The hottest fighting took place at the "Label" bastion, around which there
was not a foot of ground that had not been steeped in the blood of friend
or foe. However, by degrees the Turks gained a few paces; at the end of
August they were lodged in the ditches of the city; and on September 4th
they sprung a mine under the "Bourg" bastion; one-half of the city was
shaken thereby, and a breach was rent in the bastion wide enough for an
assault to be delivered, but the enemy was repulsed. Next day the Turks
attacked it with renewed courage, but the valor of the besieged baffled
the assailants. On September 10th another mine was sprung under the same
bastion, and the breach was so wide that a battalion might have entered
it abreast. The danger was extreme, for the garrison was exhausted
by fighting, sickness, and incessant labor. The Count de Starhemberg
despatched courier after courier to the Duke of Lorraine for succor: "There
is not a moment to be lost, Monseigneur," he wrote, "not a moment;" and
Vienna, exhausted, saw not yet her liberators arrive. At length, on the
14th, when the whole city was in a stupor in the immediate expectation of
an attack, a movement was observed in the enemy's camp which announced that
succor was at hand. At five o'clock in the afternoon the Christian army was
descried surmounting the Hill of Kahlen, and it made its presence known by
a salvo of artillery. John Sobieski had arrived at the head of a valiant
army. The Electors of Saxony and of Bavaria with many princes, dukes,
and margraves of Germany had brought with them fresh troops. Charles of
Lorraine might then dare to march against the Moslems, although he had yet
only forty-six thousand men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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