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Distinctive Facts About The Mighty Ottoman Empire

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2020 35 min

Battle of Ankara - Timurid Empire — Tamerlane gloating over the captured Bayezid I. Wikimedia

22. A Consequential Setback That Shaped History

A contemporary engraving of the 1529 siege of Vienna. Wikimedia

What made the Ottoman failure before the walls of Vienna decisive is that it was the closest they ever came to conquering Europe. Politically, Europe in 1529 was rent by wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics. Moreover, European armies had not yet undergone the Military Revolution, with its innovations in tactics and strategy that would give western armies a qualitative edge for centuries to come.

The Ottomans made another unsuccessful and better-known attempt to seize Vienna in 1683. By 1683, however, even if they had managed to seize the city, it is unlikely that they could have advanced much further into Europe, or even held on to Vienna for long. Thus, the failure in 1529 proved to be the Ottoman Empire’s high watermark in the west.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.