Treaty of Passarowitz (1718): Austria Takes Belgrade

The Treaty of Passarowitz, signed on 21 July 1718 at the small Serbian town of Passarowitz (Požarevac), ended the wars of 1714–1718 between the Ottoman Empire and an alliance of Venice and Habsburg Austria. Austria gained Belgrade and wide lands in the Balkans, while Venice gave up the Morea. The peace marked the high point of Habsburg expansion in south-eastern Europe and opened the calm years of the Ottoman Tulip Period.

Background

The Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699 had cost the Ottomans Hungary and given Venice the Morea, the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece. In the following years the Ottomans rebuilt their strength and won a war against Russia in 1711. In December 1714 they declared war on Venice and in 1715 overran the Morea in a swift campaign.

Austria, bound to Venice by treaty, joined the war in 1716. Its army was commanded by Prince Eugene of Savoy, the most celebrated general of the age.

The war of 1716–1718

On 5 August 1716 Eugene defeated a large Ottoman army at Petrovaradin (Peterwardein) on the Danube; the grand vizier, Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha, was killed. In October the Austrians took the fortress of Temesvár (Timișoara). An Ottoman siege of Venetian-held Corfu in the same summer failed.

In 1717 Eugene besieged Belgrade. On 16 August he attacked and routed an Ottoman relief army camped around the city, and the garrison surrendered a few days later. With Belgrade lost, the Ottoman government sought peace, a policy pursued by Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha after he became grand vizier in May 1718. Austria, meanwhile, faced a Spanish attack on its Italian lands and was also ready to settle.

The negotiators

The talks were held in tents outside Passarowitz, a small town on the Morava river south-east of Belgrade. Emperor Charles VI was represented by Count Damian Hugo von Virmont and Michael von Talman, an experienced diplomat in Ottoman affairs, and Venice by Carlo Ruzzini. The Ottoman delegation was sent by the grand vizier İbrahim Pasha.

The mediators were the British ambassador Sir Robert Sutton and the Dutch envoy Jacob Colyer, both long resident in Istanbul. Britain and the Dutch Republic wanted peace in the east so that Austria could concentrate on the threat from Spain in Italy, where Philip V had just landed troops in Sardinia and Sicily.

The terms

Negotiations opened at Passarowitz in June 1718 with British and Dutch diplomats as mediators. The settlement was based on the principle that each side kept what it held (uti possidetis). Its main terms were:

• Austria received the Banat of Temesvár, Belgrade and the north of Serbia, Lesser Wallachia (Oltenia, west of the river Olt) and a strip of northern Bosnia.
• The Ottomans kept the Morea, which Venice formally surrendered.
• Venice kept the Ionian Islands, including Corfu, and a few fortresses in Dalmatia and Albania.

A commercial treaty signed shortly afterwards gave Habsburg merchants the right to trade freely in the Ottoman Empire, with low customs duties. It helped Austrian trade on the Danube and through the port of Trieste, which Charles VI declared a free port in 1719.

Key people

• Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736): Habsburg field marshal whose victories at Petrovaradin and Belgrade forced the Ottomans to negotiate.
• Charles VI (r. 1711–1740): Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Habsburg lands, in whose name the treaty was concluded.
• Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730): Ottoman sultan during the war and the peace.
• Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha: grand vizier from 1718, who favoured peace in Europe.

Consequences

For Venice, Passarowitz was the last of its many wars with the Ottomans. The republic never again fought a major war against them and declined steadily until its end in 1797.

For the Ottomans, the treaty brought more than a decade without major war in Europe. In Istanbul this became the Tulip Period, associated with Ahmed III and İbrahim Pasha, a time of new palaces, poetry and growing curiosity about Europe.

For Austria, the gains proved fragile. Belgrade was rebuilt as a Habsburg fortress, but a new war in 1737–1739 went badly, and by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739 Austria returned Belgrade, northern Serbia and Lesser Wallachia. Only the Banat remained, and it was settled by German, Serbian and other colonists, shaping the mixed population of the region for two centuries.

Timeline

• 1714, December: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Venice.
• 1715: Ottoman forces reconquer the Morea.
• 1716, 5 August: Prince Eugene defeats the Ottomans at Petrovaradin.
• 1716, October: Austrian forces capture Temesvár.
• 1717, 16 August: Eugene defeats the Ottoman relief army at Belgrade; the city surrenders soon after.
• 1718, 21 July: The Treaty of Passarowitz is signed.
• 1739, September: The Treaty of Belgrade returns most of Austria’s gains to the Ottomans.

Why it matters

Passarowitz confirmed that the balance of power in south-eastern Europe had turned against the Ottomans while ending Venice’s role as a great power in the eastern Mediterranean. It also set the stage for the short-lived Habsburg rule in Serbia and for the peaceful interlude of the Tulip Period in Istanbul.