Wednesday, July 14, 1683
Xavier
Outside Vienna
Three hundred thousand men. The number was enormous, and it represented the horde of enemy troops Xavier Schor and his regiment were trying to avoid. Not all were coming to Vienna. Some were still in Hungary, and some were raiding the countryside, but the bulk were marching on the capital. Some were more intimidating—the janissaries and Tatars. Some were with the sultan’s army only by force—the Wallachians and Moldavians. But it didn’t matter if a portion of the sultan’s troops were reluctant Christian levies. The Imperial Army tasked with stopping them was not even forty thousand strong.
“Ensign Schor!”
“Yes, sir?” Xavier turned to Captain Heisterman, who was mounted on a dappled horse where all could see him above the multitude of troops, wagons, and dust.
“See to it that the stragglers don’t fall behind. The carts for the wounded and sick are nearly full, so do what you can for those too weak to walk. We need to make it into the city by nightfall—the vizier is practically on our heels.”
“We aren’t going north with the Duke of Lorraine?”
“Haven’t you heard? We’re pulling into Vienna. Reinforcing the garrison. The rest of the army will withdraw with Lorraine until they can relieve us.”
Xavier nodded. Vienna. He hadn’t been home in a year and wasn’t sure what type of welcome he’d receive.
Ensign Balthasar Laymann joined him as Heisterman rode off. “Are you well, Xavier?” Balth waved a hand toward a cart full of injured men. “Most of the wounded have more color than you.”
“I’m fine.” Xavier’s head had hurt for days, but he could work through a little headache. He had to get his men safely into the city. “All the same, I’ll be glad for a bit of rest, if we can get it.”
“Do you think your brother will be glad to see you?”
Xavier grunted. Wilhelm might have cooled a little since their argument, but more likely not. Xavier had said unforgiveable things, shattered the relationship beyond repair. “My esteemed brother, the edler, is a member of court, so he won’t be in Vienna. He’ll be with the emperor. And he probably took my sister with him.” It was just as well that Wilhelm would be gone, but he would have liked to see Katja. But that was selfish of him. She’d be safer with Wilhelm—as safe as anyone could be during an invasion.
“Well, we’ll be coming home, at least.”
“Yes. Hopefully not to see the city destroyed.” The last time he’d viewed the walls, they’d been in disrepair. Rumor said von Starhemberg and Rimpler had made improvements, but would it be enough?
A baby-faced soldier named Hosp dropped to the ground. Xavier rushed over to him. “Come on. Just a little longer and then you can rest. If you collapse out here, the Turks will flay the skin from your body or stick your head on a pike.”
Balthasar bent over the man too. “He’s burning up.”
“Probably another with the bloody flux.” Men had been succumbing to it for weeks. Some recovered. Some didn’t. Regardless of Hosp’s chances, Xavier didn’t intend to leave him behind for the Turks.
Xavier and Balth pulled him to his feet. Balth was the largest man in the company, maybe the largest in the regiment, making it easy for him to haul around the wounded. Balth spoke to the ill soldier in his deep, calming voice. “Come on, lad, less than a mile to go.”
“Captain Heisterman said the carts were almost full. I hope we can find room for him.” The city wasn’t too distant, but Xavier wasn’t feeling strong enough to support Hosp for even that long.
“Let’s put him in there.” Balth nodded at a baggage cart.
Xavier grunted his agreement. “And we’ll hope the Tatars don’t target the baggage like they did at Petronell.”
A cry of alarm came from behind them. Xavier spun round to see soldiers running forward.
“I’ll take him,” Balth said.
Xavier released Hosp and ran to meet the scattered troops in uniforms of palest gray. He grabbed a panicked soldier by his arm. “What is it?”
“Tatars!”
Phrases like light horsemen and skilled with the bow flashed through Xavier’s mind. They would probably harass rather than attack, and the more disorganized the troops, the more damage they’d do.
“Musketeers, form a square!” Xavier shouted. Massed fire from close-ordered troops ought to deter the Tatars from coming too near. He had drilled cooperation and obedience into the men, and once he gave the order, they moved quickly into position, forming four ranks.
