The 1683 Siege of Vienna

Holy League vs Ottoman Turks

Islam's High-Water Mark

Prologue

After the fall of Acre in 1291 the Crusader states in the Holy Land were eliminated. With Israel back under Muslim domination, the armies of jihad began looking west again. The armies of the Ottoman Turks recommenced attacks on the dying Byzantine Empire and seized more of Turkey and Greece. However, the ancient fortress of Constantinople still managed to resist any attack.

That changed in 1453 when the city was attacked by 200,000 Turks. The 8,000 Byzantine defenders held out for weeks through cleverness and sheer guts, but the outcome was inevitable. Using large numbers of heavy cannon, the Turks finally broke through and sacked the city.

With the greatest fortress of the Medieval age taken, there seemed to be nothing to stop the Turkish advance. In the ensuing decades nearly the entire Balkan area was overrun. However, the Turks hit their first snag in 1529 when the armies of Sultan Suliman the Magnificent laid the first siege of Vienna. The 20,000 Austrian defenders managed to defeat several attacks and break the Turks' morale. Suliman retreated and Europe was saved, at least momentarily.

Suliman didn't quit, however. In 1565 he sent a great fleet and 30,000 men to capture the island of Malta, an excellent staging point for an attack on Rome. The badly outnumbered Knights Hospitaller based on Malta managed to hold out until winter forced a Turkish withdrawal. In 1571 a combined Catholic fleet defeated the Turkish navy decisively at Lepanto. With these twin Christian victories the Turks abandoned their plans to attack Rome by sea.

With the overland route now the only road to Rome, it was obvious Vienna would be attacked by the Turks again. However, after Suliman's death a series of weak and incompetent sultans reigned over the Ottoman empire, delaying the attack by over a century. The Austrians used this time well, transforming Vienna into the mightiest fortress of the late Reformation.

In 1681 the Turkish Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, was forced to make peace the the Cossacks after a failed expedition to the Russia steppe. Probably in an attempt to atone for his failure, Mustafa convinced Sultan Mohamed IV to let him command an attack on Austria. In early 1683 an army of 168,000 Turks was assembled and marched on Vienna. Hapsburg Emperor Leopold, his family, and some 60,000 Viennese abandoned the capital, leaving Count Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg and 16,000 men to defend the city against the full might of the Turkish onslaught.

After cutting a bloody swathe through southeast Austria, Mustafa's army reached the gates of Vienna on July 14th. After the formalities of the Muslim offer of surrender and Christian rejection of said offer were over, the siege was on. Over the course of the next two months the battle would devolve into bloody, filthy, screaming hell.

The Siege

Vienna was truly a great fortress. The Danube and Wein rivers defended the north and eastern sides of the city, leaving only the south and western sides open to attack. The Viennese had cleared the ground on those sides, meaning the Turks would have to cross a wide stretch of open plain. That crossing would be made even more dangerous by the numerous cannons in Vienna's many bastions.

Rather than risk a long charge under heavy fire, the Turks began digging a series of trenches towards the walls. This was still very dangerous, as Vienna's cannons and snipers began to fill the trenches with corpses.

Despite Vienna's mighty defenses, however, the Turks continued to inch closer and closer to the city. Although Mustafa lacked the cannon-power necessary to demolish the city walls, his gunners were still able to cause a great deal of damage by firing into the city.

As critical as the war on the surface was, just as important was the war underground. Since the Turks lacked enough siege guns to destroy Vienna's walls, Mustafa brought along 5,000 Ottoman sappers, known to be the finest in the world. The sappers' job was to dig under the city walls and explode hundreds of pounds of gunpowder under critical points. The Turks exploded 40 mines under the walls of Vienna, each destroyed a vital spot in the walls and brought the trenches closer. The Austrians counter-dug. They managed to defuse one mine and also detonated their own mines under the Turkish trenches.

Above ground the fighting was fierce beyond imagination. As the trenches creeped closer and closer, Mustafa launched more and more assaults on the crumbling defenses of Vienna. Count Starhemberg and his men beat back fifty attacks over the course of the two months. As water and food ran low and garbage and the dead piled up, disease and sickness swept through the city. By September 11th, 75% of the defenders of Vienna were dead, wounded, or sick. Count Starhemberg was down to only 4,000 men and those left were exhausted. The walls were one mine away from being breached. At midnight, September 12th, the Viennese shot off their last signal rocket. It was a desperate plea to the relief force they had heard was on the way. If no help came, Vienna was down to it's last twenty-four hours.

Help WAS on the way. Emperor Leopold had called upon all his allies in the Holy League for aid, and aid came. An army of more than 60,000 men, composed of Austrians, Germans, and Poles was massing twenty miles northwest of Vienna at the city of Tulln. In command of this mighty Christian force was the devout king John III Sobieski of Poland.

Sobieski marched the Holy League army to Vienna through the Wienerwald, a rugged and mountainous region west of the city. The difficult terrain forced the League to abandon it's heaviest cannons, but it gained Sobieski the element of surprise. Mustafa had assumed that no force of any size could breach the Wienerwald mountains and thus did not defend the Khalenberg Heights just west of Vienna. It was on these heights that the Holy League army appeared at dawn, September 12th. It was just in the nick of time, Mustafa was already finishing the last mine needed to breach the walls of Vienna. If the Christians couldn't dislodge the Turks, Vienna would fall and all of central Europe would be open to Muslim invasion.

