The Siege of Vienna

The city of Vienna was besieged twice by the armies of the Ottoman Empire: in 1529, by the army of Suleiman the Magnificent, and in 1683, by the army of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha under Sultan Mehmed IV. The two sieges are the most celebrated military operations in the long history of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars, and they are conventionally treated as the high-water mark and the turning point of Ottoman expansion into central Europe. The sieges are treated here in their own right; a general account of Ottoman military and warfare and of Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare provides the wider context.

The strategic context

Vienna, the seat of the Habsburg dynasty and the capital of the Holy Roman Empire’s eastern lands, was the principal Christian stronghold on the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier. The city had been threatened by the Ottomans from the late fourteenth century, and the long Hungarian wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had brought the Ottoman army to the gates of Vienna on several occasions. The fall of Belgrade in 1521 and the victory at Mohács in 1526 had opened the way for the first siege; the long war of 1663-1664 and the revolt of Imre Thököly in 1682-83 had opened the way for the second.

The first siege, 1529

The first siege of Vienna was the climactic operation of the early reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman army, numbering perhaps 80,000 to 100,000 men, with a strong contingent of Janissaries and a substantial artillery train, marched into Austria in the early autumn of 1529. The army was supported by the Tatar cavalry of the Crimean khan, and the army of John Zápolya, the rival Hungarian king supported by the Ottomans. The Habsburg garrison, under the command of the Austrian general Count Niklas Graf Salm, numbered perhaps 17,000 men, of whom only some 5,000 were regular soldiers.

The Ottoman army arrived before the walls of Vienna on 27 September 1529 and began the siege. The assault was marked by the heavy bombardment of the walls, by a series of mining operations, and by a number of massed assaults on the gates and the breaches. The defence was tenacious, and the garrison, supported by the burghers of the city, held the walls for nearly three weeks. The arrival of the Hungarian relief force under Count Niklas Salm — the same commander who was leading the defence — and the worsening weather forced Suleiman to lift the siege on 14 October 1529. The Ottoman army retreated to the south, and the city was saved.

The first siege of Vienna was, in the long run, a setback for the Ottoman position in central Europe. The failure to take the city, combined with the long Hungarian war and the early death of the Ottoman grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha, marked a turning point in the reign of Suleiman. The siege did not, however, mark the end of the Ottoman threat: the Ottomans returned to Hungary in 1541, taking Buda and Pest, and the long contest with the Habsburgs continued for another century and a half.

The second siege, 1683

The second siege of Vienna was the climactic operation of the long war of 1683. The Ottoman army, under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, marched into Austria in the summer of 1683, supported by the Tatar cavalry of the Crimean khan, the troops of the Transylvanian prince Imre Thököly, and the contingents of several Moldavian and Wallachian princes. The army numbered perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 men, with a strong Janissary corps, a substantial artillery train, and a powerful cavalry arm. The Habsburg garrison, under the command of the Austrian general Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, numbered perhaps 20,000 men.

The Ottoman army arrived before the walls of Vienna in early July 1683 and began the siege. The assault was marked by the heavy bombardment of the walls, by a series of mining operations, and by a number of massed assaults. The defence was tenacious, and the garrison held the walls for nearly two months. The arrival of the Polish relief force under King John III Sobieski, in early September, was the signal for a final Ottoman assault.

The Polish relief force, supported by the Austrian and German troops of Emperor Leopold I, attacked the Ottoman lines on 12 September 1683. The Polish hussars, the famous winged cavalry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, broke through the Ottoman centre, and the Ottoman army was routed. The grand vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha withdrew with the remnant of his army, and the siege was lifted. The defeat was a major blow to the Ottoman position in central Europe. Within a generation, the Ottomans had lost Hungary, the Morea, and the northern Black Sea coast, and the balance of power in south-eastern Europe had shifted decisively.

The aftermath

The two sieges of Vienna are conventionally treated as the high-water mark and the turning point of Ottoman expansion into central Europe. The first siege, in 1529, marked the limit of Ottoman ambitions in the region; the second, in 1683, marked the beginning of the long Ottoman retreat. The sieges have been widely studied by military historians, and they remain central to the national memory of Austria and of Poland.

The sieges are also important in the history of the Ottoman military. The first siege of 1529 was a high point of the classical Ottoman army, the army of the Janissaries, the sipahi cavalry, and the great bombards. The second siege of 1683 was the last great operation of that army, and the failure of the siege was widely attributed, in part, to the decline of the Janissary corps and the long erosion of the timar system. The sieges are, in this sense, the two ends of the classical Ottoman military system. The two sieges have been compared, in the long history of Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare, with the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 and the other great operations of the period, and the comparison is a useful one for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman army at the high point and at the crisis of its long career.

Related articles

• Ottoman military and warfare — A general account of the Ottoman military, of which the two sieges of Vienna are the most celebrated operations.
• Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare — The history of Ottoman siege warfare, of which the two sieges of Vienna are the most famous examples.
• The Janissary corps — The elite infantry that formed the storm troops of the Ottoman army in both sieges.
• The provincial sipahi cavalry — The timariot horsemen who fought in both sieges, and whose system was breaking down in the seventeenth century.
• The Great Siege of Malta — The 1565 siege of Malta, the other great operation of Ottoman siege warfare in this period.