Leopold, after a failed Hungarian plot to throw off Habsburg rule, suppresses the Hungarian constitution, subjects Royal Hungary to direct absolute rule from Vienna, and harshly represses Hungarian Protestants, handing over Protestant ministers who refuse to deny their faith to work as galley slaves.

Hungarian discontent deepens.

In 1681 Imre Thokoly, a Transylvanian nobleman, leads a rebellion against the Habsburgs and forces Leopold I to convoke the Diet and restore Hungary's constitution and the office of palatine.

The Turks, sensing weakness, make their strike against Austria, but Polish forces rout them near Vienna in 1683.

Imre Thököly, the scion of a rich Protestant family in Royal Hungary, had moved to Transylvania after his father was executed for having had a role in the Hungarian magnates' conspiracy against the Habsburg emperor Leopold I (1670).

His family properties sequestered, he has become a leader of the Hungarian Protestant resistance to the continuing repressive Habsburg policy.

Thököly is in 1680 elected commander in chief of the malcontents.

Thököly, aided by the emperor's preoccupation with hostile France, and backed by the Turks and the prince of Transylvania, overruns much of upper Hungary and forces Leopold to restore Hungarian liberties (Treaty of Sopron, 1681) and to recognize his own quasi-sovereignty in north Hungary.

He soon resumes hostilities against the emperor, however, allying himself with the Turks, whose army by 1681 appears very strong, and taking the title of prince over his own dominions.

Charles V is the younger brother of Ferdinand Philip of Lorraine, who had died at twenty years of age in 1659, and with whose demise Charles had inherited his aunt's Duchy of Bar.

Charles has been the titular Duke of Lorraine from 1675.

Lorraine being occupied by France, Charles had found refuge with the Habsburgs, in whose service he has had a notable military career.

He was supposed to have married Marie Jeanne of Savoy (a cousin via Maria Jeanne's grandmother).

Despite a marriage contract being signed, Charles had backed out of the union, which is seen as void due to not having been consummated.

Marie Jeanne had instead married Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, in 1665.

The Habsburg connection had been cemented in 1678 by the marriage of Charles to Eleonora Maria Josefa, Archduchess of Austria, daughter of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleonore Gonzaga.

She is also the widow of Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, King of Poland, and will pass to her heirs the inheritance of the Gonzaga of Mantua.

In the Imperial service, Charles had first distinguished himself at the battle of August 1, 1664, fighting among Imperial forces against the Turks, and had campaigned in Hungary with general Johann Sporck in 1671.

He had been in command at the siege of Murau in the Steiermark.

The following year he was in command of Imperial cavalry under Raimondo Montecuccoli.

At Seneffe in 1674, he had received a head wound; in 1676 he had been present at the siege of Philipsburg.

Finally, named generalissimo of the Imperial army in April 1683, he will aid the king of Poland at the imminent Battle of Vienna.

Kara Mustafa’s campaign, launched northward into Austria in spring 1683, is a last effort to expand the Ottoman empire after more than one hundred and fifty years of war.

Mehmed IV enters Belgrade in May.

Thököly had married the Croatian countess Jelena Zrinska (in Hungarian: Zrínyi Ilona), the widow of Prince Francis I Rákóczi, in June 1682.

Thököly's distrust of the Emperor now induces him to turn for help to Sultan Mehmed IV, who, on condition that he pay an annual tribute of forty thousand tallers, recognizes him as Kral of Upper Hungary (i.e., eastern Slovakia and parts of northeastern present-day Hungary), a separate military district, headquartered in Košice, within Royal Hungary. The title "Kral", of Slavic origin, means monarch) .

Thököly captures fortress after fortress from the Emperor in the course of 1683, and extends his dominions to the Vág river.

At the two Diets held by him in this year at Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia) and ...

...Tállya, the estates, though not uninfluenced by his personal charm, show some want of confidence in him, fearing that he might sacrifice national independence to the Turkish alliance.

They refuse therefore to grant him either subsidies or a levy en masse, and he has to take what he wants by force.

As the leader of the Hungarian Calvinists, Thököly appeals to Kara Mustafa to attack the Habsburg capital.

One hundred and fifty thousand Turkish troops, with the tacit support of the Hungarian army, lay siege to Vienna in mid-July, succeed in capturing the outer fortifications, and begin to tunnel to the inner walls.

The emperor flees the city, which is guarded by only ten thousand Habsburg soldiers.

Pope Innocent XI, after trying unsuccessfully to induce Louis XIV of France to aid Leopold against the Turks, appeals to Poland with a large subsidy.

Although Sobieski and the emperor had made a pact of alliance earlier that year, the Polish king is reluctant to come until Innocent persuades Charles of Lorraine to join a combined army with the electors of Saxony and Bavaria as well as thirty German princes.

The eight thousand troops of this relieving army form along the top of the Vienna hills, and, on the morning of September 12, Lorraine's and Sobieski's forces attack the Turks.

The battle rages for fifteen hours before the Turkish invaders are driven from their trenches.

The red tent of the grand vizier is blown up, but he escapes while thousands of members of his routed army are slaughtered or taken prisoner.

Reports state that it takes the armies and the Viennese a week to collect the booty that has been left behind in the Turkish camp.

As Mustafa Pasha's army retreated, it had left several large bags of green beans behind in their camp.

These sacks contain unroasted coffee beans which as legend has it, forms the nucleus from which the Viennese coffee trade begins.

Kara Mustafa has taken a portion of Vienna’s walls and by September appears to be on his way to victory, but on September 12, 1683, the Austrians and their Polish allies under King Jan Sobieski take advantage of dissent within the Turkish military command and the poor disposition of Kara Mustafa’s troops, winning the Battle of Vienna with a devastating flank attack led by Sobieski's Polish cavalry.

The Turks retreat into Hungary, and then leaving the kingdom for retaking by the Germans in 1686.

The defeat costs Mustafa his position, and ultimately, his life.