The Siege Of Vienna [Paperback]

What an interesting book! The present War on Terror does have certain overtones of the past struggles between Christianity and Islam. The Jihadists refer to the Western nations as Crusaders and while most in the West make a distinction between Islam per se and the Jihadists, they are not blind to the fact that the Jihadists (or Islamofacists or whatever you want to call them) are almost completely Muslim.

And certainly, the Christianity of Europe is nominal at best and is not a motivating factor in the West's approach to the current situation. There are other more overriding interests. If one went on Sunday to the Cathedrals and traditional Christian denominations and conscripted the congregants into an army, it would consist mostly of older women and some children. And it would be small.

It was not always so. This book recounts the time in the late seventeenth century (mostly in 1683 to be precise) when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (and ruler of the Muslim world) and his Grand Vizir took a hundred thousand men (or more) into and through the Hungarian territories into Austria on a quest for new lands to tax (more than for converts) and after conquering lesser cities on the way, laid siege to Vienna.

Europe was very much different than the Europe of the past two centuries. There were nations, but not so much nation states as the two great kingdoms of France ruled by Louis XIV and the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire ruled out of Austria and Spain. Both also had relationship with ancillary and related smaller states and territories. The complex web of treaties were often, but not always, related to whether the ruler and the population were primarily Roman Catholic or Protestant.

This was not the first time that the Ottomans came out of Turkey to attack Vienna. In 1529 they came and laid siege to the city until disease forced them back. In 1683, they came and were making progress in undermining the walls of the city until the King of Poland, Jon Sobieski and came from the north and drove the Turks out. This led to a more extended war with the Ottomans that lasted until 1699 and captured Hungary for the Habsburgs.

John Toye has written a very concise telling of the second siege. There are nine chapters in just fewer than two hundred pages. The first chapter provides the origins of the Ottoman attack. Understanding the court politics and the names and titles of all the players is probably the most difficult part of the book. However, once the reader has that under control, all goes smoothly. The author provides a helpful list of key names and titles on pages x and xi. There are also some maps up front and provided within the text as needed.

The second chapter informs the reader about the situation in Austria and Vienna. We learn about the court of Leopold his character, talents, his key advisors, and I. The third chapter gives us a broader picture of the Habsburg Empire and its competitive relations with France and what its true condition was late in the seventeenth century.

The fourth chapter tells us about the move of the Ottomans through Hungary and how Vienna began its preparations. This involved getting some people out (including Leopold I) and other people in. It also involved getting as many supplies as possible (such as money, wood and food). In chapter five we get the description of how the siege began and what the techniques were for the attackers and the defenders.

Chapter six takes us outside of Vienna and what was going on between the city and its allies as well as the maneuvering of the Ottoman camps. In chapter seven the author gives us the movements of Sobieski and the others who would come to the aid of the beleaguered city.

All of this is prelude to the climax of the book in chapter eight when the armies come out of the north and sweep the Ottomans off the walls of Vienna and into a panicked rout. The last chapter ties up what happened in Europe after the battle. Like most victories, it leads to claims by many as the reason for the success. Offenses are taken at real, perceived, or manufactured slights, advantage is taken by those still strong over those weakened by the struggle (read Louis XIV trying to take advantage of the limited resources of the Hapsburgs now fighting in Hungary).

This was a very important event in the history of Europe, of the relations between the West and Islam (at the time the Ottomans were essentially synonymous with the faith - the Sultan held the key to the Kabah and flew what was believed to be Mohammed's banner). It is an event that everyone should understand better. The troubles didn't begin on 9/11 nor were the Crusades of the eleventh century the only armed struggle before that event. It is a long and rather aggressive history, from both sides.

While some claim history to be bunk, it is critical to learn the true history of what has happened in the past and how it has flowed into and created the world we inherited.

The failure of the Turkish army to take Vienna in 1683 marks the beginning of the long decline of the Ottoman state but it was a close-run affair. Kara Mustafa's janissaries laid siege to the Austrian imperial capital while allied horsemen ravaged the surrounding countryside. Leopold III and his court had fled leaving the rescue of Vienna to Charles, Duke of Lorraine and John Sobieski of Poland. Had Mustafa been a little less reckless in failing to fortify his positions the outcome of the battle (and the history of Europe) might have been different.

Stoye has done an excellent job in painstakingly recounting each detail of the negotiations among the Christian princes and charting the march of the various armies. Where his sources have been unclear or lacking he is honest in not speculating too freely. However, if any battle cried out for a historian with a sense of colour and drama this was it. Massacres of prisoners, hand-to-hand fighting in trenches and tunnels, banners with crosses and crescents waving over blood-drenched salients, wild Tartars from the steppes duelling with hussars clad in armour and angel wings, vizirs strangled with bow-strings: the siege of Vienna had all this and more but Stoye is the not the man who can breathe life into such a story. Nor are the maps and illustrations much help.

This book is a noble effort and will certainly serve readers interested in the minutiae of central-European politics but the siege still awaits a better story-teller.

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 500 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. The Ottoman empire lost control of half of their European territories which led to the long, slow, decline and inevitable collapse, even as the Hapbsburgs were able to parley the Viennese victory into control of the Balkans and expand their influence into France and the Rhine country. An enthusiastic recommendation for inclusion into both academic and community library World History collections, "The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent" by John Stoye (Fellow in Modern History, Magdalen College, Oxford, England) is a superbly presented and accurately detailed account of this pivotal incident between the forces of a militant Islam and the armies of a European Christendom.

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