The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (34 page)

Stratmann and Königsegg were tough and intelligent statesmen. Their immediate aim was to collect forces for the relief of the city within two
months. They had no use for concessions which did not strengthen the Emperor at once; resistance to France had been their great watchword in politics for years, their permanent assignment; and they were by now sceptical of these French time-limits which, so often renewed, had lost something of their original menace.
⁵⁴
But they had to meet strong resistance from their friends. At Regensburg, Bavarian and Saxon diplomacy was less sympathetic to Leopold than in Vienna or Passau; and at Passau itself, a number of people close to the Emperor certainly wanted the French offer taken up without further delay. For them, it seemed obvious that there was no time to lose. On the other flank, the Dutch and Spanish envoys were justifiably alarmed, because if the French offer was indeed accepted, Louis XIV could not in future employ his armies in Germany, and would be likely to throw his whole weight against the Spanish Netherlands. As a result, these two diplomats weighed into the grand debate with all their skill.
⁵⁵
They wanted the absolute rejection of the French proposal for a truce unless Louis explicitly agreed that it included lands in dispute outside the Empire—by which they meant Luxembourg
*
and the rest of the Spanish Netherlands. The Austrians, for their part, did not at first wish to rule out the chance of coming to terms with Louis if the worst should befall, and Vienna fell. The Dutchman, Brunincx, realised that they would then pay little or no attention to the interest of their allies in the north. This conflict made it difficult, in the first few weeks at Passau, to formulate a common policy; and the debate continued in the course of many discussions. Early in August the Habsburg tactics were tentative, almost negative. Windischgrätz, the Imperial commissary at Regensburg, the ‘mad Roland’ who aroused the passionate dislike of Verjus and Gottfried Jena,
⁵⁶
was instructed to brush aside the time-limit for the moment, and to inform the Diet of Leopold’s intention to go himself to Regensburg in October in order to confer personally with the Electors and Princes on all matters of common interest. This was the project which had been raised in the parallel negotiations with Anhalt. Then more hopeful news reached the government from Vienna, and Waldeck also arrived at Passau, after arranging for the Franconian troops to follow him down the Danube.
⁵⁷
It is clear that he gave powerful assistance to all those who meant to give nothing away to the French because they were confident that the Turks could also be repulsed. Another plea from the four Rhineland Electors, dated 21 August, was set aside in a firm reply from Leopold on the 23rd. His ministers had at length decided on their policy. They were
not
prepared to respond to the French offer before the time-limit expired on 31 August; and they were
not
prepared to say that it was acceptable provided that territories outside western Germany were included in the truce. This was much less negative than it may sound on a casual reading. Leopold had given
nothing away to Louis XIV, and very little to the Spaniards and the Dutch, at a time when the pressure on him to do so was greatest.

On 24 August Waldeck wrote to William of Orange.
⁵⁸
He was happy enough to report his own part in the strenuous discussions of the past week. The Emperor, he says, declared in conference that he would rather lose some of his lands than make a truce with Louis; but Waldeck believed that Louis was unlikely to ‘insult’ Leopold for the moment. His personal views on the Danubian theatre of war were simple and outspoken: the Habsburg government should never have left Vienna; the city would continue to hold out until it was relieved.

Anhalt’s draft-treaty, when it reached Berlin, caused immense annoyance—and Rébenac was delighted. Frederick William replied at once, rebuked Anhalt for exceeding his instructions and recalled him. The Austrian ministers, by now in Linz, sadly concluded that they must write off their hopes of employing Derfflinger and 6,000 or 12,000 Brandenburg soldiers in the coming struggle for Vienna. They did however decide to pursue negotiations with Anhalt, who had himself determined to remain by the Danube and, if possible, take some share in the campaign ahead. He told the Austrians that he knew the Elector’s temper: the last dispatch from Berlin was no doubt the product of insomnia and irritability; if the more militant clauses of the draft could be toned down, he hoped to convince the Elector of its value. On 1 September Stratmann and Königsegg still judged it worthwhile spending their valuable time discussing Habsburg relations with the Hohenzollern court. In retrospect their labour seems an unnecessary use of ink and energy. They had done what they could to mobilise the states of Europe; the troops had already marched out of Germany and Poland, already reached the Danube close to Vienna and the Ottoman besiegers. The months of diplomatic preparation in distant courts were over. Lorraine, Kara Mustafa and Sobieski, acting for the moment as soldiers rather than politicians, would have to shape the immediate future.

