Polish Winged Lancers – Battle of Vienna, September 12th 1683 by Brian Palmer
Fighting with Austrian and Holy Roman Empire forces in the 1590s weakened the Ottoman hold on Hungary and Turkish possessions in the Balkans. The Thirty Years’ War diverted European attention away from the Balkans until the 1660s, when the Turks returned to advance on Vienna under the leadership of Fazil Ahmed Koprulu Pasha. They were checked at Neuhause in September 1663 and postponed their attack until the following spring, by which time the Austrians were stronger and better prepared. The battle of St. Gotthard Abbey was fought as peace talks were being held, and the Turks were forced to retreat to Belgrade. The Peace of Vasvar, signed in August 1664, called for a 20-year peace and ceded Transylvania to Turkey. After the 20-year truce, the Turks were back in 1683. Hungary was in the process of rebelling against Austria, so the Austrians were pressed by a number of enemies: the Hungarians, Transylvanians, and Turks. Muhammad IV arrived at Vienna in June with 150,000 men to besiege a city defended by a mere 15,000. The Turks had little siege artillery, but they managed to breach the walls in a few places. They could not break through in strength, however, and Vienna was spared by the fortuitous arrival of Pole Jan Sobiesky at the same time a German force marched to help. A mixed Austrian- German-Polish force of 70,000 engaged the Turks outside Vienna on 12 September. After a daylong battle, the Turks fled, and the city was saved. When Sobiesky later pursued the Turks, he captured Grau and much of Hungary, which came under Habsburg control over the next five years.
After the elapse of seven days Kara Mustafa left Raab blockaded by 12,000 troops (overturning the calculations of Rimpier, who had hoped to check the entire Ottoman army), and at last on 14 July 1683 the first of the 25,000 tents of the Turkish host appeared on the levels to the west of Vienna.
Every five generations or so Mars called the Viennese to account by planting a hostile army in front of the gates. The Turks had last descended on the place as long ago as 1529, and now in 1683 it was up to the engineer Georg Rimpler to review the defences of the city. He drew up the necessary plans between 15 January and 20 February, and his intention was to enable the sixteenth-century brick enceinte to put up a step-by-step resistance. Rimpler had proclaimed as a matter of principle: ‘We must prepare the defences in good time, so as to be well dug in on all the important locations in advance. This is much better than having to meet the attack by constructing new lines of defence in the presence of the enemy’ (Kittler, 1951, 217).
The experience of the siege of Candia indicated that the main threat would be posed by the Turkish miners, and Rimpler correctly anticipated that the presence of the Danube and the little river Wien would rule out approaches from the north and east. The resources of the defence were therefore concentrated on the south-west and southern sides of the city, along the fronts which were formed by the Mölker-, Löwel -, Burg- and Augustiner-Bastions and the intervening ravelins, especially the Burg-Ravelin. Embrasures were cut through the parapets of the existing works, to afford some protection to the artillery, and, where space allowed, strong retrenchments, with ditches and palisades, were built inside the bastions and ravelins. On the far side of the ditch the covered way was furnished with palisaded traverses and other strongpoints, in accordance with Rimpler’s maxim: ‘It is a demonstrable fact that a covered way, at small expense, may be so arranged as to cause the enemy more trouble than a strong fortress in the present conventional manner’ (Dreyfacher Tractat, 1674, Kittler, 1951, 112).
In the actual ditch a lower outer rampart (faussebraye) was built close to the foot of the revetment, and a network of caponnieres, or ‘bonnets’ in RimpIer’s parlace, was run from the ravelins to the shoulder angles of the adjacent bastions. These caponnieres were particularly close to Rimpler’s heart. They were low-lying and apparently insignificant loopholed galleries, with sides built up of earth, wicker-work or other materials, and roofed over with planks and earth. They were difficult for the besieger to see and hit, while offering the defender almost complete protection from the elements and enemy fire.
Much remained beyond remedy. General Caplirs reported that there was
reason to fear the enemy miners, and especially at the Burg-Bastion, since it is devoid of vaulted galleries and countermines which might have enabled us to act against the enemy. Moreover we lack qualified miners, and in their place we have to employ men who do not have a full understanding of this trade – when they hear the enemy at work they run away, instead of advancing to meet them, such is their lack of experience and resolution. (Duncker, 1893, 269)
The adjoining Löwel -Bastion was particularly narrow and badly proportioned, and lacked the room for strong interior defences. Any breach here was therefore considered more than usually dangerous.
The garrison was under the overall command of Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg. Marshal Villars offers the sour comment: ‘of all the qualities necessary for war, the only one which he is allowed to possess is courage, a trait which is rather more dangerous than useful to a general who is in sole command’. More narrowly he criticised Starhemberg for his policy of launching frequent sorties, instead of conserving the strength of the garrison. ‘Foreign nations are more enthusiastic in their praises of Starhemberg than are the Germans, perhaps because they are envious of him or because they are better informed’ (Villars, 1884-9, I, 438).
Closely associated with Starhemberg and indeed with the business of the defence as a whole was the ailing Bürgermeister Andreas von Liebenberg, who set an example to his fellow-citizens by transporting loads of earth on a barrow in the last days before the Turks arrived.
Christoph Börner, the artillery commander, was a self-made man of north German Protestant stock, like Rimpler himself. Börner’s wanderings had begun from the day when, as an apprentice to a Berlin shoemaker, he had been ordered to buy a bottle of the well-known Barnau beer. He walked all the way to Bärnau, instead of buying the beer locally, and he was so terrified when he discovered his mistake that he buried the bottle under a tree and fell into the hands of an Austrian recruiting party. He rose speedily in the Imperial artillery, that most democratic of arms, and after playing a distinguished part in the defence of Vienna he became a full general and Prince Eugene’s right-hand man in gunnery matters. He was still troubled about the incident at Bärnau, and he could not rest until, as a very senior and respected commander, he returned to the spot and dug up the beer in its hermetically-sealed container.
For a city of the size of Vienna the garrison was a small one, of 10,000 regular troops. Starhemberg also commanded an urban militia of about eighteen hundred men, though these folk lacked the experience to be employed in the direct combat role in the early stages of the siege. Vienna was adequately, but not lavishly provisioned, and many of the 80,000 civilians enclosed within were refugees, who lacked shelter and food of their own. As some compensation Starhemberg owned the highly unusual advantage of a convincing superiority in artillery over his besiegers. Vienna was armed with no less than 312 cannon, of which forty-seven were 24-pounders or pieces of still heavier calibre.
