Normally, I post my playlist articles on either Tuesday or Wednesday, but as today is the anniversary of the actual events that inspired the song, I decided to go a little off-list in posting about Swedish Heavy Metal icons Sabatons‘ Winged Hussars.
Vienna. September 11, 1683: Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha has laid siege to Vienna since July. His army has attempted to undermine the walls and storm the city.
But, not to put too fine a point on it:
Then the Winged Hussars arrived.
A relief force, a coalition of Polish–Lithuanian and Holy Roman Imperial troops led by Polish King Jan Sobieski signals its arrival on the Kahlenberg, a hill on the outskirts of Vienna.
Combat begins in the early hours of September 12 as the Ottomans move to intercept. After a day of heavy fighting, the relief force in position to charge. Sobieski orders his forces to attack the Ottoman lines in force. Kara Mustafa finds himself on the wrong end of the largest cavalry charge in history as Sobieski and 3,000 of famous Winged Hussars lead the attack.
The Ottoman siege lines are shattered by the force of a 18,000-strong cavalry charge, Vienna is saved and with it, according to later European chroniclers, all of Christendom.
Sobieski at Vienna: Juliusz Kossak.
via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Despite the subsequent framing of Vienna as a clash of civilisation and religion (as seen above), Ottoman Christian vassals took part in the siege, and a contingent of Muslim Lipka Tatars fought under Polish command as part of the relief force.
Kara Mustafa escapes with his life, only to be executed on the Sultan‘s command for his failure a few months later. Ottoman advances into Europe are permanently blunted, and the Habsburgs will begin the reconquest of Ottoman territory in Southern Europe in the following years.
Incidentally, the sacking of the Ottoman encampment is popularly held to be the moment that introduced coffee to Austria.
And we got an awesome song out of it:
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