The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (6 page)

It was believed a few years after 1676 that Kara Mustafa had disapproved of the course of events in the north.
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He did not understand, it is reported, why Fazil Ahmed Köprülü concentrated on warfare in the Dniester valley, or treated so coolly the Magyars in rebellion against Leopold who appealed to him for aid. But there is no solid evidence that Kara Mustafa, on his accession to power, hoped to attack the Habsburg lands in the near future. Certainly, he could not easily disengage from the Ukraine. The Poles had recognised the Turkish claim to keep garrisons along the Black Sea coast, and at one or two points on the lower Dnieper. This safeguarded communications by land with the Crimea, and no responsible Turkish statesman wanted to whittle down the advantage of the concession by failing to press for an equally satisfactory settlement with the Cossacks and Muscovites. Moreover, the Hetman’s disobedience was a blow at the whole system of dependent princes which the Köprülüs had restored to good working order. So the Ukrainian war against the Czar and the Cossacks went wearily on. A new Turkish nominee for the post of Hetman was found. Dreadful devastation took place, which pushed innumerable families from the right to the left bank of the Dnieper. Kara Mustafa accepted enormous losses in manpower, wasting the Janissaries and other standing corps severely, in order to defeat the enemy. Above all he tried to capture the Cossack capital of Chigirin, ‘that unsupportable place Chagreen’
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as an English envoy to Moscow called it, and also their advanced base 200 miles farther down the river. In 1677 a massive Turkish army failed to accomplish anything. In 1678, under Kara Mustafa himself, they took Chigirin but were next year driven back again. The fighting degenerated over a wide area into a purposeless deadlock for the main protagonists. The reasons for putting an end to it gradually impressed them both. An ambassador from Moscow reached Istanbul in March 1680, and negotiations began.

In consequence, close observers felt that the time was coming nearer when the Ottoman politicians would need ‘fresh woods and pastures new’, if the system and initiative of the last two Grand Vezirs were to be maintained. The Poles foresaw that Lvov and even Cracow were vulnerable to a renewed Ottoman attack, although they had accepted Kara Mustafa’s draconic terms for a treaty of peace in 1678.
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The Venetians, far to the south, feared for the fate of what remained of their Adriatic empire. They showed themselves nervously ready to swallow every insult, and to comply with every demand for extravagant financial compensation, when small frontier incidents occurred in
Dalmatia. Luckily for Venice, luckily for Poland, the affairs of Hungary offered the Grand Vezir a much clearer opening.

Here the Viennese court had governed autocratically after 1670, discontent led to disorder, disorder to more repression which then touched off a rebellion. A stream of exiles—the ‘Malcontents’—found their way east to Transylvania, and organised a number of raids back into Hungary from 1672 onwards.
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Fazil Ahmed Köprülü refused to support these and instructed Apafi to hold aloof, but some of the rebels took refuge on Turkish territory in Hungary, where the local commanders allowed bands of their own soldiery to help in attacking neighbouring Habsburg districts. A pattern of guerrilla warfare was soon imposed on northern Hungary. Desultory but brutal fighting disturbed a part of each year. Desultory but inconclusive negotiations between Vienna and the rebels tended to take place each winter and spring.

An influential Magyar nobleman, Stephen Thököly, died in 1672; Habsburg troops had captured his stronghold of Árva in the extreme north-west corner of Hungary, and confiscated his property. His son, Imre, grew up in Transylvania where he secured by inheritance very extensive revenues. He was alert, attractive, and passably well-educated. He possessed the talents and personality of an instinctive leader. He never felt timidity or scruple, he had craft rather than judgment, but men followed him. In 1678 the Malcontents summarily chose the twenty-five-year-old Thököly as their commander and immediately, in the course of a few months, they won a series of spectacular engagements. The important points of Murány, Baňská Bystrica and Árva were taken. Booty, especially in the form of coined and uncoined precious metal from the Slovakian mining areas, was considerable. Thököly’s prestige soared, and he soon enjoyed unchallenged control of the Magyar patriot force. During the next two years he held his own against the Habsburg garrisons in Hungary; he rattled and weakened them. He discredited the authority of Apafi’s chief adviser in Transylvania.
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Agents from Warsaw and even Paris bid high for his support. Kara Mustafa, inactive but watchful in Istanbul, slowly learnt to appreciate Thököly’s nuisance value in the politics of the intricate Carpathian world, of which he may have felt that he knew too little. He had still to decide how best to use this new star in the firmament.

