thousand men and three hundred guns, marched to Belgrade, and thence
invaded Hungary. On August 27th, five months after their departure from
Constantinople, they met the Hungarian army at Mohacz, not far from
the Danube, and about half-way from Belgrade to Buda, then, as now,
the capital of Hungary. The battle was quickly decided. The Ottoman
army had the advantage of an overwhelming superiority both of men
and guns. The Hungarians were defeated. Their King, eight bishops,
a great majority of the Hungarian nobles, and twenty-four thousand
men were killed. This decided the fate of Hungary. Before marching
onwards, Solyman ordered all the prisoners he had taken—four thousand
in number—to be put to death. He reached Buda on September 10th. The
city surrendered. Solyman received there the submission of a number
of Hungarian nobles who had survived the disaster of Mohacz. At his
instance, Count Zapolya, one of the magnates of Hungary and Voivode of
Transylvania, was elected by them as King of Hungary in succession to
Louis II, who had left no heir. Solyman shortly after this—influenced
in part by news of civil disturbance in Asia Minor—left Buda and
retreated to the Danube, and thence returned to his capital. The
temporary occupation of part of Hungary had been attended with fearful
devastation and with great loss of life to its population. It was
estimated that two hundred thousand men were massacred. The retreating
army carried off an immense booty and drove before them about a hundred
thousand captives of both sexes, who were eventually sold as slaves
at Constantinople. Garrisons were left by the Turks in some of the
frontier fortresses of Hungary.
The election of Count Zapolya as King of Hungary under the dictation of
the Turks led to civil war in that country. Archduke Ferdinand, brother
of Charles V, to whom the Emperor had transferred his Archduchy of
Austria, claimed the throne of Hungary, by virtue of a treaty between
the Emperor and the late King Louis. On the other hand, it was claimed
by Zapolya and his adherents that, under an ancient law of Hungary, no
one but a native could be elected as King. In spite of this, the nobles
of Western Hungary met in Diet at Presburg and elected Ferdinand.
Ferdinand appealed to arms, and was supported by the Austrians. He
defeated his rival. Zapolya was driven from the country. He fled to
Poland, and thence he appealed to the Sultan for aid in support of
his claims in Hungary. Ferdinand, hearing of this, sent an envoy to
the Sultan. Most unwisely, he not only claimed assistance in support
of his claims to the throne of Hungary, but he demanded that Belgrade
and other towns in Hungary in possession of the Sultan should be given
up. Ibrahim, the Grand Vizier, who conducted the negotiations with the
two rivals, was most arrogant. He claimed that every place where the
hoofs of the Sultan’s horses had once trod became at once and for ever
part of the Ottoman Empire. “We have slain,” he said, “King Louis of
Hungary. His kingdom is now ours to hold or to give to whom we list. It
is not the crown that makes the King, it is the sword. It is the sword
that brings men into subjection; and what the sword has won the sword
will keep.”
The Sultan decided against Ferdinand and said to Zapolya’s envoy, “I
will be a true friend to thy master. I will march in person to aid
him. I swear it by our Prophet Mahomet, the beloved of God, and by
my sabre.” To the rival’s agent he said that he would speedily visit
Ferdinand and drive him from the kingdom he had stolen. “Tell him that
I will look for him on the field of Mohacz or even in Buda, and if he
fail to meet me there, I will offer him battle beneath the walls of
Vienna.”
In pursuance of these threats, Solyman, in 1529, at the head of two
hundred and fifty thousand men and with three hundred guns, again
invaded Hungary and laid siege to Buda. The city surrendered at
the instance of traitors among its defenders. Under the terms of
capitulation life and property were to be preserved to the garrison and
the citizens. The Janissaries, furious at the loss of loot, refused to
recognize the terms. They massacred all the garrison as they issued
from the fortress, and they carried off for sale most of the young
women of the town. Zapolya was reinstated as a vassal King of that
part of Hungary. Solyman then marched on to Vienna. He arrived there on
September 27, 1529, with over two hundred thousand men. There ensued
the first of the two memorable sieges of Vienna by the Ottomans.
