Download PDF | Mark L. Stein - Guarding the Frontier_ Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe (Library of Ottoman Studies) (2007).
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Acknowledgements
Many individuals and institutions have helped me in bringing this work to publication. I must thank my graduate advisors at the University of Chicago who helped me with this project in its earliest form. First and foremost my dissertation supervisor Halil İnalcık, as well as Walter Kaegi, Cornell Fleischer, Richard Chambers, and Holly Shissler. Palmira Brummett and Virginia Aksan saw this work through various incarnations and I greatly benefited from their insightful comments and suggestions. Thanks, too, for excellent advice and moral support to Cam Amin, Paul Cobb, Caroline Finkel, Elizabeth Frierson, Ben Fortna, Marion Katz, John Meloy, Sholeh Quinn, Warren Schultz, Ernie Tucker, and Renée Worringer.
Thank you to the Turkish Ministry of Culture for granting me permission to work in the following libraries and archives: the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, and the Topkapı Sarayı archives and library. I am extremely grateful to the directors and staff of these institutions for their assistance while I worked in their collections. Every historian must rely on good libraries and librarians to support their research. My thanks to the University of Chicago Regenstein Library’s Middle East Department, which was for so long my home away from home, and to the bibliographers, Bruce Craig and Marlis Saleh. Thanks also to the librarians and collection at the Muhlenberg College Trexler Library, and especially to the Inter-Library Loan department. Muhlenberg College has been a welcoming and supportive home.
My thanks to my always-encouraging colleagues in the History Department, and to our secretary Cathy Ramella. I would also like to thank the Faculty Development and Scholarship Committee for awarding me both a Summer Research grant and the funding for a Student Research Assistant to support the completion of this book. Thanks too to Provost Marjorie Hass for providing the funds to purchase rights to the cover image. Special thanks to my colleague Clif Kussmaul for vital last-minute technical help. My thanks to the editors at I. B. Tauris, Lester Crook and Elizabeth Munns, and to Kelly Hallett, the production manager for this volume. I would also like to thank the Historic Cities Research Project at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Jewish National and University Library for the rights to reproduce the image of the fort at Uyvar that appears on the cover.
Two Muhlenberg students provided essential help in the last stages of preparing this book. Thanks to my Research Assistant Jason Bonder, and to John Jannuzzi, who prepared the map. I am grateful for the support of my family. Thanks to my mother, Shirley Stein, mother-in-law, Annette Albert, and all my sisters, sisters- and brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews for their love and assistance. My sons Isaiah and Elijah were both an inspiration to, and distraction from, finishing this book. Finally, my greatest thanks go to my wife, Sharon Albert, whose love, assistance, and belief helped me see this project to completion. I could never have done it without her, and this book is dedicated to her.
Introduction The Ottoman-Habsburg frontier in Hungary was the scene of chronic conflict during the early-modern period. These two empires had faced each other in the Balkans since Sultan Süleyman I’s destruction of the Hungarian kingdom in 1526. Hungary was just one theater in the larger Habsburg-Ottoman struggle between Süleyman and his rival Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Although the animosity between these rulers was great, at times political factors led both states to reorient their foreign policy to other arenas. Charles became more concerned with supporting the papacy against the growing Protestant Reformation, as well as competing with Francis I of France for supremacy in western Europe. Süleyman too was drawn away by the threat to his eastern frontiers presented by the Safavids in Iran. Ottoman-Habsburg peace in Hungary was short-lived, however. After a series of campaigns to determine Hungarian sovereignty in the 1530s Süleyman ended hostilities in exchange for annual tribute payments from the Austrian Habsburgs. A dispute over late payments brought the aging Sultan back into the field for his last campaign in 1566. He died one day before his forces captured the Hungarian city of Szigetvar. With the death of the Sultan a new peace was arranged in 1568, with the Habsburgs again agreeing to pay tribute to Istanbul.
