368

Continued defeats of the Turks.

[1688-90 triumph seemed to be assured to the Imperialists if they were prompt to move in 1688. But precious time was wasted in an intrigue which ended in the transfer of the supreme command from the Duke of Lorraine to the Elector of Bavaria. It was not till July that the latter joined the army, and not till August that he advanced from Peterwardein to besiege Belgrade. Fortunately for him, the Turks had not taken full advantage of the respite given to them; and on September 6 the famous fortress at the junction of the Save and the Danube was carried by storm. The capture of Belgrade, as Leopold himself said, opened the way to Constantinople, and pious churchmen began to anticipate confidently the complete expulsion of the infidels from the soil of Europe. But they reckoned without the Most Christian King. Louis XIV had watched with ever-increasing chagrin the progress of the Austrian arms. Every defeat of the Turks and the Hungarian rebels diminished his chances of gaining the Spanish succession for his House. It became necessary for him to strike before the Eastern War was at an end; and, in spite of the twenty years' truce which he had concluded in 1684, he now recommenced those acts of aggression which in the next year involved the Western Powers in another great war. But he nearly overreached himself. William III joined Spain in urging the Emperor to accept the peace which the humbled Turks had more than once offered in vain. The negotiations, however, which were conducted in the winter of 1688-9 came to no result. The Turks became less yielding, when they discovered that France was about to make a diversion in their favour; and Leopold was obstinately loyal to his allies in Venice and Poland. To the intense chagrin of Spain and the Maritime Powers, the Emperor decided to continue the war against the Turks.

It was a courageous but a rash decision. The outbreak of war with France, which compelled Leopold to send considerable forces under Charles of Lorraine and the Elector of Bavaria to the Rhine, restored the balance in the eastern struggle which had hitherto been so decisively adverse to the Turks. In 1689 the change was not yet apparent. In addition to their wars with Poland and Venice, the Turks had to face a new enemy in the Russians who invaded the Crimea. Lewis of Baden, who had succeeded to the command of the Imperial army, was able to overrun Servia, where he made himself master of Nizza and Widdin. But in the winter the Sultan gave the office of Vezir to Mustafa Kiuprili, the brother of the famous Ahmad. Mustafa displayed all the reforming zeal which characterised the members of his House, while he surpassed them in religious tolerance. His great desire was to deprive the enemies of the Porte of the advantages which they had hitherto gained from the discontent of the subject Christians. At the same time, he set himself to reorganise the military organisation and to rekindle discord in Hungary. The death of Apaffy in April, 1690, was followed by the

1690-7]

Revival of Turkish power.

369

recognition of his son as Prince of Transylvania. But the Turks, in exercise of the suzerainty which they had never relinquished, nominated Tökölyi and sent him into Transylvania to revive the old spirit of hostility to the House of Habsburg. Taking advantage of the diversion thus caused, the Vezir attacked the Austrian garrisons in Servia, recaptured Widdin and Nizza, and by supreme good fortune succeeded in reducing Belgrade (October 8, 1690). The loss of this great fortress endangered all the Austrian gains in Hungary, but fortunately Essek still blocked the passage over the Drave. In 1691 Kiuprili led his army from Belgrade against Peterwardein. Lewis of Baden, who had in the meantime driven Tökölyi from Transylvania and compelled that province to renew its submission to the Emperor, now hurried southwards to the defence of southern Hungary. At Szalankemen (August 19) he won the greatest of his victories and the Vezir, who had held office for barely two years, was among the slain. But the Austrian army was too exhausted to attempt to cross the Save or to attack Belgrade.

The battle of Szalankemen marks a turning-point in the history of the war. Both sides relaxed their efforts. The intrigues of France in Constantinople succeeded in preventing the conclusion of peace. On the other hand the influence of the Emperor's western allies, and especially of William III, induced him to abandon all ideas of further conquest and to stand on the defensive in Hungary. Lewis of Baden succeeded in taking Gross wardein in 1692, but in the following year he was despatched to the Rhine. For four years the Imperialists, under the successive commands of Croy, Caprara and the young Frederick Augustus of Saxony, achieved practically nothing, and more than once narrowly escaped disastrous defeat. Meanwhile changes of rulers occurred in Constantinople. On the death of Solyman II in 1691, his brother Ahmad had ascended the throne. The latter's death in 1695 was followed by the accession of his nephew Mustafa II, the son of the deposed Mohammad IV. The new Sultan was a young man in the prime of life and eager for military fame. Instead of entrusting all responsibility to a Vezir he undertook the command of his army in person. The Turks, always responsive to the call of an energetic leader, displayed their old warlike spirit. In 1695 and 1696 they defeated the Imperial forces in Hungary and recovered some of their lost predominance in the Egean. It seemed as if events would justify the solemn warning of Montecuculi that his master should never wage a long war against the Turks, as their power remained unshaken by defeat. In 1697 the Sultan at the head of a formidable army marched from Belgrade up the valley of the Theiss in the direction of Szegedin, whence he could throw himself by way of the Maros into Transylvania. Frederick Augustus of Saxony, with all his physical strength and courage, possessed neither the character nor the capacity needed for a great general, yet it was impossible for the Emperor to dismiss an ally who had brought an independent force to his

C. M. H. V. CH. XII.

24

370

The battle of Zenta.

