page_title: Habsburg–Ottoman wars in Hungary (1526–1568)
section_title: 1540s
hierarchical_section_title: Habsburg–Ottoman wars in Hungary (1526–1568) / 1540s
caption_attribution_description: Cannon battery at the Siege of Esztergom 1543
context_page_description: Habsburg-Ottoman wars in Hungary, from 1526 to 1568, were wars between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, waged on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary and several adjacent lands in Southeastern Europe. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans engaged in a series of military campaigns against one another in Hungary between 1526 and 1568. While overall the Ottomans had the upper hand, the war failed to produce any decisive result. The Ottoman army remained very powerful in the open field but it often lost a significant amount of time besieging the many fortresses of the Hungarian frontier and its communication lines were now dangerously overstretched. At the end of the conflict, Hungary had been split into several different zones of control, between the Ottomans, Habsburgs, and Transylvania, an Ottoman vassal state.
context_section_description: In 1541, the Ottomans failed to take the fortress of Szigetvár. However a humiliating defeat was inflicted on the Habsburgs in the Siege of Buda (1541). John Szapolyai had died in 1540 and his son was only a few weeks old. An Austrian attack on Buda followed the news of the death of John, but the appeals of John's widow to Suleiman were not unanswered and in 1541 the elderly General Rogendorf was defeated outside of Buda, before he could even cross the Danube to take it. The next year Ferdinand besieged Pest but was repulsed.
  In April 1543 Suleiman launched another campaign in Hungary, bringing back Bran and other forts so that much of Hungary was under Ottoman control. As part of a Franco-Ottoman alliance (see also: Franco-Hungarian alliance and Petar Keglević), French troops were supplied to the Ottomans in Hungary: a French artillery unit was dispatched in 1543–1544 and attached to the Ottoman Army. In August 1543, the Ottoman succeeded in the Siege of Esztergom The siege would be followed by the capture of the Hungarian coronation city of Székesfehérvár in September 1543. Other cities that were captured during this campaign are Siklós and Szeged in order to better protect Buda. However, continuous delay of the push toward the west, because of the siege of these fortresses, meant that the Ottomans could not launch any new offensive against Austria.
  From 1548 to the end of the war, a Habsburg Spanish infantry tercio which had fought in the Schmalkaldic War, led by Maestre de campo Bernardo de Aldana, was detached in Hungary to fight against John Zápolya's supporters on behalf of Ferdinand. In fact, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent Spanish troops to help his brother regularly from 1527 to 1553, a support that proved instrumental in Hungary remaining inside Christianity.
caption: Ottoman cannon battery at the Siege of Esztergom, 1543 (detail).
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