Battle of Vienna

Background

In 1683 the Ottoman Empire launched a major campaign against the Habsburg lands, part of the long Ottoman Wars in Europe. The Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa Pasha, had the backing of Sultan Mehmed IV and an alliance with the Hungarian rebel leader Imre Thököly. His army gathered at Belgrade in the spring and marched up the Danube. Estimates of its size range from about 90,000 to more than 150,000 men, including many non-combatants and allied troops such as the Crimean Tatars. Emperor Leopold I left Vienna on 7 July. The siege began on 14 July. The city's commander, Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, had around 11,000 soldiers and about 5,000 armed citizens and volunteers. The Ottomans had little heavy siege artillery, so they relied on trenches and mines dug under the bastions. Through August and early September the defenders beat off assault after assault, but disease, casualties and the mines wore them down. By early September parts of the walls near the Burg bastion were breached, and the city was close to falling. Poland had signed an alliance with the Emperor in March, and Jan III Sobieski marched south with his army. The relief forces met near Tulln on the Danube in early September.

The Battle

The relief army numbered roughly 65,000 to 80,000 men: Imperial troops under Charles of Lorraine, contingents from Saxony, Bavaria and other German states, and the Polish army, with Sobieski in overall command. On 11 September it climbed through the Vienna Woods to the Kahlenberg and nearby heights overlooking the Ottoman camp. Kara Mustafa had not fortified the hills, and he kept many of his best troops in the siege lines. Fighting began at dawn on 12 September on the Christian left, near the Danube, where Imperial and Saxon infantry pushed down through vineyards and villages such as Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt. The Polish army on the right had to struggle through steep, wooded ground and did not reach the open plain until early afternoon. An early probe by Polish cavalry was driven back. Late in the afternoon Sobieski launched a massed charge of Polish and Imperial cavalry, often estimated at around 18,000 horsemen and often called one of the largest cavalry charges in history, with the Polish hussars in the front. It broke the Ottoman line. Starhemberg's garrison came out of the city to join in, and by evening the Ottoman army was fleeing and its camp was taken.

Weapons

The Polish charge was led by the Winged Hussars, armed with the Winged Hussar Lance, the Polish Szabla and pistols like the Wheellock Pistol. The Imperial and German infantry carried the Matchlock Musket, supported by blocks of pikemen with the Pike. The Ottoman infantry core was the Janissaries, armed with the Janissary Tüfek. Ottoman cavalry and the Tatars fought with the Ottoman Composite Bow and the Ottoman Kilij. Both sides used field artillery.

Aftermath

Ottoman losses in the battle are usually estimated at about 10,000 to 15,000 killed, with many more captured, while the relief army lost a few thousand. The vast Ottoman camp, with its tents, guns, supplies and treasure, fell to the victors. Sobieski is said to have written to the Pope, "We came, we saw, God conquered." Kara Mustafa retreated to Belgrade, where he was executed on the sultan's orders on 25 December 1683. In 1684 the Emperor, Poland and Venice formed the Holy League, and in the Great Turkish War that followed, the Ottomans lost Buda in 1686 and were defeated at Mohács in 1687 and Zenta in 1697. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 gave most of Hungary and Transylvania to the Habsburgs.