IN a 2006 post at Gates Of Vienna, Baron Bodissey described the Battle of Vienna on September 11, 1683, when the Christian army under Jan Sobieski, the King of Poland, ended the Muslim siege of the city:

It was then, at the last possible moment on the evening of September 11th, that Jan Sobieski arrived at a hill north of the city, leading a force of 40,000 Poles and their German and Austrian allies. The battle began soon afterwards, in the early morning hours of September 12th.

The Austrians and Germans attacked the Turks first at the center and on the left flank. The Turks counterattacked, but held back a significant portion of their forces in anticipation of entering the city through a breach in the wall. That very morning the Grand Vizier had prepared a second and more powerful charge to be set off under the Löbel bastion, one that would throw the city open to the Turkish forces once and for all.

Unfortunately for Kara Mustafa, the Austrians within the city had mounted a counter-tunneling operation. The Austrian “moles” detected the Turkish mine, found the charge, and defused it.

At about the same time the King of Poland, in the van with the fearsome Winged Hussars and with 20,000 men behind him, led a cavalry charge down the hill into the right flank of the Ottoman army. The Hussars were one of the most formidable fighting forces of the time, and the sound of the wind through the feathers of their artificial wings was said to unnerve the enemies’ horses and drive superstitious soldiers into a panic.

The battle was over in three hours. The King drove through the Turkish lines, and, seeing his success, the Vienna garrison sallied forth from the city and hit the Turks from the rear. Demoralized by these attacks and their failure to breach the wall, the Turks fled eastwards in haste, abandoning their tents, weapons, battle standards, provisions, and slaves.

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Henry McCulloch writes:

It is good to be reminded of what should have been Christendom’s conclusive triumph over Islam, in the persons of the Ottoman besiegers of Vienna in 1683.  On September 11th of that year, with the invaluable aid of John III Sobieski’s Polish cavalry, the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor succeeded in defeating Vizier Kara Mustafa’s army and raising the two-months’ siege.  It was the second time Vienna had needed rescuing from an Ottoman siege; the first, in 1529, had been a close-run thing also.  As news of the great victory over the horrible Turk spread throughout Europe, people in the West (Russia still had Tatars and Turks to contend with) came to believe that Christendom had at long last gained the victory over Islam, after intermittent warfare lasting over 1,000 years and in which, more often than not, the Christians had not had the upper hand.  And so it should have been.

But now we know it was not.  Not because of any renaissance in the Moslem world, but because of the loss of faith in the Christian world – we can no more call today’s Europe Christendom than we can call it a Neo-Roman Empire – and the self-despising fecklessness of the West’s “leaders.”

I have been convinced since that dark day in 2001 that the 9/11 attackers chose the date because it was the anniversary of Islam’s greatest defeat.  There are parallels of a sort that very likely occurred to the jihadists, who are far more historically minded than most of their Western targets.

In 1683, despite Europe’s sectarian divisions following the Reformation, the Holy Roman Empire – however imperfect – was still Christendom’s primus inter pares political power representing the traditions of Christendom and its Catholic roots.  The Holy Roman Emperor, whose capital Vienna was, claimed descent in legal succession from Charlemagne – a great foe of the Moslems.  As Charlemagne had received his imperial crown from the Pope himself, so too did the Holy Roman Emperors.  While the political reality was considerably less than the facade by 1683, nevertheless the Holy Roman Emperor and the Empire – Voltaire’s later quip notwithstanding – were still potent symbols of an ideal of Christian and European unity looking back past the Carolingians right to the original Roman Empire.  To have installed a Turkish vizier in the Empire’s capital would have been a devastating shock to all the European kingdoms and a terrible wound to Christendom.  The last Holy Roman Emperor considered the spiritual significance of the title sufficiently important that he abolished it when Revolutionary French forces threatened Vienna, re-styling himself Emperor of Austria, to ensure that Bonaparte could never seize it for himself.  Napoleon had to settle for the bogus title of Emperor of the French instead.

