On 12 August 1687, below Harsány Hill near the village of Nagyharsány in southern Hungary, the allied Christian army of Duke Charles V of Lorraine and Elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria defeated the Ottoman army of the grand vizier Sarı Süleyman Pasha. An Ottoman attack on the allied column on the march turned into a general assault on the vizier's entrenched camp, which was overrun. Because it was fought near Mohács, where Hungary had been crushed in 1526, the victory became known as the second Battle of Mohács. It opened Transylvania to the allies and shook the Ottoman throne.
The war of reconquest
After the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs and their allies of the Holy League went over to the offensive in Hungary and took Buda in 1686. The historian Ferenc Tóth calls 1687 one of the most important and eventful years of that war of reconquest, and the battle of 12 August one of its greatest successes. The art historian Papp J. notes that the Habsburg court made the most of the coincidence of place: contemporary prints and victory medals, ordered abroad, often set the victory of 1687 beside the defeat of 1526 to present the dynasty as the restorer of Christian Hungary.1 › Battle of Slankamen, 1691
Harsány Hill
Tóth's study of a newly discovered autograph diary of Charles of Lorraine reconstructs the day. On the evening of 11 August the allies camped at the foot of Harsány Hill, with the Ottoman army close by to the southeast in an entrenched camp; neither side knew exactly where the other stood. In the morning Charles set off with the army in battle order toward Siklós, and the first clashes came as a surprise. The situation turned serious when Ottoman light cavalry fell on the allied baggage on the left wing, commanded by Max Emanuel, and Charles sent cavalry from his second line to help.2
A thick belt of woods and scrub separated the allied wings. When the half-entrenched Ottoman line was discovered, Charles rode to the elector, and in his diary he credits Max Emanuel with the decision to attack. After a critical moment in which a charging regiment was surrounded and had to be rescued, the allies advanced in parallel lines on the Ottoman camp; Charles noted with surprise how his gunners hitched the cannon straight to their horses, without limbers, and brought them up to the Ottoman earthworks, where they opened fire astonishingly fast. The camp was stormed. Tóth writes, from the French memoirs of commanders who were there, that the young Prince Eugene of Savoy was among the first into the Ottoman camp and carried the news of the victory to Vienna.3
After the battle
The losses were very unequal. By the accounts Tóth cites, the Ottoman army lost about 8,000 janissaries on the field and many more men cut down in the pursuit over the following days, and the imperial troops counted more than 10,000 Ottoman dead the day after the battle; allied losses were far smaller. These figures come from the victors' side.4
The victory let the allies march into the Principality of Transylvania and extend their control over most of the Kingdom of Hungary. In Constantinople the run of defeats set off a crisis: Britannica records that the defeats led to the deposition of Sultan Mehmed IV on 7 November 1687. The first battle at Mohács, the disaster of 1526, is told in our article on the Battle of Mohács, and the siege that started the war in our article on the Battle of Vienna.5