This treaty was renewed in 1574 and again in 1583. During this period of official peace, the soldiers of the two empires conducted raids into enemy territory. The Ottomans and Habsburgs both continued to claim parts of Hungary no longer under their active control as well as the tax revenues generated by those regions. This situation meant that service on the frontier could be dangerous, but could also financially rewarding. Troops often crossed the border not only to collect taxes, but also to seek booty for themselves. Raids by garrison troops of both empires were endemic and a certain level of raiding was acceptable under the terms of the peace treaties. Sometimes, though, the raids were so large the imperial centers had to take notice and act. Such was the case with the Ottoman-Habsburg war of 1593- 1606, usually called the Long War.
Raids led by the Ottoman governor of Bosnia were of a scale that Vienna could neither ignore nor tolerate. The Habsburg retaliation gave the aggressive Ottoman grand vezir Koca Sinan Pasha the pretext he needed to launch a campaign in the West. Neither side, however, had the resources to bring the war to a decisive, victorious end. The conflict dragged on for thirteen years, with forts won and lost by both empires. The negotiated settlement that ended the war in 1606 ultimately brought little change to the frontier. The Ottomans now held the forts at Kanije and Eğri. The Habsburgs no longer paid annual tribute, but they did agree to pay the Sultan a substantial “gift.” For most of the seventeenth century the location of the Ottoman-Habsburg border was relatively stable. It ran through western Hungary and along a line similar to that of present-day Austria’s borders with the former Yugoslavia.
Both empires had established a line of fortresses to defend their territory, and to act as bases for raids against the other. These fortresses ranged in size from timber and dirt-walled palisades to enormous bastioned structures built according to the then state-of-the-art trace italienne system. Advances in military architecture, driven in large part by the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, reoriented early-modern warfare to focus on sieges of fortresses and fortified cities. To defend against the new guns, fortifications became lower—with deep ditches and walls backed by tons of earth—and more spread out. Advanced artillery aided the defense as well, with guns that shot farther and straighter. Capturing forts became much more time- and labor-intensive, and operationally more important than ever. Bypassing even a small fort on the way to a more important target left the advancing army open to attacks on its rear by the fortress garrison.
Thus, border forts and their garrisons became vitally important to the defense of both empires. This book is an attempt to examine the nature of the Ottoman forts and garrisons on the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier by investigating the military, social, and economic aspects of their administration. The temporal focus of the book is the period between the Long War and the campaigns engendered by the second siege of Vienna in 1683. With the exception of the war of 1663-64, this was a period of official peace between the Habsburgs and Ottomans. My goal is to see how the OttomanHabsburg frontier operated between major campaigns—when it was not under the scrutiny of the imperial centers.
The early modern frontier between the Ottomans and their adversaries to the west has been the subject of a number of studies. Renowned historian William McNeill produced an important overview in Europe’s Steppe Frontier, his study of the influence on western Europe of the conflict with enemies coming from the steppes to the east. 1 Relations in the Mediterranean have been discussed in John Guilmartin’s influential book on the technology of naval warfare and the advent of gunpowder weapons, Gunpowder and Galleys.2 Other important studies of the Mediterranean frontier are Andrew Hess’s foundational work on Spain and Ottoman North Africa, Palmira Brummett’s monograph on trade, war, and diplomacy between the Ottomans, Mamluks, and Italian city-states, and Molly Greene’s study of Crete under Ottoman rule. 3 Hess’s work has been particularly influential in the development of the current study. The confrontation he describes between the Habsburgs and Ottomans in the Western Mediterranean has many parallels to their encounter in the Balkans. A comparison helps place both regions in the larger context of early-modern imperial conflict. More directly about the Ottoman-Habsburg land frontier is a book by Jean Nouzille titled Histoire de Frontières l’Autriche et l’Empire Ottoman. 4
While Nouzille does present some useful descriptive material, he never develops a theoretical definition of frontiers. His description of frontiers is based on ideas about the Roman limes derived without reference to any recent scholarship in English about the borders of Rome. 5 He then views the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier as nothing but an extension of the Danubian limes of Rome. In any case, the majority of the book concerns developments after 1700. Early work approaching the Ottoman-Habsburg military frontier from the Habsburg side includes Gunther Rothenburg’s excellent studies of the organization and administration of the Habsburg “Grenzer” frontier guards in Croatia. 6 More recent studies of the Habsburg defenses against the Ottomans make up the first half of a volume published by a group of Hungarian scholars, Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe. 7
