Can we talk about the Ottomans, for a hot minute?

Can we talk about the Ottomans, for a hot minute?

Not my favorite empire, they did some pretty evil things, but I'm more or less interested in the conflict the Ottomans had between Hungary and Austria, or more specifically the Habsburg territories. I'm trying to write up a small little primer on the interaction between these three powers, it's just that there REALLY IS so much history that happens in such a short span of time with so many famous people, its nearly impossible to keep track of it all. So I'll narrow my questions down to finer points:

1. What was the Ottoman tribute system?
2. How was this tribute system applied to the Hungarian people after the Ottomans conquered the majority of the kingdom?
3. What did they actually do to all the young boys they abducted/demanded? And the women?
4. Was Hungary effectively depopulated during the wars between the Habsburgs and the Sultan?
5. Were the wars rolling wars in that they never really stopped despite treaty, with the Pannonian plains being used as a sort of DMZ for back and forth fighting?

From what I get out of history books, they make it seem like Hungary was a smoking depopulated hellhole for 150 years until the Holy League started reconquering it all. I'm wondering how much of that is accurate, or if the Ottomans really were shits and spent all their time raping and forcing Islam.

I can answer your third point.
If you with abducted mean the devsirme those young boys were converted to islam and depending on their abilities either became the elite infantry named jannisaries or they became statesmen if they were foud to be intelligent.
If you're talking about the literal abductions done by the barbary pirates and tatars under the ottomans then the women if they were pretty got sent into the harem of the sultan or those of the pashas which also came from the devsirme system or if they weren't that pretty they got bought and became domestic slaves which helped in the household of people wealthy enough to buy them. Construction etc got mostly done by free workers so male slaves at worst could end up in galleys.

The tribute system was pretty much same as the jizya with added devşirme( blood tax) where they collected young boys and girls and beat the inferior christianity out of them,
The boys would be trained as soldiers and added to the elite Janissary corps or members of the government, but they would all be indoctraded into superior Ottoman sunnism.

The hungarian girls, as inferior as they were became harem wenches to be filled with superior turkic semen and maybe one day give birth to a child of superior turkic genetics.

Which empire hasn't done """"evil"""" things.
Since when is killing people considered evil? Especially in war.
The word you're looking for is effective. Atleast the ottomans were effective until the decline.
Same thing can be said about EVERY empire t b q h.

>Since when is killing people considered evil?

Uh... Since forever?

As fucking annoying as you may be, gotta admire the dedication to being a shitstain on the internet with self-made memes and what not.

Do you consider the Roman empire evil? Or the United States? Or the French empire? etc. etc.

Ottomans were "evil" because they just conquered, genocided and subsequently left everything in ruin after they left, meanwhile they didn't contribute anything intellectually. Even Arabs managed to contribute to science in their long-ass history. The Turks conquered the most consistently intellectually active civilization in history and only managed to translate and transfer other people's work instead of producing original discoveries or just to expand on existing work. A few years after their collapse, everyone hates their descendants because of Ottoman influence.

The point is, conquering is normal, killing is normal in history. But that's all the Turks did. Kill other people and cultures and spread Islam. The Romans actually spread Greco-Roman culture and civilization to most of Europe (and by extension Western Civilization). Alexander killed countless people and destroyed a superpower, but he spread hellenic culture to many places that became centres of learning and education. The United States despite its numerous evil actions has contributed to science in ways that have benefited the world immensely. Every empire does "evil" things, it's just that some empires do nothing to balance out the "evil" they cause.

1. 2. As far as I can tell, it basically wasn't very different the one in Christian countries. People had to pay in money and resources, and sometimes perform services to the Ottomans.
Non-muslims paid jizyna tax. Devşirme, or blood tax, meant taking children from Christian subjects, but that wasn't used in Hungary.
There was no established border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, so some places suffered dual taxation, being forced to pay both powers.

3. summed it up well enough.

4. The southern parts of Ottoman-held area (yellow and orange) were hit very hard. The Kingdom of Hungary (green) remained intact demographically.

However, today’s historians do not think that this was the result of Turks being bad rulers. It was the constant wars that devastated the area. Same thing that happened with Germany in the Thirty Years’ War.

5. Skirmishes and raids were constant whether there was offically peace or not. Sometimes people in the opposing garrisons even challenged each other to duels.

The fighting went back and forth indeed, and as I’ve said, the borders were not clearly drawn. However, most of the fighting was sieges. Both sides have built up their own defensive line over the decades, and tried take the forts from the other.

Oops, forgot this.