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364

The Holy League against the Turks

[1683-98 the Vezir, he risked his safety by a personal visit to the Sultan at Adrianople. His eloquence, strengthened by the support of Kara Mus tafa's numerous enemies, prevailed with Mohammad IV. Not only was he allowed to depart with renewed promises of aid, but his personal enemy was removed by death. On December 25 the emissaries of the Sultan carried to Kara Mustafa at Belgrade the fatal bowstring, and the immense wealth which his avarice had accumulated was confiscated by his sovereign.

No sooner had the glorious campaign of 1683 closed, than the Emperor Leopold was confronted by the same momentous question which had been so hotly debated by the Austrian Ministers in the previous year. Were his most vital interests in the east or in the west? Would he transform a war which had been forced upon him for the defence of his own dominions into an aggressive crusade for wresting from the Turks the Christian lands which had so long groaned under their rule? Or would he make peace with the disappointed invaders of Austria, and turn his whole strength to the task of resisting Louis XIV, who remained in possession of Strassburg, and who, at the time when Vienna was in its greatest straits, had renewed the attack upon Luxem burg, which with a parade of magnanimity he had suspended in 1682? On the one side was the influence of the Spanish ambassador at Vienna, Borgomainero, who hoped to gain the support of Charles of Lorraine for a scheme which might lead to recovering his lost duchy. On the other side were the urgent representations of Pope Innocent XI and of the victorious generals, including the chivalrous Duke of Lorraine, who placed the interests of Christendom far above the recovery of his own inheritance. Leopold, with equal wisdom and docility, followed the guidance of the Church. On March 5, 1684, at Linz, where the Emperor resided while his capital was purified and rebuilt, was signed the Holy League between Austria, Poland, and Venice. The three Powers pledged themselves to carry on war against the Turks and to conclude no separate peace with the infidel. Each State was to retain any conquests which it might make. The Pope was recognised as the patron and protector of the League, and a solemn oath to carry out its terms was transmitted to him from each of the members.

From this treaty dates the continuous war which lasted till the Peace of Carlowitz (1684-98), which finally freed Europe from the Turkish terror, and which assured to the Austrian Habsburgs a foremost place among the Great Powers. The contributions of the three allies to the ultimate success were unequal in merit and in extent. That of Poland was unquestionably the least. John Sobieski did little to maintain, and nothing to enhance, the fame which he had won at Khoczim, at Lemberg, and in the relief of Vienna. He was not unfaithful to his allies, but he was fatally hampered by domestic difficulties, by the opposition of interested partisans of France among the nobles

1684-96]

War between Venice and the Turks

365

of Poland and Lithuania, and by the influence of his wife, who returned to her old love for her native country. These troubles broke the spirit and clouded the later years of the hero-King. Sobieski died in 1696 without having achieved either of the objects dearest to his heart. He had failed to drive the Turks from Kameniec and Podolia, and he did not succeed in securing the succession of his son to the throne of which he was the last illustrious occupant.

In the case of Venice, on the other hand, the war was signalised by many creditable achievements. Taking full advantage of the fact that the main Turkish forces were occupied in the north, the Republic organised simultaneous attacks upon the Dalmatian coast and upon Greece. In the latter the chief command was entrusted to Francesco Morosini, the hero of the defence of Candia. He began the campaign in 1684 by capturing the island of Santa Maura and the town of Prevesa. In 1685, with the help of an army of German mercenaries, he commenced his great enterprise, the conquest of the Morea, which gave him the name of "the Peloponnesian." Koron was taken in August, and the fall of Kalamata made him master of the peninsula of Maina. In the next year the Turks were defeated in an attempt to relieve Nauplia by Count Königsmarck, who commanded the German troops; and the surrender of the garrison gave to Venice almost complete mastery of the southern Morea. The campaign of 1687 is the most famous in the history of the war. In July the Turkish entrenchments near Patras were carried by storm, and an entry was secured into the gulf of Corinth. Accompanied by the fleet, the army marched along the coast to Corinth, which was occupied on August 7. After fortifying the Isthmus, the Venetian forces proceeded into Attica and laid siege to Athens. The bombs of the besiegers reduced to ruin the Parthenon and the Propylaea, and the Turks surrendered the city on September 28. With the fall of Athens the record of uninterrupted success came to an end. In 1688 the city was evacuated, partly on account of an outbreak of plague, and partly in order to concentrate all the forces of the Republic on the conquest of Negropont. This enterprise ended in complete and disastrous failure. Königsmarck died in September; and on their departure from Negropont in October the German troops were disbanded and sent home. The later history of the war is comparatively uneventful. Morosini resigned his command in 1689; and in the next year Monemvasia, the last Turkish stronghold in the Morea, was starved into surrender. But all attempts to extend or retain Venetian domination beyond the Isthmus ended in failure. Morosini tried to encourage his fellow-countrymen by returning to Greece at the age of seventy-five; but he died at Napoli (January 16, 1694) before he had time to put his reputation to a new test. His successor Zeno attacked Chios, but was completely defeated by a Turkish fleet and was punished for his incompetence by imprisonment in Venice. The Turkish Government

