The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (5 page)

The Turks also treated religious problems with considerable shrewdness. They did not proselytise in Hungary, because they wanted subjects not
Moslems, nor did they conscript Christian boys for a military education in the schools of Istanbul, as occurred in the Balkans. On the other hand they limited strictly the right of Christians to protect, repair or build churches, though without persecution by
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on the Habsburg or Bourbon model. Denying the Catholic hierarchy any chance of exercising public authority, they made it easier for Calvinism to survive in Hungary. The rival Christian faiths could quarrel under the eye of Moslem pashas claiming authority over both.

These arrangements also suited the Ottoman interest across the border, in Habsburg Hungary. Here the Magyars never learnt to combine for long under the Habsburg dynasts whom they nevertheless accepted as kings of Hungary. Whenever the royal authority appeared too weak to enforce order, or too harsh to be endured, there was always the strong probability that a party of patriots or rebels would look for Turkish support. A great conspiracy of the magnates Zrinyi, Nádasdy, and Wesselényi against Leopold in 1668–70, after a period of Habsburg military activity in warfare against the Turks (1660–64), and the rebellion which broke out in 1672 after the first rising had been crushed, were due to increased autocratic pressure by the Vienna government, and both illustrated the iron law of Hungarian politics in this century: that Magyar liberties under the Habsburgs depended on the presence of the Turks in the rest of Hungary. The constitutional weakness, a very old one, was intensified by the relatively modern antagonism of Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants, given the impartiality which the Turks mixed with oppression in matters of religion, were bound to look to them for support. Otherwise there would be no means of checking the Catholic counter-offensive to recover lost ground, which was perhaps more powerfully mounted in Habsburg Hungary after 1648 than anywhere else in Europe. The seminary for clergy at Trnava came into Jesuit hands in 1649; and the Jesuit academy in the chief Protestant city of eastern Hungary, Kassa (Košice), was accorded the status of a university in 1660. From these two major points, and a host of lesser ones, Catholic influence radiated fast. The bishops now formed a strong and zealous body of men, headed after 1665 by the implacable Archbishop of Esztergom, George Szelepcsényi. They enjoyed the Vienna government’s firm support, because the Emperor Ferdinand II and his successors held explicitly that the Catholic creed was the surest test of political loyalty. Measures based on this premise were bound to push the Protestants into further acts of disloyalty.

As a result the Turkish authority in Buda, always confident of its power to hold Hungary with the standing Ottoman forces, viewed with pleasure and attention the predicament of the Christians across the frontier. Of course, the Moslem commanders were not dispatched to this distant exile for the sake of a quiet life, but their security was no greater than they would have wished. If the seventeenth-century courts of Vienna and Istanbul kept peace with one another between 1606 and 1663, and between 1665 and 1683, the border lands dividing the two empires were disturbed by continual forays. Raiders from both sides conducted their expeditions with varying success. The Turks
expected a reasonable annual revenue from the capture of cattle, horses and prisoners, by looting or taxing the border villages. This contributed to the fortune of high provincial officials who were never left long at their posts by a suspicious central government, and government in turn increased its revenue by making them pay heavily for the privilege (sometimes unwelcome) of their appointment. But petty anarchy and violence never detracted from the essential strength of the Turkish position in the lands which marched from the middle reaches of the Sava and Drava northwards to Buda and Esztergom, and then gradually east and south to the Transylvanian frontier.

From here to the distant steppe of the Don basin, the Ottoman defences rested to a greater degree on political manoeuvre. The principalities of Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Polish claims in the lower Dniester and Dnieper valleys, the complicated rivalry of different Christian Cossack groups with one another and with Tartars in the same area (the outlying Tartars in the Dobrudja by the Danube delta or the more organised followers of the Khan in the Crimea) all had to be combined in one gigantic jigsaw, the pieces of which continually altered in shape and significance. The general strategy of the Turks was to restrain each by means of the other, with the minimum possible use of their own strength. This extraordinary system, comparable in its own way with the elaborate network of Bourbon diplomacy in northern and eastern Europe under Louis XIV had been devised gradually, first round the Black Sea, and then covering more and more ground towards the west.

