| |  | |  |  |  | |
|
 |
| Battle of Vienna 1683 |
 |
The Battle of Vienna (German:
Schlacht am Kahlenberg, Polish: Bitwa pod Wiedniem or Odsiecz
Wiedeńska, Turkish: İkinci Viyana Kuşatması), Ukrainian: Віденська
відсіч (Viděns'ka Vidsič) took place on September 12, 1683 after
Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The
battle broke the advance of the Ottoman Empire into Europe, and
marked the political hegemony of the Habsburg dynasty in central
Europe.
The large-scale battle was won by Polish-Austrian-German forces led
by King of Poland John III Sobieski against the Ottoman Empire army
commanded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha.
The siege itself began on 14 July 1683, by the Ottoman Empire army
of approximately 138,000 men (although a large number of these
played no part in the battle, as only 50,000 were experienced
soldiers (Turks), and the rest less-motivated supporting troops. The decisive battle took place on 12 September, after the united
relief army of 70,000 men had arrived, pitted against the Ottoman
army.
King John III Sobieski of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had
been made Commander in Chief of |
 |
 |
his own 30,000-man Polish forces (Lithuanians
did not take part in the battle), |
 |
18,500 Austrian troops led by Charles V,
Duke of Lorraine, |
 |
19,000 Franconian, Swabian and Bavarian
troops led by Prince Georg Friedrich of Waldeck, |
 |
9,000 Saxon troops led by John George
III, Elector of Saxony. |
|
 |
| The battle marked the turning point in the 300-year
struggle between the forces of the Central European kingdoms and the
Ottoman Empire. Over the sixteen years following the battle, the
Habsburgs of Austria gradually occupied and dominated southern
Hungary and Transylvania, which had been largely cleared of the
Turkish forces. |
| |
 |
| |
 |
 |
| Battle of Vienna on
September 12, 1683 (Painting: F. Greffels) |
 |
| Prelude |
 |
The capture of the city of Vienna had
long been a strategic aspiration of the Ottoman Empire, due to its
inter-locking control over Danubean (Black Sea-to-Western Europe)
southern Europe, and the overland (Eastern Mediterranean-to-Germany)
trade routes. During the years preceding the second siege (the first one
was in 1529), under the auspices of grand viziers from the influential
Köprülü family, the Ottoman Empire undertook extensive logistical
preparations this time, including the repair and establishment of roads
and bridges leading into Austria and logistical centers, as well as the
forwarding of ammunition, cannon and other resources from all over the
Empire to these logistical centers and into the Balkans.
On the political front, the Ottoman Empire had been providing military
assistance to the Hungarians and to non-Catholic minorities in
Habsburg-occupied portions of Hungary. There, in the years preceding the
siege, widespread unrest had become open rebellion upon Leopold I's
pursuit of Counter-Reformation principles and his desire to crush
Protestantism. In 1681, Protestants and other anti-Habsburg forces, led
by Imre Thököly, were reinforced with a significant force from the
Ottomans, who recognized Imre as King of "Upper Hungary" (eastern
Slovakia and parts of northeastern present-day Hungary, which he had
earlier taken by force of arms from the Habsburgs). This support went so
far as 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 twenty years
between the Habsburgs 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
Habsburgs' military frontier (which was then northern Hungary) forces
intensified, and the incursions of Habsburg forces into Central Hungary
provided the crucial argument of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha in
convincing the Sultan, Mehmet IV and his Divan, to allow the movement of
the Ottoman Army. Mehmet IV authorized Kara Mustafa Pasha to operate as
far as Győr (Turkish: Yanıkkale, German: Raab) and Komarom (Turkish:
Komaron, German: Komorn) castles, both in northwestern Hungary, and to
besiege them. The Ottoman Army was mobilized on January 21, 1682, and
war was declared on August 6, 1682.
The wording of this declaration left no room for doubt what would await
in case of Turkish success. Mehmed IV. wrote to Leopold I verbatim, "Primarily
we order You to await Us in Your residence city of Vienna so that We can
decapitate You... (...) We will exterminate You and all Your followers...