Early in 1681 Leopold at last summoned a properly constituted Hungarian Diet.
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His ministers recognised, very late in the day, that their costly autocratic experiment in this region weakened Leopold’s whole position in Europe at a time when they were determined to resist Louis XIV’s expanding power. They had to admit the advantages of the old Magyar constitutional procedure. But long before the Diet opened in May, in the town of Sopron by the Neusiedler See, Kara Mustafa took definite counter-measures. He persuaded Thököly to repudiate it by instructing the rulers of Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania, as well as the Turkish command in Hungary, to bring substantial assistance to the rebels.
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Thököly turned down Leopold’s invitation to come to Sopron. Although discussions continued during the summer between
Habsburg statesmen and those Magyars who were willing to work for a settlement, Thököly still refused to appear. Forces gathered in the north-east, both Christian and Moslem fighting men, in order to help him against Leopold’s troops in Upper Hungary. The Transylvanians under Prince Apafi at length arrived but the hostility of the local Turkish pashas towards them, and their own unwillingness to reinforce Thököly, were equally evident. Then Apafi withdrew, and the campaigning season came inconclusively to an end. It was still possible that the tranquil close of the Sopron Diet, which had solved one or two of the outstanding constitutional and religious problems of the day in Hungary, would draw off some of the Malcontents. Thököly stood where he was. The Ottoman government, on this occasion at least, had moved somewhat cautiously, promising more than it cared actually to give. Far away to the south, Kara Mustafa had to digest the affront of Admiral Du Quesne’s demonstration of French naval power in the Aegean between July 1681 and March 1682.

During the winter Kuniz, the Habsburg envoy at Istanbul, tried to negotiate seriously for a renewal of the treaty between Emperor and Sultan which was due to expire in 1684. His political opponent, the French ambassador Guilleragues, soon swung into action. He resisted the Ottoman demand for satisfaction from Louis XIV for Du Quesne’s exploits but incited the Grand Vezir to attack the Habsburg Emperor. On Louis’ instructions, he suggested that the King of France would not refrain from helping the Poles if the Turks attacked up the Dniester, but on the other hand would refuse to help the Habsburgs in the event of war between Emperor and Sultan.
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The language of these colloquies was shrouded, and their influence on the Ottoman minister is open to debate. The political condition of eastern Europe both drove and tempted the Turks to intervene on an increasing scale in Hungary, but the arguments of Louis’ envoy at least did nothing to deter them. For that matter, neither did those of Kuniz. He gloomily reported to Vienna the Grand Vezir’s unbending refusal to discuss a settlement. His letters persuaded Leopold to make a new move on the board, by instructing a second envoy to go to Istanbul. Unfortunately, although this decision was reached in August 1681, the ambassador extraordinary—Albert Caprara
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—only left Vienna in February 1682, and reached Istanbul in April.

Such sloth was partly explained by Thököly’s skilful tactics. He never allowed the Habsburg court, and the powerful party at Vienna which preferred to neglect the dangers in Hungary, to write him off as irreconcilable. Indeed, he had very strong motives for following a sinuous and complicated line of
action. First of all, it was obvious prudence to force the Ottoman government to raise its bid for his support. Then, while he wanted to reap a due reward for military victories over the Habsburgs, he also wanted to strengthen his territorial position by one of the commonest gambits open to princes and magnates. In north-east Hungary, without any doubt, the greatest single complex of lands and revenues still belonged to the combined inheritance of the Rákóczi and Báthory families. The Habsburg government relied much on the goodwill of that militant Catholic lady, Sophie Báthory, the widow of George II Rákóczi. The opposition relied on Helen Zrinyi, whose father was executed after the conspiracy in 1670, now the widow of Francis I Rákóczi (who had died in 1676). Therefore Thököly contemplated a match with Helen. Unfortunately, Sophie Báthory countered this by tying up much valuable property in her will and appointing Leopold the executor for Francis Rákóczi’s young children, and their guardian. She died in 1680, and it became a part of Thököly’s policy to secure Leopold’s consent to his union with their mother, Helen. This became one of the agenda in diplomacy which continued during the winters of 1680–1 and 1681–2; for both parties it seemed a useful lever for putting pressure on the other. Vienna miscalculated: it could neither bully nor befriend its opponent. Leopold finally consented to the marriage, his representative was present at the festivities in the great castle of Munkács (Mukachevo) during June 1682. Immediately afterwards Thököly unmasked again, to become the Sultan’s firm and formal ally.

