The Glory of the Crusades (41 page)

The allied relief army assembled in the Viennese woods, and appointed Sobieski supreme commander. They marched together toward Vienna, drawing near on September 9. Their scouts confirmed the unthinkable: The Turks had not secured the approaches to the city. In fact, they had not even posted sentries to warn Kara Mustapha of the approach of the relief army. It was a foolish and deadly mistake by the grand vizier, who was focused solely on his siege.

Sobieski developed his battle plan and prepared to attack the Ottomans using the high ground of Kahlenberg Mountain on the outskirts of Vienna. The battle began on September 11, 1683 as Kara Mustapha ordered his troops to attack the Christian forces in the hopes of disrupting their positioning maneuvers.

Fighting was intense, and the unseasonal heat of the day increased the suffering of the soldiers. Both sides were so exhausted by midday that they stopped fighting to regroup and rest. Fighting resumed and continued through the day until about five o’clock in the evening when Sobieski unleashed his famed Winged Hussars for a cavalry charge that demolished the Ottoman line. The rout was complete, and the Ottoman army fell into disarray. Kara Mustapha was captured, and later executed on December 25.
664

Polish troops were first into the city and were greeted with cheers and prayers of thanksgiving by the beleaguered defenders.
Sobieski sent a victory message to Pope Innocent XI that echoed the report of Charles V after his defeat of a Protestant army at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547: “We came, we saw, God conquered.”
665
The pope credited the Christian victory over the Ottomans and the salvation of the city to the intercession of the Blessed Mother, and established the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary as a result.
666
Truly, the day of Vienna’s salvation, September 11, 1683, “ought to be among the most famous in history.”
667
It was the high-water mark of Islamic incursion into the Christian West.

The Ottoman campaign to capture the gateway to Europe and destroy Christendom was a risky operation. Its success would have ensured Ottoman hegemony over Eastern Europe and opened up the approaches to Western Europe. Instead, its failure began the empire’s decline and ruin. Through the intercession of the Blessed Mother and the military genius of the Polish king Jan Sobieski, Christendom was saved. But the price was high. 50,000 Christian soldiers and civilians were killed during the siege of the great city of Vienna, and another 500,000 were killed as a result of the Turkish marches through Hapsburg lands.
668

From its beginning Islam had been a violent, imperialistic movement bent on conquest. Muslim armies throughout Islamic history had proved the better of their opponents in significant clashes, which helped to spread the beliefs of Mohammed. At the end of the seventeenth century, however, a Muslim army finally met its match, and its defeat stopped the advance of the Ottoman Empire. The Hapsburgs would rally from the great victory at Vienna and begin the long process of liberating the Balkans from Ottoman rule. In two more centuries, the Ottoman Empire was the “sick man of Europe”—an empire in name only. The Turks allied with the Kaiser in the First World War, declaring their participation a
jihad
in the name of Allah, but they chose the wrong side, and in 1918 the victorious Allied powers finally disbanded the Ottoman Empire with the sweep of a pen.
669

574
A speech at the Congress of Mantua to rally Western warriors to fight the Ottoman Turks after the sack and conquest of Constantinople. Pius II in Franz Babinger,
Mehmet the Conqueror and His Time
170–171, in Roger Crowley,
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
(New York: 2005), 242.

575
Jérome Maurand,
Itinénraire de J. Maurand d’Antibes à Constantinople (1544)
(Paris: 1901), 67–69, in Roger Crowley,
Empires of the Sea—The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
(New York: Random House, 2009), 68.

576
12,000 of the 22,000 inhabitants were killed during the invasion. Crowley,
1453
, 241.

577
Giovanni Laggetto,
Historia della guerra di Otranto del 1480
, in Matthew E. Bunson, “How the 800 Martyrs of Otranto Saved Rome,”
This Rock
(Catholic Answers), vol. 19, Number 6, July 2008.
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/how-the-800-martyrs-of-otranto-saved-rome
. Accessed January 20, 2014.

