page_title: Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg / Life
caption_attribution_description: Starhemberg, Ernst Rüdiger Graf; Stadtkommandant von Wien bei der Türkenbelagerung 1683
context_page_description: Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg was military governor of Vienna from 1680, the city's defender during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Imperial general during the Great Turkish War, and President of the Hofkriegsrat.
context_section_description: He was born in Graz, Styria, his cousin Guido Starhemberg also became a famous soldier and fought as an adjutant at his side. Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg fought in the 1660s under Imperial Lieutenant general Raimondo Montecuccoli against French and Ottoman forces.
  In 1683 he was military commander of the city of Vienna, with fewer than 20,000 men to oppose about 120,000 besieging Ottomans. On 15 July 1683 Starhemberg refused an offer by the Turkish commander Kara Mustafa Pasha to capitulate, counting on the speedy arrival of an Imperial army, sent by the Habsburg emperor Leopold I who had fled his residence, and the strength of city walls which had been fortified after the first Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1529.
  When after two months the relief army under the command of Polish king Jan Sobieski arrived in the first half of September, Vienna was on the brink of collapse. Its walls were breached by Turkish sappers who had tunnelled under the walls, packed the tunnels with gunpowder, and detonated the explosive charges. Finally, on 12 September, 80,000 Polish, Venetian, Bavarian, and Saxon troops attacked the Turks and were able to defeat them in the Battle on the Kahlenberg.
  Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg was promoted to the rank of a field marshal by the Emperor, recognizing Starhemberg's action in saving the imperial capital. He was also made a minister of the state. Going after the retiring Ottoman troops, Starhemberg was severely wounded in 1686 during the Siege of Buda by a shot in his left hand and had to abandon his command. In 1691 he was made President of the Hofkriegsrat and was responsible for the organisation of the Habsburg army.
  Starhemberg died at Vösendorf on 4 January 1701, aged 62. His tomb (by Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach) is situated in the Vienna Schottenkirche.
  The later Austrian politician Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg (1899-1956) was a collateral descendant.
caption: Starhemberg, engraving by Jean Le Pautre
exif: {}