Spoils from the Sultan (part II): Arms and armour captured from the Turks in 1529-1683, in the Military History Museum of Vienna

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By Periklis Deligiannis
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CONTINUED FROM PART I

Ottoman horsetail-standards (credit: Erich Lessing archive)

Spoils from the Sultan (part I): Arms and armour captured from the Turks in 1529-1683, in the Military History Museum of Vienna

The chichak type helmet of the Ottoman Grand Visier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha who as a military commander confronted the army of the Habsburgs in 1566, between the two sieges of Vienna (credit: http://www.tforum.info).
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By Periklis Deligiannis
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The two sieges of Vienna by the Ottomans in 1529 and 1683 and the intermediate wars between the Ottoman Empire on the one side and the Habsburg dominions and the Poles on the other, had been remarkably decisive conflicts for the History of Europe. In both sieges of Vienna and the subsequent battles, the Ottomans were finally defeated leaving behind many dead, prisoners and valuable arms and armourand other military items, while the victorious European side paid a heavy toll in casualties as well. Today the most important spoils captured from the Turks are exhibited in the Military History Museum of Vienna. In these posts I present some images of Ottoman arms and armour in this exceptional museum.

ENGINEERING PATIENTLY A GLOBAL EMPIRE: The HAPSBURG EXPANSION-PART I

By  Periklis    Deligiannis
A  Spanish  tercio  in  a  modern  artwork (source:  Desperta  Ferro).  The  Spanish  army  was  the  strongest  European  army  of  the  mid  16th  century,  belonging  to  the  Hapsburgs.
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Charles  V  Hapsburg  was  the  most  powerful  European  monarch  of  the  first  half  of  the  16th  century.  The  Hapsburg  family/dynasty  (known  also  as  Habsburg)  was  able  to  expand  rapidly  its  territories  and  to  become  possibly  the  strongest  dynasty  ever  in  the  thrones  of  Europe,  in  a  unique  way:  not  so  much  through  waging  wars  and  conquests  but  mainly  through  dynastic  marriages  and  choosing  spouses  for  their  brood,  who  would  be  classified  today  as  “very  wealthy  brides.”  Their  dowries  were  not  simply  money  and  wealth  but  thrones,  kingdoms  and  the  treasures  that  accompanied  them.  But  this  policy  of  the  Hapsburg  dynasty  does  not  reduce  the  competence  and  the  fighting  ability and  spirit  of  the  Austrian-Hapsburg  imperial  army,  who  was  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  effective  in  European  history.  The  immense  Hapsburg  Empire  had  to  be  supported  by  an  army  of  a  similar  level,  mostly  in  quality.  In  the  period  that  this  article  is  referred  to,  the  Hapsburgs  controlled  not  only  the  Austrian  army,  but  a  “multitude”  of  several  European  military  forces  (mercenaries  in  a  great  percentage)  and  mostly  an  imperial  army  stronger  than  the  Austrian,  the  Spanish  one.

Α  modern  representation  of  a  harquebusier  of  the  1st  half  of  the  17th  cent. (copyright: Francisco Galiano).

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