After two months besieged by an Ottoman army of roughly 150,000, Vienna was relieved when a relief force of Polish, German, and Austrian troops attacked the besiegers. King Jan III Sobieski personally led some 18,000 heavy cavalry, including the famed winged Polish hussars, in a massive charge that shattered Ottoman lines and forced a chaotic retreat, marking a turning point that halted Ottoman expansion into Central Europe.
Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha had besieged Vienna since mid-July, tunneling mines beneath its walls and reducing the starving garrison to desperation, with the city's fall seeming imminent by early September. A hastily assembled relief army, gathering on the Kahlenberg heights overlooking the city, launched its attack on the morning of September 12, following a night of exhausting maneuvers through forested hills to reach position.
By late afternoon, after infantry had worn down Ottoman positions for hours, Sobieski unleashed what is often cited as history's largest cavalry charge, some 18,000 horsemen thundering downhill in a coordinated assault. Ottoman forces, already stretched and demoralized, broke and fled, abandoning their camp, treasury, and even Kara Mustafa's personal effects.
Sobieski reportedly paraphrased Julius Caesar afterward: 'I came, I saw, God conquered.' The victory ended the last serious Ottoman threat to Central Europe and began a long Habsburg counteroffensive that would push the Ottomans out of Hungary over the following decades, reshaping the balance of power in Europe for two centuries.
Key people: Jan III Sobieski, Kara Mustafa Pasha