An exceptionally rare depiction of the 1684 siege of Buda (the Stadt Ofen of the title), on the western bank of the Danube, a natural boundary between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I (reigned 1658–1705), led by Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–1690), supreme commander of the imperial army, and hero of the eventual 1686 reconquest of Buda. Failing to find favour with his own French King, Lorraine had changed sides as a young man, and subsequently became one of the most successful commanders of the Habsburg army.

The Habsburgs and the Ottomans had been fighting each other for 300 years, when the Ottoman 1683 attempt to take Vienna was defeated by a coalition between the Habsburgs and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That significant victory marked a turning point in this series of conflicts, and inspired Leopold I to create a Holy League, a coalition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire-Habsburg monarchy, the Venetian Republic, the Tsardom of Russia, and the Kingdom of Hungary. Effectively a crusade, indeed sometimes referred to as the "last crusade", this super-army systematically dismantled the Ottoman stranglehold, by first reconquering Hungary, fort by fort along the Danube, then Transylvania, and finally Belgrade in 1699.

This meticulous plan, from a drawing by Ludwig Nicolaus von Hallart/ Hallard (1569-1727) shows the Holy League's troops arraigned in the countryside surrounding Buda, in particular Lorraine's Imperial forces, and the Bavarian troops led by Hallart (himself), Bavarian General, and Lieutenant-Adjutant. A Saxon nobleman, diplomat and soldier, and military engineer, Hallart drew a series of maps and views between 1684 and 1688 chronicling the Holy League's battles with the Ottoman Empire along the Danube, published by Michael Wening (1645-1718).

Court engraver for Maxmilian II Emanuel, the Elector of Bavaria, from 1675, Wening is best known for an engraving of the firework display to celebrated Maxmilian's birthday in 1680, and the 'Historico-Topographica Descriptio', published in four volumes between 1701 and 1726, which included 846 engravings of Bavarian landscapes.

Rarity: We were only able to locate one other example of this plan, in Museum of Military History, Budapest.