Treaty of Karlowitz

The Treaty of Karlowitz, concluding the Great Turkish War of 1683–1697, in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Holy League at the Battle of Zenta, was signed in Karlowitz, in the Military Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy (present-day Sremski Karlovci, Serbia), on 26 January 1699. Also known as "The Austrian treaty that saved Europe", it marks the end of Ottoman control in much of Central Europe, with their first major territorial losses in Europe, beginning the reversal of four centuries of expansion (1299–1683). The treaty established the Habsburg monarchy as the dominant power of the region.

Context and terms
Following a two-month congress between the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Holy League of 1684, a coalition of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice and Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, a peace treaty was signed on 26 January 1699.

On the basis of uti possidetis, the treaty confirmed the territorial holdings of each power. The Habsburgs received from the Ottomans the Eğri Eyalet, Varat Eyalet, much of the Budin Eyalet, the northern part of the Temeşvar Eyalet and parts of the Bosnia Eyalet. That corresponded to much of Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia. The Principality of Transylvania remained nominally independent but was subject to the direct rule of Austrian governors.

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth recovered Podolia with the undestroyed fortress at Kamianets-Podilskyi (Although the fortress in Kamianets was not recaptured in the 1698 campaign). Therefore, the areas lost 27 years earlier in the Treaty of Buchach in 1672 were regained. In return, Commonwealth gave back captured fortresses in Moldova. The treaty also assumed the release of prisoners, the displacement of the Buda Tatars from Moldova, the end of Tatar raids, the rendition of fugitives (Cossacks to Commonwealth, Moldovans to Ottomans) and the cessation of tribute payments by Commonwealth. Commonwealth never again had a military conflict with Ottomans.

Venice obtained most of Dalmatia along with the Morea (the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece) though the Morea was restored to the Turks within 20 years by the Treaty of Passarowitz. There was no agreement about the Holy Sepulchre although it was discussed in Karlowitz.

The Ottomans retained Belgrade, the Banat of Temesvár (now Timișoara), as well as suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia. Negotiations with Tsardom of Russia for a further year under a truce agreed at Karlowitz culminated in the Treaty of Constantinople of 1700 in which the Sultan ceded the Azov region to Peter the Great. (Russia had to return the territories eleven years later after the failed Pruth River Campaign and the Treaty of the Pruth in 1711.)

Commissions were set up to devise the new borders between the Austrians and the Turks, with some parts disputed until 1703. Largely through the efforts of the Habsburg commissioner, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, the Croatian and Bihać borders were agreed by mid-1700 and that at Temesvár by early 1701, leading to a border demarcated by physical landmarks for the first time.

The acquisition of some 60000 sqmi of Hungarian territories at Karlowitz and of the Banat of Temesvár 18 years later by the Treaty of Passarowitz, enlarged the Habsburg monarchy to its largest extent to that point, cementing Archduchy of Austria as a dominant regional power. It was later increased further in size by the acquisition of Polish territories in 1772 and 1795, by the annexation of Dalmatia in 1815, and by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908.

The treaty was a watershed moment in the history of the Ottoman Empire, which for the first time lost substantial amounts of territory after three-and-a-half centuries of expansionism in Europe. Although the Ottoman borders in the region would wax and wane over the next 100 years, never again would there be any further acquisition of territory on a scale seen during the reigns of Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim the Grim, or Suleiman the Magnificent in the 15th-16th centuries. Indeed, after the mid-1700s the Ottoman frontier was largely delimited to the south of the Sava River and the Balkans proper, and would be further pushed south as the 19th century began.