In February 1683 Quartermaster-General Haslingen drew up a
complete list of Leopold’s troops and of the areas in which they were
stationed. He counted seventy companies in Bohemia, forty-five in Moravia, and
forty-eight in Silesia—with a complement, in theory, of 7,600 foot and 10,000
cuirassiers and dragoons. There were seventy-five companies in western Hungary
and thirty-eight in Upper Hungary, although a comparison with another of his
memoranda seems to show that he was here counting some regiments and companies
twice over; nor could he, or anyone else, rely on the estimates of men serving
in the various types of Hungarian militia. In the Inner Austrian lands (Styria,
Carinthia and Carniola) Haslingen enumerated forty-three companies—5,600 foot
and 1,200 horse; in Upper and Lower Austria forty companies—4,000 foot and
1,600 horse; and in the empire eighty companies of foot and one of horse—16,400
men. His figures for the number of companies were correct (except, no doubt,
for Hungary); but on the premise that the full complement in foot and mounted
companies was 200 and 80 men respectively, the grand totals of 44,800 infantry
and 17,600 cavalry were no more than the roughest of guides to the size of the
whole Habsburg force. They much exceeded the actual number of effective
soldiers. However, the quartermaster could soon hope to add to it the bands of
irregulars to be raised by Magyar magnates, three mounted regiments which
Prince Lubomirski was commissioned to bring from Poland, and also the new
regiments of the patentees nominated by Leopold during the winter.
The immediate problem, for the War Council, was to decide
how many men could be safely moved east from the empire, in spite of Louis
XIV’s aggressive policy, in order to reinforce the contingents sent south from
the Bohemian lands, building up by this concentration the strongest possible
force in Hungary to oppose the Turks. The decision involved some of the best
regiments at Leopold’s disposal; it had also to take into account the treaty
recently agreed with Max Emmanuel of Bavaria, which obliged the Emperor to
leave 15,000 men always available for the defence of the Empire. In fact, about
7,500 infantry from the old regiments were finally ordered to march from the
western front to a rendezvous at Kittsee, near Pressburg, to join there the
great majority of the regiments recently quartered in Bohemia and the various
Austrian duchies. In due course, 5,000 men from the new regiments were also
available for the campaign in Hungary.
It was soon realised that one miscalculation had already
been made. The troops, especially those in the Empire, took much longer than
expected to make the long journey to the eastern front, and the date for the
rendezvous at Kittsee had to be altered from 21 April to 6 May. Sixteen days
were thus lost, and the chance of taking the initiative before the Turks could
arrive dwindled fast.
Another difficult point was the appointment of a commander
in the field. Leopold, unlike his father, unlike such militant contemporary
rulers as Max Emmanuel and William of Orange or John Sobieski, never imagined
himself a victorious commanding general. He had always to choose a deputy,
after taking into account the ticklish animosities of the military and
political grandees of his court. In the last war against France, Montecuccoli,
by combining the presidency of the War Council with the supreme command in the
field, had caused them the greatest offence. Enemies and critics of Baden, the
new President, were determined to deny him the same monopoly of power and they
relied on the pledge, previously given by Leopold, to appoint Charles of
Lorraine commander-in-chief if war broke out again. This could not bind the
Emperor. Circumstances alter cases, Charles had often been ill in recent years,
while Herman of Baden certainly disliked and perhaps under-estimated him. In
1683, in spite of counter-intrigues, Lorraine’s party at the court persevered
and finally triumphed, so that he was instructed to be in Vienna by 10 April in
order to discuss the strategy of the coming campaign.
He duly arrived from Innsbruck and a council of war was held
on 21 April. It took a great many decisions in detail, but the guiding proposal
was to place the field army in the centre of the frontier through Hungary,
around Komárom. The council wanted to leave General Schultz with a strong
independent force farther north, on the River Váh; and to ensure that the lower
part of the Mur valley far to the south (which guards the approaches to Graz)
was firmly held by troops from Styria and Croatia. The gaps between were
assigned mainly to the Magyars, under Esterházy along the lower Váh, and under
Batthyány along the line of the Rába. Lorraine’s command of the field-army was
publicly announced on 21 April.
