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Turning the Ottoman Tide – John III Sobieski at Vienna 1683By Anthony Pagden | MHQ | 10 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post While its leaders wrangled among themselves, Christendom watched the Ottomans slowly encroach. By the end of 1461, all that remained of the Byzantine oikoumene—the Duchy of Athens, the Despotate of Morea, and the Empire of Trebizond—had passed into Turkish hands. Serbia capitulated in 1459 and Bosnia four years later. Albania was overrun in 1468. Across the Danube, the Transylvanian state of Wallachia, which had maintained a precarious independence under the infamous Prince Vlad Drakula, known as “the Impaler” because of his favorite method of disposing of his opponents, fell in 1462. The neighboring principality of Moldavia followed in 1504. In 1521, an Ottoman army seized the Hungarian city of Belgrade, having failed before, in 1440 and again in 1456. In August 1526, Sultan Suleiman I defeated Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in the marshes of Mohács, whose muddy waters closed over the unfortunate king’s head before he could escape the pursuing Ottoman cavalry. At the time, the Battle of Mohács seemed like a magnificent victory for the Ottomans. But in the long run, it was to be something of a pyrrhic one. For the death of Louis brought to the Hungarian throne Ferdinand II, the Hapsburg archduke of Vienna, brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and ruler of Spain, Spanish America, much of Italy, the Netherlands, and a great swath of central Europe. The Ottomans now faced a far greater and more united Christian power than they had ever had to confront before. As the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto put it, now there were “two suns” shining upon the globe and two rulers competing for universal supremacy: A Christian emperor in the West and a Muslim sultan in the East. Suleiman I, called “the Magnificent” in Europe, saw himself as the heir of Alexander the Great, the “last world emperor” who would destroy his rival Charles V and then march west and conquer Rome. Like his competitors in the West, Suleiman was also eager to see himself as the beneficiary of an apocalyptic tradition, based loosely on the Book of Daniel, that foretold of a time toward the end of the sixteenth century when the Great Year would dawn, in which one true religion (Catholic Christianity for Charles V, Sunni Islam for Suleiman) would triumph over all others, ruled by one divinely appointed ruler—the sahib-kiran, “Emperor of the Last Age.” In 1529, Suleiman marched west again, his sights now set on the emperor Ferdinand’s capital at Vienna. This time, however, the sultan overextended himself. The centralized nature of the Ottoman state demanded that the entire army, recruited from every province in the empire, muster outside Istanbul. This took months. Then, when the army finally was on the march, it was dragged down by heavy rains and floods and took more than four months to reach Vienna. By the time they arrived, the troops were demoralized and exhausted, and supplies were running out. After only three weeks, Suleiman called off the siege and retreated to Istanbul. Yet, the sheer audacity of the siege and the devastation Suleiman’s armies had left in their wake staggered Western minds. If the sultan’s forces could reach that deep into the heart of Christendom, across daunting terrain crossed by mighty rivers, the Danube among them, might they not, rather more easily, seize another Christian capital such as Rome, which was easily accessible from the sea? Alarmed by this prospect, in 1534 Pope Paul III commissioned the architect Antonio da Sangallo to build a protective wall around the Eternal City with no fewer than eighteen bastions. Lack of funds finally forced him to abandon the project. For Suleiman, Vienna was merely a setback. In 1551, the port of Tripoli, held by the Knights Hospitalers for Charles V, fell to a joint attack by the Ottoman imperial fleet and the legendary corsair Turgud Reis. That same year, Piri Reis, the Ottoman admiral who had commissioned a map of the Americas so that his master might see what new realms still waited to be conquered, sacked the Portuguese settlement at Ormuz, on the Persian Gulf. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: 17th - 18th Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures
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10 Comments to “Turning the Ottoman Tide – John III Sobieski at Vienna 1683”
I think this article is not that objective. It has gone too far about looting and calling muslims as barbarians.
By Mete Han on Aug 11, 2008 at 6:11 am
Great article, very informative. Gives a great overview of a serious subject that resonates today in America’s so called “War on Terror”
By Murphy Maloney on Aug 26, 2008 at 5:33 pm
These days, September 2008 we have 325 anniversary of this battle. You can discuss this battle at the historynet.com forum:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67411
By Bartosz on Sep 7, 2008 at 4:21 am
I think the article is a decent overview of the ottoman empire trending upward and then its decline but the title is all wrong. It should have stopped at “Turning the Ottoman Tide” for in reality what did it mention the battle of Vienna for? 4 paragraphs?
By Bob Sandusky on Dec 26, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Nicely written article.
It would have been reasonable to remind readers that Janissaries were mostly Christian children, forcably taken from Christian families in conquered regions, brought up by Muslims under conditions of religious manipulation, converted to Islam when they came of age, then sent out with zeal to commit Jihads against Christians.
The Janissary core was one of many methods used by Muslims to convert the Middle East and North Africa to Islam.
By Tom Sontag on Jan 31, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I thought that the article (which was, indeed, taken from a much larger work) was immense in its coverage of a hugh piece of history. BUT, I missed a better description of the heroic deeds of John III, particularly his cavalry, whic h played such an important tole in the salvation of the West.
By Bob Sayers on May 27, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I thank you for this article. I appreciate an honest historian. The article complaining about calling some of the Muslim men of the year(s) mentioned want to candy coat reality. I realize with the heat of battle/caught up in the moment men on both sides of a battle may over due their anger. The reason we have enjoyed our living style(s) and history is in thanks to the monks (scriptoria), Benedictines e.g., and the Roman Catholic men and women who stood in the breach and fought and/or shed their blood; both secular/laity and the Knights .g. St. Johns Hospitalliers, the Knights of St. Peter Alcantara etc…
Read William Thomas Walsh book’s “Isabella the Catholic of Spain” and “Phillip II”. This is why the Roman Catholic church that is being preserved with the Latin mass is right. We will need our faith and will be shedding blood. I believe there is another group of a different faith that is instigating this, too. As in the case of what we have seen since 1948.
Palestine until then, 1948 and even before the 1920’s with the British helping with a settlement, was quiet.
The Palestinians, both Christian and Arab, are right in their grievance.
Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat
By Clarence J. LaFuentes II on Jun 12, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The article was very good and covered most of the better information available. I was recently in Constantinople and it is still in ruins. The city has not been taken care of but there is a newer movement to clean it up to bring in Western Tourists.
The history there is directed towards Islam and how wonderfully it changed everything for the better there and not Christianity. You need to study the facts before you go to Constantinople and Vienne and this article will help in that regard. Sadly, the Janissary core did betray their own families also.
Don Juan of Austria, Eugene of Savoy (Austrian General) and King John III Sobieski of Poland and the emperor’s brother-in-law, Charles Sixte of Lorraine should all be given much more credit for what they did for the West. World wide historical kudos should still be showered on Sobieski for his decision to march through the Wienerwald to catch the Turks off guard. There is a church and lookout on that hill now to honor this.
The uneducated public does not realize that the Muslims are still at the Gates of Vienna and the West has thrown those gates open to the good people to come in for jobs but the bad are also slithering in under their shoes into the European Union.
This article is good in historical context of the times. Yes,
Turkey proudly announces that it is .99 % Muslim and open to the West.
By John Riggs on Jun 13, 2009 at 7:01 am