State of the city—Situation of the Empire—Rapid advance of the Turks—The massacre of Perchtoldsdorf—The Turkish camp—Kollonitsch—View without the walls—Ditto within—Progress of the siege—The camp of Crems—Desperate condition of the citizens—The signal-rockets.
State of the city—Situation of the Empire—Rapid advance of the Turks—The massacre of Perchtoldsdorf—The Turkish camp—Kollonitsch—View without the walls—Ditto within—Progress of the siege—The camp of Crems—Desperate condition of the citizens—The signal-rockets.
On the evening of the 7th of July 1683 the city of Vienna presented a strange and melancholy spectacle. The road leading out of the Rothenthurm Gate was crowded by a dense mass of carriages and other vehicles, as well as by a vast multitude of foot-passengers, who, by their anxious and terrified looks, seemed to be flying from a pressing danger. Hour after hour you might have watched the stream of fugitives, and still it flowed on without intermission, till you would have thought the city emptied of its inhabitants, or at least of all those of the noble and wealthier classes. And had you sought the reason of so strange a spectacle, the red glare of the distant horizon, lit up by the flames of burning villages, and nearer still, those that enveloped the Carmelite Convent on the heights of the Kahlenberg, would have furnished you with the answer. Those fires were the tokens that Vienna was surrounded by the dreaded forces of the Turks. Every post, for weekspast, had brought the intelligence of some fresh disaster. Hungary was in open revolt; and 400,000 Turks, under the command of the Vizier Kara Mustapha, had poured into the territories of the empire, invited by the treachery of the insurgents. Then came the news that Emerick Tekeli had accepted the investiture of the Hungarian kingdom at the hands of the infidels, and basely acknowledged himself and his countrymen vassals to the Porte. And at last, on that very morning, the city had been thrown into a very panic of alarm by the hasty entrance of fugitives of the imperial cavalry; and the rumour quickly spread that the forces of the Duke of Lorraine had been surprised and totally defeated at Petrouel by the Tartar horse, and that the remains of the imperial army were falling back in disordered flight upon the capital. This, as it afterwards proved, was a false report; as Lorraine, although surprised by the enemy, had succeeded in repulsing them, and was effecting his retreat in good order. But the Emperor Leopold did not wait for the confirmation or contradiction of the intelligence; and at seven o’clock on the same evening the imperial carriages were seen hastily passing over the Tabor Bridge on their way to Lintz, thus giving an example of flight which was quickly followed by the greater portion of the wealthier citizens. It is calculated that upwards of 60,000 persons left the city during that memorable night, the confused masses being lighted on their way by the flames of the burning convent. A great number of these having no conveyances fell into the hands of the very enemy from whom they sought to escape; and the roads leading to Styria were covered with unhappy fugitives, whom the Turks are even said to have hunted down with bloodhounds: some perished of hunger in the woods; others met a cruel death from their barbarous pursuers; the rest succeeded in reaching the Bavarian dominions, where Leopold had already found refuge, after narrowly escaping the Tartar cavalry, who occupied the very line of route which had been originally proposed for him to take.
Our present business, however, is rather with the story of the few who, resisting the infection of terror, remained at their post, and prepared, as best they could, to offer a determined resistance to the besiegers. Their numbers were fearfully small. One regiment of troops only was within the walls, and the citizens capable of bearing arms were reckoned at no more than 1200 men. Ernest Ruchjer, Count of Stahremberg, was the heroic governor to whom the defence of the city was intrusted and if his scanty forces, and the utter want of all preparation for a warlike emergency, might well have made his heart sink at the task before him, yet his own gallantry and the active co-operation of some of his followers and of the burgher authorities almost supplied for the want of other resources. The works necessary for the defence of the city were not yet begun; for even the ordinary engineering tools were wanting. The supplies of fuel, water, and provisions requisite for sustaining a long siege were still unprovided; and all this had to be done, and was done, by the astonishing exertions of a few men within the space of a single week. The spectacle which their courage and activity presented formed a striking contrast to that which had been displayed only a few days previously by the flight of the court and of so many of their fellow-citizens. Men of all classes, priests, and even women, were to be seen labouring at the fortifications: the burgomaster, Von Liebenberg, was foremost with his wheelbarrow among the workmen, cheering them on by his example and words of encouragement; some carried loads of wood from the suburbs to the city-stores; whilst the circle of flames from the burning villages, denoting the advance of the enemy, drew nearer and nearer, so that by the 12th of July they were working under the very eyes of the Turks.