By the beginning of May troops were arriving at the
rendezvous, a flat plain round the village of Kittsee, near the southern shore
of the Danube where the last spurs of the Leitha hills die away opposite
Pressburg. While Lorraine himself rode east to inspect the position at Györ,
his officers remained behind to supervise the assembling of regiments which
were coming in from the north and west. It was rainy, windy weather which
damaged a pontoon-bridge leading across to the town. The officers felt
perturbed by the shortness of forage, they grumbled hard at the lateness of the
spring, but enjoyed plenty of leisure to discuss uncertain news filtering
through about the entry of the Ottoman army into Hungary, or alleged
difficulties in the Habsburg negotiation with Poland. In Vienna the Emperor
prepared to come to Pressburg. So did courtiers, foreign ambassadors, fine
ladies and sightseers. Splendid ceremonial tents were made ready for the
review. Then Lorraine returned from his tour of inspection, apparently
satisfied by what he saw at Györ and elsewhere along the border. The Magyars
appeared, led by the Palatine Paul Esterházy. They were only 500 or 600 at
first, not the 6,000 promised, but a few days later their number increased to
2,000. About 32,000 men—21,000 foot and 10,800 horse and dragoons—were finally
and elaborately assembled for a grand parade on 6 May when the Emperor crossed
over from Pressburg to spend nine slow and crowded hours on the triple ceremony
of a solemn Mass, an inspection of the troops, and a state banquet.
It was a brave show that day; but the summer campaign of the
Habsburg army proved a dismal failure, due largely to the paralysis of the
command. Lorraine, as the general in the field, was required to consult with
his council of officers, and the Emperor in Vienna, and the War Council which
was dominated by Herman of Baden. The personal rivalry of Baden and Lorraine
remained intense, and they differed over the whole strategy to be followed in
the period (of uncertain duration) before the Turkish army reached the Austrian
frontier. Exasperated by the general unwillingness of many high-ranking
officers to accept his proposals with any cordiality, Lorraine fell ill with
worry and exhaustion. The theatre of war was a complete novelty to him—apart
from one campaign in Hungary twenty years earlier—and his touch was very
uncertain, as if he did not realise the distances involved or even the ordinary
difficulties of transport in this waterlogged area. His main idea was
clear-cut: an aggressive march eastwards, followed by the capture of an important
point held by the Turks, stood a chance of compelling the Turkish grand army to
spend the rest of the summer and autumn in trying to recover what they had just
lost. A powerful attack of this kind, at an early date, appeared to him the one
possible method of defending the Austrian lands; there is no hint that he ever
gave the defence of Hungary a thought, except as an aid to the protection of
more westerly areas. The target which he suggested, at the conference held in
Kittsee on 7 May—with Baden and nine senior officers present—was Esztergom on
the south bank of the Danube, or alternatively Neuhäusel which lies well to the
north of the river. Both were important Ottoman citadels. The argument in
favour of an aggressive start was duly marshalled. It would raise the Emperor’s
reputation if a force were put into the field before the Turks were ready, and
thereby strengthen his bargaining power in the Empire and in Poland; it would
increase Turkish dissatisfaction with the Grand Vezir; and ‘fix’ the enemy,
compelling him to concentrate on the recapture of a lost position in the coming
campaign. Baden apparently demurred. Most of the officers agreed to the course
proposed by Lorraine, although they preferred the idea of an attack on
Neuhäusel—which was separated from the approaching Ottoman army by the
Danube—to an attack on Esztergom. It was finally decided to move the troops
eastwards to Györ and to Komárom, the outermost Habsburg fortress, and then to
reconnoitre in the direction of Esztergom, subject always to the Emperor’s
approval.
During the next fortnight the army, split into sections in
order to ease a shortage of forage everywhere, marched and rode slowly across
the enormous plain. By 19 May the infantry reached the outskirts of Györ, and
on the next day continued on the route to Komárom. Camps were set along the
right bank of the river. Lorraine himself reconnoitred Esztergom while waiting
for munitions and artillery. He held firmly to his project of an attack, even
though he felt disconcerted by his officers’ grumbling, by the indecisive
instructions received from Vienna, and contradictory reports about the speed
and direction of the Turkish advance. In spite of the council of officers, who
met on 26 May and loudly opposed the move on Esztergom, Lorraine held firm and
shortly afterwards ordered the troops to march. They had already left the camp
on 31 May when Lorraine returned from a further reconnaissance and
countermanded the order. His reason for this was apparently a disturbing
message from Styria, that the Grand Vezir had already crossed the bridge at
Osijek, so that a further advance by the Habsburg forces looked exposed to an
early attack in open country against overwhelming odds. Lorraine was in despair
when he got back to his base. Then, temporarily, the position seemed to alter.
