King Jan III Sobieski:Defeating the Turks and Saving Christianity, 1683

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In early modern Europe, one of the most powerful states was the joint kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, covering an area which would have included modern Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, Slovakia, and much of the Ukraine. The area stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Jan III Sobieski was king of one of the largest nations in Europe, called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This commonwealth had a parliament where the king was elected to the throne.


Religious toleration was guaranteed to all-an unheard of ideal, except for the tiny Dutch republic. King Jan III Sobieski was the great Polish hero who defeated the Muslim Turks during the second siege of Vienna on September 12th, 1683. For defeating the Muslims and granting religious liberty to all her subjects, that republic later disappeared from the map of Europe.


Following the Conquest of Constantinople

The Ottoman Turks, in time, went on to take the Balkans. By the spring of 1683 their ruthless Grand Vizier (leader) Kara Mustafa Pasha decided to launch a major campaign to seize the rest of Hungary and advance into Central Europe. The Turk’s main rival in the region was Austria, whose monarch, Leopold I, was both the King of Austria, Bohemia, Habsburg Hungary, and was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a collection of feudal German states and independent cities. The Habsburg commander-in-chief could muster only 33,000 soldiers. Leopold fled his capital, and Vienna was placed under siege.


Holy Alliance of Christian Princes Pope Innocent XI called for a “Holy Alliance of Christian Princes” to resist the Muslim horde. Innocent pledged the revenues of the church to help raise an army. King Jan III Sobieski of Poland, a veteran of the wars against the Turks, was willing to lead an army in support of the Habsburgs. King Jan then set about to raise an army of 40,000.


While Kara Mustafa Pasha’s savage tartar allies pillaged the surrounding countryside, the Turkish engineers went about the business of constructing siege lines and undermining the city’s defenses. The Muslims were on the verge of breaking through the last defensive works, when, on September 9th, it was announced that a relief force was assembling nearby, commanded by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland.


The Battle of Vienna

The large-scale battle was won by Polish, Austrian, and German forces commanded by the King of Poland, Jan III Sobieski. They fought against the Ottoman Empire Army commanded by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha. On this date, September 12, 1683, Central Europe was on the edge of conquest by an Islamic army. Within days, if not hours, militant and expansionist Islam would hold sway over the heart of Europe. That was when the Polish army showed up, with King Jan III Sobieski in command. The Ottoman commanders had intended to take Vienna before Sobieski arrived, but time ran out.


The Battle

According to King Sobieski’s account, he found about 100,000 small tents in the Turk’s camp; there were at least three men in each tent. The Ottoman’s strength was around 300,000 troops and 300 heavy cannons. The Holy League’s strength was around 84,000 troops and 152 cannons. A large battle was underway as the Polish infantry launched a massive assault upon the Ottoman’s right flank.


Instead of focusing on the battle with the relief army, the Ottomans tried to force their way into the city, carrying their crescent flag. After twelve hours of fighting, the Poles held the high ground on the right. The Holy League Cavalry waited on the hills and watched the infantry battle for the whole day. Then, at about, 5:00 p.m., the King of Poland ordered the attack.


The Cavalry attacked in four groups. One group was Austrian-German, and the other three were Polish. Twenty thousand horsemen charged down the hills (the largest cavalry charge in history). The charge was planned and led by the King of Poland. King Jan III Sobieski was at the head of 3,000 Polish heavy lancers, the famed “winged Hussars.” The unusual wings had two possible purposes: the first was to make a hissing or rattling noise that terrified the horses who were not accustomed to it, and the second was to defeat the lariats- long, light ropes with running nooses at one end to catch livestock, that were sometimes used by the Tartars.


The leopard or tiger fur also was probably quite menacing to horses that were unaccustomed to their appearance and order.


The highly innovative Poles doubtlessly realized that, once they frightened the horse, the man on its back became irrelevant to any subsequent proceedings. Unlike medieval knights, the Husaria adopted an “all or nothing” doctrine for armor. Although the legs and forearms were not protected, the breastplate was, in fact, capable of stopping musket-fire like a bullet proof vest.


The charge broke the lines of the Ottomans, who were tired from the long fight on two sides. In the confusion, the cavalry headed straight for the Ottoman camps, while the remaining Vienna garrison sallied out of its defenses and joined in the assault. The Ottoman troops were tired and dispirited following the failure of the brute force assault on the city. The charge against them sent them into retreat to the south and east.


In less than three hours after the cavalry attack, the Christian forces had won the battle and saved Vienna. After the battle, Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar’s famous quote by saying:”Venimus, vidimus, Deus vincit”-We came, we saw, God conquered. The battle marked the historic end of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe.

The Polish King Saved Germany from Becoming a Muslim State

By the heroic relief of Vienna during the 2nd Muslim siege of the city, King Jan III Sobieski saved Germany from a fate far worse than death. By September 11th, 1683, a huge Muslim army had Vienna surrounded and was ready to take the city by storm. Their final target was Germany-the birthplace of Martin Luther and the homeland of the reformation. Vienna was the key to the conquest of Germany, and Muslim possession of that city would open the way to the subjugation of both Austria and Germany.


If Germany had fallen to the Muslims, the very memory of the Reformation would have been permanently expunged from the history books along with all the writings of the Great Reformer. If the 1st or 2nd Muslim invasion of Germany had succeeded, all the great historic places in the life of Luther would now be mosques.


Aftermath

The Turkish Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha was in such haste to flee, that he broke a jeweled stirrup from his horse’s tack and King Sobieski captured it as a gift for his wife. The Poles meanwhile cleaned out the Turkish camp where they found not only the usual prizes of war, but a large supply of coffee. Coffee: a Polish gift to civilization.


The victorious king gave bags of coffee abandoned in the Turkish camp to one of his officers, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki, who opened the first coffee house in Vienna, and who helped popularize coffee in Europe. Kulczycki used the coffee to open the first café in Vienna called ‘Under the Blue Bottle,’ from where the idea spread to other parts of Europe. A statue of Kulczycki now stands on Vienna’s Kulczycki Street. Kulczycki himself added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino-first created in Vienna.


According to another culinary legend, the first bagel was made as a gift to King Jan Sobieski to commemorate his victory over the Turks near Vienna. Its round shape is a reference to a stirrup. The first croissant was baked in Vienna to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish siege of the city, and hence its shape resembling the crescent on the Turkish flag.


Conclusion

This was one of the most important battles in the history of the world, yet it is not always given the credit it deserves in the history books. After the battle, Sobieski sent the captured standard of the Turks with a victory message to the Pope thanking God alone for the victory. The Battle of Vienna stopped the westward expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic religion. It was Poland’s Hussaria-the most fearsome cavalry to ever ride the earth-that struck the decisive blow. In honor of Sobieski, the Austrians erected a church atop a hill of Kahlenberg, north of Vienna. The train route from Vienna to Warsaw is also named in Sobieski’s honor.


Since Sobieski entrusted his kingdom to the protection of the Blessed Virgin (Our lady of Czestochowa) before the battle, Pope Innocent XI commemorated his victory by extending the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, celebrating it on the 12th of September.


A statue of King Jan III Sobieski was erected in Vienna, Austria and Gdansk, Poland. The Battle of Vienna cleared the path towards the forming of the future Austrian Empire (1804-1867), and the destruction of the commonwealth. In 1772 and 1795 the Habsburg Monarchy took part in the first and third partitions of Poland, which wiped the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth off the map of Europe.







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