The Thunder of Kahlenberg (Vienna, Holy Roman Empire – September 12, 1683) — Imagine History

Standing high on the forested ridges of Mount Kahlenberg, the crisp autumn morning air smells of damp pine and bitter gunsmoke. Below in the Danube valley, the historic city of Vienna is nearly smothered in dust and flame. For two agonizing months, over one hundred thousand Ottoman troops have besieged the imperial capital, battering its bastions with heavy artillery and digging tunnels under the stone walls to detonate subterranean mines. Inside the city, defender supplies are exhausted, disease is rife, and the last line of defensive earthworks is on the verge of collapsing. From your vantage on the slopes, you can see the sprawling silk tents of the Ottoman encampments encircling the city like a vast, colorful sea. Suddenly, the woods behind you tremble. A low rumble echoes through the trees, growing into a deafening thunder of tens of thousands of iron-shod hooves. Emerging from the forest canopy comes King John III Sobieski of Poland leading a massive relief force, flanked by the fearsome Winged Hussars—cavalrymen wearing tall wooden frames mounted with eagle feathers that rustle wildly in the wind. With a single blast of war horns, eighteen thousand horsemen surge down the steep, vine-draped hillsides in the largest cavalry charge in human history. The sudden, overwhelming onslaught strikes the flank of the grand vizier’s army, breaking the siege in a single afternoon and permanently halting the westward expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe.