On December 15, 1683, he arrived at the Ottoman Empire's important city Thessalonika by a quick contact ship.

In this city that was quickly busy due to the war, Gao Wengang did not find Sultan Muhammad IV, who had been rumored to be stationed here. It is reported that he had led some of the troops of the Ganishari army to Sofia, where he raised food and funds for the front-line army. This news surprised Gao Wengang and wondered whether the Ottomans were crazy about gaining and losing their hearts and planned to have a battle to conquer the country.

That night, he found the stationmaster of Thessalonika and asked him carefully about the situation in recent times, focusing on information about the Austrian-Turkish war - the East Coast people called this war the "Fourth Austrian-Turkish war".

The merchant station's website is a sailor-born cadre. He had been the merchant station's website that had been merged for many years. He also got a Serbian wife who believed in Orthodox religion. Therefore, he had some connections in the Balkans and was well-informed.

"Enter Gao, the news from the front is quite chaotic, and there are all kinds of things. I asked someone to analyze it, and then confirmed it with the more reliable news found from some imperial officials and friends. At present, it is basically certain that the main army of the Ottoman Empire has arrived at the city of Vienna, and the two sides have had an offensive and defensive battle for a while, but it is not clear who is the dominant one." The merchant station master first pondered for a moment, and then said: "But what is certain is that the preparations for this hasty military operation must be insufficient. According to the situation in the city of Thessalonika and surrounding areas, the Ottoman Empire temporarily requested a large number of troops to be provided.

The materials included food, livestock, ammunition, tents, medicines and other things. The imperial officials who came to raise the materials were very urgent and wanted to get all the things on the spot. In terms of the city, the preparations were not sufficient, or they had never received orders to hoard a large amount of war materials before, so they fell into chaos. This chaos and contradiction may be a direct reflection of the confusion of the upper class of the entire empire. In my opinion, the Ottoman Empire had no intention of attacking the heartland of Austria before. This action was just a slap in the head by Sultan Mohammed IV."

Gao Wen smiled bitterly as soon as he heard this. The webmaster was really a straightforward man and did not make any mistakes at all. However, he also brought some new situations in his words, that is, to march from Hungary to Austria. Perhaps it was not because of the command of Grand Vizikara Mustafa by his subordinates, but because they had really received the highest order from Istanbul, so the troops that had already retreated made a sharp turn. While collecting food and serving livestock in Hungary, they began to plan the route to Austria. At this time, the lord army of various places with a number of more than 50,000 people had actually withdrawn, but Mustafa Davizi did not summon them and replaced them with a large number of minion troops from Hungary.

"How is the Austrian's response?" Gao Wengang asked the question he was most concerned about, and he wanted to judge more different meanings from the Austrian's response.

"Their response is to shrink their troops and wait for change. This is probably because their elite main force is still on the Western Front and has not had time to rush back." The station manager replied: "The Austrian army is widely distributed and it takes time to assemble. Moreover, the Turks also divided their troops to plunder everywhere, one for obtaining supplies, and the other for restraining the Austrian garrisons everywhere, so that they cannot quickly approach the capital Vienna."

"Several division?" Gao Wengang raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, but most of them are minions, head troops led by Grand Duke Transylvania and a large number of temporary Hungarian soldiers. However, it is rumored that they had failed two months ago. The poor Grand Duke only fled with more than a thousand cavalry and is currently receiving defeated soldiers in the rear, but they should not have the courage to provoke the Austrian army in Bratislava and other places." The webmaster said.

"Is this news confirmed?" Gao Wengang couldn't sit still after hearing this. Even though it was already winter, some fine beads of sweat still oozed out of his forehead. This was a failure of the side-level masters. What was the behavior of greatly damaging morale? What were the Ottomans making trouble?

