Kara Mustafa Pasha -Grand Vizier and Commander of Ottoman Empire
At nine o’clock, on the morning of 7 July the whole position
changed with appalling suddenness. Lorraine was riding a mile or two from his
headquarters when he heard that the Turks had entered Ungarisch-Altenburg in
great force. The surprise was so complete that the defenders were unable to destroy
the bridge and it looked as if the Grand Vezir had thrown into the campaign
another 25,000 or 30,000 disciplined men, of whom the van was coming up fast,
in order to attack the much smaller Habsburg concentration of cavalry and
dragoons round Berg. These would be overwhelmed, allowing the enemy to strike
deeply into Austria in the direction of Vienna itself. But while Lorraine and
his staff discussed the new crisis, they saw large clouds of dust rising behind
them far off to the west from farther up the Leitha, which suggested ominously
that other Turks had already got upstream, having by-passed Leopold’s troops.
It was a double disaster; and Count Auersperg set out at once to inform the
court that all hopes of pinning down the main mass of the Turks in the
neighbourhood of either Györ or Berg had abruptly and finally disappeared on
that morning of 7 July.
The Habsburg cause fared even worse in the afternoon.
Fischamend, a crossing over the small Danube tributary of the Fischa, and
half-way between Berg and Vienna, was the point to which Lorraine next directed
his forces; they were divided into the regiments under his own command, a
rearguard under Rabatta and Taafe, and a van led by Mercy and Gondola. Ahead of
the van went escorts with carts and carriages of equipment, while still farther
in front were other transports containing the baggage of certain senior
officers who apparently preferred to run the risk of sending their own goods
forward, unprotected, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for them, the
Tartars suddenly fell on this part of the long and straggling train. Mercy and
Gondola at once hurried up, drove them off and went on to Fischamend, fearing
that other enemy bands would reach the fords there first. Lorraine, several
miles behind and by now on relatively high ground farther east, was scanning
the view and debating how to recover control of the country between his own
troops and his van, when he learnt that another Turkish force (from the
direction of Ungarisch-Altenburg) was assailing his rearguard. He turned back
with all the men and horses he could muster, realising that he had not a minute
to spare.
It is impossible to say exactly where the encounter took
place, sometimes known as ‘the affair of Petronell’. It was probably close to
the famous Roman site of Carnuntum in the estate of Count Traun, on undulating
and thickly wooded ground not far from the Danube. The Habsburg cavalry of the
rearguard, particularly Montecuccoli’s regiment and Savoy’s dragoons, was
thrown into complete disarray. Lorraine, bringing up more squadrons of horse,
at first utterly failed to rekindle the urge to stop and fight back. His pleas
and his gestures—he even went for the men by thumping them with the butt of his
pistol—effected nothing. ‘What, gentlemen,’ he is said to have exclaimed, ‘you
betray the honour of the imperial arms, you’re afraid?’ The left wing resisted
the enemy onrush more steadily, at last a strong counter-attack was mounted and
the Turks disappeared again. They were far fewer than their opponents realised,
in this sudden and confused melee of horse and rider. Perhaps thirty-five lay
dead on the field and the total loss of the Habsburg troops was 100 men; but
before the engagement had ended one or more officers had left for Vienna,
convinced that a very large enemy force was moving irresistibly forward.
The rest of the day passed off quietly and Lorraine spent
the night at Schwechat, six miles from Vienna. At least Leopold’s cavalry, if
not his infantry, had been brought back safely for the defence of the capital
city of the whole dominion. But a major attack was now inevitable, and cavalry
could not man a fortress.
On the next day Lorraine heard that the Turks had left not
more than 12,000 troops at their camp in front of Györ. The rest were marching
forward. He learnt that nearly all the Magyars in western Hungary had
recognised Thököly’s sovereignty. Thököly himself was at Trnava with his
followers, which implied a distinct threat to Pressburg and to Vienna from the
area north of the Danube. Fortunately Leslie and his infantry were already well
on their way back through the Schütt to Pressburg, and Schultz had
independently decided to withdraw his men westwards as quickly as possible even
before he received orders to do so. In spite of these two items of good news,
for Lorraine it had been twenty-four hours of repeated crises, and he was still
unaware of their impact in Vienna itself.
