The Enemy at the Gate

April 1, 2009
Wheatcroft (director, Centre for Publishing Studies, Univ. of Stirling, Scotland; "Infidels") offers a richly detailed account of the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna and subsequent battle with the Hapsburg central European forces. Although focusing on a single military campaign, Wheatcroft draws on decades of his own research on the Hapsburg-Ottoman conflict to provide needed historical context for the events of war. As Wheatcroft aptly states in his introduction, his is in fact a broader study that seeks to understand "Europe's fear of the Turks" within the frame of a specific Ottoman-Hapsburg military clash. Much of Wheatcroft's detail comes from European accounts of life in the Ottoman Empire and first-person descriptions of war, but the inherent bias in these sources is always acknowledged. As a result, Wheatcroft is able to move beyond tales of the "Terrible Turks" to provide a realistic portrayal of Ottoman leadership, a political context for the Hapsburg-Ottoman conflict, and a description of the shifting balance of power between these two dynasties. This is not a work of popular history for the casual reader, but scholars and students of history would benefit greatly from this well-researched account of 17th-century Ottoman-Hapsburg political power.Veronica Arellano, Univ. of Houston Libs.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2009
Historian Wheatcroft (Centre for Publishing Studies/Univ. of Stirling; Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam, 2004, etc.) presents a blow-by-blow account of the Siege of Vienna of 1683.

Determined to"bring all people under Ottoman rule and under the authority of Islam," Sultan Mehmed IV, along with his Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, gathered their vast army—comprised of ferocious Tartars, janissaries and Balkan riders—and marched on Vienna, the seat of Christianity and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. The Ottomans might well have succeeded if the Germans and Polish cavalry hadn't come to the Habsburgs' rescue. Wheatcroft demonstrates a scholarly command of this multifaceted area of history, carefully sifting through the evidence on both sides, Western and Eastern. He dutifully chronicles the two-month showdown, which ended in the rout of the Turks by military leaders such as Prince Eugene of Savoy, Charles of Lorraine and Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg. While the Habsburg defenses' were vulnerable, weakened by the Thirty Years' War, the leaders were strong, the tactics effective and the Viennese stronghold substantial. Their outright fear of the enemy—"Turkish armies were terrifying to behold"—proved instrumental as well. In contrast, the Ottomans, under the vainglorious Vizier, underestimated the Habsburg strengths and could not control their own manpower; their confidence in victory proved"delusional." Wheatcroft does a fine job marshaling much of the available new research, emphasizing the role of Hungary as"the battleground in the confrontation between two great empires."

A highly specialized but informative study.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2009
Four centuries ago, the West really was involved in a seminal clash of cultures against an aggressive Islamic power, and that struggle reached its zenith at the siege of Vienna in 1683. Wheatcroft has written a fast-moving and exciting account of this sustained conflict and the history-turning siege that may well have preserved the Christian character of Europe. Since their smashing defeat of the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, Turkish nomadic warriors had threatened Europe, but the Ottomans had harnessed the power of an efficient state to their superior logistics and mobile cavalry. On the front line opposing the Ottoman advance were the forces of the polyglot Hapsburg Empire. Wheatcroft indicates that the Hapsburgs had their own particular assets, including a superbly trained infantry, and an effective, largely Polish cavalry. Relying to a large extent on contemporary Hapsburg sources, Wheatcroft offers an outstanding blow-by-blow description of the siege, which in the end was decided through a combination of luck and several critical Ottoman blunders.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)