The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

As the lines of expansion in the East and in Africa had been closed by the remarkable achievements of Selim, Souliman’s hands were free to take up the traditional line of aggressive progress of Turkish power. Hungary was attacked on the ground that the payment of tribute was refused. In 1521, after two important battles, Belgrade was besieged by the Sultan; the fate of the city was decided by the defection of its Servian and Bulgarian allies. Twenty assaults were made, and there were only 400 able-bodied men in the garrison, when a mutiny among the inhabitants forced the town to capitulate on August 29, 1521.

The conquest of Rhodes, the center of Christian resistance in the East, was now not long delayed. A large navy of 200 vessels appeared off the island with a summons to the grand master, Villiers de l’lsle Adam, to surrender. Souliman had collected an army of 100,000 men to undertake the siege, but the defenders were not terrified. Every assault made on the great bastions of the citadel caused enormous losses among the Turks; but their prolonged artillery fire and the new supplies of men, drawn constantly from Asia, showed the mere handful of defenders that their struggle could have only one outcome. In December, 1522, the island capitulated on terms that were favorable to the heroic defenders; even the Sultan appreciated the tragedy, for he is recorded to have said to his favorite Ibrahim, that he was loath to force this Christian commander, in his old age, to leave his house and his goods.

Suleyman The Magnificent

(In Youth.)

The next field of Souliman’s military enterprise was Persia, where the Shah, by the defection of an Ottoman official, had recovered some of the territory taken by Selim. Souliman, appearing with a large force, received the submission of many of the Shah’s vassals, and, after a long march to the East, during which his cannon had to be abandoned, entered the ancient capital of the Khalifate, Bagdad, in 1535. But several other campaigns were required to establish definite possession of the country. Finally, after many victories, peace was signed at Amasia, on the 29th of May, 1555, a step which implied that the Sunnite Turks acknowledged the legitimacy of a Shiite monarchy. In the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan the extension of Ottoman power encountered serious obstacles. Native chieftains and princes followed their own caprices and their own interests in changing their allegiance to Shah or Sultan. There was constant guerrilla warfare, without any notable advantage to Turkish arms. In the southern regions at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Ottoman power was firmly established; Turkish vessels were to be seen now in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Aden was occupied and the control of Yemen made effective. But the chief effort of Souliman was directed against the King of Hungary and the Emperor Charles V. A curious and novel development of European diplomacy was seen, when Francis I, the French King, appealed to the Sultan in his difficulties, after his defeat at the hands of Charles in Italy. Souliman sent a gracious message assuring the imprisoned monarch of his support, and spoke of his own throne as the refuge of the world; “night and day,” he added, “our horse is saddled and our sword girded.” In 1526 the Sultan marched from his capital to give battle to Charles, the “hated head of the infidels,” with an army of 100,000 men and 300 cannon. There was a great battle with the Hungarian troops at Mohacs (August 28, 1526). After a hot engagement of two hours, the Christians left on the field 20,000 foot and 400 horse, and of the prisoners 400 were put to death.

A few days after the battle Buda surrendered to the Turks, and the Hungarian kingdom was harried by the Turkish irregular forces. Everywhere they went, their path was marked by massacre. Ten thousand captives were taken, and the result of the campaign was almost the disappearance of Hungary as an independent Christian kingdom, because, after the taking of Buda, Souliman called to him the Hungarian nobles and settled who should be their king. The kingdom was now rent by factions, some of the nobles siding with the Sultan’s candidate, John Zapolya, while others accepted Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V. When Zapolya appeared at Constantinople, because of the failure of his faction to support his claims, the Sultan, after securing from him a formal engagement as vassal, undertook to place him on the Hungarian throne. The promise was more than made good. In October, 1529, the Turks appeared before the walls of Vienna with 250,000 men and 300 cannon. To defend the city there were only 16,000 men and 70 pieces of artillery. But the defense was conducted with such spirit and intelligence that the Turkish army was compelled to withdraw. When winter approached, the extent of the ravages of the Turkish arms was marked by attacks on Regensburg and Brunn. Later on, another expedition was made into Styria, where the country suffered terrible devastations.

Under the stress of these alarms the powers of Western Europe, irrespective of religious differences, banded together to resist the enemy. Even Francis I was concerned at the rapidity of the success of his ally, the Sultan, and sent an ambassador to Constantinople to entreat Souliman to hold his hand. Finally, owing to the difficulties with Persia, the Sultan agreed to sign a treaty of peace with Hungary in 1533, by which Ferdinand was allowed to hold the land already occupied by him. But the war with Charles V, and with his ally, Venice, still went on, chiefly a contest at sea between the Turkish admiral, Kheir-ed-Din, and his Venetian antagonist, Andrew Doria, without decisive results, except the capture of many of the Venetian islands in the Ægean. In 1541 steps were taken, when dissensions arose again in Hungary between the heirs of Zapolya and Ferdinand, to make the conquest of part of the country effective. A Turkish pasha-lik was formed, with Buda as its capital, and for 147 years Buda remained an Ottoman city. Further conquests were made of Van, or Stuhlweissenburg, the city where the Hungarian kings were consecrated, and Vychegrad, where the royal crown of Hungary was kept. Owing to the valor of the people there were repeated efforts on the part of the Hungarians to renew resistance to the Ottoman domination. A treaty was made in 1567, when the aged Sultan, worn out by constant warfare, was willing to concede to the Emperor Ferdinand an arrangement for the payment of an annual tribute. Although peace was formally declared, disturbances on the frontier still continued, and the seas were not free from acts of piracy.

As Spain had not been included in the treaty of 1562, a Spanish flotilla of twenty-two ships was destroyed near the island of Djerba, which had previously been seized by Spain. Not long afterwards a Turkish armada of 191 vessels sailed against the island of Malta, with the purpose of bringing to the home of the Knights Hospitalers the ruin that had already been inflicted at Rhodes on their brethren. For four months the siege lasted, costing the assailants nearly 20,000 men. Dragut, the Turkish commander, was slain, and finally, on September 11, 1565, the undertaking was abandoned as hopeless, and the Turkish armament withdrew.

Souliman’s days were brought to an end in the midst of the siege of a Hungarian town, Sziget, one of the many events of the frontier warfare carried on without intermission, irrespective of the treaty between the heads of the two states. His death was carefully concealed from his men for fear of discouraging them in their assaults on the citadel of the town, which was being heroically defended by Zriny. Three days after the Sultan’s death, on the 8th of September, 1566, only the central tower of the fort was left in the hands of the Hungarian champion. He loaded up his cannon to the muzzle, and in the smoke of the cannonade rushed into the thick of the Turkish lines and perished. He had taken care to arrange for the blowing up of the powder magazine at the time he made his sortie. The great tower fell in ruins, burying in the débris 3000 Turks. Souliman, in his life of seventy-one years, had personally led sixteen campaigns against the Christians; despite gout and physical weakness he would not hand over to a lieutenant the work of wiping out on the battlefield the stigma inflicted on Turkish arms by the failure at Malta.