One feature of this confusing week was the nervous response
of the military command to the appearance of small hostile bands of horsemen,
and to the fire and smoke perplexing its view of events in that wide plain. The
civilian population reacted more sluggishly. True, many peasants were by now on
the move, carrying their goods towards the walled towns or into the shelter of
any buildings surrounded by walls, like the manor-houses of lords and
monasteries, while the harvest stood ready in the fields but they were afraid
to go out and reap it. Yet contrary rumours, that all was well, often stopped
bolder folk from fearing the worst and they carried on with business as usual.
We know something of wavering public opinion in the area from a journal kept by
the choirmaster of Heiligenkreuz, the great and ancient Cistercian house in the
Wiener Wald. On 3 July a priest came into the monastery from the monks’ parish
of Podersdorf, by the shore of the Neusiedler See. He reported that the enemy
was at hand, and was laughed at for his pains. His listeners believed that the
Turks were in fact at Neuhäusel, a long way over on the other side of the
Danube, and that the thick clouds of smoke on the eastern horizon resulted from
the ordinary indiscipline of Leopold’s own troops in Hungary. The opinion of
these scoffers was partly based on the confident messages of a bailiff in charge
of the monastic lands (particularly the quarries) near Bruck-on-the-Leitha; but
a little later the Turks captured this man, they surrounded Bruck, and the
stone-cutters with their families fled to Vienna. Meanwhile tension mounted in
Heiligenkreuz. On 4, 5 and 6 July more and more refugees, with their
belongings, crowded into the three great courtyards of the abbey. Onlookers
were amazed by the mountain of chests, which held silverware and other
valuables, in the inner court. Prosperous burghers hastened up the narrow
valley from Baden and Mödling. On 7 July a soothing, ill-informed message
reached the chapter from the Spanish embassy in Vienna. Then on the 8th the
blow fell, with authentic news of what had happened near Petronell and of panic
in Vienna. The choirmaster hurriedly prepared to take his young choristers over
the hills westwards.
As June had worn on, bringing no message of a Habsburg
triumph against Esztergom or Neuhäusel, and gloomy reports of the Turkish
advance through Hungary, popular fears increased in Vienna itself. An unceasing
round of public religious ceremonies intensified them. By decree, the members
of every trade and profession were required to attend for one hour a week at
the service in St Stephen’s: the Emperor himself took his turn at nine o’clock
on Sundays, the Danube fishermen on Thursdays at eight, and the violin-makers
on Saturdays at three. By decree also, the old usage was revived of the
‘Türkenglocken’. Bells started to ring every morning through the city and the
whole land of Austria, summoning all to kneel and pray for deliverance from the
invader. Some of the popular preachers thundered that God chose the Moslem
terror to punish, when punishment was needed; but Abraham a Sancta Clara
himself preferred the great refrain which was the title of his booklet just
then going through the press: ‘Up! Up! You Christians!’ calling simply for
courage and action against a brutal but cowardly enemy. The entire week from 27
June to 3 July was organised by the ecclesiastical authorities as one immense
petition for divine intervention. Yet if most men were devout, a few abused the
clerical interest. If there were politicians who disliked the Pope, the nuncio
and their allies for insisting on the Turkish peril and consequently on the need
to give ground in western Europe, there were citizens who blamed the crisis on
the church for persecuting uselessly in Hungary. One night they smashed the
windows of the Bishop of Vienna’s palace in the Rotenturmstrasse; though,
ironically, the bishop was no friend of the nuncio.
Throughout 5 and 6 July officials at court worked long and
hard. The conference of ministers, War Council, Treasury, and Government of
Lower Austria, were all in session. First Philip Thurn was sent post-haste to
Warsaw to ask for Sobieski’s full support, now that the Turks appeared to be
threatening Austria directly. Next, they tried to control the growing movement
of refugees from the countryside into the city. They had strong guards set at
the gates, to bar the entry of rabble elements which conceivably included
traitors; the presence of Thököly’s agents in disguise was suspected, and also
Frenchmen. Supplies were discussed, and the official responsible for the
purchase of corn happily stated that stocks were high. At a meeting in the
Bishop’s palace the clergy offered a loan to the government, but the tightness
of funds still bedevilled administration as much as ever. The War Council and
Treasury blandly decided to reduce their earlier estimate of military
expenditure for the coming year from three million to two and a half million
florins, a sleight of hand which could hardly have helped them to find the
money they needed at once.
