Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
66. The Second Siege of Vienna (1684), Part 2 of 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
There were no major hostilities with the European powers during the reign of Sultan Murad IV. The Europeans were fighting among themselves during the thirty-year war (1618-1648), and had neither the will nor the resources to start a conflict with the Ottomans. However, the situation changed soon after the death of Murad.
The Knights of St John, based in Malta, regularly raided the coasts of Syria and North Africa. The island of Crete, controlled by Venice, served as their base. In 1645, an Ottoman fleet set sail for Crete to drive them out. It was to be the start of a long war in which the two most powerful navies of the eastern Mediterranean, those of the Ottomans and the Venetians, tested their mettle against each other. The war lasted until 1669 when Venice finally ceded Crete to the Ottomans.
In Istanbul, meanwhile, the process of disintegration that was evident before Murad IV was set in motion again after his death. His successor, Ibrahim (1640-1648), was weak, vacillating, and showed little inclination to govern. Intrigues in the harem and the court surfaced again. The Grand Vizier, Mustafa Pasha, tried to arrest the centrifugal forces. He reduced the size of the standing army, paid soldiers and bureaucrats alike on time, reduced taxes on peasants, and put the currency on a solid footing. His reforms evoked the jealousy of the harem and the court alike. Mustafa Pasha was framed, deposed and executed in 1644.
The situation in the capital went from bad to worse, and in 1648, the janissars rebelled, dethroned and executed Sultan Ibrahim. Mehmet IV, then a boy of seven, ascended the throne. Since he was too young to rule, the Grand Vizier, Mehmet Pasha, managed the affairs of state. The job was always a precarious one and tenure depended on performance. In 1649, when the Turkish navy suffered reverses in their naval engagements against the Venetians in the Aegean Sea, Mehmet Pasha was dismissed and executed. His successor, Grand Vizier Ibshir Pasha was equally frustrated by palace intrigue from reforming the administration. He too was executed in 1655 and Kurpulu Mehmet Pasha was appointed the Grand Vizier.
Mehmet Pasha was an able, intelligent, determined and experienced administrator. It was he who guided the ship of state while Sultan Mehmet IV was busy with the harem and hunting. Mehmet purged the administration of incompetent personnel, fostered discipline in the army, eliminated extortion, punished greedy tax collectors, and ruthlessly put down any rebellion. He reorganized the navy and ordered it to lift the blockade of Istanbul that the Venetians had imposed.
One by one, the islands of the Aegean that had been lost to Venice were won back, and Venice was forced to sue for peace. Mehmet Pasha died in 1661 and was succeeded as Grand Vizier by his son Fazil Ahmed Pasha. A cultivated, urbane man, Fazil continued the reforms of his father. He is known in history for his encouragement of art and literature and his policy of tolerance towards Christians, Jews and other minorities. The combined period of the two Kurpulus, Mehmet Pasha and Fazil Ahmed (1655-1676), is known as the golden age for Turkish arts. Under the two Kurpulus, the old Ottoman institutions regained their former vitality, and the empire regained its former military muscle.
It was about this time that the struggle between the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs for control of Central Europe heated up again, and was to climax with the siege of Vienna in 1683. The Grand Vizier demanded that the Hapsburgs cease their intervention in Hungary, demolish the fortresses they had built while the Ottomans had been preoccupied with internal turmoil, and resume the payment of annual tribute to the Sultan. When the demands were refused, Fazil Ahmed advanced from Buda-Pest towards Vienna (1663), and captured several key forts. The demonstration of renewed Turkish strength alarmed the Europeans. The Hapsburgs of Austria were Catholic, and they appealed to the Vatican for help. Pope Alexander VII formed a “Holy League” against the Ottomans. Venice, Genoa and the German principalities signed on. Louis XIV of France sent a contingent. Additional troops were dispatched from as far away as Portugal and Spain. The two armies met at the Battle of St. Gotthard (1664). The contest was a draw, and it ended with the Treaty of Vasvar, which reconfirmed Ottoman control of Hungary. But it also demonstrated to the Europeans that the Turks could be held at bay. To the north, Turkish armies advanced deep into the Ukraine and Poland (1672), and forced the Poles to pay tribute. Thus, for a while in the 17thcentury, the principal powers of eastern and central Europe, including Austria, and Poland paid tribute to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul or to his vassals.
The battle for Hungary started again when the Treaty of Vasvar expired in 1682. Ahmed Pasha passed away in 1676, and Kara Mustafa Pasha was appointed the Grand Vizier. Capable, determined, and ambitious, he saw the manifest destiny of the Ottomans as the principal power dominating Christian Europe. The Hungarians preferred Ottoman rule to the Hapsburgs because the Protestants as well as the Orthodox Christians of Hungary enjoyed greater freedom under the Muslim Turks than they did under the Catholic Austrians. So, when Austria made a move into Hungary, Thokoly, King of Hungary, appealed to the Ottomans for help. A contingent of Turkish troops arrived, and with their help, Thokoly managed to extend his realm in western Hungary. Trying to avoid renewed war, the Hapsburgs sent an envoy to Istanbul to negotiate an extension of the treaty of Vasvar. Mustafa Pasha demanded the surrender of Gyor, a strong Austrian fortress located between Buda-Pest and Vienna. War became inevitable when the Austrians refused, and Mustafa Pasha advanced towards Hungary with a powerful army of over a hundred thousand, backed by a corps of artillery units. This formidable army was joined by 30,000 troops from the Crimean Tatars. The year was 1683.
