Ottomans: Military History and Notable Events

1299 - 1453 - Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts in which the Ottoman Empire eventually defeated and replaced the Byzantine Empire

• Series of conflicts which

  • began when Byzantium was still trying to come to terms with the shock defeat of its imperial troops by a group of Ottoman Turkish tribesman on its eastern border in 1301

  • included reports from the battlefield having said that the Turkish attackers were about to raid a valley leading to the port of Nicomedia when they were stopped by Byzantine Imperial forces

  • included looting had been taking place in the immediate area but in which no further advance on Nicomedia had been conducted

1366 - 1526 - Hungarian-Ottoman Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts which ended with the Battle of Mohacs

1371 - Battle of Maritsa (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Ottoman Turks defeated the Bulgarians, conquering all of Macedonia except for Salonika

1389 - Battle of Kosovo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Bayezid and Murad and the Ottomans defeated St. Lazar and the Serbians, but in which Murad was killed

• Battle in which the entire Serbian nobility was wiped out

• Battle which represented the Ottoman Turkish conquest over the Balkans

• Battle whose location name means “field of the blackbirds”

• Battle after which St. Lazar was taken and executed along with his nobles

• Battle in which the Janissary corps of forcibly recruited Christian boys fought very well for the Turkish rulers against the Serbians

• Battle after which Bayezid married St. Lazar’s daughter Olivera Despina as a pledge of peace between the Lazarević (Serbian) and Ottoman dynasties

1396 - Battle of Nicopolis (All Facts)

• Battle in which Bayezid and the Ottoman Turks defeated King Sigismund of Hungary and the Crusaders, leaving Constantinople at the Ottomans’ mercy

• Battle which led to the end of the Second Bulgarian Empire, in which the Bulgarian czar was imprisoned and killed and the namesake Bulgarian fortress on the Danube River was captures

• Battle in which the French and reluctant vassal forces of the Crusader army were eventually persuaded to join, but showed more appetite for pillage and plunder than for military strategy as the allies advanced down the Danube River

• Battle in which the brave but blindly-led French advance was overwhelmed before the rest of the crusaders’ army disintegrated and Bayezid and his forces took bloody revenge, slaughtering French captives by the hundreds

1402 - Battle of Ankara (All Facts)

• Battle in which Tamerlane and the Timurids defeated Bayezid and the Ottomans

• Battle which began when

  • Bayezid rejected an offer from Tamerlane of compromise over a border dispute by questioning Tamerlane’s sexual virility

• Battle in which, by a remarkable bluff, Tamerlane contrived to march into the heart of Anatolia and occupy a position behind his opponent and upstream, across the only water source in that desolate plain, which he diverted

• Battle in which Bayezid put Tartar cavalry, of the same blood as Tamerlane, at the front, only to have promptly changed sides, reducing Ottoman forces by a quarter

• Battle after which Bayezid was taken prisoner and died in captivity

  • While prisoner, in response to Bayezid’s response to his offer of compromise, Tamerlane forced Bayezid to act as his footstool while Bayezid’s wife Olivera Despina served at Tamerlane’s table as a naked waitress

• Battle after which Tamerlane captured Smyrna and reached the Bosporus Strait

• Battle which brought temporary disorder to the Ottoman Empire

1441 - Battle of Smederevo (All Facts)

• Battle in which General Janos Hunyadi of Hungary and his forces defeated Ishak Bey and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1442 - Battle of the Iron Gate (All Facts)

• Battle in which General Janos Hunyadi of Hungary and his forces defeated Mezid Bey and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Romania during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1444 - Battle of Varna (All Facts)

• Battle in which Murad II and the Ottoman Turks defeated General Janos Hunyadi of Hungary and King Wladyslaw III of Poland and their forces in modern-day Bulgaria on the shores of the Black Sea during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which allowed the Ottoman Turks to enter Constantinople and which failed to prevent further Ottoman expansion into the Balkans

• Battle after which King Wladyslaw III vanished

1448 - Battle of Kosovo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Murad II and the Ottoman Turks defeated General Janos Hunyadi of Hungary and his forces in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1453 - Siege and Conquest of Constantinople (All Facts)

• Conflict in which Giovanni Giustiniani-Longo and his forces and the namesake city fell and was besieged by Mehmed II and the Ottoman Turks, thus having ended the Roman / Byzantine Empire after 2,000+ years

• Conflict in which the brave but doomed resistance of the Byzantines was eventually overwhelmed by the Ottoman Turks

• Conflict after which the head of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI was displayed on the Augusteum column

• Conflict before which the Ottoman Turks spent time maneuvering the Byzantines’ heavy artillery into position, while several towns on the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea were overrun

• Conflict in which Mohammed directed his great cannon at the Gate of St. Romanus, where he and his Genoese mercenaries had mustered

• Conflict in which the Byzantines initially resisted quite strongly, in which they

  • repulsed an Ottoman surprise attack

  • Rebuilt its walls that were previously damaged by cannon fire

  • at sea, made the Turkish fleet suffer a reverse when four relief ship battled through the harbor

• Conflict in which the Ottoman Turks eventually defeated the Byzantines in which

  • Mehmed II decided to transport 72 ships overland from the Bosporus Strait to the Golden Horn, having penetrated the harbor defenses

  • Mehmed II’s cannon kept up the bombardment of the namesake city while his fellow besiegers had been digging under the namesake city’s walls

  • they stormed the city, fiercely fighting until they wounded the Byzantine commander Giovanni Giustiniani-Longo and killed Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI in the thick of battle

  • they plundered the city and dragged off people who were huddled in the namesake city’s church to slavery or had them killed or assaulted on the altar

