Siege of Vienna

The Siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first attempt by the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, to capture the city of Vienna, Austria. The siege signaled the pinnacle of the Ottoman Empire's power, the maximum extent of Ottoman expansion in central Europe, and was the result of a long-lasting rivalry with Europe. Thereafter, 150 years of bitter military tension and reciprocal attacks ensued, culminating in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which marked the start of the Great Turkish War by European powers to remove the Ottoman presence.

The Ottoman failure to capture Vienna in 1529 turned the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe, which had previously directly annexed Central Hungary and established a vassal state in Transylvania in the wake of the Battle of Mohács. According to Toynbee, "The failure of the first brought to a standstill the tide of Ottoman conquest which had been flooding up the Danube Valley for a century past."

There is speculation by some historians that Suleiman's main objective in 1529 was in actuality to assert Ottoman control over the whole of Hungary, the western part of which (known as Royal Hungary) was under Habsburg control. The decision to attack Vienna after such a long interval in Suleiman's European campaign is viewed as an opportunistic manoeuvre after his decisive victory in Hungary. Other scholars theorize that the suppression of Hungary simply marked the prologue to a later, premeditated invasion of Europe.