Customer Reviews

The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe

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Andrew Wheatcroft does an excellent job of narrating the dramatic struggle between the Hapsburg Empire and it's allies and the Ottoman Empire and their allies for control of Central Europe. He describes not only the military events but also the political and cultural aspects of this struggle. I enjoyed the entire book but being retired military the descriptions of the various military forces involved were most interesting to me. The Janissaries and Sipahis were aggressive, fierce and highly courageous but they were facing opponents who learned their trade in the Thirty Years War and understood the value of dicipline and massed firepower. Wheatcroft makes a good argument that,"Nothing until the battle for Stalingrad in 1942 equalled the relentless struggle in the ditch before Vienna." I disagree with the other reviewer who questioned the need for Wheatcroft's continuing the story to include the campaigns to liberate Hungary. I thought it was facinating to read about the heroic old Pasha of Buda and his doomed stand against Lorraine, and I'll read about Pringe Eugene any day. There's a reason why Napoleon called Eugene one of the greatest generals of all time. If you have any interest in the history of Central Europe or just want to read a great story you owe it to yourself to read "Enemy at the Gate."

With only rudimentary knowledge about either the Ottoman Empire or the Holy Roman (Habsburg) One, I found Andrew Wheatcroft's "The Enemy at the Gate" to be a good primer about the empires, their epic clash in 1683, and 17th century European history generally. Although the narrative lacks focus, its heart - a study of the massive Ottoman campaign against the capital of the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire - is solid.

The conquest of Vienna would have been the crown achievement of the Ottoman Empire, a victory to rival the conquest of Constantinople. Vienna had withstood a siege by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1521, and topping his achievement would have immortalized his distant successor, Mehmet IV. It was a battle for the glory of the empire and that of Islam - "to be hailed as the Conqueror of Vienna was an irresistible Prospect" (p. 82).

Irresistible, but far fetched. From the get go, the Ottomans were disadvantaged - their troops, although superior to the Habsburg forces individually, were far less disciplined, and were unable to maneuver as ably. The Ottomans were facing an invasion of a well defended country in an era in which military maneuvering were moving away from pitch battles into sieges. By the late seventeenth Century, the Ottoman Habsburg border was littered with formidable castles. Vienna itself sported impressive defenses, admittedly poorly maintained. Mehmet's task was considerably more onerous than the one attempted by his legendary ancestor.

Not that the Sultan was there to command the campaign - in fact, neither sovereign participated directly in the campaign. Mehmet IV, after accompanying his soldiers part of the way as a de jure commander, gave formal authority to his Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa in Belgrade. On the Habsburg side, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I abandoned Vienna as soon as it appeared the Ottomans were approaching.

The Ottoman army caught the Holy Roman Empire unaware; Its leaders did not foresee a march on Vienna, and the city was left mostly undefended, with its main forces scattered. Arriving in Vienna in middle of July, the Turks surrounded the city, and the war started in earnest.

The Ottoman Siege of Vienna was a pitched battle, a daily carnage as the Ottomans inched forward, mining and destroying the Viennese defenses piece by piece, all the time under heavy fire. "Nothing until the battle of Stalingrad in 1942 equaled the relentless struggle in the ditch before Vienna... men fought over the mountains of debris, shattered buildings and a landscape of utter desolation" (p. 150).

By the end of august, a month and a half after the siege has commenced, the Ottomans have cracked through most of the main defenses. Battles now raged around improvised, yet effective, barriers. But as the City's defenses endured, help was on the way. A coalition of Habsburg, Polish, and several Germanic states' forces made its way towards Vienna. Battle was matched on September the 12th, 1683.

Wheatcroft's description of the battle is confusing. With only one map, deciphering the various tactical moves is difficult. Yet the bottom line is clear: after 12 hours of heavy fighting, the result was an utter rout for the Ottoman forces. Vienna, and Christendom, saved.

Unfortunately, Wheatcroft's account does not stop after the siege was lifted, or even after the successful Habsburg counter attack, which led to the re-conquest of Hungary by the early 18th century. Instead, Wheatcroft spends several rambling chapters tracking Turkish-Western relations to the present, in a transparent and cheap attempt at political relevance.