Tatar horsemen appeared, keeping their distance, for now. They traveled faster than any other cavalry, wore no armor, and rode sturdy horses that could swim across rivers and survive on the most meager grazing. They circled around, not yet close enough to launch their arrows. Xavier would prefer his soldiers to take cover where they’d be shielded from enemy projectiles, but the ground was open and it would take too long to move the baggage carts into a screen—if they could find any not filled with the ill and injured.
“Front rank, prepare to fire.”
On orders from Xavier, the men lit their matchcords, then opened one of the wooden powder flasks hanging from their bandoliers. They filled the pan first, then dumped the rest of the powder into the barrel. One man’s fingers trembled as he added his ball, but the musketeers moved almost in unison as they removed their scouring sticks, reversed them, and shoved them into their respective barrels before withdrawing them and putting them away. They blew on the matchcord to make sure it was burning and fitted it into the matchlock’s jaws.
Xavier gave the next orders in quick succession.
“Shoulder your muskets!
“Make ready!
“Present!
“Give fire!”
The blast of fifteen matchlocks spewing their balls at the same time was almost deafening. The smoke tickled Xavier’s throat, and he tried to wave it away so he could better see. The Tatar horsemen retreated, leaving behind five men and two animals, all on the ground. Good. The Tatars would return if the regiment showed poor order, but for now, Xavier and his men could continue their march into Vienna unmolested.
“Form a column, and march into the city as a unit.” They’d be less vulnerable to Ottoman attacks that way, from both roaming Tatars and the main force marching under the Grand Vizier.
Xavier stayed with the rearguard, keeping their march steady. Once they got to Vienna, they could stop worrying about Tatars. The men from the Crimea were lethal in the open, but they traveled so lightly that they were little threat to a walled city.
Xavier murmured encouragement to a slow-moving pair of men, one of them hobbling along, and then he enlisted a stout soldier to help a man who had just finished vomiting. “Get him into the city.”
“But, sir, are you sure the city wants diseased soldiers?”
That decision wasn’t Xavier’s responsibility. He’d been given orders to get the men into Vienna—all of them. “The city has extensive defenses to man. Every soldier we bring in might be needed before Lorraine returns.”
The stout soldier nodded and obeyed, if grudgingly.
Balth joined Xavier again. “How did the skirmish go?”
“We fired a single volley, and they decided not to charge us. There are plenty of easier targets for them to wreak havoc on.” Thinking too much about who they might attack instead wasn’t pleasant. The Tatars put everything in their path to the sword and fire, and most targets wouldn’t be able to fight back as effectively as a company of musketeers could.
“They’ve really done something to the enceinte, haven’t they?” Balth said.
They were near enough to the city that the defenses were changing from what looked like grassy mounds into something more definable. Xavier scanned past the sloping glacis to a ravelin sitting before the bastioned walls like a great ship of brick. Raw earth along the counterscarp showed where parapets had been freshly cut into the proper slope, and recently planted palisades and newly stacked sandbags marked a flurry of recent activity. Fortresses always needed preparation before a siege began, but the Vienna of his memory had needed more than average. The emperor should have kept the defenses in better order.
A year remained of the peace treaty made with the Ottomans after the Battle of St. Gotthard, but Imperial diplomats had warned that the Porte was in a bellicose mood. That warning should have propelled a rush of preparations—they shouldn’t have waited until the enemy had crossed the border. Had Xavier been in Vienna, he would have told Wilhelm that the emperor should have relied on work, not just prayers. No doubt Wilhelm would have scolded him for disloyalty.
“I hope it will be enough,” Xavier said.
“What happened there?” Balth pointed to the charred remnants of a neighborhood. They couldn’t see anything inside the city yet other than the tops of spires and pinnacles, but these blackened ruins were outside Vienna’s wall. “Did we destroy it so the Turks couldn’t use it, or have the Tatars crept this close without opposition?”