  • Mehmed II curbed some of the excesses of the Ottoman takeover, having put the imprisoned Lucas Notaras, grand duke and admiral of the Byzantines, at the head of the namesake city’s administration, with the state and court officials, under future Ottoman rule

• Conflict in which each side executed their prisoners of war, in which the Ottomans executed their Venetian prisoners and the Byzantines executed their Ottoman prisoners

1456 - Siege of Belgrade (All Facts)

• Battle in which Mohammed II and the Ottoman Turks were defeated by General Janos Hunyadi of Hungary and his forces in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which took place on the Danube River

• Battle in which Hunyadi and his forces were outnumbered by but nevertheless defeated the larger Ottoman army and navy

• Battle before which Hunyadi gathered some 60K men, mostly volunteers and peasants, and a much smaller fleet

• Battle prior to which Mohammed II was able to prepare in secret and muster some 150K men and 60 ships to blockade the namesake city

• Battle in which the Ottoman Turks had some 300 siege guns, including 27 giant cannons and catapults and other weapons

• Battle in which huge boulders were hurled at the namesake fortress but were ineffective because of a successful warning system employed by the Hungarians involving bells

• Battle in which after Hunyadi’s navy broke the blockade, his troops relieved the namesake fortress and blunted a series of Ottoman attacks until the siege guns were overrun and they stormed to victory

1463 - 1479 - First Ottoman-Venetian War (All Facts)

• War in which Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces defeated the Republic of Venice, which lost several outposts as a result and the Ottomans gained some control over the Mediterranean Sea from Venice

1485 - 1491 - Ottoman-Mameluke War (All Facts)

• Ended with a peace agreement in which Cilicia was placed under control of the Egyptian Mamelukes

1499 - 1503 - Second Ottoman-Venetian War (All Facts)

• War in which Ottoman forces under Bayezid II defeated the Republic of Venice and gained control over the Mediterranean

• War in which Ottoman forces raided as far as Vincenza

• War in which the Republic of Venice lost more of its possessions

1505 - 1517 - Ottoman-Persian War (All Facts)

1514 - Battle of Chaldiran (All Facts)

• Battle in which Selim and his Ottoman forces defeated Ismail and his Safavid forces during the Ottoman-Persian War

• Battle which was located in the upper basin of the Aras River

1516 - Battle of Marj Dabiq (All Facts)

• Battle in which Selim and his Ottoman forces defeated al-Ghuri and his Mameluke forces, completely conquering and destroying the Mameluke Sultanate of Egypt

1516 - 1517 - Ottoman-Mamluk War (All Facts)

• War in which the Ottomans invaded, captured, and destroyed Mameluke Egypt

1521 - Siege of Belgrade (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated and conquered the namesake city within the Kingdom of Hungary, during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle before which the Hungarian’s pleas for help from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his forces went unnoticed given the Holy Roman Emperor’s issues in Germany due to the Protestant Reformation

• Battle in which the defenders of the namesake city had no answer to the Ottoman mines and cannon bombardment from an island in the Danube River

• Battle in which the namesake city fell and its Hungarian inhabitants were massacred while its Serb inhabitants were imprisoned in Istanbul

• Battle after which the Danube River became unreliable line of defense for the Kingdom of Hungary and Kingdom of Serbia, exposed to the Ottoman advance

• Battle which forced the Republic of Venice to anxiously negotiate peace with the Ottoman Empire

1522 - Siege of Rhodes (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated and expelled the Knights Hospitaller from the namesake city and stronghold

• Battle after which the Ottoman Turks secured control of the Eastern Mediterranean

1526 - Battle of Mohacs (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated King Louis II and his Hungarian forces, ending the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which was one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles in its day, in which King Louis II and 20K of his men died

• Battle which is considered one of the worst tragedies to befall the Hungarians to which they still mourn to this day

• Battle during which the Hungarian forces were subject to internal bitter rivalries and disputes in which

  • no effort was made to hold the line of Drava River

  • the Hungarian nobles rejected all delaying actions which might have enabled reinforcements to arrive

• Battle during which successive frontal assaults by the Hungarian forces were met by heavy artillery fire and superior numbers by the Ottoman forces

• Battle in which any Hungarian survivors that remained were massacred

• Battle after which Hungary split into three parts:

  • Habsburg Hungary, which ruled the west and north

  • Ottoman Hungary, which ruled central Hungary around the city of Buda and was a province of the Ottoman Empire

  • Transylvanian Hungary, which ruled east and southeast Hungary and was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire

• Battle after which the Ottoman forces were just over 100 miles from Vienna (in Austria)

1529 - 1533 - Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1529 (All Facts)

1529 - Siege of Vienna (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Holy Roman Empire and Spain and their combined forces (nearly) defeated Suleiman and his Ottoman forces in the Habsburg-Ottoman War

• Battle before which the Imperial Holy Roman Diet assembled in Innsbruck and voted 120K Rhenish guilders for defense against the Ottoman forces

  • In addition, the Diet of Speyer had promised an army of 16K men and 4K cavalry, despite opposition of Philip of Hesse and other German Protestant Princes

• Battle in which the Ottoman troops were first met by a garrison of seasoned veterans, and, wave after wave Suleiman and his forces were beaten back and made no significant breach into the city walls

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces lost a month battling through heavy storms, building bridges across rivers, and leading his troops through treacherous terrain of streams and marshes

• Battle in which bad weather and disease had been the crucial factors in preventing the Ottomans from gaining control of Austria, not Christian arms or strategies

  • Battle in which Suleiman and his forces lost horses and men from hunger and disease

• Battle after which the Ottoman forces, which were encamped beneath the namesake Austrian city walls for three weeks, were ordered by Suleiman to retreat, and headed back towards Belgrade

1537 - 1540 - Third Ottoman-Venetian War (All Facts)