The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (40 page)

Le Bègue relates that, already on 7 September Lorraine gave orders for the pontoon-boats at Tulln to be moved downstream to Vienna as soon
as the relief of the city was assured; the order was repeated on the 13th.
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Unfortunately, he adds, the boatmen had been dismissed for want of money to pay them. It also seems likely that Polish troops were still coming up through Moravia towards the Tulln bridgehead. At any rate a serious delay occurred. The movement of supplies across the river was held up, and the whole army pinned to the south bank until 23 September. Engineers finally reconstructed the bridge at a point just below Pressburg and the troops, including the Poles’ unwieldy baggage-train, began to cross to the Schütt. The boats were then moved downstream once more to Komárom.

A week later, on 2 October, Sobieski and Lorraine conferred. Wet weather had set in and they learnt that the ground around the enemy stronghold of Neuhäusel was already too waterlogged to make an attack worth while. They decided to advance towards Párkány, on the north side of the Danube which protected a bridge crossing the river from Esztergom on the opposite bank. For the Turks, of course, this bridge linked Neuhäusel with Buda, and enabled them to put pressure on Thököly and his Magyars. It would be a valuable prize.

*
Sobieski’s flair for publicity is one of his most interesting traits. He describes his letter of 13 September to the Queen as a ‘gazette’ – ‘and I would ask you to use it as such’. On other occasions he states what passages were to be suppressed before publication.

II

Kara Mustafa—with his right eye in bandages—reached the outskirts of Györ two days after the battle, preceded by Turkish forces which had certainly left Vienna before its final phase began, and without his authority to do so. He and his followers now crossed the River Rába but fierce fighting at once broke out between troops which wished to continue their flight eastwards and others, still obedient to orders, whom he sent to hold them back—as a Christian captive concealed in the neighbouring vineyards, our old friend Luigi Marsigli, observed with malicious pleasure. The revolt was crushed, but we have only a few scraps of evidence for the next few days, and these show the Grand Vezir, bitter and desperate, pondering the whole bewildering situation in which he found himself.
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Did a defeat on the scale of his reported losses at Vienna destroy his standing at court? Could he rely on the loyalty shown by Sultan Mehmed IV, for the last twenty-five years, to the Grand Vezirs governing in his name? The great empire was intact, the Sultan still ruled in Ottoman Hungary. If there was treachery—as there had been—let there be retribution and punishment. Then, if the next campaign ended with credit, no one would doubt the goodness of God and the irresistible strength of His servant the Ottoman Sultan, or of His servant’s blameless servant Kara Mustafa.

The principal scapegoat, the leader of those disloyal incompetents responsible for the defeat at Vienna, was easy to choose. The Grand Vezir at once had Ibrahim of Buda, and certain other senior commanders, executed in the camp outside Györ. But the old man’s offence was really a double one. Not only had he opposed the whole policy of Kara Mustafa since the beginning
of the year, above all the strategy of the march out of Hungary into Austria. His personal connections were dangerous, because his wife was a sister of the Sultan; so that if the politicians at Belgrade or Adrianople ever pressed for a serious analysis of the conduct of the recent campaign, the Grand Vezir could hardly doubt that Ibrahim would inspire his fiercest critics. Moreover, it was intolerable and demoralising to have an important commander on the actual theatre of war who was able to say: ‘I told you so.’ After the blood-bath Kara Mustafa composed an eloquent apologia, explaining what he had done and why, and sent it to Belgrade.

He spent three more days trying to reorganise and reanimate his sadly shrunken force. But while we know that many Poles and Germans were short of supplies, sick or exhausted after 12 September, there is little firm evidence about the condition of the Ottoman army. Messages which Prince Apafi
*
sent to Lorraine and Sobieski suggest that it was deplorable.
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In consequence the Grand Vezir decided that he could not risk losing control by staying any longer among his desperate men, who surrounded him. It was simply too dangerous. He withdrew at once to Buda.

