The failure of the siege of Vienna was only the start of the Great Turkish War, which lasted down to 1699 and resulted in the significant loss of Turkish territory in what is now Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Completely disgraced, the unfortunate Kara Mustafa was strangled in Belgrade on the sultan’s orders late in the same year. Overall, between the siege and the battle, the Turks lost at least 30,000 men and an enormous amount of loot. In the mid-afternoon he led what has been called the largest cavalry charge in European history down the forested side of the Kahlenberg and into the exhausted Ottoman ranks, which promptly fled. Noticing that the Turks had not fortified one side of their position because of the presence of the Kahlenberg mountain, Sobieski managed to get 18,000 cavalry and a number of cannons up the opposite side of the Kahlenberg. After half a day of fighting, Sobieski achieved a notable tactical success. But the Imperial forces intervened, forcing a land battle. He was able to persuade Mehmed IV’s Divan (essentially, the Ottoman Cabinet) to authorize military action, and in August of 1682, the Ottomans declared war on Austria.Īware of the arriving relief army, Mustafa ordered an assault of the city very early on September 12 th (while it was still dark, actually). In 1681, Hungarian Protestants rebelled against the Austrian Emperor Leopold I’s efforts to impose Catholicism throughout Hungary, and Mustafa decided to support the rebellion in the hopes of being able to break Hungary away from Austria and eventually absorb it into the Ottoman state. Initially, the Grand Vizier Köprülü Mehmed proved a successful military leader, defeating Venice, re-affirming Ottoman power over Transylvania after a brief war with Austria, and waging a successful campaign against Poland.īut a later Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, proved less effective in the office. He surrendered a great deal of his political power to his Grand Viziers, inaugurating a gradual decline in the power of the sultan. In the middle of the 18 th century, the reign of Sultan Mehmet IV (1642-93) marked a significant turning point in Ottoman fortunes. This failure brought an end to Ottoman expansion into Europe for 150 years. In 1529, the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna, but was unable to take the city, and heavy snowfall turned the Ottoman withdrawal into a serious disaster. The Ottoman Empire conquered the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and by the early 16 th century the attention of the Ottoman Sultans had turned to expanding up into the Balkans. It reminded me a lot of eggplant after I was done, I thought, “I could have had something else.” So let’s (reluctantly) dig in. It’s notable chiefly for not being especially good or bad, and tackling an important but poorly-known historical event. Renzo Martinelli) is a joint Italian-Polish film about the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.
Day of the Siege: September Eleven, 1683 (aka September Eleven, 1683, 2012, dir.
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