Demarcation of the Habsburg-Ottoman Border

The peace negotiations that brought the Great Turkish War to an end began on 13 November 1698 in Karlowitz, also spelt as Carlowitz, which is present-day Sremski Karlovci in northern Serbia and concluded with the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz on 26 January 1699. Representatives from the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire as well as delegates from England and the Netherlands were present and the talks were conducted on the principle of Uti possidetis, ita possideatis, meaning ‘As you possess, so you may possess’, with both sides bargaining to retain the most strategically advantageous territories.[1]

Unknown painter, ‘La pace di Carlowitz’, Courtesy of Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna – Sistema Museale di Ateneo | Museo di Palazzo Poggi | ph. Pierpaolo Zannoni.

The image above is one of six oil on canvas paintings from a series depicting episodes from the life of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili held in the Museo di Palazzo Poggi in Bologna. It shows three diplomats sitting under a camp tent during the peace negotiations at Karlowitz. The other five paintings in the series show military camps and travelling armies.[2]

Marsili, aided by Johann Christoph Müller (1673-1721), obtained and produced maps whilst preparing for the peace negotiations and during the negotiations he acted as an advisor to the plenipotentiaries on the demarcation of the 850km long border between the two empires. Müller was a pupil of the astronomer, copperplate engraver and instrument maker Georg Christoph Eimmart (1638-1705) in Nuremberg and worked under Marsili’s direction for seven years between 1696 and 1703 as a cartographer, astronomer, draftsman and personal secretary.[3]

The Treaty of Karlowitz did not define the Habsburg-Ottoman border precisely, but only in general terms, and it was left up to a Turkish and an Austrian border commission to determine and accurately demarcate the boundaries. Marsili oversaw, as head of the Austrian border commission, the cartographic surveying and mapping of areas within two-hour walking distance of either side of the mutually accepted border in accordance with the terms of the peace treaty between 1699 and 1701. Marsili sent regular reports on each section of the border to Vienna that were supplemented with maps. Hundreds of drafts and finely detailed manuscript maps and site plans are preserved today between Bologna and Vienna.[4]

The Habsburg-Ottoman border ran from Transylvania to Croatia almost as far as the Adriatic coast along the course of the Maros river to its confluence with the Tisza river and down the Tisza to its confluence with the Danube, where a diagonal line was drawn overland across the Syrmia region to the Sava river that was marked by the construction of border markers. The border then followed the course of the Sava to its confluence with the Una river where it continued along the Una through the Croatian hills.[5]

Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus: Observationibus Geographicis, Astronomicis, Hydrographicis, Historicis, Physicis (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1726), i, Plate 13. Sectio XI map. Carlowitz is located near the centre of the map on the southern bank of the Danube.

Marsili fell out of favour with Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) and his military career came to an abrupt end following the humiliating surrender of Breisach Castle on the banks of the Rhine river to the French after a brief siege in September 1703 during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-15). He had served as second in command with responsibility for the fortifications and was dismissed with dishonour from the Austrian imperial army by a military tribunal held in Bregenz in February 1704, while the castle’s commander, Johann Philipp d’Arco (1652-1704) was sentenced to death and beheaded.[6] Marsili went to Vienna after the military tribunal in an unsuccessful attempt to clear his name before moving first to Switzerland, then Milan and finally Montpellier in 1706. He turned his attention to studying marine science in the Gulf of Lion in the Mediterranean between Provence and the Pyrenees, which he carried out for several months at a time from the fishing village of Cassis near Marseille.[7] His observations were published as Histoire physique de la mer: Ouvrage enrichi de figures dessinées d’après le naturel in Amsterdam in 1725, a copy of which is held in the Edward Worth Library. He stayed in France until 1708 when he was recalled to Italy by Pope Clement XI (1649-1721) to help organise the defences of the Papal States in a brief dispute with the Habsburg Empire.[8] He was asked by the Pope again in 1715 to survey and report on the defences of the Papal States along the Adriatic coast against a possible Ottoman attack.[9]

Marsili spent much of the remainder of his life from 1709 onwards back in Bologna, negotiating to hand over his personal library and collections to the Senate of Bologna and securing financial support from the Pope for the establishment of a new scientific academy for the city as well as preparing his life’s works for publication. Marsili died in Bologna on 30 November 1730 at the age of 72.

