The Battle of Vienna (1683)

In 1683 Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha marched on Vienna, the Habsburg capital, with a great Ottoman army, and in mid-July laid siege to it. Defended under Count Starhemberg, the city held out for two months while Ottoman sappers tunnelled under the walls to bring down the fortifications.

Meanwhile the Holy Roman Empire and Poland-Lithuania joined forces to relieve the city, under the overall command of King John III Sobieski of Poland. On 12 September 1683 the allied army came down from the Kahlenberg hill near Vienna and attacked the Ottoman camp. Towards evening Sobieski's winged hussars made one of the largest cavalry charges in history, and the Ottoman army withdrew.

After Vienna, Kara Mustafa Pasha was executed in Belgrade. The Great Turkish War that followed ended with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, in which the Ottomans lost most of Hungary. Most historians see Vienna as the end of the Ottoman advance in Europe and the beginning of its retreat.