# The Desperate Stand That Saved Europe: Siege of Vienna 1683

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** HistoryMarche
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5UV3EsQmk
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/40437

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

It is May 13th 1683, and in the lush sun dappled fields by the Sava River, just outside historic Belgrade, a monumental army of the Ottoman Empire is forming up and marching in parade order. The object of the day’s maneuvers is the symbolic bestowal of power on the Sultan’s Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, and both Sultan Mehmed IV and his sons are on hand to pass the totems of authority to their servant – handing him the ultimate control of life or death. Ten days later, this behemoth force marches north, with nothing short of Vienna, the capital of the Ottomans’ greatest rival the Hapsburg Empire, as its secret objective. Marching on roads newly restored to carry the weight of tens of thousands of men as well as massive cannon, the columns take hours to pass the few villagers who have remained to watch their procession. Meanwhile, in the grand halls of the Hofburg, the court of the Emperor Leopold I veers between denial and hurried toing and froing to assess the strength of Vienna’s defenses. Exhausted by its long wars with France and bereft of a general of genius since the death of Montecuccoli, the Habsburgs can count on an army of fewer than 18,000 cavalry and just over 40,000 infantry. Worse, these forces are stretched across the vast domains of the empire, and to denude the western border with Louis XIV’s France of its garrisons would be to invite ultimate disaster. The recent plague in the city has compounded this emergency and Vienna also lacks fresh recruits to draw on to defend its dilapidated and almost derelict walls. With the renegade Hungarian Protestant forces of Imre Thokoly running rampant in one direction, there is news from farther east that Tatars from the Crimea are also bearing down on the city in numbers too large to count. As if that were not enough, the Transylvanians under Prince Mihaly Apafi have now joined the stalking Ottoman horde, making for a force that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, or so they are saying in the streets of Vienna. Leopold’s only military ally outside the Holy Roman Empire is Jan Sobieski of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, no friend of Protestant, Tatar, or Turk, but Sobieski’s empire is also beset by raids and vulnerabilities and there is no guarantee he can make a meaningful contribution to the war effort. For the Holy Roman Empire, inheritor of the bulwark of Christendom since the fall of Byzantium to the same Ottomans 200 years before, the end appears to be at hand.

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

At Stuhlweissenbeg, or as the Hungarians call it, Székesfehérvár, on the 25th of June, Kara Mustafa reveals his grand plan to his shocked high command. Though his generals are motivated and eager for war, the serasker’s revelation that their army will move straight on Vienna comes as an unwelcome shock. Military convention demands that they reduce the chain of fortresses protecting the enemy border, or else their supply lines will suffer and their rear be subject to ambush and assault, but the Grand Vizier is adamant. He will put Gyor and Komarom to siege, but a direct run and overwhelming attack on the center of the Holy Roman Empire’s power will break any resistance and the border garrisons will submit afterward as a fait accompli. The commanders – including the governor of Damascus Abaza Siyavuş Pasha - tell Kara Mustafa that they are there to follow his orders. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the Ottoman host mean that progress is slow. Hundreds of thousands of men and camp followers move across the country like a languid but deadly anaconda. Kara Mustafa delays the march further by dispatching a missive to the Sultan confirming his plan, but after a week he still has not received a reply. The Tatar forces are much faster moving, and on the orders of their leader Murad Kirey Khan they swing around the commander of the Imperial field army, Duke Charles of Lorraine, at the fortress of Gyor and move into the vicinity of Vienna in an orgy of looting and burning. Charles – whose bodyguard includes a slightly built but precocious nineteen year old prince from the Duchy of Savoy named Eugene – pulls back from Gyor on sighting the main Ottoman army on the hills behind and engages the Tatars at Petronell, slapping them away in a sharp exchange but nevertheless unable to pin down and destroy the light mounted force. The Tatars simply ride on and continue their depredations on the countryside in anticipation of the Grand Vizier’s arrival. Charles gives his report to the court and though the Emperor has also doubted that Kara Mustafa would move against Vienna without first taking the border fortresses, there is no time for hesitation. The Imperial chief engineer Georg Rimpler sets to work with a massive labor force on preparing the city for the coming hurricane. On first glance, the task of guarding the city with a garrison that is a fraction of the size of the well supplied invading army would appear so formidable as to be almost impossible, but Rimpler is experienced enough to understand the approach the Ottomans must take when they arrive the gates of Vienna. The Danube and Wein Rivers will render assaults from the east and north non-viable, thus he can concentrate his efforts on the south and west of the walls. In spite of their neglect in recent years, the defenses begun centuries earlier with the proceeds from the ransom of Richard the Lionheart are still a daunting prospect. Standing fully 200 feet tall in some places – according to some reports – they are also layered in depth and constructed in a star formation so as to allow a clean line of fire for the defenders on the triangular ravelins to engage any attacking force. Rimpler augments this by modifying the walls so that cannon can be placed at strategic points and used to either fire long range or shoot into massed ranks of oncoming janissaries. Beyond this main wall, there is a second defensive line known as a faussebraye, and this overlooks the deep ditch and moat, which will be a serious impediment to any oncoming enemy. On the far side of the ditch, there is yet another raised firing line, known as the covered way, which will be the first perimeter of defence along with the ravelins for the men posted behind its parapets, but will also receive significant cover from

