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Ottoman Turks

Having captured Bulgaria in 1396 and the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) in 1453, the Islamic Ottoman Turks continued to move north. In 1525, as part of long held ambitions to extend their territories across the Balkans into central Europe, they formed an alliance with France aimed at confronting the power of the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire. After taking Belgrade (1521), then a Hungarian city, the Turks were well placed to march upon the Habsburg capital, Vienna. To do so they first had to conquer Hungary. In 1526 the advancing Turks routed a Hungarian army, commanded by King Ladislaus II, at the Battle of Mohács (Stage 5), and although the King managed to escape he drowned crossing the river. Many Serbs and Hungarians fled before the arrival of the Ottomans who captured Budapest unopposed and went on to lay siege to Vienna in 1529, although they failed to capture it. The death of King Ladislaus, who had no heir, marked the end of the independent Hungarian Kingdom, the crown passing by marriage to the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled what was left of the country from Pressburg (modern day Bratislava). Southern Serbia was annexed by the Ottomans in 1540.