Johann Nepomuk Höchle, Emperor Leopold I and King John III. Sobieski in front of Vienna in 1683 by Atelier Liesjes

About "Johann Nepomuk Höchle, Emperor Leopold I and King John III. Sobieski in front of Vienna in 1683"

by Atelier Liesjes

About the artwork

The Siege of Vienna (1683) was an attempt by the Ottoman Empire to take the capital of the Archduchy of Austria, which at the time was also the residence of Emperor Leopold I of the Holy Roman Empire and the seat of the Habsburg monarchy.

In 1681, when Habsburg authority over Royal Hungary was weakened by a Protestant-Hungarian revolt, the Ottoman or Turkish Grand Vizier Kara Moestafa was given permission by Sultan Mehmet IV to capture Vienna with an army of 138,000 men to establish a "Kingdom of Vienna" under the rule of the Protestant Hungarian Imre Thököly.

Moestafa hoped to force a quick victory by blowing up the city walls with mines. Therefore, he paid little attention to his own defence. In early September, the city was on the verge of falling when an eighty thousand-strong dismemberment army arrived from German princes under the command of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who came to the rescue with a large cavalry force.

Leopold I (Leopold Ignatius Joseph Balthasar Felician; Hungarian: I. Lipót) (Vienna, 9 June 1640 - there, 5 May 1705), ruled for almost half a century as Roman German emperor, king of Hungary and king of Bohemia.

Jan III Sobieski (Polish: Jan III Sobieski, Lithuanian: Jonas Sobieskis) (Olesko, 17 August 1629 - Wilanów, 17 June 1696) was one of the most notable monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1674 until his death, as king of Poland and grand prince of Lithuania.

Johann Nepomuk Hoechle (16 September 1790 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany; 12 December 1835 in Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian genre painter and lithographer. The painter mainly produced military paintings.