The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (43 page)

If Louis XIV had died suddenly, if the siege of Luxembourg had been the scene of a surprising military reverse which disconcerted the French, it is possible that the German and Habsburg courts would have altered their course. But Max Emmanuel simply told Waldeck that—although his troops had been kept in readiness for a march to the western frontiers in case of emergency during the past few months, although he had refused to sanction their departure down the Danube to Hungary—his final word depended on the instructions of the Habsburg government to its own regiments. Leopold in turn stated that he could do nothing without a firm promise of support from William of Orange and other princes.
⁵²
It was an impasse. Luxembourg fell on 7 June, the Dutch Estates-General came rapidly to terms with Louis, while William with Grana and the Spanish government had to acknowledge their own complete repulse. Louis XIV’s long-standing offer to negotiate a
settlement, on the basis of a formula which by-passed the question of ultimate sovereignty in the lands of the Empire annexed by him between 1679 and 1681, and also in Luxembourg, but recognised his right to occupy them for many years to come, was at last accepted by Leopold. The bargaining at Regensburg, which finally fixed the duration of the ‘truce’ for a period of twenty years, ended on 24 August 1684.

The decision to give way to Louis was clinched by unfavourable news from Hungary, where the siege of Buda had been going badly. This was indeed the significant point, that there could be no thought of withdrawing from the Turkish war. The capture of Buda, for Leopold and the majority of his ministers, now took precedence over the recovery of Strasbourg, Freiburg or Luxembourg as the most immediately practical, desirable objective for their arms and diplomacy. After many months of elaborate sparring on the western front, it was clearer than ever before that the victories of 1683 along the Danube had made a fundamental contribution to future Habsburg statecraft, committing it to the long sequence of campaigns against the Ottoman Sultan which ended only with the treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. If Louis XIV gained time, and strengthened further that marvellously complete system of defences which saved France in the wars of the great coalitions against it between 1688 and 1714, Emperor Leopold and his successors won a new Hungarian empire.

*
Innocent also sent Marco on a special mission to Munich to persuade Max Emmanuel that the war against the Sultan deserved priority over everything else.

VI

The advance down the Danube, one of the major developments of seventeenth century history, anticipated by a few years the expansion of Russian power under Czar Peter. The Austrian Habsburgs no less than Russia and the Great Britain of Queen Anne, were to draw abreast of the French monarchy or at least to counter-balance it by their victories in the field. With Lorraine still in command Buda was taken in 1686, and Max Emmanuel triumphed at Belgrade in 1688. Year by year Habsburg forces tightened their hold on Transylvania and the plains of Hungary. But the first of all these victories, the relief of Vienna, had been won at the heaviest possible cost to the inhabitants of the city itself, so that against the background of empire-building on the grand scale it seems prudent—if we are to draw an honest picture of men and events in a period no less complex than any other—to take a final glance at the city of Vienna, the citizens, and the landscape surrounding them, in the years after the siege.

Statistics of any use are hard to come by. It was believed, in 1689, that half a million people had died in Austria as a result of the Turkish invasion, a figure which seems incredible; but there can be little doubt, first, that the plague years of 1679 and 1680 already created serious gaps in the working population of the whole area—in Vienna alone the loss was not less than 50,000—and
second, that before society had properly recovered from this earlier disaster the events of 1683 dealt another crushing blow to the population of most towns and villages in Lower Austria south of the Danube. On this occasion, the civilians in Vienna certainly suffered fewer losses than in 1679–80, or than the inhabitants of the surrounding district in 1683. But depopulation in the Wiener Wald was so great that its historian has spoken of ‘a new wave of colonisation’
⁵³
which continued for the next twenty-five years, gradually making good the enormous losses. He has also discovered, from an inspection of parish registers, that possibly a fifth of the immigrants came from outside Lower Austria, above all from Styria and Bavaria. A minor misfortune for the Viennese was these strangers’ ignorance of the skills needed for work in their ravaged vineyards. Much worse, the plague of 1713 again decimated the population. The government, in greater need of high taxes than ever before during its long and expensive wars, was bombarded with pleas for exemption from them; villages had too many ruined houses, and estates too few labourers, to pay what the old assessments required. The whole process of recovery was painfully slow. Lower Austria ranks with the Rhenish Palatinate as one of the areas most devastated by the ravaging of armies in this period.

