Battle of Vienna
The Siege and Battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 1683 after the city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire, led by the Habsburg monarchy, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both under the command of Polish King John III Sobieski, against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states.
The battle was won by the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, marking the beginning of their military cooperation against the Ottomans.
Some historians maintain that the battle marked a turning point in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, a 300-year struggle between the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. The battle marked the culmination of 150 years of bitter military tension following the failed 1529 siege of Vienna. The Ottomans would gain no further ground in Europe and never again challenge Vienna. In the ensuing war that lasted until 1699, the Holy Roman Empire consolidated territorial gains resulting in most of Ottoman Hungary being ceded to Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.
The Viennese garrison was led by the General of the Artillery of the Holy Roman Imperial Army Count Starhemberg, an Austrian subject of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. The overall command was held by the senior leader, the King of Poland, John III Sobieski, who led the relief forces. The Lithuanian army was delayed, and only reached Vienna after it had been relieved. The forces of the Ottoman Empire and its vassal states were commanded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha.
The Ottoman army numbered approximately 90,000 to 300,000 men, and according to the documents on the order of battle found in Kara Mustafa's tent, initial strength at the start of the campaign was 170,000 men. They began the siege on 14 July 1683. The battle is noted for including the largest known cavalry charge in history.
Prelude
Capturing the city of Vienna had long been a strategic aspiration of the Ottoman Empire, due to the control the city had over the Danube and the overland trade routes to Germany and the Eastern Mediterranean. During the years preceding the siege, the Ottoman Empire, under the auspices of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, undertook extensive logistical preparations, including the repair and establishment of roads and bridges leading into the Holy Roman Empire and its logistical centers, as well as the forwarding of ammunition, cannon, and other resources from all over the Empire to these centers and into the Balkans. The Siege of Szigetvár in 1566 blocked the advance of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent towards Vienna and stopped the Ottoman advance towards Vienna that year. Vienna was not threatened again until 1683. In 1679 plague had been raging in Vienna.On the political front, the Ottoman Empire had been providing military assistance to the Hungarians and non-Catholic minorities in Habsburg-occupied portions of Hungary. There, in the years preceding the siege, widespread unrest had grown into open rebellion against Leopold I's pursuit of Counter-Reformation principles and his desire to suppress Protestantism. In 1681, Protestants and other anti-Habsburg Kuruc forces, led by Imre Thököly, were reinforced with a significant military contingent from the Ottomans, who recognized Thököly as King of "Upper Hungary". This support included explicitly promising the "Kingdom of Vienna" to the Hungarians if it fell into Ottoman hands. Yet before the siege, a state of peace had existed for 20 years between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Peace of Vasvár.
In 1681 and 1682, clashes between the forces of Imre Thököly and the Holy Roman Empire intensified, and the incursions of Habsburg forces into central Hungary provided the crucial argument of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha in convincing Sultan Mehmed IV and his Divan to allow the movement of the Ottoman army. Mehmed IV authorized Mustafa Pasha to operate as far as Győr and Komárom Castles, both in northwestern Hungary, and to besiege them. The Ottoman army was mobilized on 21 January 1682 and war was declared on 6 August 1682.
Logistically, it would have been risky or impossible to launch an invasion in August or September 1682, since a three-month campaign would have taken the Ottomans to Vienna just as winter set in. But the 15-month gap between mobilization and the launch of a full-scale invasion provided ample time for Vienna to prepare its defense and for Leopold to assemble troops from the Holy Roman Empire and form an alliance with Poland, Venice and Pope Innocent XI. The defensive alliance of the Holy Roman Empire with Poland was concluded in the 1683 Treaty of Warsaw, by which Leopold promised to support John III Sobieski if the Ottomans attacked Kraków, and in return, the Polish army would come to the relief of Vienna if it were attacked.
On 31 March, another declarationsent by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha on behalf of Mehmed IVarrived at the Imperial Court in Vienna. The next day the forward march of Ottoman army elements began from Edirne in Rumelia. Ottoman troops reached Belgrade by early May. They were joined by a Transylvanian army under Prince Mihaly Apafi and a Hungarian force under Imre Thököly; they laid siege to Győr and the remaining army of 150,000 moved toward the city of Vienna. About 40,000 Crimean Tatar troops arrived east of Vienna on 7 July, twice as many as the Imperial troops in the area. Emperor Leopold fled Vienna for Passau with his court and 60,000 Viennese, while Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, withdrew his force of 20,000 towards Linz. The main Ottoman army arrived at Vienna on 14 July; the city's only defense force was now that of Count Starhemberg's 15,000 men. Saxon engineer Georg Rimpler, who had been employed by the empire to prepare for war with the Turks, began to prepare Vienna for the upcoming siege – much of Austria's pre-war plans had calculated on fighting the Turks near the city of Győr, a plan made untenable by the Turkish advance.