*
Although Louis gave up his blockade of Luxembourg in April, 1682 (see
pp. 52–3
), it was obvious that he still hoped to win this great citadel by one method or another. Earlier in 1683 he made an ‘offer’ for it to the Spaniards, but here again his time-limit had run out by July.

8

The Relief of Vienna

I

At this very time, during the second half of August, the courtiers at Passau were intensely excited. For some, the approaching confinement of the Empress was the immediate concern; the question whether she would give birth to a son or a daughter, even though overshadowed by a crisis in the grand antagonism of the Christian and Moslem worlds, had sufficient significance in this age of dynastic politics. For others, the movement of troops from Germany down the Danube whetted their excitement most. The Bavarians had already gone through Passau. On 21 August 6,000 Franconian infantry arrived, travelling by water; 2,000 cavalry were soon to follow by land. The military authorities were naturally anxious about the concentration of these forces in Lower Austria because they knew, in general terms, that the Saxons were already in Bohemia, that the Poles were in Silesia, while Lorraine himself was moving west. Less informed observers still hoped for the appearance of 15,000 Brandenburgers and 5,000 from the Brunswick lands, to make up a total of 100,000 troops for the relieving army. It was not only a matter of transport, food and other supplies, but of the collaboration of so many ruling princes which preoccupied the government. On this point, the Emperor himself felt the gravest doubts. He wanted to recover the personal prestige lost by his abrupt flight from Vienna, and to assert his Imperial status. On the other hand he also wanted to satisfy and pacify indispensable allies and, except in a few moments of daydreaming, did not visualise himself as the generalissimo which his father Ferdinand III had been. In effect, he enjoyed the proudest title on earth, while suffering from an acute sense of personal inferiority in many matters. A long series of discussions followed, in which most of the Habsburg ministers and the Spanish ambassador pressed strongly for Leopold’s presence with the army. The nuncio disagreed: such a decision, he argued, could only irritate the other princes, who deserved credit for their determination to come to the rescue of
Vienna.
¹
It would increase, not diminish, the dangers of useless quarrels over precedence. (The nuncio spoke as an expert: his correspondence is filled with the details of his ceaseless bickering at court to establish his own precedence over princes of the Empire and their representatives.) It was certainly true that an Emperor who arrived at camp with a retinue of thirty guards could only suffer by contrast with the panoply which the King of Poland and the Elector of Bavaria evidently intended to display. In fact, when the question of precedence did not affect the Catholic Church, Buonvisi blandly overlooked it. He thought that he had won the debate, when Leopold at length decided to move down the river to Linz.
²
This appeared to signify that the Emperor and the War Council simply proposed to get closer to the scene of action; but Leopold wanted to join the army, without having fully made up his mind to do so or determining exactly what part to try and play in the coming campaign. Because the Empress signified her willingness to accompany him he was able to temporise a little longer. The whole affair was one example, among thousands in the course of a long life, of his chronic difficulty in making a firm decision.

On 25 August from 8.30 in the morning until seven o’clock at night the government, including the four senior court officers, three chancellors, and two presidents
*
of the great offices of state, travelled down the Danube as far as Linz.
³
During the day Leopold wrote to Marco d’Aviano, who was himself coming over the Alps to the theatre of action, sent by Pope Innocent with the powers of a Papal Legate to bless and console the crusaders. Leopold, although anxious for yet more counsel, told Marco that he proposed to appear among the confederate princes and generals in order to stop quarrels between them. Then he reached Linz, and the court settled down again. Troops poured through from Germany, and he reviewed them. Max Emmanuel arrived by water, with a large staff which set the court-marshal a pretty problem in trying to accommodate their 600 horses. The old debate continued. Buonvisi urged his views once more, and apparently won over the Bishop of Vienna. Marco arrived on 2 September and also discussed the question with Leopold. Evidently it was understood between them that Marco, who left on the next day for Krems and Tulln, would advise the Emperor whether to proceed farther after he had sounded opinion at the military headquarters.

