Although 12th September 1683 was an important day
in the history of Europe, it also had two unexpected consequences, both of
which could easily be within arm’s reach as you as read this article!
The ending of the siege of Vienna
By 12th September 1683 the Ottoman Turks had been besieging Vienna
for two months and the signs were not good for the inhabitants. An army of
250,000 men was camped around the walls, against which cannonballs thudded with
monotonous regularity. The outer defences were already under Turkish control
and tunnels were being dug to undermine the inner walls.
However, help was on the way. The Pope, Alexander VIII, was
so concerned that the forces of Islam could make such inroads into Christian
Europe that he paid a large sum of money to the King of Poland, John Sobieski,
to come to the Austrians’ aid.
A combined Polish and Austrian army of some 80,000 men
attacked the Turks at first light on 12th September and took them
completely by surprise. Although the battle was to rage on for fifteen hours,
by the end of the day the siege had been lifted and the Turks had fled, leaving
most of their supplies, and thousands of dead bodies, behind. King John sent a
message to the Pope that misquoted Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, God
conquered”.
A celebration bake
The celebrations were, as might have been expected, long and
joyous. The bakers of Vienna, for example, devised a new bread product which
they called a “kipfel”, which is German for “crescent”. They took the shape
from the crescent on the Turkish flag, which every Viennese citizen had become
heartily sick of seeing whenever they peeped over the city walls. Eating the
crescent was therefore a way of revenging oneself on the defeated enemy.
Nearly a century later the Austrian princess Marie
Antoinette became the wife of the French King Louis XVI. She took the secret of
the kipfel with her and it became highly popular in France under the name we
still use today, the “croissant”.
Sweetened coffee
As mentioned above, the Turks left a large amount of
supplies behind, and this included a huge store of coffee. The Austrians found
Turkish coffee to be too bitter to their taste, so they added milk and honey to
sweeten it. One legend has it that the new drink was invented by a friar named
Marco d’Aviano, a Capuchin monk who had arrived in Vienna as the Pope’s
emissary. The drinkable coffee was the same colour as his robes, which is why
it was named Cappuccino in his honour.
So, if you want to celebrate the anniversary of the freeing
of Vienna in true style, having a croissant and a cappuccino would be the most
appropriate way of so doing!
© John Welford
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