9/23/2023 0 Comments Capuccino siege of viennaThe Hapsburg armies spent the day courageously defending Vienna, doing what they could with what strength they had, without any certainty of the potential deliverance climbing the other side of a hill yonder north. Marco d’Aviano celebrated Mass before the battle. O wretched Vienna.”Īs the siege had neared its end, while Kara Mustafa readied himself to witness Ottoman soldiers breach the walls and flood into the city like waters from a burst dam, news had arrived that a relief expedition was nearby. “Vienna,” he had cried out, “Vienna, your love of lax living has prepared you a grave and imminent chastisement! Convert, and consider well what you are doing. When the siege finally commenced in July of 1683, d’Aviano steadfastly urged the faithful of Vienna to repent of their sins and to pray the Rosary, just as the faithful had been so urged during the anxious days leading up to the Battle of Lepanto (the anniversary of which is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary) a century before. Even still, the Christian armies would be vastly outnumbered. Regardless of his convictions, war was well on its way, so in obedience d’Aviano used his talents as a negotiator and an orator, as one called to be “wise as serpents, innocent as doves,” to band together a delicate alliance that would be led by the King of Poland. As a committed Franciscan, d’Aviano viewed all forms of violence as repugnant. Father d’Aviano had served as advisor to Leopold I, the ever-indecisive Holy Roman Emperor, and so he had been deemed apt for the difficult task ahead. This alliance was largely formed through the efforts of Blessed Marco d’Aviano, an Italian Capuchin friar with a reputation for holiness, whom Pope Innocent XI had nominated as chaplain. The Holy League, a Christian coalition, was formed during the months in which rumors of imminent invasion circulated. Mustafa, a brilliant tactician, had seized an opportunity to exploit tensions between Catholics and Protestants and recruited Hungarian prince Imre Thokoly to his side, among allegiances of other Christian vassal states with plentiful reason to believe that they were siding with a winner. History had offered those soldiers under the Ottoman banner plentiful reason to believe that the conquest of Vienna, a stepping stone for the eventual fall of Rome and final collapse of the Christian faith, was destiny for the “one true faith.” Having assembled such a grand army for the task, Kara Mustafa could relish in the thought that his own name would be recorded in history alongside the names of Muhammad, the Four Great Caliphs, Saladin, Mehmed II, and Suleiman the Magnificent (who himself had failed to conquer Vienna), and other greats before him who brought the light of Islam to new territories through their conquests. Non-Muslims became subjected to the jizya tax, and countless young Christian men were forcibly conscripted and converted in the system of devshirme. Churches such as the Hagia Sophia were converted to mosques (just as the Hagia Sophia was recently reconverted to a mosque). In 1453 the great city of Constantinople had fallen into Ottoman hands. The Iberian Peninsula likewise fell long ago, to the invading Moors, and the conquered peoples had to expend centuries of energy for Spain and Portugal to finally be liberated, during the Reconquista. The vision of God as the Holy Trinity, whose efforts to befriend mankind culminated in the Crucifixion of Christ, had been traded away for the vision of God as Allah, far too majestic to have ever been one of us, to whom all servitude must be given. In the centuries since the early Arab conquests the subjugated peoples, many of whom had the honorary status of “People of the Book” according to the Quran, had most all been converted, through policies of taxation and breeding and the force of law. The Holy Land had fallen long ago, as had Egypt, the Levant, and all of North Africa. The soldiers defending Vienna, and the peoples trapped behind her gates, were exhausted.įor over a thousand years, since the very dawn of Islam, the borders of Christendom had been pressed against, and receding. Having refused the customary demand to surrender, made by Kara Mustafa, the Grand Vizier, she had been under siege for two months. An invading Ottoman-led army, estimated at 150,000 troops, stood outside of her gates.
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