Xavier didn’t know. Several of the city gates had been bricked up, and in some sectors, the causeways leading over the ditch between the counterscarp and the ramparts had been pulled down. They followed the men in front of them around to the Rothenthurm Gate on the northwestern side of the city and passed through the enceinte and into the city.
Within the walls, Xavier took in the bustle that met him. Vienna was familiar, but the air seemed different: expectant, desperate, defiant. There were other changes too. Someone had removed the wooden shingles from the roofs to reduce the risk of fire. Paving stones were torn up. The streets were scoured.
Captain Heisterman strode over to Xavier. “Von Starhemberg assigned half the garrison to the southern edge of the city, between the Löbl and Burg Bastions. You know the area?”
“Yes, sir.” Xavier knew all the bastions.
“Good. Lead these men there. Not all of them are from Vienna, so they don’t know the way. No delays. The Grand Vizier is expected before nightfall.”
* * *
Xavier situated his men around the Burg Bastion, positioning them behind the parapets where they could shoot at any approaching Turks without interfering with the artillery. The enormous bunker in the middle of the bastion made it harder to move men and cannon in and out, but for now, they had time. The bastion’s thick sides angled out abruptly from the city’s wall, giving the defenders clear lines of fire at anyone who might attack the bastions on either side, the ravelins before them, or the wall itself.
“Do you think you could pick off a Turk at the tip of the Löbl Bastion?” he asked Eder, who was probably the best shot in the company.
Eder held his musket up and aimed at the Löbl Bastion. The bastions were designed so there were no blind spots where the enemy could attack without being exposed to fire from multiple supporting structures. “’Tis a puny little bastion, isn’t it? I daresay a volley would be effective from here. As for hitting a specific man . . .” Eder lowered his musket. “I would certainly give it my best shot, sir. I’d have better luck aiming at the Löbl Bastion than at the Carinthian Gates.”
Too much space separated the Burg Bastion from the Carinthian Gates, leaving both vulnerable. No doubt that was why von Starhemberg had assigned a disproportionate number of defenders to this sector.
“Ensign Schor, sir?” A soldier Xavier didn’t know interrupted his musings.
“Yes?”
“Captain Heisterman wishes you to join him.”
Xavier walked to the tip of the bastion where his captain stood peering through an embrasure at a mass of dust rising in the south. The Ottoman Army.
Heisterman returned Xavier’s salute. “They sent their terms over. Some Ottoman officer gave it to one of our Croats.”
“And?”
Heisterman gazed at the enemy. The majority were out of cannon range, but some were closer. The huge mass formed a crescent that grew, stretching itself around the city. Sunlight reflected from helmets, and the breeze caught at banners floating over the crush of soldiers. “The Grand Vizier gave us a few choices: we can accept Islam and live in peace under the sultan. Or we can take our things and leave, again in peace. If we resist, he tells us we can expect death or spoliation or slavery.”
Xavier grunted. “Even if I were inclined to let an army waltz in and take my city, I wouldn’t trust them. How many towns have they told the same thing to only to let the Tatars kill or enslave everyone who surrendered?”
Heisterman glanced at a nearby cannon, then at a pair of musketeers. “Yes, promising peace and not delivering it has a way of making any further promises unbelievable. Von Starhemberg has already sent his rejection.”
“How many men have we?”
“Fifteen thousand. But that number includes local companies made up of bakers and students and the like, and about a third of the professional soldiers are wounded or ill.”
Twelve bastions to defend, plus the ravelins and the walls. Fifteen thousand—perhaps ten thousand healthy enough to man the defenses—divided into shifts. . . . It wasn’t much, but it might be enough. They didn’t have to defeat the Turks. They just had to keep the city safe long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Xavier flinched as a large boom sounded. A small line of smoke wisped toward the sky in the distance, behind what had to be the revetments protecting the Ottoman artillery. “It sounds as though the Grand Vizier has received von Starhemberg’s refusal.”
Heisterman squinted at the enemy battery. “So it begins.”
Xavier straightened his back and planted his feet firmly on the stone wall beneath him. “Indeed.” The battle for Vienna had started, and he was ready.