“What’ll we drink to? Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King
Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?
One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts. I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting). On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail: the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.
We’d talk through history. Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting! Why don’t they teach that in school?”
Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.
Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?
What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal? A polar bear.
The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about. Namely, 9/11.
Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11. This is the story of September 11, 1683. And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.
It’s September 11, 1683.
Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been. In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back. Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.
But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire
Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks. Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.
My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.
Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders. They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in? The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well. Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender. The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.
When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved. That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.
What sort of devil was it? It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.
I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques. They did announce they have a waiting list, however.
Sound familiar? It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales. In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class. I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.
The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna. Instead they held the walls through two months of hell. Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city. They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.
Enter the relief force arriving on September 11th. 47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles. Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars. The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.
To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.
Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums. “I don’t like the sound of that.” The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”
On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything. Everything. The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople. are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.
Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).
Vienna is saved.
Europe is saved.
The West lives to fight another day.
The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win: it was a philosophical line in the sand. Faith fueled those defenders. Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving. It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:
How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!
Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today: “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”
I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.
Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought. More than that, they chose to fight there. They believed in something bigger than themselves: their family, their faith, and their civilization. That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.
The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.” They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.
Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously: they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances. The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for. The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.
History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat. The defenders weren’t perfect. Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together. And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. Back to John III’s letter:
There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life. Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”
So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.
One cannot mention the Winged Hussars without reference to Sabaton’s epic song about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcYhYO02f98
That was awesome!!!
Also, Based.
Truly a legendary battle. Almost as epic as the time we took down the Tiberium Alliances Firestorm VIII fortress.
Royem1
Hahahahaha! That’s been forever and a day ago!!!!!!
Muslims attack us on 9/11 and so what do we do? We import even more Muslims. Historians are going to look back on 21st Century America with disbelief.
Re: “Muslims attack us on 9/11 and so what do we do? We import even more Muslims.”
To paraphrase Tonto when speaking to the Lone Ranger, who is this “we” stuff? Ordinary Americans never voted for more Muslims to be imported into this country; it is being done by the globalist oligarchs and their domestic political allies (chiefly Democrats, but some GOP also). The pipeline starts at the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees which leads to the State Dept. thence to the NGOs/charities such as Catholic Charities, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and World Council of Churches and finally ends at Your Town, USA.
Despite claims to the contrary by the usual suspects, the “Great Replacement” is very real and the effort is ongoing around the West. It is most-apparent in Europe; the reason it is not quite so obvious in the ‘States is because of our size and the fact that the invasion is not yet as advanced.
Of course, the U.S. has problems Europeans don’t – such as armies of Latinos flooding over our southern border. A visitor to our society thirty or forty years hence, maybe after yours truly is gone, might see the Chinese fight the Muslims fighting the Mexicans for control of what remains of the former USA.
Norm Macdonald: “Good thing we weren’t hit with a nuke. Imagine the blowback on the peaceful moslems!”
William Wordsworth wrote a great poem about this. Siege of Vienna Raised:
https://youtu.be/8eW0tk8k3bk
Based.
John III also looked on the devastation and commented…”Vienna, I never sausage a thing.”
Apologies to a South Of The Border billboard on I-95 in SC.
If John III were German, I’d fear the wurst.
John – – I noticed that you were using the word “Muslim” and this is in response to that choice of words. Don’t mean to be pedantic, but I need to convince you to consider using the name MOSLEM. Here is why:
MOSLEM is an authorized spelling set forth in dictionaries. It was the original spelling of the death cult’s name when Brits began colonizing Egypt and nearby lands (or taking it by League of Nations as a “Protectorate”).
In Arabic, MOSLEM, pronounced the way we and Brits say the word, sounds like the Arabic word meaning: dirty, filthy, nasty, unclean, slovenly, etc.
MOSLEM propagandists, irked at our 1st World pronounciation, convinced media types and other Libtards to start using the word MUSLIM. (Libtard Reasoning: Let’s appease them because it isn’t nice to to upset them, especially when they know how to use knives and drive trucks onto busy sidewalks…..….)
I will not let MOSLEMS dictate to me the word that I use to describe their ilk. Who are they -or anybody else – to tell me what I should call them ??
Not that I am any better or whatever, but their pushy presence in our lives will not be rewarded by me going along with their propaganda advanced as if it is no big deal to use a different word to describe who they are.
Call them whatever you want, but remember that one day our descendants, most likely it will be our grandchildren and their offspring, will fight a World War that will determine which peoples and nations do not have to become Moslem. (Remember that their beliefs state that they are to kill or enslave all Infidels, but if they are feeling generous, allow non-Moslems to live – but only if the Infidels pay the annual 25% income tax to the local mosque.)
Yes, you are correct that “Moslem” was one of the commonest terms used, but so was “Mohammedan,” i.e., a follower of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. Our Founding Fathers and many other lettered men and women of that time, did not consider Islam per se to be a religion in the way that Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism are religions; it was considered more of a creed or cult. The idea that it was one of the world’s “Three Great Monotheistic Faiths” or the like, lay a ways in the politically-correct future.
Works for me. As it was, it wasn’t capitalized.
Don’t forget the earlier, and arguably more important Siege of Vienna in 1529, led by none other than the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, a far better Sultan and general than anyone that the later Ottomans could produce a hundred and fifty years later. Since Suleiman’s stated objective was the Rhine, even the Protestants in Germany were more than happy to send contingents to aid in Vienna’s defense. Add to this that the French, smarting from their defeat in Italy by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, were in league with the Turks making it that much worse. “His Most Catholic Majesty King Francis I of France” was willing to stab Christendom in the back by aiding the Turks just to gain political advantage.
