Floro historico de la guerre movida…
Floro historico de la guerra movida por el sultan de los turcos Mehemet IV… y floro historico, o sucessos de la liga sagrada contra Turcos [followed by] secunda parte, que contiene los sucessos de los años 1684 y 1685…
The first part appeared in Barcelona in 1684, the same year as the Madrid edition published by Bernardo de Villadiego. Presented as a translation from Italian into Castilian, it was expanded by Francisco Fabro Bremundán with an account of events following the relief of Vienna. The second part, published in 1686, continues the narrative of military operations conducted during 1684 and 1685.
The work opens with the Ottoman offensive of 1683. Under the reign of Mehmed IV, the grand vizier Kara Mustafa led a considerable army into the heart of Habsburg territory and laid siege to Vienna. The imperial capital, on the verge of collapse, was finally relieved on 12 September by imperial and Polish forces commanded notably by Charles of Lorraine and King John III Sobieski. This victory, immediately celebrated throughout Christian Europe, marked the beginning of a long decline of Ottoman power in Central Europe.
Floro histórico stands, in effect, halfway between a gazette and a history book. The narrative retains something of the urgency of news reporting: dispatches, military reports, troop lists, descriptions of sieges and accounts of victories follow one another almost at the pace of the operations themselves. The work thus serves a double purpose: it informs the Spanish reader about a war followed anxiously throughout Europe, while also celebrating the resistance of Christendom and the renewed power of the Habsburgs. The military events are presented as episodes of a providential confrontation between the Empire and the Ottoman Porte.
The success of the undertaking led Fabro Bremundán to continue it with several further parts devoted to subsequent campaigns. The present set, printed in Barcelona in 1684 and 1686, contains the first two installments of this chronicle, from the siege of Vienna to the operations of the Holy League in 1685.
Palau, 86152 (for the Madrid edition).
A good copy, with wide margins.