366

Austrian successes in the east

[1684-6

was steadily improving its naval and military forces as the war went on; and the Republic owed the retention of most of its conquests in Greece and Dalmatia to the obstinate exertions of Austria.

As compared with her allies, Austria bore the brunt of the war, and to her fell the largest and the most durable share of the spoils. Four eminent commanders, Duke Charles of Lorraine, the Elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria, Margrave Lewis of Baden-Baden, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, had taken part in the relief of Vienna; and they became the protagonists in the great eastern struggle. With the excep tion of 1684, when an over-confident attack upon Buda ended in the complete repulse of the besiegers, each of the early years of the war was marked by at least one distinguished feat of arms. In fact the superiority of the German arms and tactics, thanks largely to the teaching of Montecuculi, was so great that some contemporary critics complained that the successes gained were not more rapid and complete. For this they blamed the lateness of the season in which the campaigns were begun, and the jealousy with which both the Elector of Bavaria and the Margrave of Baden regarded the Duke of Lorraine. But it must also be remembered that, in addition to the main campaigns, the Austrians were fighting against rebels in northern Hungary and against the Turks in Slavonia and Bosnia; that the central war was mainly a war of sieges; and that the Turks, if inferior in the open field, were still stubborn opponents behind walls or entrenchments. A series of almost unbroken victories began in 1685 with the siege of Neuhäusel. The Turks, instead of attempting to effect a direct relief, marched to attack Gran, where they were defeated with great loss by Charles of Lorraine with his main army (August 16). Three days later Aeneas Caprara, who had been left with a small force to maintain the siege till the Duke's return, succeeded in storming the fortress which had been originally constructed by Ferdinand I, and had been the great prize of Ahmad Kiuprili in 1663. In the next year the Imperial army, to which volunteers now flocked from all parts of Europe, advanced to the second siege of Buda. The garrison offered as obstinate a defence as before, and the Vezir Kara Ibrahim led a large army to its succour. But the Duke of Lorraine pressed his attack in spite of many disappointments, and on September 2, after a siege of ten weeks, the ancient capital of Hungary was added to the dominions of the Habsburg King. Equally gratifying to Leopold and almost equally important were the successes gained in 1686 in Upper Hungary. Tökölyi, defeated by General Schulz near Eperies, appealed for aid to the Pasha of Gross wardein, who received him with royal honours and then sent him in chains to Adrianople. Although he was subsequently released and even restored to favour, his cause had suffered a blow from which it never recovered. By the end of 1686 Eperies, Kaschan, Tokay and a number of other towns had submitted to the Emperor. Only the fortress of Munkács held out

1687]

Austrian ascendancy in Hungary

367

under the command of Helen Zrinyi, a more obstinate rebel even than her husband.

