The siege of Szigetvár or the Battle of Szigeth (pronunciation: [ˈsiɡɛtvaːr]; Hungarian: Szigetvár ostroma; Croatian: Bitka kod Sigeta, Sigetska bitka; Turkish: Zigetvar Kuşatması) was an Ottoman siege of the fortress of Szigetvár in the Kingdom of Hungary. The fort had blocked Sultan Suleiman's line of advance towards Vienna in 1566. The battle was fought between the defending forces of the Habsburg monarchy under the leadership of Nikola IV Zrinski, the former Ban of Croatia, and the invading Ottoman army under the nominal command of Sultan Suleiman.
In January 1566, Suleiman began his offensive campaign in Hungary. The siege of Szigetvár was fought from 5 August to 8 September 1566 and it resulted in an Ottoman victory. Some historians have viewed the victory as pyrrhic as there were heavy losses on both sides. Both commanders died during the course of the siege – Zrinski during the final charge, and Suleiman in his tent from natural causes. The siege lasted for a total of 33 days.
More than 20,000 Ottomans died during the siege, and almost all of Zrinski's 2,300-man garrison was killed, with most of the final 600 men killed on the last day. Although the Ottomans were victorious, the siege stopped the planned Ottoman push towards Vienna that year. Vienna was not threatened again until the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
The importance of the battle was considered so great that the French clergyman and statesman Cardinal Richelieu was reported to have described it as "the battle that saved (Western) civilization". The battle is still famous in Croatia and Hungary and inspired both the Hungarian epic poem The Siege of Sziget and the Croatian opera Nikola Šubić Zrinski.
Background
Historical events
A peace agreement between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans was in effect until 1552, when Suleiman decided to attack Eger. The Siege of Eger proved futile, and the Habsburg victory reversed a period of territorial losses in Hungary. Their retention of Eger gave the Austrians good reason to believe that Hungary was still contested ground and that the Ottoman campaign in Hungary had also ended, until its revival in 1566.
The siege of Tokaj in 1565 by the Imperial Army under the command of Lazarus von Schwendi had angered Suleiman. The latter considered Transylvania to be his realm, and did not consider the peace treaty signed between John Sigismund Zápolya and the Holy Roman Empire to be valid.
A peace treaty between the Ottomans and Habsburgs had been negotiated in 1565 after Ferdinand's death in 1564. Ottoman officials had sent multiple letters to Emperor Maximilian on the following issues: the payment of tribute, Habsburg infiltration in Ottoman territories, the return of the Ottoman emissary Hidayet Ağa, and the potential invalidity of the 1565 treaty if the Habsburgs did not withdraw their forces from Transylvania. These have been listed as some of the reasons for the Ottoman campaign in Hungary.
Szigetvár, Márk Horváth, its commander, and bandits in the fort's vicinity had also been previously infuriating for Suleiman. The Ottomans had already besieged the fort twice in 1555 and 1556. In a letter he had sent to Ferdinand in 1557, he had written "The fortress of Szigetvár... When the haydud and robbers make trouble and commit evil acts, they take refuge in this fortress." Also, in a remark to the diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq in the year 1562, Suleiman had said: "'What', said he, 'might make us conclude peace, if those who are in charge of Sigeth will disturb it and continue the war?'"
Suleiman had written to John Sigismund on 7 October 1565 that "he would go to war the following spring, if Maximilian did not send an ambassador with suitable assurances of peace". After the siege of Nagybanya by Schwendi, Suleiman wrote to John Sigismund that he would personally arrive in Hungary with his army by the following spring.
Geography
Szigetvár was considered important primarily since forces dispatched from there could cut the enemy lines around the Danube river and thus threaten Buda and Ottoman Hungary. The fort had also obstructed Ottoman conquests in Southern Transdanubia because it controlled movement on the Drava river and had also threatened Virovitica and Požega among other Ottoman border forts in the region of Slavonia.
