Siege of Vienna
An Ottoman army of some 150,000 besieged Vienna in July 1683 and was destroyed outside it in September. The campaign was the grand vizier Kara Mustafa's, and its object was the city rather than the province — a prize no Ottoman commander had taken, Suleiman having failed in 1529. The emperor Leopold left for Passau with the court, and Vienna was held by about 15,000 men under Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg behind fortifications that had been modernised and were still incomplete. The Ottomans did not have heavy siege guns in quantity and mined instead, digging saps towards the walls and blowing breaches; the defenders countermined, and the fighting went on underground for two months. By early September the garrison was down to a few thousand effective men, the ravelin was lost, and a breach was open. The relief was assembled by papal money and by a treaty between Leopold and Jan Sobieski of Poland. Some 70,000 to 80,000 Poles, Saxons, Bavarians and imperial troops came over the Kahlenberg hills north-west of the city on 12 September, ground the Ottoman commanders had failed to secure. The battle ran all day and ended with what is usually described as the largest cavalry charge in history — several thousand horse including Polish winged hussars — down the slope into the Ottoman camp. Kara Mustafa was strangled at Belgrade in December on the sultan's order. The Ottomans lost Hungary over the following sixteen years. Sobieski's despatch to the pope adapted Caesar: he came, he saw, God conquered. The croissant and the Viennese coffee house are both traditionally traced to the siege, and neither story survives examination.
- Year: 1683 CE
- Category: Military
