Battle of Saint Gotthard (1664)
THE WAR OF 1663-64
War resumed in 1663 as a result of Habsburg efforts to challenge Ottoman dominance of Transylvania. The Grand Vizier, Fazil Ahmet, advanced in 1664, being met near St Gotthard by the Austrians under Montecuccoli, who sought to block any Ottoman advance on Graz or Vienna. The Austrians were supported by German contingents and by French troops sent by Louis XIV. The Ottoman forces, prevented from advancing across the river Raab, lost their cannon, but avoided a rout. The war was terminated swiftly by the Peace of Vasvar (1664), with an Austrian agreement to respect the Ottoman position in Transylvania.
Ahmed Fazil Köprülü (1635–1676).
Grand vezier at 26, in direct succession following his father Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, holding office from 1661–1676. He was as ruthless as his father but far more debauched. Like his father, he began his term by exterminating in a bloody purge all political opposition he could identify, including some courtiers who had supported his father and his own succession. Köprülü Ahmed Fazil also continued his father’s policy of full-bore aggression into Hungary and other Habsburg lands. His offensive into Hungary was stopped by Montecuccoli at St. Gotthard (August 1, 1664), but nevertheless resulted in a treaty favorable to the Ottomans, the Peace of Vasvár, signed nine days later. Unlike his father, Köprülü Ahmed Fazil successfully completed the Ottoman-Venetian War (1645–1669), traveling personally to Crete to conduct the final phase of the siege of Candia (1666–1669). He then opened a new front and war against Poland, the Ottoman-Polish War (1672–1676). His ambitions were repeatedly frustrated by the superior generalship of Jan Sobieski: he lost badly at Chocim in November 1673, and again at Lwów (Lvov) in 1675, despite having superior numbers in each case. He died at the start of the 1676 campaign, and his plans and army were defeated yet again later in the year at Zuravno.
Raimondo Montecuccoli, (1609–1680).
Habsburg field marshal. An Italian, he entered Austrian and Imperial service in 1625. He saw extensive action during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), including at the Battles of Lutzen (1634), First Nördlingen (1634), and Wittstock (1636). He was captured by the Swedes at Wittstock and held for 30 months before being ransomed back to the emperor. He used the time to study all available literature on the “art of war,” ancient and contemporary. After his release he fought in Silesia and Lombardy. He fought against the Swedes in the last several years of the German war, notably at Zusmarshausen (1648). He fought Sweden again during the Second Northern War (1655–1660), alongside the “Great Elector” of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm. Montecuccoli led Austrian armies against the Ottomans in the 1660s. He won at St. Gotthard (August 1, 1664), though more by Ottoman misfortune than any special skill on his part. Regardless, the victory brought him appointment as head of the Hofkriegsrat. He fought well against the French during the Dutch War (1672–1678). Feeling his age, he retired to write extensively on the subject of war and gained much influence thereby, deserved or not.
Like many minds of the age, Montecuccoli sought perfect order even in the sheer chaos of combat, believing that there were immutable “laws of war” that might be discovered and codified. This approach to war was much approved by the salon set and in studies of the good professors of the Sorbonne and The Hague, but it bore no relation to actual warfare then or since. For instance, Montecuccoli proposed a law of war that established a perfectly-sized Imperial army of 28,000 foot and 22,000 horse to face any opposing Ottoman force, of whatever size or makeup. He was more right in famously declaring that the precondition of successful war making was having enough money. As for the problem of finding soldiers to feed into the Imperial war machine he was busy crafting in theory, Montecuccoli wrote that all “orphans, bastards, beggars, and paupers” cared for by charitable orders or in hospices should be swept into the Army. This was far from the later concept of the “nation in arms” or the ancient one of a natural nobility of warriors.
Montecuccoli came out of retirement to fence with Turenne in a prolonged war of maneuver in Germany during the campaign of 1673. He joined the future William III to besiege Bonn that November. Montecuccoli lost a campaign of maneuver to Turenne during the summer of 1675. By July he was short on food and fodder, and in full retreat. Turenne tried to force battle at Sasbach on July 27, but before the fight got underway, he was killed by an Imperial cannonball. Montecuccoli retired for the final time a few months later, the same year as the Great Condé. Widely regarded and hailed by earlier historians as a brilliantly skillful practitioner of the art of 17th-century positional warfare, his reputation may exceed what is deserved. It has been downgraded in more recent studies of his campaigns and especially of his writings on war.
Battle of St. Gotthard, (August 1, 1664).
A Habsburg army reinforced by French troops and Rhinelanders to a total of about 40,000 men fought to victory over the Ottomans and their Tatar allies at St. Gotthard, a small village in Hungary near the Styrian border. The Habsburgs were led by Montecuccoli, who commanded about one-quarter of the Allied troops. Before the Allies arrived, the Ottomans had thrown a rickety bridge over the Raba river, gaining a foothold on the far side. The bridge collapsed, however, forcing the Ottomans to abandon the bridgehead. Tatars helped extricate infantry from forward positions, mounting foot soldiers on the extra horses that always accompanied Tatar fighters into battle. Failure of the bridge was compounded by tactical errors that decided the outcome of the fight, rather than by any supposed or later-reported brilliance on the part of Montecuccoli, as was once widely thought among military historians. A young Charles V also saw action at St. Gotthard, leading a cavalry charge against the Ottoman left. The result contributed to negotiation of the Peace of Vasvár (August 10, 1664), which turned into a 20-year Habsburg-Ottoman truce. This conclusion was secured only in part by military action; Leopold I also bought peace by paying a tribute to the sultan of 200,000 florins.
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