Abstract Within twenty years of the Austro‐Ottoman Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718, when the Ottomans had relinquished the important city of Belgrade to Vienna, much of the Danubian territory then ceded was recovered in the 1739 TreatyofBelgrade. Russia, allied with Austria, was the instigator of the war in April 1736, forcing her coalition partner to follow suit in 1737. In the three years of campaigning along the Danube River, the Austrians were indecisive and disorganized, while the Ottomans, equally unprepared, showed unusual sustaining power. Russia's aims were as much about expansion into Ukraine and the Crimea as they were about cooperating with Austria, setting off alarm bells in Vienna.