page_title: Battle of Vienna
section_title: Events during the siege
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Vienna / Events during the siege
context_page_description: The Battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 12 September 1683 after the imperial city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire led by the Habsburg Monarchy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both under the command of King John III Sobieski, against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states. The battle marked the first time the Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire had cooperated militarily against the Ottomans, and it is often seen as a turning point in history, after which "the Ottoman Turks ceased to be a menace to the Christian world". In the ensuing war that lasted until 1699, the Ottomans lost almost all of Hungary to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.
  The battle was won by the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the latter represented only by the forces of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The Viennese garrison was led by Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, an Austrian subject of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. The overall command was held by the senior leader, the King of Poland, John III Sobieski, who led the relief forces.
context_section_description: The main Ottoman army finally laid siege to Vienna on 14 July. On the same day, Kara Mustafa sent the traditional demand that the city surrender to the Ottoman empire. Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, leader of the remaining 15,000 troops and 8,700 volunteers with 370 cannons, refused to capitulate. Only days before, he had received news of the mass slaughter at Perchtoldsdorf, a town south of Vienna, where the citizens had handed over the keys of the city after having been given a similar choice, but were killed anyway. Siege operations started on 17 July.
  The Viennese had demolished many of the houses around the city walls and cleared the debris, leaving an empty plain that would expose the Ottomans to defensive fire if they tried to rush into the city. Kara Mustafa Pasha tried to solve that problem by ordering his forces to dig long lines of trenches directly toward the city, to help protect them from the defenders as they advanced.
  The Ottomans had 130 field guns and 19 medium-caliber cannon, insufficient in the face of the defenders' 370. Mining tunnels were dug under the massive city walls, which would then be filled with sufficient quantities of black powder to blow up the walls. According to Andrew Wheatcroft, the outer palisade was around 150 years old and mostly rotten, so the defenders set to work knocking very large tree trunks into the ground to surround the walls. This seriously disrupted the Ottoman plan, adding almost another three weeks to the time it would take to get past the old palisade. This, combined with the delay in advancing their army after declaring war, eventually allowed a relief force to arrive in September. Historians have speculated that Kara Mustafa wanted to take the city intact with its riches and declined an all-out attack, not wishing to initiate the plundering that would accompany an assault and was viewed as the right of conquering soldiers.
  The Ottoman siege cut virtually every means of food supply into Vienna. Fatigue became so common that von Starhemberg ordered any soldier found asleep on watch to be shot. Increasingly desperate, the forces holding Vienna were on their last legs when, in August, Imperial forces under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, defeated Thököly at Bisamberg, 5 km (3.1 mi) northwest of Vienna.
  On 6 September the Poles under Sobieski crossed the Danube 30 km (19 mi) northwest of Vienna at Tulln, to unite with imperial troops and the additional forces from Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, Franconia and Swabia. The forces were also joined by several regiments of Zaporozhian Cossacks from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Louis XIV of France declined to help his Habsburg rival, having just annexed Alsace.
  An alliance between Sobieski and Emperor Leopold I resulted in the addition of the Polish hussars to the existing allied army. The leadership of the forces of European allies was entrusted to the Polish king, who had under his command 70,000–80,000 soldiers facing an Ottoman army of 150,000. Sobieski's courage and remarkable aptitude for command was already known in Europe.
  During early September, approximately 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers had repeatedly blown up large portions of the walls between the Burg bastion, the Löbel bastion and the Burg ravelin, creating gaps of about 12 metres (39 ft) in width. The Viennese tried to counter this by digging their own tunnels to intercept the placing of large amounts of gunpowder in caverns. The Ottomans finally managed to occupy the Burg ravelin and the low wall in that area on 8 September. Anticipating a breach in the city walls, the remaining Viennese prepared to fight in the inner city.
caption: The Ottomans before the walls of Vienna.
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