Some things never change.
Well, they main language of Paris is Arabic now, so . . .
If you don’t mind somewhat sketchy English voice-overs, watch the excellent historic epic “The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683” (original Polish title: Bitwa pod Wiedniem, literally “Siege of Vienna”). It really emphasizes this was also a religious war, not just a land dispute, as a monk is one of the main POV characters, and it also really condemns the way the nobility (the elite) abandoned Vienna to the Ottoman Empire for petty political reasons because they thought it would somehow increase their own power selling out to the Turks. Ignore the 4.4 star rating on IMDb. For some reason, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes make it very hard to pull up and find this movie, and its constantly getting buried in the algorithms, too much so to be coincidence.
You can watch the English-dubbed version for free here: https://ww20.0123movie.net/movie/the-day-of-the-siege-september-eleven-1683-3411.html
It’s like the 30 Year’s War (and larger 100 Years War). For some reason, it gets totally omitted from history classes and you have to look to foreign films to find a movie about it.
Half a decade ago I found that on one of the streaming services. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It deserves another watch.
The American Civil War will make the Siege of Vienna look like a bake sale.
400,000 mooslims with scimitars, Abdul ‘El Bobo’ Amir? meh.
75,000,000 uber-empowered females, and their tyrannical State, and their simping Whiteknights, and their deluded dotter-daddies . . . now, that won’t be quite so easy.
Ray I’m confused by your military assessment of the next Civil War. It seems to me that wiping out the feminist/male simp army would be easy as they would be the most predictable and retarded soldiers in history.
Advertise free soy lattes at Starbucks and you could easily encircle/capture half their army.
Feminism is what brought us here.
Re: “History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat.”
It is historically-accurate to state that Sept. 11th was chosen by Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda – they saw the attacks on the WTC and other targets as vengeance for the long-ago defeat at Vienna in 1683.
Islam as a system of belief passes down grievances from one generation to the next. The past is never really past for many of those people. Bin Laden himself called Spain and Portugal “al Andalus,”which is name in Arabic for the more than seven-hundred year rule of the Iberian peninsula by the Moors.
The terror/direct-action group of the 1960s-1970s, Black September, which had ties to the PLO-Fatah, was so named in response to that fateful day when the siege was broken and the Ottoman invaders were defeated and sent reeling.
Barack Hussein Obama, who is a practicing Sunni Muslim, and was all through his time as POTUS – never missed an opportunity to insult the U.S.Navy and Marine Corps. Why? Because they inflicted a humiliating defeat upon his fellow Muslims during the Barbary Wars, the very first war fought by the newly-independent United States of America.
For those who dispute Obama’s lineage and identity, get real: “Hussein” is a name found nowhere else save in the Islamic world. Obama was adopted by his stepfather, an Indonesian Sunni Muslim. At that moment, according to sharia law, he was a member of the umma. He later attended a madrasa, or Islamic school, in which he learned to quote lengthy passages from the Koran from memory in prefect Arabic.
Obama’s claim to be “Christian” was just a bit of convenient taqiyya – lying to the infidels – which is permitted under sharia if it will protect an individual Muslim or advance the faith itself. And if good ole Jeremiah Wright’s “church” was “Christian” – then I’m Mother Teresa. Wright famously allowed members of other faiths to join the church, something which is starkly at odds with Christian doctrine.
Not a bit of argument from me on any of that. Obama was the worst president of my lifetime.
Absolutely. Obie was just another Traitor Within. Most of us knew he was a mooslim plant and liar. Our own intel services groomed him from youth; mammy was an asset too.
Looking forward to mooslims in front of the King of Truth, pleading taqiyah. It’ll be entertaining.
Meanwhile, in today’s UK…and beyond:
https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/1947004662059581449
https://x.com/moment_mirthful/status/1947068457734053957
https://x.com/ani_makom/status/1947241517468307914?t=Iv-7D6eZZOs-l9FM3cXZLA&s=19
Remember how short the Kingdom of Jerusalem was. Looking for a new Rome . . . where is it?
This is an outstandingly written article.
Thank you! I’ve been trying to put together a string of ’em. Like I said on Friday, how else will I hit “John Wilder is a National Treasure” status?
more pictures of girls in bikinis always helps.
Ha! Okay, hint taken. I’ll look for (or make) places to fit ’em in.
? What happened to the website of the same name “https://gatesofvienna.net/” – it’s gone dark…
They are having some technical issues as explained by Vlad Tepes (https://vladtepesblog.com/2025/07/21/about-gates-of-vienna-and-other-sites/)
Yup, still down.
You mught want to comment on THE HAMMER
Nice call. Also very Based.
Rather embarrassingly, I do not get the first meme, regarding the requirement to retreat from Vienna…?
Can you explain yourself, Mr Wilder?
Otherwise, I could not agree more with your conclusions and offerings here. This is happening, and it is not new, so by this time we are discussing something that is nearly complete.
Have a nice day.
We’re out of men
We’re Outta-men. 🙂
Ah, yes… now I see where the confusion came from.
Thank you for the clarification, sirs…
MinC
Democrats want to save money.
Their all-Electric USPS Fleet Sees Each Truck Come With A $6.8 Million Price-Tag, which means each one will have to have a life span of about 500 years and deliver over 5 billion tons of junk mail to make it all pay. Real economy!
jim.major2@icloud.com
Hahahaha! Only .gov could spend so much.