Ottomans march on Vienna... after 1683?

After the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Vienna, the Habsburgs won several victories and expelled the Sultan's armies out of Hungary. However, after 1790, with Austria distracted by a war with France, the Turks went on the offensive and began to retake lost territory, until they were finally crushed when Eugene of Savoy caught them with their pants down at the Battle of Zenta in 1797.

Now, let's say they are a little lucky and aren't ambushed right as they crossing the Tisza River. If that's not enough, let's deprive the Austrians of Eugene, either by killing him in an accident or making him a soldier in the army of Louis XIV.

Could the Ottomans recapture Buda, and from there attack Vienna yet again, or were they too exhausted for that? They could at least get a status quo ante bellum, right?
 
Now, let's say they are a little lucky and aren't ambushed right as they crossing the Tisza River. If that's not enough, let's deprive the Austrians of Eugene, either by killing him in an accident or making him a soldier in the army of Louis XIV.

Option 1: Seems very plausible, but i have the sense that Prinz Eugen would crush the ottomans in a way or another
Option 2: This would have SO MANY butterflies that i really have fear of them, the ottomans would win in the analogue of the Battle of Zenta? Yes, but the War of Spanish Succession is completely changed (like, the french wins GREAT in Italy)

Could the Ottomans recapture Buda, and from there attack Vienna yet again, or were they too exhausted for that? They could at least get a status quo ante bellum, right?

I think that not, they probably will just try to plunder what they can and make a status quo. Venice would be in hot water but (may) they're fine and can have the domains to survive, Russia will not be able to get Azov and Poland also will push to S.q.A
 
Option 1: Seems very plausible, but i have the sense that Prinz Eugen would crush the ottomans in a way or another
Option 2: This would have SO MANY butterflies that i really have fear of them, the ottomans would win in the analogue of the Battle of Zenta? Yes, but the War of Spanish Succession is completely changed (like, the french wins GREAT in Italy)



I think that not, they probably will just try to plunder what they can and make a status quo. Venice would be in hot water but (may) they're fine and can have the domains to survive, Russia will not be able to get Azov and Poland also will push to S.q.A
Who knows, if Eugene becomes a French soldier (in 1683, I think) maybe this little guy doesn't die and ends up becoming king of Spain. No succession war. Or, maybe the Le Roi Soleil also wins a crushing victory in the Nine Years' War. Or the Russian attempts to conquer Crimea are more successful. So many butterflies...
 
Another question: What would be the fate of Mustafa II? IOTL, he was overthrown by the Janissaries in 1703. However, if he returned to Constantinople full of glory (he pretty much saved the empire, an Ottoman Aurelian/Heraclius) and plunder, could he purge them? If so, the empire's armed forces could be modernized over a century earlier.
 
Another question: What would be the fate of Mustafa II? IOTL, he was overthrown by the Janissaries in 1703. However, if he returned to Constantinople full of glory (he pretty much saved the empire, an Ottoman Aurelian/Heraclius) and plunder, could he purge them? If so, the empire's armed forces could be modernized over a century earlier.

Probably yes, with such victory (c'mon, it's a tie but it's a tie with the taste of a victory) he probably would modernize the armed forces. And i think that he'll give a look in the category "quality of commanders", this would be great for the empire in the long run.
 
Probably yes, with such victory (c'mon, it's a tie but it's a tie with the taste of a victory) he probably would modernize the armed forces. And i think that he'll give a look in the category "quality of commanders", this would be great for the empire in the long run.
This is the bit that matters. Peter the Great's Prut Campaign would probably be even more of a debacle.
 
This is the bit that matters. Peter the Great's Prut Campaign would probably be even more of a debacle.

Probably yes, and it's not just it. Probably the commander of the ottoman forces don't would accept the bribe at all, and this would have some interesting consequences....
 
Who knows, if Eugene becomes a French soldier (in 1683, I think) maybe this little guy doesn't die and ends up becoming king of Spain. No succession war. Or, maybe the Le Roi Soleil also wins a crushing victory in the Nine Years' War. Or the Russian attempts to conquer Crimea are more successful. So many butterflies...