A Hungarian grand duke led more than 30,000 troops to advance westward. The general was not a famous general, the soldiers were not elite soldiers. He was easily defeated by thousands of Austrian soldiers. This was really a mess! Gao Wengang felt that if he remembered correctly, it was this Transylvanian grand duke who invaded Poland and took advantage of it, but was defeated. Then on the way to retreat, 30,000 troops were raided by Crimean Tatar cavalry (at that time, this lord had not yet surrendered to the Ottoman Sultan and swung between Austria and Türkiye). The guy only fled back with four hundred cavalry.

The country. And since it has such a bad record of failure, why did Mustafadavizi still feel at ease to hand over so many people to him, instead of sending a veteran officer to command? You know, even these seemingly garbage-looking Romanians and Hungarian soldiers can play a significant role in operating well. As a result, after a war is gone, liberating one of the Austrian flanks, which not only allows the Austrian garrison in Slovakia to rest assured, but also facilitates the reinforcements of the German princes to come in. It is simply outrageous!

The Ottomans are extremely stupid! Both the Sultan and the Great Weiqi are extremely stupid! Gao Wengang is already cursing in his heart.

"It can be almost confirmed that I obtained the news through some special channels." The merchant station manager looked at Gao Wengang and said in a certain tone: "They advanced to the 150,000 main force led by Daweiqi. Maybe they directly accepted the remote control command of Sultan Muhammad IV. Daweiqi was not aware of it at the beginning."

Hearing this, Gao Wengang didn't know what to say, and he didn't really think about the ending of this battle.

"Is there any news?" Gao Wengang asked again.

"There is a proof of news, that is, the Ottoman army massacred the city when attacking Pechtolsdorf, a barrier in southern Vienna. It is worth mentioning that the city was slaughtered after surrender, and all surrendered soldiers and city residents were slaughtered. This news spread throughout Austria in a short time, and then began to spread to Poland, Germany, Italy and other places. From then on, the Ottomans marched again

No one surrendered, and they all fought to the death, which caused them serious losses." The merchant station's website said in a helpless tone: "It can be said that the massacre of Pechtolzdorf was a meaningless massacre. After surrender, he also committed abusive killing. What other functions can this be in addition to arousing the will of the Austrians to resist desperately and the disgust of the Christ world? The Ottomans didn't know what they did, and they were all foolish moves along the way, and I couldn't say anything."

"Stupid! Extremely stupid!" Gao Wengang slapped the table suddenly and said angrily. After saying that, he grabbed a cup of warm tea on the table, tilted his neck and drank it all. Then he let out a long sigh and relieved his mood a little.

"And, it's winter now?" Gao Wengang seemed to have suddenly thought of something and asked suddenly.

"It's winter, what's wrong? Special Envoy?" asked the merchant station's website owner a little slow. He had lived in the city all year round and didn't think of anything for a while, so he asked stupidly.

"What's wrong with winter?" Gao Wengang stared and said, "This is Thessalonika, Greece, and winter is of course nothing! But the winter in Germany is still very cold. In the winter, the Ottomans thought that their troubles were not big enough? They were very warm when they were in Hungary and did not intend to go deep into the heart of Austria, but now the plan has been temporarily changed. What should I do? Are there sufficient cold-proof materials? The winter siege without enough cold-proof materials is a disaster in itself."

"What's more, many rivers are frozen in winter and cannot sail, but this freezing is not enough to be kind enough to transport supplies on ice with sleds, so the Ottoman logistics line is destined to become extremely difficult. If my information is correct, when attacking Hungary, the Ottomans did not bring many artillery because the road was not working. Now they temporarily decided to attack Vienna. The number of artillery is probably even smaller? Many unfavorable factors are gathered here. What are the Ottomans doing?" Gao Wengang now feels that they sighed to the sky. The Ottomans' operations over the past year have been too bad, but they are still self-righteous and cannot listen to other people's opinions. Gao Wengang and Malati, the East Coast Ambassador to Istanbul, have made suggestions several times, but they are ignored by others, which is also speechless.