The fort was surrounded by the Mecsek range which provided natural defense. The usage of canals ensured that the valley around the fort was always inundated with water. Even if a besieger was to break the canals, the dried waterbed around the fort would be muddy and covered with vegetation, thus preventing infantry charges and the deployment of artillery guns near the walls. The fort did not have defensive outworks or a moat, partly because the marshland surrounding the fort was greater in width than most such constructions. Crossing the marshland was a complex task for any besieging army. The Szigetvár fort complex had a total of four forts.
Logistics and preparation
Habsburg
On 18 August 1565, Emperor Maximilian wrote to his brothers that the Habsburgs would have to be prepared for a war. However, since they had expected the main focus of the Ottoman campaign to be Vienna, they concentrated on the city and had no plans to lift the siege of Szigetvár. Emperor Maximilian and the Habsburg army were thus encamped near Győr but did not lift the siege.
Ottoman
For the siege and campaign, soldiers were mobilized from the Hungarian and Balkan provinces administered by the beylerbey of Timișoara. Royal decrees ordering mobilisation were dispatched to multiple beylerbeys in November 1565. The Ottoman government of the Sublime Porte fed wrong information to Habsburg envoys in order to mislead them about the targets and status of the campaign. Suleiman and his army set out for the campaign on 29 April 1566. The historians Szabolcs Varga and Nicolas Vatin both provide a figure of 50,000 for the size of the Ottoman army. The Ottoman chief military engineer for the siege was Ali Portuk. The Ottomans used at least 17 bacaluşka (basilisk guns), majorly of the 14 and 16 oka caliber, during the siege. The chronicler Mustafa Selaniki noted that 180 – 280 large Darbzen guns had been carried along for the siege.
Şeyh Nureddinzade Muslihiddin, a Sufi of the Khalwati order, along with Sokollu Mehmed Pasha had persuaded Sultan Suleiman to participate in the campaign to discharge his obligation of a last jihad. Many beys and mirzas from the Crimean Khanate, including the Kalga (deputy khan) Mehmed II Giray, participated in the campaign. Because of their absence, the khan Devlet I Giray was unable to pledge an oath on "the whole land" to the Tsardom of Russia.
Zrinski
To enhance the defenses of the fort of Szigetvár, Zrinski had started collecting taxes from multiple areas in the vicinity after he was made the captain general. His initiative led to the fort becoming very large in size, the construction of small forts overlooking important inner roads and the placement of a swamp around the city. Zrinski's strategy was to hold the towns and thus not provide an opening for an Ottoman attack on the fort.
Scholars agree that Zrinski's army must have numbered around 2,300 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers, and 2,000 civilians. These troops consisted of his personal forces, and those of his friends and allies, namely Count Gašpar Alapić and the lieutenants Miklouš Kobak, Petar Patačić and Vuk Papratović. Zrinski had sent a letter to the widow of Tamás Nádasdy on 19 April 1566, four months before the siege began, where he said he was going to defend the fort. Zrinski had also written to Maximilian that he would hold Szigetvár long enough that the defenses of Vienna could be strengthened.
Siege
The fort's defender, Count Nikola IV Zrinski, was one of the largest landholders in the Kingdom of Croatia, a veteran of border warfare, and a Ban (Croatian royal representative) from 1542 to 1556.
Suleiman's forces reached Belgrade on 27 June after 49 days of marching through Edirne, Plovdiv and Sofia. They constructed a bridge over the Sava river and arrived in Zemun. Here he met with John II Sigismund Zápolya, whom he had earlier promised to make the ruler of all of Hungary. The Ottoman army arrived in Osijek on 12 July and began crossing the Drava river. According to the historian Kenneth Setton, Suleiman had decided to postpone his attack on Eger after learning of Zrinski's success in an attack on an Ottoman encampment at Siklós, and instead attack Zrinski's fortress at Szigetvár in order to neutralise him. The historian Gyula Káldy-Nagy argues that it was the falling water level of the Drava river which led to the attack against Szigetvár and the postponement of the attack on Eger.