578
Saverio de Marco,
Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini
,
in Bunson, “How the 800 Martyrs of Otranto Saved Rome.”

579
Norman Housley, “Pope Pius II and Crusading,”
Crusades
, vol. 11, The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012), 245.

580
Crowley,
1453
, 44.

581
Ibid., 42.

582
Tyerman,
God’s War
, 863.

583
Doukas,
Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum
, vol. 5 (Paris: 1870), 247–248, in Crowley,
1453
, 90.

584
Crowley,
1453
, 93–94.

585
Ibid., 94

586
Ibid.

587
Ibid., 116.

588
Crowley,
1453
, 67.

589
Ibid., 116.

590
Total number of guns and shots per day from Crowley,
1453
, 112, 118.

591
Nestor-Iskander,
The Tale of Constantinople
, 49, in Crowley,
1453
, 161.

592
The core of the Ottoman army was the fearsome “Janissary” troops who were personally loyal to the sultan. Janissaries were taken from the Ottoman system of “boy tribute,” which required Christian parents in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe to hand over their male children between six and twenty years of age to Muslim authorities. These male tributes were sent to the sultan’s court where they were forcibly converted to Islam and educated. Some of the tributes were chosen for a civil service career path, and served as government officials throughout the Ottoman Empire. Others became Janissaries and were sent to military schools where they learned the art of personal combat and military science. Originally, the tributes were not allowed to marry or own property because their lives were totally dedicated to the sultan’s service. In the history of the Ottoman Empire upwards of a million Christian boys were forcibly removed from their homes and compelled to serve the sultan. The system of “boy tributes” was not officially abolished until 1848. Diane Moczar,
Islam at the Gates—How Christendom Defeated the Ottoman Turks
(Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2008), 40.

593
Crowley,
1453
, 211.

594
Leonard of Chios,
De Capta a Mehemethe II Constantinopoli
, 44, in Crowley,
1453
, 177.

595
Crowley,
1453
, 215.

596
Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 568.

597
Ibid.

598
Crowley,
1453
, 220.

599
Although recent reports indicate a movement in Istanbul to return the space to a mosque.

600
Number of killed, see Tyerman,
God’s War
, 864. Number seized and enslaved, see Crowley,
1453
, 233, 235.

601
Referred to by the Greeks as
polis
or “the city,” and when going to the city they said “
eis tin polin
”; it is possible the Ottomans heard “Istanbul,” giving the conquered city its new name. Crowley,
1453
, 30. It is also recorded that Mehmet called the city “Islambol” meaning “full of Islam.” Crowley,
1453
, 237.

602
Norman Housley, “Pope Pius II and Crusading,” 245.

603
Pius II in Franz Babinger,
Mehmet the Conqueror and His Time,
170–171, in Crowley,
1453
, 242.

604
Moczar,
Islam at the Gates
, 90.

605
Ludwig von Pastor,
History of the Popes
, vol. III (St. Louis: 1895–1935), 326, in Carroll,
The Glory of Christendom
, 583.

606
Pii II Orations
, 3:117, in Housley, “Pope Pius II and Crusading,” 234.

607
Housley, “Pope Pius II and Crusading,”
246.

608
Crowley,
Empires of the
Sea, 4.

609
Ibid., xvi.

610
Tim Pickles,
Malta 1565—Last Battle of the Crusades
(New York: Osprey Publishing, 1998), 14.

611
Crowley,
Empires of the Sea
, 90.

612
Numbers of troops from Pickles,
Malta 1565
, 23. Number of artillery pieces from Crowley,
Empires of the Sea
, 95–96.

613
Crowley,
Empires of the Sea
, 111.

614
Ernle Bradford,
The Great Siege
(New York: 1961), 43, in Warren H. Carroll,
The Cleaving of Christendom—vol. IV in A History of Christendom
(Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2000), 824.

615
Warren H. Carroll and Anne W. Carroll,
The Crisis of Christendom—vol. VI in A History of Christendom
(Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2013), 824.