6/24/2023 0 Comments Heights the last bastionHis adoring soldiers nicknamed him their “brown Capuchin” after the plain brown coat he preferred over a more lavish officer’s uniform. The battle awakened Eugene’s warrior heart and changed his life.ĭuring the Second Turkish War (1683-1699), the Nine Years’ War (1689-1697), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), Eugene won military laurels through his personal bravery and his tactical and strategic genius. Undaunted, Eugene defected to the Austrians just in time to battle the Turks investing Vienna in 1683. When he came of age, his king, Louis XIV, refused him a military career, sizing up Eugene as a short, frail dandy whose scandalous mother was infamous for her affairs and dabbling in magic. Sparking War With the OttomansĮugene was of Italian heritage but grew up in France. The 53-year-old prince was not only the Holy Roman Empire’s most celebrated warrior, but also one of the great captains of his age. A year earlier, Eugene had defeated the Turks at Peterwardein, the “Gibraltar of Hungary,” and then proceeded to wrest control of Temesvár, the last Turkish stronghold north of the Danube. Nobles feasted and waltzed in gold-and-white marbled palaces, celebrating the year’s victories of their champion, Field Marshal Prince Eugene of Savoy. Although major hostilities had ceased for the winter, the war between Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III continued to drag on.įar to the west, across the frozen Hungarian plain to the crags of the Alps, the city of Vienna, hub of the Habsburg Empire, nestled between the Danube and Vienna Rivers. Imperial raiders galloped through the white countryside of Wallachia, Bosnia, and Serbia. The cold winter winds howled outside the massive stone walls. Beneath the Gothic steeples of their churches, the priests of Wallachia prayed that the Austrians would deliver them from the Turkish yoke.
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