(...) Children and grown-ups will be exposed to the most atrocious
tortures before put to an end in the most ignominious way imaginable..."
The forward march of Ottoman Army elements did not begin until April 1,
1683 from Edirne in Thracia. The logistics of the time meant that it
would have been risky or impossible to launch an invasion in August or
September 1682 (a three month campaign would have got the Turks to
Vienna just as winter set in). However this 15 month gap between
mobilisation and the launch of a full-scale invasion allowed ample time
for the Habsburg forces to prepare their defense and set up alliances
with other Central European rulers, and undoubtedly contributed to the
failure of the campaign.
During the winter, the Habsburgs and Poland concluded a treaty in which
Leopold would support Sobieski if the Turks attacked Kraków; in return,
the Polish Army would come to the relief of Vienna, if attacked.
In the spring, the Ottoman army reached Belgrade by early May, then
moved toward the city of Vienna. About 40,000 Tatar Forces arrived 40km
east of Vienna on 7 July, twice as many as the Austrian forces in that
area. After initial fights, Leopold retreated to Linz with 80,000
inhabitants of Vienna.
The King of Poland prepared a relief expedition to Vienna during the
summer of 1683, honoring his obligations to the treaty. He went so far
as to leave his own nation virtually undefended when departing from
Kraków on 15 August. Sobieski covered this with a stern warning to Imre
Thököly, the leader of Hungary, whom he threatened with destruction if
he tried to take advantage of the situation — which Thököly did. |
 |
 |
|
 |
| |
 |
|
Kara Mustafa Pasha
Painting 1696 |
|
Ernst Rüdiger von
Starhemberg
Painting 1683 |
|
 |
| Events during the siege |
 |
The main Turkish army finally invested
Vienna on July 14. Graf Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, leader of the
remaining 11,000 troops and 5,000 citizens and volunteers, refused to
capitulate.
The Viennese had demolished many of the houses around the city walls and
cleared the debris, leaving an empty plain that would expose the Turks
to defensive fire if they tried to rush the city. Kara Mustafa Pasha
solved that problem by ordering his forces to dig long lines of trenches
directly toward the city, to help protect them from the defenders as
they advanced steadily toward the city.
As their 300 cannon were outdated and the fortifications of Vienna were
up to date, the Turks had a more effective use for their gunpowder:
undermining. Tunnels were dug under the massive city walls to blow them
up with explosives, using sapping mines.
The Ottomans had essentially two options to take the city: the first, an
all-out assault, was virtually guaranteed success since they outnumbered
the defenders almost 20-1. The second was to lay siege to the city, and
this was the option they chose.
This seems against military logic, but assaulting properly defended
fortifications has always resulted in very heavy casualties for the
attackers. A siege was a reasonable course of action to minimise
casualties and capture the city intact, and in fact it nearly succeeded.
What the Ottomans did not take into account however was that time was
not on their side. Their lack of urgency at this point, combined with
the delay in advancing their army after declaring war, eventually
allowed a relief force to arrive. Historians have speculated that Kara
Mustafa wanted to take the city intact for its riches, and declined an
all-out attack in order to prevent the right of plunder which would
accompany such an assault.
The Ottoman siege cut virtually every means of food supply into Vienna,[3]
and the garrison and civilian volunteers suffered extreme casualties.
Fatigue became such a problem that Graf Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg
ordered any soldier found asleep on watch to be shot. Increasingly
desperate, the forces holding Vienna were on their last legs when in
August, Imperial forces under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine beat Imre
Thököly of Hungary at Bisamberg, 5km northeast of Vienna.
On 6 September, the Poles crossed the Danube 30km north west of Vienna
at Tulln, to unite with the Imperial forces and additional troops from
Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, Franconia and Swabia who had answered the call
for a Holy League that was supported by Pope Innocent XI. Only Louis XIV
of France, Habsburg's rival, not only declined to help, but used the
opportunity to attack cities in Alsace and other parts of southern
Germany, as in the Thirty Years' War decades earlier.
