Many of the attractions the Buda side of present-day Budapest has to offer—the several Turkish baths or the burial monument of Gül baba—testify to the area's hundred and fifty years of Ottoman conquest. Despite the obvious appeal of these relics today, the presence of the Ottomans in Central Europe was the main concern of many royal dynasties, and a thorn in the side of generations of Habsburg rulers.

One of the most prominent figures in the anti-Turkish military campaigns of the 1680s that eventually put an end to the Ottoman rule in Hungary and Southern Europe was a “duc sans duchés,” Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–90), supreme commander of the imperial army and a hero of the 1686 reconquest of Buda. After his claims to Lorraine and Bar were systematically ignored by the French ruler, Charles, just like his father before him, decided to side with the Habsburg emperor instead. His alienation from France was the gain of the Habsburg military, which Charles V joined early in his life, becoming one of its most successful commanders. His diaries from the military campaigns of 1683 to 1689 are an invaluable source, offering a reliable, objective narrative of the events, political commentary, family history, and cultural and geographic information.

The diaries, written in third-person singular, most probably by François Le Bègue, a nobleman from Lorraine and a faithful companion to Charles V, have never been published in their entirety, even though one carefully edited manuscript version in Vienna suggests that serious preparations were made to publish it—a project abandoned for reasons unknown. The various manuscripts, just like the family archives of the Dukes of Lorraine, suffered a fate not unusual for the period when they were transferred from one place to the next until many of them were finally deposited in Vienna.

When Ferenc Tóth gathered the diaries into one volume, with a substantial introduction and an apparatus, he restored these sources to the position they deserve. From his introduction to the life of Charles V, we learn that this cunning strategist escaped the attention of earlier historians interested in, and constructing, national histories because he was unable to reinstall himself in his family's hereditary possessions: he remained a citizen of no-man's-land—neither French nor Austrian.

The diaries describe the military campaigns from 1683 to 1689, year by year, in a strict chronological order, with the help of tables and figures. They focus on the description of military maneuvers and outline the strategic goals, but do not remain immune to the debates in the Hofkriegsrat that accompanied the decision-making process. The diaries take off with the 1683 siege of Vienna—led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, who was supported by the armies of the renegade Hungarian Imre Thököly—an attempt that proved a disaster for the attackers. The following year, 1684, however, marked the unsuccessful siege by the imperial army of Buda, after which new strategic goals were established: instead of starting the campaign with its final objective, they set out first to reconquer the forts and cities in the south of Hungary and then march up north, taking them one by one, weakening the Ottoman line of defense and the morale of their foes. The campaign of 1686 started with a series of successful sieges—Simontornya, Pécs, and Siklós were back in Christian hands—and culminated in the reconquest of Buda, an event that was considered by Charles V himself as one of his major victories and the peak of his career.

That Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, was more than a military man is proven by his authorship of a political testament that offered opinions and suggestions for the Habsburg government. His reforms aimed at the establishment of an army ready to strike, and he understood the relevance of the Hungarian light cavalry, the Hussars. Such an army, he thought, could even take on that of his enemy, the French king Louis XIV. The research of Ferenc Tóth situates the diaries in a wider context, offering many insights into the life and times of their protagonist. It is an excellent reference work and an important source for the anti-Turkish wars of the late seventeenth century.