What if Suleiman the Magnificent had taken Vienna in 1529?
Rain, mud and countermines stopped the Ottomans at Vienna in 1529. What if the walls had fallen?
What actually happened
In 1526 Suleiman the Magnificent destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács, where King Louis II died. Hungary's crown was then disputed between the Habsburg Ferdinand of Austria and the Hungarian magnate John Zápolya, whom Suleiman backed. In 1529 the sultan marched up the Danube to restore Zápolya in Buda and to strike at Ferdinand himself.
It was an exceptionally wet summer. Rain turned the roads to mud, and much of the heavy siege artillery had to be left behind. The army reached Vienna only in late September. The city's defences were old, but a garrison of perhaps 20,000 under Count Niklas Salm had prepared, and it fought a war of mines and countermines under the walls.
Several breaches were opened but every assault was beaten back. With supplies short and the campaigning season over, the Ottomans made a last attack in mid-October, then burned their camp and withdrew through early snow. Salm died of his wounds. The Habsburg–Ottoman frontier settled in Hungary for the next 150 years.
The turning point
The weather was the decisive factor: with its heavy guns and a few more weeks of good weather, the army would have had a far better chance against Vienna's medieval walls. The defenders' countermining, which found and destroyed many Ottoman mines, was the other.
Historians also question how far Suleiman intended a conquest. Caroline Finkel and others note that Vienna lay at the edge of the range an army marching from Istanbul each spring could reach and supply; the campaign may have aimed as much at securing Hungary for Zápolya and challenging Charles V's prestige as at taking and holding the city.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the great guns arrived on time by boat down the Danube; a mine burst beside the Kärntner Gate and the wall came down; the crescent rose over the tower of St Stephen's Cathedral; Ferdinand withdrew to Linz, and all of Hungary became the sultan's. The game then removes the scripted siege of 1529 that follows history.
Beyond the game, holding Vienna would have been hard. It was a long way from the Ottoman heartland, and Charles V would have been under enormous pressure to retake it. But an Ottoman Vienna, even for a few years, would have exposed Bohemia, Moravia and southern Germany, and might have forced the Protestant and Catholic princes of the Empire into a much closer, earlier alliance against the sultan.
It would also have changed Habsburg priorities. Charles V's wars with France and his struggle against the Lutherans were constantly interrupted by the Ottoman threat; with Vienna lost, that threat would have dominated everything.
Ripples through time
A Habsburg family fighting for its own heartland has less to spare for the west: in the game a successful Spanish invasion of England in 1588 becomes less likely.
Carried into the Age of the Sun King (1680), the Ottomans hold Austria, Carinthia, Upper Hungary and Croatia, Vienna has been the sultan's city for 150 years and the Habsburg court sits in Prague. The scripted second siege of Vienna in 1683 and the later Habsburg reconquest of Hungary do not happen as in history; see What if the Ottomans had taken Vienna in 1683?
- Shapes What if the Spanish Armada had landed in England?
- Carries into the next era Age of the Sun King and the Baroque
Play this turning point
Start in the Renaissance era. The Currents of History story The Ottoman advance invites you in the 1520s: fight for the sultan to change history, or for Christendom to keep it. There is no dedicated scenario.
The odds compare Ottoman strength with the Habsburg defenders; the Ottomans are strong, but history still leans heavily toward Vienna holding.
Questions and answers
Why did the Ottoman siege of Vienna fail in 1529?
Heavy rain forced the Ottomans to abandon much of their heavy artillery, they arrived late in the season, the garrison's countermines defeated their mines, and supplies ran short before winter.
Who defended Vienna in 1529?
A garrison of roughly 17,000–21,000 under Count Niklas Salm, who was mortally wounded, with Wilhelm von Roggendorf and others.
Was 1529 the only Ottoman siege of Vienna?
No. The Ottomans besieged Vienna again in 1683, when the city was relieved by Jan III Sobieski's army at the Battle of Vienna.
Sources and further reading
Contemporary German siege accounts and Ottoman campaign diaries. Modern accounts: Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream; Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate; Pál Fodor and Géza Dávid (eds.), Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central Europe.
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