In fact when Caprara reached the last stage of his long journey south, at Adrianople, he met the Magyar envoys returning from Istanbul. They had reached an agreement with Kara Mustafa, and therefore Thököly soon prepared for a fresh campaign. The Turks once more ordered up men and supplies from the principalities, and also from Bosnia and Serbia. The pashas and the Magyars began active collaboration in July. In August the great council of state was held at Istanbul, which foreshadowed fighting on a much grander scale in the following year; and the Diploma was drawn which proclaimed Imre Thököly the prince of ‘middle’ Hungary under the Sultan’s protection.
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It reached the theatre of war after the city and citadel of Kassa had fallen to the Malcontents, and a combined force of Magyars, Turks and Transylvanians had completed the destruction of Fülek (Fila’kovo)—forty miles north-east of Buda—by a devastating siege. Thököly received the insignia of authority under the Sultan from the governor of Buda.
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The Magyars continued for a few weeks to push farther into the territory still held by Habsburg garrisons, causing particular alarm to the Poles on the other side of the Carpathians, and then the campaign came to an end
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just when the Sultan and the Sultan’s troops set out from Istanbul to Adrianople.

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Sobicski’s election as King of Poland in 1674 was partly due to the prestige which his success as a military leader had given him the year before.

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A professor of moral philosophy at Bologna University, who wrote a charming version of Aesop’s Fables, Albert Caprara (1627?–1691) was more a man of letters, and an ‘orator’ who took formal messages of condolence or congratulation from court to court, than a serious politician. Albert is to be distinguished from his cousin Aeneas Caprara, the Habsburg general. This was a most curious and unsatisfactory appointment.
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V

It is clear that the Grand Vezir now judged the situation ripe for major changes in Hungary and the adjoining lands. The Magyar rebellion had continued for many years, but only in 1682 did Kara Mustafa decide that he could exploit it fully. Moreover for him, as for other Turkish statesmen, Hungary itself was primarily a frontier province with a cluster of fortresses in water-logged country, which served to protect the inner lands of the Balkan empire. It was not a rich or fruitful territory, even if richer than the empty plains of the Ukraine in which they had fought against the Muscovites before 1681. The gains to be expected from a modest local advance, such as the capture of Györ or Komárom, and the squeezing of the nearby lordships of Magyar magnates, would be correspondingly meagre. On the other hand Vienna, a hundred miles beyond Györ, was a glittering prize. Those Turks who had been there, as members of an embassy which visited the city in 1665, seem to have brought home impressions completely in harmony with the old Moslem legend of the ‘Golden Apple’; that apple of the heart’s desire, said the legend, was the splendid Christian city of the infidel Emperor, to be captured at some golden moment in a future age.
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Evliyá Chelibi accompanied this embassage, and what seemed to western travellers of the seventeenth century a rather dull city, and a dull court, appeared to him staggeringly rich and attractive. The ambassador himself was Kara Mehmed, one of Kara Mustapha’s most trusted advisers and commanders in 1683. Useful information about the military defences of Vienna meanwhile came from renegades in the Sultan’s service; an un-named ex-Capuchin friar, for one, claimed to be an engineer and know the city well.
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The relative poverty of Hungary, the alleged wealth and weakness of the centre of Habsburg power, as well as the effect on Leopold’s position of Louis XIV’s strength in the west: these must all have been commonplaces of discussion in Istanbul. At the very least, in the summer of 1682 the expansion of the Ottoman empire into Habsburg Hungary was planned for 1683.
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The army would march, there would be conferences with Caprara in order to discover whether he had been given authority to surrender territory or citadels, the army would in any case occupy still more territory and live on the spoils; and whatever transpired in the immediate future, an attack on Vienna was also to be regarded as an item in the Grand Vezir’s secret catalogue of possible objectives.