Siege of Vienna 1529: Suleiman's Guns Stuck in Mud, Count Salm Holds

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After the Ottomans crushed Hungary at Mohács in 1526 and King Louis II drowned when his horse slipped into a stream, the Hungarian crown was split between the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand I and the Transylvanian noble John Zápolya. Zápolya offered to become an Ottoman vassal, and in May 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent marched with up to 100,000 men to back him. Record spring rains turned the Balkan roads to mud, killing the thousands of camels hauling supplies and forcing Suleiman to abandon his heavy bronze siege cannon, while dysentery spread through the camps.

Ferdinand fled to Bohemia, leaving Vienna to Niklas, Count of Salm, a 70-year-old mercenary commander with about 21,000 peasants, militia, German Landsknechte, Serbian hussars and Spanish arquebusiers. He backed the old walls, in places only six feet thick, with earthen ramparts and blocked the four main gates. The war went underground, with Ottoman sappers tunneling under the walls and defenders countermining. A sortie of 8,000 men on 6 October ended in a deadly crush at the narrow sally ports. After a final assault failed on 14 October, snow fell the next day and Suleiman withdrew.

Defenders set drums of water or dried peas near the walls to detect the vibrations of digging.
When Suleiman sent three captured Austrians to demand surrender, Salm silently sent back three Muslim prisoners.
Wet weather favored the Spanish arquebusiers firing from cover while Ottoman troops struggled to keep powder dry in the trenches.
The retreating irregulars burned villages and enslaved an estimated 20,000 Austrian civilians.
Salm died months later of injuries from falling debris, while Suleiman celebrated the campaign in Constantinople as a triumph.

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