He would have been wise to avoid it. Until the final chapters, "The Enemy at the Gate" is a workmanlike history of the Battle of Vienna and its aftermath. It is mostly well written, albeit somewhat confusing: The narrative jumps around places and times in a manner that makes it difficult for the reader to keep track. In chronicling decades of Ottoman-Habsburg clashes, it is sometimes difficult to decide where and when events occurred. Nevertheless, if we overlook its pretensions and expositional faults, "The Enemy at the Gate" is a worthwhile piece for anyone interested in the mighty clash between two competing empires, and two great faiths.

As an aged reader of histories, I often wonder at my seemingly insatiable appetite for more accounts of more events in more detail. Just can't get enough. We experienced pursuers of what's past pretty much know how "things," be they prominent persons' lives, or battles, or natural cataclysms, or whatever, turned out, that is, we know who won the battle, invented the whatever, caught the miscreant, etc., but we always want to know more. How many books can one read about, say, World War I, and not be completely sated? Well, it turns out, at least in my case, to be just about every one that comes down the pike. No historian can ever adequately describe the convoluted causes, the military missteps, the human suffering, the nation-changing results. But they continue to try, and we continue to be fascinated by their efforts.

I guess if my memory of relatively recent readings had served me better, I would have passed on Author Wheatcroft's latest effort in view of my reaction to his 2005 work, "Infidels." As with that earlier effort, "Enemy" gets off to a decent start but trails off in unsupported observations and uncertain conclusions. Two failings stand out in my mind. First, Mr. Wheatcroft possesses a distressingly dry and unimaginative writing style. If an author can't invigoratingly portray the inherent drama and human terror and suffering of the Siege of Vienna, then I don't know what other event could propel the effort. I understand that it was long ago and that the implicit sprawl of a siege does not lend itself to concise and engaging descriptions. One could say the same about 16th century sea battles, but as Roger Crowley demonstrates in his marvelous "Empires of the Sea," it is possible to tell a very complicated and diffused story in a manner that excites and engages the reader and makes him wonder as he anxiously turns the pages whether he really does recall how "things turned out." Crowley succeeds; Wheatcroft does not.

Secondly, and as other reviewers have mentioned, the book just cries out for even the most rudimentary maps and diagrams to aid understanding of the geographic and fortification challenges for both sides in the sieges of Vienna and Buda. Instead, the author includes several pretty, and pretty much worthless, romantic portrayals of the action. There simply must exist illustrative documents that would enhance the reader's appreciation of the action, but if there are, you won't find them here. Very frustrating.

The late, and very great, film director, John Huston, was once asked what he looked for in auditioning an actor for a particularly obscure and demanding role. He answered, "A quality so fragile that it would die in the description." Precisely. That's what we history buffs always desire but so seldom find. "The Enemy at the Gate" is a worthy and obviously deeply researched effort which ultimately comes up short. Our search continues.

This reviewer had largely ignored late European history in the 17th Century. After the mad fighting in the 30 years war this arm chair reader turned his attendion to the New World.

However, I could not be more wrong in my assessment of Europe in the late 1600s by reading this book. This book makes it very clear that the seige of Vienna was a close run affair. Indeed, if the relieving Christian forces had just been a few week later then to this day Vienna would be an Islamic capital. It's doubtful that Christianity would have survived on mainland Europe if Vienna had fallen. The heart of Europe would have been ripe for conquest.

I will have to admit that the battle described in this book is a little confusing. But that is one of the few debits. Largely, one can look at this seige as the equal of Grant at Vicksburg. The Ottomans had larger field guns and did a fantastic amount of mining the defenses of Vienna. The books says that at the height of the seige the Ottomans fired off more than one mine a day. Grant did the total of one mine attack at Petersburg and fumbled the excellent results of that explosion.

I was also surprised at the Ottoman war machine. "Yours is to command and ours is to obey" is what envelopes the Ottoman empire. Armies, supplies and draft animals are drawn up in perfect harmony. The seige camps are kept clean in accordance with dictates of the Koran. I was impressed. Generally the Ottomans keep a cleaner camp than any Western Army up until the 20th Century. Since the Ottomans keep a cleancamp it means they are spared the disease that rips through any western army.