Szigetvár was divided by water into three sections: the old town, the new town, and the castle—each of which was linked to the next by bridges and to the land by causeways. Although it was not built on particularly high ground, the inner castle, which occupied much of the area of today's castle, was not directly accessible to the attackers. This was because two other baileys had to be taken and secured before a final assault on the inner castle could be launched.
The Ottoman vanguard arrived near the fort on 1 August 1566. The Ottoman army had surrounded the fort and town by 5 August. Suleiman arrived on 9 August and his war tent was erected on Semlék hill. The Sultan stayed in his camp where he received verbal battle progress reports from Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, his Grand Vizier and the real operational commander of the Ottoman forces.
On 7 August, the preparations for the siege began. Trenches were built, and from behind these lines cannon fire began. The fort's palisades were targeted first instead of the walls in order to make the defenders come out. At night the artillery batteries were put up, and the next day artillery firing on the New Town's walls began. The historian József Kelenik argues that only field guns were used for this effort, and that the long-range siege guns were used only to bombard the fort. On 9 August, a battery of five guns began firing at the tower in the inner fort and destroyed its top level, because the tower had afforded full view of the Ottoman movements.
Bombardment of the New Town and the inner castle continued on 9 August. Trenches and batteries were constructed in an arc stretching from the southeast rampart. The Old Town was surrounded to the east by janissaries who were closing in on the walls, and to the west by a battery near the dam, while more batteries were built to bombard it. Preliminary work was initiated to break open the dam while guarded by 600 janissaries. The defenders retreated from New Town in the evening after incurring much damage from the bombardment.
On 10 August, the Ottomans initiated a large artillery offensive against the fort. Ottoman artillery began firing on its two southern parapets, meanwhile, the Old Town was fired upon by four or five batteries. Zrinski and his subordinates disagreed on what course to follow next. Zrinski intended to withdraw from the Old Town, but his subordinates wanted to hold onto it. Zrinski decided to keep holding the town because it would provide more time for the defenders and because evacuating 4,000 people from the town to the fort would be tough.
On 19 August, long sections of the Old Town's walls had collapsed. The defenders began retreating but were attacked by the Ottomans at the entrance of the fort's bridge, and the former lost many of their officers during the fighting. The bulwarks on the southwest and southeast parts of the fort had been under bombardment continuously for ten days, but had not broken, primarily due to the long distance from and constrained angle of fire of the batteries. An additional two batteries were deployed in the Old Town to the south of the fort, where they targeted the weakest and least defensible portions of the bastions. The cross beams of these structures were more vulnerable to bombardment and crumbled quickly.
Zrinski, advised by his experienced commanders, ordered 200 of his cavalry to prevent the Ottomans from draining the swamp surrounding the fort complex. This initiative failed; other ideas advanced by Zrinski's subordinates in the first two weeks of the siege also ended in failure. After the demise of his lieutenants and the Ottomans taking the towns, Zrinski commandeered the resistance himself.
The fort's walls were partly breached at the Hegy (lit. 'Mountain') Bastion, which was the one nearest to the Ottoman cannons. A bigger portion of the walls collapsed six days after the Old Town was taken by the Ottomans. The Ottoman commanders determined that this was the time to mount their first infantry attack. On 26 August, they launched the attack but failed and suffered high losses. The purpose of this attack probably was to expand the breaches they had made by digging through them into the fort walls. On 29 August, the Ottomans initiated another attack to decisively defeat the defenders; however, the attack failed and 4,000 Ottoman soldiers died.
During the following days, the Ottomans suffered great losses due to the spread of dysentery, which also might have infected Sultan Suleiman. The defenders had sent multiple letters to Emperor Maximilian requesting aid and the lifting of the siege, but the Emperor and his army did not move from their camp. The Emperor, till the end of the siege, was tricked by the Sultan and Grand Vizier into believing that the Ottomans' actual target was Vienna.