Chances of Eugène going into French service are pretty much nil. Louis XIV intended for him to become a cleric, and refused Eugène's request to join the army. And let's face it, guy with a crooked back and humped shoulder isn't who you expect to be some great general who'll wipe the floor with your armies.
 
Chances of Eugène going into French service are pretty much nil. Louis XIV intended for him to become a cleric, and refused Eugène's request to join the army. And let's face it, guy with a crooked back and humped shoulder isn't who you expect to be some great general who'll wipe the floor with your armies.
Eugène also would never be trusted in France because his mother’s involvement in the Affair of Poisons
 
Chances of Eugène going into French service are pretty much nil. Louis XIV intended for him to become a cleric, and refused Eugène's request to join the army. And let's face it, guy with a crooked back and humped shoulder isn't who you expect to be some great general who'll wipe the floor with your armies.

Well if his mother would have avoided to compromise herself with certain characters, maybe he could have managed to get be enrolled in the end.
 
Well if his mother would have avoided to compromise herself with certain characters, maybe he could have managed to get be enrolled in the end.
That could be butterflied away in a POD quite easily.


Problem came in that the Comtesse de Soisson's sister (the duchesse de Bouillon) was implicated IIRC. Which means that even if the comtesse decides to not get involved, she is still tainted by the connection. Not to mention that the comtesse was a scheming intrigante in general, so even if she didn't get involved, many would believe she was still somehow involved.
 
Problem came in that the Comtesse de Soisson's sister (the duchesse de Bouillon) was implicated IIRC. Which means that even if the comtesse decides to not get involved, she is still tainted by the connection. Not to mention that the comtesse was a scheming intrigante in general, so even if she didn't get involved, many would believe she was still somehow involved.

I still can't conceive how Louis would have loved a person like Olimpia but after all he went with the Montespan as well... But I guess it would be hard to remove the shadow of Mazzarino from both Louis and the Mancini sisters's mind and heart. It sort of scarred them all. And I guess Eugene paid for this in the end, the poison affairs was only the final catalyst of a situation boiling up for decades.
 
I still can't conceive how Louis would have loved a person like Olimpia but after all he went with the Montespan as well... But I guess it would be hard to remove the shadow of Mazzarino from both Louis and the Mancini sisters's mind and heart. It sort of scarred them all. And I guess Eugene paid for this in the end, the poison affairs was only the final catalyst of a situation boiling up for decades.

Olimpia was the one who sent Louis that threatening note "come back to me. Or you'll be sorry!" right?

Proof that Versailles had crazy ex-girlfriends before Hollywood made it "cool" ;)
 
The Ottomans implemented comprehensive fiscal reforms in order to raise revenue during the war. Most significantly, this meant reforming cizye/jizya collection methods, issuing new forms of tax farms, and purging the Janissary payrolls, as well as some other changes like the legalization and taxation of the sale of tobacco. The Ottomans came out of the War of the Holy League with budget surpluses unlike anything they'd had during the seventeenth century. Far from declining revenues, Ottoman income exploded from around 600 million akçe per year to 1 billion, and continued to grow with the expansion of the economy during the early eighteenth century to 1.6 billion in 1748.

If you have an Ottoman state that has done not just this but also managed to maintain control over most of Hungary, it would be extremely powerful. Arguably even stronger financially speaking than before the Battle of Vienna.
 
After the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Vienna, the Habsburgs won several victories and expelled the Sultan's armies out of Hungary. However, after 1790, with Austria distracted by a war with France, the Turks went on the offensive and began to retake lost territory, until they were finally crushed when Eugene of Savoy caught them with their pants down at the Battle of Zenta in 1797.

Now, let's say they are a little lucky and aren't ambushed right as they crossing the Tisza River. If that's not enough, let's deprive the Austrians of Eugene, either by killing him in an accident or making him a soldier in the army of Louis XIV.

Could the Ottomans recapture Buda, and from there attack Vienna yet again, or were they too exhausted for that? They could at least get a status quo ante bellum, right?