Ottoman historians have debated to this day whether Grand Vizier Mustafa Pasha had Vienna as the target of this mission or whether he moved in that direction to exploit a military opportunity. They are also divided as to whether Sultan Mehmet IV knew in advance of the march on Vienna. There is general agreement only that the approved target was the great fortress of Gyor. Against the advice of some of his generals, and of his Tatar allies, Mustafa bypassed the fort of Gyor and advanced towards Vienna. He arrived at the Hapsburg capital on July 14, 1683.
Much had changed since Sulaiman the Magnificent stood at the gates of Vienna in September 1526. At that time, the Turks enjoyed overwhelming superiority in field guns and in tactics. Their cavalry was the fiercest in the world. By 1683, the Europeans had caught up with the Ottomans in metallurgy and ballistics, and their field guns were a match for the Ottomans. In tactics and discipline too, the Hapsburgs and the Germans could successfully challenge the Turks. Sultan Sulaiman had withdrawn at the early onset of winter in Central Europe after forcing the Hapsburgs to pay tribute. Grand Vizier Mustafa Pasha was determined to succeed where Sulaiman the Magnificent had failed, and to make a name for himself in history. He had arrived at the capital in mid-summer, allowing himself plenty of time for a successful siege.
The Hapsburgs were ill prepared for this invasion, believing that the Ottomans would confine their campaigns to western Hungary and retreat. Vienna was defended by only 15,000 troops. Once it became obvious that Mustafa was headed for their capital, Leopold I of Austria appealed to the European powers for help. Pope Innocent XI sent a large amount of cash, and organized a Catholic alliance. Louis XIV of France stayed aloof, but the Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony in Germany sent troops. King Sobiesky of Poland formed an alliance with the Hapsburgs and marched forth with 40,000 troops. Portugal and Spain sent contingents. The Venetians offered help as well.
What followed were a series of missteps and miscalculations on the part of the Turks, and a confluence of circumstances favorable to the Europeans. The Ottoman army arrived at the gates of Vienna in July 1683 and laid siege to it. The Crimean Tatars, together with some Turkish contingents, continued their westward advance and raided territories deep into Austria and Central Germany. Mustafa Pasha was in such a great hurry to reach the capital that he had left behind the heavy guns in the Ottoman arsenal, believing that mining would accomplish a breach of the fort. This proved to be a serious miscalculation. The walls of Vienna were too well constructed to yield to light cannon, and mining was a time-consuming process. Meanwhile, King Sobiesky of Poland arrived with his troops and was joined by German contingents from Bavaria, Saxony, as well as a contingent from Lorraine. Together, this host of over 70,000 marched towards Vienna. The situation in the capital was desperate. The Ottomans had succeeded in mining the walls, and their light artillery had demolished sections of the fort. The city might have fallen to a determined assault. At this critical juncture the Ottomans made a grave tactical error in permitting the Catholic armies to cross the River Danube towards the fort. Turkish historians maintain that Mustafa Pasha had asked the Tatar Khan to guard the river, but the latter had stood by as the European troops crossed because of his personal animosity towards the Grand Vizier. Even so, Mustafa made another tactical error in trying to stem the advance of the enemy using his cavalry. The European armies were well disciplined, well led, used cannon effectively, and were fighting a holy war to defend a capital city. The battle was fought on September 12, 1683. When it was over, more than 10,000 Turkish soldiers had perished against half that number for the Christians. The Ottomans retreated, having lost their tents, their treasures, and their field guns.
This was the first major defeat suffered by the Ottoman armies at the hands of the Europeans. It proved to be as much of a disaster to the Ottomans as was the defeat at Las Novas de Tolosa (1212) for the Al Muhaddith in Spain. The Austrians followed up on their victory, advanced deep into Hungary, and pushed the Ottoman armies south of the River Danube. Sultan Mehmet IV who had idled away his time in hunting, blamed the defeat on Kara Mustafa, and had him strangled at Belgrade (1683). There was deep dissatisfaction in the court and among the general population with Mehmet IV, and his preoccupation with hunting, in the face of the grave crisis facing the empire. Even the Shaykh ul Islam, Mufti Ali Effendi of Istanbul joined in the demand that the Emperor put his house in order (1684). When there was no response, the army marched into Istanbul, deposed and imprisoned Mehmet (1687), and installed his brother Sulaiman II on the throne.
The second siege of Vienna marks the high point of Muslim expansion in Europe. Its failure highlights the incipient weakness of Muslim armies in technology, tactics and discipline in comparison to those of the Europeans. The Ottoman retreat began about the same time as the Moghul reverses at the hands of the Marathas in India, and the Safavid losses in northern Persia to the Russians. After Vienna, the Ottomans ceased to be a threat to Europe, although the resilient Turks made recurrent efforts to reform and revitalize their institutions. A sustained counter thrust from Europe began, which was aimed initially at the Balkans and the Caucasus, but expanded over the years to North Africa and Egypt, and resulted ultimately in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the Great War of 1914-1918. Muslim power had passed its zenith. The hour of Europe had arrived.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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