What happened at the Battle of Zenta?
On 11 September 1697 Prince Eugene of Savoy, in his first independent command, caught the Ottoman army of Sultan Mustafa II at Zenta while it was crossing the Tisza River on a bridge of boats. The sultan, the treasury and much of the army were already on the far bank. Eugene attacked the troops still on the near side late in the afternoon, broke their defenses and drove them into the river. Grand Vizier Elmas Mehmed Pasha was killed, and the victory led to the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699.1
By 1697 the war that had begun with the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 was in its fifteenth year. The young sultan Mustafa II, who came to the throne in 1695, wanted to win it in person, as Abdülkadir Özcan writes in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, and led his army on campaign each summer. In 1695 and 1696 he won two victories in the Banat and refused an Austrian offer of peace. In August 1697 he set out on his third campaign against Austria.2
On the other side, the emperor Leopold I gave the command in Hungary that July to Prince Eugene of Savoy. According to Mark C. Herman, writing for EBSCO, Eugene found poor discipline and little money to pay his troops, and the emperor urged caution. Moving along the Tisza, he joined up with other imperial forces into an army of 50,000.3
A divided council
At a council of war in Belgrade the Ottoman commanders could not agree on a target. One party wanted to march on Petrovaradin, the nearer fortress. The grand vizier, Elmas Mehmed Pasha, and the governor of Timişoara pressed for a move toward Timişoara, and the sultan agreed. Mücteba İlgürel's TDV article on the grand vizier explains the plan: to take the plain of Bačka and the forts of Szeged and Ineu and make the Hungarian rebel Imre Thököly king of central Hungary. The road led over several rivers and marshes, which meant building bridges.4
The army crossed into the Banat and took the fort of Titel. Then, against the grand vizier's objection, a bridge was built across the Tisza near Zenta, on 83 pontoons according to İlgürel; Herman speaks of sixty boats. Eugene followed the Ottoman march closely, and through his spies he knew of the quarrels between the grand vizier and his rivals.5
Caught on the river
When word came that the Austrian army was near, the sultan, the treasury, the Janissaries, the ammunition and the guns were hurried across to the far bank. The grand vizier, the commander of the Janissaries and other senior officers stayed on the near side to keep order. From a captured Ottoman soldier Eugene learned that the infantry had not yet crossed and was protected only by a line of wagons, and he ordered an attack late in the afternoon. His left wing crossed on sandbanks in the river and came in behind the Ottoman defenses.6
The grand vizier tried to organize a defense with the provincial troops around him while sending men over the bridge as fast as he could. According to İlgürel, about 2,000 of them fell from the crowded bridge and drowned in the panic. His harsh treatment of the frightened soldiers turned them against him. When they began to flee, he had two of the pontoons removed and stood before them with a drawn sword, and he was probably killed by his own men. With the middle of the bridge broken, those left on the near bank drowned or died fighting.7
The toll
The battle was over by nightfall, but the killing of the Ottoman infantry went on into the night, Herman writes. He puts the Ottoman dead at 30,000 and lists 9,000 baggage carts, 6,000 camels and 15,000 oxen captured. The Ottoman account summarized by Özcan is smaller but grim: about twenty commanders fell with the grand vizier, an eighth of the army was lost, and treasure chests, thousands of horses and oxen and the seal of the grand vizier fell into Austrian hands. İlgürel adds that the seal of Mustafa II taken from the grand vizier is kept in Vienna today.8
The sultan withdrew to Timişoara. The Austrians, who had also suffered losses, did not press on against the main army. Instead Eugene led a raid into Bosnia that autumn and reached Sarajevo.9
Toward Karlowitz
Zenta made Eugene a European hero against the Ottomans, Herman writes, and in effect ended this phase of the wars between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire. The Peace of Karlowitz, signed on 26 January 1699, gave most of Hungary and Transylvania to Austria, which became a major power. Almost all the Ottoman sources blame the grand vizier for the disaster, according to İlgürel, and after Zenta, Özcan writes, Mustafa II gave himself over to hunting like his father.10
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”; Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”; Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”. ↩
- Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”. ↩
- Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”. ↩
- Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”; Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”. ↩
- Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”; Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”. ↩
- Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”; Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”. ↩
- Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”. ↩
- Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”; Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”; Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”. ↩
- Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”. ↩
- Mark C. Herman, “Battle of Zenta”; Mücteba İlgürel, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”; Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mustafa II”. ↩
Sources
- Mark C. Herman, EBSCO Research Starters, “Battle of Zenta”
- Mücteba İlgürel, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, “Elmas Mehmed Paşa”
- Abdülkadir Özcan, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, “Mustafa II”
