Deák Antal András: A Duna fölfedezése

Tartalom - III.A DANUBIUS PANNONICO-MYSICUS, 1726

T II E DISCOVERY OF THE DANUBE The military engineer After his liberation he spent three weeks in Venice and then went on to Ferrara. From there he travelled to Loreto, Florence and finally home to Bologna. On learning that an assassination was planned against him,

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0 he left the town in haste and travelled to Linz through Innsbruck, where he was received by Emperor Leopold himself. Then, he once again entered the army, and was ordered to join Count Stahremberg's army, who met him with the exclamation: Here is the man who has barely won back his freedom and is already ready to fight! And in fact, Marsigli put all his heart into the fight as a true soldier. He made plans, siege plans, during the campaigns or analysed events. He was interested even in those battles that he had not seen. At the time when Esztergom was recaptured (autumn of 1683), he was being carried as a slave toward Eszék, yet during the first winter pause after his liberation following the unsuccessful siege of Buda, he translated a Turkish report about the events that occurred below Vienna, at Párkány and at Esztergom in 1683. I emphasise the latter since it sheds light on an episode that has been considered a mystery up to the present. Tens of thousands of Turks drowned in the Danube when they fled the Párkány battle to the castle of Esztergom across a pontoon bridge, which broke in the middle. Hungarian historiography has held that it was hit by one of Sobieski's canons. The Turkish source translated by Marsigli reported, however, that the Turks themselves had destroyed it. The correct decision would have been, said the Turkish reporter, if after the first successful attack they had retreated to Esztergom across the bridge and had burned up the planks of Párkány. Instead, the bridge on the Danube was cut into two on the mistaken order of Pasha Kara MuhamedD At that time, and until 1686, the Turks ruled Buda. The significance of the recaptured town of Esztergom increased. In the spring of 1685, Marsigli was sent into the castle of Esztergom to inspect the defences of the castle and to carry out the necessary fortification work. The Austrian military leaders were afraid that the Turks sitting in Buda would lay siege to Esztergom while the allied troops were advancing against Érsekújvár, according to plan, which later proved to be true. So Marsigli, as a military engineer, inspected Esztergom and took steps to make up for the deficiencies. He had walls constructed to protect the soldiers from the cannons of the enemy, ramparts raised to provide shelter, settle artillery, and even insisted on buildingabaker's oven and improving provisions, because, as he describedin his report, a great misery ruled in this place. He ordered the castellan to construct latrines, because unimaginable dirt and ill smells gather on the slopes of the castle hill.

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2 While the allied troops gathered at Párkány on the other side of the Danube to recapture Érsekújvár, in his mission as a military engineer, he inspected the nearby castle of Visegrád and then crossed the river at Esztergom and joined the troops that surrounded Érsekújvár. As expected, the Turks advanced from Buda against Esztergom as soon as word of the siege came to them. Sobiesky,

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3 leaving just enough forces behind to maintain the blockade, crossed the Danube at Komárom and hastened to the aid of Esztergom against the Turkish threat. Coronelli

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4 recorded the daily events of the battle movements of the troops on a map.

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0 He was sitting at the barber's when a monk came to him with the news that somebody had "given the order to kill Marsigli For 100 double thalers". László Gróf: Marsigli gróf élete (The life of Count Marsigli) II. Cartografica Hungarica no. 3. May. 1993. 3

1 BUB Mss di Marsigli Vol. 57. Manuscritti diversi. Vol. VII. 38. Relazione dell'assedio di Vienna, fedelmente dalf'idioma Turco tradotta in Italiano dal Conte Marsigli, pp. 407-446. 3

2 BUB Mss di Marsigli Vol. 53. Manuscritti diversi. Vol. III. letter no. 43. 3

3 Jan Sobiesky, Polish king (1674-1696) gloriously defeated the Turks at Kochin in 1673 and at Lemberg in 1675. His reputation as a defeater of Turks was enhanced when he crushed Kara Mustafa's army below Vienna, then at Párkány in 1683 in alliance with Leopold I. 3

4 Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria (1650 - 1718). 35 movements and camps of thelmperial army from the start of the campaign of 1695 to the battle of Esztergom and the occupation of Érsekújvár, the place where the army concentrated and its route from there to the beginning of the siege of Érsekújvár can be see. The route was was interrupted in order to relieve Esztergom from under the Turkish siege." 100