If Gao Wengang had a little luck in the Ottoman attack on Vienna before, now after listening to the report of the Thessalonika merchant station, he even got rid of the last bit of luck. In his opinion, the Ottomans had three disadvantages in this battle, one was that they sent troops in a hurry and were not prepared enough; the second was that they massacred the city for no reason, which aroused the opponent's desire to fight to the death; the third was that the weather was unfavorable and transportation was difficult. With these three disadvantages, even if they had the advantage of their troops, facing the Austrians who had a strong city and a good geographical position, they would probably not have a high chance of victory, which would be very troublesome!

"Why did Sultan Muhammad go to Sofia? This is the end of their combat readiness highway, right?" Gao Wengang suddenly thought of this again and sneered for a moment: "Our country sent technical engineers to guide them to build the highway from Istanbul to Adrianburg, and then extended all the way through Plovdiv to Sofia. What happened? I almost didn't get the project payment back, and it was arrears for several years before I got it. Later, my father asked them whether they would continue to build the combat readiness highway from Sofia to Belgrade, but those idiots were still expensive and were reluctant to build it. Now they are all stupid? If there is a high-level combat readiness highway from Istanbul to Budapest, the Ottoman war will become much easier. Unfortunately, there is no regret selling medicine in the world. The Ottomans gave up this opportunity and could only swallow the bitter fruits themselves."

"Forget it, it will be useless to scold you here. I need to meet Sultan Muhammad. The faster the better. You will contact me in a while. He is our old friend and should help. It is too late to go to Istanbul now, not to mention that the bureaucrats there may not be able to contact Sultan himself as soon as possible. Compared to the fact that it is faster from Thessalonika," said Gao Wengang: "I hope to contact them before things get bad. Well, by the way, the intelligence collection work cannot be left behind. Now the front line has been fighting for a while, and it is impossible for no intelligence to be transmitted back. Don't be afraid of spending money at this time. I will give you 10,000 Dukats, and you can spend money hard to collect intelligence as quickly as possible."

"It's much easier to do if you have money." The station manager smiled and said, "I'll do these things now."

The next few days were spent in crazy intelligence collection and analysis. Under the magic of money, Gao Wengang quickly learned more useful information. For example, the Habsburg royal family and officials in Vienna had retreated to the inland hinterland, leaving only 15,000 to 20,000 defenders to defend the city. The defenders' artillery may have "hundreds", and most of them were heavy artillery placed on the top of the city, and the number was several times greater than that of the Ottomans; for example, Charles V, the Duke of Lorraine.

The Austrian field group, which led 30,000 elite troops, left the capital Vienna from the beginning and retreated to Linz, an important city west of Vienna. On the one hand, it gathered local defenders, and on the other hand, it was also spy on the Ottoman army besieging Vienna. For example, reinforcements from the German states emerged one after another, and the Ottomans had to divide their troops to stop the aid, which further reduced the siege of the siege, which made Vienna still unable to capture for a long time without losing more than 10,000 combat troops.

With all this, even though Gao Wengang didn't understand military affairs, he could see that the Austrians used the strong city as their shield, tried their best to delay, consumed the troops, materials and spirit of the main Ottoman army, and waited for the assembly of their main forces and the gathering of reinforcements from the Christ world. This strategy was actually very successful. Vienna is now an empty city, and the Habsburg royal family and most of the nobles and wealthy merchants have moved to other regions. The role of this city is to act as a flesh-and-blood grinder to destroy the strength of the Ottomans. Even if it was finally captured by the Ottomans, it was nothing. The Ottomans would definitely have suffered heavy casualties and almost nothing useful.

At that time, the Austrians themselves had almost assembled tens of thousands of elite main forces, and tens of thousands of reinforcements from Germany, Italy and Poland also arrived. These were all new forces, which were very different from the Ottoman army, which was exhausted and suffered heavy casualties for a long battle. If the two sides launched a decisive battle at that time, what would the Ottomans have the chance of winning?

On December 22, 1683, news finally came about that Ottoman Sultan: Sultan Mohammed IV had led some guards to Belgrade, and it was not convenient for anyone to meet. This news made Gao Wengang furious, but there was no way.
Chapter completed!