In 1478 Mehmed II reduced the ruling Ghiraj dynasty of the Crimean Tartars to an honoured but subordinate status. The Black Sea was closed to western trading fleets. In the seventeenth century the revenues of the busy port of Caffa
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in the Crimea, fell to the Ottomans who garrisoned it, by this means supervising and subsidising the Khans who held sway over the rest of the peninsula from their splendid palace at Bagchi Serai in the hills above Balaclava. Some members of the Ghiraj family were usually held in Constantinople as hostages for the Khan’s good behaviour and would be sent to replace him if necessary. The subsidies partly paid for the great forays to the west—to Polish and Transylvanian territory or elsewhere—which the Sultan from time to time ordered the Tartars to undertake. The balance of their payment was found in the actual booty of an expedition, particularly the slaves who were disposed of at Caffa. These, with the profits of other raids carried out against or without Ottoman consent, and of the more ordinary commerce flowing south from the Russian lands, once again swelled the revenues of the Crimean ports. The total result in terms of high politics was to place at the Sultan’s disposal a large if erratic force of nomadic cavalry which could usually be directed where it was wanted. The activity of the Tartars in Poland in 1657–8, in Transylvania in 1660–2, in Moravia and Hungary in 1664, in the Hungarian campaigns from 1683 onwards, was remarkable. They preferred to cross the steppe while snow still covered the ground, and in consequence reached the western lands no later than an army coming up
from the Balkans. They pushed through the Carpathian passes, or traversed Moldavia and Wallachia to join the Turks farther south. It is arguable that they were far more destructive, and did far greater damage to a countryside than the more tightly ordered Ottoman troops. However difficult to control, they were effective auxiliaries. If not disciplined, they were highly trained.

The Sultan, meanwhile, kept his grip on the lands which lie along the eastern slope of the Carpathians. Without much difficulty, pliant candidates were placed on the thrones which controlled uneasily the Moldavian court at Iasi, and the Wallachian court at Targoviste or Bucharest. In spite of their very mixed origins, Greek, Albanian, Polish, as well as Romanian, these princes or ‘hospodars’ were still closely linked with local and patriotic interests. They intermarried with descendants of the native dynasties. They were patrons of Romanian and Greek literature. But the Ottoman government nearly always maintained its suzerainty and squeezed a large revenue from the two principalities in the shape of douceurs, tribute and military supplies demanded from the hospodars. The dominant families transferred the burden to a peasantry gradually declining in status. The Turks also relied on their substantial garrisons along the Danube below the Iron Gates, which in emergency they could assist with much larger forces. Instead of taking the Belgrade road, an expedition for this purpose followed the other old Roman itinerary which climbed the most easterly pass through the Balkan range, and was at once ready for action.

Farther north the Turks either built new or, more commonly, used old fortifications: at Chotin and Akermann on the Dniester; at the mouths of the Dnieper; at the strait leading into the Sea of Azov and the mouth of the Don. Sometimes but not always, garrisons were left at these points. A navy on the Black Sea was an additional safeguard. Political management, occasionally braced by the deployment of great military force, held their position intact from Azov to Bucharest.

Transylvania remained the most important Turkish dependency, because its obedience or disobedience affected profoundly the security of the frontiers farther east and farther west. The country consisted of a central lowland surrounded by great afforested ramparts and these were pierced by a number of passes, so that invasion (or punitive raiding) was always possible, but at the same time difficult and costly. Although a part of the medieval kingdom of Hungary, by 1500 its viceroy enjoyed extensive and princely authority. When Hungary collapsed in the sixteenth century under Turkish pressure, the Transylvanian princes and estates struggled hard to keep their precarious freedom by never deferring completely to the dictation of Istanbul or to that of the new line of Hungarian kings, the Habsburgs; but they normally had to recognise the Sultan’s suzerain power and to pay tribute to him.

Such was the situation in eastern Europe down to 1648, and twenty-five years later the political system of the Ottoman frontier still seemed in good working order. In 1683, the Sultan’s grand army came up to reinforce the
troops at the disposal of the pashas in Hungary. The princes of the Crimea, Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia obediently crossed the hills to join Kara Mustafa in the Danubian plain. The eastern sections of the frontier were docile while battle was joined with the Habsburg Emperor. But the fact was that there had also been successive upheavals and violent dislocations, which step by step transformed the situation.

IV

Indeed, one can watch the action of something like a magnetic pull from central Europe during these decades. It was to be exerted with the greatest force in 1683, when the Ottoman besiegers drew towards Vienna the German and Polish soldiers who relieved the city; it was only just not strong enough to bring in the French as well, and the Lithuanians, and the north German princes. But earlier there had already been a displacement of Turkish power itself from east to west. Crises in Transylvania, Poland and the Ukraine were followed by the crisis in Hungary, which first tempted Kara Mustafa to frame his plan for an attack on Austria. In the background France contributed to this pull towards the centre of the continent. Louis XIV’s agents, in Istanbul and Warsaw and Transylvania, did their devious best to divert Ottoman forces from the area beyond the Carpathians, and to make them advance up the Danube instead.