Momentarily Leopold seemed becalmed. On the 5th he made up his mind to go down the river again and join his army, although he had heard nothing from Marco. Then Prince George of Hanover arrived with his few followers, all that were spared from the powerful Brunswick forces in Lower Saxony. Then the Empress gave birth to a daughter, hastily christened Maria Anna Josepha Regina with the sponsorship of a single godfather, Max Emmanuel. Then a letter from Marco was delivered, and it said not a single word about the matter
uppermost in Leopold’s mind. But he set off on the 8th. He left behind him the Empress and her household, and wrote once more begging for definite advice, at the same time admitting that he would wait for it.
⁴
In his own wavering fashion he was moving with the current of the Danube, and the course of circumstances; he hesitated to enforce the autocratic will vested in him, and yet not his own. He must go, and he must wait; while other and lesser figures participated and determined, he waited. This agonising, pathetic pause in the most dramatic moment of his whole reign, took place on the waters of the Danube somewhere near Dürnstein, on the great bend of the river there; below the bend is the little walled town; and on the height above the river stand the ancient ruins of a castle in which the Anglo-Norman King Richard, Coeur de Lion, was imprisoned in 1193. From here there is an immense panorama stretching miles downstream as far as the western edge of the Wiener Wald. No contemporary source says that anyone was sent up the ridge to observe signs of action in the landscape; but on board his boat Leopold remained from 9 to 12 September. He received a letter from Marco on the 11th, and replied at once. He received another, dated the 11th, on the 12th and again replied. Leopold throughout expresses a complete faith in the future: this crisis, thanks to God and all the saints, thanks to the Papal blessing and the Capuchin’s presence in the army, will be surmounted. For the moment he repressed the alternative view, of the plague and the comet and the Turks as a part of a righteous judgment on himself and the sinfulness of man. But he still wanted to know whether the time had not come for the Emperor and hereditary ruler of these lands to negotiate personally with his allies and to show himself to his subjects. Marco said nothing; Leopold did nothing. The siege continued.

*
One of these was Herman of Baden, who went further down the river in order to confer with Lorraine and Sobieski, and was present at Ober-Hollabrun on 31 August.

II

Starhemberg’s letter from Vienna of 18 August was still serene and confident, reporting that the Turks had made little progress in the past week. This was no more than the truth even allowing for the fact that our principal Turkish source of information, which would have boasted of any Turkish gains, has an unfortunate gap from 14 to 17 August. However the Master of Ceremonies, on the 13th, gives two important items:
⁵
troops and commanders on the Danube islands were being brought round to reinforce the Janissaries and other units in the area in front of the Burg; while heavy rain, falling during the night, made the approaches temporarily unusable. His next entry, on the 18th, notes the Grand Vezir’s urgent order to the commander at Neuhäusel to join the army at once.

The Austrians also mention the rain but they were much more preoccupied by the works then being carried out in the Burg and Löbel bastions. New trenches and walls were thrown up quickly, to give better protection to the defenders when and if the Turks reached these inner works. The pressure on
the labour squads was intense. Large numbers were absent and ill. Starhemberg reprimanded the civilian authorities sharply for slackness, and insisted on a reorganisation of the burgher companies. Meanwhile all through the week, in front of the bastions, the moat was the scene of violent fighting every day. The soldiers, taking turn and turn about under different commanding officers—Souches, Württemberg, Serenyi and Scherffenberg—held on to the Burg-ravelin, to various block-houses to left and right of it, and to parts of the counterscarp even in this sector. Elsewhere they defended the counterscarp fairly easily. The Turks slowly dug down towards the floor of the moat, desperately trying to extend the area under their control. Trenches and tunnels required first to be dug, then to be strengthened and covered with timbers and sandbags. A few feet away from them their opponents were digging in the same way, using similar materials. Miners on both sides endeavoured to site their powder barrels undetected, and to countermine. After earth and masonry had been displaced by an explosion small groups of men, thirty, forty, or a hundred, went over to the assault, sometimes in daylight, sometimes at night with the darkness abruptly dispelled by flares here and there. On one occasion (the night of the 16th), an Austrian sortie led by Serenyi and Scherffenberg managed to set fire to the Turkish galleries projecting from the escarpment opposite the Löbel, and sufficient damage was done to hold up the enemy for ten or twelve days in this sector.
⁶
But foot by foot the Turks pressed forward; and on 18 August a much less effective sortie by the garrison troops, intended to push the Turks out of their corner of the ravelin, met with a decided repulse and resulted in the death of Colonel Dupigny, whose dragoons had been dismounted and now shared in the fighting. The consequences of the defeat might have been serious, and it was Starhemberg’s good fortune that the Turks were not quick enough to profit from it.