Second Siege of Vienna and the turn of the Ottoman tide
- Date
- 12 September 1683
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Vienna (Habsburg Austria)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
In July 1683 the Ottoman grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha laid siege to Vienna with a great army, hoping to seize the Habsburg capital and open Central Europe to Ottoman power. The city held out for two months under desperate conditions.
On 12 September a relief army led by King John III Sobieski of Poland, alongside Habsburg and German forces, attacked the Ottoman camp from the heights of the Kahlenberg. A massed charge of Polish winged hussars, one of the largest cavalry charges in history, broke the Ottoman lines and routed the besiegers. Kara Mustafa was later executed on the sultan's orders. The defeat marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman expansion in Europe: it triggered the formation of the Holy League and the long Great Turkish War, which ended in 1699 with the Treaty of Karlowitz and the loss of Hungary and much Ottoman territory, shifting the balance of power decisively toward the Habsburgs.
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Empires active in 12 September 1683
- Mughal Empire1526 CE to 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE to 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE to 1976 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE to 1974 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE to 1922 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE to 1912 CE
Related military & conflict events
- First Ottoman Siege of Vienna27 September to 15 October 1529
- Fall of Beijing and the Ming-Qing transition1644
- Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War23 May 1618
- Oman captures Fort Jesus and seizes the Swahili coast13 December 1698
- Dahomey conquers Allada and Whydah on the Slave Coast1724 to 1727
- Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and shatters Mughal powerMarch 1739
Essential reading
- Battle of Feyiase and the rise of the Asante Empire1701
- Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang1755 to 1759
- Founding of the Bank of Amsterdam (Wisselbank)31 January 1609
- Shah Abbas I and the golden age of Safavid Isfahan1598 (capital moved to Isfahan)
Further reading
The wider story
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.
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