The Battle of Vienna: The Ride of Jan Sobieski

Part 2

Early on the morning of September 12, 1683 Polish, Hapsburg, Saxon, Bavarian and Franconian infantry and cavalry, accompanied by Jan Sobieski on horseback, advanced downhill through the slopes and ravines to confront the Turkish army on the plains of Vienna.  The attackers were outnumbered by the Ottoman army but that army had lost the qualitative edge it had held over the Europeans in the 1400s and early 1500s.(Sobieski)

A century before, the series of very capable Ottoman sultans ended with the death of Suleiman the Magnificent (his immediate successor was known as Selim the Sot) and a stalemate ensued in the Balkans.  From the Hapsburg perspective their greatest foes and threats were the French, not the Turks, and in the early 17th century the dynasty became preoccupied with the Thirty Years War (1618-48), the intra-Christian religious war that convulsed much of western and central Europe. With one brief exception the Hapsburgs and Turks co-existed in peace from 1606 to 1680, the main point of contention being Transylvania and the remnant of Hungary (now governed by the Hapsburgs), ruled by Protestant princes, who were often allied with the Turks in opposition to the Catholic Hapsburgs.  While the Balkan front remained stable the Turks gained territory around the Black Sea where they occupied much of what is now southern Russia, The Ukraine and the Polish province of Podolia.(Ottoman Empire at its peak)

The result was that while there was growing internal stagnation and decay, the Ottoman Empire appeared still strong to many European observers in the mid-17th century.  Its geographic expanse was enormous, it was prosperous, for the most part internally peaceful and Constantinople with nearly a million inhabitants was the largest city in the world outside China.  For a clear eyed, entertainingly written and sometimes affectionate account of the rise, decay and fall of the empire THC highly recommends Lords of the Horizons by Jason Goodwin (1998) who writes:

"The city's position was the soldered joint which bound the bell of Ottoman Asia to the balloon of Ottoman Europe.  Its barracks housed the only standing army in Europe, the notorious janissaries, whose lives were dedicated to war . . . Just as the army, passing through the countryside, was able to feed and supply itself without reference to the surrounding lands [due to the logistical excellence of the Ottomans], so Constantinople seemed to float free of its immediate environment. . .  Two thousand ships sailed in with foodstuffs each year.  Nothing in Instanbul was left to chance, and so great was the city's appetite that while it was the Venetians, famously, who discerned and pursued the pattern of trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was really the Turks who willed that pattern into being, controlling it by fiat and regulation."

And the prosperity extended beyond the great city and Goodwin goes on to point out:

"Trade was conducted on an imperial scale.  Bertrand de la Brocquiere was in Damascus when a caravan came in from the desert, and it took two nights and three days to settle in.  In Belgrade's shops in the mid-sixteenth century a German visitor found 'everything as in the most advanced cities of Italy and Germany.'"

And while it was a Moslem state and the emperor was considered the Caliph of Islam, it was also, by the standards of the time, relatively tolerant.  Those standards were certainly different from today's and from the more modern view expressed by George Washington in his famous letter to the Tauro Synagogue (see All Possess Alike Liberty of Conscience) but they did allow for a degree of religious freedom for Christians and Jews though in a clearly subservient position to Moslems.  I stress the word "relatively" here so as not to be misunderstood.  Justice in the Empire could be arbitrary, swift and violent, particularly if you were not a Moslem, and the janissaries mentioned in the quote above were obtained by seizing young Christian boys from the Balkans and bringing them to Constantinople to be raised and trained in the art of war.  Each non-Moslem community was organized as a millet and, as Goodwin writes:

"as long as the millet did not come into conflict with Islamic organisation and society, provided it stumped up its taxes and kept the peace, its leaders were left to run their own affairs . . . Shielded from the bullies of the Counter-Reformation, Protestant doctrine spread through Ottoman Hungary: the boy levy, in fact, was never extended to Hungary, and in the Balkans, beyond this single impostion, no efforts were made to convert Christians to Islam."

Compared to Christian Europe racked by the religious wars of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the expulsion of Jews from many communities as well as Moslems from Spain and Portugal, sometimes the Turks did not look so bad and, as one example, many of the Jews expelled from Spain were welcomed as immigrants by the Ottomans.

To understand the origins of the Ottoman campaign of 1683 we need to look at Hungary.  While most of Hungary had been governed by the Ottomans for more than a century a small sliver remained in Hapsburg hands.  However, the Magyar nobles were mostly Protestant and other Magyars were Orthodox Christians in contrast to the Hapsburgs who were fervent Catholics, leading the Magyars to prefer the Turks who they viewed as more tolerant.  A Magyar revolt against the Hapsburgs was supported by the Turks and triggered a train of events leading to the Ottoman (Lighter green is Ottoman Hungary; Light blue Hapsburg Hungary)

decision to campaign against the Hapsburgs.  Leopold I was seen as weak by the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, and there was an(Leopold, 'nuff said)  opportunity for territorial gain and plunder, though it remains uncertain whether Vienna itself was the original target (the Ottomans kept few written records and most of those that still exist are in inaccessible archives in Turkey).

