When the Winged Hussars Arrived – The Battle/Siege of Vienna in 1683…

The year is 1683. An enormous Turkish army attempts to batter its way into Vienna, whose inhabitants and small garrison have been starving for the best part of a month.

Standing between them and total annihilation is the alliance of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Confederacy, the latter’s Winged Hussars being counted on as crucial should victory be achieved. …
The amazing attack of Polish winged hussars in half an hour resolved the fate of the battle. It would be expected that the gratitude of the Austrian emperor will be enormous. Nothing more wrong!
One of the witnesses, Emil Bardysz (“Medical diary from the Viennese expedition of 1683”) describes it in this way:
“The king’s meeting with the emperor fell coldly. Leopold I did not take off his hat neither when (Polish)Prince James was presented to him, nor when Polish banners bent before him during the review of the troops. It was high insult to King Sobieski and all Polish knights. Relations have deteriorated since this meeting. The Austrians stopped supplying Polish troops. They also refused to accept the burial of Polish soldiers in the city, indicating fields and cemeteries further away, where the fallen soldiers from the Turkish army were buried. There have been instances of opening fire to hungry Polish soldiers attempting to enter the city. They also made it difficult to obtain the ships needed to transport the wounded and sick to the hospital organized in Prezburg. After these actions, opinions appeared among Polish soldiers that the emperor had unnecessarily been given relief … ”
Was this victory worth it for Poland? Unfortunately It strengthened the Habsburgs, hostile to Poland.
Of course, both Leopold I, as well as Pope Innocent XI did not spare Polish King Jan III Sobieski the most pathetic compliments. The Pope even wrote: ” “On this happy day, Your Royal Majesty proved worthy not only of the crown of Poland, but deserved to wield the whole world if the skies would allow only one monarch …”. It is difficult to find the words of greater hypocrisy from the mouth of a man recognizing himself as the only superior of the whole religion. Leopold did not hit such high notes : “The whole world speaks of the king in the highest praise and admits that his arrival saved Vienna. (…) I assure you that I will always have total confidence in him … “.

In the following years, neither the Papacy nor the Habsburgs diplomatically or politically helped Poland. Paradoxically, the final collapse of Poland began with the “Vienna victory”.

If King Jan III Sobieski did not help the Austrians to rescue Vienna, we would have one potential partitioner less
*****(The partitions of Poland – 1772, 1793, 1795 – were conducted by Habsburg Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Polish lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations, by which Poland’s size was progressively reduced until, after the final partition, the state of Poland ceased to exist, until November 11 1918)*****
As a result, Russia and Germany – forced to defend their borders against a powerful Muslim threat – would prefer to seek an alliance with it instead of plotting against the Commonwealth (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania)…
Terrified by the imminent, real jihad, France would join the anti-Islamic crusade. In place of Victory of Vienna, we would celebrate a few years later the victory over the army of Kara Mustafa, near Lviv. Istanbul would be called Constantinople (or Janopol?), Nobody would even hear about ISIS. … Unfortunately – this blessed act of omission did not happen. Two terrible powers grew at our borders, responsible for our partitions, two terrible world wars and (with the approval of France and England) – half a century of Soviet occupation. Today, the European Union gave up itself to Muslims as a slave, with requests and threats, trying to convince us to commit collective suicide with the rest of Europe…..

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