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

the artillery on the main bastions and outworks behind them again. By the 7th July, the dust cloud that the Ottoman horde are kicking up to heaven in the dry summer weather is fully visible from the high ground on the eastern side of Vienna and Leopold withdraws from the city, bringing his young family with him and making for Passau. Tens of thousands of Viennese leave with him, slowing the emperor’s progress almost to a standstill, but not inhibiting his strong determination to fight on for his realm. Count Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg is left in command of the city’s defense, and he faces the enemy with perhaps fewer than 15,000 men, for Charles of Lorraine will also shortly depart the city to maintain the emperor’s strategy of keeping a mobile field army in play for future action. The departure of so many citizens from Vienna would have lessened the pressures on supplies for an imminent siege, but the city is soon swamped by a flood of refugees from the outlying hinterland and the regions beyond. Their accounts of rapine, violence, and burning of property and crops are horrendous. Starhemberg, Charles, and Rimpler spend the next week working hard on the defenses, building on Rimpler’s earlier preparations and also bringing in as many supplies and stores of water as possible. They also make the decision to burn down the suburbs to the south of the city over two days, hoping to create a wide open killing ground over which no invader will be able to hide. In the event, not all the buildings are completely destroyed, many skeletal walls are still standing which will provide cover to the enemy, but the arrangements are complete. The Ottomans announce their arrival on the 13th of July with an attack by the vanguard on the hamlet of St Ulrich, where they spare neither man, woman, nor child, at least until a detachment of Croats serving with the city’s defenders put them to flight. Word reaches Starhemberg that the people of Perchtoldsdorf and similar settlements have not been so lucky. By the 14th, Kara Mustafa’s main force arrives and begins to dig its artillery emplacements on higher ground just at the point where the wall and the Hofburg palace are located. The Grand Viziers headquarters are placed at Ottakring, while the greater part of the besieging host is placed in the outlying villages of Rossau, Hundstrom, Gumpendorf, Heiligenstadt, and St Marx. Kara Mustafa and his generals smile in satisfaction to themselves as they study the crescent shape of their host on the map. It is an omen of success, no doubt. Lorraine departs to the north of the Danube, leaving only 12,000 regulars in the city along with a few thousand volunteer militia, and on the same day, Starhemberg rejects the demand to renounce his faith and surrender the city, and so the bombardments begins. The Ottomans have constructed their own trenches and raised parapets and they use these to concentrate their fire on the area around the Hofburg, while the rest of the city is surrounded and sealed off. Habsburg forces fire back with their own cannon and sharpshooter musketeers, and they even launch some night time sorties, though these have less than successful results. The Ottomans dig their trenches close the wall, and the earth displaced by these works is then used as a firing placement, from which they enjoy a height advantage over the defenders in some places. In contrast to the legendary Ottoman guns that reduced the walls of Constantinople in 1453, the 17th century technology of the Sultan’s artillery has fallen behind that of the western Europeans and over the course of the next ten days, the defenders are pushed hard by Ottoman pressure and initial infantry attacks, but in spite of the size the enemy host, they do not feel in imminent danger of overwhelment. This is helped by their stockpile of fully 80,000 hand grenades which they liberally fling at any approaching janissary. This stability changes on the evening of the 23rd of July when a mine laid in a tunnel dug under the outer defenses of the city explodes and causes

