Ottomans for Austro-Turkish War 1716–18

[doctorphalanx]

@ Hwiccee

I was wondering what you make of the Ottoman OOB/troop types listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrovaradin_order_of_battle#Ottoman_army

[Hwiccee]

@doctorphalanx

Sources: I am afraid there are no really good sources from the gamers point of view and not in general. Watts is certainly right that you have to find bits buried around the place. The best I can offer are some academic books. But be warned they are often not very helpful and only a few pages are useful.

Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars 1700-1870 - she also has some other articles on various aspects which are useful, one on the war of 1768 for example.
Uar and Erikson, A Military History of the Ottomans
Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700
There is also an upcoming booklet on the war of 1711 (should be out in 2014) - The Humbling of Peter the Great

Sipahi: I would still say use the renaissance sipahi - I don't think there is another option really. As already mentioned I haven't actually got any figures yet but cutting them down will be a pain but doable. I am hoping that some of the 'command' will be swordsmen for example. Plus we are only talking about doing some of some units. I have 'converted' some of the Poles already for my Polish GNW army and that went well, shorten the lance and shape it a bit to make a sword & a pistol is also doable. OK they are not that 'animated' but.....

OOB: Yes I have come across this as well. I tried to find someone who has a copy who can say what the source of this is - it is by a staff writer on the S&T magazine so not neccessarily an 'expert'. But it looks plausible at least - many such lists don't even manage that. But as is often the case it adds to the confusion as much as helps. The numbers look like theory rather than practice and the names look like the source is not Turkish. So for some of the names it is difficult to be sure what they are supposed to be. While the academics insist that maximum army size is nowhere near these numbers.

I should also point out that the academics say the key advantage of the Ottomans was their logistics/supply system. It was far superior to their enemies and years ahead of its time. But of course it meant they needed lots of non combatant muscle/baggage handlers, etc to actually run this system

OK so from the top -

Auxillary Light Cavalry - looks good, the irregulars will be Moldovians/Wallachians

Provincial Cavalry - Deli are scouts. Gonullu according to the academics were 'real' troops in the past but by this time had become garrison troops/muscle. So maybe these are these guys or maybe the name has been corrupted but either way they are clearly not combat troops.

Infantry Sari - Tufekci are good, Gonullu as above. Yoynuk are muscle/baggage handlers, etc.

Provincial Cavalry - these are ordinary Sipahi.

Regular/Slave Cavalry - these are some of the 'elite' kapa kula/sipahi of the porte.

Infantry Sari Ahmed - Janissaries are obvious. Division Cemaat no idea at all (Cemaat is probably a persons name). See below.

Support - Sekban are mounted musketeer types (i.e. dragoons in the original sense - ride to battle, fight dismounted). I would guess these are from the Balkans. Boluk Division - as Cemaat above. See below on these as well.

Artillery Corps - These are all good and part of the 'elite' troops. They are the gunners, engineers and other specialists support troops.

Regular/Slave Cavalry - these are some more of the 'elite' kapa kula/sipahi of the porte.

OK so back to the Cemaat/Boluk divisions. These are called Infantry/Support troops. I was a little surprised to see the Gonullu and other probable non combat troops (muscle) in this list, such lists don't usually have these. So it could be that these are more muscle/baggage guys, etc. But 53,000 is a lot for muscle. Perhaps the Boluk are as they are said to be support but the list is noticeably short of ordinary Sipahi. Normally there are 2, 3 or more ordinary sipahi for each 'elite' sipahi - so there could easily be 50 to 60,000 ordinary sipahi. So it seems likely that one or both of these groups are actually more ordinary sipahi who have been misidentified or something. Whichever you think is correct means problems. If they are misidentified sipahi then what else is misidentified? If they are really infantry/support then where are the rest of the sipahi? They could also be something else - the numbers of Tartars are fairly low so maybe Boluk could be more Tartars. While because Boluk is in with the Sekbans then maybe they are more Balkan troops - musketeers?