Before proceeding to the story of the siege, it may be necessary to say a few words on the position of the two parties in the struggle about to commence, so as to give some idea of their relative chances of success. Thehostilities between the Turks and the Empire had been interrupted only by occasional truces, from the first occupation of Constantinople by the former two centuries previously. The present invasion had been brought about mainly through the means of the Hungarian insurgents; and however much we may be disposed to allow that the severity of the Austrian government to a conquered country provoked the assertion of national independence on the part of its oppressed people, yet we cannot but withhold the title of “patriots” from those who, in their hatred to Austria, were ready to sacrifice the very safety of Christendom, and whose notions of national independence consisted in exchanging subjection to the Austrians for a far more degrading vassalage to the infidels. When the news of the vast preparations of the Ottomans reached Vienna, it found the imperial government almost without defence. The day was past when Christian Europe could be roused to a crusade in defence of its faith, or even of its freedom; nay, in the history of this contest we are met at every page by the details of secret negotiations and most unworthy intrigues, by which the emissaries of the “Most Christian King,” Louis XIV., encouraged and assisted the invasion of the infidels to gratify his personal jealousy against the House of Hapsburgh. In the day of his distress and humiliation Leopold was compelled to seek for assistance from one whom till then it had been the policy of his government to slight and thwart on all occasions, and from whom, according to the calculations of a selfish policy, he had certainly nothing to expect. This was John Sobieski, the elective king of Poland, whose former exploits had rendered his name a very watchword of terror to the Turks, but on whom the Austrian sovereign had but little claim. The interests of the Polish king were all opposed to his taking any part in the hostilities. After years of civil war and foreign invasion, his surpassing genius had but just obtained for Poland a profound and honourable peace. An alliance with the House of Hapsburgh was at variancewith the close and intimate connection existing between himself and the court of Versailles; and the favour and protection of the French king was of no small importance to the distracted councils of Poland; whilst the contemptuous and unfriendly treatment he had ever received from the Austrian sovereign might very naturally have prompted him to refuse the sacrifice of his own interests in that monarch’s behalf. But none of these considerations had any weight in the noble heart of Sobieski, who looked on the question simply as one involving his faith and honour as a Christian king. “For thirty years,” to use the words of Pope Innocent XI., “he had been the bulwark of the Christian republic—the wall of brass against which all the efforts of the barbarians had been broken in pieces.” Indeed, if we may so say, he had come to look on war with the infidel as his special vocation: the victories of Podhaiski and Choczim, and that other wonderful series of achievements, to which history has given the title, adopted from the gazette of Louis XIV., of the “Miraculous Campaign,” had, as it were, installed him in his glorious office; and when the same Pope called him in council “the lieutenant of God” he did but give expression to the feeling with which all Christian Europe looked to him as her hero and protector. It is not a little striking that the greater number of the semi-infidel historians of the eighteenth century, while doing full justice to the gallantry and genius of this extraordinary man, have condemned his enterprise against the Turks as proceeding only from a religious and chivalrous impulse, undirected by any views of sound state-policy. Whether the policy which saved Europe from the horrors[67]of an Ottoman invasion can rightly be termed unsound, our readers may determine; it was doubtless unselfish, and probably its very generosity has been the principal cause of its condemnation by thesewriters; but we refer to their criticism as an unquestionable testimony in proof of the real character of this campaign, and of the motives from which it was undertaken; and we think, on their own showing, we can scarcely be wrong in representing this war as purely a religious one, entered on in defence of the Christian faith, and without any mixture of those political motives, the want of which is so deplored by the historians of that sceptical age, but which renders its history so glorious in the eyes of the Christian student.
