What if the Ottomans had taken Vienna in 1683?
Sobieski's relief army broke the siege of Vienna on 12 September 1683. What if the city had surrendered first?
What actually happened
In 1683 the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa led one of the largest Ottoman armies ever assembled up the Danube, in alliance with the Hungarian Kuruc rebels of Imre Thököly. The emperor Leopold I left his capital for Passau, and from 14 July Vienna was besieged, defended by a garrison of some 15,000 soldiers and armed citizens under Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg.
For two months the Ottomans dug trenches and mines toward the Burg and Löbel bastions. By early September parts of the defences were in ruins and the garrison was exhausted and sick. Meanwhile a relief army gathered: Imperial troops under Charles of Lorraine, Bavarians, Saxons and other German contingents, and a Polish army led by King Jan III Sobieski.
On 12 September the relief army descended from the Kahlenberg heights. After a day of fighting in the vineyards, the Polish cavalry, including the famous winged hussars, made a massive charge late in the afternoon and the Ottoman camp collapsed. Kara Mustafa fled and was executed on the sultan's orders in Belgrade that December. The Holy League that followed retook Buda in 1686, and the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 gave almost all of Hungary to the Habsburgs.
The turning point
The city was close to falling. A few more mine explosions or one successful general assault in early September might have broken the defence before the relief army arrived. Kara Mustafa has been criticised for bringing too few heavy siege guns and for preferring a slow siege, perhaps hoping for a negotiated surrender that would have kept the city's wealth for the Ottoman treasury rather than for his soldiers' plunder.
The relief itself was also a gamble. The allied army was assembled late and in haste, and its commanders were rivals. Had it arrived a week later, or had the Ottomans guarded the Kahlenberg properly, the outcome might have been very different. Historians such as John Stoye and Andrew Wheatcroft describe the siege as one of the closest-fought in European history.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: before the relief army could gather, powder in a mine blew apart the Burg bastion; in early September the gates of Vienna opened; the emperor set up his court in Prague, and the crescent rose over the spire of St Stephen's Cathedral. The game then removes the scripted Habsburg recovery: the retaking of Buda, Karlowitz, Passarowitz and Belgrade.
Beyond the game, an Ottoman Vienna would have been hard to keep. It lay at the very end of Ottoman supply lines, and the allied army was still in the field. But even a few years of Ottoman rule there would have shattered Habsburg prestige, delayed or prevented the reconquest of Hungary and pushed the centre of the Habsburg monarchy toward Bohemia.
The wider consequences are open. Louis XIV, who had pointedly stayed out of the crusade, might have gained in Germany; Poland, having failed, would have lost its moment of glory; and the long Ottoman retreat from Central Europe that began in 1683 might have come later and more slowly.
Ripples through time
A Habsburg defeat in 1683 echoes through the rest of the era. In the game it makes a Bourbon union of France and Spain more likely, because Austria is weaker in the war over the Spanish succession, and it makes a Swedish victory at Poltava somewhat more likely.
Carried into the Age of Revolution (1789), the Ottomans still rule Buda and the Banat of Temesvár.
- Shapes What if Charles XII had won the Battle of Poltava?, What if France and Spain had been united under one Bourbon crown?
- Carries into the next era Age of Revolution
Play this turning point
Start in the Age of the Sun King and the Baroque (1680), or take the scenario Winged hussars, which begins as the Ottoman army besieges Vienna. The Currents of History story The siege of Vienna and the Great Turkish War lets you join the Holy League, the sultan's side or Thököly's Kuruc; the last two push for the alternative.
History is weighted heavily here; only a large contribution, or a strong Ottoman realm in your world, makes the fall of Vienna a real possibility.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “Winged hussars” →
Questions and answers
When was the Battle of Vienna?
On 12 September 1683, when the relief army of the Holy Roman Empire and Poland broke the two-month Ottoman siege.
Who led the winged hussars at Vienna?
King Jan III Sobieski of Poland, who was also the overall commander of the relief army on the day of the battle.
What happened to Kara Mustafa?
He retreated to Belgrade and was executed by strangulation with a silk cord on the orders of Sultan Mehmed IV on 25 December 1683.
Sources and further reading
Contemporary siege diaries and the dispatches of Sobieski. Modern accounts: John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna; Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate; Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream.
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