Knights vs Ottomans Alternative Campaign idea

[LouieN]

Hello,

I have a unpainted 15mm miniature collection built around siege of Malta 1565.  Knights/Renaissance Europeans vs Ottomans.  All of my terrain collection is European centered.

In a desire to limit the hobby footprint in the basement I was wondering what alternative campaigns could the miniatures fit in, but place it area of green fields.

I have just seeking ideas. 

Thanks 

[Freddy]

Hello,

I have a unpainted 15mm miniature collection built around siege of Malta 1536.  Knights/Renaissance Europeans vs Ottomans.  All of my terrain collection is European centered.

In a desire to limit the hobby footprint in the basement I was wondering what alternative campaigns would could the miniatures but place it area of green fields.

I have just seeking ideas. 

Thanks

16th century Hungary: basically constant war against the Ottomans, from the smallest skirmishes to the largest battles. You would need a lot of light cavalry though, popular both on the Hungarian and on the Ottoman side.

[LouieN]

Thank you

Any inspiriting battles, or sieges come to mind?  A start to research. 

[Maniac]

A little late, but there is the Siege of Vienna you could draw inspiration from 1529.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vienna_(1529)

Then any of the rest of the wars with Austria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman%E2%80%93Habsburg_wars

You'd want landsknechts for a chunk of that.

[Freddy]

Thank you

Any inspiriting battles, or sieges come to mind?  A start to research.

This was a period of almost 200 years constant warfare (from the Battle of Mohács in 1526 to the peace at Karlóca in 1699), so basically several wars with a lot of skirmishes between them, ideal for campaign gaming. The whole thing revolved around the "végvár" (~"castle of the ends")  castle line protecting the frontline between the two forces, campaigns were started for sieges and castle crews led raids into enemy territory between the major clashes. The castle of Buda (now Budapest) for example was besieged 10 times during this period.

The Hungarian literature for the period is huge, both the historical/scientific and the polite literature. The problem is the language: if someone speaks Hungarian, could spend 10 lifetimes reading just the historical material (and maybe 1-2 years of visiting the surviving castles themselves), but a very few people outside Hungary actually do even in the scientific community, so non-Hungarian historians tend just to ignore the whole topic.

Some of the battles you can easily find English material about:

The most well known story is the siege of Eger in 1552 when 1800 Hungarians protected the castle against an Ottoman army of 40-50k. There was a novel written about the story in the 19th century (Egri csillagok- Stars of Eger), the most famous novel in Hungary, which was made in 1968 into an equally great quality movie. Someone made a "modern" trailer for it, you can catch the feeling:

There is a modern historical animation about the actual siege:


Another famous story is the siege of Szigetvár in 1566: the castle fell after a heroic defense where the defenders led by Miklós Zrínyi (the guy the ww2 assault gun was named after) made a final heroic breakout Helms Deep style where they fell to a man. This was the siege where the great Sultan I. Suleyman died- the Ottomans paraded his dead body as if he were alive to keep the morale of their soldiers. Here is an animation with English subtitles:


Also a great story (with a famous ballad written about it) is the story of the siege of Drégely in 1552. The aforementioned Ottoman army marching towards Eger had to take this little castle with only 200 men first. All of them died heroically, with their commander György Szondy being the last man defending the gates.
https://dregelyvar.com/summary-dregelypalank/

The great Hungarian poet Bálint Balassi fought as a lifetime soldier in these wars (and wrote a lots of poems about it), he died in the "15 years war" siege of Esztergom in 1594 after a cannonball tore his leg off. The picture is about the 1543 siege, this town was also besieged several times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Esztergom_(1543)#/media/File:Siege_of_Esztergom_1543.jpg

And of course our biggest national tragedy, the battle of Mohács:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs