1593 The Long Turkish War started on July 29, 1593, when the Ottoman army under
Sinan Pasha launched a campaign against the Habsburg monarchy. The first engagement of the war was the
Siege of Veszprém () followed by the
Siege of Várpalota () in October 1593;
Győr () and
Komárom () were captured in 1594.
1594 In early 1594, the
Serbs in Banat rose up against the Ottomans. The rebels had, in the character of a
holy war, carried
war flags with the
icon of
Saint Sava. The war banners were consecrated by Patriarch
Jovan Kantul, and the uprising was aided by Serbian Orthodox
metropolitans Rufim Njeguš of
Cetinje and
Visarion of
Trebinje. In response, Ottoman
Grand Vizier Koca Sinan Pasha demanded that the green flag of the Prophet
Muhammed be brought from
Damascus to counter the Serb flag and ordered that the sarcophagus containing the relics of Saint Sava be removed from the
Mileševa monastery and transferred to
Belgrade via military convoy. During the entire war,
Cossack and Polish cavalry troops were present at the fronts of Hungary, Wallachia and Transylvania. The papal auxiliaries were made up mainly of Walloon and Italian mercenaries, and to a small extent French and English mercenaries. The Habsburg army also employed Walloon mercenaries.
Persia indirectly supported the war against the Ottomans in Hungary and the Balkans. The Ottomans' objective in the war was to seize
Vienna, while the Habsburg monarchy wanted to recapture the central territories of the
Kingdom of Hungary controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Control of the Danube line and possession of the fortresses located there was crucial. The war was mainly fought in Royal Hungary (mostly present-day western Hungary and southern
Slovakia),
Transdanubia, Royal Croatia and
Slavonia, the Ottoman Empire (
Rumelia – present-day
Bulgaria and
Serbia), and Wallachia (in present-day southern
Romania). castle in 1596 In 1595, the Christians, led by Mansfeld, captured
Esztergom and
Visegrád, strategic fortresses on the Danube, but they did not lay siege to the key fortress of
Buda. The Ottomans launched a siege of
Eger (), conquering it in 1596. In 1595 in the Balkans, a Spanish fleet of galleys from the
Kingdom of Naples and
Kingdom of Sicily under
Pedro de Toledo, marquis of Villafranca, sacked
Patras, on the
Rumelia Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire, in retaliation for Turkish raids against the Italian coasts. The raid was so spectacular that Sultan
Murad III discussed exterminating the Christians of Constantinople in revenge. He finally decided to order the expulsion of all unmarried Greeks from the city. In the following years, Spanish fleets continued to raid the
Levant waters, but large-scale naval warfare between Christians and Ottomans did not resume. Instead,
privateers such as
Alonso de Contreras took on the role of harassing Ottoman ships. Michael continued his attacks deep within the Ottoman Empire, taking the forts of
Nicopolis,
Ribnice, and Chilia, and even reaching as far as
Adrianople. At one point his forces were only from the Ottoman capital,
Constantinople. in 1598 mercenaries in 1600 He was however forced to fall back across the Danube, and the Ottomans in turn led a massive counter-offensive (100,000 strong) which aimed to not only take back their recently captured possessions but also conquer Wallachia once and for all. The push was initially successful, managing to capture not only Giurgiu but also Bucharest and
Târgoviște, despite fierce opposition at
Călugăreni (23 August 1595). At this point the Ottoman command grew complacent and stopped pursuing the retreating
Wallachian army, focusing instead on fortifying Târgoviște and Bucharest and considering their task all but done. Michael had to wait almost two months for aid from his allies to arrive, but when it did his counter-offensive took the Ottomans by surprise, managing to sweep through the Ottoman defences on three successive battlefields, at Târgoviște (18 October), Bucharest (22 October), and Giurgiu (26 October). The
Battle of Giurgiu in particular was devastating for the Ottoman forces, which had to retreat across the Danube in disarray. The war between Wallachia and the Ottomans continued until late 1599, when Michael was unable to continue the war due to poor support from his allies. The turning point of the war was the
Battle of Mezőkeresztes, which took place in the territory of Hungary on October 24–26, 1596. The combined Habsburg–Transylvanian force of 45–50,000 troops was defeated by the Ottoman army. The battle turned when Christian soldiers, thinking they had won the battle, stopped fighting in order to plunder the Ottoman camp. This battle was the first significant military encounter in Central Europe between a large Christian army and the Ottoman Turkish Army after the
Battle of Mohács. Nevertheless, Austrians recaptured
Győr and
Komarom in 1598. In 1599, the Turks and their Tatar allies attacked
Prievidza,
Topoľčany and other towns in the
Nitra river valley in
Upper Hungary, in what is now Slovakia, and took thousands of people
into slavery.
1601–06 in 1602 leader
Stephen Bocskai and his
hajduk warriors In August 1601, at the
Battle of Guruslău,
Giorgio Basta and Michael the Brave defeated the Hungarian nobility led by
Sigismund Báthory in Transylvania, who accepted Ottoman and Polish protection. After the assassination of Michael the Brave by mercenary soldiers under Basta's orders, the Transylvanian nobility, led by
Mózes Székely, was again defeated at the
Battle of Braşov in 1603 by the Habsburg Empire and Wallachian troops led by the voivode of Wallachia,
Radu Şerban. In September 1601, armies of the Holy Roman Empire laid siege to
Nagykanizsa. Despite the numerical superiority, coalition armies had to abandon the siege two months later, due to heavy losses. The last phase of the war (from 1604 to 1606) corresponds to the
uprising of the Prince of Transylvania
Stephen Bocskai. When Rudolf started prosecutions against a number of noble men in order to fill up the court's exhausted treasury, Bocskai, an educated strategist, resisted. He collected desperate Hungarians together with disappointed members of the nobility to start an uprising against the Habsburg ruler. The troops marched westwards, supported by the
hajduk of Hungary, won some victories and regained the territories that had been lost to the Habsburg army until Bocskai was first declared the Prince of Transylvania (
Marosvásárhely, February 21, 1605) and later also of Hungary (Szerencs, April 17, 1605). The Ottoman Empire supported Bocskai with a crown that he refused (being Christian). As Prince of Hungary he accepted negotiations with Rudolf II and concluded the
Treaty of Vienna (1606). ==Aftermath==