A campaign against two enemies simultaneously? The 1658 military venture of the Ottomans

The topic of this article is the Ottoman campaign against Transylvania in 1658, which aimed to remove the Prince of Transylvania, György II Rákóczi from his position, who had already been deposed for his unauthorised attempt to take the Polish crown, but still tried to maintain his power. The recently discovered sources in Ottoman-Turkish concerning the army’s food supplies put the whole issue into a different perspective. According to these sources the campaign was planned against the Dalmatian regions of the Republic of Venice, then slowly turned against Transylvania due to Rákóczi desperately trying to hold onto power, and culminated in the capture of the castle of Jenő and the appointment of Ákos Barcsai as Prince because of the Celālī rebellion that broke out in the Ottoman Empire. Due to this situation the Ottomans were planning a double camping, presented in this study together with the previously mentioned events, as a process in three separate parts divided by the turning points of the campaign’s planning and execution process. The study discusses how the Ottomans planned to attack Zadar first with their whole army, and later only with their central armies, as well as how the regional army, then the full army led by Grand Vizier Köprülü Mehmed turned against Transylvania and Jenő.