July 14 – September 12, 1683 · Austria Theater
July 14 – September 12, 1683
Kara Mustafa Pasha arrived before Vienna with perhaps 150,000 men in July 1683 and began a methodical siege, driving mines toward the city walls while Starhemberg's garrison of 15,000 held on by improvised countermining and desperate sorties. By September the walls were breached and the city was days from falling. On September 12, a relief army of some 70,000 under Sobieski descended from the Kahlenberg in the largest cavalry charge in recorded history — 18,000 horsemen, led by 3,000 Polish winged hussars, swept down the hillside and into the Ottoman camp. The Turkish army broke and fled, abandoning its siege works, artillery, and the grand vizier's tent.
Commanders