The Other Siege of Vienna and the Ottoman Threat: An Essay in Counter-Factual History

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.1.1.0011
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• Date: 01 October 2015
• Pages: 11-22
• Author: Richard W. Bulliet
• Subject Matter: Ottoman history,counter-factual history,siege of Vienna,Holy Roman Empire,Protestant Reformation

ReOrient 1.1 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

THE OTHER SIEGE OF VIENNA AND THE

OTTOMAN THREAT: AN ESSAY IN

COUNTER-FACTUAL HISTORY

Richard W. Bulliet

Abstract: By proposing a counter-factual history in which the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529

succeeded, this essay attempts to illuminate both the parameters of Ottoman power at that

time and the complexity of European politics at the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. As

with many attempts at counter-factual history, this exercise seeks to offer a warning against

teleological approaches to history in which major events and their outcomes are described as

being inevitable.

Keywords: Ottoman history, counter-factual history, siege of Vienna, Holy Roman Empire,

Protestant Reformation

Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of

Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity

and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

Edward Gibbon on the possibility of Charles Martel losing

the Battle Tours to the Saracens in 732 (Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire, New York: Bradley, n.d., vol. V: 423).

In 1521, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire chose Charles V, the Hapsburg

ruler of Spain, over Francis I of France as the imperial candidate most likely to

press a successful war against the Ottomans. A month later, Ottoman forces took

the Danubian fortress of Belgrade, and the following year the island of Rhodes,

the Eastern Mediterranean stronghold of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John.

In 1526, at the battle of Mohács, Sultan Süleyman the Magnicent’s artillery

annihilated the Hungarian heavy cavalry and killed their king, Louis II. He left

no heir. Buda fell less than two weeks later, but Süleyman chose to withdraw

leaving the Hungarian Diet to elect John Zapolya, the voivode of Transylvania, as

tributary king. Two months later, an anti-Zapolya faction of Hungarian notables

met at Pressburg (now Bratislava) further up the Danube to offer the throne to the

Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V and of Marie of Hungary,

Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University.

ReOrient 1.1.indd 11 29/09/2015 10:00