The Siege of Vienna

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the summer of 1683, Vienna was under siege. A vast Ottoman army surrounded the city, poised to breach the walls and clear the way for Ottoman expansion into Central Europe. Inside the city, famine and fear took hold. But as the city teetered on the brink of collapse, a thunderous cavalry charge broke the Ottoman lines and shattered the siege.

To tell us all about this mighty clash, we're joined by Martyn Rady, Professor Emeritus of Central European History at University College London and author of 'The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe'. He explains why this event marked a turning point in European history.

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On average, we will spend 80,000 hours at work.
0:03.9	Yet, around 25% of workers think their own job doesn't add anything of value to the world.
0:10.9	Maybe you want something more from life.
0:13.1	Maybe you want to be both idealistic and successful and to change the world along the way.
0:19.0	Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference with moral ambition by me,
0:23.8	Rutger Brackman, available in bookshops and audiobook now.
0:36.2	Hi, buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit.
0:39.2	It was the noise that helped to break the enemy.
0:44.0	As much as the razor sharp steel wielded by the riders, it was the sound.
0:49.5	It was the crash of tens of thousands of hooves, the roar of thousands of voices, the keening
0:57.0	shriek of the feathers attached to the saddles, the winged Hazars of Poland had arrived
1:05.0	before the walls of Vienna. It is without. It is without doubt one of the most dramatic moments of European history.
1:25.2	One of Europe's great cities was within a whisker of capture by its
1:31.4	ancestral Islamic enemies. This was a climax of the generational struggle between these two
1:40.4	empires, which both claimed to be heirs of Rome. And at that moment of decision,
1:46.9	when it could have gone either way, suddenly a relieving army appears, and there is one of the
1:51.6	great cavalry charges of history. Vienna, the city, is saved. The Turkish retreat, never to return.
2:07.4	People at the time believed that Christian Europe itself had been saved. And it has influenced artists, writers, politicians ever since. I'd always
2:14.3	think that Tolkien's just-in-time ride of the Rohirim is surely stolen from
2:21.2	this moment in history. In the 1680s, Europe was divided. The German lands, particularly divided,
2:28.6	certainly by religion and politics. There was a notional leader of this German Reich,
2:33.8	the First Reich, if you like,
	...

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