The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (2 page)

George Frederick,
Count Waldeck

Abele,
President of the Treasury in Vienna

Borgomanero,
Spanish ambassador in Vienna

Buonvisi,
Papal Nuncio in Vienna

Caplirs,
Vice-President of the War Council

Caprara,
Leopold’s envoy to the Sultan

Königsegg,
Imperial Vice-Chancellor

Kuniz,
Leopold’s envoy to the Sultan

Lamberg, John Maximilian,
a senior court official in Vienna

Lamberg, John Philip,
his son, Leopold’s envoy to Berlin and Dresden

Montecuccoli,
President of the War Council until 1680

Nostitz-Reineck,
Bohemian Chancellor

Pallavicini,
Papal Nuncio in Warsaw

Rébenac,
French ambassador in Berlin

Schwarzenberg,
President of the Imperial Council

Sinelli,
Bishop of Vienna

Sinzendorf, Hans,
President of the Treasury until 1680

Starhemberg, Conrad,
Statthalter of Lower Austria

Starhemberg, Ernest Rüdiger,
his son, commander of the Vienna garrison

Stratmann,
Austrian Court-Chancellor

Zierowski,
Leopold’s ambassador in Poland

Zinzendorf, Albert,
a senior court official in Vienna

To Catherine

for withstanding the siege

1

The Origins of the

Ottoman Attack

I

On 6 August 1682, an important meeting took place in Sultan Mehmed IV’s great palace in Istanbul. The highest officers of his government were present, and those among them who opposed the Grand Vezir Kara Mustafa for personal reasons, or deplored his aggressive statesmanship, had been silenced. They now agreed to disregard the existing treaty of peace with the Emperor Leopold I, which was not due to expire until 1684, and they recommended a military campaign for the year 1683, to be mounted in Hungary with the maximum armament of the Sultan’s empire.

In fact, these dignitaries were formally accepting the Grand Vezir’s decision to intensify a policy already in operation; but they could hardly fail to realise how much depended on the bigger scale, and therefore on the scope, of his new proposal. In 1681, a number of the Sultan’s troops stationed north of the Danube had been sent to help Imre Thököly, the Magyar leader in rebellion against Habsburg authority in Christian Hungary, that part of the country which the Turks themselves did not occupy. Early in 1682, more troops were drawn from an even wider area, including Bosnia and Serbia, for the same purpose. Their commander, old Ibrahim, the governor of Buda, gave Thököly powerful assistance and some useful Habsburg strongholds in Slovakia were captured. Up to, but not beyond this point, the policy was flexible. It could be modified or even reversed. But now the Sultan, inspired by the Grand Vezir, went decidedly further. He recognised Thököly as ‘King’ of Hungary under Ottoman protection. He instructed his own court, and in addition the full complement of his household troops, to winter in Adrianople. He began to summon other contingents from his more distant provinces. It was soon understood that they were all to move northwards during the early months
of the following year to Belgrade, the general rendezvous for an immense concentration of forces.

Five days later, on 11th August 1682, at Laxenburg near Vienna, Leopold I received the opinion of his counsellors on the question of peace or war with the Turks.
¹
They unanimously advised him to try to renew his treaty of peace. These statesmen paid far too little attention to the gloomy dispatches from the Habsburg envoys in Istanbul, George Kuniz and Albert Caprara, or to the threatening situation in Hungary. They were almost all preoccupied by the recent aggressions of Louis XIV in Flanders and Germany and Italy, and by Leopold’s and Louis’ rival claims to succeed Carlos II of Spain if he died childless. They considered that the ambitious foreign policy of the French court had gained rather than lost momentum since the treaties signed at Nymegen
*
in Holland, in 1678 and 1679, put an end to seven years of public warfare in western Europe. They believed that Louis XIV was more to be feared than Mehmed IV. They argued that further concessions to France would prove fatal to Habsburg power and reputation, while possible concessions to the Sultan might be retrieved in due course. They appeared to have in mind, not an immediate order to Caprara to make a positive offer to the Turks (this they had always refused to contemplate), but a further dragging out of discussion between their envoys and the Grand Vezir; if necessary, somewhat later, they would consider the surrender of a few fortified points in the area between Habsburg Pressburg and Turkish Buda. The Sultan, after all, had not stirred in the critical 1670s when Christian Hungary was in a state of mutiny against Leopold. They tried hard to convince themselves that he would not stir far in the 1680s.