Leopold remained focused on the French threat and left only a small garrison of 11,000 soldiers in Vienna.  He called for support from the German principalities and the kings of Europe.  And one key factor was about to change in the balance of forces.  Poland was an ally of France and had not aided the Hapsburg before against the Turks.  In fact, Poland was supporting the Hungarian rebels against Leopold.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 16th and 17th centuries was unique.  Run by a feudal nobility it had an elective monarchy, resulting in a King with much less power than those with the same title in England, France and Spain and not as strong as the Hapsburg monarch.  At its peak in 1648, it extended beyond modern Poland and Lithuania to included most of what is today Belarus, The Ukraine and Slovakia.  However, that same year saw a massive uprising by the Cossacks in the Ukraine, triggering a chain of events leading to a broader war and attacks from the growing power of Russia.  Poland lost its eastern territories and the Turks saw an opportunity to attack the weakened commonwealth, seizing the province of Podolia in 1672.  Jan Sobieski, who had already achieved some military victories against the Turks, was elected the Polish King in 1674 and continued to try to regain the lost province.  Meanwhile, Leopold I was happy to have the Turks occupied attacking the Poles allowing him to continue his war with the French.

With the start of the Ottoman campaign in 1683, the French lobbied to keep Poland from helping the Hapsburgs, including making large payments to some of the Polish nobility.  Even though Sobieski's wife was French-born he saw the Ottoman threat as a larger one, and in fact, the mystery over the destination of the Ottoman army contributed to the decision as well as the opportunity to recover the lost lands of Poland and eventually the Polish Parliament voted to enter into an alliance with the Hapsburgs which was signed in May 1683.

In July, Sobieski led his army (with one of his most trusted contingents consisting of Muslim Tartars from the Russian steppes) towards Vienna and after uniting with Hapsburg and German troops, crossed the Danube northwest of the city on September 6.

The actions of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa remain a puzzle to military historians.  In his rush to reach Vienna, he left behind the heavy artillery which could have pulverized the city walls.  Once the siege was laid, he resisted launching a general assault which, in the judgement of many, would have likely succeeded.   There's been speculation that he didn't order the assault because the Ottoman custom was that if a city or town was taken by assault the(Kara Mustafa) victorious troops had three days to plunder and loot but it the city surrendered all its wealth would go to the Sultan (with a nice cut for the Grand Vizier).  It is also baffling to figure out why the Turkish camp was not fortified once Mustafa learned the relief army was approaching and why he failed to order outposts set up in the hills surrounding Vienna through which the Poles and others would have to approach.
(From raremaps.com)

Even with these mistakes the siege was a close run thing.  Goodwin describes its climax:

"The outer walls were breached; the inner walls were crumbling  . . . always the eerie, slow, methodical trenching and mining . . . On 4 September, a mine blew a big hole in the inner wall of the city; whole lengths began crumbling.  Belated assaults were launched with increasing ferocity upon these breaches; but overnight the citizens did their best to repair the holes, and fought back with equal ferocity, although the effects of the siege were beginning to tell.  Butcher's meat had run out; vegetables were scare; families sat down to donkey and cat.  The elderly and weak began dying, and disease stalked the unpaved streets."

The attack on September 12 began with an assault by German infantry on the Turkish camp.  After a midday halt, the Polish cavalry and infantry under Sobieski joined the action and the Turks collapsed.  Kara Mustafa fled, collecting as much of the army as he could but it was a rout and much wealth was left in the camp.  It was the worst defeat suffered by the Ottomans since they'd entered Europe in 1354.  On his way back to Constantinople, Mustafa was met by the Sultan's representatives and told he must pay the price for failure as a vizier.  He was strangled with a bowstring and his head sent to the Sultan in a velvet bag.

For the Poles and Jan Sobieski it was the last moment of glory.  Without the Polish army it is doubtful the relief would have succeeded, but soon thereafter Poland was plunged once again into war on many fronts and less than a century after Sobieski's death in 1696 the kingdom no longer existed, partitioned among Prussia, Austria and Russia and erased from the map until 1919.


The defeat of the Turks in 1683 was a turning point.  The Ottomans were never again a threat to attack Europe and it signaled the start of a 230 year retreat.  The Hapsburgs, quickly following up their victory, captured Budapest in 1686 recovering most of the Kingdom of Hungary soon thereafter and their armies reached as far as Belgrade by the end of the century.  Though much of the Balkans did not see the Turks definitively ousted until the 19th and early 20th centuries (see First Balkan War), the rest of Europe began to look west after 1683 and by the 1800s the Empire known as "the sick man of Europe" was kept alive only by the support of Britain and France who saw it as a bulwark against the growing Russian empire and its ambitions in the Balkans and Middle East.  Even the reformist revolt of the "Young Turks" in 1908 could not save the empire and when it sided with the Germans and Austrians in World War One it sealed its fate (a fate shared by its Hapsburg rivals) and the new nation-state of Turkey emerged from the ashes of the Empire after the war.

So, goodnight Vienna and sleep well, Jan Sobieski.