Stratmann, the new chancellor—Hocher had just died—went off
to report to the Emperor on all these pressing items of business.
One point which worried the Habsburg advisers was the
security of the Crown of St Stephen of Hungary. This highly important symbol of
the royal authority in that country was always in safe-keeping in the castle of
Pressburg; two of the most senior office-holders in Hungary were ‘Guardians of
the Crown’. The political consequences, if Thököly laid hands on it, would be
serious indeed. At length Leopold decided to remove the insignia of Hungarian
royalty from Pressburg to Vienna. A strong escort of cavalry rode off and
brought the crown to the Hofburg on 5 July. On the same day Leopold also
determined to authorise preparations for the departure of his children and
their staff from Vienna, while by the 7th the valuables of his Treasury—jewels,
crowns (including the Crown of Hungary), sceptres, crosses and the like—were
packed away on transports, ready to leave the city. There was no specific
decision about the Emperor’s own departure. On the other hand, while refugees
were pouring in from the east, many of the burghers and officials with their
families had already left the city.
On 6 July Leopold went hunting near Mödling. He gave no sign
that he contemplated flight to the safer and more distant part of his dominion,
and one argument which kept the court in Vienna was certainly the Empress’s
advanced pregnancy. Physicians did not consider it wise for her to travel. But
women of her household had letters from their husbands, officers serving under
Lorraine on his retreat from Györ, who begged them to flee as quickly as
possible. Buonvisi’s account of a conversation with the Empress suggests that
she herself was eager to go. The Emperor still demurred. He can hardly have
failed to realise the consequences of the court’s departure on the morale of
his subjects.
From two o’clock onwards in the afternoon of 7 July, one
messenger after another reached the Hofburg and transformed the situation. The
first, Auersperg, reported the attack on Ungarisch-Altenburg, which was enough
to make most courtiers press the Emperor to leave at once. In Leopold’s
antechamber Auersperg and the counsellors were soon joined by General Caprara
and Colonel Montecuccoli, telling of the Turks’ sudden appearance in great
strength much closer to the city, probably because they themselves had left the
scene of the fighting between Petronell and Fischamend before Lorraine restored
order, and anticipated his total defeat. Then Caprara’s servant, in charge of
his baggage, arrived to give an account of that sudden assault on the
baggage-train, at a point even closer to Vienna. The counsellors conferred and
their long debate went on, while at the city-gates townsmen and incoming
strangers—some of them wounded—repeated rumours based on such things as smoke
seen, or shots heard, on that day and on the day before. All these persons,
Auersperg, Montecuccoli, Caprara, Caprara’s servant, and the men who simply
talked to other men, helped to spread the panic which seized the Emperor, his
ministers, his courtiers, everyone in the palace, everyone in the Burgplatz
outside and in the now crowded streets which led from here to the rest of the
city. ‘The Turk is at the gates!’ was the cry; and though we know that each
report of the day’s fighting had been inaccurate, the worst fears of most
people then were confirmed by the cumulative effect of so many messages and
rumours. All who could prepared to quit the city immediately. The Emperor, his
nerves overbearing his sense of dignity, listening to the pleas of his
ministers and family, decided to sanction his own retreat from what looked like
the point of maximum danger, Vienna itself.
He held a final conference at six o’clock in his private
apartment. The decision to go at once was formally announced and it remained to
choose the route to follow. The direct road to Linz over the Wiener Wald was
proposed and rejected; the Turks would threaten it too quickly. Flight
northwards to Prague, or south-west into the hilly country by Heiligenkreuz and
so round to Linz, was considered. The counsellors at length advised the Emperor
to cross the Danube, and then to move upstream along the farther bank towards
Upper Austria.
