Austrian Emperor Leopold I and Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha also get quite a bit of attention, but very little is known about the historical context in the two decades preceding the 1683 siege, and even less is known in German- and English-language histories about the role of the Hungarians in this conflict. The history of the 1683 siege on Vienna typically centers on Polish king John III Sobieski, who liberated the city by charging at the Turkish troops as his forces surprise attacked them coming down from the Kahlenberg.

Michels provides a much-needed revisionist history on this narrative in his book The Habsburg Empire under Siege: Ottoman Expansion and Hungarian Revolt in the Age of Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü (1661–76), in which he examines the ambivalence of the Hungarians, mostly Protestant Christians, caught between two competing empires, and in which readers learn of the much-neglected historical figure of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü. Of course, this narrative is too simplistic and ignores the fact that it was part of an ongoing conflict between two empires: the huge Ottoman Empire and the large (by Central European standards) Habsburg Empire. In 1983, Vienna commemorated the tricentennial of the second siege with lavish exhibitions and events that reiterated the idea of world history being written in Vienna, when the Habsburg Empire with the help of the Polish King prevented a Muslim advance on Christian Europe.

This conflict between two empires has been remembered as a conflict between Christian Europe and the Muslim World. For the Habsburg Empire, both sieges were existential threats in world history they are remembered as the furthest point that the Ottoman Empire ever got moving northwest. The Ottomans unsuccessfully laid siege on Vienna twice over the course of roughly 150 years in 1529 and again in 1683.

Siege of vienna poland