Being born in 1663, Eugene would be well over 100 years old by 1790 so your dates are century off. :)

As for the battle of Zenta, the Ottomans had been captured in a process of retreating across the river after abandoning siege of Szeged. If Eugene did not attack them against the imperial order they’d march to their winter quarters in Timisoara.

Eugene turned a planned retreat into the disaster but the Ottomans were in a strategic retreat almost as soon as they discovered presence of the imperial army of a size comparable with their own. Now, it can be argued that it took Eugene with his talent and energy to assemble the force he had in OTL with no money but on that issue we are in the area of pure speculations.

The Ottomans could be reasonably successful in the border regions but their ability to march on Vienna is rather questionable at least as long as the Hapsburgs can muster enough of the imperial forces and put a half decent General in charge: they were already lagging behind in 5he military organization and tactics especially in the area of field battles.

Now, as far as Eugene on the French service is involved, his mother was one of the issues but his personality was probably a greater problem: when asking for a rather lowly position of a company commander he behaved with the independence absolutely untypical (and unacceptable) for those talking to Louis XIV. If he got his request granted, his further career would greatly depend upon the good graces of Luvois who also did not approve of the independent people. So, while ending up as a marshal of France was not out of question, it could not be guaranteed neither based on merit nor on pedigree.
 
Chances of Eugène going into French service are pretty much nil. Louis XIV intended for him to become a cleric, and refused Eugène's request to join the army. And let's face it, guy with a crooked back and humped shoulder isn't who you expect to be some great general who'll wipe the floor with your armies.

Indeed, his appearance clearly disqualified him as a promising military cadre and his behavior during the interview with Louis made things even worse: “the petition was humble but petitioner was not”. And you were expected to be humble with Louis.
 
It's worth noting that the main reason why the Ottoman Empire was defeated during the war of the holy league was not really due to them 'lagging behind in military organisation,' historians believe that they were generally on par with the hapsburgs in this regard by the end of the 17th century. It was mainly because they were having to dedicate their forces to fight on several different fronts at the same time. They were not just fighting the Hapsburgs, but also the Commonwealth, Russians and Venetians. This was a logistically difficult operation, so they were effectively 'defeated in detail'
 
It's worth noting that the main reason why the Ottoman Empire was defeated during the war of the holy league was not really due to them 'lagging behind in military organisation,' historians believe that they were generally on par with the hapsburgs in this regard by the end of the 17th century. It was mainly because they were having to dedicate their forces to fight on several different fronts at the same time. They were not just fighting the Hapsburgs, but also the Commonwealth, Russians and Venetians. This was a logistically difficult operation, so they were effectively 'defeated in detail'
By the end of the XVII was they already had been behind the “Western” level. The gap was not, yet, critical but it already did exist. Explanation of their defeats is not convincing: at the mid-/late XVIII they had been winning against the Austrians while fighting against the Russian-Austrian coalition and being, beyond any serious doubt, noticeably behind the “west”.

As far as the Russians are involved, in the war you are talking about the Ottoman involvement on that “front” was minuscule: not at all during Golitsin’s campaigns against the Crimea and few thousands during Peyer’s Azov campaigns.
 
By the end of the XVII was they already had been behind the “Western” level. The gap was not, yet, critical but it already did exist. Explanation of their defeats is not convincing: at the mid-/late XVIII they had been winning against the Austrians while fighting against the Russian-Austrian coalition and being, beyond any serious doubt, noticeably behind the “west”.

As far as the Russians are involved, in the war you are talking about the Ottoman involvement on that “front” was minuscule: not at all during Golitsin’s campaigns against the Crimea and few thousands during Peyer’s Azov campaigns.

Disclaimer: In regard to why the Ottomans lost the great Turkish war, we don't have a definitive answer. Nobody has written a modern detailed study of the war.

The traditional explanation would be that the Ottomans did not keep up with European developments in the realm of army drill and in the shift from cavalry to infantry, but current research is pushing back against this. Until recently we've been in the dark with regard to how seventeenth-century Ottoman armies fought, relying basically on European observers. Relying on foreign observations is fraught with danger because the observers often write more from their own biases than any real knowledge of what they're talking about - I could cite an Ottoman observer telling you that Austrian musketeers did not know how to aim. So lately we've tried to rely more on what the actual Ottoman sources have to tell us, and they've given us an image of the Ottoman army as being much more "modern" than we thought. For instance, we know that the Ottomans maintained an infantry/cavalry ratio roughly equivalent to that of the Habsburgs and that they also made use of their cavalry as dragoons. We also have very early proof that they were training their infantry in volley formations.