The Polish colonising movement into the Ukraine was the most spectacular enterprise of the Poles in modern history. Gathering momentum in the second quarter of the century it progressed in an easterly direction towards the Dnieper, but the strains set up by this expansion proved intense. The antagonism of the Ukrainians to the Poles, of Orthodox to Catholics, of free settlers to the menace of serfdom imposed by the greater landlords, of nomads to colonists, caused the mammoth Cossack rebellion of 1648, with which was soon linked Russian and Swedish attacks on Poland. All this favoured the Turks, who welcomed the disarray of neighbour states. However George II Rákóczi Prince of Transylvania, tempted by these developments to try to rise above that modest station in life which the Ottoman court required from a subordinate ruler, intrigued in Moldavia and Wallachia, and intervened in Poland. In 1656 he joined an alliance of Sweden, Brandenburg and the Cossacks for partitioning that country. He threatened to become so much more powerful that it appeared a matter of obvious urgency for the Sultan’s government to crush him; and, just then, the hard-headed Mehmed Köprülü took over the office of Grand Vezir. He was nothing if not thorough; under him, both Turks and Tartars made terrible incursions into the three Carpathian principalities. Rákóczi was deposed and in 1662, after a confused interregnum, a subservient nominee of the Sultan was brought in to govern Transylvania: Prince Michael Apafi who loved his Calvinist books and his bottle, and hated politics.
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At the same time, it became clear that the restoration of order in the Ukraine depended not only on the Poles but on the Czar of Muscovy. They bargained and reached a settlement at the famous truce of Andrusovo in 1667, which divided a vast tract of land on both sides of the Dnieper into Polish and Russian spheres of influence. But there had already been signs that the ‘free’ Cossacks would prefer the Sultan as a distant overlord to either the Czar or the King of Poland. Led by Peter Doroshenko, their Hetman, they formally offered to recognise Ottoman suzerainty in 1669. The Grand Vezir seized this opportunity. He could buttress his regime at home by continuous military activity in a remote area. He could use his dominance in the principalities, now firmly re-established, as a base for intervention and expansion farther north. The Polish and Ukrainian campaigns of Fazil Ahmed Köprülü and his successor, Kara Mustafa, covering an apparently limitless territory, soon began. In 1672, the Turks captured Kamenets, a stronghold in the Dniester valley, and a key to the security of southern Poland. In 1673 the Poles counterattacked with some success but thereafter the full force of Ottoman arms was exerted, and in 1676 the Turks compelled the new Polish King, John III Sobieski,
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to agree to a truce which gave them Kamenets and much else besides. Unfortunately, inevitably, the completeness of their victory had alarmed the Cossacks; Doroshenko the Hetman changed sides and appealed to Moscow. The Czar intervened, and at this moment Fazil Ahmed Köprülü died and Kara Mustafa succeeded him.

The records are too meagre, there can be no proper biography of this cardinal figure in European history.
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We must surmise that he was born in northern Anatolia at some date between 1620 and 1635, that his father was a soldier named either Uradj or Hassan, and that he was educated in Mehmed Köprülü’s household. He married into the Köprülü family. In 1659 he secured the important post of governor of Silistria, and from 1660 onwards held a number of influential appointments. Ten years later he acted as Fazil Ahmed’s deputy at the Sultan’s court when the Grand Vezir was absent, and in 1675 was betrothed to one of the Sultan’s daughters. No one expressed surprise when he became the new Grand Vezir and gathered up the reins of power without any visible challenge. All agree that his swarthy complexion justified the nickname of Kara, or black; in other respects, reports about him are very contradictory. There is occasional praise by diplomats for his courtesy. More often they were bewildered, and cowed, by his arrogance when he granted them official audiences. Possibly the displays of anger were well-controlled; intimidation is a point of politics. There are many references to the size of Kara Mustafa’s household, the splendour of his stables and horses, the number of his concubines, and the avarice which sustained them all; but one Englishman, resident at Istanbul in 1676, added that he had earned the
reputation of a ‘Great Souldyer, and a Great Courtier and of a very Active Genious.’
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Venetian and French ambassadors analysed his qualities at more length, but in substance failed to improve on that somewhat slight appraisal. The actions of this Ottoman politician, rather than the words of others about his character, prove to be his only trustworthy memorial. They were at least in part dictated by historical forces of more permanent significance than one man’s intense personal ambition.