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For nearly 160 years the Turks controlled the lower Danube basins, ruling over a mainly empty land, the Christian population having either fled or been slaughtered. A number of attempts to push further into western Europe were unsuccessful, culminating in defeat at the second siege of Vienna (1683), a battle that was hailed by the Catholic Church as the deciding victory of Christianity over Islam in Europe. The Turks were gradually pushed back through Hungary by Habsburg forces, before being expelled from Hungarian territory after the Battle of Belgrade (1688). They did however retain control of southern Serbia, Wallachia (southern Romania), Dobruja (Danube Delta) and Bulgaria.

The battlefield at Mohács where defeat by the Ottoman Turks ended the Hungarian Kingdom (Stage 6)

The Habsburgs

The House of Habsburg, which originated in 11th-century Switzerland, came to prominence when Rudolf von Habsburg became king of Germany (1273) and Duke of Austria (1282). After becoming the dominant force in the Holy Roman Empire, a series of dynastic marriages expanded Habsburg power over Spain and its American colonies, Burgundy, the Netherlands, Bohemia and much of Italy. Along the Danube they controlled Austria itself, the Austrian Vorland (modern Württemberg) and Slovakia after 1526. When Prince Eugene of Savoy, commanding Habsburg forces, drove the Turks out of Hungary in 1687, Hungary and its territories in Croatia, Vojvodina (northern Serbia) and Transylvania (northern Romania) all came under Habsburg rule. The Habsburgs repopulated the empty lands with returning Hungarians and Serbs plus large numbers of Swabian Germans who had been displaced from Germany by the Thirty Years War. The Danube was the major transport corridor linking this empire together.