The King of Poland, John III Sobieski, prepared a relief expedition to Vienna during the summer of 1683, honoring his obligations to the treaty, and would depart from Kraków on 15 August. During this time most of Poland would be largely undefended, and taking advantage of the situation, Imre Thököly would attempt an invasion. Kazimierz Jan Sapieha delayed the march of the Lithuanian army, campaigning in the Hungarian Highlands instead, and arrived in Vienna only after it had been relieved.
Immediately, tensions rose between Poland and the various German states – especially Austria – over the relief of the city. Payment of troops' wages and supplies while marching would be the predominant issue. Sobieski insisted that he should not have to pay for his march to Vienna, since it was by his efforts that the city had been saved; nor could the Viennese neglect the other German troops who had marched. The Habsburg leadership found as much money as possible to pay for these and arranged deals with the Polish to limit their costs.
Events during the siege
The main Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna on 14 July. On the same day, Kara Mustafa sent the traditional demand that the city surrender to the Ottoman Empire. Starhemberg, leader of the remaining 15,000 troops and 8,700 volunteers with 370 cannons, refused to capitulate. Only days before, he had received news of the mass slaughter at Perchtoldsdorf, a town south of Vienna, where the citizens had handed over the keys of the city after having been given a similar choice but were killed anyway. Siege operations started on 17 July.The Viennese had demolished many of the houses around the city walls and cleared the debris, leaving an empty plain that would expose the Ottomans to defensive fire if they tried to rush into the city. In response to this Kara Mustafa Pasha would order his forces to dig long lines of trenches directly toward the city, to help protect them from the defenders as they advanced.
The Ottomans had 130 field guns and 19 medium-caliber cannon, compared to the defenders' 370. Mining tunnels were dug under the city walls, which would then be filled with sufficient quantities of black powder to demolish the walls. According to Andrew Wheatcroft, the outer palisade was around 150 years old and mostly rotten. To counter this, the defenders set to work knocking very large tree trunks into the ground to surround the walls. This disrupted the Ottoman plan of a quick siege, adding almost another three weeks to the time it would take to get past the old palisade. This, combined with the delay in advancing their army after declaring war, eventually allowed a relief force to arrive in September. Some historians have speculated that Kara Mustafa wanted to take the city intact with its riches and declined an all-out attack, not wishing to initiate the plundering that would accompany an assault, which was viewed as the right of conquering soldiers.
The Ottoman siege cut virtually all means of food supply into Vienna. Fatigue became so common that Starhemberg ordered any soldier found asleep on watch to be shot. Increasingly desperate, the forces holding Vienna were on the verge of defeat when, in August, Imperial forces under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, defeated Thököly at Bisamberg, northwest of Vienna.
On 6 September, the Poles under Sobieski crossed the Danube northwest of Vienna at Tulln, to unite with imperial troops and the additional forces from Saxony, Bavaria, Brandenburg-Prussia, Baden and other imperial estates. Louis XIV of France declined to help his Habsburg rival, having just annexed Alsace. The Zaporozhian Cossacks led by Semyon Paliy joined the relief force. There was around 5,000 Cossacks.
An alliance between Sobieski and Emperor Leopold I resulted in the addition of the Polish hussars to the existing allied army. The command of the European allied forces was assigned to the Polish king, renowned for his extensive experience in leading campaigns against the Ottoman army. Notably, he achieved a decisive victory over the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Khotyn and now commanded an army of 70,000–80,000 soldiers, countering a supposed Ottoman force of 150,000. Sobieski's courage and aptitude for command were already known in Europe.
During early September, approximately 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers had repeatedly demolished large portions of the walls between the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion and the Burg ravelin, creating gaps of about in width. In response to this, the Viennese began digging their own tunnels to intercept the placing of large amounts of gunpowder in the caverns. The Ottomans finally managed to occupy the Burg ravelin and the low wall nearby on 8 September. Anticipating a breach in the city walls, the remaining Viennese prepared to fight in the inner city.