Vienna Besieged by the Turks

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 1216. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $5000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

AUSTRIA, Wien (Vienna). AV Dukat Klippe (3.45 g, 6h). Siege issue. Dated 1529. Crowned and armored bust of Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria, right; 15 Z9 flanking bust; TVRK • BLE/GERT • WI/: EN : ; arabesques at cardinal points / Largcross pattée; in quarters at angles, coats-of-arms of Niederösterreich, Castile, Hungary, and Bohemia; each shield surmounted by an arabesque. Brause-Mansfeld pl. XLII, 9; Markl 278; Mailliet 2². VF, surfaces lightly corroded, struck on slightly irregular flan. Extremely rare.

The siege of Vienna in 1529 was the first of two sieges by the Ottoman Turks against the city (the later coming in 1683). After a successful military campaign in Hungary, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I advanced on Vienna with an enormous force in the fall of 1529. However, due to poor weather and a strong defense of the city, he was soon forced to abandon the siege. This event was a highwater mark for the Turkish expansion. For more than a century afterwards, the Ottoman Empire would not have the power to threaten central Europe.