The Treaty of Karlowitz, concluding the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699, in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Holy League at the Battle of Zenta, was signed in Karlowitz (present-day Sremski Karlovci, Serbia), in the Military Frontier of the Habsburg Monarchy, 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 almost three 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 (HRE), the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice, and Peter the Great– the tsar of Russia, a peace treaty was signed on 26 January 1699.
The Ottomans retained Belgrade, the Banat of Temesvár (now Timișoara), as well as suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia. Negotiations with the Tsardom of Russia went on for a further year, under a truce agreed at Karlowitz, and culminated in the Treaty of Constantinople of 1700, in which the Sultan ceded the Azov region to Peter the Great.