The Enemy At the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe - Softcover

Wheatcroft, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844137414 ISBN 13: 9781844137411

Publisher: Pimlico, 2009

Synopsis

Major historian Andrew Wheatcroft reveals the full story behind four centuries of Ottoman incursions into the heartlands of Europe.

In 1683, two empires — the Ottoman, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg dynasty in Vienna — came face to face in the culmination of a 250-year-old struggle for power at the Great Siege of Vienna. Within the city walls, the choice of resistance over surrender to the largest army ever assembled by the Turks created an all-or-nothing scenario: every last survivor would be enslaved or ruthlessly slaughtered.

Although it was their most famous attack, the 1683 siege was the historical culmination of the Turks’ sustained attempt to march westwards and finally obtain the city they had long called “The Golden Apple.” Their defeat was to mark the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

With Turkey now seeking to re-orient itself towards the West and with a new generation of politicians exploiting the residual tensions between East and West, The Enemy at the Gate provides a timely and masterful account of this most complex and epic of conflicts.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Wheatcroft has written many books on early modern and modern history.

From School Library Journal:

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.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1844137414
• ISBN 13: 9781844137411
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368