During early September, the experienced 5000 Turkish sappers repeatedly
blew up large portions of the walls, the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion
and the Burg ravelin in between, creating gaps of about 12m in width.
The Austrians tried to counter by digging their own tunnels, to
intercept the depositing of large amounts of gunpowder in subterranean
caverns. The Turks finally managed to occupy the Burg ravelin and the
Nieder wall in that area on 8 September. Anticipating a breach in the
city walls, the remaining Austrians prepared to fight in Vienna itself. |
 |
| Staging the battle |
 |
The relief army had to act quickly to
save the city from the Turks and to prevent another long siege in case
they would take it. Despite the international composition and the short
time of only six days, an effective leadership structure was established,
indisputedly centered on the King of Poland and his heavy cavalry. The
motivation was high, as this war was not as usual for the interests of
kings, but for Christian faith. And, unlike the crusades, the
battleground was in the heart of Europe.
Kara Mustafa Pasha, on the other hand, was less effective, despite
having months of time to organize his forces, ensure their motivation
and loyalty, and prepare for the expected relief army attack. He had
entrusted defence of the rear to the Khan of Crimea and his cavalry
force, which numbered about 30,000.
There are serious questions as to how much the Tatar forces participated
in the final battle at Vienna. Their Khan felt humiliated by repeated
snubs by Kara Mustafa and reportedly refused to make a strike against
the Polish relief force as it crossed the mountains, where the heavy
cavalry would have been vulnerable to such an assault from the
lighthorse Tatars. Nor were they the only component of the Ottoman army
to openly defy Mustafa and to refuse assignments.
This left vital bridges undefended and allowed passage of the combined
Habsburg-Polish army, which arrived to relieve the siege. Critics of
this account say that it was Kara Mustafa Pasha, and not the Crimean
Khan, who was held responsible for the failure of the siege. Also, the
Ottomans could not rely on their wallachian and moldavian allies. These
peoples had a significant hatred of the ottomans who were bleeding their
countries dry of all their resources. In the years prior to the siege,
the turks intervened many times to change the princes in these countries,
so as to keep a tight grip on them. Knowing of the turkish plans, the
princes of Moldavia and Wallachia try to warn the Habsburgs. Initially
they tried to stand up to the ottomans and not join the campaign, but
they were pressed-ganged into the joint strike force. There are a great
deal of popular legends about the involvement and comittement of these
principalities in the siege. Almost invariably, these legends describe
the wallachian and moldavian forces loading their cannons with straw
balls,so as to make no impact upon the walls of the besieged city.
The Holy League forces arrived on the "Kahlen Berg" (bare hill) above
Vienna, signaling their arrival with bonfires. In the early morning
hours of 12 September, before the battle, a mass was held for King
Sobieski. |
 |
| The battle |
 |
The battle started before all units were
fully deployed. Early in the morning at 4:00, Turkish forces opened
hostilities to interfere with the Holy League's troop deployment. A move
forward was made by Charles, the Austrian army on the left, and the
German forces in the center.
Mustafa Pasha launched a counter-attack, with most of his force, but
holding back parts of the elite Janissary and Sipahi for the invasion of
the city. The Turkish commanders had intended to take Vienna before
Sobieski arrived, but time ran out. Their sappers had prepared another
large and final detonation under the Löbelbastei, to provide access to
the city. While the Turks hastily finished their work and sealed the
tunnel to make the explosion more effective, the Austrian "moles"
detected the cavern in the afternoon. One of them entered and defused
the load just in time.