TEXT: Mr Antoine Mac Gaoithín, Library Assistant at the Edward Worth Library.

SOURCES

Ágoston, Gábor, ‘Karlowitz, Treaty of (1699)’, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2009), pp 309-310.

Bernardini, Carla, ‘Six Episodes from the Life of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili’, in ‘Discover Baroque Art’, Museum With No Frontiers.

Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004).

Deák, Antal András, Maps from under the shadow of the crescent moon = Térképek a félhold árnyékából = Carte geografiche dall’ombra della mezzaluna = Landkarten aus dem Schatten des Halbmondes (Esztergom, Hungary, 2006).

Deák, Antal András, ‘The Mineral Maps of L. F. Marsigli and the Mystery of a Mine Map’, in Elri Liebenberg, Peter Collier & Zsolt Gyözö Török (eds), History of Cartography : International Symposium of the ICA, 2012 (Heidelberg, 2014), pp. 91-110.

Deák, Antal András, ‘Marsigli, Luigi Ferdinando’, in Matthew H. Edney & Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Chicago & London, 2019), pp 920-922.

Deák, Antal András, ‘Müller, Johann Christoph’, in Matthew H. Edney & Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Chicago & London, 2019), pp 1019-1020.

Gajić, Aleksandar M., ‘Danube and Luigi Ferdinand Marsigli’, in Gerhard Mayer & Paul F. Langer (eds) Die Donau schafft Identität! = The Danube creates identity! : Beiträge der Danube Summer School Ulm/Neu-Ulm 2014 (Ulm, Germany, 2015), pp 71-79.

McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721, and His Report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 179-204.

Sartori, Renzo, ‘Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, founding father of oceanography = Luigi Ferdinando Marsili fondatore dell’oceanografia’, in Gian Battista Vai & William Cavazza (eds), Four centuries of the word geology : Ulisse Aldrovandi 1603 in Bologna = Quadricentenario della parola geologia : Ulisse Aldrovandi 1603 Bologna (Bologna, 2003), pp 169-177.

Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994).

Török, Zsolt, ‘Karlowitz, Treaty of (1699)’, in Matthew H. Edney & Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Chicago & London, 2019), pp 709-710.

[1] Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004), pp 103-104; Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994), pp 170-177.

[2] Bernardini, Carla, ‘Six Episodes from the Life of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili’, in ‘Discover Baroque Art’, Museum With No Frontiers; Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, p. 115.

[3] Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, pp 104 & 120; Deák, Antal András, ‘Müller, Johann Christoph’, in Matthew H. Edney & Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Chicago & London, 2019), p. 1019.

[4] Ágoston, Gábor, ‘Karlowitz, Treaty of (1699)’, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2009), p. 309; Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, pp 103-115; Deák, Antal András, ‘Marsigli, Luigi Ferdinando’, in Matthew H. Edney & Mary Sponberg Pedley (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 4, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Chicago & London, 2019), p. 921; Deák, ‘Müller, Johann Christoph’, pp 1019-1020.

[5] Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, pp 104-9; Gajić, Aleksandar M., ‘Danube and Luigi Ferdinand Marsigli’, in Gerhard Mayer & Paul F. Langer (eds) Die Donau schafft Identität! = The Danube creates identity! : Beiträge der Danube Summer School Ulm/Neu-Ulm 2014 (Ulm, Germany, 2015), pp 75-76; Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 176-177.

[6] Deák, ‘Marsigli, Luigi Ferdinando’, p. 921; McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721, and His Report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 183; Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 239-246.

[7] Deák, ‘Marsigli, Luigi Ferdinando’, p. 921; Sartori, Renzo, ‘Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, founding father of oceanography = Luigi Ferdinando Marsili fondatore dell’oceanografia’, in Gian Battista Vai & William Cavazza (eds), Four centuries of the word geology : Ulisse Aldrovandi 1603 in Bologna = Quadricentenario della parola geologia : Ulisse Aldrovandi 1603 Bologna (Bologna, 2003), p. 171; Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 263-270.

[8] Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, p. 132; Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 271-276.

[9] McConnell, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721’, 184 ; Sartori, ‘Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, founding father of oceanography’, p. 176.