Weirdly, if it had not been for the 30 years war then the Europeans would not have been able to defeat the Ottomans. The Field Artillery arm had been invented. Indeed, the typical Western field gun was not much different than the American Civil War gun of about 180 years later. The musket line had been perfected by the Western armies. So, a strange paradox happens on the battlefield. The western armies are far more fluid in battle but initially slow. The Ottomans are far quicker to strike but far slower after commitment. This allows the Austrian Prince Eugene to break the Ottoman seige with a smaller attacking force.

The coda of the book is what is of great interest. By the early 19th Century the Ottomans and Austrians come to a somewhat peaceful coexistence. They are alternately attacked by outside forces. The Ottomans have to tolerate the constant attacks by Russia. The Austrians alternate between the problems with Prussia and later Napoleon.

A USA historian observes that the Austrians only won large battles with Prince Eugene over the 300 years of its government. The Ottoman Empire had more constant fighting with its Arab charges and that changed after World War One when Attaturk took the defeated Ottoman Empire and changed it into Turkey, the most wealthy, peaceful, and successful of present Islamic nations.

I highly recommend the book. The seige of Vienna in 1683 is a close run affair. It's strange to think that if the Ottomans had struck harder a few weeks prior and had a better commander that all of Europe south of Great Britain would now be an Islamic state.

I must say that when I first bought this book, I didn't know what to expect. The reviews weren't the best and this time in history wasn't one of my favorites.

However, when I opened the book and started reading it, I was impressed. The pictures that it painted of this period of time, where very good. The Ottoman Empire of that period was a very dictatorial environment with the Sultan running everything and disobedience resulting in death. And, when they attacked a Christian city, the inhabitants were provided two options prior to the start of the siege - either surrendur or die. At the end of the battles, if the inhabitants did not surrender, the results were truly barbaric.

This was the lead in to the campaign that resulted in a near run affair of the siege of a major European city in 1683 - the siege of Vienna. The city was under siege for 2 months - and the book shares the specifics of the bombardment, the Ottoman mining (which they were very good at), the assaults of Ottomans (after mines were exploded taking down some of the city walls), the defense and the potential loss of the city. As the book continued through this section describing these events, I couldn't put it down. I kept wondering what it must have been like to experience this. And, what would have happened to the thousands of people in the city, if the city was taken.

The highlight of the book is the arrival of the "cavalry". A joint army of units from Poland, Saxony and other locations arrives in the nick of time, fights a battle with the Ottomans that ends with a successful heroic attack of the Polish Winged Hussars. You can just picture the result as you are reading the book - the hussars attacking with their lances, chasing the Ottomans and routing them.

The end of the book is somewhat anti-climatic relating how the Christian armies then attacked and threw the Ottomans out of Buda (Pest), Belgrade and other Balkan cities and states resulting in the elimination of a future threat.

As you read this, you can get a sense of why, to this date, there are animosities in that region between the Christians and Muslims what with the barbarism that occurred - beheadings, flayings, impalings, etc. for the poor losers. There was very little mercy towards civilians and prisoners.

This is a great book on a fairly unknown period of history that also provides some perspective on why the Christian and Muslim animosities exist. For this reason, I highly recommend this book.

In this relatively short book, Wheatcroft attempts to provide an overview of the Hapsburg-Ottoman rivalry, an account of the 1683 siege of Vienna, and some historiographic analysis of Western perceptions of the Turkish threat. Any one of these topics could occupy a fairly thick book and The Enemy at the Gate... suffers from Wheatcroft's ambitious attempt to cover all three topics in a concise book. No topic is covered thoroughtly. The overview of the Hapsburg-Ottoman rivalry is relatively superficial and leaves out a lot. We learn, for example, that the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans were often engaged in conflicts on more than one front. The Ottomans with the Shiite regimes of Iran, the Hapsburgs in Germany and against France. But what impact these conflicts had on Ottoman and Hapsburg resources, and the relative division of forces between southeastern Europe and other fronts is never discussed. There is little sense of how the Hapsburg state and the Ottoman Empire interacted in the general context of the European state system. You would never know, for example, from this account, that Wittelsbach Bavaria, which appears here mainly as a Hapsburg ally against the Ottomans was a French ally during the War of the Spanish Succession and that the Wittelsbachs had designs on becoming Holy Roman Emperor.

Similary, the actual description of the siege of Vienna is not very detailed. As other reviewers have commented here, the quality of the maps is relatively poor. We get an idea of Austrian casualties during the siege but never of the Ottoman casualties. This may be due to documentary limitations, but no effort is made to address this crucial point. Wheatcroft, apparently relying on the work of other scholars, does well in laying out the important differences in Hapsburg and Ottoman military organization and performance, but as a campaign history, this account is superficial. Wheatcroft hardly does better in his historiographic analysis of Western perceptions of the Ottomans. He shows that distorted public images of the "Turk" were presented but his discussion and analysis is neither original nor thorough.

I have to cavil about the subtitle, "The Battle for Europe." This may have been imposed by the publisher to give this book a more topical flavor but Wheatcroft uses this phrase in text several times. The battle for southeastern Europe, perhaps, but the implication that the successful defense of Vienna precluded Ottoman invasion of the remainder of Europe is undermined by Wheatcroft's own description of the limitations of the Ottoman war effort.

Scottish professor Andrew Wheatcroft has written a very readable and succinct history about the war between the Habsburgs and Ottoman Turks that culminated (but did not end) at the Siege and Battle of Vienna in the summer and fall of 1683, in his book, "The Enemy at the Gate". His book is a good look at both the geo-political and military issues.

The forces of Christendom and Islam had been sparring for well over 600 years by the time the Turks tried for the last time to take the walled city of Vienna in 1683. The area south and east of Vienna - Hungary and points south - had been the scene of random raids, battles between the two, wholesale slaughter of people on each side by the other side, and general sniping at each other. And just as sites in lower eastern Europe had been a battlefield for years, so had the Ottoman empire itself. From the Crusades onward, there had been bad blood between Christians and Muslims and cities and territory often changed hands in this period. The Turks had tried to capture but had been turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1529. The area slumbered for the next 150 years with minor excursions into each others' territory by both Turks and Austrians, and "tribute" was paid reluctantly by the Habsburgs to the Turks to keep the peace. Reluctantly and often late, as it were.

Then, in the early 1680's, a nationalism was fired up in the Turks and they decided to finally "take" Vienna - one of the prizes of "Christendom". Wheatcroft tells the story of the history of the enmity between two, as well as the story of the siege of Vienna the summer of 1683 and the battle to relieve the Turkish siege on September 12th. An all-day battle of European coalition forces put together by allies of the Habsburgs routed the Ottoman forces and sent them back down the Danube to their own area. Another battle was won at Buda, returning that city to the Habsburg fold. Wheatcroft's writing of the Siege of Vienna and the battle and the forces put together was the best part of the book. He writes well about battle and diplomacy; particularly the latter was important in getting such various figures as the (elected) King of Poland and various German princes together to fight the Turks. For the serious amateur history reader, Andrew Wheatcroft's book is a valuable addition to their library.

I found the book to be disappointing. The main event, i.e., the battle for Vienna, was a subject I wanted to know more of, and that part of the book doesn't come off too badly (although it has its own problems). But, as others have noted, the book has some flaws. For one thing, after Vienna the narrative wanders around with a disjointed description of subsequent Habsburg-Ottoman relations. A battle here, a treaty there (with absolutely no description of the terms of any treaty, or why the parties entered into them), and side trips that have almost nothing to do with the subject of the book. For another, throughout the book its organization is spotty. The narrative jumps around to different times and topics, eventually wandering back to the current action but with no apparent thread connecting them. The book is especially weak as it approaches its end (which I was glad to get to), in which it tries to describe the ends of the two empires. The complexity of the last years of the Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empires is simply too great to try to cram it into a few pages, and so the book just trails off.

The author obviously did a prodigious amount of research, but what he really needed was an editor.

