Chapter 1595: Who Are You Fighting For?

Hungary, Győr Fortress.

The three-horsetail banner of the Ottoman Empire's Grand Vizier Mustafa Köprülü flew high above this great bastion.

Column after column of the Ottoman Empire's Janissaries were streaming northward along the Danube from the south, passing beneath the majestic fortress walls and marching toward the Austrian border to the north. Moving with them were large numbers of heavy bronze cannon dragged by mules and horses, rumbling along the broad road and grinding two deep ruts into the earth. Those soldiers wearing great hats and long beards, carrying rifled guns imported from the Great Ming, matchlocks of their own manufacture, or other weapons of one sort or another, were advancing at forced-march pace, every one of them panting for breath yet not pausing for a moment. The long column stretched from the southern horizon below Győr Fortress all the way to the northern horizon, as if it had no end.

The whole plain on the west bank of the Danube seemed to hold nothing but them. The local Hungarians had long since vanished without a trace when the Tatar cavalry passed through as the vanguard. These people, who for generations had lived on the front line of the struggle between the faith of Arabia and Catholicism, had long ago caught the scent of danger.

This war was no small affair!

For the first time in history, the Christian camp of the West had united! Although the Roman Empire was far from having developed to the point of unifying the whole Christian world, its leadership of the pack was beyond doubt, and the Empire also held the papacy firmly under its control, so that for the first time Emperor and Pope stood united.

Thus Louis, Emperor of the Roman Empire, could now mobilize the greater part of Christendom's strength for a crusade against the Ottoman Empire, the leader of the faith of Arabia, and need not worry about being dragged down by "his own people."

And the armies the Roman Empire could now mobilize numbered no less than four or five hundred thousand! With so many troops flooding over like a tide, could the Ottoman Empire hold out? Would Istanbul become Constantinople again?

Yet although the Hungarian Christians living on the west bank of the Danube had long yearned for the Roman imperial army to come, they had also seen plenty of the burning, killing, and looting ways of Western Christian armies, and knew they were about as savage as the Ottomans to the east — perhaps even a little more savage!

Now that several hundred thousand troops from both sides were about to fight a decisive battle between Hungary and Austria, the local inhabitants had best run as far away as they could.

The two old men, Mustafa Köprülü and Mustafa Kara, stood side by side atop the walls of Győr Fortress, raising their telescopes to gaze out over the open plain to the north.

Both men's brows were slightly furrowed, and they looked thoroughly vexed.

The cause of their vexation was that Archduke Henry of Austria had actually incited the nobles of Upper Hungary to rise in revolt, driving out the Ottoman garrison at Bratislava and the Grand Duke appointed by the Ottoman Empire!

This was trampling on the Ottoman Empire's red line!

The spoils the Ottoman Empire had taken after last defeating the Holy Roman Empire were suzerainty over the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Grand Duchy of Upper Hungary, the Grand Duchy of Austria, and the Grand Duchy of Croatia. Among these, the Grand Duchy of Upper Hungary was the most important piece of territory!

Upper Hungary lay at a relatively high elevation, was close to Vienna, capital of the Grand Duchy of Austria, and also bordered rich Bohemia. It was the strategic ground from which the Ottoman Empire controlled Bohemia, overawed Austria, and resisted Poland.

The Ottoman Empire had therefore always kept ten thousand heavy troops stationed at Bratislava. Originally the Grand Duchy of Austria had only fifteen thousand standing troops, so the ten thousand at Bratislava, plus the ten thousand at Győr and the ten thousand garrisoned at Brno, had been enough to overawe Archduke Henry.

But no one had expected that Archduke Henry would expand his army to 150,000 men in a very short time, and that it would be so disciplined and imposing. When they advanced in vast array on Bratislava, the Hungarians there all boiled over with excitement, while the Ottoman garrison was terrified on the spot. The Ottoman troops stationed at Bratislava were not the finest Janissaries — how could they have the nerve to fight ten or more to one while beset from within and without?

So when they saw the white Austrian corps advancing in vast array, they immediately packed their baggage and fled. And their flight brought disaster upon that unlucky fellow Demetrius I, Grand Duke of Upper Hungary, who had just fled to Győr when he ran straight into the Grand Vizier Mustafa Köprülü, who had just arrived.

To enforce military discipline, Mustafa Köprülü had Demetrius I beheaded! Now a bloody head hung by the roadside beneath the walls of Győr Fortress.

A Janissary officer dashed up onto the ramparts and handed a freshly received military report to Mustafa Kara.

The old man, whose beard and hair had gone snow-white, fished out his reading glasses, put them on, and began to read. When he finished, he laughed.

"Kara, what are you laughing at?" Mustafa Köprülü turned and asked his brother-in-law.

"Grand Vizier, we are going to win!" Mustafa Kara had always been an optimist. He said to Mustafa Köprülü with a smile, "Henry and François Eugène really do not know how to fight. They have actually deployed an army of 150,000 men between Lake Neusiedl and the Danube, and have even dug a long trench and piled up low walls."

"What?" Mustafa Köprülü was taken aback. "Digging trenches and building earthen walls between Lake Neusiedl and the Danube? What are they trying to do?"

The straight-line distance between Lake Neusiedl and the Danube was over twenty-six kilometers! And it was flat, open ground with no defensible terrain.

To defend a front that wide, the usual method was to build bastions, or simply to concentrate one's forces and fight in the open field.

Digging trenches and holding a twenty-six-kilometer front was truly beyond Mustafa Köprülü's imagination.

What were they thinking? Even with 150,000 men, once spread across a front that broad, they would be scattered beyond all reason.

And how deep or wide a trench could they dig in such haste? Could it stop Tatar cavalry? This time Mustafa Köprülü had personally led 100,000 troops and 30,000 Tatar cavalry. After joining up with the troops from Győr and those who had fled from Bratislava, his total strength reached 150,000!

Moreover, Mustafa Köprülü's great army was carrying more than three hundred cannon, which should completely overwhelm the enemy in firepower.

A single long defensive line could never hold back the Ottoman host!

Mustafa Köprülü gave a cold laugh, his arrogance and self-assurance beyond words: "Pass the order — increase the pace of march. I intend to break through the Austrians' thin line in the shortest possible time, and then march straight into Vienna!

The banks of Vienna are waiting for us to plunder them!"

Robbing banks!

The moment Mustafa Köprülü's order was given, the Ottoman host at once boiled over with excitement!

Morale shot straight up into the heavens — it could have charged all the way into paradise.

Archduke Henry's wishful calculations thus came completely to nothing. By his original intent, he had not wanted to fight a desperate battle against the Ottoman host, so after the uprising broke out in Bratislava he had not marched his troops in to occupy it, but instead had drawn his army back to the plain south of Bratislava and deployed it there, declaring that he would fight a decisive battle with the Ottomans to defend the people of Bratislava.

But in fact, the Ottomans could perfectly well have crossed the Danube near Győr and then advanced along the east bank, thereby bypassing the Austrian army on the west bank. Yet in the Ottomans' eyes there were no rebels in Upper Hungary at all — what they had their sights on were the banks of Vienna!

How could suppressing rebels compare in importance to robbing banks? So the entire Ottoman host of 150,000 men surged forward in vast array toward the 100,000 Austrian troops deployed between Lake Neusiedl and the Danube.

A bloody battle was about to begin!