Winged Hussars[/caption]12 September 1683, and Vienna, under control of the Hapsburg Monarchy with approximately 16,000 personnel (11,000 regular forces and 5,000 auxiliaries/volunteers), has been besieged by an Ottoman Turk force of 140,000 for two months as a part of the Ottoman-Hapsburg War.
Vienna was offered the option to surrender before the siege began on 14 July, but news of the town of Perchtoldsdorf’s capitulation and subsequent mass slaughter at the same offer steeled the resolve of the garrison commander, Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, to hold out and hope for relief.
The defenders had knocked down houses surrounding the defensive palisade, reinforced the 150 year old walls with large tree trunks, and cleared the rubble to offer clear fields of fire out to the effective range of their 370 field guns, forcing the Turks to keep at bay lest lose tens of thousands of men on an approach before even beginning an assault. The Turks only had a little over 100 field guns, of varying calibers.
The Turks began digging trench lines to provide cover and began digging saps, intending to mine the walls with black powder and blow holes in the defensive barriers. The Viennese defender’s additional defensive measures proved vital in buying them time for relief forces to arrive.
The Polish-Lithuanian King John III Sobieski, a renowned military commander, had consolidated a force of 70,000 to 80,000 soldiers between Poland and the Holy Roman Empire. This was the first time commonwealth and Holy Roman Imperial forces took to the field together.
Louis XIV of France declined to assist, and was in fact in the middle of annexing Hapsburg Monarchy land while they were occupied with the Turks.
By the time the combined relief force had arrived, the Turks had successfully sapped and blown several holes in the defensive perimeter. At the prospect of being surrounded, they pressed an attack before the European field army could fully deploy and set for battle, charging German Holy League troops at 0400 the morning of 12 September, starting the Battle of Vienna.
The battle slowly progressed through the day, with German and Polish forces making steady progress and inflicting heavy casualties on Turk forces. The bulk of the Ottoman army deployed at this point were conscripts and peasants, the elite Janissary forces being held back to take the city when the walls fell. Ottoman forces had prepared ten large final charges to be blown for a final large assault, but unbeknownst to them, Viennese defenders had dug counter-saps, located, and disabled every one of these charges.
By 4 PM the situation was dire for the Turks. Their front lines had fallen all the way back to their central formation.
The Polish cavalry, “Winged Hussars” because of the decorative wooden wings with swan, eagle, ostrich, and goose feathers that they wore, cleared the tree line to the loud cheers of foot soldiers who had been awaiting their arrival to the field of battle. They plunged into Ottoman lines and Turkish resolve began to wane.
Around this time, at 5 PM, the Turkish commander decided to fall back to the South where his main headquarters was located.
By 6 PM the Ottoman lines were in full withdrawal.
King Sobieski then ordered four detachments of cavalry, three of his own Winged Hussar heavy lancers, and one of German heavy cavalry, to charge. 18,000 heavy lancers, the largest cavalry charge in history, with the renowned military commander and Polish king at the front and leading the charge, crashed upon the faltering Ottoman waves like an ocean of righteous fury and completely shattered the Turkish army.
The remaining three hours of battle were little more than cleanup operations.
Following the battle, King Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar: “Vini, vici, Deus vicit” or “I came, I saw, God conquered.”
The battle is seen as a turning point in European history, with the charge of the Winged Hussars putting an end to the 300 years of Ottomans menacing Europe.
Red Cascadia
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Jan III Sobieski sending Message of Victory at Vienna to the Pope, painting by Jan Matejko, in Vatican Museums[/caption]
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