Ottoman wars in Europe

In the latter half of the 14th century, the Ottoman Empire proceeded to advance north and west in the Balkans, completely subordinating Thrace and much of Macedonia after the Battle of Maritsa in 1371.

Both the Roman and Avignon popes awarded indulgences and the French king's uncle, Louis II, Duke of Bourbon, was the leader.

[6] After their victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Ottomans had conquered most of the Balkans and had reduced Byzantine influence to the area immediately surrounding Constantinople, which they later besieged.

[9] Æneas Sylvius and John of Capistrano preached the Crusade, the princes of the Holy Roman Empire in the Diets of Ratisbon and Frankfurt promised assistance, and a league was formed between Venice, Florence and Milan, but nothing came of it.

The end of the Crusades, in at least a nominal effort of Catholic Europe against Muslim incursion, came in the 16th century, when the Franco-Imperial wars assumed continental proportions.

Amongst these, he entered into one of the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire with Suleiman the Magnificent while making common cause with Hayreddin Barbarossa and a number of the Sultan's North African vassals.

[11] In March 1442, Hunyadi defeated Mezid Bey and the raiding Ottoman army at the Battle of Szeben in the south part of the Kingdom of Hungary in Transylvania.

This was the first time that a European army defeated such a large Ottoman force, composed not only of raiders, but of the provincial cavalry led by their own sanjak beys (governors) and accompanied by the formidable janissaries.

[17] After the fall of Serbia in 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where the Bosnians participated through Vlatko Vuković, the Turks began various offensives against the Kingdom of Bosnia.

The Ottomans meanwhile reached the river Neretva and, having conquered Herzegovina (Rama) in 1482, they encroached upon Croatia, skillfully avoiding the fortified border towns.

In 1500, a Spanish–Venetian army commanded by Gonzalo de Córdoba took Kefalonia, temporarily stopping the Ottoman offensive on eastern Venetian territories.

This caused outrage among many influential Hungarian figures and Western admirers of Vlad's success in the battle against the Ottoman Empire (and his early recognition of the threat it posed), including high-ranking members of the Vatican.

The Sultan launched an attack against the weakened kingdom, whose smaller army was defeated in 1526 at the Battle of Mohács and King Louis II of Hungary died.

In 1532, another attack on Vienna with 60,000 troops in the main army was held up by the small fort (800 defenders) of Kőszeg in western Hungary, fighting a suicidal battle.

In retaliation for a failed Austrian counter-attack in 1542, the conquest of the western half of central Hungary was finished in the 1543 campaign that took both the most important royal ex-capital, Székesfehérvár, and the ex-seat of the cardinal, Esztergom.

For Hungarians, the 1552 campaign was a series of tragic losses and some heroic (but pyrrhic) victories, which entered folklore—most notably the fall of Drégely (a small fort defended to the last man by just 146 men,[25] and the siege of Eger.

Finally, the 1556 campaign secured Ottoman influence over Transylvania (which had fallen under Habsburg control for a time), while failing to gain any ground on the western front, being tied down in the second (after 1555) unsuccessful siege of the southwestern Hungarian border castle of Szigetvár.

It also marked the importance of the Knights of Saint John and their relevant presence in Malta to aid Christendom in its defence against the Muslim conquest.

A Holy League of Venice, the Papal States, Spain, the Knights of Saint John in Malta and initially Portugal was formed against the Ottoman Empire during this period.

About 60,000 troops, including cavalry and artillery, under the command of Lala Mustafa Pasha landed unopposed near Limassol on July 2, 1570, and laid siege to Nicosia.

The Great Turkish War started in 1683, with a grand invasion force of 140,000 men[29] marching on Vienna, supported by Protestant Hungarian noblemen rebelling against Habsburg rule.

[30] After winning the Battle of Vienna, the Holy League gained the upper hand and reconquered Hungary (Buda and Pest were retaken in 1686, the former under the command of a Swiss-born convert to Islam).

It was instigated by Charles XII of Sweden after the defeat at the Battle of Poltava, in order to tie down Russia with the Ottoman Empire and gain some breathing space in the increasingly unsuccessful campaign.

The Russians were severely beaten but not annihilated, and after the Treaty of the Pruth was signed, the Ottoman Empire disengaged, allowing Russia to refocus its energies on the defeat of Sweden.

The Treaty of Adrianople ended the war in 1829, and forced the Ottomans to accept Greek independence (as the new Kingdom of Greece), more autonomy for Serbia and the Russian occupation of the Romanian principalities.

Cretan Uprising in 1866.The decision to increase taxes to Christian nations in the empire's Balkan provinces resulted in widespread outrage that lead to several revolts.

After six months of inconclusive fighting, international reaction to atrocities committed by Turkish troops forced intervention of the major European powers, which concluded a ceasefire.

Russia, inspired by Pan-Slavism and feeling support in the anti-Ottoman sympathies running throughout Europe, saw the chance to declare war on the Ottoman Empire and fulfill the union of all Orthodox nations in the Balkans under its mantle.

That started the eleventh Russo-Turkish War in 1877, fought in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, with Russia leading a coalition with Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro.

However, during wartime operations the Empire prevented the British Royal Navy from reaching Constantinople, stopping an Entente invasion in the Battle of Gallipoli (1915–1916).