The Siege of Vienna, 1683: the charge that saved Europe

For two months in 1683, the fate of Central Europe hung on the walls of one city. When the relief finally came, it came down a wooded mountain at a gallop, and the Siege of Vienna became the moment the long Ottoman advance into Europe was finally turned back.³

The battle from both sides

Two perspectives

Poland, Holy Roman Empire and German states Ottoman Empire

The relief army came to Vienna to save a city on the point of falling after a two-month Ottoman siege. Under the overall command of the Polish king John III Sobieski, a coalition of Poles, Austrians and German states massed on the Kahlenberg heights above the city. Late in the day Sobieski launched what is often called one of the largest cavalry charges in history, his winged hussars smashing into the Ottoman camp and shattering the besieging army. The victory saved Vienna, marked the high-water mark of Ottoman expansion into Europe, and began the long reconquest that would push the Ottomans out of Hungary.

Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa brought a huge Ottoman army to the gates of Vienna in 1683, aiming to take the Habsburg capital and open central Europe. For two months his sappers mined ever closer to the walls and the city neared collapse. But he failed to seize the Kahlenberg heights or to break off the siege in time when the relief army gathered there. When Sobieski's charge struck the unprepared camp, the exhausted besiegers broke and fled, abandoning their guns and stores. The defeat was a disaster for the empire, cost Kara Mustafa his life, and marked the turning point after which Ottoman power in Europe steadily receded.

Who fought in the relief army, and what did the battle cost?

The army that lifted the siege was made up of Polish, imperial Austrian and German troops, including contingents from Bavaria and Saxony. Venetian troops were not part of it, although the City of Vienna's history wiki notes that the Republic of Venice and the Papal States gave the relief further support. The Republic entered the war only in 1684, when it joined Emperor Leopold I and Poland in the new Holy League founded under Pope Innocent XI. Losses in the battle itself are only estimates. The allies lost roughly 3,500 to 4,500 killed and wounded, while Ottoman dead are usually put at around 10,000 to 15,000, with some estimates higher or lower.⁴

The Ottomans at the gates

A vast Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa reached Vienna on 14 July 1683 and ringed it in. Inside, Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg commanded about 11,000 soldiers, backed by some 5,000 citizens and volunteers. The defenders held an ever smaller perimeter as Ottoman engineers dug beneath the walls and blew breach after breach. By September fighting and dysentery had badly thinned the garrison, and the city was close to collapse.⁵

The relief that almost came too late

An allied relief army of Imperial, German and Polish troops marched to save it, under the overall command of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski. They gathered in the hills above the city, on the wooded heights of the Kahlenberg, and on 12 September began fighting their way down toward the Ottoman camp. Charles of Lorraine, commander of the imperial army, served under Sobieski and led the imperial troops on the left wing, along the Danube toward Nussdorf.⁶

The great charge

Late in the afternoon, with the Ottoman army held along the Danube by the imperial troops and its trenches still pressed against the city, Sobieski launched the blow that made the battle famous: a massive charge by perhaps as many as 20,000 horsemen, led by the Polish winged hussars, which our ranking counts among the largest cavalry charges in history. From the wooded hills where the relief army had formed, they rode down into the Ottoman lines and on to the grand vizier's camp.⁷

At the head of it rode King Jan III Sobieski himself. Perhaps as many as twenty thousand horsemen took part, Polish, German and Austrian together, with the armored winged hussars at the tip, and the charge broke the Ottoman line and swept into the grand vizier's own camp.⁸

The rout

The Ottoman army broke and fled, abandoning its tents, guns and treasure. Sobieski, surveying the captured camp, sent word of the victory with a line echoing Caesar: we came, we saw, God conquered.⁹

The tide turns

Vienna was the high-water mark of Ottoman expansion into Europe. From that autumn the frontier began, slowly, to move the other way, and the Habsburgs pushed south and east over the following decades. A siege that nearly ended in catastrophe became instead a turning point remembered across the continent.¹⁰

The fate of Kara Mustafa

For the man who had brought the empire to disaster, there was no mercy. Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa fled the field and fell back through Hungary, blaming his subordinates for the defeat. It did not save him. On the sultan’s order he was executed at Belgrade on 25 December 1683, strangled with a silk cord, and the failure at Vienna that cost him his life marked the end of the age of Ottoman expansion into central Europe.¹¹

Coffee, croissants and the legends of Vienna

Few battles have gathered as many tasty legends as Vienna. Popular stories claim that the croissant was baked in the shape of the Ottoman crescent to mock the defeated enemy, and that the first Viennese coffeehouse was opened by a hero of the siege with coffee the Ottomans left behind. The City of Vienna’s history wiki treats both as legends. The crescent-shaped Kipferl is recorded in Vienna as early as the 13th century, long before 1683, and the story of its invention after the siege is, in the wiki’s words, historically untenable. The claim that Georg Franz Koltschitzky founded the first coffeehouse after the siege has been disproved; the first license to serve coffee in public went to Johannes Diodato on 17 January 1685. What changed the course of European history was the victory, not the pastries.¹²