The Fall of The Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 - Buda 1541

Third Phase: from the Capture of Belgrade e to the Peace of Adrianople, 1521-1568.

The capture of Belgrade was in every way a prerequisite for thedecisive Ottoman attack against Hungary, since the army could nothave by-passed such a powerful fortress. Furthermore, the fall of thecastle entailed the collapse of the system of fortifications along thesouthern border of Hungary, as a result of which the country becamepractically defenseless. [76]

Considering that the fall of medieval Hungary, the main subject ofthis book, was the central event in this period, Ottoman strategy andits relationship to politics will be discussed in some detail in subsequent chapters. Therefore, only, a few theoretical issues should beraised here, as a background for the strategic decisions of thisperiod.

On the relationship between politics and war we should readClausewitz. It was he who established the maxim that "war is...acontinuation of political activity by other means. The political objectis the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never beconsidered in isolation from their purpose." [77] There can be no doubtthat the Ottoman leadership acted according to this principle. Thegreat wars, normally led by the sultan in person, were alwayslaunched for the sake of well defined political objectives. Of course,the troops in the border provinces carried out steady forays into theneighboring lands to obtain booty, but even in these political objectives were not entirely absent: the exhaustion of the adversary, byforcing him to military, hence economic efforts, which tired him tothe point at which he became unable to defend himself. This wasexactly what happened in the case of Hungary, as we shall see inmore detail.

We may also detect in the application of Ottoman military strategy those propositions which, according to Clausewitz, form thescientific foundation for the art of war. Thus it can be asserted thatOttoman military leaders knew that "defense is the stronger form offighting with negative purpose, attack the weaker form with thenegative purpose; that major successes help bring about minor ones,so that strategic results can be traced back to certain centers ofgravity." [78] While the Turks did not put all this in writing--nor didthe Europeans, for that matter, before Clausewitz--from a survey ofthe episodes of individual wars and campaigns we may conclude thatthey did follow these principles in practice. As regards specific strategic planning, the. Ottoman leadership, as I have argued earlier, made their decisions on the basis of accurate information. Theytook good care to assess the principal factors--force, space andtime--correctly. It seems that in all cases they had an accuratepicture of the military strength and potential of the army of theiradversary. They also had fair knowledge of the battlegrounds thatmight come into consideration. Finally, they usually timed theiraction well, and knew well how to make time their ally.

The strategic leadership techniques of the Ottomans were quitesophisticated, enabling them to carry out victorious campaigns intheaters of operation as far removed from the center of the Empire asPersia, Egypt, or Hungary. No army in Europe at this time couldhave done the same. Such distant campaigns required, of course,precise yet flexible coordination of military and logistical operations,the prerequisite for which was their outstanding logistical servicedescribed above. The Ottoman military leaders were masters of theart of moving large masses to the area of concentration and to thetheater of war. We have seen how painstakingly they organized themarch of their army across the Balkans. Their numerous cavalrywas likewise directed with considerable ease, before and during thebattle, to the side or the rear of the foe.

We can obtain a clear outline of the dynamics and structure of theHungarian wars from the more important Ottoman campaigns ofthis period, as well as of the range beyond which they could notextend themselves. It seems that it was precisely in Hungary thatthe sphere of the Ottoman machinery of conquest reached its outerlimit; the frontiers in the process of definition at this time did notvary essentially until the Ottoman collapse in the late seventeenthcentury. The capture of Eger (1596), Kanizsa (1600), Varad (1660),and Ersekujvar (1663) in the following period, albeit significantadditions, amounted to an extension of conquests in width withoutreally transcending the radius of operation.

It was this radius that explains why the Ottomans waged onlylimited warfare against Hungary. [79] The restrictions on the military

objective in turn entailed a reduction of the political objective,namely, the initial delay of conquering Hungary. It is precisely thisself-control, and the description of the considerations which finallyled Suleyman to launch an all-out war against Hungary that constitutes the subject matter of this book. The radius of effective action,the significance of which exceeds the merely military aspects, deserves treatment in some detail.

The radius or range of action is the limit of operation of an army,determined by its speed of advance, the logistical service, as well asthe time allotted to the campaign. In the early modern period armieswere able to march an average of 20 km a day. Since, however, thetroops and the draft animals required rest periods, and time for thedistribution of food and foraging, it was necessary to halt everyfourth or fifth day; hence the average length of march was no morethan 15 km a day. Because of the difficulties of transport, foodsupplies, and quartering, the campaigns seldom continued into thewinter; the campaigning season stretched from spring to fall. If wetake 180 days and multiply this number by the number of kilometersadvanced by the troops, we obtain 2,700 km, the radius of the army'soperation. If, however, the army had to return to its own countrybefore the coming of winter, as was usually the case, then the radiusof action is half of that, that is, 1,350 km. But even this distance isexcessive since we have counted only the days of actual advance,disregarding the days spent on maneuvers and fighting battles. Aminimum of 30 days had to be allotted for such purposes, whichmeans that we have to deduct 30 X 15 = 450 km from the total. Thereremains approximately 950 km.