The Austrian counsellors were mistaken, but the westward orientation of Viennese policy was an obstinate tradition of long standing. The dominant idea, at least since the early part of the century when the Ottoman power was relatively quiescent, had been to deal gently with the Moslems in order to spare the maximum force required to oppose Christian enemies in western Europe. This was the tactic in 1664, after the great victory of St Gotthard on the banks of the River Rába, when the Habsburgs made concessions (unnecessarily, it seemed to some critics) in order to secure the twenty years’ truce due to expire in 1684. ‘The Crescent Moon (of Islam) climbs up the night sky and the Gallic cock sleeps not!’ was a popular German saying of the time. Leopold I in the Hofburg heard clearly the crowing of the French court and, with the majority of his statesmen, disliked Louis XIV intensely; but for him, the moon rose in comparative silence and the Sultan represented the principle of evil in a somewhat remote sphere, at least in the years before 1682 and 1683. A strong clerical interest at his court, which argued the merits of defending or
expanding Christendom, battled in vain against the traditional emphasis in the complex system of Viennese diplomacy.

In August 1682, therefore, the Turks decided on an ambitious military attack against the Habsburg at an early date; and the Habsburg decided to try to avoid war. It is a coincidence which helps to explain why twelve months later the armies of the Sultan were camped round the walls of Vienna itself. In fact, the Habsburg government was not caught completely off its guard, as other evidence will show. But a fundamental underestimate of Turkish striking power continued to bedevil its general policy.

An official ceremony in Istanbul, the mounting of the Sultan’s insignia—the
Tugh,
or horsetails—outside the Grand Seraglio, publicly proclaimed his intention of leaving the city in the near future. As so often in past years, no doubt, it seemed that he would hunt during the autumn and then go on to Adrianople. Indeed, he left on 8 October,
²
after the fast of Ramadan and the feast of Bairam were over, hunted at leisure through various tracts of countryside, and reached Adrianople early in December. His harem and household followed him. But observant men were on the watch for a great deal besides the usual paraphernalia of a despot’s private pleasures. They saw the different sections of the Sultan’s permanent army, usually stationed in and near Istanbul, now assembling outside the walls of the city around his gorgeous ceremonial tent, the movable headquarters and symbol of his government: the Janissaries and auxiliary infantry units, the Spahis and other household cavalry, and a host of technicians and tradesmen required for the service of the troops. Although a marvellous cavalcade had ushered the Sultan out of the city with traditional Moslem emphasis on the importance of such an occasion, the majority of the soldiers left a week later, moved forward without stopping long anywhere, and reached Adrianople before him. Here they remained for four months, the core of an army which expanded rapidly as additional detachments kept coming in; for messengers had gone out to the farthest edges of the empire in Asia and Europe, and also to Egypt. The
beylerbeyis,
or governors-in-chief, were instructed to bring with them the contingents for which their revenues made them liable, and to see that the lesser provincial officials, the
sandjakbeyis,
and the landowners large and small, who held land on military tenures, did likewise. Gradually, these forces began to make their way to Adrianople, Belgrade or to points on the road between them.

Meanwhile Kuniz and Caprara had both been brought from Istanbul, and the representatives of other rulers arrived at the temporary centre of government where the Sultan and Grand Vezir resided. One came from Moscow, and the treaty made in 1681 with the Czar of Muscovy was ratified, which ensured peace in a vast area north of the Black Sea. The envoys of the Prince of Transylvania were for once well and lavishly entertained: the Ottoman government hoped to make certain that Prince Michael Apafi sent his forces to join the army, and paid his tribute punctually in the coming
year, at the same time acting as a counterweight to Thököly, the new ‘King’ in Hungary. A conference with Caprara took place, in which arguments aired at earlier meetings between the Austrian and the Turkish statesmen were repeated. It was a farcical occasion, because Leopold had made no fresh offers, and because Kara Mustafa was determined not to commit himself until the weight of the army to be assembled in Hungary had given him an overpowering advantage. Caprara learnt now that the price of peace was the surrender of Györ, a fortress of the greatest importance to the Habsburg defences, situated on the Danube, fifty miles south-east of Pressburg. The Turks realised that he had no authority to agree to this; he was already that familiar phenomenon in the history of Ottoman relations with the Christian states, a captive diplomat, detained for possible use by the Turks at their discretion. As a matter of much greater immediate importance, at Adrianople the Sultan willingly agreed with his counsellors that he should lead the army to Belgrade, while thereafter the Grand Vezir exercised supreme military command as his deputy.