Taken together these works provide an understanding of the nature of Habsburg defenses against the Ottomans, at least for specific regions such as Croatia or periods such as the sixteenth century. Others have approached the question using Ottoman sources. For the regions of the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia respectively, Vojtech Kopčan and Olga Zirojevič have studied the Ottoman military establishment and administration. 8 These works provide good material for comparison to the situation in Ottoman Hungary. Also important is Caroline Finkel’s study of the logistics of the Ottoman-Habsburg Long War for its insight into Ottoman military planning, spending, and manpower in Hungary in the early seventeenth century.9 When one narrows the focus just to the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier in Hungary, one must of course rely heavily upon the work of Hungarian scholars. Led by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, a number of Hungarian Ottomanists have begun publishing their work in English to gain a wider scholarly audience.10
The second half of Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe contains studies of the Ottoman side of the frontier. 11 Both Fodor and Dávid have articles about the Ottoman military in the sixteenth century.12 Much of what they describe was still the case in the seventeenth century. Klára Hegyi and Gábor Ágoston, also contributors to the volume, have written specifically about Ottoman forts in Hungary. Hegyi has produced several articles on garrisons in the sixteenth century, the period immediately prior to the focus of the present study. 13 Ágoston has done important work on Ottoman gunpowder production, as well as on the costs of Ottoman frontier defense in the West..14 Although his work too concentrates on the sixteenth century, it adds a valuable perspective to developments in the seventeenth century. Two other scholars who have worked on Ottoman forts on the Habsburg frontier are Claudia Römer and A. Z. Hertz. Römer’s book is a study of Ottoman forts in Hungary in the sixteenth century.15 Hertz’s work focuses on border forts during the eighteenth century. 16 Both these authors explore issues of garrison composition and fortress supply, and their work thus acts as a sort of “bookends” for my investigations in the seventeenth century.
In this volume I try to present a picture of Ottoman fortress life, organization, and administration in a systematic way. In the first chapter I discuss both the idea of frontiers and their importance to Ottoman history and historiography. I view frontiers as transitional zones between two or more states or peoples. As such, the frontier is less a dividing line and more a zone of interaction between and among those peoples, states, and cultures. Using this definition of a frontier, and applying it to the Ottoman-Habsburg case, I employ comparative examples whenever applicable to show how this frontier fits larger frontier paradigms. Taking a comparative approach to frontier history both helps to clarify what is specific to one state’s experience and shows what aspects of frontier interactions affect all states.
The nature of these interactions makes the frontier population transitional and presents that population with certain economic opportunities. The Ottoman-Habsburg frontier in Hungary has often been portrayed as a clear division between two competing states and civilizations. On one side, the Habsburgs have been depicted as the defenders of Christendom, protecting Europe from the onslaught of the Turks. On the other, the Ottomans have been viewed as the last of the gazi warriors, conducting raids against the infidels and expanding the Dar al-Islam. Such a stark bifurcation was far from the case. The frontier zone in Hungary was less a locus of separation than a transitional zone of interaction. The population at the frontier, although separated by political boundaries, was connected through trade, taxation, and raiding. Trade continued across the frontier despite the division of Hungary between the Ottomans and Habsburgs.
Cattle raised on the Hungarian plains and wine from local vineyards were still brought to market for consumption in the West. The proceeds from agricultural production, in the form of taxes, also crossed the frontier, as both empires claimed rights of ownership over villages that were sometimes controlled by one state, sometimes the other. The issue of double taxation and competing claims to territory led to trans-frontier connections as well. The correspondence between the pashas of Budin and their Habsburg counterparts requesting assistance collecting taxes demonstrates a commonality of interests that superseded the divisions between the two sides. Double taxation also linked the peasants on both sides of the border, as they were targeted by collection agents of both states. The frontier was a zone of economic opportunity as well— especially for the troops manning the fortresses. Garrison service presented a number of avenues for economic advancement. Volunteer troops served on the frontier hoping to be rewarded with timars, Ottoman grants of usufruct of land, or by enrollment in regular army units. All frontier troops participated in raids across the border.