The treaty between the two sovereigns, signed on the 31st of March 1683, was confirmed by the solemnity of an oath administered by the cardinal-legate, the obligation of which on the conscience of Sobieski will be found to have exercised a marked influence on his future conduct. At the time when the treaty was concluded the invader had not yet set foot in Hungary. To approach the Austrian capital they would have to pass a number of strongly fortified towns, which, according to the ordinary course of military proceedings, must first be reduced before pushing further into the enemy’s country. Nevertheless, the intelligence which reached Sobieski from his secret spies and envoys in the Turkish dominions all pointed to Vienna itself as the object of attack. But in spite of his representations to Leopold, that monarch could not be induced to believe himself in danger, or to prepare for an emergency; and thus, when the heights of the surrounding hills blazed with the camp-fires of the Tartars, the city, as we have seen, was taken by surprise; and the inhabitants of the surrounding country were quietly at work in the harvest-fields, when the hosts of the enemy came on them like some sudden inundation. Indeed, the march of Kara Mustapha was without a precedent. To advance from the borders of Hungary to the walls of Vienna, leaving in his rear all the fortresses of the imperialists, was the affair of a week; before another had closed, his trenches were opened and the siege begun; and this extraordinary rapidity must account, both for the defencelessstate of the capital and for the time which necessarily elapsed before the Polish king could come to its relief.
An incident may here be related which will show the nature of the warfare waged by the infidels, and the treatment which the Viennese might expect at their hands. In the neighbourhood of the city was the small town of Perchtoldsdorf; and as one of the first objects of the invaders was to secure all the places capable of being fortified within a short distance of Vienna, a detachment was sent to take possession. The inhabitants, under the direction of their bailiff, at first endeavoured to hold the town; but owing to the superior numbers of the enemy and the failure of ammunition, they were soon compelled to abandon it, and to betake themselves to the tower of the church and its precincts, which, on the approach of the Turks, they had diligently fortified, as their forefathers had done 150 years before. Small hope, however, was there that they should be able to keep the enemy at bay; and when a horseman, bearing a flag of truce, summoned them to surrender, with the offer of security to life and property in case of immediate compliance, they did not hesitate to accept the terms. On the morning of July 17th a pasha arrived from the camp, and, seating himself on a red carpet opposite the church, announced to the besieged the conditions of surrender; which were, that the inhabitants should pay a contribution of 6000 florins, and, as a token that they had not yielded up the place, but had honourably capitulated, the keys were to be delivered by a young maiden with her hair flowing and a garland on her head. These terms concluded, the citizens left their stronghold; and the daughter of the bailiff, arrayed as described, bore the keys of the place on a cushion, and presented them to the pasha. The latter now required that all the men capable of bearing arms should be drawn up in the market-place, on pretence of ascertaining what number of troops were needed for the occupation of the town. It was too late to retreat, and the order was obeyed. As the inhabitants came out, theTurkish soldiers closed about them, and deprived them of their arms; such as hesitated were overpowered, and those who paused in the gateway, reluctant to proceed, were dragged out by the hair of their heads. The unfortunate people were no sooner all assembled than their persons were searched, and every thing they had about them was taken away. At the same time the entrance-gate was strongly guarded. Some of the townsmen, seized with alarm, endeavoured, with the bailiff at their head, to regain the church; but the Turks rushed upon them with drawn sabres, and the bailiff was cut downon the threshold. At that instant the pasha rose from his seat, flung down the table before him, and gave the signal for a general massacre, himself setting the example by cutting down with his own hand the trembling girl at his side. The slaughter raged for two hours without intermission; 3500 persons were put to the sword, and in a space so confined that the expression “torrents of blood,” so often a figure of speech, was fully applicable to the case. The women and children, who still remained within the church, together with the parish-priest and his coadjutor, were dragged into slavery, and never heard of more. Among the victims, numbers of whom were inhabitants of adjacent places who had taken refuge in the town, some, it is conjectured, were people of condition; for, in the course of excavations which lately took place on the scene of the massacre, valuable rings set with precious stones have been discovered.[68]To this day the Holy Sacrifice is offered every year for those who perished on the fatal 17th of July by this act of savage treachery.
