Unlearned History: The Battle Of Vienna
It is the 15th of October, 1529. A peasant farmer from a town outside of Vienna is standing on top of a damaged fortress wall. Down below, the army of nearly 100,000 Ottomans and their vassals is breaking camp under harassing fire from archers and crossbowman along the tops of the damaged ramparts.
The snow and sleet falling onto the retreating troops has limited the amount of arquebus fire from the defenders of Vienna, and the cannon the farmer has been assigned to doesn’t even have fire at it right now. He won’t be doing any killing today.
He is familiar with Vienna, but has learned the city better in the last month than he even knew it from his season trips into market and his occasional mass at Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. The city now with torn up roads, damaged buildings and gaps in the walls stands broken but defiant.
Two major assaults in the past four days have killed many of the city’s noble defenders. Thousands of the pikemen are dead or wounded, and word amongst the men is that Count Nicholas, the fearless elderly leader of the German mercenaries has been taken off the lines with some form of injury.
While no one is resting easy yet, it appears that, for now, the Ottomans are leaving. Having conquered most of the Christian lands to the southeast, they won’t be far and are likely to return someday. As the weather intensifies, he says a little prayer of thanks for the miracle October snow that seems to have ensured the Ottoman departure, and asks God that if the Ottomans do return, that it be long after his time on this earth has passed.
It is July 14th, 1683. One of 15,000 defenders under Count Starhemberg stares out into the fields around Vienna as more than 100,000 Ottoman attackers surround the city.
Thousands of soldiers had recently departed along with the the Emperor and most of the Austrian nobility. They knew this was coming. The peace of the last 20 years between The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans has been quickly unraveling. Everyone knew the Ottomans were coming to finish the job they couldn’t more than 150 years earlier.
The emperor has fled with the promise to return at the head of a massive army of Poles, Lithuanians, Germans and others that are supposedly already in route.
Hopefully they get here soon, because the attackers may have the defenders outnumbered by nearly 10 to 1. There is no telling how long the city can hold.
It is September 8th, 1683. The situation inside Vienna has gotten desperate. The defenders are exhausted, but rumors are spreading that soldiers have been shot for falling asleep on duty.
The Ottomans have been digging tunnels under the city and have successfully breached a portion of the external fortifications known as a ravelin. The demoralized defenders expect a full breach any day. The fighting is expected to be intense as the life or death struggle to hold the inner city begins soon.
Thinking about the reputation of the Ottomans for how they deal with conquered cities sends a chill down the spine of the remaining soldiers in the city. The emperor is rumored to be close with a relieving force from Poland and other allies, but there isn’t much time to spare.
Tens of thousands of Ottomans have been killed by the Vienna defenders, but they still outnumber the forces in the city several times over. If there is a breach, it will be a bloody fight to the death for all inside.
It is September 12th, 1683. A defender of Vienna has been fighting since early this morning. Around 4am the long-awaited relief force finally attacked the Ottomans encamped around the city. As the sun rose and illuminated the battlefield, it became clear that a majority of the Ottoman forces were dispatched to defend against the relieving army. Those that are returning from that fight are not doing so in good order. Some of the Ottoman vassal forces appear to be retreating from the city altogether.
A group of elite Janissaries had remained behind intending to storm the city before the defenders could be rescued, but their plan had included 10 large explosions in mines under the walls and the defenders discovered and diffused those mines, thwarting the planned attack. For now, the Janissaries were bombarding the city with their field guns.
As evening approaches, cheers start breaking out from the Christian armies both inside and outside the city. The great warrior King John of Poland emerges from the woods with thousands of Winged Hussars and begins to assemble for a charge into the enemy camp.
As this is going on, the Ottomans are attempting to regroup for some nature of a counter attack, but more than 3,000 heavy calvary began a progressively faster charge toward the Ottoman lines. A great and terrifying buzzing sound emerges from the wings of the Hussars as they approach the enemy at top speed.
The Ottomans don’t have time to form solid battle lines and are absolutely crushed by the magnificent Hussars. As the defenders watch and cheer from the ramparts, the Ottomans flee the field in a panic leaving behind most of their baggage. It is a complete rout.
The city of Vienna, it would seem, is saved.
For hundreds of years the Ottomans were a virtually unstoppable force, destroying and subjugating Christian kingdoms in Europe with impunity. After the second failed siege of Vienna, the Ottomans began a period of noteworthy decline as they would soon lose many of their holdings in Eastern Europe.
The decline would accelerate the coming centuries with the Ottoman Turk empire being officially dissolved in the fallout of World War II. But it all started 339 years ago on this date, September 12th, 1683.