The booty collected on even a short raid could be worth many times a soldier’s annual salary. Finally, garrison troops often had access to capital with which to invest in local trade. The second chapter investigates the Ottomans’ ability to besiege, defend, build, and repair fortifications in the seventeenth century. Technological developments in gunpowder weapons and fortifications made siegecraft a highly specialized aspect of the military arts in the early modern period. In this chapter I discuss the tactical advances in siegecraft, and assess how well the Ottomans adapted to the new technology and methods. This discussion includes Ottoman techniques in digging and advancing trenches and placing mines, as well as the manpower and supply requirements for a lengthy siege. I also survey the types of artillery available to an Ottoman army conducting these operations. I use a wide variety of sources in these investigations.
In addition to Ottoman archival material, narrative sources— both Habsburg and Ottoman—prove particularly enlightening, especially the military manuals written by Habsburg officers such as Raimondo Montecuccoli and Luigi Marsigli. These men reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Ottoman frontier operations in the proposals they put forward. Chapter Two continues with an investigation into the defensive aspects of Ottoman siege warfare: building, maintaining, and supplying fortresses. Using Ottoman narrative histories and archival records I discuss Ottoman military architecture and the procedures involved in building and maintaining frontier forts. Data from financial records not only presents an estimate of the costs of maintaining the fortifications, but also provides information on the recruitment of craftsmen used in the construction projects. Fortress inventories present data on the equipment and supplies found in Ottoman forts. Inventories of the armaments and munitions of a fort shed light on the military aspects of garrison life, but knowing what other supplies were stocked leads us to a better understanding of the non-military activities of the garrisons.
These latter materials reveal aspects of the everyday life of garrison troops. The variety of tools and equipment suggests how a fort was maintained. Listings of foodstuffs, cookware, and other household goods provide information on how the troops lived while defending the border. These supply records allow us to consider the wide variety of activities of the garrison troops and humanize the men, making them more than just numbers in a payroll record. Chapter Three deals specifically with the garrison troops. Drawing on an extensive database compiled from seventeenthcentury garrison payroll records, I describe the various types of troops who served on the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier. This analysis is the first comprehensive examination of garrison staffing that synthesizes data from the entire century. The garrisons contained troops of different backgrounds who served different purposes: the kapıkulu, imperial “slaves of the Sultan,” and levied soldiers, cavalry and infantry, Muslims and Christians. I consider the size and command structure of the different kinds of units, as well as their pay.
The sometimes-confusing variety of troop types in a garrison reflected not only imperial strategic decisions about the military needs along the frontier, but also the workings of competing interest groups within the Ottoman army. An analysis of the payroll records clearly shows that certain units were maintained even if understaffed to preserve the pay and benefits of the unit commanders. Similar reasons go far in explaining the presence of different categories of troops that effectively served the same purpose. Finally, a thorough understanding of the costs of frontier defense adds to our knowledge of the financial health of the Ottoman state in the seventeenth century. Chapter Four discusses the size of Ottoman frontier garrisons in Hungary, using the forts at Kanije and Uyvar as samples.
I track the changes in the composition of the garrisons, as well as their overall size through the seventeenth century, again using the information from the garrison payroll records. Garrison size varied widely over time, and those variations can be related to the overall military needs of the empire. When this frontier was quiet, garrisons could be reduced. When military action against the Habsburgs heated up, more men were assigned to the frontier. One can also see how the Ottomans worked to ensure peace on their Hungarian frontier when they were prosecuting campaigns against the Safavids or in Poland. The final chapter deals with the Ottoman administration of the frontier. I approach the issue of frontier administration from two directions. Using documents produced by the central administration, such as financial records, kanunname law codes, and the mühimme copies of imperial orders, I first assess what the interests of the Sublime Porte were, and the actions it took to ensure its authority along the border.
