In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent, commander of the Ottoman forces, sent this ultimatum to the besieged city: “If you become Muslims nothing will happen to you. But if you offer resistance, then by Allah the most sublime your city will be reduced to ashes and young and old slaughtered.”
The siege of Vienna in 1529 marked the beginning of the 150-year war between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. The protective walls and glacis completed in 1548 would eventually be transformed into the Ringstrasse in the nineteenth century.
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(Glacis: “a gently sloping bank, in particular one that slopes down from a fort, exposing attackers to the defenders' missiles”)
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Italian Medal Celebrating Napoleon’s Defeat of Austria in 1805
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Napoleon’s bombardment of Vienna, destroying parts of the fortification walls, in 1809
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After the defeat of the Austrian army and destruction of the city’s fortifications, Napoleon looted art treasures from Viennese collections and forced the Habsburg family to provide him with a wife, Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma.
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