![]() The Ottomans and Austria had clashed repeatedly for more than 150 years, and Mustafa planned an expedition to put an end to this situation. Sobieski began planning a relief expedition to Vienna during the summer of 1683, when the hard-pressed Turks launched an all-out offensive against Austria. After the later dispersal of the Turks, the Polish army reported many horse thefts.) (For example, the Viennese cavalry had to start killing their own horses for food. Additionally, the Ottoman siege cut virtually every means of food supply into Vienna, and the population started to starve. ![]() One goal of this digging was to decrease the stability of the walls around Vienna. Kara Mustafa solved that problem by ordering his forces to dig long lines of trenches directly toward the city to help protect them from the defenders as they advanced toward it. The Turks, commanded by Pasha Kara Mustafa, numbered approximately 140,000 men, although a large number of them played no part in the battle.īefore the siege, the Viennese had demolished many of the houses around the city walls and cleared the debris, leaving an empty plain that would expose the Turks to defensive fire if they tried to rush the city. The battle, which took place on September 12, 1683, pitted a large Austrian and German army of about 100,000 troops and their allies, a 30,000-man relief force under Jan III Sobieski, King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, against their Turkish besiegers. ![]() Over the 16 years following the battle Christian forces would permanently drive the Turks south of the Danube River, where they never again posed a serious threat to central Europe. The Battle of Vienna in 1683 (as distinct from the Siege of Vienna in 1529) marked the final turning point in a 250-year struggle between the forces of Christian Europe and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. ![]()
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