The central administration had to balance the need for a strong and effective defense of the frontier with the necessity of husbanding the limited financial resources of the state. The payroll costs of the Hungarian frontier were substantial, and the financial bureaucrats developed several methods to provide for the troops with as little strain on the treasury as possible. These methods ranged from simply not paying the troops when the frontier was quiet, to a variety of bookkeeping techniques that either lowered the payments or shifted the financial burden off the central treasury and drew on other income sources. Receiving no or lower pay led the garrison soldiers to seek alternative means of recompense. In addition to the raiding and looting that was a normal part of frontier military service, many troops became involved in merchant activity in the local markets. The central administration took a dim view of this illegal activity, and much of the kanunname law codes established for the Hungarian provinces deal with regulating trade at forts.
There are frequent prohibitions against the garrison soldiers becoming involved in merchant activity. Fiscal records show that despite these laws fortress troops were investing in basic commodities, like salt, and trading them. If soldiers became too involved in the market, they would neglect their primary military duties, and the security of the frontier would be imperiled. The Ottoman central government was well aware of this problem, and worked to prevent it. Coming from the other direction, I investigate what aspects of administration were handled by provincial officials through an analysis of a unique report from a frontier bureaucrat to his superiors in the central financial ministry. This is the report of a frontier bureaucrat describing local conditions and his own activities.
The document shows us that provincial administrators were also concerned with cutting costs and saving the treasury money. The report lists a number of cases where money was being wasted, and indicates attempts to control spending. It also demonstrates the sometimes strained relationships between the financial authorities and the military commanders on the frontier as the local treasury clerk struggled to keep the soldiers from overspending state funds or keeping tax revenues for themselves. Although this study concerns the entire Ottoman-Habsburg frontier in Hungary, in my discussion of the garrisons and administration I focus on two specific fortresses as case studies. These are Kanije and Uyvar. These two forts were important parts of the Ottoman defensive network in Hungary during the seventeenth century.
The differences between them make them useful for broader comparative purposes, especially with regard to garrison composition and size. Kanije (modern Nagykanisza) is located in western Hungary between Lake Balaton and the River Mur, near what was the former Yugoslav-Hungarian border. It is approximately 120 miles southwest of Budapest and 70 miles northeast of Zagreb. Kanije was taken by the Ottomans in 1600 C.E. and held until the Holy League conquered it in 1690 C.E. The famous defense of the fort by Tiryaki Hasan Pasha in the autumn of 1601 C.E. is the subject of several gazavatnames, prose works commemorating a specific battle or campaign, as well as a famous work by the nineteenth-century Turkish nationalist writer Namık Kemal. 17 Kanije was a large fort, and the city was the center of an Ottoman vilayet, or province, for most of the seventeenth century. Uyvar (called Neühausel in contemporary German sources; modern Nové Zámky in Slovakia) was, by comparison, a much smaller fortress, and was held by the Ottomans for only 22 years.
The fort was one of those captured by Fazıl Ahmed Köprülü in 1663 and was lost to the Habsburgs and their allies in 1685. 18 Uyvar was also the center of a vilayet, and was much closer to disputed territory while in Ottoman hands, lying less than 100 miles from Vienna itself.19 Taken together, Kanije and Uyvar are good examples of Ottoman frontier garrisons. Information on Kanije shows what happened in a large fortress that was a center of Ottoman frontier defense for almost a century. Uyvar, though smaller and held for a much shorter time, was equally vital to the defense of the Empire, due to its location at the farthest extent of Ottoman western expansion.
It is clear from the data that conclusions about the garrisons and administration of these forts holds equally true for other Ottoman-Habsburg frontier fortresses, such as Estergon, İstolni Belgrad, and even Budin. In closing, some technical notes on language, names, and dates: For transliteration of the Ottoman language I have followed the United States Library of Congress system. Briefly, this system mandates the use of the modern Turkish spelling of Ottoman terms, with adaptation to show the Persian possessive. For most places and cities under Ottoman control I use the Ottoman name. Thus, Uyvar not Nové Zámky, Kanije not Nagykanisza, and Budin not Buda. For non-Ottoman places with well-know English names, however, I use those names. Examples are Vienna and the Danube River. While I have used only Common Era dates in the framing historical narrative, in the body of the text, where I rely primarily on Ottoman sources, I maintain the Hijri dating with corresponding Common Era dates.
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