| No copyright infringement intended. "Bóg i Pan nasz na wieki błogosławiony dał zwycięstwo i sławę narodowi naszemu, o jakiej wieki przeszłe nigdy nie słyszały" - Jan III Sobieski. Vienna was a strong fortress, but by the end of August 1683, the city was in mortal danger of collapsing to the Turkish attack. Food and ammunition were inadequate, The Ottoman siege cut virtually every means of food supply into Vienna, and the garrison and civilian volunteers suffered extreme casualties. Fatigue became such a problem that Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg ordered any soldier found asleep on watch to be shot. The siege by the Islamic Turks of the Christian city of Vienna in 1683 was a watershed incident in European history. Had the Turks been successful, there well might have been no Christian Europe to dominate the world stage for the next 300 years. Facing that magnitude of threat, European powers that were normally jealous and hostile to one another suppressed their mutual antagonisms to defeat the armies of Islam and their brutal Tartar Allies. Before he set out, Sobieski had sent a letter to Innocent XI, in which he wrote: "When the good of the Church and Christianity is concerned I shed my blood to the last drop, together with the whole kingdom. Since my kingdom and I are two bulwarks of Christianity". Sobieski said that his purpose for going to Vienna was "to proceed to the Holy War, and with God's help to give back the old freedom to besieged Vienna, and thereby help ... |