Immediately after the siege, certain matters were urgent. The Turks might return and the allied army dissolve into its separate parts while the rival rulers adjusted, or failed to adjust, their mutual jealousies. The remains of the Turkish camp had to be dismantled, and all stores of value moved into the city. It was even more important to level the Turkish siege-works, so that they could not be used a second time. The engineers Suttinger and Anguissola first made accurate drawings of them,
⁵⁴
and then sufficient labour was mobilised to fill in the galleries and clear the glacis in a manner which satisfied the military authorities. Once again the city council was asked to find 1,000 workmen, with each house responsible for producing a man or his pay. Another 870 artisans from the civilian companies now being disbanded, as well as some of the infantry, had to join them. Once again, after protests, the Estates of Lower Austria brought in forced labour from the countryside. Meanwhile Turkish prisoners cleaned up the streets of the city. One repair, essential on all counts, was taken in hand during the winter: the bridges over the Canal and the Danube were rebuilt. The ability of a disrupted economy to create employment remained very low for a number of years, and public works of this type probably met a real need. The lack of accommodation and foodstuffs in September 1683 had prevented the permanent return of the government to Vienna; Leopold passed the five nights of his short stay in the Stallburg because his quarters in the Hofburg were too damaged; but the court’s long absence at Linz, until August 1684, no doubt robbed the Viennese of their most rewarding customer. A civic deputation, headed by Hocke the syndic, handed in a petition to Leopold at Linz in June which described, the general condition of Vienna as truly desperate.
⁵⁵
The economic tightness was such that every privileged person or institution tried hard to evade common liabilities. Taxes
were not paid, the rights of the guilds were not observed by the unprivileged. The friction was intense.

In fact the halcyon moment had ended, although the Emperor slowly offered promotions of title to men who had acquitted themselves well during the siege. City councillors became ‘imperial’ councillors. Individuals in the War Council and the Treasury (like Belchamps, who handled finance so competently throughout the crisis), were advanced to the status of ‘Freiherren’. A large number of officers rose in rank. Gratuities in cash were given, or at least promised; and Starhemberg saw to it that all the regiments which had served in the garrison were paid something extra on 21 September 1683. The Vienna municipality gave presents to the colonels and commanders who had defended them against the Turk. They then gave smaller rewards to some of their own number. The treasurer and the syndic, for example, did not refuse a modest 300 florins each. With merit in the past duly rewarded, everyone now had to take stock of a new set of problems, doing what they could for themselves or for others. Bishop Kollonics gathered together hundreds of children, waifs and strays left behind in the Turkish camp, and housed them in Leopoldstadt. In the same district, the sponsors of a scheme for starting up an academy for the education of young noblemen looked sadly at the ruins of a building which they had just secured for the purpose in 1682, and began to search for new quarters. This academy later became an important school for military engineers, under the direction of Anguissola the mapmaker of 1683. In Leopoldstadt also, the irrepressible Koltschitzki obtained a tax-free house from the city fathers. According to legend, it was he who now persuaded the Viennese to take pleasure in a new drink. Soon after the siege individual Greeks and Serbs certainly started to open coffee-houses in the town—but Koltschitzki has somehow taken most of the credit.
⁵⁶

