American Minute - Battle of Vienna, 1683

American Minute
with
Bill Federer

In 1683, over 138,000 Muslim Ottoman Turks surrounded Vienna, Austria.

For two months they starved the 11,000 Hapsburg-Austrian defenders.

Sultan Mehmed IV sent a message to Austrian King, Leopold I: "Await us in your residence...so we can decapitate you."

Secretly, Polish King Jan Sobieski, gathered 81,000 Polish, Austrian and German troops and on SEPTEMBER 11, 1683, led a surprise attack causing the Turks to flee in confusion.

Upon entering the abandonded Turkish tents, they found bags of beans - coffee beans - revealing how Turks could fight day and night.

Shortly thereafter, Polish General Kulczycki opened one of Vienna's first coffeehouses and coffee quickly spread across Europe.

Whereas the Pope and European leaders hailed Jan Sobieski as the "Savior of Western Civilization," the humiliated Muslim army beheaded their general, Mustafa Pasha, and sent his head back to Sultan Mehmed IV in a velvet bag.

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his 1916 book, Fear God and Take Your Own Part:

"From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Jan Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact it...could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor."