Battle of Belgrade
The Battle of Belgrade in 1717 was a significant military engagement during the prolonged conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs. Following a period of military setbacks for the Ottomans after the second Siege of Vienna in 1683, their fortunes improved briefly with victories in the early 1710s. However, under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Habsburg forces sought to capitalize on this resurgence by targeting Belgrade, defended by a substantial contingent of Ottoman troops. The battle was notable for its tactical maneuvers, including the construction of pontoon bridges by the Habsburgs and an unexpected assault that exploited Ottoman overconfidence. Ultimately, Belgrade fell to the Habsburgs, marking a pivotal moment that contributed to the decline of Ottoman territorial power in Europe. Following this battle, the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718 reshaped the territorial landscape, solidifying Habsburg dominance in the region. The aftermath of these conflicts set the stage for ongoing challenges within the Ottoman Empire, foreshadowing its eventual decline and the complexities of the Eastern Question that persisted until the empire's dissolution after World War I.
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Battle of Belgrade
Type of action: Siege and battle in the Austro-Turkish Wars
Date: July-August, 1717 (siege); August 16, 1717 (battle)
Location: Belgrade
Combatants: Habsburgs vs. Ottomans
Principal commanders:Habsburg, Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736); Ottoman, Halil Pasha
Result: With Austria’s intervention, the Turks lost Belgrade; Turkey retained conquests from the Venetians but ceded Hungary and part of Serbia
The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of major defeats at the hands of European powers after the second unsuccessful Siege of Vienna in 1683. The empire’s military prospects revived when the Turks defeated Peter the Great on the Pruth River in 1712, then retook the Morea (southern Greece) from the Venetians in 1714. The Ottoman army next moved north to Serbia to fight the Habsburgs, who were mobilizing against them under Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Frenchman who had been in service to the Habsburgs since the 1680’s.
After defeating the Turks as they attempted to besiege Peterwardein (modern Novi Sad), Eugene of Savoy captured the fortress of Temesvar and moved on Belgrade, which was defended by 30,000 Turkish troops. The Habsburg soldiers built pontoon bridges over the Danube to keep their lines of communication open to the north. Before Eugene of Savoy’s forces could take the city, another Ottoman army, led by the Turkish grand vizier Halil Pasha, arrived on the scene. Although it possessed a significant amount of artillery and was twice as big as Eugene’s dysentery-weakened force of 70,000, the prince boldly attacked it. The advantage of surprise, coupled with Ottoman overconfidence and a superbly disciplined bayonet charge by the Habsburg infantry, broke the lines of Turkish Janissaries. Belgrade fell to the Austrians shortly thereafter. Both sides made extensive use of irregular troops in this campaign, and atrocities and looting were common.
The Battle of Belgrade in 1717 was not as destructive to the Ottomans as the Battle of Zenta had been in 1697; likewise, the ensuing Peace of Passarowitz (1718) was not as lucrative for the Habsburgs as the Treaty of Karlowitz had been in 1699. Both battles were won by the same famous Habsburg commander, Prince Eugene of Savoy, renowned for his generalship in other wars against the Turks and against the French in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). The two wars, comprising a thirty-five-year set of conflicts between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, marked the end of the Ottoman Empire as an expanding power; thus they form the beginning of the Eastern Question (the process of manipulating the Ottoman Empire from without and gradually depriving it of territory) that would last until the country’s final collapse, just after World War I.
Significance
After the Ottoman Empire’s brief military renaissance had ended, the sultan, Ahmed III, returned to his beloved cultural pursuits; Istanbul experienced a temporary burst of westernization and douceur de vivre in his day, but what it needed was sweeping reforms to keep up with growing Western industrial and military power. For the Habsburgs, the gains of the Treaty of Karlowitz (most of Hungary) were now greatly supplemented by the acquisition of the rest of Hungary (the Banat and Vojvodina), Oltenia, central Serbia, and a narrow strip of northern Bosnia south of the Sava River, which was added to the military frontier. The Habsburg Empire became a major power in the Balkans as well as in Central Europe.
Bibliography
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Kinross, Lord (John Patrick). The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York: Morrow Quill, 1977.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. New York: Longman, 1997.
McKay, Derek. Prince Eugene of Savoy. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.
Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare: 1500–1700. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
Pope, Nicole, and Hugh Pope. Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1998.
Stavrianos, Leften S. The Balkans Since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958.
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