Battle of Petrovaradin

Overview

The Battle of Petrovaradin also known as the Battle of Peterwardein, took place on 5 August 1716 during the Austro-Turkish War when the Ottoman army besieged the Habsburg-controlled fortress of Petrovaradin on the Military Frontier of the Habsburg monarchy. The Ottomans attempted to capture Petrovaradin, the so-called Gibraltar on the Danube, but experienced a great defeat by an army half the size of their own, similar to the defeat they had experienced in 1697 at the Battle of Zenta. Ottoman Grand Vizier Damad Ali Pasha was fatally wounded, while the Ottoman army lost 20,000 men and 250 guns to the Habsburg army led by Field Marshal Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Petrovaradin on 5 August 1716 was a decisive Habsburg victory during the Austro-Turkish War, in which Eugene of Savoy's army inflicted a severe defeat on an Ottoman force of equal size. The Ottoman army lost 20,000 men and 250 guns, and Grand Vizier Damad Ali Pasha was fatally wounded in the fighting — the loss of the Ottoman commander compounding the scale of the strategic setback. The outcome continued a pattern of Ottoman defeat in the region that had begun with the Battle of Zenta in 1697, further eroding Ottoman military capacity on the Danubian frontier. By repelling the siege of Petrovaradin — described contemporaneously as the Gibraltar on the Danube and a linchpin of the Habsburg Military Frontier — the battle secured a critical fortified position and removed a principal Ottoman operational commander. Within the longer arc of the Ottoman Wars in Europe, Petrovaradin reinforced Habsburg ascendancy in the middle Danube region and helped set the conditions for continued Habsburg advances into Ottoman-held territory in the years that followed.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (7)