18 Oct Friday Bonus- The Battle of Vienna

 Hello!

Source: Wikipedia

This Friday's weekly history episode is about the Battle of Vienna - a key historical event that had a large effect in history. The powerful Ottoman Turkish empire, though have weakened in the past century, aspired to take the key city of Vienna which would grant them power even deeper into the European continent. 

It was a key city and there was very intricate and well designed Ottoman logistical preparations under the Ottoman vizier (vizier is like an advisor) Kara Mustafa. Vienna was under the control of one of the many states in the larger state of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire is a complex political entity. It was not Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. It was barely an organized empire - more of a semi united collection of lots of small and large smaller kingdoms and barely had legitimacy as being Roman. The ruling Habsburg dynasty also was very messy and inbred. It was a messy thing.

The Ottoman Turks (Turks were from Central Asia but migrated into Western Asia, converting religion to Islam) had strong, famous cannons that could devastate walls. Even before the big battle in 1683, the Ottomans had inflicted minor damages and in 1683, a large Ottoman army came. Vienna was unprepared and a siege (an attack in which the enemy army surrounds the walls of a city, which ceases possibility for people inside the city to get food and other supplies) began.

Both sides began making tunnels to try and get to the other side but the Ottoman intention of a speedy success could not be reached. Still, Vienna was cut out from any food supply. However, the Ottoman Turks had suffered lots of casualties, and Polish Hussars, a kind of armed cavalry, came to the defense of

The Ottoman army under Kara Mustafa failed to properly fight the Polish relief army and battle struck on 12 September in the morning. The Polish cavalry emerged from random directions, and by dusk the Polish relief army succeeded to repulse the Ottoman advance, which ended virtually any possibility for Ottoman expansion further into Europe.

Soon after the Europeans regained more land such as Hungary and later on, the Ottomans would be fully expelled out of Europe except for some territory near Constantinople/Istanbul. 


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