On 6 October the Poles were already close to Párkány.
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The German cavalry stood farther back while the infantry, under Starhemberg, were still coming through the Schütt. The commanders at first agreed that the troops in front should pause for a day, but Sobieski abruptly changed his mind and ordered an attack. Something went wrong, the Poles were routed by their opponents while Ottoman reinforcements came quickly across the bridge from Esztergom. Sobieski, his son Jacob and other high-ranking commanders were all in danger of death or capture, and their retreat was disorderly. Everything changed next day when the infantry arrived, and some 16,700 German troops and 8,000 (or 10,000) Poles confronted possibly 16,000 of the Sultan’s men. Sobieski was never a more loyal ally of Lorraine and Leopold than on this occasion. Conversely, both Thököly and the Tartars preferred to keep their distance from the Turkish commanders. The Sultan’s men, outnumbered, dashed out from Párkány attacking wildly. The Christians, in good order, soon closed in and after an hour’s fighting drove them back to the river bank. A battery was brought up to fire on the bridge, and its central section collapsed. Some Turks tried to get across it, others to float down and across the stream by clinging to odd bits of timber. The greatest massacre of the year began, the most shocking and pitiable carnage which eye-witnesses tell us they had ever seen. There was a veritable bridge of death, the broken section of the structure gradually filling up with corpses, over whom others tried to clamber to the pontoons on the Esztergom side; more and more men were drowned. Others escaped along the north bank of the Danube to Pest. Some got over the river to Esztergom. Others were captured. Nine thousand, it was believed, were dead.

Kara Mustafa was quickly losing his power, while still retaining authority. He hastily left Buda for Belgrade the day (or two days) after the battle, after pronouncing the deposition of the Khan of the Tartars. Speech with the Sultan face to face, it must have seemed, was his best chance for the future. But the Sultan, probably for reasons unconnected with the events in Hungary, had just left Belgrade for Adrianople; so that while the Grand Vezir, arrived in Belgrade, asserted himself and gave orders as usual, in Adrianople his enemies at court were unopposed while trying to destroy his credit with the Sultan.

The Austrian pontoon boats had been moving gradually down the Danube channels, to replace the ruined timberwork of the Ottoman bridge at Párkány. Several Polish officers still opposed the idea of further fighting, but Sobieski and Lorraine together favoured one more venture, an assault on Esztergom in their year of triumph. A Brandenburg contingent of 1,200 appeared on the scene (their belated entry in the season’s warfare), followed by Max Emmanuel with his Bavarians, to make the Christian armament look even stronger.
¹⁹
The bridge was ready by 19 October, the troops in Párkány crossed the Danube and a siege of Esztergom began. The Turks had little desire to fight, the town was taken and the high ground of its citadel encircled. The Ottoman commander soon capitulated on terms which allowed him to leave with his troops. This archepiscopal seat and city, and grand Ottoman stronghold, had been recovered for the Christian interest. Kara Mustafa predictably responded by ordering the execution of those officers (including Janissaries) who had quitted Esztergom. But their senior, the Aga of the Janissaries, was already on the road to Belgrade.

News of the fresh disaster soon travelled further. We have no reliable account of what followed in Adrianople, of the dialogue between attendant office-holders and courtiers and the Sultan, but their alarm can be understood from the words of the French ambassador, writing from Istanbul. ‘I have just learnt that the Imperialists have taken Esztergom, that desertion, terror, disorder and agitation against the Grand Vezir and the Sultan himself increase every day.’
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Against the Sultan! It was time for a change of government! On this occasion Ottoman government responded with speed and effect. Messengers rode back to Belgrade. They made their plans with the Aga of the Janissaries, and on 25 December presented themselves before the Grand Vezir. They bid him, in accordance with the Sultan’s command, hand over the symbols of his high authority, his seal, the Prophet’s holy standard and the key of the Kaaba at Mecca. He obeyed or was compelled to obey, and asked: ‘Am I to die?’ ‘Yes, it must be so,’ they said. ‘As God pleases,’ he replied. Then the executioner came forward with his cord. The Grand Vezir Kara Mustafa was dead, but for the Christian world it was Christmas day.
²¹

These events, the capture of Esztergom and the death of the Grand Vezir, were like milestones in the development of Habsburg international policy. What had seemed a possibility after the relief of Vienna, a campaign or a series of campaigns aimed at the reconquest of Turkish Hungary, was quickly
transformed by these victories into an obligation to fight offensively on this front, an obligation which Leopold’s government could no longer lightly set aside in order to defend the Rhineland, as in earlier years. It led to a new tactic of appeasement in the west, and a new militancy in the east, which step by step altered the overall balance of Habsburg policy. For this reason the year 1683 was an epoch in the history of Europe.

