From the end of September to the end of December, 1683.
The Emperor’s stay in his rescued capital was brief. He quitted it
for Lintz on the 16th, leaving to the local authorities a heavy task
to be performed of repair, and reconstruction, and purification.
The Christian prisoners had been compelled to labour in the Turkish
trenches, and in like manner Turkish captives were now compelled to
repair the damage they had contributed to effect. The events of the
siege had shown the danger occasioned by the near vicinity of suburban
buildings in possession of an enemy, and an order was now issued for
preventing the establishment either of buildings or gardens within a
distance of 600 paces from the city rampart, to which edict the present
glacis owes its origin. In this, the metropolitan seat of wealth and
power, the work of restoration proceeded with speed and regularity;
the affairs of mankind soon fell into their accustomed order, and
material objects resumed their former aspect. It was far different in
the country, where, through whole districts, human hands were wanting
to build upon the sites of ruined villages, to replant the vineyard and
orchard, and to restore to cultivation the fields which the Tartar had
converted into a wilderness. It was necessary in many instances for the
Government to colonize before it could cultivate, and it required years
of peace and security to repair the ravages of a few hours of Turkish
occupation.
The failure of so vast a scheme of invasion produced in the minds of
the Viennese a reasonable sense of security against any reappearance
of the horse-tails before their walls. It might be long, indeed,
before the aggressive power of the Porte should be restrained within
the limits of a well-defined frontier, and awed into quiescence by
experience of its inability to cope with Christian Europe. The Turk was
still in possession of fortresses, such as Neuhaüsel, within a few
hours’ march of the capital, but another investment of Vienna was an
event not within the scope of reasonable calculation. It was therefore
now determined to remove from public gaze a conspicuous and not very
creditable memorial of the former liability of the city to the insult
which it had twice experienced: namely, the crescent, which, since
the siege of 1529, had surmounted the spire of the Christian Temple
of St. Stephen. It was generally held to have been placed there on an
understanding with Soliman, that, like the black flag, which in modern
warfare frequently protects an hospital, it should exempt the building
beneath from the fire of an attack. Some writers, jealous of their
country’s honour, have indeed disputed this version of its origin. Be
this as it may, the talisman had lost its virtue, for the malignity
of Kara Mustapha had selected the cathedral as a principal object for
his batteries, though the Turkish gunners had only succeeded in two
or three instances in disturbing the celebration of its services,
and the return of killed and wounded in its congregations exhibited
only one old woman whose leg had been carried off by a shell. At the
suggestion, according to some authors, of Sobieski, but more probably
of Kollonitsch, the crescent was now removed to the arsenal, where
it is still preserved, and replaced in the first instance by an iron
cross, which being fixed was shortly carried away by a storm. In 1587,
a rotatory double eagle of brass was placed on the pinnacle, which it
still adorns.