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

casualties and some damage to the works. Two days later another mine goes off in the vicinity of the Lobel Bastion. In the aftermath, Ottoman forces rush forward on the surface to take advantage of the damage and disorder, and the Imperials fight them away with losses. The siege now settles into a relentless and terrifying grind over the next four weeks, with the Ottomans constantly digging under the Viennese defenses using sappers and then placing powerful explosives to bring down the walls and earthworks above. Meanwhile, the Viennese build their own tunnels to undermine and fight the invaders in vicious hand to hand struggles in the dark of the subterranean vaults. Along with the now growing threat of an Ottoman breakthrough, food and fuel shortages begin to bite, and the specter of disease rears its head. Meanwhile, the Emperor Leopold has not been idle at his Passau bolthole. With no help at hand from his enemy Louis XIV and the French in fact encouraging the Ottomans to attack and conquer Vienna, Leopold turns to his friends and those with a vested interest in seeing the Holy Roman Empire remain out of the Sultan’s hands. From Spain, his Habsburg cousins send money, and in Rome, Pope Innocent XI contributes even further, calling on the Catholic states of Europe to fight for the city in the great Holy League. Saxony, Bavaria, Prussia, Swabia, Franconia, and Baden all heed the call and over the course of the next weeks the Imperial army begins to grow into a substantial force, which when combined will number close to 50,000 men. With this growing army, Charles of Lorraine keeps a position north of Vienna at Jedlesee, and at the close of July, he is able to lead a successful attack on the mixed Hungarian and Ottoman host of Imre Thokoly who is attempting to take Pressburg – modern Bratislava – and so lead a flanking attack on the Imperial field army. Even after this victory, Charles is still waiting on some German forces such as the Saxons to arrive in their full complement, as well as the Polish-Lithuanian army, which he has been told will be a prodigious legion of squadrons and infantry but will not arrive until at least September. Thus, Charles must hold position for a torturous period, mustering his power so that he can dislodge the mighty Ottoman army, but not leaving it so long that the garrison and defenses of Vienna break and the capital falls. Conditions in the city continue to decline. The Ottoman concentration of assault on the Lowel Bastion, Burg Ravelin, and the Burg Bastion has yielded results. After a breakthrough at the Burg sector, the Ottoman guns are brought right up to the walls through their extensive network of trenches, while at the same time, the 5,000 sappers digging tunnels beneath the walls constantly explode mines and collapse foundations. Viennese tunnelers continue their attempts to thwart them in the underground battle, even keeping boiling kettles of oil and water on hand to throw at the enemy in the dark. Though the janissaries have stormed their path to taking the covered way by the first week of August, all is not perfect in the Grand Vizier’s camp. The marauding and murder committed by their Tatar and Hungarian allies has left the local regions as blackened, depopulated wastelands, and there are no supplies to be had anywhere. Kara Mustafa is forced to rely on the stores kept at Offn, in modern Budapest, to feed his companies and the snaking supply lines inevitably bring shortages and declines in morale. By the 8th of August, however, the janissaries are past the moat via tunnels and directly below the city walls, using yet more underground mines to level the ravelins and waiting for an over ground assault to be successful. The Viennese fight back with night time sorties, rushed repair work, and hand grenades by the score. On the 15th August, an attack in force by the janissaries on the ditch moat

