After the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, in 1571, the Ottoman power in Europe slowly declined. But under the Sultan Mahomet IV the old Moslem ambition for European conquest reawoke, as if for a final effort. And such it proved to be. By the disaster before Vienna, in which John Sobieski, King of Poland, once more saved Europe from their incursions, the Turks were driven back within their own confines, where they have since, for the most part, remained, making many wars, but no successful inroads, upon European powers.
In 1682 the Hungarian magnates, who were resisting the oppression and persecution of their people by the Austrian Government, called upon the Turks for assistance. Listening to the proposals of Tekeli, the Hungarian leader, who had secured the aid of Louis XIV of France, Mahomet IV decided to break the truce he had made with Austria in 1665. In vain the Emperor Leopold I sent an embassy to Constantinople to dissuade the Sultan from his purpose.
Early in the spring of 1683 Sultan Mahomet marched forth from his capital with a large army, which at Belgrad he transferred to the command of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha. Tekeli formed a junction with the Turks at Essek. In vain did Ibrahim, the experienced Pacha of Buda, endeavor to persuade Kara Mustapha first of all to subdue the surrounding country, and to postpone until the following year the attack upon Vienna; his advice was scornfully rejected, and, indeed, the audacity of the Grand Vizier seemed justified by the scant resistance he had met with. He talked of renewing the conquests of Solyman: he assembled, it is said, seven hundred thousand men, one hundred thousand horses, and one thousand two hundred guns—an army more powerful than any the Turks had set on foot since the capture of Constantinople. All of which may be reduced to one hundred fifty thousand barbarian troops without discipline, the last conquering army which the degenerate race of the Osmanlis produced wherewith to invade Hungary.
Hostilities commenced in March, 1683; for the Turks, who had not been accustomed to enter upon a campaign before the summer season, had begun their march that year before the end of winter. Some prompt and easy successes exalted the ambition of Kara Mustapha; and in spite of the contrary advice of Tekeli, Ibrahim Pacha, and several other personages, he determined to besiege Vienna. He accordingly advanced direct upon that capital and encamped under its walls on July 14th. It was just at the moment that Louis XIV had captured Strasburg, and at which his army appeared ready to cross the Rhine: all Europe was in alarm, believing that an agreement existed between France and the Porte for the conquest and dismemberment of Germany. But it was not so. The Turks, without giving France any previous warning, had of themselves made their invasion of Hungary; Louis XIV was delighted at their success, but nevertheless disposed, if it went too far, to check them, in order to play the part of saviour of Christendom.
It was fortunate for the Emperor Leopold that he had upon the frontiers of Poland an ally of indomitable courage in King John Sobieski, and that he found the German princes loyal and prompt on this occasion, contrary to their custom, in sending him succor. Moreover, in Duke Charles of Lorraine he met with a skilful general to lead his army. Consternation and confusion prevailed, however, in Vienna, while the Emperor with his court fled to Linz. Many of the inhabitants followed him; but the rest, when the first moments of terror had passed, prepared for the defence, and the dilatoriness of the Turks, who amused themselves with pillaging the environs and neighboring châteaux, allowed the Duke of Lorraine to throw twelve thousand men as a garrison into the city; then, as he was unable with his slender force to bar the approach of the Turkish army, he kept aloof and waited for the King of Poland.
Leopold solicited succor on all sides, and the Pope made an appeal to the piety of the King of France. Louis XIV, on the contrary, was intriguing throughout Europe in order that the Christian princes should not quit their attitude of repose, and he only offered to the Diet of Ratisbon the aid of his arms on condition that it should recognize the recent usurpations decreed by the famous Chambers of Reunion,[1] and that it should elect his son king of the Romans. He reckoned, if it should accept his offers, to determine the Turks to retreat and to effect a peace which, by bringing the imperial crown into his house, would have been the death-stroke for Austria. All these combinations miscarried through the devotedness of the Poles.
[Footnote 1: The Chambers of Reunion were special courts established in
France by Louis XIV (1680). These courts declared for the annexation to
France of various territories along the eastern frontier.—ED.]
When Leopold supplicated Sobieski to come to his aid, Louis XIV tried to divert him from it; he reassured him upon the projects of the Turks by a letter of the Sultan, he made him see his real enemies in Austria, Brandenburg, and that power of the North, which the Dutch gazettes had begun to call "His Russian Majesty"; he reminded him, in fine, that the house of Austria, saved by the French on the day of St. Gothard, had testified its gratitude to them by allowing the victors to die of hunger and by envenoming their difference with the Porte. But it was all useless; hatred of the infidels prevailed, and the Polish squadrons hurried to the deliverance of Vienna.
Count Rudiger de Starhemberg was made commandant of the city, and showed himself alike bold and energetic in everything that could contribute to its defence. The Turkish camp encircled Vienna and its suburbs, spreading over the country all round to the distance of six leagues. Two days afterward, Kara Mustapha opened the trenches, and his artillery battered the walls in order to make a breach. Great efforts, moreover, were made in digging mines, with the design of blowing up bastions or portions of the wall, so that the city might be carried by assault, wherein the Turks hoped to find an immense booty. But the besieged made an obstinate defence, and repaired during the night the damage done on the previous day. During sixty days forty mines and ten counter-mines were exploded; the Turks delivered eighteen assaults, the besieged made twenty-four sorties. Each inch of ground was only obtained by dint of a hard and long struggle, in which an equal stubbornness both in attack and defence was exhibited.
The hottest fighting took place at the "Label" bastion, around which there was not a foot of ground that had not been steeped in the blood of friend or foe. However, by degrees the Turks gained a few paces; at the end of August they were lodged in the ditches of the city; and on September 4th they sprung a mine under the "Bourg" bastion; one-half of the city was shaken thereby, and a breach was rent in the bastion wide enough for an assault to be delivered, but the enemy was repulsed. Next day the Turks attacked it with renewed courage, but the valor of the besieged baffled the assailants. On September 10th another mine was sprung under the same bastion, and the breach was so wide that a battalion might have entered it abreast. The danger was extreme, for the garrison was exhausted by fighting, sickness, and incessant labor. The Count de Starhemberg despatched courier after courier to the Duke of Lorraine for succor: "There is not a moment to be lost, Monseigneur," he wrote, "not a moment;" and Vienna, exhausted, saw not yet her liberators arrive. At length, on the 14th, when the whole city was in a stupor in the immediate expectation of an attack, a movement was observed in the enemy's camp which announced that succor was at hand. At five o'clock in the afternoon the Christian army was descried surmounting the Hill of Kahlen, and it made its presence known by a salvo of artillery. John Sobieski had arrived at the head of a valiant army. The Electors of Saxony and of Bavaria with many princes, dukes, and margraves of Germany had brought with them fresh troops. Charles of Lorraine might then dare to march against the Moslems, although he had yet only forty-six thousand men.