But to return. Thirteen thousand regular troops from the army of Lorraine were assembled within the walls of Vienna by the evening of the 13th; and at sunrise on the following day a dusky moving mass appeared on the heights of the Weinerberg, which was the main body of the enemy. Scarcely could the most practised eye distinguish one object from another in theconfusion of the crowd. Men, horses, camels, and carriages, formed a mixed multitude, which from the ramparts of the city seemed like some swarm of locusts, and extended for miles along the plains of the Danube and the surrounding hills. The formation of the besieging camp was immediately begun, and within a few hours 25,000 tents had risen as if by magic out of the ground. Luxury and magnificence formed the very tradition of an eastern army; and since the days of Xerxes perhaps no such host had been seen, either for numbers or for splendour of equipment, as that which now spread around the walls of the devoted city of Vienna. We should form an imperfect notion of the spectacle presented to the eyes of its defenders, if our idea of the Turkish camp were modelled on the usual military equipages of European nations. The pavilion of the vizier and his principal officers blazed with a wealth which the imperial palaces could hardly rival. That of Kara Mustapha was a town in itself: the canvas walls formed streets and houses, and included within one enclosure baths, fountains, and flower-gardens, and even a menagerie stocked from the imperial collection of the Favorita, which had fallen into the hands of the invaders. Within the mazy labyrinth of these luxurious alleys stood the pavilion of Mustapha himself. The material was of green silk, worked in gold and silver, and it was furnished with the richest oriental carpets and dazzling with precious stones. In a yet more magnificent sanctuary, forming the centre of the whole, was preserved the sacred standard of the Prophet, which had been solemnly intrusted to the care of the vizier by the sultan’s own hands. The display of the inferior officers was on a corresponding scale.
Whilst these preparations were going on outside the walls, Stahremberg was busy in his arrangements for the defence. Among his most able coadjutors was one whose name deserves to be remembered among the noblest ranks of Christian patriots. This was Leopold von Kollonitsch, Bishop of Neustadt, on whom the spiritual care of the city had devolved; the Bishop ofVienna having accompanied his royal master in his flight. It could scarce have fallen on one better fitted to hold it at such a time. In his youth he had served as a Knight of Malta in many campaigns against the infidels; and in the Cretan war had excited the wonder and admiration of the Venetians, before whose eyes he boarded several Turkish galleys, killing many unbelievers with his own hand, and tearing down and bearing away as a trophy the Moslem standard of the horse-tail. The military experience of such a man was of no small use in the present crisis; yet we should be in error if we attached to the name of Kollonitsch the prejudice which lies against the character of a military prelate. If he was daily on the ramparts, and by the side of Stahremberg in the posts of greatest danger, it was to console the wounded and administer the last rites of religion to the dying. His talents and scientific knowledge were directed towards securing the safety of his fellow-citizens, and mitigating the sufferings of the siege. It was he who suggested, and, indeed, by his exertions supplied the necessary means for provisioning the city; regulated the tariff; and even provided for the extinction of the fires which might be caused by the shells of the besiegers. Yet, extraordinary as were the services he rendered, in discharging them he never seems for one moment to have stepped beyond the line assigned to him by his clerical character. The hospital was his home; women, children, and the aged and infirm, were the only forces whose command he assumed; and by his ingenuity they were organised into a regular body, and rendered efficient for many services which would otherwise have necessarily taken up the time of those whose presence was required on the walls.
Let us now place ourselves on those walls and watch the scene before us. A week ago there was a pleasant prospect over the faubourgs of the city, where in the midst of vineyards and gardens might be seen the white walls of costly public edifices, or the villas of the nobility and richer citizens. All this is now gone;for, as a necessary precaution of public safety, the suburbs, whose proximity to the city would have afforded a dangerous cover to the invaders, have been devoted to the flames. Beyond the blackened ruins, which gird the ramparts of Vienna with a dark line of desolation, stretches the camp of the Ottomans, in the form of a vast half-moon. The bright July sun is shining over its gilded pavilions, and you may see the busy caravans of merchants with their trains of camels and elephants, which carry your fancy back to the gorgeous descriptions of an Arabian tale. It seems like the work of some of its own fabled genii when you see the landscape, but a day or two ago rich in the civilisation of an European capital, now suddenly transformed into an Oriental scene, and mark the picture of mimic domes and minarets, and the horse-tail standards waving in the breeze, every breath of which brings the echo of a wild and savage music from the cymbals and trombones of the Tartar troops.