Charles V, Emperor of Germany, was at this time the greatest and most
powerful sovereign in Europe. He had inherited the kingdoms of Spain,
the Netherlands, Naples and Sicily, as well as his possessions in
Germany. Born six years later than Solyman, he was elected Emperor
of Germany a year before the accession of Solyman as Sultan. He
abdicated his throne and retired to a monastery ten years before the
death of Solyman. For thirty-six years, therefore, their reigns were
synchronous. It would be hard to say which of the two sovereigns was
the more valiant in arms, or the more astute statesman. Judged by
the extent of conquests, Solyman far surpassed his rival. Charles
did little more than maintain the integrity of his immense inherited
possessions in Europe. But he acquired by conquest Tunis in Africa, and
Mexico and Peru in America.
When Solyman, instigated by Francis I of France, was invading Austria,
Charles was deeply engaged in war against France in Italy, and could
not send an army to meet the Ottomans in the field. Vienna was left to
stand the brunt of invasion without a protecting army. Its garrison
consisted of only sixteen thousand soldiers under Count de Salms.
Its fortifications were only a continuous wall 5 feet in thickness
and without bastions. Its guns were only seventy-two in number. Such
weak defences seemed to offer little hope against the overwhelming
numbers of the Ottomans. The tents of the Sultan and his army whitened
the whole plain round the city. Irregular cavalry, called Scorchers,
depending on loot for their food and pay, ravaged the country for miles
round the city with incredible cruelty and rapacity. A Turkish flotilla
of four hundred small vessels found its way up the Danube, after
destroying all bridges, and lent assistance to the siege. It was all in
vain. The Austrian and Spanish troops under the Count de Salms defended
the weak lines with the utmost courage and tenacity. The Viennese
citizens constructed lines of earthworks within the walls, against
which the lighter guns of the Turks had little effect. The powerful
siege guns of the Ottomans had been left behind _en route_, owing to
heavy rains and the badness of roads. Numerous assaults were made by
the Turks. The soldiers were at last dispirited by failure. In vain
their officers drove them on by sticks and sabres. The men said they
preferred death from their officers to death from the long arquebuses
of the Spaniards. Twenty ducats a head were given or promised to them.
It was to no purpose. Solyman, after three weeks of fruitless assaults,
found himself compelled to raise the siege and to retreat with his
great army. His irregulars had so ravaged the country that he had the
utmost difficulty in feeding his men.
Before striking the camp all the immense booty taken in the campaign
was burnt. The prisoners, most of them the peasantry of the district
round Vienna, were massacred. Only the fairest of the young women were
carried off captives to be sold as slaves. The Sultan returned to
Constantinople. There was no pursuit of his army. It came back intact.
It was a slur on the fame of Solyman that he endeavoured to conceal
his failure to capture Vienna by lying accounts of success, and by a
popular celebration of triumph, on return to his capital. There was
this much to be said for him, that he had flouted the Austrians, by
invading their country and devastating it up to the walls of Vienna,
without any attempt, on their part, to meet him in the field or to
follow him up on his retreat.
Three years later, in 1532, Solyman, with another immense army,
again invaded Hungary, with the avowed object of marching to Vienna
and attacking the army of the Emperor. Charles V, on this occasion,
took command of the Austrian army. It was expected that a trial of
strength would take place between the two potentates, and would decide
which of them was the stronger. But Solyman’s progress was delayed
by the heroic defence for three weeks of the small fortress of Guns.
After its capture Solyman made no further advance towards Vienna, but
turned aside and devastated Styria, and then led his army homeward.
The Emperor, on his part, made no effort to meet his foe and join
conclusions with him. It was evident that both of them were anxious to
avoid the issue of a great battle.
Though the Sultan had retreated and had returned to Constantinople,
peace was not concluded, and a desultory war was continued for some
years between Ferdinand and Zapolya. Peace was concluded in 1538, under
which Zapolya was to retain the title of King of Eastern Hungary and
Transylvania and Ferdinand was acknowledged ruler of the western half.
In 1566 Solyman again invaded Hungary, on his thirteenth and last
campaign, to which we will revert later.
We have thus described briefly the course of events between the Turks
and the Hungarians, supported by Austria. Though the conquests of
Solyman in this direction had been arrested by his failure to capture
Vienna, he succeeded in securing virtual possession of the greater part
of Hungary.
