| Polish–Ottoman War (1683–1699) | |||||||||
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| Part of thePolish–Ottoman Wars and theGreat Turkish War | |||||||||
 Painting of theBattle of Párkány byJuliusz Kossak (1683) | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Zaporozhian Cossacks |
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ThePolish–Ottoman War or theWar of the Holy League was the Polish side of the conflict otherwise known as theGreat Turkish War. The conflict began with a Polish victory at theBattle of Vienna in 1683, and ended with theTreaty of Karlowitz, restoring to thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth lands lost in the previous Polish-Ottoman War (thePolish–Ottoman War (1672–76)). It was the last conflict between thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and theOttoman Empire, and despite the Polish victory, it marked the decline of power of not only the Ottoman Empire, but also of the Commonwealth, which would never again interfere in affairs outside of itsdeclining borders.
After a few years of peace, theOttoman Empire attacked theHabsburg Empire again. The Ottomans almost capturedVienna, butking of PolandJohn III Sobieski led aChristian alliance that defeated them in theBattle of Vienna which shook the Ottoman Empire'shegemony in south-eastern Europe.[3]
A newHoly League was initiated byPope Innocent XI and encompassed theHoly Roman Empire (headed byHabsburg Austria), theVenetian Republic andPoland in 1684, joined byTsarist Russia in 1686. Ottomans suffered two decisive defeats against the Holy Roman Empire: the secondBattle of Mohács in 1687 and a decade later, in 1697, thebattle of Zenta.
On the smaller Polish front, after the battles of 1683 (Vienna and Parkany), Sobieski, after his proposal for the League to start a major coordinated offensive, undertook a rather unsuccessful offensive inMoldavia in 1686, with the Ottomans refusing a major engagement and harassing the army. For the next four years Poland would blockade the key fortress atKamenets, and OttomanTatars would raid the borderlands. In 1691, Sobieski undertook another expedition to Moldavia, with slightly better results, but still with no decisive victories.[4]
The last battle of the campaign was thebattle of Podhajce in 1698, where PolishhetmanFeliks Kazimierz Potocki defeated the Ottoman incursion into the Commonwealth. The League won the war in 1699 and forced the Ottoman Empire to sign theTreaty of Karlowitz. The Ottomans lost much of their European possessions, withPodolia (including Kamenets) returned to Poland with imposition of Austria.[3]
| Grand Duchy of Lithuania (to 1795) |
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| Lithuania partitioned (1795–1918) |
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| Interwar Lithuania (1918–1940) |
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| World War II |
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| Soviet occupation (1944–1990) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Restored Lithuania (since 1990) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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