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

initiates a savage counter attack and there is a pitched battle before the city walls. The desperate defenders manage to push away the attackers with significant losses. More valuable for the defenders is that the rout allows them to burn or destroy any of the Ottoman works in the vicinity, a work of sabotage that stalls the Grand Vizier’s progress for almost a fortnight. This is a fortuitous deliverance for the defenders for in the days preceding this action, bloody flux has broken out in the city and its virulent spread and ghastly effect on its victims decimates their dwindling numbers still further. Limited actions of strike and counter strike continue in this interregnum, but morale continues to decline on the Ottoman side also. As the duration of the siege passes 40 days, many of the janissaries – who are no longer the unswervingly loyal force that swept all before them in the empire’s heyday – begin to dissent and loss enthusiasm for the endless wave attacks on the unmovable defenders. When the final week of August brings with it torrential early autumn rains, there seems to be a signal change with the seasons. Both Starhemberg and Kara Mustafa must bring all of their abilities and authority to bear in keeping their armies intact for what will soon be the final reckoning. By the opening of September, with Starhemburg now frantically building barriers behind the city walls for what he sees are their inevitable capture, the Grand Vizier is willing his companies to clamber over the corpses of their fallen brothers to take the city for which they have expended so much of their blood. By the close of that first week of autumn, the janissaries have made good on their commander’s demands, forcing the Viennese to withdraw from the ravelin before the Palace and Lobel Bastions, and then concentrating their attacks on the walls there. Huge mine explosions weaken the city walls, and counter attacks from the city cause damage but cannot turn back the tide. Parts of the main walls start to collapse and widening breaches open that Starhemberg attempts to plug with men, obstacles, improvised barriers in the streets themselves. In the second week of September, the Ottomans shift the intense focus to the Lobel Bastion, working to inflict such damage on it that the wall linking to the Palace outwork simply crumbles away. All seems to be lost for Vienna when on the night of the 8th of September, the rockets that the garrison have been nightly firing from the city are suddenly answered by a corresponding projectile from the high ground of the Vienna forests, the Wienerwald. The relief army has arrived. Keeping his word, Sobieski finally made his appearance ahead of an almost entirely Polish force on the 31st August, and he and Charles of Lorraine meet and it is agreed that the king will take command of the allied host. When it finally comes together at Tulln, reinforced with the Saxons, the Royal Army, as well as perhaps 5,000 Cossacks, the army of the Holy League is more than 80,000 strong, of which almost 40,000 is cavalry, an unheard of number. Even the armies of ancient Rome never came close to such a force. Crossing the Danube by the 7th of September, it is an advance company of 600 cavalry that lights the fires on the Wienerwald ridge to tell their comrades in the city that they have come to join the battle. Over the next days, the army deploys over the Wienerwald and on September the 11th when the commanders look down over the vast, uncountable Ottoman tents, pavilions, camels, horses, and oxen, as well as the swirling companies of Tatars amidst the farms, villages, hedgerows, walls, and vineyards, circling like angry hornets, they see anew the enormity of the battle ahead. Vienna appears as a hamlet brought up from the midst of hell; smoke, fire, rubble, and chaos engulf it. It is decided that the offensive will be launched the next day. Charles of Lorraine will command the left wing with Imperial infantry