The Armies

The Holy League

The army of the Holy League was composed of roughly 30,000 Germans and Austrians along with 30,000 Poles. The infantry from all League nations fought in 'pike-and-shot' formation, with armored pikemen forming a protective box around the musketeers. When the musketeers ran out of ammunition the pikemen would fight it out like an ancient Greek phalanx.

The German/Austrian and Polish cavalry, however, were considerably different. German/Austrian cavalry fought using carousel tactics. Using these tactics horsemen fired pistols in the enemy lines and then fell back to reload. The 14,000 Polish Hussars who formed the core of the army fought more like Medieval knights. They typically charged headlong into enemy formations, although they also frequently used firearms. The Hussars wore plate armor and attached large wings to the back to intimidate their enemies. Years of fighting the Tartars, Russians, and Cossacks on the massive plains of eastern Europe had made the Hussars the the most effective cavalry in the western world.

The Ottoman Turks

The core of the Turkish army was composed of 12,000 Janisseries. These were the sons of Christians taken at an early age and hammered into a super-elite fighting force. The army was their life, as they were forbidden to leave to corp or marry. This formed a suicidally loyal force which would accomplish its mission or die trying. The Ottoman's chief military advantage was the vast numbers of soldiers the Sultan could amass. Aside from the Janisseries, cavalry, and sappers, however, the army was composed of conscripts who lacked significant training and discipline.

The Battle

Despite the appearance of the army of the Holy League at dawn, September 12th, the fate of Vienna was still very much in the balance. Mustafa's sappers were preparing the final mine needed to destroy the walls of the city. At the front lines Starhemberg and his men were fighting off yet another fierce assault. The Viennese moles were digging desperately to find and defuse the Turkish mine. The city was on the very verge of defeat.

The League needed an immediate attack. However, the Polish army had not arrived on the scene. The cavalry-centered Poles had suffered the worst delays in the Weinerwald and would not be able to reach Vienna before noon. Charles of Lorraine, the League's second-in-command, refused to wait and led the 30,000 Austrians and Germans on a dawn attack down the hill and into the Turkish lines. After brushing away the Turks' advance units, the sheer numbers of Turks stalled Charles' attack. As the battle on the northern portion of the plain intensified, the League's infantry lines were compacted to concentrate firepower and prevent the Christians from being overrun. Charles would need the Polish army to have any chance of saving Vienna.

Finally, the Polish forces arrived at around noon and charged the southern Turkish flank. However, disorganization and Turkish cannons forced Sobieski to fall back regroup. With the Poles forced back, the Germans stalled, and the last mine minutes away from detonating, Western Europe appeared doomed.

It was at this instant, by some Divine miracle, the Viennese diggers found and defused Mustafa's mine at last possible moment. When Mustafa discovered his sappers had failed and quick victory was impossible, he ordered a general attack on the relieving army.

However, the night before, Mustafa had kept many of his men in the trenches in the hope of exploiting the expected mine-breach. It would take time to redeploy them, and Sobieski was determined not to give him that time. A second charge of the Polish Hussars shattered the southern flank of the Ottoman army. The Turkish army collapsed and Mustafa had no choice but to retreat from the massacre and save what he could. King John III Sobieski sent this message to Pope Innocent XI, "We came, We saw, and God conquered."

Aftermath

The victory at Vienna was wildly celebrated across Europe. Sobieski and his men welcomed as conquering heroes by the citizens of Vienna. Propaganda and messages were spread across the entire continent praising the bravery and valour of Count Starhemberg and his soldiers. Mustafa was soon executed for his failure and news of that event was spread across Europe as well. Much of this material was sent to France, where short-sighted Louis XIV had stayed out of the fighting in the hope of the defeat of his Germanic rivals.

After Vienna, the Hapsburgs of Austria began taking the offensive in the Balkans. There they won another great victory at the city of Budapest, which had been under Turkish domination for more than 150 years. This battle was even more damaging to the Turkish psyche. Defeat before the walls of Christian city was bad enough, but to lose lands they considered Islamic was the ultimate humiliation.

The humiliation would not stop there. The newly Westernized and modernized nation of Russia was looking to expand and saw the Black Sea region as prime real estate. The armies of Peter the Great took the mighty port/fortress of Azov in 1696 and Russia became the great power on the Black Sea. Over the next 200 years Turkish power would wane until the Sultan controlled only the Holy Land, Syria, and Turkey.

The Austrians came to dominate Central and Southeastern Europe. Their preeminence lasted until the German victory at the Battle of Koniggratz in 1866. This defeat marked the end of Austria's days as THE Central European power, but the they still maintained a close second place until 1918.

In a grand stroke of irony both the Austrian and Turkish empires would collapse during the same war while fighting for the same side. After the victory of the Allies in 1918, the borders of Austria were reduced to their traditional boundaries. The Ottoman Caliphate was disbanded (yet another humiliation for the Islamic world) and a secular Turkish state was established.

The benefits of Islamic defeat have been discussed in earlier posts so they will not be covered in great detail here. It is enough to know that if Vienna had fallen, the Turks would have poured through Europe. This would have radically changed future events and perhaps have ended Western culture. Starhemberg's stubborn defense of Vienna, the skill of the Viennese moles, and Sobieski's superior leadership saved the Western world and marked the beginning of the end for the Turks.

Next Week-Valcour Island: America vs Great Britain.