Less alarming intelligence reached him about the pace of the Turkish advance,
and he received a letter from Leopold encouraging him to persevere with an
attack on some Turkish stronghold before the main body of the enemy arrived on
the scene. But Lorraine dithered, and his faithful secretary Le Bègue began to
think that a return to the duchy of Lorraine on terms imposed by Louis XIV
would be a better fate than the infuriating perplexities of supreme command in
Hungary. On 2 (or possibly 3) June the general proposed, for the last time, an
assault on Esztergom. The officers protested and he began to reconsider the
alternative of an assault on Neuhäusel; this the officers, somewhat grudgingly,
approved.
Throughout the last three weeks, at almost every camp,
Lorraine had received reports from Vienna which emphasised his isolation in the
distant world of court politics. He attempted to brief his supporters in the
capital by letter, but far too many interests there were eager for his
discredit by his failure as a general. Lorraine took it as an intolerable
insult that Herman of Baden, returning from a tour of inspection to Györ in the
middle of May, had not even stopped to confer with him. He resented and
probably exaggerated the hostility of some of Leopold’s advisers, like the
Bishop of Vienna and Zinzendorf. In any case their criticism had its
justification. Laymen might be pardoned for thinking that the organisation of a
defensive position along the Rivers Váh and Rába was the paramount concern.
Certain of the professional soldiers, Baden or Rimpler, supported them. As
things turned out, these experts completely underestimated the mass and weight
of the Turkish attack but Lorraine made the greater mistake of wasting time and
resources for six precious weeks. He had accomplished nothing at Esztergom;
then he made the troublesome crossing of the Danube at Komárom and advanced
towards Neuhäusel. All went well at first, although it was realised that more
heavy artillery would be needed here. The outworks were quickly taken, and
troops lodged in the island immediately opposite the inner defences of the
Turks; and yet once again, by 8 June Lorraine was in despair. He was
embarrassed by a letter from the Emperor which advised him to remain on the
defensive, without positively forbidding an assault on a Turkish strongpoint
like Neuhäusel. This he countered by a reply which asked for more explicit
instructions. Then, during the night of the 7th, everything went wrong. The
guns which the troops had with them were not sited in accordance with
Lorraine’s orders, and he inclined to think that the error was a piece of
deliberate obstruction by the officers concerned. Other, heavier weapons, on
their way up from Komárom got stuck in the mud, and it soon became clear that
they could not be brought into action against the enemy for several days.
Finally, reports suggested that Tartars and some Turkish forces were assembling
in great numbers near Buda to advance towards Neuhäusel. Confused and angry
discussions went on all the next day at headquarters. In the morning Lorraine
was still determined to go on with the attack. General Leslie arrived and
joined the council of war. He supported the other officers, until Lorraine gave
way and decided to return to Komárom without waiting for further orders from
Leopold. His second attempt to take the initiative, before the grand army of
the enemy arrived near the scene of action, had failed utterly.
On the next day the retreat began. A camp was set on the
left bank of the Neutra opposite Komárom, from which it was easy enough to raid
into country beyond the frontier for essential supplies. For ten days the army
rested, motionless in this central position, while Lorraine expected Kara
Mustafa to show his hand by committing himself to a definite line of advance.
News from stray deserters and other miscellaneous arrivals at the camp
disclosed that the odds were in favour of a Turkish move towards Györ, with a
slight chance that very large Turkish forces might still be sent to fight north
of the Danube. On 18 May he received in audience envoys from Thököly, who were
travelling towards Vienna to give Leopold formal notice that their master was
ending the truce between them. Their word was not of the slightest value, but
when they announced that Györ was the first Turkish objective Lorraine at last
felt disposed to agree. Certainly, on the following day there are real signs
that he was preparing to break camp and move his troops. On the 19th some
detachments crossed the Neutra. On the 21st he sent the dragoon regiments of
Castell and d’Herbeville to reinforce Schultz up in the north, and the
Dieppenthal dragoons to Gúta (another small fortified post which he himself
inspected). Starhemberg and Leslie set out on their way to Györ. Turkish
raiders had already appeared near the now deserted camp across the Neutra, and
the guns of Komárom fired warningly over the water at them.
During the next few hours a strong gale blew up suddenly and
broke the pontoon bridge over the Danube. Fortunately a quick repair was
possible and soon the troops of the field-army (preceded by Lorraine himself)
got back to Györ.