The bustle and confusion in the Burg and the Burgplatz were
by this time tremendous. The doors of the palace were left wide open, and every
kind of wagon and cart or coach was being crammed with every kind of necessity
and valuable which could be moved. The less fortunate, who owned or who could
find no horses, made ready to walk. In the town the government tried to get
each householder to send a man to work on the fortifications. It tried to
requisition all the boats on the river, with their boatmen, and to send them
down the Danube in order to meet the infantry regiments marching westwards from
the Schutt. The conscripted labourers who had been working in Vienna downed
their tools, and fled. Coming the other way population from the outskirts
packed into the city as never before, if only to pass the night in the security
of the streets. Then, at about eight o’clock in the evening the Emperor left
the Hofburg. A not very orderly procession made its way out of the Burg-gate,
round the city wall to the Canal, through Leopoldstadt, and over the Danube.
Later still the dowager Empress Eleanor, whose staff had hardly recovered from
the toil and annoyance of bringing her possessions into the city from the
‘Favorita’, her palace in Leopoldstadt, set out with a great transport to the
west by way of Klosterneuburg on the south side of the river.
Sleep and Vienna were strangers that night. Men and women
sorted out their goods, put one part in cellars (the cellars of the city figure
conspicuously in the legends of the siege) and one part in packages for their
flight to the west. They hammered and corded. Yet several hours after Leopold’s
departure, a despatch arrived from Lorraine which gave a more consoling picture
of the whole position: the Habsburg cavalry was now in good order again,
approaching Vienna fast, with the main Turkish force at least some days’ march
behind it. (This news caught up with Leopold in the course of the night.)
Encouraged, at three o’clock in the morning Herman of Baden called a meeting to
announce the Emperor’s instruction for the government of Vienna in the
immediate future. Present were the burgomaster Liebenberg, the syndic, and
other municipal councillors; also Daun the acting military commander, and
Colonel Serenyi, an old and very senior officer who was in the city more by
chance than because of any proper posting. Baden gave notice that Starhemberg
had been given the supreme command. Administration was placed in the hands of a
Collegium—a select committee of two soldiers (Caplirs, the experienced
vice-president of the Habsburg War Council, and Starhemberg) and three
civilians (the Marshal of the Estates of Lower Austria, an official of the
Government of Lower Austria, and Belchamps of the Treasury). Caplirs was to
preside over it. Baden also declared that a section of the War Council would be
left behind in the city to handle ordinary military business; and Caplirs would
direct it. The municipality was to cooperate with Starhemberg, the Collegium
and War Council in all matters. Supplies were sufficient to stand a siege. In
response, the burgomaster solemnly promised to do his best. But neither
Starhemberg nor Caplirs had as yet reached Vienna, and in these dark minutes of
the early morning no one could visualise clearly how these arrangements would
work in practice.
In fact, confirmed and elaborated by a message from Leopold
some days later, they effectively met the emergency of the next three months.
They gave the military the necessary powers, but permitted some civilians to
share in the discussion of urgent problems. Even so the municipality of Vienna
was not directly represented in the two highest committees responsible for the
public safety. Caplirs had to harmonise the different and sometimes conflicting
interests civil and military. On the one hand he directed the personnel of the
War Council and collaborated with Starhemberg. On the other, he dealt with the
burghers, who inevitably tended to find themselves overwhelmed by the
emergency, and their rights disregarded. The whole administrative structure,
apparently, depended on the coordinating ability of Caplirs in spite of his age
and inveterate pessimism. Partly owing to the shortage of good evidence,
historians have differed over his merits during the crisis. He certainly
returned to Vienna very unwillingly on 10 July, no doubt sighing for his new
palace and picture gallery hundreds of miles away in the peaceful woods of
northern Bohemia, the most recent rewards of a long and successful career. But
he soon set to work; if Starhemberg was much the more militant and forceful
character, he grumblingly did his best to help him.
