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 – 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related military & conflict events
- First Ottoman Siege of Vienna27 September – 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 Coast1724–1727
- Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and shatters Mughal powerMarch 1739
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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