So we are really in best guess territory here. I would guess that Cemaat at least is sipahi and probably Boluk. Boluk might be something else but it is impossible to know what. If I am right then most likely the 3 groups of sipahi are from different areas - Europe, Anatolia, Asia for example. But there really are many different possible interpretations you could come to. Without whatever the original of this list is then it is difficult to tell and even if we know it will probably bring more questions/problems.

So this would, in theory, give us a strength of combat troops if the above is correct -

21,000 'Elite' sipahi
51 to 63,000 Ordinary sipahi (depending on if Boluk is sipahi)
10,000 Allied light cavalry
32,000 Janissaries
17,000 Tufekci/Sekban musketeer types
5,000  Gunners

This is similar to the (best guess again) composition of the army in 1711. If the acadamics are right the real strength of the army will be about half of these numbers. We really need some one Turkish to look at all this & publish whatever is available in Turkish sources - this looks to me to have come from a non Turkish source.

[OldenBUA]

Hello,

A little bit of copy and paste here from a post on the "By Fire and Sword" forum. Which is about the 17th century wars between Ottomans and Poles and so on. So a bit earlier (1672), but I think a lot still applies.

Those interested in Ottoman Empire and its army may want to have a wee look into some primary sources:

Paul Rycault, The history of the present state of the Ottoman Empire..., London 1686

http://books.google.nl/books?id=rJxMAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+history+of+the+present+state+of+the+Ottoman+Empire&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mnuoUvvuIseb0wWYgoHIAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=The%20history%20of%20the%20present%20state%20of%20the%20Ottoman%20Empire&f=false

Elias Habesci, The present state of the Ottoman Empire..., London 1784

http://books.google.nl/books?id=kfoSAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+history+of+the+present+state+of+the+Ottoman+Empire&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mnuoUvvuIseb0wWYgoHIAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=The%20history%20of%20the%20present%20state%20of%20the%20Ottoman%20Empire&f=false

And/or some good articles and books about Ottoman warfare:

Gabor Agoston, Guns for the Sultan, Cambridge 2005

Mark L. Stein, Guarding the Frontier. Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe, London-New York 2007

Selcuk Aksin Somel, Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire, Lanham-Maryland-Oxford 2003

Mesut Uyar, Edward J. Erickson, A military history of the Ottomans, Santa Barbara-Denver-Oxford 2009

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman warfare 1500-1700, London 2001

[doctorphalanx]

@Hwiccee

Ottoman army history is a real can of worms. What information there is on the web seems to come mainly from gamers quoting each other without reference to sources or dates.

Have you seen David Nicolle's Ospreys on the 'The Janissaries' and 'The Armies of the Ottoman Turks'? I haven't read them yet but I have them on order.

If you go to Google Books you can preview quite a lot of the content of the 'The Janissaries':

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0HWKMh3p9JwC

As you will see, it may shed some light on both 'Boluk' and 'Cemaat'.

[Hwiccee]

@doctorphalanx

The basic problem with Ottoman history is lack of reliable first hand information. This is mainly because non Turkish writers have to rely on a few basically bad sources and there was no interest in the period by Turkish historians, or at least any that has results that made it outside Turkey. But the good news is if you look at the list of recent works I put up and also OldenBUA you will see some Turkish names. It seems interest in this is growing in Turkey and so with luck better information will be available in the fuure.

I am afraid I am not a big fan of Osprey books. They are OK but I would rely on them without additional information.

Yes I know about the earlier use of Boluk/Cemaat but I am not so sure these old terms were still in use or applied to Janissaries - it is common in all armies for terms to drift over time to be used differently. Sekbans for example is used for one of these division, some of the Janissary units, mounted musketeers and some of the irregular forces at various times. If these guys in the list are more Janissaries then that just opens up a lot more questions - the key ones being where are the Sipahi, they should be at least half the army ,and about the size of the Janissary Corps - this would make them 2 to 3 times the official size of the Corps. Maybe they are Janissaries but basically if they are then something is very wrong with everything else we think we know.

I have been inspired by this to try again to track down the original list that was used to see what that actually says.