It is necessary to revert to Solyman’s feats in other directions. In
1534 he entered upon his sixth campaign, this time against Persia. Shah
Ismail was no longer alive, and had been succeeded by Shah Talmasp, a
very weak personage. Solyman, as a prelude to his attack, gave orders
for the execution of all the Persian prisoners at Gallipoli. Ibrahim
was sent on, in advance, by some months, with a large army. Instead of
marching by Aleppo to Bagdad, he took the route direct to Tabriz, which
he occupied without resistance on the part of the Persians. He wintered
there, and the next spring he was joined by Solyman with another
army, and together they marched to Mossul and Bagdad, through a most
difficult country, where the climate entailed great losses on the army.
Bagdad was ultimately reached. It was treacherously surrendered by its
commander. In fact, the Shah made no attempt to repel the invasion of
the Ottoman army, and the two great provinces of Mossul and Bagdad were
added to the Ottoman Empire, without any pitched battle on the part of
Persia.
There were other campaigns in Persia in 1548, 1553, and 1554, in which
the Turks often suffered more from the climate and from the difficulty
of obtaining supplies than from the guerrilla attacks of the Persians.
But there was no pitched battle between the armies of the two Powers.
The Turks maintained their conquests, and have done so to the present
year (1917).
Not less remarkable during the long reign of Solyman than his conquests
by his army were the exploits of his navy. It achieved victory in
many hard-fought battles with Spain and Venice. There was no great
disparity in naval force between the Turks and the Spaniards, but
when the fleets of Venice and the Pope were combined with those of
Spain, there was great superiority on their part in the number and
size of vessels. In spite of this, in the two great battles where this
combination was against them, the Turks were victorious, and generally,
throughout Solyman’s reign, his fleets maintained a supremacy in the
Mediterranean. This enabled him to add to his Empire the provinces of
Algiers, Oran, and Tripoli, and numerous islands in the Ægean Sea,
taken from Venice.
The Mussulman States of North Africa, at the commencement of Solyman’s
reign, were in the hands of degenerate and incompetent Mahommedan
rulers, who exercised little control over the Arabs of the hinterland.
The cities on the coast were the haunts of pirates, who sometimes
sailed under the flags of these States, but more often under no flag
but their own. They preyed on the commerce of the Mediterranean,
bringing their prizes into their ports and selling the captives as
slaves, with the result that in Tunis alone there were twenty thousand
Christian captives. These corsairs formed squadrons of ten or twenty
galleys, under the command of admirals, chosen from the most daring and
adventurous of them. They were called corsairs, but, in fact, they were
mere pirates, knowing no law but their own, and that founded on robbery
and murder. The sea-dogs in command of these pirates gained great
experience in handling their ships and squadrons. They ravaged the
coasts of Spain, Italy, and France, and even occasionally of England
and Ireland, devastating the cities and villages and carrying away
booty and captives.
It has been shown that Selim paid great attention to his navy, and
increased his ships in number and size. Solyman followed the same
course. But his admirals and captains did not compare in skill and
daring with those of the pirate squadrons. When Solyman became aware of
this, he most astutely invited the ablest and most experienced of these
pirates to take service under the Ottoman flag, and to bring with them
their ships and men. He gave high appointments to them, raised them
to the rank of admirals and commanders-in-chief of his navy, over the
heads of the officers of his regular service.
The first and most distinguished of these corsairs to take naval
service under Solyman was Kheireddin, better known in history as
Barbarossa. He was one of four brothers, of Greek descent, born in
Mytilene, three of whom in early life took to piracy as a profession,
under the pretence of legitimate commerce at sea. Two of them
eventually lost their lives in the venture, but the third survived,
prospered, and made money. He collected a squadron under his command
and became the terror of the whole Mediterranean, capturing merchant
vessels and devastating the coasts in all directions. Gathering
strength in number of ships and men, he made war on his own account.
He attacked Algiers and made himself master of that city and its
surrounding district. But finding himself unequal to the task of
maintaining an independent rule there, he recognized the supremacy of
the Sultan of Turkey. He carried on his ships seventy thousand fugitive
Moors from Andalusia, in Spain, and settled them at Algiers. Later, he
was employed by Solyman in an attack on Tunis, which was then under the
rule of Muley-Hasan, the twenty-second representative of the dynasty
of Boni Hafss—a degenerate reprobate, who had murdered all but one of
his forty-four brothers on his accession to the throne, and who spent
his energies in recruiting a harem of four hundred good-looking lads.
