Jan Sobieski and the Relief of Vienna
A relief army came over the Kahlenberg above Vienna on 12 September 1683 and broke the Ottoman siege in an afternoon. Kara Mustafa Pasha had brought well over a hundred thousand men to the city in July, in the most ambitious Ottoman campaign since Suleiman had failed there in 1529. He chose to mine and starve it rather than storm it, on the reasoning that a city taken by assault belonged to the troops and one that surrendered belonged to the sultan. Vienna was held by about 15,000 under Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, and by early September the mines had brought the walls close to collapse and the garrison was down to a few thousand fit men. The relief was assembled by Pope Innocent XI's diplomacy and money: imperial troops under Charles of Lorraine, contingents from Saxony, Bavaria and Franconia, and a Polish army under King Jan III Sobieski, who took overall command. They crossed the Danube and came down through the Vienna Woods, which the Ottomans had not fortified. The infantry fought down the slopes through the afternoon. At about five o'clock Sobieski led some 18,000 cavalry, including 3,000 Polish winged hussars, in what is generally called the largest cavalry charge in history, straight into the Ottoman camp. The army broke and abandoned its tents, guns and the Grand Vizier's treasury. Kara Mustafa was strangled at Belgrade that December. The Habsburgs took Hungary within sixteen years, and the Ottoman advance into Europe was over. Sobieski wrote to his wife that he had come, seen, and God had conquered.
- Year: 1683 CE
- Category: Military