Obviously, exceeding this distance would be most risky, because ifthe decisive battle did not take place within the aforementioned 30days then the army would have to return without accomplishing itstask, to avoid the onset of winter. If an open and decisive battle didtake place late in this time-span, no matter what the outcome, thearmy would have been in a difficult position. If victorious, it couldnot exploit its victory, being unable to pursue the enemy beyond itsrange. If defeated, it would be threatened with almost complete *annihilation, since it would have to cover considerable ground to finda haven within its own boundaries, while demoralized and with theenemy at its heels. The logistical difficulties increased in proportionto the distance.

Let us apply these considerations to the Turkish-Hungarian wars.n begin with, it should be noted first, that the Ottomans wereunable to take the entire country; had they been able to occupy it,there can be no doubt that they would have done so. Second, once thecampaign season was over, only part of the Turkish forces spent thewinter in Hungary, for two reasons: (1) it was impossible to find food,forage, and lodging for such a large mass of people during the wintermonths; and (2) as landowners and administrators the timar landowners could not be absent from their residence over such a longperiod. Finally, it is obvious that while the Ottoman Turks could notannex or absorb Hungary, neither could they allow the Habsburgs totake over--hence they did have to occupy as much of the land aspossible. [80]

The occupied zone had to include Buda because of its strategicsignificance. The possession of Buda was essential to the OttomanEmpire for three reasons: it enabled them to control the Danube; itprevented the Habsburgs from launching an attack against theEmpire along the Danube; and, being midway between Vienna and Transylvania, it was an obstacle to Habsburg designs on the latter.But no matter what advantages the Ottoman forces may havederived from possessing Buda these could not make up for theoverwhelming disadvantage of being beyond their range of effectiveness and lying far closer to Vienna than to Constantinople. Thedistance of Vienna-Buda is 240 km, which can be covered in 16 days,march; Constantinople-Buda is, however, 1,460 km, 97 days' march(of which Belgrade-Buda is about a third, 460 km, 31 days, march).From these figures it follows that holding on to Buda was almost amatter of accident for the Turks. No fortification can withstand asiege beyond a certain period if relief does not arrive. It was highlyunlikely that an Ottoman relief army would be able to reach Buda intime. Assuming they set off at the same time, the Habsburg forceswere hardly more than two weeks away, the Ottomans more thanthree months. The imperial forces would have had about 80 days tocarry out their siege which, under normal circumstances, would bemore than sufficient to take the castle.

The reasons why the Ottoman Turks were able to hold on to Budafor a century and a half--and, with it the central portions of thecountry, in spite of unfavorable strategic conditions--were notstrictly military Rather, it was the fact that under the prevailingeconomic, social, and political conditions the Habsburg provincesand the Holy Roman Empire could not field an army powerfulenough to challenge the Turks, nor was it possible for them to beginthe campaign in the spring or early summer early enough to initiateand to complete the siege before the arrival of the Ottoman reliefforce. When, however, these conditions changed, the situation of theOttomans in Hungary became untenable.

A survey of the sieges undertaken in the period of the Ottomandomination provides clear evidence for the foregoing. The Christianforces besieged Buda seven times in vain: in 1530, 1540, 1541, 1598,1602, 1603, and 168-not counting 1542, when their campaignbogged down as early as the siege of Pest, across the river. Thus thesiege was attempted eight times, but only twice, in 1541 and 1684,were the assailants able to initiate the siege in May or July; sixtimes they reached Buda as late as September or October. Evenwhen the siege was launched early enough it still had to be abandoned because of inadequate preparations and organization; whenthey started in autumn the besiegers were turned away either by theappearance of the relief expedition or by the coming of bad weather.

Buda was recaptured only in 1686. On this occasion the Austrian,Hungarian, and Imperial forces reached Pest or Buda on June 17

and 18 and launched the siege in a matter of days. The Ottomanrelief expedition showed up near the castle only on August 13, thatis, on the 57th day of the siege, but did not venture to attack thebesieging Christian forces. The castle fell on September 2, on the77th day. Had the Christian host not delayed its departure, butstarted off in May, it could have embarked on the siege a monthearlier and completed it even before the arrival of the relief force.After the fall of Buda the theater of operations shifted to the southern regions of the country; in spite of repeated efforts, the Ottomanswere unable to recapture Buda, or even to get near it. Once the castlewas lost, the Turkish army was no longer able to confront theChristian forces in pitched battle. It was forced out of Hungary aftera further series of defeats.

From that time on, however, the law of range of effective actionworked against the Christians. The overly extended supply line puta brake on military operations and made it practically impossible forthe Christians to operate beyond the River Sava. Their main objective was to capture and hold Belgrade, but in this they failed.

