MAHOMET IV. Sultan of Turkey, was born in 1642, and succeeded his father Ibrahim I. The chief exploits of his reign were those of the grand viziers Kuperli and his
son Achmet. The Turks were defeated by the Hungarians at St Gothard, in 1664, by General Montecuccoli. The war with the Venetians, begun in 1645, was ended in 1669, when the town of Candia, after a siege of two years, capitulated to Achmet Kuperli. Encouraged by the internal discord of Poland under King Michael, the Turks successfully invaded that country in 1672; but in 1673 were routed by the famous John Sobieski, driven south of the Danube, and forced to sign a disadvantageous peace. In 1683 a horde of 200,000 men, under the grand vizier Kara Mustapha, marched westward, and encamped in front of Vienna. After a siege of six weeks, all hope of relief had been abandoned, when Sobieski, now King of Poland, attacked the Turkish forces, drove them from their entrenchments, and cut them to pieces. This was the first of a series of disasters that ended, in 1687, in an insurrection of the Janissaries, and in the deposition of Mahomet IV. He died in prison in 1691.