1683Jan Sobieski’s relief army breaks the Ottoman siege of Vienna
In the summer of 1683 the Ottoman grand vizier Kara Mustafa led a huge army up the Danube and, in mid-July, laid siege to Vienna, the seat of the Habsburg emperor Leopold I. The emperor left the city, and its garrison and citizens held out behind the walls for two months while Ottoman engineers dug mines beneath the bastions. By early September the defenders were exhausted and short of food, and the walls had been breached in places.
Help came from a coalition that Leopold and the Pope had worked to build. Imperial, Bavarian, Saxon and other German troops joined a Polish army under King Jan III Sobieski, who took overall command; the whole force is put at some 70,000 to 80,000 men. On 12 September 1683 they came down from the wooded heights of the Kahlenberg, north-west of the city. Late in the afternoon a great charge of cavalry, led by the Polish hussars, broke the Ottoman camp, and Kara Mustafa fled. The defeat began a long Ottoman retreat from central Europe, and the sultan had the grand vizier executed that December.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Kahlenberg ↗
1990The Two Plus Four Treaty clears the way for German unity
After the Second World War, Germany was divided and the four victorious powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France, kept special rights over the country as a whole and over Berlin. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and East Germans voted for unity, those rights had to be settled before the two German states could become one. From May 1990 the foreign ministers of East and West Germany and the four powers met in a series of talks known as Two Plus Four.
On 12 September 1990 the six ministers signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany at a hotel in Moscow. The united Germany accepted its existing borders, including the frontier with Poland, as final, renounced nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and agreed to cut its armed forces to 370,000. Soviet troops would leave the former East Germany by 1994, and the country would be free to stay in NATO. The four powers suspended their rights from the day of unity, 3 October 1990, and the treaty came fully into force in March 1991, when Germany regained complete sovereignty.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: CVCE, University of Luxembourg: Signing of the ‘Two Plus Four’ Treaty (Moscow, 12 September 1990) ↗
1974Ethiopia’s army deposes Emperor Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie had ruled Ethiopia since 1930, as regent and then emperor. He led resistance to the Italian invasion of 1935, returned in triumph in 1941 and became a respected voice in Africa, but at home power stayed with the crown, the nobility and the church, and most Ethiopians remained poor peasants. In 1973 a famine in the province of Wollo killed many thousands of people while the government played it down, and early in 1974 rising prices set off strikes, student protests and mutinies in the army.
A committee of junior officers and soldiers, which became known as the Derg, began arresting ministers and nobles over the summer. On 12 September 1974 it formally deposed the aged emperor and took power as the Provisional Military Administrative Council. The monarchy was abolished the following year, and Haile Selassie died in custody in August 1975. Major Mengistu Haile Mariam, one of the Derg’s leaders, soon emerged as the country’s ruler and governed with great brutality until 1991.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: History of Ethiopia, the rise and reign of Haile Selassie I ↗
1897Twenty-one Sikh soldiers hold the post at Saragarhi
In 1897 risings broke out among the Pashtun tribes on the North-West Frontier of British India, in what is now Pakistan. On the Samana Ridge the British held two old forts, Lockhart and Gulistan, which could not see each other. Between them stood Saragarhi, a small signalling post that passed messages by heliograph and flag. It was held by 21 men of the 36th Sikhs, a regiment of the Indian Army, under Havildar Ishar Singh.
On 12 September 1897 thousands of Orakzai and Afridi tribesmen, as many as 10,000 by some accounts, attacked the post. The defenders refused to surrender and fought for most of the day, signalling news of the battle to Fort Lockhart until the end. When the walls were breached they fought on with their bayonets, and all were killed. All 21 were awarded the Indian Order of Merit, then the highest gallantry award open to Indian soldiers. Saragarhi Day is still marked each year by the Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army and by the British Army.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: National Army Museum: 36th Sikhs on the ruins of Saragarhi, 1897 ↗