By 2001 even the facade of Christian unity was long gone from the West.  Vienna is the capital of a small land-locked republic.  Rome is far less important than it was even in 1683.  If the modern West can be said to have a capital city, it is that showplace and central market of finance capitalism and decadent entertainments, New York – home, no less, to the closest imitation of a global government there is, the United Nations.  If the modern West can be said to have a primus inter pares political power today, it is the United States, whose capital is Washington.

For jihadists to succeed in a massive and lethal strike against the epicenters of the West’s financial, cultural and political power simultaneously would go a long way to assuage long-nursed Moslem humiliation over being stopped cold before Vienna by the infidel, so great a humiliation that Kara Mustafa was summarily executed for his failure, and embolden all fighters for Allah.  To strike on the anniversary of Vienna would make the message unmistakable – to those capable of understanding it.  That leaves out George W. Bush and every other Western “leader” in power in 2001 and since, unfortunately.

The history of the Siege of Vienna is bracing, and a great story for its own sake.  I cannot recommend highly enough John Stoye’s The Siege of Vienna, first written in 1964 but since updated.  It is a gripping tale of how confused Catholic Christians overcame their doubts and divisions to defeat a mortal threat from the Moslem world – a reminder that we can win this clash of civilizations if only we will fight it.

Another superb narrative history – and another tale of how initially confused Catholic Christians pulled themselves together to defeat a lethal Moslem threat – I should equally recommend is Jack Beeching’s The Galleys at Lepanto, about the Holy League’s epic naval victory over the Turks in 1571.  To this day, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the date of that deliverance, October 7th, as the feast of Our Lady of Victory.  And for further inspiration, it’s hard to beat G.K. Chesterton’s poem about Lepanto.

So while we should lament that, through our moral weakness, Vienna was not the last word in the struggle between Islam and the West, we can draw hope from its example that the West can endure if we can only summon the will to prevail.

James P. writes:

Today is the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende — September 11, 1973.

Of course, the media is determined to represent this as a Bad Thing. Even Fox News writes,

“The CIA-backed coup took less than eight hours, but its impact is still palpable in this South American nation 40 years ago. Political and civil rights were suspended; the press was censored; alleged dissidents were interrogated and tortured. In all, almost 4,000 people were killed under Pinochet’s rule, which lasted until 1990, and the coup set the precedent for military juntas in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay.”

The fact is that Pinochet saved his country from Castro-style Red despotism, and thereby earned the undying enmity of Western Leftists.

Dave P. writes:

In addition to books on the siege of Vienna, I would like to recommend The Great Siege by Ernle Bradford.

The great Ottoman emperor Suleiman the Magnificent, having difficulties in the Balkans, decided to conquer Europe via Italy. As in World War II, where Churchill recognized that Italy was the soft underbelly of Europe, he decided to take Sicily. But before he could do that, he had to conquer Malta – the strategic island, with its wonderful harbours, that sat in the strategic North-South and East-West seaways of the Mediterranean.

As in World War II, in which Germany had to wrest control of Malta from Britain for its North Africa campaign, or to deter the Allies, Suleiman had to take Malta, launched the greatest navy of the time, equipped with great siege engines and canons, and a force of over 40,000 experienced and fanatic Muslim soldiers. Among the elite were the Janissaries- kidnapped or forcefully taken Christian boys from the Balkans, converted to Islam, and trained to be the fiercest in the Ottoman army.

Against this force that no European state had managed to resist, was a band of 600 Knights of Saint John Hospitallers ( Presently St Johns Ambulance Brigade), backed by an untrained peasant militia of around 9000.

This was the greatest siege in all history, past and present. Short of food, weapons, and gunpowder, but with total faith in God, the Knights were victorious.  The siege began in early summer of 1565, and  was a prelude to the battle of Lepanto, some six years later. The Knights of St John were the most accomplished seamen of the time, and were crucial in the victory at Lepanto. These two victories gave hope to the rest of Europe, that the Ottoman army was not invincible.

It’s a riveting read.

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