The campaign of 1687 opened with a reverse. Max Emanuel of Bavaria had long urged that he was entitled to a separate command by his rank as a great German Prince and as the Emperor's son-in-law. The fear that his discontent might lead to the withdrawal of the Bavarian contingent compelled the Austrian Government to divide the army between the Duke of Lorraine and the Elector. Their imperfect co-operation helped to bring about the repulse of an attack on the important fortress of Essek, where the great bridge over the marshy valley of the Drave was the main link in the line of communication between southern Hungary and Belgrade. But the failure was no unmixed evil, since it encouraged the Vezir to follow the retreating army and to risk a pitched battle at Harkány, near Mohács. Here the Turks suffered a crushing defeat (August 12), which did more than any other single event to overthrow that Turkish ascendancy in Hungary which had been founded upon Solyman's great victory at Mohács more than a hundred and fifty years before. General Dünewald, following the fleeing enemy, took Essek and Peterwardein, and thus opened the way into Servia. In the north Erlau surrendered, and Charles of Lorraine, entering into Transylvania, received from Apaffy an acknowledgment of vassalage to the Habsburg King of Hungary. Earlier in the year a special Court had been erected at Eperies under General Caraffa to enquire into the guilt of Tökölyi's associates, and its severity had for the moment intimidated the malcontents. On October 31 a Diet was opened at Pressburg, which recognised the Hungarian Crown as hereditary in the male Habsburg line, and repealed the famous clause in the Golden Bull of 1222, supposed to give the Hungarians a right of armed insurrection in defence of their liberties. The concessions to Protestants made at Oedenburg in 1681 were confirmed. Leopold celebrated his triumph in the formal coronation of his nine year old son, Joseph, on December 9. A few weeks later Munkács was at last forced to surrender, and Helen Zrinyi with her children became the Emperor's prisoner.

But the most important results of the battle of Harkány were felt in Turkey. A mutiny broke out in the retreating army, and the mutineers demanded the head of the Vezir. When this was conceded, they proceeded to insist upon the deposition of Mohammad IV, who had preferred the pleasures of the chase to the tasks of government and of military command (November, 1687). Solyman II, whose life had, contrary to all precedents, been spared by his brother, now emerged from his prison to mount the throne. He was wholly unable to control the disorderly troops; and for months Constantinople was given over to anarchy and lawless pillage, until the citizens themselves rose and put the ringleaders to death. So great was the disorder that an easy

368

Continued defeats of the Turks

[1688-90

triumph seemed to be assured to the Imperialists if they were prompt to move in 1688. But precious time was wasted in an intrigue which ended in the transfer of the supreme command from the Duke of Lorraine to the Elector of Bavaria. It was not till July that the latter joined the army, and not till August that he advanced from Peterwardein to besiege Belgrade. Fortunately for him, the Turks had not taken full advantage of the respite given to them; and on September 6 the famous fortress at the junction of the Save and the Danube was carried by storm. The capture of Belgrade, as Leopold himself said, opened the way to Constantinople, and pious churchmen began to anticipate confidently the complete expulsion of the infidels from the soil of Europe. But they reckoned without the Most Christian King. Louis XIV had watched with ever-increasing chagrin the progress of the Austrian arms. Every defeat of the Turks and the Hungarian rebels diminished his chances of gaining the Spanish succession for his House. It became necessary for him to strike before the Eastern War was at an end; and, in spite of the twenty years' truce which he had concluded in 1684, he now recommenced those acts of aggression which in the next year involved the Western Powers in another great war. But he nearly overreached himself. William III joined Spain in urging the Emperor to accept the peace which the humbled Turks had more than once offered in vain. The negotiations, however, which were conducted in the winter of 1688-9 came to no result. The Turks became less yielding, when they discovered that France was about to make a diversion in their favour; and Leopold was obstinately loyal to his allies in Venice and Poland. To the intense. chagrin of Spain and the Maritime Powers, the Emperor decided to continue the war against the Turks.

It was a courageous but a rash decision. The outbreak of war with France, which compelled Leopold to send considerable forces under Charles of Lorraine and the Elector of Bavaria to the Rhine, restored the balance in the eastern struggle which had hitherto been so decisively adverse to the Turks. In 1689 the change was not yet apparent. In addition to their wars with Poland and Venice, the Turks had to face a new enemy in the Russians who invaded the Crimea. Lewis of Baden, who had succeeded to the command of the Imperial army, was able to overrun Servia, where he made himself master of Nizza and Widdin. But in the winter the Sultan gave the office of Vezir to Mustafa Kiuprili, the brother of the famous Ahmad. Mustafa displayed all the reforming zeal which characterised the members of his House, while he surpassed them in religious tolerance. His great desire was to deprive the enemies of the Porte of the advantages which they had hitherto gained from the discontent of the subject Christians. At the same time, he set himself to reorganise the military organisation and to rekindle discord in Hungary. The death of Apaffy in April, 1690, was followed by the

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