Battle of Vienna (1683): Sobieski and the Ottoman Defeat

The Battle of Vienna on 12 September 1683 ended a two-month Ottoman siege of the Habsburg capital. An allied relief army led by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland descended from the Kahlenberg heights and routed the army of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha. The victory marked the high-water mark of Ottoman expansion in Central Europe and opened sixteen years of war in which the Habsburgs recovered Hungary.

Background: the road to Vienna

The Ottomans had besieged Vienna once before, in the Siege of Vienna of 1529 under Suleiman the Magnificent, without success. In the following century the border between the two empires ran through Hungary, which was divided into Habsburg, Ottoman and Transylvanian parts.

The Koprulu grand viziers had restored Ottoman strength after 1656. When Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, a son-in-law of the family, became grand vizier in 1676, he sought prestige in a major war. The Peace of Vasvar of 1664 was due to expire in 1684.

An opportunity came from Hungary. The Protestant noble Imre Thokoly led a rebellion of Kuruc fighters against Habsburg rule and accepted Ottoman protection; in 1682 the sultan recognised him as king of Upper Hungary. Emperor Leopold I, also worried about Louis XIV of France, sought peace, but the Ottomans declared war.

The alliance against the Ottomans

Leopold looked for allies. Encouraged by Pope Innocent XI, he concluded an alliance with Poland on 31 March 1683, under which each would help the other if its capital was threatened. Sobieski, elected king in 1674, had his own experience of Ottoman wars, including a victory at Khotyn in 1673.

German princes also promised troops, notably the elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel, and the elector of Saxony, John George III. The papacy contributed money, and the Capuchin friar Marco d’Aviano acted as a spiritual adviser to the commanders. Louis XIV stayed out of the conflict.

The siege

Sultan Mehmed IV led the army as far as Belgrade, then left command to Kara Mustafa. The Ottoman army that marched on Vienna, including Crimean Tatars and other auxiliaries, is variously estimated at roughly 90,000 to 150,000 men, with many non-combatants following.

Leopold and his court left Vienna on 7 July for Linz and then Passau. The city was defended by a garrison under Count Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg of about 11,000-16,000 regular troops, supported by several thousand armed citizens, students and guildsmen. The mayor, Johann Andreas von Liebenberg, organised the civilian effort until his death during the siege.

The Ottomans encircled the city on 14 July 1683. Kara Mustafa chose a methodical siege rather than an all-out assault, probably hoping to capture the city intact and its treasures with it. Ottoman engineers dug trenches toward the walls and exploded mines under the Burg and Lowel bastions. By early September the defenders had suffered heavy losses and dysentery, and parts of the fortifications had been breached.

Meanwhile Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, with a small imperial field army, held the Danube crossings and kept contact with the outside world. Messengers slipped through the Ottoman lines to report how desperate the city’s position was.

Inside the walls, the defenders fought a grinding war underground and on the ramparts. Austrian miners dug counter-mines to find and destroy Ottoman tunnels, and the garrison made sorties to wreck siege works. Food grew scarce and prices soared, while disease killed many soldiers and civilians. Outside, Ottoman and Tatar raiders ravaged the countryside of Lower Austria, burning villages and carrying off thousands of captives.

The relief forces gathered north-west of Vienna in early September and crossed the Danube at Tulln. Estimates of their total size usually range from about 65,000 to 80,000 men. The Polish contingent numbered roughly 20,000-27,000; the rest were imperial troops under Lorraine and soldiers from Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia and Swabia. As the only crowned head present, Sobieski held supreme command.

The army then marched through the wooded hills of the Vienna Woods to the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg, overlooking the Ottoman lines. Kara Mustafa had not seriously fortified his rear, and the Tatar horsemen who might have harassed the approach did little to stop it.

The battle of 12 September

Fighting began early on 12 September, when imperial and Saxon troops on the left wing, near the Danube, advanced down the slopes through vineyards and villages such as Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt. The Germans in the centre followed. The broken terrain slowed progress, but by midday the Ottoman forces were being pushed back.

The Polish army on the right wing, after a difficult march through the hills, reached open ground in the afternoon. Late in the day Sobieski launched a massed cavalry charge, with Polish winged hussars in front and imperial and German cavalry alongside, perhaps 18,000-20,000 horsemen in all. It broke the Ottoman lines.