It had become urgently necessary to settle on a plan for the
proper defence of this neighbourhood. Once again, Lorraine and his friends
championed a forward position. A letter written some days earlier by Le Bègue,
while he was still in the Schütt, shows that they wished to place their army in
the angle between the right bank of the Rába and the Danube, in front of the
fortifications of Györ. They held that the defences of the town were far too
weak to hold out against heavy Turkish artillery. They believed that the
alternative, sponsored by both Herman of Baden and by Leslie, of keeping a
great majority of the forces in a sheltered position in the Schütt, would
expose Györ to the risk of immediate capture. It would dangerously uncover the
left bank of the Rába and possibly Austria itself. Once on the spot Lorraine personally
surveyed the ground. He did his best to hasten the palisading of the
counterscarp in front of the town, still far from complete, and soon 7,000 men
were at work on it. He also started to fortify the heights at some distance
from the town, across the Rába, in order to prevent the enemy from beginning
their siege operations uncomfortably close to the main defences, which would
have shortened the time needed by the Turks to prepare a final assault. The
Lorrainers lamented that so little had been done at an earlier stage; but the
engineer Rimpler disagreed and felt more confident, perhaps partly because he
himself was responsible for much of the spadework carried out in and around
Györ since 1681; and indeed, the Turks never took the place in 1683. Moreover
Rimpler and other officers could not approve the plan to place the field-army
in front of the works, and after detailed discussion the command decided on a
new scheme of defence. It visualised a slight enlargement of the garrison in
Györ and its outposts, while the greater part of the army was stationed along
the left bank of the Rába. This decision was carried out amid scenes of hectic
activity between 25 and 29 June. A redoubt and other works were built, to guard
the fords immediately in front of the troops. Some cavalry and dragoons moved
southwards, and others northwards over the Danube (into the Schütt), to ward
off any movement by skirmishers in either direction. All the time different
messengers were bringing in news of the Turks’ approach, while on the 28th
Lorraine himself led a cavalry raid into the countryside in front of them, in
order to strip it of any supplies which the enemy could use. Soon, smoke rising
over the horizon revealed the first incursions of the enemy. On the 30th,
pickets of guards protecting labourers in the outworks had their first brush
with advance bodies of Turks; and on the next day, 1 July, with perhaps 12,500
foot and 9,500 horse prepared for action behind the Rába, Lorraine and his
officers watched vast numbers approaching them from the east.
The Italian Marsigli, who earlier drew attention to the
importance of the defences above Györ, had been sent on a special mission to
this area. His letters made gloomy reading ten days before the Turks appeared.
The Magyars, he wrote, were utterly scornful of the Habsburg army which behaved
so feebly at Esztergom and Neuhäusel. On 21 June some Tartars, already reported
to be in the neighbourhood, caused panic at one small bridgehead where the
Magyars on the spot refused to destroy the bridge. Marsigli himself and his
troop of 200 dragoons did succeed in breaking down two other bridges over the
Rába, but he warned Lorraine that there were ‘three fords’ to be watched
between the marshes—his own sector—and Györ. Unfortunately, while the Magyar
leaders assembled their men on the ‘island’ and Lorraine prepared to fight in
and around the citadel, neither party attended to these easy crossings of the
river. The discord between Batthyány and Draskovich on one side, and the
Habsburg authorities (who had never examined this stretch of the frontier with
thoroughness) on the other, produced a fatal fracture in the whole system of
the defence; and as Marsigli was later to insist, in the great book which he
wrote on Ottoman military institutions, the Tartars were absolute masters of
the art of fording rivers with their horses, baggage and even with prisoners.
That night of 1 July, the Turkish camps were set on the
right bank of the Rába and in front of the town, over a large area of ground
which extended several miles upstream. Many other forces took up a position
along the Danube and on the higher ground a little farther off. At two o’clock
on the next morning Lorraine was woken, and tried to take stock of the
position. As it grew light he could see the dense, irregular formation of the
Turkish encampments, with large hosts of fighting men apparently getting ready
for action. He roused up his own troops and put them in order of battle close
to the river; batteries opened fire, attempting to drive the foremost Turks
back from the edge of the water. Christian observers were guessing confusedly
at the numbers of Moslems and Christian auxiliaries opposed to them: there were
80,000 there were 100,000 there were 150,000! At all events here was the enemy,
looking as formidable as the most pessimistic reports had ever anticipated,
with individual troops or groups testing the fordability of the Rába and riding
upstream out of sight, well beyond the right wing of the Habsburg army. This
crowded and confused spectacle slowly began to disclose a more regular pattern.
Many Turkish or Tartar tents were struck and more men moved away to the south.