So the Ottoman army doesn't appear to have been all that "backwards," or at least we can't say that with certainty anymore. We can say that the Ottomans definitely had less experience with battle than the Habsburgs. Large-scale battles were far more common in central European wars than they were for the Ottomans if this is what you refer to. However even here this would only be true for the specific period were talking about and not reflective of the ottomans “falling behind” holistically in terms of military capabilities. Habsburg leadership probably knew how to conduct itself in battle better than that of the Ottomans, and this is part of the explanation for why the Ottomans lost most of the major field battles they fought during the war. Sieges were another matter - there the Ottomans were experts.

The context of the war is extremely important. The Ottomans weren't just fighting the Habsburgs and Imperials; they were also fighting Venice, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia. This meant that the war took place on a huge number of fronts. The Ottomans had to divide their forces to fight in Greece, in Dalmatia, in Hungary, in Podolia, and in Crimea. You mentioned that direct ottoman focus against the Russians was minuscule for most of the war. This is true, but you’re forgetting something important. The Crimean Khans were unable to support Ottoman operations in Hungary for pretty much the entire duration of the war because they were defending their territory against the Russian empire, robbing the main Ottoman field army there of its usual enormous light cavalry support (and consequently its ability to engage in effective reconnaissance and harrassment). For Rhoads Murphey, probably the foremost military historian of this era, the logistical strain of trying to fight on so many fronts is the primary reason for the Ottoman defeat.

To this we can add a few other features: one, the defensive structure of the Ottoman fortress network in Hungary was very hollow. Border fortresses were quite strong, but once the exterior fortress line was breached (the fall of Buda, 1686), the Habsburgs could pour through the gap and conquer basically all of central Hungary. If you look at the timeline of Habsburg conquest, you can clearly see this pattern: the Habsburgs reached the Danube very soon after the fall of Buda, but it took them a long time to actually consolidate that position by conquering all the Ottoman border forts they bypassed. By the end of 1686 the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier basically looked like this. The Ottomans were really not prepared to suddenly have their network breached.

Secondly, the aftermath of the Siege of Vienna was a political nightmare. These critical Habsburg advances were occurring during a time of severe instability in Istanbul. The grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha was executed for his decision to attack Vienna without the consent of Mehmed IV*, and this led to an attempt to dismantle the whole Köprülü political apparatus that had dominated the empire's politics for the last thirty years. The empire really needed stable leadership but in this crucial moment, it didn't have it. By 1687 Mehmed IV was overthrown and replaced by Süleyman II, which eventually brought about a Köprülü restoration as well. This provided the stability the Ottomans needed to push the Habsburgs back across the Danube and reconquer Belgrade (helped by the outbreak of the Nine Years' War between France and the Habsburgs), but they couldn't get back into Hungary - all their fortresses there remained cut off and were gradually conquered. The fight shifted to Transylvania and ultimately ended with a stalemate on the Danube. The Ottomans couldn't push back north and the Habsburgs couldn't push south.

*Some historians think that Mehmed IV actually ordered the attack, and just shifted the blame to Kara Mustafa after the failure.

  • Ágoston, Gábor. “Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450-1800.” Journal of World History 25 (2014): 85-124.
  • Börekçi, Günhan. “A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries Use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman-Habsburg War of 1593-1606 and the Problem of Origins.” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59 (2006): 407-438.
  • Kolçak, Özgür. “The Composition, Tactics and Strategy of the Ottoman Field Army at Zrínyi-Újvár and St. Gotthard (1663–1664).” In A szentgotthárdi csata és a vasvári béke: Oszmán Terjeszkedés-Európai Összefogás, 73-92. Edited by Tóth Ference and Zágorhidi Czigány. Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 2017
  • Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700.London, UCL Press, 1999.
 
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