Later in the morning of 8 July the burgomaster held a
council of his own. The city fathers had a desperately heavy day in front of
them, trying to organise the burghers, many of whom were making every effort to
lock up and get out. They wanted to bring into the city a large amount of
timber still stacked outside the New-gate; to redistribute the reserves of
grain into stores of more equal size; and to arrange for guards at various
points. But above all, for the most obvious reasons, an immediate increase in
the numbers of men at work on the fortifications was required. While the
burgher companies of militia were ordered to assemble at one o’clock outside
the town hall, a summons went out to the rest of the male population to attend
in the square ‘Am Hof’ at three o’clock, outside the civic armoury. Here
Nicholas Hocke, the syndic, mounted the steps of the building. In a powerful
speech he tried to stir up enthusiasm for the good cause, pointing out that
ordinary employment would necessarily be interrupted or suspended during the
coming crisis. He offered decent wages to all who went to work on the
fortifications of the city. Not far off, in the Bishop’s palace the
Vicar-General was telling the clergy that they also must take their turn at the
works. Soon afterwards the sound of drum and trumpet was heard; and Lorraine’s
cavalry appeared, riding past the city-walls, and over the Canal through
Leopoldstadt, to an encampment on the Danube islands. In the evening, both
Lorraine and Starhemberg entered Vienna, and almost their first recorded action
tightened the pressure on the townsfolk. They threatened the use of force
unless sufficient numbers were ready and present for duty, on the
defence-works, at four o’clock the next morning.
At dawn the burgomaster himself was there, shouldering a
spade. Hocke enrolled the workers. Starhemberg demanded another 500 within
twenty-four hours; and more workers were brought in during the day. For almost
a week the burghers, the casual labourers, the substitutes paid by burghers who
preferred to avoid this strenuous drudgery, the soldiers detailed for the same
duty by Starhemberg as they reached the city, and members of the City Guard all
made great efforts. In spite of gloomy comments from some experienced
observers, they managed to get the bastions, the moat and counterscarp into
reasonable condition. At this stage, what was essential were improved
earthworks and adequate timbering. By digging hard under competent direction it
proved possible to buttress weak patches in the stone revetments of the
curtain-wall and the bastions, and to deepen the moat. New palisades now shored
up the counterscarp, and a fairly usable ‘covered way’ along it protected the
outermost position which the garrison would have to try and hold. In the
moat—separating the counterscarp from the walls and bastions—excavation was
still needed. Additional barricades were set up in various parts of it, while
at other points new wooden bridges were built to link bastions to ravelins, and
ravelins to the counterscarp.
Important conferences were held on 9 and 10 July;
Starhemberg and Lorraine elaborated their plans. It was then for Starhemberg to
settle details with Breuner of the commissariat and Belchamps of the Treasury.
He told the first that soon they could count on a garrison of 10,000 troops,
together with the City Guard and the civilian companies; and that they must be
ready to face a siege lasting four months. Happily, food was not a difficult
problem. The officials of the commissariat confirmed that there were stores of
grain in the city large enough to feed a force of this size until November.
On the next day, the 10th, finance was discussed, a much
more difficult matter. Starhemberg insisted that the punctual payment of the
soldiers throughout the period of siege, and generous treatment of labour squads
in the works, were absolutely essential if the Turks were to be resisted with
any chance of success; but he was told that only 30,000 florins remained in the
military treasury, none of which could be spared for pay. It was calculated
that the wages of the troops alone would amount to 40,000 florins a month. But
Belchamps had been looking into the question, and was earlier in touch with the
Hungarian Bishop of Kalocza, George Széchényi, who had lent a large sum to the
government in 1682. In 1683 he brought his funds to Vienna for safe-keeping,
and then sought refuge farther west when the Turks advanced, but before leaving
the city he agreed to place 61,000 florins at Belchamps’s disposal. On 9 July
Prince Ferdinand Schwarzenberg, having reached Vienna after Leopold’s
departure, offered a loan of 50,000 florins and 1,000 measures of wine, which
he had in his vaults. He then left the city. His negotiation was not with
Belchamps in the first instance, but with his friend Kollonics, the Bishop of
Wiener-Neustadt, who was determined to remain behind and fight for Church and
Emperor.
