Mehmed III
Mehmed III was the
sultan of the
Ottoman Empire from
1595 to
1603.
He remains notorious even in Ottoman history for having his sixteen brothers strangled upon his succession. Mehmed was an idle ruler, leaving government to his mother the Sultana Valide. The major event of this reign was the Austro-Ottoman War in Hungary (1596-1605). Mehmed's armies conquered Erlau (1596) and defeated the Habsburg and Transylvanian forces at Mezokeresztes during which the Sultan had to be dissuaded from fleeing the field halfway through the battle. Mehmed's reign saw no major setbacks for the supposedly declining Ottoman Empire, but none of this can be attributed to the ruler himself.