At the urging of Russian Empress Catherine the Great, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor committed the Habsburg monarchy to a war against Ottoman Turkey.

In mid-September, Laudon's army crossed the Sava River and laid siege to Belgrade with 120,000 soldiers and over 200 cannons.

In the face of a destructive bombardment, Osman Pasha negotiated the surrender of the city on 7 October in exchange for allowing the garrison free passage to a Turkish fortress.

[2] In 1788, Emperor Joseph personally led the main Austrian army, advised by Feldmarschall Franz Moritz von Lacy, in a campaign in the valley of the Sava River.

That year the emperor's army captured Šabac (Schabatz) while Saxe-Coburg and Russian General Alexander Suvorov overran Moldavia.

With the help of a flanking column under Joseph Anton Franz von Mittrowsky, the Pasha of Travnik was maneuvered out of his entrenched camp at Donji Jelovac.

The Turks left behind a single man who was supposed to blow up the powder magazine, but this individual did not carry out the plan.

[2] Charles-Joseph, 7th Prince of Ligne arrived in May to assume command of Semlin (Zemun), which is now part of Belgrade but was a separate town in 1789.

[9] On 30 August 1789, Laudon gave orders for his army to concentrate at Novi Banovci, northwest of Belgrade and Semlin.

His plan was cross the Sava on 13 September,[9] but the timetable was accelerated when intelligence indicated that Abdy Pasha and 30,000 Ottomans were approaching.

[11] On 9 September, the Austrian advanced guard reached Banovci and the following day it crossed the Sava at Boljevci and established itself on high ground near Ostružnica.

Harassed by Austrian freikorps (5,268 Serbs under Mihailo Mihaljevic), Abdy Pasha's relief army halted without coming to grips with Clerfayt's covering force.

[17] On the west bank of the Sava, the Prince of Ligne set up a battery at a position called the Sauspitz from which his artillery directed an effective fire against the Ottoman defenses.

Recovering from a severe bout of fever and dosing himself with quinine, Ligne had to be half-carried by two junior officers in his inspections of the trenches.

[19] On the morning of 6 October 1789, the Austrian batteries began a very intense bombardment, under which Belgrade's defenses rapidly crumbled.

[17] After several hours of silence, Osman Pasha and two of his officers emerged from the main gate and requested a parley.

[20] In exchange for the surrender of Belgrade on 8 October, the Ottoman garrison was given a free passage[21] with their personal and private possessions to Orșova.

Saxe-Coburg occupied Bucharest, Friedrich Wilhelm, Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Kirchberg seized northern Wallachia, Anton Lipthay de Kisfalud overran the Timok valley, and Stephan Mihaljevich took Niš.

[23] Austria soon became preoccupied by threats from the Kingdom of Prussia, by a loss of interest in the war by Russia, by the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands, and by troubles throughout the empire.

[24] Jealous of Austria's success, Prussia made diplomatic contacts with the Ottomans, suggesting an offensive alliance.

Austria restored Belgrade and other captured territories to the Ottomans in return for a strip of land in northern Bosnia.

13[30] and Oberst Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss-Plauen led the Wenzel Colloredo Infantry Regiment Nr.

[32] Count Heinrich von Bellegarde led a portion of the Wurmser Hussars in securing control of the Bexania dam on 8 September 1788.

[33] In 1791, Stephen Storace composed The Siege of Belgrade, a comic opera in three acts to an English libretto by James Cobb.

[34] The dramatist Friedrich Kaiser included details related to the siege of Belgrade in his screenplay for a play about the Field Marshal Ernst Laudon and Habsburg–Ottoman War.

[34] The poem The Siege of Belgrade by Alaric Alexander Watts is a notable example of alliterative verse with these opening lines.

[35] An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,Boldly by battery besieged BelgradeCossack commanders cannonading come,Just before the start of the war, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the La Bataille K. 535 (also known as “Die Belagerung Belgrads”), which was most likely inspired by previous sieges of the city, while some scholars state that the composition was used to support the war effort.