[9] It was waged from 1593 to 1606, but in Europe, it is sometimes called the Fifteen Years' War (Hungarian: Tizenöt éves háború), reckoning from the 1591–1592 Turkish campaign that captured Bihać.

The major participants of the war were the Habsburg monarchy, the Principality of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia opposing the Ottoman Empire.

The Long Turkish War started on July 29, 1593, when the Ottoman army under Sinan Pasha launched a campaign against the Habsburg monarchy.

[15] 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.

[16] 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.

[15] The Ottomans publicly incinerated the relics of Saint Sava on a pyre atop the Vračar plateau on April 27 and had the ashes scattered.

[15] In 1595, an alliance of Christian European powers was organized by Pope Clement VIII to oppose the Ottoman Empire (the Holy League of Pope Clement VIII); a treaty of alliance was signed in Prague by the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II and Sigismund Báthory of Transylvania.

[21] In the following years, Spanish fleets continued to raid the Levant waters, but large-scale naval warfare between Christians and Ottomans did not resume.

[23] Michael continued his attacks deep within the Ottoman Empire, taking the forts of Nicopolis, Ribnice, and Chilia,[24] and even reaching as far as Adrianople.

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.

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.

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.

When Rudolf – mostly based on false charges[citation needed] – started prosecutions against a number of noble men in order to fill up the court's exhausted treasury, Bocskai, an educated strategist, resisted.

The Long War ended with the Peace of Zsitvatorok on November 11, 1606, with meagre territorial gains for the two main empires – the Ottomans won the fortresses of Eger, Esztergom, and Kanisza, but gave the region of Vác (which they had occupied since 1541) to Austria.

Rudolf, by the end of the war, had massive debts to lenders, border troops and the field army, made concessions with the Hungarian nobility, and disappointed the princes of the Holy Roman Empire who had subsidized the Habsburg–Ottoman frontier.