Tactics

At the time of the occupation of Gallipoli the nomadic tacticsfamiliar from warfare on the steppes still prevailed in the Ottomanarmy. It is hard to say whether these tactics were the same as thoseused by the Huns and Mongols. On the basis of logic and sparse data,it seems, however, that the Turks used a degenerate, no longereffective version of nomadic warfare. It may also be assumed that, asa result of the change in the mode of production and the introductionof feudal arrangements, this kind of warfare lost its economic andsocial base. Two facts support this assumption. The formation of thebody of janissaries was to complement the easily panicked mass oflight cavalry which was predominant in the classical form of nomadic warfare. The janissaries provided a solid, unshakable nucleuswhich the classical application of nomadic warfare did not require.Furthermore, barely half a century after the capture of Gallipoli in1402, the masters of nomadic warfare, the Mongols, administeredthe Ottoman army a crushing defeat. The process must have beensimilar to the one experienced by the Hungarians after they settledin the Carpathian basin. When they abandoned nomadic animal husbandry and adopted settled agriculture, the framework and organization of the feudal Hungarian state evolved, including, ofcourse, radical transformations of warfare as well. And they, too,were beaten by the Mongols some two to three centuries after thesetransformations.

Nevertheless, Ottoman tactics were generally superior to thetactics employed by the European knights in the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries. The speed of their light cavalry, their mobility,as well as the solidity of leadership deriving from strict disciplineand a despotic administration gave the Ottomans decisive superiority in tactical maneuvering over the individualistic, undisciplined,hence almost unmanageable knights, incapable of varying theirbattle formation. It followed that enveloping and turning attacks, aswell as feints and ambushes, acquired a decisive importance inOttoman fighting. At the same time the unshakable stonewall of thejanissaries provided much security to the continuously milling, nowattacking, now retreating, mass of cavalry which was inclined topanic precisely because of its loose style of fighting.

It would seem, then, that these tactics left nothing to be desired;taking a closer look, however, one may discover weaknesses which,though covered up by the strong points, eventually spelled catastrophe. First of all, the combat formation did not have a closed, massive,thrusting nucleus capable of shock attacks, like that of the armoredknights in European armies. The light cavalry was not fit for shock;it could do no more than harass, tire out, and finally disperse theenemy on the verge of disintegration. A closed attack could havebeen the task of the janissaries, but they were reserved for defense.Yet the defensive attitude of the janissaries was no solution to thedefense of the army as a whole either, because the light cavalry wasby its very nature entirely useless for defense. To use a simile, theOttoman combat formation was like a castle where the janissariesrepresented the citadel that makes a last stand possible, but whichhas no bastions, curtines, or forward positions. The Ottoman troopswere never able to withstand the assault of the armored knights.But, since the western cavalry was unable to carry out any othermaneuver, they could not exploit their initial success in battle. Howeffective the assault of the Christian cavalry was and how defenseless the Ottoman army facing it becomes obvious not only fromthe course of specific battles, as reconstructed from the sources, butalso from the candid admissions of Turkish historians regarding thefear which seized the Ottoman troops in the face of the massive cavalry assault. [82] Ottoman military leaders, recognizing the dangerof the assaults by armored knights, attempted to break up the solidranks of the Christian forces. One means employed was the archercavalry, which sent a shower of arrows on the enemy from all sides.Another, even more effective device was suddenly to open up theranks, so that the shock assault would hit nothing but air. [83]

The balance was somewhat restored when with the passing offeudalism the \Western armored cavalry began to decline and theknights could not well withstand the fire of the janissaries who, inthe meantime, had acquired muskets. But then, the fighting potential of the timariot sipahis and their ability for maneuvers derivingfrom nomadic tactics and requiring quick, precise execution, greatdiscipline, and thorough training, decreased as well. Mercenarytroops might have offered an alternative, as they had in Europewhere they became a concomitant of the new tactics that developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. [84] There are indications thatthe Ottoman leaders were well aware of their army's tactical inferiority, and this was probably the explanation for the enormous increase in the number of professional soldiers in the seventeenthcentury. [85] Yet this could only be a partial solution as long as thetimariots remained a substantial proportion of the military setupwhile, in the rest of Europe, the role and significance of the feudalforces dwindled drastically after the evolution of a standing army ofregular soldiers. But social and political considerations seem to haveprecluded a thorough reform abolition of the timar system. [86]

The great transformations that changed military art in earlymodern Europe did not affect Ottoman tactics and military organization. The synchronization of the various services and the mutuallycomplementing utilization of shock and firepower, typical for thisrevolution, were never assimilated by the Ottoman army. Theyonly avoided catastrophe because of the strategic deadlock whichcharacterized the wars between Austria and the Ottoman Empireafter the fall of Hungary, when no more pitched battles were fought.

The Fall of The Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 - Buda 1541