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

and Saxons under the Elector Johan George, while the Bavarian and Franconian infantry will man the center under the command of George Frederick of Waldeck. The right wing consists of more Bavarian, Franconian, and Imperial cavalry under Julius Francis of Saxe-Lauenburg. The Elector Maximilian of Bavaria is also present in person. On the plain before Vienna, the Grand Vizier and his command are also in hurried consultation. It is decided that the janissaries will be kept in position to maintain the attack on the city, as the faussebraye has been stormed and close to a dozen mines are placed and primed to explode the next day. At the same time, five dozen cannon are taken from the line and put into position facing the Wienerwald and up to 60,000 men are deployed in hastily constructed defensive lines and positions. 20,000 Ottoman cavalry – an immense force in itself – is included in this host. Over 5,000 of these form a forward defense group under Kara Mehmed of Diyarbekir, while Abaza Sari Hussein takes the line between St Ulrich and the Wien River. The largest grouping of units, perhaps close to 20,000 men, is granted to Ibrahim Pasha who is given the responsibility to contain the attacks on both flanks by the approaching Holy League army. Kara Mustafa himself will stay in his headquarters to coordinate the two front battle, and it is worthwhile to wonder whether the Grand Vizier now regrets not fortifying the high ground of the Wienerwald and the Kahlenburg Mountain. It is the Ottomans who launch proceedings at four o’clock on the morning of the twelfth, but this limited sortie is flicked away, only for a more concentrated offensive to begin an hour later around Nussberg. The Imperial gun emplacements are still being put in place, but Charles sets his left wing on their march forward and after a consultation with Sobieski it is agreed that there will be a general advance. Sobieski leaves Charles to attend mass. The majority of the early fighting centers around Nussberg and Nussdorf, though there are clashes right across the line, with back and forth running battles using musket, sword, and pistol a constant. The Poles are once more late in arriving as the terrain on their approach to the outside right wing is far more inhospitable than that of their allies. Bit by bit, however, the Imperials bring their strength to bear and once their artillery is in position by about ten o’clock, they have had the better of the morning. When Charles calls a halt to the advance at this time, the Ottomans spring a general offensive across the Imperial line, but this is beaten back and the advance to relieve the city continues. The Ottomans are yet determined and they launch another thrust from Schreiberbach and the Nesselbach, which is fended off with more difficulty by the Imperials. By now, they are fighting in the midst of Nussdorf. All along the line, cannon and infantry work together to blast and clear the Ottoman positions. At twelve o’clock, the Imperial forward positions stretch in a line from Sievering to Grinzing and on to Heiligenstadt. It is about this moment that the Poles arrive on the field. Contrary to stories that will emerge in later years, their entrance to the battle does not result in a sudden Ottoman implosion. Instead, Sobieski and his men must fight in the same manner as the Imperials and the German allies against a staunch and dangerous enemy, first taking the Schafberg, then the Heuberg, and then taking control of the Mariabrunn against a counter attack. A majority of units from Ibahaim Pasha’s contingent are moved out wide from the center in front of the Ottoman camp to contain the Polish, and they come close to drawing them into a snare by launching an attack and then feigning retreat, but the Polish cavalry withdraws and German infantry from the Heuberg section provides them with a screen to regroup.

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 33:00) [30:00]

When Sachsen-Launenberg launches diversionary attacks from his section on the right side of the Ottoman left, it is enough to allow Sobieski’s forces to press forward once more and they power into Gallitzenberg. With all of the heights now in their hands, Charles of Lorraine sees the moment of opportunity. The Ottoman center has been shorn of troops by Kara Mustafa’s transfer of men to confront the Poles, and so the Habsburg commander orders a lightning assault on the Ottoman camp. Cavalry and infantry rush forward in squares with the remaining defenders doing their best to stand their ground. Further on, the Bavarians and Franconians move on the Turkenshanz. The noise and screams of battle resound across the battlefield, and Sobieski picks up on the prevailing atmosphere and orders his cavalry to charge in support of the attack on the camp. “Jezus and Maria, retuj! ” they cry out as they speed forward with lances raised towards the enemy. Fighting together, this assault of the Holy League forms the largest cavalry charge in all history – tens of thousands of men and horses hurtling toward the battered and misaligned units of the Ottoman army, like an unstoppable ocean of pitch rolling down the hill as one Ottoman officer will later describe it. Imperials and Polish infantry – already fighting the extraordinary looking Oriental army of the Sultan – halt their advance to view the sight that no man on earth has viewed before or since. In spite of a final brave counter against the units of Polish general Stanislaus Jablonowski, the Ottoman lines collapse and the majority of its troops start to flee their positions to avoid certain death. Kara Mustafa, seeing that his camp is in imminent danger of falling, leads a party to secure the Holy Banner and then orders the withdrawal of the janissary units still attempting to breach the Vienna wall. With the warriors of the Holy League advancing, he makes a courageous stand, fighting with sword in hand, and many of his party lose their lives before his attendants almost forcibly move him to safety. Within minutes, Sobieski – his face and armor streaked with blood and dirt - is standing in the splendor of the Vizier’s tent. Vienna is saved – the Holy League has triumphed – and the Sultan’s army, so resplendent and majestic at outset of the march from Belgrade, is in tatters, its campaign turned to an utter debacle. History has shifted once more, and in a rare occurrence, perhaps all who hear the news of the rescue of Vienna can feel it. Europe has entered a new age, and there is much to be done to fully grasp it. For Vienna, a golden age looms… For Kara Mustafa, there is nothing but a silk rope and the honorable death demanded by his former rank and title...