How the Russo-Turkish War over Ukraine (1677–81) Changed the Course of Hungarian History

In May 1678 Vienna’s resident in Istanbul predicted that Habsburg Hungary would join the Ottoman Empire unless the Turks decided to invade Ukraine. The emissary painted a dire scenario: “As soon as [the Hungarians] see the Turkish banners [they all], . . . irrespective of their estate, condition, or religion, will recognize the sultan as loyal vassals. . . . The entire Kingdom of Hungary will submit itself.” The good news, however, was that Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (1676–83) was seriously contemplating foregoing the long-planned campaign in Hungary for war with Russia. In August 1677 the Russians had defeated a Turkish army in western Ukraine, which had been an Ottoman protectorate for nearly ten years. The resident was cautiously optimistic: “May God grant that the [grand] vizier . . . advances into Ukraine. May the Muscovites defeat him completely. . . . This will ensure peace in the Kingdom of Hungary.”1The resident’s secret report to Vienna sheds light on the little-known entanglement of Ukrainian and Hungarian history during a decisive period of world history. Since the late 1650s the Ottoman Empire had been surging to unprecedented heights under the warrior dynasty of the Köprülü grand viziers. In three military campaigns they had destroyed Transylvania and the Habsburg border defense system in Hungary. Ottoman garrisons had seized important Habsburg fortresses and the Habsburg-ruled parts of Hungary had greatly shrunk in size. To prevent the complete loss of Hungary, the Antemurale Christianitatis (“Bulwark of Christendom”), the Habsburgs poured in more and more troops; they also instituted a brutal Counter-Reformation campaign because the Spanish-educated Emperor Leopold I believed that Hungary’s majority Protestant population could not be trusted. In August 1666, the horrors of the Habsburg occupation induced Hungarian nobles to appeal to the sultan for protection. They would be willing to become Ottoman subjects as long as their constitutional rights would be guaranteed. This did not happen in large part due to events unfolding in Ukraine.The Ukrainians had recently gained their independence from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after a major popular uprising (1648–49). Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky became the founder of the first independent Ukrainian state, the Cossack Hetmanate. The name “Ukraine” thus no longer signified a remote steppe borderland but a new nation-state that would become the inspiration for all future Ukrainian nation-building projects. But the existence of this new state was not acceptable to Polish and Russian rulers, who in 1667 signed an imperialist treaty: Ukraine east of the Dnipro would be ruled by Moscow and western Ukraine by Warsaw. This colonial project left Cossack leaders no choice. Khmelnytsky’s successor, Hetman Petro Doroshenko (1665–76), appealed to the Ottomans for help. If the sultan would guarantee Ukrainian independence, all the inhabitants of Ukraine would happily join the Ottoman Empire as vassals.Hungarian and Ukrainian emissaries flocked to Istanbul and started competing with each other for the Porte’s attention. The most successful met with Ahmed Köprülü (1661–76), the longest-serving of all Ottoman grand viziers. In June 1669, the Ukrainians received an imperial patent (berat) that declared all of Ukraine an Ottoman protectorate. Hungarian nobles wanted something similar. As one of them told Köprülü: “We want to recognize the authority of . . . more gentle overlords than the Germans [Austrians]. They have gotten used to raging over the living, dead, and even our souls. . . . May Europe recognize Your generous magnanimity. . . . Those who have suffered iniquities from others have found refuge with You and are . . . fleeing under Your wings.”2 Hopes were running high in Hungary that the Ottomans would liberate them from the Habsburg yoke. In the early 1670s, Hungarian Protestant nobles stirred up major popular revolts with promises that Sultan Mehmed IV (1648–87) had sworn on the tomb of Mohammed to come to their rescue. But the invasion did not come; instead, the Ottomans invaded Poland in 1672 and crushed the Polish army. The Polish military presence in Ukraine crumbled and grateful Ukrainians—including the Orthodox clergy—prayed for the sultan’s health.Hungarians were hoping that it now was their turn to be liberated. But the Kremlin moved large armies into eastern Ukraine and occupied Kiev with 50,000 troops. All hopes for a Hungarian campaign, long desired by the Köprülüs, seemed to vanish in the face of the Russian threat in Ukraine. The gaze of all major European powers—not just the Habsburg court—was now on Ukraine: Would the Ottomans go to war against the Russians or accept that much of Ukraine had lost its independence? A lot depended on whether the Ottomans would march their army into Ukraine or Hungary. The Dutch, for example, rooted for war with Russia; this would allow the Habsburg army to defend them against the troops of Louis XIV. The French, however, hoped for an Ottoman attack on Hungary; this would give them a free hand in the Netherlands. Vienna rejoiced when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa finally launched a major campaign against the Russians in summer 1678; the campaign, though victorious, became a war of attrition that greatly weakened Ottoman military power. Without the Russo-Turkish war over Ukraine the Ottoman army would have been much stronger during the 1683 campaign against Vienna. Most of Hungarian society then embraced the Ottomans, but the collapse of Habsburg power was only short-lived.Thus, the histories of Ukraine and Hungary were closely intertwined during this pivotal period in the formation of Ukrainian and Hungarian nationhood. Ukraine and Hungary were then at the epicenter of world history as the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest expansion in East Central Europe. Nobody expected that the Ottomans would be defeated at the gates of Vienna, least of all the Ukrainians and Hungarians, who saw the Ottomans as their saviors and protectors against brutal imperial powers.3

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