The Great Turkish War was a 15-year-long conflict between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Christian "Holy League" of the Holy Roman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, Venice, and the Spanish Empire. The war was a major defeat for the Turks, who lost substantial territory (for the first time) in Hungary, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans; it was also the first instance of Russia joining an alliance with Western Europe.
Following Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossack uprising in Polish-ruled Ukraine, the Tsardom of Russia conquered parts of eastern Ukraine, while some Cossacks stayed in the southeastern prat of the commonwealth. Their leader Petro Doroshenko sought Ottoman protection against Poland-Lithuania, and the Ottomans invaded Poland-Lithuania in 1672 and seized Podolia. King Jan Sobieski led a fightback that reconquered a third of the lost territory by 1676, when the Poles and Turks made peace. At the same time, a war between the Turks and Russia resulted in stalemate.
The Turks, encouraged by their conquests in Poland, decided to invade the Holy Roman Empire in 1683. The Turks nearly captured the Austrian capital of Vienna before King Jan Sobieski led a Christian alliance that defeated the Turks at the Battle of Vienna, marking the high-water mark of the Ottoman invasion of Christian Europe. Pope Innocent XI established a new "Holy League" of the Holy Roman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, and the Republic of Venice in 1684, joined by Russia in 1686. That same year, the Holy League's forces liberated Buda, which had been under Turkish control since 1541, and the Christians defeated the Turks at the 1687 Battle of Mohacs, the site of Hungary's subjugation to the Turks a century and a half earlier. Meanwhile, the Venetians invaded Greece and captured Nafplion before conquering Patras, the last Ottoman stronghold in the Morea (Peloponnese), in 1687. The Turks were more successful against the Poles, whose Sejm refused to raise taxes and bolster Sobieski's army, and they retained control of Podolia.
The Russian entry into the war in 1686 resulted in the Turks' loss of their key Don River fortress of Azov on the Sea of Azov. In 1697, the Austrians defeated the Turks at the Battle of Zenta, and, in 1699, the League forced the Ottomans to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz. The Turks ceded most of Hungary, Transylvania, and Slavonia, as well as parts of Croatia, to the Habsburgs while returning Podolia to Poland. Most of Dalmatia passed to Venice, along with the Morea, which the Ottomans reconquered in 1715. The defeated Ottomans were forced to adopt a more defensive military policy in the following century.