A Knight of St John who did not forget the bravery of his
youth when he served in Crete, Kollonics felt little sympathy for anyone
hesitating to make sacrifices at this critical hour. So, a few days later, he
turned his attention to the property of the Primate of Hungary; for the
Archbishop of Esztergom, George Szelepcsényi, had brought to his Vienna
residence, No. 14 in the Himmelpfortgasse, between 70,000 and 80,000 florins in
money, together with ecclesiastical plate, crosses and similar precious objects
which were later valued at over 400,000 florins. The Archbishop himself took
refuge in Moravia. On 19 and 20 July, after the siege began, the administration
impounded his assets. By melting down a part of the treasure, the mint in
Vienna solved the purely financial problem for the duration of the siege. It
seems probable, although there is no direct evidence to prove the point, that
Belchamps knew well enough that a few outstandingly wealthy individuals had
deposited money and plate in the city for safekeeping earlier in the year. For
various reasons, lack of transport or lack of instructions, these could not be
removed fast enough, when it abruptly and unexpectedly became clear that Vienna
was not (as it had been, up to date) the surest refuge within hundreds of
miles. But the size of these sums belonging to a nobleman like Schwarzenberg,
or to clerics like the Hungarian episcopate, when compared with the poverty of
the government, is very remarkable.
Money without manpower was useless. Lorraine and Starhemberg
had immediately agreed that the infantry regiments marching up the Danube from
Pressburg should move at once into Vienna. On 10 July, troops of the vanguard
first appeared. More arrived on the following day, and on the 13th the mass of
Leslie’s command completed their long journey from Györ; the great majority of
his infantry regiments were sent over the river with the utmost despatch. Early
that day, therefore, Starhemberg commanded 5,000 men. By evening he had some
11,000. The prospects were at least less dismal than the week before, when the
Turks were expected to invest or storm a city held by no more than the ghost of
a garrison.
Yet the foremost Ottoman raiders now appeared, and in the
distance the smoke of burning villages in the neighbourhood rose skywards.
Starhemberg did not dare delay in performing one of his most disagreeable
duties: the speedy and forcible clearing of the glacis. Since earlier
demolition orders had not been obeyed, he began—on 13 July—to burn down
everything in the area outside the counterscarp which would obviously hamper
the garrison. Most of all he wanted to clear the ground west of the city, where
suburbs came closest to the moat. More smoke rose skywards. The sparks flew.
They flew over the walls as far as the roof of the Schotten monastery by the
Schottengate, where a fire broke out in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 14th;
and it almost altered the course of history. The wind blew sparks against the
neighbouring buildings, an inn, and from the inn to a wall of the Arsenal,
where supplies of every kind were stored, including 1,800 barrels of powder.
Nearby, other powder magazines adjoined the New-gate. If the defence-works here
were seriously damaged by explosion, or the stores lost, resistance to the
Turks was hardly thinkable. The flames moved along a wooden gallery into the
Arsenal. Townsmen and soldiers gathered, there was a muddle about keys which could
not be found, but soldiers broke through a door and cleared the points of
greatest danger. A hysterical mob, looking on, smelt treason at once and
lynched two suspects, a poor lunatic and a boy wearing woman’s clothes. It also
destroyed the baggage which an inoffensive mining official from Hungary, then
in Vienna, was trying to get out of a second inn near the Arsenal; and it
panicked at the sight of a flag flying unaccountably from a roof close to the
fire, fearing some kind of a signal to the enemy. More effectively, the wind
then veered. Flames swept towards and into aristocratic properties on the other
side, away from the Arsenal, and proceeded to burn out the Auersperg palace
where the ruins went on smouldering for days. The crisis had passed before the
arrival of the Turks; but the danger of yet more fires, set off by Turkish
bombs or by traitors and spies inside the walls, was to be a constant nightmare
in Vienna later on.
Starhemberg very properly ordered the municipality to
requisition cellars for the storage of powder. It took over a number of crypts
or cellars under churches and convents for this purpose.
On the same day, the 14th, Lorraine began pulling his
cavalry out of Leopoldstadt and the islands. Breaking down the bridges as they
went, they crossed right over the Danube and took up a new position on the
north bank. Only the final bridge was left intact, guarded by a small force.
Leslie’s infantry continued to move into the city. Stores, coming downstream by
boat and raft, were still being unloaded by townsmen and units of the garrison.
