page_title: Battle of Vienna
section_title: Prelude
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Vienna / Prelude
caption_attribution_description: Kuruc labanc összecsapás ábrázolása egy korabeli térképen
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: Capturing the city of Vienna had long been a strategic aspiration of the Ottoman Empire, because of its interlocking control over Danubian (Black Sea to Western Europe) southern Europe and the overland (Eastern Mediterranean to Germany) trade routes. During the years preceding this second siege (the first was the 1529 Siege of Vienna) under the auspices of grand viziers from the influential Köprülü family, the Ottoman Empire undertook extensive logistical preparations, including the repair and establishment of roads and bridges leading into the Holy Roman Empire and its logistical centers, as well as the forwarding of ammunition, cannon, and other resources from all over the Empire to these centers and into the Balkans, since 1679 the plague had been raging in Vienna. The battle would have been sooner had it not been 1566 Battle of Szigeth which stopped the Ottoman Empire for a while.
  On the political front, the Ottoman Empire had been providing military assistance to the Hungarians and non-Catholic minorities in Habsburg-occupied portions of Hungary. There, in the years preceding the siege, widespread unrest had grown into open rebellion against Leopold I's pursuit of Counter-Reformation principles and his desire to crush Protestantism. In 1681 Protestants and other anti-Habsburg Kuruc forces, led by Imre Thököly, were reinforced with a significant military contingent from the Ottomans, who recognized Thököly as King of "Upper Hungary" (the eastern part of today's Slovakia and parts of northeastern Hungary, which he had earlier taken by force from the Habsburgs). This support included explicitly promising the "Kingdom of Vienna" to the Hungarians if it fell into Ottoman hands. Yet before the siege, a state of peace had existed for 20 years between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Peace of Vasvár.
  In 1681 and 1682 clashes between the forces of Imre Thököly and the Holy Roman Empire (the border of which was then northern Hungary) intensified, and the incursions of Habsburg forces into central Hungary provided the crucial argument of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha in convincing Sultan Mehmed IV and his Divan to allow the movement of the Ottoman army. Mehmet IV authorized Mustafa Pasha to operate as far as Győr (then known as Yanıkkale, and in German as Raab) and Komárom (in Turkish Komaron, Komorn in German) Castles, both in northwestern Hungary, and to besiege them. The Ottoman army was mobilized on 21 January 1682 and war was declared on 6 August 1682.
  The logistics of the time meant it would have been risky or impossible to launch an invasion in August or September 1682, since a three-month campaign would have taken the Ottomans to Vienna just as winter set in. But the 15-month gap between mobilization and the launch of a full-scale invasion provided ample time for Vienna to prepare its defense and for Leopold to assemble troops from the Holy Roman Empire and form an alliance with Poland, Venice and Pope Innocent XI. This undoubtedly contributed to the failure of the Ottoman campaign. The decisive alliance of the Holy Roman Empire with Poland was concluded in the 1683 Treaty of Warsaw, by which Leopold promised to support Sobieski if the Ottomans attacked Kraków, and in return the Polish army would come to the relief of Vienna if it were attacked.
  On 31 March 1683, another declaration—sent by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha on behalf of Mehmet IV—arrived at the Imperial Court in Vienna. The next day the forward march of Ottoman army elements began from Edirne in Rumelia. Ottoman troops reached Belgrade by early May. They were joined by a Transylvanian army under Prince Mihaly Apafi and a Hungarian force under Imre Thököly; they laid siege to Győr and the remaining army of 150,000 moved toward the city of Vienna. About 40,000 Crimean Tatar troops arrived 40 kilometres (25 mi) east of Vienna on 7 July, twice as many as the Imperial troops in the area. Emperor Leopold fled Vienna for Passau with his court and 60,000 Viennese, while Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, withdrew his force o
caption: Anti-Habsburg Kuruc rebels in Hungary.
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