On the pretext of putting an end to this infamy, Barbarossa attacked
the city of Tunis, and had no difficulty in getting possession of it
and expelling the contemptible Sultan. He did not, however, remain many
months in possession of it. Muley-Hasan appealed to the Emperor Charles
for aid.
The Emperor, in personal command of a fleet of five hundred vessels and
an army of thirty thousand men, attacked and defeated Barbarossa in a
battle before the walls of Tunis, captured his vessels lying there,
and drove him into the interior of the country. Although he had come
there at the invitation of the Sultan of Tunis, and the inhabitants of
the city had given no assistance to Barbarossa in defending it against
the Spanish attack, the Emperor allowed his soldiers to sack it after
the capture. A scene of almost incredible cruelty and destruction took
place. Thirty thousand of the innocent inhabitants were massacred,
and ten thousand were sold into captivity. The mosques and all the
principal buildings were burnt and destroyed. No worse deed was ever
perpetrated by any victorious Moslem army in that age. It resulted that
Tunis, for a time, was rescued from Barbarossa and from Ottoman rule.
Muley-Hasan was reinstated there on terms of close dependence on Spain.
It was not till 1574 that Tunis finally fell into the hands of the
Turks.
Barbarossa had made a splendid defence of the city. His force was
quite inadequate for the purpose. Solyman was at the time engaged in
war with Persia and could not give adequate support. Shortly after
this, when war broke out between the Ottomans and Spain, the Sultan
invited Barbarossa to Constantinople, and made him Grand Admiral of
the Turkish fleet. In this capacity he fought in 1538 a great naval
battle off Prevesa against the combined fleets of Spain, Venice, and
the Pope, under Admiral Andrea Doria, in which he achieved victory, in
spite of great inferiority of numbers and size of vessels. He appears
to have been the first to adopt the manœuvre of breaking the line
of the enemy’s fleet, for which three centuries later Nelson was so
famous. The Turkish fleet numbered a hundred and thirty vessels, and
that of the combined Christian Powers a hundred and sixty-seven. Six of
the latter were captured and destroyed. The main body of the combined
fleet drew off, under cover of the night. Later, Barbarossa accompanied
Solyman in the attack on Corfu, which was heroically defended by the
Venetians. The Sultan was compelled to withdraw from the island.
This failure at Corfu, and that before Vienna, were the only reverses
which Solyman personally encountered in his numerous campaigns.
Barbarossa, however, in the course of the war with the Venetians,
succeeded in capturing from them all the many islands which they
possessed in the Ægean Sea, with the exception of Crete and the few
fortified places they held in the Morea. These were his last exploits.
He died at Constantinople in 1546.
Others, however, of the same brood of corsairs or pirates succeeded
Barbarossa in the Turkish navy, and maintained its reputation for
successful daring. The most distinguished of them were Dragut (or
Torghut) and Piale, both of them renegade subjects of Turkey who had
taken to piracy as a profession. Dragut, a Croatian by birth, closely
resembled Barbarossa in his career, in his prowess at sea, and in the
terror which he created on the coasts of Italy and Spain. He had little
respect for the allies of the Sultan, and captured their vessels as
readily as those of his enemies. When called to account by the Porte
for the destruction of some Venetian merchant ships, and summoned to
Constantinople, he declined to go there, well knowing the fate in store
for him. He betook himself, with his pirate squadron, to Morocco, which
he made the base for piracy for some years. Later, Solyman, finding the
need of such a daring spirit, invited him again to take service under
the Ottoman flag, and promised to make him Governor of Tripoli, if he
could capture it. Tripoli then belonged to the Knights of St. John at
Malta. Dragut attacked and captured it, and annexed it to the Turkish
Empire. Eventually Dragut was appointed Governor of Tripoli and, in
this capacity, led a fleet in aid of the attack on Malta in 1565. He
lost his life in an assault on the city.
Another such corsair was Piale, who, in his turn, after a long spell
of piracy, was taken into the Ottoman naval service by Solyman, and
rose to be commander-in-chief. He defeated the combined fleet of Spain,
Venice, and the Pope, under command of Andrea Doria, sent to recapture
Tripoli. He attacked and annexed for the Turks the province of Oran, on
the African coast, westward of Algiers. He commanded the Turkish fleet
in the attack on Malta in 1565, the last naval enterprise in Solyman’s
reign.