By 1683, Louis XIV had moved his court to Versailles; William Penn had founded the city of Philadelphia; the first measurements of the speed of light had been made, and ice cream had become a popular treat in Paris. But while the dodo bird had become extinct, religious conflicts of the kind that had flourished throughout the Middle Ages were alive and well from Constantinople through the Balkans and to within a few days' ride of the Hapbsburg capital of Vienna, as Andrew Wheatcroft recounts in this history of the final great conflict that marked the beginning of the end to the Ottoman ambitions to conquer Western Europe.

Wheatcroft knows his Hapsburg and his Ottoman history, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before he began to focus more explicitly on the centuries of conflict between these two ruling houses, which reached a climax first in the early 16th century when Suleiman reached the gates of Vienna and again in the late 17th century, when a later Ottoman sultan's troops laid siege to the Hapsburg capital. Focusing on the latter conflict, Wheatcroft has broader agenda in mind, however: he wants to prove that these military conflicts form the roots of the ongoing tension between Turkey and western Europe (explaining why Europe has been so reluctant to admit Turkey to the European Union.) Alas, the broader a point Wheatcroft tries to make and the further afield he stretches from the book's central focus -- the events leading up to and surrounding the siege of Vienna in 1683 -- the more the book falls short. It certainly doesn't begin to convince me that history alone is responsible for current European attitudes to Turkey, as he seems to argue.

When it's good, this is a very good book indeed. Wheatcroft captures the flavor of the Ottoman Empire's systematic preparations for war, carefully and colorfully distinguishing between all the various types of military forces upon whom the sultan and vizier could call. Particularly intriguing are the Tartars, whose warrior society Wheatcroft describes vividly. In the author's eyes, these troops were partly responsible for the Ottoman's biggest weapon, fear itself: "Implacable in their savagery, recklessly disregarding any danger, tireless and bold, the peasants of the west named them the devil's horsemen." He does a skillful job of comparing and contrasting the two empires and their military strategies. He even manages that rare feat in military history (when the reader almost always knows who won the battle): he creates an air of suspense surround the siege itself that was so great that while I was reading about the relentless Ottoman efforts to break the city walls and I heard the first clap of thunder from an approaching storm, I nearly hit the ceiling in alarm. It was as if one of the Ottoman cannons had somehow sounded three centuries later a continent away... It's hard to write a good military history, both maintaining the level of suspense and not becoming bogged down in technicalities or details of manoeuvers of interest only to military strategists or those who still like re-enacting battles with their toy soldiers, but Wheatcroft succeeds at this as well as he does conveying a broader sense of why this particular conflict was such a critical turning point.

Unfortunately, he doesn't stop there. He's trying to make bigger and broader points about fear as a weapon of war that are probably valid, but probably also deserve a book of their own -- a different book. There isn't enough evidence included in this book to support Wheatcroft's broader point about fear as an element in the contemporary relationship between Turkey and western Europe (although he certainly proves that fear was a key ingredient in the historical relationship.) That, too, is a different topic and one that can probably be better dealt with in another kind of book.

The book's other major flaw is that Wheatcroft drags out his narrative after the siege of Vienna is lifted by troops including the legendary Polish king, Jan Sobieski and Prince Eugene of Savoy, the only military strategist to be revered by Napoleon. It covers another century of battles and Hapsburg reconquests, all of which could have been elegantly summarized in a kind of postscript along with the fate of the Hapsburg monarchy, Sobieski and the Poles and Prince Eugene.

Still, this is a well-written and thoroughly researched history of the events surrounding the siege, and stands on its own as a valuable addition to the existing writings on the subject, one that is likely to be readily accessible even to those unfamiliar with the timeframe or the main players. As such, it's highly recommended to any history buff hoping to learn more about the Ottomans, Hapbsburgs and Balkans. Anyone looking for a quick and even more readable history of the Ottomans themselves should look at Jason Goodwin's Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, Wheatcroft's book about the Hapsburgs themselves is an oblique and thematic look at the dynasty that is also a rather dry read.

If you are looking for an entry level book on war between Muslim and Christian empires this is not it. This is a deep dive on the history, sociology, logistics, training and economics of the two great empires that clashed in eastern Europe.

Offered great insight into the intrinsic differences in the early gunpowder army tactics of Europe and the mounted archers of the Ottomans. If you interested in fleshing out your understanding of the men, battles and geography of this conflict this book will be a good read.