It is not easy to give details about the return to more normal conditions in Vienna, and for a very simple reason. Those men who thought it worth while to keep journals during the crisis, or to write its memorable history soon afterwards, saw no point in continuing with their work after the Turks had fled. There was no European public for the merely municipal history of Vienna after 12 September 1683. Instead, readers everywhere wished eagerly to discover what had happened within the walls during the two months when the city was cut off from the Christian world outside, how the army of relief had been got together, and what were the exploits of the Poles, Saxons, and Bavarians respectively in the winning of this glorious victory. The honour of states, regiments and commanders was in debate. Printing presses were soon at work to profit from the universal curiosity, individual (though sometimes anonymous) writers endeavouring to defend or enhance this or that reputation. At first, Koltschitzki’s publicity seemed the most intense. His tale of dangerous journeys in disguise, more and more fancifully embroidered, stole the limelight in various languages. Then other and better descriptions of the whole siege appeared.
⁵⁷
Reuss, a tax-officer who had served as an
adjutant to Starhemberg in the commander’s dealings with the city-council, was anticipated by Leopold’s official ‘Historiographer’, John Peter Vaelckeren, providentially trapped in the city by the advancing Turks for the benefit of later historians. The publisher John Ghelen, a civilian volunteer during the siege, issued a
Relazione compendiosa ma veredica
of ‘everything that happened’ at Vienna in the months just past. The syndic, Hocke, reluctant to let the achievements of the city fathers be unfairly forgotten, because most other accounts emphasised the military history of the siege, published his own ‘Short Description’ in 1685. But every one of these authors ended his tale a few days after the flight of the Turks; while the informative foreign diplomats accredited to Leopold, who might have told us much more about Vienna in the winter that followed, remained at Linz with the court for another year.

So, gradually, the event receded into the past, with men’s view of it determined at first by a cloud of pamphlets and broadsheets, and then by the myth-making of later generations. These knew well enough what prodigious violence had once been done in a region which was quiet and orderly during most decades of the eighteenth century, although Magyar rebels again ravaged the Wiener Wald in 1704. The military authorities built a defensive wall round the suburbs; they continued to keep the glacis outside the old wall fairly clear, and the bastions and outworks in a state of repair sufficient to remind the citizens, increasingly hemmed in by them, of the ever-memorable siege-year 1683. Beyond the glacis, Vienna grew. In size and in the magnificence of its best buildings, it at last became worthy of the expanded Habsburg empire, which had partly sprung from that bitter fighting across the ground where now the traffic roars in the Ring and in the suburbs.

Notes and References Index

ABBREVIATIONS

Acta Acta regis Joannis III ad res anno 1683, ed. F. Kluczycki (Acta historica res gestas Poloniae illustrantia 1507–1795, vol. vi), Cracow, 1883.

A.ö.G. Archiv für österreichische Geschichte (including Archiv für Kunde Österreichischer Geschichts-Quellen).

Bojani F. Bojani, Innocent XI. Sa correspondance avec ses nonces, vol. iii, Roulers, 1912.

B.L. British Library.

Hammer J. Hammer, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, vol. vi, Pest, 1830.

H.H.S. Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna.

Hocke N. Hocke, Kurtze Beschreibung . . . Wienn von 7 Julii bis 12 Septembris (Vienna, 1685).

K.J. ‘Das Kriegsjahr 1683 nach Acten und anderen authentischen Quellen’, Mitteilungen des K. K. Kriegs-Archivs, Vienna, 1883.

Klopp O. Klopp, Das Jahr 1683 und der folgende grosse Türkenkrieg bis zum Frieden von Carlowitz 1699, Graz, 1882.

Kreutel Kara Mustafa vor Wien. Das türkische Tagebuch der Belagerung Wiens 1683, verfasst vom Zeremonienmeister der Hohen Pforte, ed. R. F. Kreutel, Graz, 1955.

M.I.ö.G. Mitteilungen des österreichischen Instituts für Geschichtsforschung.

M.M. Necati Salim, ‘Die zweite Belagerung Wiens im Jahre 1683’, Militärwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen, vol. lxiv, Vienna, 1933.

Newald J. Newald, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Belagerung von Wien durch die Türken, im Jahre 1683, Vienna, 1883–4.

N.Q. ‘Neue Quellen zur Geschichte des Türkenjahres 1683 aus dem Lothringischen Hausarchiv’, ed. F. Stöller, M.I.ö.G. Ergänzungs-Bd. xiii, Vienna, 1933.

Renner V. Renner, Wien im Jahre 1683, Vienna 1883.

U. und A. Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte des Kurfürsten Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, Berlin, 1864–1930.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The great modern bibliography of the second (as of the first) siege of Vienna, which supersedes all previous lists of the kind, is W. Sturminger,
Bibliographie und Ikonographie der Türkenbelagerungen Wiens 1529 und 1683
(
Veröffentlichungen der Kommissiom für neuere Geschichte Österreichs,
vol. xli), Graz, 1955. It lists 2,547 published items on the siege of 1683.