Siege of Vienna
In July 1683, Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led an Ottoman army of approximately 150,000 men to besiege Vienna, the Habsburg capital. The city's garrison of 15,000 defenders under Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg held out for two months while a relief army was assembled. On 12 September 1683, a combined force of approximately 80,000 Holy League troops — Poles, Habsburgs, Bavarians, Saxons, and other German princes — arrived under the overall command of King John III Sobieski of Poland. In the Battle of Vienna, the largest cavalry charge in history, Sobieski's Polish Hussar cavalry swept down from the Kahlenberg hill and shattered the Ottoman army, forcing its retreat. Kara Mustafa was strangled by order of the Sultan on Christmas Day. The Battle of Vienna marked the decisive turning point of Ottoman westward expansion: the Ottomans never again threatened Central Europe, and the subsequent Great Turkish War (1683–1699) ended with the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) transferring Hungary, Transylvania, and Podolia from Ottoman to Habsburg and Polish control. The siege became a founding myth of European Christian identity and of Polish military glory.
- Year: 1683 CE
- Category: Military
