1529 The Siege of Vienna Fails
Since the late 1300s the Ottoman Turks had been expanding into eastern Europe, conquering a number of Christian states and levying tribute from others on their borders. In 1453 they stormed the walls of Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire which had stood as a bulwark against Islam for 800 years. The Turks gradually moved out of the Balkans toward central Europe. In 1526 they smashed the Hungarians at Mohács and set their eyes on Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman empire.
The Turkish sultan was Suleiman the Magnificent, victor of battles against Wallachians, Serbs, Hungarians, the Knights of Rhodes, and Persia. He styled himself the Kayser-i-Rum, emperor of Rome and successor to Alexander the Great, the Byzantines and the Caesars. In 1529 he assembled a massive army of over 100,000 men and marched into Austria. His elite cavalry, the sipahis, and his elite infantry, the janissaries, were accompanied by artillery, often pulled by camels, and a force of Christian infantry from territories in Serbia subject to the Turks. They reached Vienna in late September and laid siege to the city.
Vienna was not well fortified nor were her walls manned by an abundance of troops. The Emperor Charles V was off in western Europe making war on the French and could spare only a very few soldiers, Spanish musketeers. The rest of the defenders were townsfolk and German landsknecht mercenaries, wielders of long swords and pikes. Fortunately, the defence was led by a cunning old strategist, Count Nicholas von Salm, a German mercenary who had been a soldier since the 1470s and who countered the Turkish siege attempts by intercepting the tunnels beneath the walls and occasional sallies against enemy trenches. In the end, sickness, heavy rain and snow sapped Turkish morale and on this date Suleiman abandoned the siege. Islamic forces would not penetrate this deep into Europe again until another disastrous siege of Vienna in 1683.