[1696-7 service. From this dilemma Leopold was saved by events in Poland. In 1696 John Sobieski died after thirteen years of disappointment and chagrin. For the third time within thirty years there was a scramble for the still coveted Crown. The most prominent candidates were at first the young James Sobieski, who had married the sister of the Empress, and the Prince of Conti, who was backed by all the influence of France. Neither could prevail against the other; and the choice of the Diet fell in 1697 upon the Elector of Saxony, who changed his religion to gain a kingdom which remained in his House for two generations. Augustus II (as he was now called) quitted the army to repair to Poland. The vacant command was at once conferred upon Prince Eugene, who had been set free by the termination of the war in Italy on the defection of the Duke of Savoy in 1696 from the Grand Alliance. Eugene had expected an attack upon Peterwardein, and was at first disconcerted by the Sultan's northward march. With great promptness, however, he set out in pursuit up the Theiss and overtook the Turks as they were crossing the river at Zenta (September 11, 1697). Only two hours of daylight remained when Eugene's main army joined the cavalry which had ridden on in advance. Arranging his troops in a semi-circle, he ordered a simultaneous attack upon the imperfect entrenchments which covered the Turkish position. The vigour of the onslaught carried all before it, and the defenders were driven back in headlong flight to the temporary bridge. As the river was low, the right wing, by taking advantage of sand-banks in the channel, succeeded in closing the access to the bridge. This converted the rout into a massacre. The Turkish soldiers who escaped the sword of the enemy were forced over the steep bank to find a watery grave in the Theiss. Twilight was setting in as the great victory was completed, and Eugene declared in his report that "the sun refused to set, until its last rays had witnessed the complete triumph of your Imperial Majesty's glorious arms." The Sultan, who had witnessed from the further bank the annihilation of his army, fled in despair to Temesvar, and thence to Belgrade. Eugene, after a brief raid into Bosnia, proceeded to Vienna, to receive the thanks of his grateful employer.

Events now tended rapidly in the direction of peace. In November, 1697, the allies concluded the Treaty of Ryswyk with Louis XIV; and this, added to the recent defeat at Zenta, put an end to the obstinate determination of the Turks to continue the war. They were once more exposed to attack from the undivided forces of Austria, and they had another formidable enemy in Peter the Great, who had conquered Azoff in 1696, and eagerly desired to make Russia a maritime Power by extending his rule to the Black Sea. On the other hand, Leopold had long abandoned the ambitious designs which had been entertained at the time of the capture of Belgrade; and any inclination to renew them was removed by the pressing interest of the approaching succession in

1698-9]

The Peace of Carlowitz.

371

Spain and by the strenuous appeals of the Maritime Powers that he would put an end to the distracting troubles of the eastern war. The youthful rulers of Poland and Russia were less peacefully inclined; but both had begun to form plans against Sweden which required that they should have their hands free. In October, 1698, the Turks, for the first time, sent envoys to a general European congress at Carlowitz between Peterwardein and Belgrade. Under the mediating influence of Lord Paget, the English representative, actual possession at the time was taken as the basis of negotiations, and it only remained to determine what exceptions to the general rule should be admitted. As between Austria and the Porte the difficulties were not considerable. The Austrians desired the surrender of Tökölyi, who since his expulsion from Transylvania had served in the Turkish ranks. The Sultan was eager to retain at any rate some shadow of his long-established authority over Transylvania. Both demands were ultimately withdrawn, and the Emperor allowed the Turks to retain the banat of Temesvar, enclosed between the waters of the Theiss and the Maros. With that exception, the whole of Hungary was left to the House of Habsburg. To Poland, whose chief service had been the bringing of Russia into the Christian alliance, Podolia and Kameniec were restored; and Venice was confirmed in its conquests in Dalmatia and the Morea. The three treaties in which these stipulations were embodied were signed on January 26, 1699. Russia, though represented at the congress, only concluded a truce for two years by which she remained in occupation of Azoff. A special agreement between Austria and the Turks stipulated that Tökölyi should be interned in Asia Minor; and there, far from the scene of their former exploits, he and his wife spent the remaining years of their lives.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TREATIES OF PARTITION AND THE
SPANISH SUCCESSION.

DURING the long reign of Philip IV a great change took place in the European position of Spain. This King renewed the warlike policy of Philip II, and Spanish troops again fought on the battlefields of the Continent. More than once during the Thirty Years' War, the ambassador of the Catholic King exerted a decisive influence on the actions of the Court of Vienna. Thus, the whole career of Wallenstein can only be realised by keeping in remembrance his relations to the King of Spain, who supported him in the epoch of his greatest power and was one of the chief authors of his fall. The actual turning-point in the development of Spain was the war in which she contended against the combined strength of England and France. The French Marshal Turenne and the English Admirals Blake and Stayner put an end to the predominance of the Spanish Power by land and sea. The French monarchy under Louis XIV wrested from Spain her military ascendancy, while her maritime power, already weakened in her eighty years' war against the United Provinces, was dealt still heavier blows by the navy of the Protector Oliver Cromwell.

About the same time Philip IV lost the sway over the neighbouring kingdom of Portugal acquired by his grandfather Philip II. The union of the two countries had always been highly unpopular with the Portuguese-the more so, since it had drawn on them the enmity of the Dutch. In the East and in the West, the Portuguese colonies had to sustain the attacks of their Dutch rivals, who succeeded in despoiling Portugal of the most valuable of her possessions in India and South America. It was thus only natural that the support of the people of Portugal was easily gained for the rights of John IV, of the House of Braganza, who in 1640 took possession of the Portuguese throne. From this time onward, Portugal never again submitted to the Spanish yoke. Philip, indeed, tried to maintain his inherited rule; but the defeat of his armies obliged him to renounce his claims. If to this is