Vienna, 12 September 1683

The battle, stage by stage

1. 14 July – August 1683

   The siege lines

   Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha's army reaches Vienna on 14 July 1683 and summons the city; Emperor Leopold I has already left, and the defence falls to Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg with roughly 11,000–16,000 soldiers and armed citizens. The houses outside the walls have been burned to clear the glacis. The Ottomans, whose field strength is variously given from about 90,000 to 150,000 (contemporary pamphlets claim far more), camp in a great crescent around the city and drive their approach trenches from the western suburbs — by Malden's account the Vizier's tents stood 'opposite the Burg bastion, in the suburb of St. Ulric' — against the Burg bastion, the Löwel (Löbel) bastion and the Burg ravelin between them, beside the Hofburg. The bastions are gone; their sites lie under the Heldenplatz, the Volksgarten and the Burgtheater.

2. 7 August – 11 September 1683

   Mines under the Burg and Löwel bastions

   Short of heavy guns, the Ottomans fight by mining. They lodge on the counterscarp on 7 August; assaults on the outer works on 23, 25 and 27 August are beaten off. On 29 August a mine is sprung under the Burg ravelin, which is finally given up on 3 September; on 4 September the point of the Burg bastion is blown up, and on 6 September a mine and assault on the Löwel bastion briefly plant Ottoman horse-tail standards on the rampart (dates per Malden, 1883). The defenders dig inner retrenchments behind the breaches, and by early September are reportedly down to about half strength, with dysentery in the city. Rockets from St Stephen's spire call for relief.

3. 11–12 September 1683, before dawn

   The relief army on the Kahlenberg

   A Holy League relief army of perhaps 65,000–80,000 (estimates differ by historian) has crossed the Danube at Tulln and climbed the wooded heights of the Vienna Woods on 10–11 September. King Jan III Sobieski of Poland holds the overall command. On the left, by the Danube and the Leopoldsberg, stand Charles of Lorraine's Imperials and the Saxons; in the centre Waldeck's Franconians and Swabians and Max Emanuel's Bavarians; on the right, still struggling through the woods between the Hermannskogel and Dreimarkstein, the Polish army. Kara Mustafa leaves his Janissaries in the trenches and turns part of his army to face the hills: by one modern reconstruction, Kara Mehmed Pasha on the Nussberg, Ibrahim Pasha on the ridges above Döbling and the Krottenbach, Abaza Sari Hüseyin Pasha from Weinhaus to Ottakring, and the Tatars far off by Mariabrunn.

4. 12 September, about 4–5 AM to late morning

   Fight for the Nussberg

   Before dawn the Ottoman right attacks to disrupt the Imperial guns being placed on the slopes; Mass is said on the heights (tradition puts Marco d'Aviano at the chapel on the Kahlenberg or Leopoldsberg). Lorraine's infantry and the Saxons counter-attack down through the vineyards around Kahlenbergerdorf, where the Ottomans have dug earth and stone works on the slopes, and by late morning hold the crest of the Nussberg. The fighting is from hedge to hedge and house to house; the contemporary London 'True and Exact Relation' says the Turks contested 'every foot of ground'.

5. 12 September, about noon – 2 PM

   Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt

   The Imperial left takes Nussdorf on the Danube channel and Heiligenstadt and comes close to a breakthrough, then halts in the midday heat so the centre can come up. Waldeck's and the Bavarians' columns work down over Grinzing and Sievering toward the Krottenbach; the Poles, after a hard march through the woods, appear on the heights above Neustift and Pötzleinsdorf, Sobieski reportedly reaching the hills above Dornbach by about 2 PM. Kara Mehmed's wing falls back on Döbling.

6. 12 September, about 3:30 – 5 PM

   Döbling, Gersthof and the Türkenschanze

   Lorraine renews the advance on the left ('Allons, marchons!'); the Imperials take Unter- and Oberdöbling and Ludwig of Baden carries the works toward Währing. The Poles come out onto the open ground east of the Schafberg and take Gersthof. Sobieski tests the Ottoman line with single banners of hussars: the first, reportedly about 120–150 horse, breaks through two lines but is driven back with heavy loss, and a second under Stanisław Potocki is cut up and Potocki killed. Around 5 PM the Franconians and Bavarians storm the Ottoman redoubt on the Türkenschanze (today's Türkenschanzpark), and Ibrahim Pasha's centre begins to give way.

7. 12 September, about 5:30 – 6 PM

   The charge of the winged hussars

   Sobieski gathers the cavalry of the right — Polish hussars, pancerni and light horse with Imperial and German cavalry — for a general charge, usually given as about 18,000 horse in four groups, with the king and some 3,000 winged hussars at its head (the numbers are later estimates; some historians describe several successive waves rather than one). The mass rides down from Gersthof across the fields by Weinhaus, Hernals and Ottakring, overruns the guns and breaks Abaza Hüseyin's line at the point where Kara Mustafa is trying to rally his men. As the whole allied line advances, the garrison sallies from the city against the Janissaries still in the trenches.

8. 12–13 September 1683, evening and night

   Rout, and the Vizier's tents

   The Ottoman army breaks and streams south toward the Vienna River and the road to Győr (Raab); Kara Mustafa escapes with the Holy Banner and his treasury, leaving the camp, its guns and stores. About 7 PM Ludwig of Baden opens communication with the city; the Janissaries left in the trenches are killed or scattered, one miner reportedly still at work under the ramparts. Sobieski spends the night in the Vizier's tents and writes to his wife from 'the tents of the Vizier'. Losses are estimated at about 3,500–4,500 for the allies and 10,000–15,000 Ottoman dead, with thousands captured; before fleeing the Ottomans reportedly killed many of their Christian captives. Kara Mustafa is executed at Belgrade on 25 December 1683.