Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Know your history

Yesterday was the anniversary of the breaking of the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Raymond Ibrahim writes about it here.

There's a pretty good movie out that deals with this fascinating bit of history (The Day of the Siege, a 2012 English-language Polish and Italian historical film). I believe it's available on Amazon Prime.

4 comments:

JeffS said...

This the one, Paco?

(Assuming the link works, of course....)

Paco said...

Yes, that's the one!

HAL9000 said...

Wonderful movie, Paco. Naturally, being the pedantic SOB that I am, I noticed historical errors. It always gripes me when they show cannonballs exploding as if they were shells. I guess moviegoers would not understand what was happening if they didn't. The charge of the Polish hussars was great. The scenes of getting up the Kahlenberg showed the problems well.

Vienna was within two days of falling when the relieving army arrived. Count von Starhemburg, the commander, did a great job of holding out as long as possible. He started the siege with about 11,000 soldiers. By the end there were about 4500 left. That was the sum total of 12 regiments of foot (nominal strength 2000 each) and one of cuirassiers (nominal 1000).

After the relief the war went on until 1699 and the Imperials made immense gains at the expense of the Turk. The Prince of Savoy became one of the greatest generals of modern history, Prince Eugene of Savoy. He was a Field Marshal at age 26 and served the Hapsburgs until he died in 1736.


One of the atrocities Turks carried out was the destruction of a town called Percholdsdorf, about ten miles from Vienna. The townsmen resisted briefly, then thought they had a surrender agreement. They sent a maiden out to hand the keys of the town to the Turkish commander. After the men were disarmed, they murdered them all. Then the Turks took such women as they wanted for slaves, shoved the rest of the women and children into the church and burned them alive. This comes from the account of an Ottoman court chamberlain who was present, and who thought it was hilarious that the stupid infidels thought they would have their lives spared. After I read about it, I wondered what happened to her. I wrote a story imagining what her fate might have been.

The Poles captured the great tent of the Grand Vizier. Polish soldiers brought it out in 1939 and carried it to Britain, where the survivors of the Free Polish Army in Exile settled after the war. When Poland became independent again, after the collapse of the USSR, it was brought home to Poland, a sacred relic.

HAL9000 said...

The comments system made me go through more than half-a-dozen "prove you're not a robot tests." It's a sorry excuse for a verification system that can't tell the difference between a robot and a super advanced computer like myself.