At that time, above the "subterranean battlefield", a large battle was
going on, as the Polish infantry had launched a massive assault upon the
Turkish right flank. Instead of focusing on the battle with the relief
army, the Turks tried to force their way into the city, carrying their
crescent flag. |
 |
 |
 |
Battle of Vienna 1683
Painting 1689
© Museum of Military History, Vienna |
 |
After 12 hours of fighting, Sobieski's Polish force held the high ground
on the right. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, after watching the
ongoing infantry battle from the hills for the whole day, four cavalry
groups, one of them Austrian-German, and the other three Polish,
totaling over 20,000 men, charged down the hills. The attack was led by
the Polish king in front of a spearhead of 3000 heavily armed winged
Polish lancer hussars. This charge broke the lines of the Ottomans, who
were tired from the long fight on two sides. In the confusion, the
cavalry headed straight for the Ottoman camps, while the remaining
Vienna garrison sallied out of its defenses and joined in the assault.
The Ottoman army were tired and dispirited following the failure of both
the sapping attempt and the brute force assault of the city, and the
arrival of the cavalry turned the tide of battle against them, sending
them into retreat to the south and east. In less than three hours after
the cavalry attack, the Christian forces had won the battle and saved
Vienna from capture.
After the battle, Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar's famous quote by
saying "veni, vidi, Deus vicit" - "I came, I saw, God conquered" |
 |
| Aftermath |
 |
The Turks lost about 15,000 men in the
fighting, compared to approximately 4,000 for the Habsburg-Polish forces.
Though routed and in full retreat, the Turkish troops had found time to
slaughter all their Austrian prisoners, with the exception of those few
of nobility which they took with them for ransoming.
The loot that fell into the hands of the Holy League troops and the
Viennese was as huge as their relief, as King Sobieski vividly described
in a letter to his wife a few days after the battle: "Ours are treasures
unheard of ... tents, sheep, cattle and no small number of camels ... it
is victory as nobody ever knew of, the enemy now completely ruined,
everything lost for them. They must run for their sheer lives ...
Commander Starhemberg hugged and kissed me and called me his savior." |
 |
 |
 |
| Leopold I, Holy Roman
Emperor, 1683 |
 |
This emotional expression of gratitude did not distract Starhemberg from
ordering the immediate repair of Vienna's severely damaged
fortifications, guarding against a possible Turkish counterstrike.
However, this proved unneccessary. The victory at Vienna set the stage
for Prince Eugene of Savoy's reconquering of Hungary and (temporarily)
some of the Balkan countries within the following years. Austria signed
a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire in 1697.
Long before that, the Turks had disposed of their defeated commander. On
25 December 1683, Kara Mustafa Pasha was executed in Belgrade (in the
approved manner, by strangulation with a silk rope pulled by several men
on each end) by order of the commander of the Janissaries. |
 |
|
|
|
Text source in extracts: |
 |
 |
 |
| WIKIPEDIA - the free
encyclopedia |
| Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia
with more than 100 languages, where everyone can
contribute with their knowledge |
| de.wikipedia.org |
|
|
 |
| further Information about |
| Battle of Vienna 1683 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
| |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
Internet Portal
Betriebsges.m.b.H.
Praterstrasse 33/20
A-1020 Vienna
Tel: +43/01/9580808
Fax: +43/01/9580909
E-Mail: office@citype.com
www.citype.com
FN 200659 m
ATU 50515900 |
 |
|
| |
|
 |
|
|
 |
WIEN-VIENNA.AT associates itself
with a liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan, ecumenical and politically
neutral world view.
Diversity of information and the support of free formation of
opinion for people of every age, every social levels, cultures,
denominations and political orientations are matters of concern for
us.
WIEN-VIENNA.AT is a link and information platform with the aim to
inform about Vienna while at the same time creating a collection of
links from official and private Vienna-related internet pages. We
strive to maximise the density of the presented information about
Vienna. In part, contents of this link and information platform
originate from websites about Vienna. Images and texts where the
author is known are provided with an acknowledgement and a link to
the respective site. In case of breached property rights with
certain images, we kindly ask you to notify us and we will remove
the respective images or excerpts from the platform or we will add
an appropriate acknowledgement of ownership.
 |
|
 |
|
|  |
|