Turkish Wars of European Expansion
The Turkish Wars of European Expansion refer to a series of military campaigns initiated by the Ottoman Empire from the 14th to the 17th centuries, significantly shaping the political landscape of Southeastern Europe. Following their emergence from Anatolia in the 13th century, the Ottomans, under various sultans, expanded their territory into Europe, capturing key cities such as Gallipoli, Adrianople, and eventually Constantinople in 1453, which marked a pivotal point in their dominance. The Ottomans faced significant resistance, including a coalition of European forces at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 and later the notable defeat at Lepanto in 1571, which was the first major setback for Ottoman maritime supremacy.
Throughout this period, notable sultans like Mehmed II and Süleyman I achieved substantial territorial gains, extending Ottoman influence to parts of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. However, by the late 17th century, their expansion faced challenges, including failed sieges of Vienna and conflicts with the Habsburgs and Russia, leading to the eventual loss of territories and the signing of treaties that recognized the sovereignty of European powers. By the end of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire's influence in Europe began to wane, signaling a significant shift in the power dynamics of the region. These wars not only influenced military strategies and alliances but also had lasting impacts on the cultural and social fabric of Europe.
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Turkish Wars of European Expansion
At issue: Sovereignty over the Balkans and southern Russia and Poland
Date: 1345–1699
Locations: Balkans, Austria, Ukraine, Crimea, Transcaucasia
Combatants: Turks vs. Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks, Transylvanians, Austrians, Poles, Russians, and Venetians
Principal commanders:Turkish, Sultan Bayezid I (1347–1403), Sultan Murad II (1404–1451), Sultan Mehmed II (1432–1481), Sultan Süleyman I (1494/1495–1566), Kara Mustapha (d. 1683), Fazil Mustapha (d. 1691); Opponents, John the Fearless (1371–1419), Marshal Jean II le Meingre, known as Boucicault (c. 1366–1421), King Sigismund (1367–1437), Tamerlane (1336–1405), János Hunyadi (1387–1456), Don Juan de Austria (1547–1578), John III Sobieski (1624–1696), Charles V, duke of Lorraine (1643–1690)
Principal battles: Adrianople, Kosovo, Constantinople, Mohács, Vienna (3), Lepanto, Mezö-Keresztes, Candia, St. Gotthard Abbey, Esztergrom, Zenta
Result: For much of the early modern era, the Ottomans produced the most dreaded military machine in Europe; the Battle of Zenta marked the beginning of their withdrawal from Balkan territories
Background
Successors to the Seljuk Turks, the followers of Osman began to expand throughout Anatolia in the thirteenth century. In 1345, Byzantine emperor John V Palaeologus invited them into Europe to help him subdue a usurper.
Action
The Turks remained in Europe under Sultan Orhan to seize Gallipoli in 1354, and eight years later under Sultan Murad I, they took Adrianople (1362). They defeated the Serbs in 1389 at Kosovo and, four years later, subdued the Bulgars.
In 1396, a coalition of European forces united to recover Nicopolis from the Turks. Burgundians under Duke John the Fearless, Frenchmen under Boucicault, and Hungarians led by King Sigismund invaded the Turkish-held lands in a crusade sponsored by Pope Boniface IX. Quarrels among the knights enabled the Turks to win the battle and capture 14,000 Christian knights. In 1402, Tamerlane and his Mongols arrived from Central Asia and defeated the Ottoman Turks at Ankara. They captured Sultan Bayezid I and displayed him in a cage.
The Mongol threat around 1402 gave the Byzantines time to strengthen the outer defenses of Constantinople. In 1422, Sultan Murad II and the Turks besieged the sacred Roman city but failed to take it. Emperor John VIII Palaeologus approached the west, seeking aid by attempting to mend the split that had existed in Christendom since 1054. The resulting Council of Florence in 1438 reunited the Eastern and Western churches, but it was later annulled by the faithful in the East. In 1442, János Hunyadi in Transylvania checked the Turkish advances northward, but a combined Hungarian-Polish crusade failed two years later. Sultan Mehmed II “The Conqueror” achieved the ultimate Ottoman goal of taking Constantinople (1453).
By 1516, under Sultan Selim I, the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean shoreline was in Turkish hands, including Syria, Egypt, and Greece. Sultan Selim I now adopted the mantle of caliph, a move rejected by the Shīʿite Muslims in Persia. The armies of Selim were organized by his agas, or military commanders, who made the Janissaries the most feared infantry in the Western world. The spahi cavalry, consisting of feudal landowners of the Turkish world, were freeborn Muslims unlike the converted slaves of the Janissary corps.
Sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent succeeded Selim and directed his Turkish armies again toward Europe. Leading his own troops in combat, he achieved immortality with his defeat of the Hungarians on the plains of Mohács on August 29, 1526. The conquests of Belgrade, Buda, and the island of Rhodes soon followed, and Süleyman’s European sovereignty extended to Southern Russia (Crimea), Transylvania, Hungary, and the rest of the Balkans. The Near East and the entire North African coastline also became Ottoman. In 1529 and later in 1532, Süleyman tried unsuccessfully to besiege Vienna, the Habsburg capital of Austria.
In 1571, the Ottoman Turks’ fleet was soundly defeated in the Gulf of Petras near Lepanto by an allied fleet led by Admiral Don Juan de Austria. This victory for the Habsburg coalition (Austrians, Spaniards, Genoese, and Venetians) reopened the great sea to European commerce. It was the first major Ottoman defeat since the Turks had entered Europe. A war with Austria broke out in 1593 when the Romanian provinces rebelled and joined the Habsburg coalition. Austrian forces defeated the Turks in northern Hungary. Sultan Mehmed III personally took charge of the campaign in October, 1596, to win a major encounter at Mezö-Keresztes. The war dragged on without distinction until the new sultan, Ahmed I, agreed to the Treaty of Szitvatorok in 1606, which ended Habsburg tribute.
Internal turmoil, the decline of the Janissaries, and wars with the Shīʿites in Safavid Persia kept the Ottoman threat to Europe silent during the first half of the next century. In July, 1645, the Turks laid siege to Candia, the capital of Crete. The siege failed but the Ottomans returned several times to besiege the city defended by the Venetian commander Count Giovanni Morisini. On September 6, 1669, the island fell to the invaders; this event represented the last extension of Turkish power in Europe.
An Albanian family of Köprülü succeeded to the post of grand vizier in the second half of the century. The first was Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, whose drastic reforms slowly began to reap rewards after 1656 when the infantry and navy defeated the Venetians and subdued a revolt in Transylvania. His successor as grand vizier was his son Fazil Ahmed, who took the offensive against Austria, but the French arrived to augment the Habsburg armies in time to repel the Turks at St. Gotthard Abbey in 1664.
The Janissaries continued their northern campaign by capturing the fortress of Kamenets (Kameniec), Lemberg, Lublin, and Podolia in a war against Poland in 1672. When Polish king John III Sobieski balked at paying tribute, war was resumed until Fazil Ahmed’s death in 1676. Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha waged an unsuccessful war with the Russians until 1681. Two years later, the same grand vizier launched the most famous campaign of the century: a new Siege of Vienna.
On July 7, 1683, the Ottoman forces took the garrison at Györ, some eighty-five miles south of Vienna. By July 16, they reached the outer defenses of the Habsburg capital, and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I fled the city. The Turks of Kara Mustapha were compelled to turn away and retreat to Györ in disgrace. Meanwhile Charles V, duke of Lorraine, brought his German army into Esztergrom, the first Islamicized city to be retaken by Christian armies. Kara Mustapha abandoned Buda and retreated farther down the Danube to Belgrade. More than fifty pashas were strangled on orders of the grand vizier.
On August 20, 1688, Austrian armies took the citadel of Belgrade; Niš surrendered to the Austrians a year later. The Ottomans rallied under new Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazil Mustapha, who pushed the Austrians away from Serbian territories; he died during the Battle of Peterwardein in 1691. After the defeat of the Turks at Zenta in 1697, all sides called for peace, and a treaty was signed two years later at Carlowitz. Poland recovered title to Podolia and the fortress of Kameniec, and the Ottomans recognized the Habsburgs as sovereigns of Transylvania.
During this same time, the Turks fought numerous wars with Russians who were allied with the Habsburgs. An inconclusive conflict took place from 1676 to 1681 following Ottoman threats to Ukrainian lands recently annexed by Muscovy. The Turks laid siege to the town of Chigirin, but the arrival of more Russian and Ukrainian armies brought an end to the conflict, ended by the Treaty of Bakhchisarai (1681). Russia continued to control the left bank of the Dnieper River, and Turks claimed sovereignty over the right bank. Czar Peter I assumed power in Russia, and the resumption of war allowed the Russians to gain access to the Sea of Azov in 1696, only to lose it later.
Aftermath
The Ottomans held their own in a series of wars with Russia and Austria in the next half century but lost considerable territories after 1768.
Bibliography
Clot, André. Süleyman the Magnificent: The Man, His Life, His Epoch. London: Saqi Books, 1992.
Crompton, Samuel Willard. One Hundred Military Leaders Who Shaped World History. San Mateo, Calif.: Bluewood Books, 1999.
Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi, 1997.
Goodwin, Jason. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. London: Vintage, 1999.
Palmer, Alan Warwick. The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire. New York: M. Evans, 1993.