*
The Prince of Transylvania had left Vienna, with the Grand Vezir’s consent, well before the final battle.

III

Not only did the Habsburg and Polish armies gain a decisive victory in Hungary in October. The working partnership of the two governments improved, in spite of many difficulties which led to interminable correspondence and argument.
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Friction with John Sobieski had been profoundly disturbing to the Habsburg ministers from the day after Vienna was relieved. The unequal distribution of the Turkish spoils, the interview with Leopold, Sobieski’s undeviating emphasis on the tokens of personal prestige, the military problem of what to do next and how to do it, the shortage of essential supplies for the forces, were all important enough; but nothing caused more nervousness than Sobieski’s attitude towards Thököly. The Poles were not obliged by the treaty with Leopold to co-operate in the conquest of Hungary, and it was arguable that Polish interests were best served by bolstering up Thököly against both the Turks and the Habsburgs. Away over the mountains in Cracow, circles round the Queen cherished the empty dream that, with or without Thököly’s help, the Magyars would consider making her son Jacob a hereditary Prince in Hungary.
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The King himself at first adopted the tactics of appeasement preferred by Herman of Baden and his friends in the first half of 1683; although there were now no signs that Baden’s party at Linz was strong enough to support Sobieski on this point. Instead Leopold’s ambassador Zierowski, who accompanied the King on the march into Hungary, was repeatedly instructed to see that the Polish negotiations with Thököly were thwarted. Lorraine backed up Zierowski. Buonvisi warned the King from Linz that his policy amounted to a silly and dangerous intrigue; and he begged the Pope to intervene. Innocent XI composed a solemn admonition. Pallavicini, in Cracow, even tried to convince Polish senators that the original wording of the treaty of alliance designated the Turks ‘and the Rebels’ as the common enemies.

This battery of criticism by no means overwhelmed Sobieski. He took the very reasonable view that, for the Poles, Thököly was worth winning over, and believed quite wrongly that this was practical politics. He even regretted the hasty departure of John George of Saxony from the theatre of war: the man best placed to urge the cause of the Hungarian Protestants on Leopold. After the capture of Esztergom, Thököly’s envoys at length came to the King’s headquarters and presented his demands.
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They were no less extravagant than in the early months of the year. Further conferences, in which Lorraine also
took part, soon showed that the Malcontent Magyars and the Austrians—in their new, victorious mood and understandably anxious not to alienate the loyal Magyars like Esterházy—would never agree. Sobieski’s patience began to wear thin while he also waged a different war against critics on another front, his own subjects. Many in the army, ever since 12 September, wanted to go home. Others, in Poland itself, felt angrily that the recent victories gave the Sobieskis too much power; and the phantom of hereditary authority vested in a single family roused their jealousies once more. The King retorted in angry and eloquent letters, addressed to the Queen but written for a wider audience, that he intended to keep the troops in Hungary in order to spare Poland expense and (he admitted) devastation, and to be in the best possible position to start the next campaign early in 1684. The war, he wrote, and the successful continuation of the war, was the opportunity of a thousand years.
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Such a chance might never occur again in the whole future history of his beloved country. The problem of Thököly soon became entwined with the problem of winter quarters in Hungary.
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Sobieski’s error of judgment was profound. He believed that Thököly would not or could not object if the Polish troops spent the coming months in the areas which Thököly still claimed to control. On this assumption, he negotiated with Lorraine an agreement about the distribution of quarters in Upper Hungary between his own and the Habsburg regiments. Their march began in mid-November. In fact, every castle and town was barred against the Poles by the Malcontents. Violence was tried on both sides. Men lost their tempers, and then they lost their lives. The anarchy was complete and this part of Sobieski’s policy was in ruins. The consequences were two: most of the Polish army, as well as the King himself, moved over the border back into Poland; and he was forced to rally wholeheartedly to the Habsburg alliance.