ABSTRACT
The first half of the eighteenth century saw the continuation of the closing of the eastern frontiers of Europe, in a series of campaigns in which Ottoman, Habsburg and Romanov armies played out victory and defeat along the Danube. Between 1700 and 1739, the Ottoman army participated in two swift and successful campaigns: on the Prut in 1711 and against the Venetians in the Morea in 1715, but suffered costly defeats by the Austrians in 1717. In a series of confrontations which reiterated the magnitude of the problems in the military organisation, the Ottomans faced Russian and Austrian armies again in 1736-39, on contested frontiers around Belgrade, Ochakov and Azov. That is the subject of this chapter.
