"Good books on the Habsburg "Long War"" Topic

Does anyone known any good books (not necesseraly in english) about the european armies and their battles against the ottomans during the Long War of 1591 – 1606?

I suppose books in English ? If you could read German or Hungarian that would help a lot ;)

I can't read those languages, but my local university has good translation services, so feel free to suggest good books in any language (:

"Das Kreuz und der Halbmond: Die Geschichte der Türkenkriege"
by Klaus-Peter Matschke

I have not read this myself, as reviews were mixed and its not really my main focus of interest. The bibliography however is reported to be good, so if you can get it on loan you could salvage that part as a starting point for further research.

BTW: I found it to be oop, with remaining copies going from 50-70 EUR. Hopefully a library can help you out…

The "Long War" of 1593-1606 is a fascinating subject which seems to have not sparked much interest among historians outside Hungary until fairly recently. Even Austrian and German historians seem curiously disinsterested despite the important place it has in Habsburg history.
The PhD thesis written by Tibor Szalontay' in 2004, ("The Art of War During the Habsburg-Ottoman Long War 1593-1606 according to narrative sources"), is probably the best place to start among the sources available in English. Lots of usefull stuff though he downplays the role of weaponry alone (compare with Kelenik below for an opposing view). Plenty of footnotes and bibliography entries to follow up as well.

Parry's "La Maniere de Combattre" (published in "Technology, War and Society in the Middle East" (1975)). Despite the title the article is written in English and provides a fairly detailed overview of the tactics employed against the Ottomans by the 'Western' forces from the 16th to the 18th Century.Most of the focus is on the Habsburg experience and the Long War coverage includes quotes and references to texts written by veterans of that war.

Jozsef Kelenik's "The Military Revolution in Hungary" (published in "Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe (2000)" provides information about the equipment and organisation of the troops fighting in Hungary for the Habsburgs. It does have some flaws as it was written as part of the "Great military revolution debate" and thus places too much focus on some factors.

Gabor Agoston has written a lot on the Ottoman-Habsburg conflict in general and though his focus is on the Ottomans his work does shed light on the "western" side as well. A lot of his papers and even some books are available at acamedia.edu link

Turkish historian Börecki has written about the Janissaries use of volley fire as well as being generous enough to put the article online at link

There are a number of articles in various German language journals about events during the war that can be found online using google books and there is also some German period sources that can be found online by using google books or Europeana. (Mostly the later). Unfortuneately I lost just about all of my links to the various work when my old computer crashed and though have copies of all downloaded files they are a bit of a mess and not easy to sort through so providing a list is a bit too much work at the moment.

You can also find bits and pieces on the war by getting hold of biographies of Jean Tser'claes, Count Tilly who served extensivly in the Long War and rose in the ranks to become one of the highest ranking Imperial officers during the war. It is this war which laid the fundation of the period reputation he had as the "Schlachtmeister" ("Battlemaster") due to his excellent tactical skill.
Mehler's "General Tilly Der Siegreiche" (1903 and a new expanded edition in 1915)
Gilardone's "Tilly Der Heilige in Harnisch" (1932)
Saller's "Reichsgraf Johann T. Serclaes von Tilly" (2007)
To name 3 that come to mind.

Thank you, daniel! And thank you, puster! Those are lots of seemingly amazing sources! i'll dig them up.

Gentlemen! Let me also thank you for these resources!

Kudos to Daniel again for sharing some substantial links :-)

Here is one that the German Wiki-entry gives as a main source. Just went on my "wanted" list (which contains a meagre 1000 titles right now…)

"Die europäischen Mächte und der "Lange Türkenkrieg" Kaiser Rudolfs II"
Jan Paul Niederkorn
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 93
556p
~50 EUR

An additional source of information is the various military texts written after the war by the men who had fought in it, two I did not know of are presented in Parry's article above. Giorgio Basta's "Il maestro di campo generale" was also written based partly on his experience as an army commander during the "Long War" and the section on tactics includes a part about how to fight the Ottomans.
"Il maestro di campo generale" can be found online in various languages (it was published in Italian, Spanish, French and German IIRC) and can be found on both google books and Europeana.

I know this is not exactly an easy source, but in 1665 Hieronimous Oertel wrote a history of "Der Ungarischen Kriegs-Empörungen Historische Beschreibung", which is in effect the war fought mainly in Hungary between the Empire and the Turks, inlcuding vast detail on the long war – some 1000 pages in total.

Alas, its written in the contemporary German in the typcial typesetting of its era, which means that I am just barely able to read it – because I am used to the style. I assume that any modern translator will fail.

Still, here it is:
Link B – chance to browse seperate pages here with the chance to enlarge them, and a seperate download link on the frontpage (320mb):
link

Example for one page (here the register of battles, skirmishes and fortifications):
link

Link A – A download from a different uni (and thus a different exemplar of the book):
link

Oertel wrote his work during the war and diffrent editions were published in 1602, 1603 and 1604 with new entries for the previous years campaigns. A 4th part covering the period up to 1607 was published in 1613, a year before the author passed away. Martin Meyer of Nürnberg published the "final" edition of the work in 1665.

Oertel's work is a bit like a Theatrum Europeaum for the "Long War" with bit and pieces collected from a wide variety of sources thoug most likely less based on first hand accounts than is claimed by the author.

IIRC I actually found some of the earlier editions easier to read than the 1665 version but it has been a while since I looked at them.

So its worth to work through it?

Do you know of any transcription?