The Ottoman army collapsed and fled, abandoning its camp, artillery and enormous stores. Kara Mustafa escaped with the army’s banner and treasury. By evening the siege was over, and on 13 September the allied commanders entered the city.

The spoils were enormous. Sobieski took Kara Mustafa’s own tent and many of its contents, and wrote to his wife, Marie Casimire, describing the riches of the camp. Captured tents, weapons, banners and saddles were carried off as trophies; many are still displayed in museums in Krakow, Vienna, Dresden and Karlsruhe. The victors also faced a grim task in the ruined suburbs, where, according to contemporary reports, many captives had been killed before the Ottoman retreat.

Relations among the allies quickly soured. Leopold returned to Vienna on 14 September and met Sobieski outside the city the next day; the emperor’s cool reception of the Polish king, who had saved his capital, was widely remarked on.

Estimates of losses vary. The Ottomans may have lost around 10,000-15,000 dead in the battle, besides the heavy casualties of the siege; the allies probably lost several thousand.

Key people

• Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696), king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania, commander-in-chief of the relief army. In a letter after the battle he is traditionally credited with the phrase “Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit” (We came, we saw, God conquered).
• Kara Mustafa Pasha (c. 1634-1683), Ottoman grand vizier, whose decision to besiege Vienna ended in his execution.
• Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg (1638-1701), commander of the Vienna garrison.
• Charles V of Lorraine (1643-1690), commander of the imperial army and later conqueror of Buda.
• Leopold I (1640-1705), Holy Roman Emperor, who returned to the city after the victory.

The young Prince Eugene of Savoy also fought in the relief army, at the start of a career that would make him the empire’s most famous general.

Timeline

• 1683, 31 March: Alliance between Leopold I and Poland is concluded.
• 1683, 7 July: Leopold I and the court leave Vienna.
• 1683, 14 July: The Ottoman army encircles Vienna.
• 1683, early September: Ottoman mines breach parts of the defences.
• 1683, 12 September: Relief army defeats the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna.
• 1683, 9 October: Allies defeat an Ottoman force at Parkany (Sturovo).
• 1683, 25 December: Kara Mustafa is executed in Belgrade.
• 1684, 5 March: The Holy League is formed.

Consequences

Vienna did not end the war; it widened it. In March 1684, with the pope’s encouragement, the emperor, Poland and Venice formed the Holy League, which Russia joined in 1686. The resulting Great Turkish War saw the recapture of Buda in 1686 and the conquest of most of Hungary.

The war ended with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, the first major Ottoman territorial loss in Europe. Within the Ottoman Empire, the defeat brought political turmoil, including the deposition of Mehmed IV in 1687.

Hungary was the main beneficiary in territorial terms, though not without cost. The Habsburg reconquest replaced Ottoman rule with Habsburg rule, and many Hungarian Protestants and supporters of Thokoly saw this as a new kind of domination. The frontier regions, devastated by decades of war, were later resettled with colonists from across the Habsburg lands and the Empire.

Myths and facts

Several popular stories are attached to 1683. The claim that the croissant was invented to celebrate the victory is a legend: crescent-shaped kipferl pastries were known earlier, and the French croissant is a nineteenth-century product.

The story that Vienna’s first coffee house was opened by Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a messenger during the siege, using coffee left behind by the Ottomans, is also doubtful. Records show that the first licence to serve coffee in Vienna was granted in 1685 to an Armenian, Johannes Diodato.

Legacy

The victory became a powerful symbol, especially in Poland and Austria. Pope Innocent XI extended the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, kept on 12 September, to the whole Catholic Church in thanksgiving. A church on the Kahlenberg commemorates Sobieski, and many Viennese monuments recall the siege.

The anniversary was celebrated with special force in 1883, at the bicentenary, and the memory of 1683 has been used in many ways since, from Habsburg and Polish patriotism to modern political rhetoric about Europe and Islam. Historians caution against reading the battle as a simple clash of civilisations: Catholic France stayed aloof, Protestant Hungarian rebels sided with the sultan, and the Ottoman army itself included many Christian subjects and vassals.

Historians today stress that the Ottoman Empire remained a major power long after 1683. But the battle marked the end of Ottoman expansion into Central Europe and the start of a long Habsburg advance down the Danube.

Why it matters

The Battle of Vienna decided that the Habsburg capital would not fall and that Hungary would return to Habsburg rule. It reshaped the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe for the next two centuries.