It was not only in the Mediterranean that Solyman’s navy was active. A
fleet was fitted out at Suez, under command of Piri Pasha. It secured
to Turkey the command of the Red Sea and enabled the capture of Aden
and Yemen. It extended its operations thence to the Persian Gulf and
the coast of India, where it came into conflict with the Portuguese,
who beat off the Ottoman ships.
The failure of the expedition to Malta, though he was not in personal
command, appears to have weighed heavily on the mind of Solyman. It was
his ambition to finish his career by a success as signal and important
as that against Belgrade, in the first year of his reign. He determined
to take command himself of the army which was to make another invasion
of Hungary in 1566, in spite of his seventy-two years and the feeble
state of his health. He was not able to mount his horse. He was
carried in a litter at the head of his army. It was his special wish
to capture Szigeth and Erlau, which had successfully resisted Ottoman
attack on the last invasion. He appears to have directed the march of
his army in the minutest detail. One of his pashas accomplished a march
in one day which he was instructed to effect in two days. Solyman was
incensed and directed the execution of the over-zealous pasha, and with
difficulty was dissuaded from this by his Grand Vizier.
The great Sultan died unexpectedly in his tent from apoplexy during the
siege of Szigeth, before the capture of this city and while the guns of
his army were thundering against its citadel, most bravely defended by
Nicholas Zriny—a fitting end to the old warrior. His death was for long
concealed from the army. The Grand Vizier directed the execution of the
Sultan’s physician, lest he should divulge the secret. Solyman’s body
was embalmed and was carried in the royal litter during the remainder
of the short campaign in Hungary, and orders were still given to the
army in the name of the defunct Sultan. It was not till news came that
Selim had arrived at Belgrade from his government in Asia Minor that
the army, on its homeward march, was informed of the death of the great
Sultan.
This was the last of Solyman’s thirteen campaigns in which he led his
armies personally on the field. There were others in which his generals
commanded. It is to be observed of all of them that there was only one
case in which a pitched battle of any great importance was fought on
land. The single case was that of Mohacz, already referred to, where
the Ottoman army greatly exceeded in number that of the Hungarians
opposed to it, and was provided with a park of artillery, in which
the enemy was wholly deficient. The result, therefore, was never in
doubt. With that exception, there was no great battle either with the
Hungarians, the Austrians, or the Persians. The campaigns consisted
of invasions by great armies of the Ottomans, with heavy parks of
artillery, and with large forces of irregular cavalry, who ravaged
and devastated the invaded country. The generals opposed to them, not
being able to meet the Turks in the field, spread their forces in
numerous fortresses, more or less strong, and the campaigns consisted
in besieging these fortresses. With rare exceptions, these sieges were
successful. The Turks brought overwhelming forces to bear on them.
Their siege guns completely overmatched the guns of the defence. It
was a question of a few days or a few weeks how long these fortresses
could resist. The wonder is that many of them resisted so long. The
usual course of such campaigns was that the Turks, having captured
the fortresses in the invaded districts, either annexed them to their
Empire, as in the case of Eastern Hungary and Mesopotamia, or compelled
the vanquished State to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Sultan and
to pay tribute, as in the case of Western Hungary, or retired, leaving
the ravaged country so destitute of supplies that the enemy could not
follow up the retreating army.
Solyman was almost always successful in his campaigns—but they do not
entitle him to a place in the first rank of great generals who have
earned their laurels by defeating opponents not unequal in number
in the open field. Practically, there was only one sovereign in
Europe—namely the Emperor Charles V—and no one in Asia, who could hope
to meet Solyman on equal terms on the battlefield, and the Emperor
evidently did not care to measure swords with him in the open.
If these considerations detract from the military fame of Solyman,
they do not lessen his reputation as an empire-builder and as an
organizer of campaigns of invasion. Seldom has an Empire been extended
to such an extent as that of the Ottomans under his efforts, with so
little expenditure of life or of the resources of the State. Solyman
evidently made it his task to run no risk of failure, but to use such
overwhelming force as made resistance all but impossible.