|
|
Turning the Ottoman Tide – John III Sobieski at Vienna 1683By Anthony Pagden | MHQ | 10 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post “We came, we saw, and God conquered,” wrote Sobieski to Pope Innocent XI, echoing Julius Caesar’s famous remark on the conquest of Pontus, in modern Turkey. The siege was ended. Vienna, wrote one despairing Ottoman historian, had been a defeat “so great that there has never been its like since the first appearance of the Ottoman state.” He was almost right (the 1402 Battle of Ankara, in which Tamerlane’s Tatars captured the Ottoman leader Bayezid I, had been more devastating). And although neither he nor any of his contemporaries, Christian or Muslim, may have fully realized it, Mehmed’s failure was to be the first step in the steady but inexorable decline of what had for so long seemed the unstoppable advance of the Ottoman Empire. After Vienna, the relationship between Christendom and Islam began to change. For centuries, the Christians had attempted to keep the Muslims at bay and, if possible, to recapture areas, most notably Palestine, that they considered to be sacred to their religion. Now, as Ottoman power visibly weakened, it became possible to imagine not merely limitations on Muslim power but its eventual elimination. The Hapsburgs were quick to capitalize on their success. In March 1684, in an unusual show of solidarity, Austria, Venice, Poland-Lithuania, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Malta, and the papacy formed a Holy League against the Sublime Porte. Two years later, on September 2, 1686, they secured their first major victory when the Hungarian city of Buda, which since 1526 had stood on the frontier between Christendom and Islam, fell to a besieging Hapsburg army. For the Ottomans, the loss was of immense psychological significance. The failure to take Vienna had been a crushing humiliation for the mighty Ottoman armies, but Vienna had always been a European Christian city. Buda, by contrast, was considered a Muslim city, part of the dar al-Islam. The real threat to the continuing survival of the Ottomans, however, came not from the Austrians but from a relatively new Christian imperial power: Russia. The conversion of the Russians to Christianity in 988 had been one of the triumphs of the Greek Church. As the Byzantine Empire had slowly lost ground to the Turks, the Russians had been gaining territory from their former Mongol overlords, in a continuing struggle that, since it pitted Christians against Muslims, was also seen by the Christians as a crusade. With the fall of Constantinople and the disappearance of the Roman Empire in the East, Moscow had become, in Russian eyes, the sole bearer of Orthodox Christianity and consequently the true heir of the Roman Empire, now ruled by a prince who styled himself “tsar,” the equivalent of “Caesar.” “The Christian Empires have fallen,” wrote the monk Philotheus in 1512 to Tsar Basil II. “In their stead stands only the Empire of our ruler….Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and a fourth there will not be….Thou art the only Christian sovereign in the world, the lord of all faithful Christians.” Now prophecies about a blond race of warriors emerging from the north to drive out the Muslims began to appear throughout the Eastern Christian world. In 1657, one Orthodox patriarch, rash enough to predict the end of Islam and the return of the Church Triumphant, was hanged for his perverse optimism. Yet, for all these claims, the peoples of Western Europe had never quite known what to make of the Russians. Russia’s vast size and the fact that so much of it had for so long been ruled by nomadic peoples had placed it, in the minds of many Europeans, beyond the formal limits of “civilization.” It remained in this way a stubbornly oriental despotism, firmly within Asia—the “Turk of the North,” as the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz called it. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: 17th - 18th Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
What is HistoryNet?The HistoryNet.com is brought to you by the Weider History Group, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. If you are interested in a specific history subject, try searching our archives, you are bound to find something to pique your interest. |
From Our Magazines
|
Weider History Group |
Weider History Network: HistoryNet | Armchair General | Great History | Achtung Panzer! Terms of Use | Copyright © 2009 Weider History Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. |
||
Loading ...
10 Comments to “Turning the Ottoman Tide – John III Sobieski at Vienna 1683”
I think this article is not that objective. It has gone too far about looting and calling muslims as barbarians.
By Mete Han on Aug 11, 2008 at 6:11 am
Great article, very informative. Gives a great overview of a serious subject that resonates today in America’s so called “War on Terror”
By Murphy Maloney on Aug 26, 2008 at 5:33 pm
These days, September 2008 we have 325 anniversary of this battle. You can discuss this battle at the historynet.com forum:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67411
By Bartosz on Sep 7, 2008 at 4:21 am
I think the article is a decent overview of the ottoman empire trending upward and then its decline but the title is all wrong. It should have stopped at “Turning the Ottoman Tide” for in reality what did it mention the battle of Vienna for? 4 paragraphs?
By Bob Sandusky on Dec 26, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Nicely written article.
It would have been reasonable to remind readers that Janissaries were mostly Christian children, forcably taken from Christian families in conquered regions, brought up by Muslims under conditions of religious manipulation, converted to Islam when they came of age, then sent out with zeal to commit Jihads against Christians.
The Janissary core was one of many methods used by Muslims to convert the Middle East and North Africa to Islam.
By Tom Sontag on Jan 31, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I thought that the article (which was, indeed, taken from a much larger work) was immense in its coverage of a hugh piece of history. BUT, I missed a better description of the heroic deeds of John III, particularly his cavalry, whic h played such an important tole in the salvation of the West.
By Bob Sayers on May 27, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I thank you for this article. I appreciate an honest historian. The article complaining about calling some of the Muslim men of the year(s) mentioned want to candy coat reality. I realize with the heat of battle/caught up in the moment men on both sides of a battle may over due their anger. The reason we have enjoyed our living style(s) and history is in thanks to the monks (scriptoria), Benedictines e.g., and the Roman Catholic men and women who stood in the breach and fought and/or shed their blood; both secular/laity and the Knights .g. St. Johns Hospitalliers, the Knights of St. Peter Alcantara etc…
Read William Thomas Walsh book’s “Isabella the Catholic of Spain” and “Phillip II”. This is why the Roman Catholic church that is being preserved with the Latin mass is right. We will need our faith and will be shedding blood. I believe there is another group of a different faith that is instigating this, too. As in the case of what we have seen since 1948.
Palestine until then, 1948 and even before the 1920’s with the British helping with a settlement, was quiet.
The Palestinians, both Christian and Arab, are right in their grievance.
Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat
By Clarence J. LaFuentes II on Jun 12, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The article was very good and covered most of the better information available. I was recently in Constantinople and it is still in ruins. The city has not been taken care of but there is a newer movement to clean it up to bring in Western Tourists.
The history there is directed towards Islam and how wonderfully it changed everything for the better there and not Christianity. You need to study the facts before you go to Constantinople and Vienne and this article will help in that regard. Sadly, the Janissary core did betray their own families also.
Don Juan of Austria, Eugene of Savoy (Austrian General) and King John III Sobieski of Poland and the emperor’s brother-in-law, Charles Sixte of Lorraine should all be given much more credit for what they did for the West. World wide historical kudos should still be showered on Sobieski for his decision to march through the Wienerwald to catch the Turks off guard. There is a church and lookout on that hill now to honor this.
The uneducated public does not realize that the Muslims are still at the Gates of Vienna and the West has thrown those gates open to the good people to come in for jobs but the bad are also slithering in under their shoes into the European Union.
This article is good in historical context of the times. Yes,
Turkey proudly announces that it is .99 % Muslim and open to the West.
By John Riggs on Jun 13, 2009 at 7:01 am