The area round Györ itself was strangely still. During the afternoon these
Turkish and Tartar horsemen got safely across the river, some making use of the
fords, others swimming. The thin screen of Austrians from Styrum’s regiment and
the Magyar or Croat forces guarding this section of the front were completely
outnumbered, and the accusation of treachery levelled against Batthyány the
Hungarian commander makes little sense. Neither he nor Styrum could have
stopped the foe. His own men quickly preferred to surrender while Styrum’s fell
back in disorder. And not much later smoke was visible a long way to the west.
Strangely enough Lorraine gave ground at once. He never
seems to have considered that, for the time being at least, he could disregard
a host of irregulars riding rapidly west to fire the countryside provided that
the great mass of the opposing army was still in front of Györ. Indeed, he also
broke up his own force into smaller pieces. Another thirteen companies were
sent to stiffen the garrison, accompanied by a few aristocratic volunteers,
Leslie led the main body of infantry over the Danube into the Schütt, and
Lorraine himself prepared to withdraw the cavalry. Baggage and artillery moved
over the Rabnitz westwards almost immediately, and the cavalry followed as
evening fell. The retreat continued overnight and during the next day. There
were Tartars ahead of the Habsburg regiments, and Tartars at their heels. At
one moment the rearguard was mauled, so that Lorraine himself had to turn back
and go to the rescue. The enemy moved quickly, with small groups of horsemen
dotted over a wide area. The Habsburg troops were divided into a van, a main
body, and a rear, riding west in a tighter, more compact formation. Both
protagonists were taking the same route, up the Danube as far as
Ungarisch-Altenburg (although the Tartars obviously circled round the town
itself), where Lorraine spent the night of the 2nd. Both then ascended the
winding course of the Leitha. While the Tartars or Turks roamed over the whole
stretch of country between the right bank of the river and the Neusiedler See,
the Habsburg commanders kept between the Leitha and Danube, and headed for
Kittsee and Pressburg again. They camped for two more nights in the plain at
Deutsch-Jahrndorf, waiting and hoping for the situation to clear. At first the
reports from Györ suggested that Kara Mustafa was settling down to besiege the
place, while Lorraine hoped to recover the district round the Neusiedler See by
sending off 800 horse under Colonel Heisler in that direction. Unfortunately,
news then came through that large numbers of Turkish infantry were crossing the
Rába, and at the same time Lorraine heard from Leslie, who announced that he
intended to withdraw westwards with all the infantry under his command unless
he was given distinct orders to the contrary by 4 July. Such a step appeared to
mean leaving Györ to its fate, and the message was only received at
headquarters on 4 July. Too late, Lorraine replied that Leslie must stay on the
Schütt. Happily Leslie took no notice and began to retreat.
Lorraine rode ahead to Kittsee for a conference with the
vice-president of the War Council, Caplirs, and on the 6th most of the cavalry
camped round Berg. Here the plain ends, the ground rises abruptly some thousand
feet. Pressburg and the Danube lie a little way off on one side, and on the
other the Leitha winds out of the Leitha hills into the plain. Lorraine was
back in the landscape made familiar to many of his soldiers and officers by the
rendezvous five weeks earlier; with this difference, remarked by everyone, that
dust and smoke now thickened the air over the plain, dust kicked up by the
moving horsemen, smoke from the fired barns and houses. Between the Leitha
hills and the sharp outcrop at Berg smoother country continues in the direction
of Vienna. It was a relatively narrow passage through which any sizeable invading
force would have to pass, and Lorraine hoped to control it.
At the same time there was talk of building new bridges just
below Pressburg. When it became clear that Leslie had definitely begun to draw
back across the Schütt, the command planned to bring his infantry over these
bridges across the Danube again, in this way re-assembling the entire
field-army for the defence of the area between the Leitha and Danube. It seemed
possible, and it was certainly essential, to hold up the advanced units of the
enemy at Berg. If his main armament moved forward, it too would have to be
resisted at this point but Lorraine hoped that Kara Mustafa himself—engaged on
the siege of Györ—would not push beyond the Leitha: at Ungarisch-Altenburg
Habsburg detachments still guarded the bridge and the fords across it, together
with large magazines of food and munitions. Much farther off, Györ was
momentarily isolated. Across the Leitha and towards the Neusiedler See, an area
of lesser strategic importance, the situation meanwhile looked completely out
of control. Neither Leopold’s government nor his armies had any power to check
the frightful course of devastation there, in the countryside once quietly
ruled over by Esterházy and his peers.