Now let us turn our eyes on the city itself. The first object which meets our gaze is the smoking ruin of the Scottish convent. On the first day of the siege it caught fire, and was reduced to ashes; and you may hear from the lips of any citizen you meet how but for the protection of God and our Lady that first day of siege bade fair to have been the last: for the fire spread rapidly to the imperial arsenal, which contained the whole store of powder belonging to the garrison. It seemed to defy every effort to extinguish it; and an explosion was each moment expected, which, had it taken place, must have destroyed the whole northern quarter of the city, and laid it open for the entrance of the enemy. Two windows were already on fire, and the heat prevented the workmen from approaching the spot. But the people, who watched the scene with terrible anxiety, prayed, even as they worked, and invoked the patronage of that fond Mother whose ear is never closed to her children’s prayers; and then, what historians call a favourable chance happened, whichsaved the city. The wind suddenly changed; the flames went out of themselves, or spread in a contrary direction. Though posterity may laugh at their superstition and credulity, the foolish people of Vienna are contented to believe that they have been preserved by the providence of Him whose ministers are the winds and His messengers the flaming fire. Nor indeed had this been the only instance of what was naturally deemed a providential intervention in behalf of the besieged. The first shell fired by the Turks into the town fell near the church of St. Michael; and before it had time to burst, a little child of three years old ran fearlessly up to it, and extinguished it. A second struck through the roof of the cathedral, and fell among a crowded congregation; but one woman alone was slightly injured by the explosion; and a third was thrown right into an open barrel of powder, but no mischief ensued: and the citizens were accustomed to collect the fragments, and, after having them blessed by a priest, to re-discharge them at the enemy. In vain did the besiegers try every combustible weapon which ingenuity could suggest; Vienna seemed at least insured against conflagration, and the fire-balls, and arrows wrapped with combustible materials, fell on the roofs and in the streets as harmlessly as a shower of leaves.
Now let us look up to the tall and graceful spire of St. Stephen, whose tapering summit, surmounted by the crescent, bears witness to the former presence of the infidels. Within those fretted and sculptured pinnacles, beyond the reach of the most piercing eye, is the stone-chair whence the governor Stahremberg overlooks the whole camp of the enemy. There he sits, hour after hour; for a wound in his head, received from the bursting of a shell, has disabled him for the present from taking his usual position on the ramparts; though not a day passes but you may see him carried in a chair to the defences which are being completed under his direction. There are others whom you encounter at every turn, whose names and services are almostas memorable as his. There is the Baron of Kielmansegge, who is ready for any thing, and will carry a private’s musket in the ranks, if need be; while his mechanical and scientific ingenuity have supplied the garrison with a powder-mill and a hand-grenade of his own construction. Or there is Count Sigbert von Heister, whose hat was pierced through with the first Turkish arrow shot into the town: and both arrow and hat are still to be seen in the Ambrose Museum of the city. Or you will come across singularly accoutred members of the various volunteer-corps of the city, whose patriotism has taught them to shoulder a gun for the first time; while the name of their companies may perhaps account for their awkwardness in their new profession: they are members of the gallant burgher companies,—of the butchers, or the bakers, or the shoemakers,—and they render good service on the walls, and never shrink from fire. But a more trimly equipped body may be seen, neither burghers nor yet of the regular force; there is a fanciful oddity in their costume, and a certain recklessness in their very walk and gestures; you see at once they are the students from the university, commanded by their rector Lawrence Grüner. And lastly, wherever the shots are thickest and the danger greatest, wherever blood is flowing and men are dying or suffering, you may see the form of the excellent Kollonitsch, not a quiver of whose eyelid betrays that the balls whistling round his head are any objects of terror to his soul, while he stoops over the prostrate bodies of the wounded, and tenderly bears them on his shoulders to the hospital which is his home.
A month has passed; and the siege has rapidly advanced, and brought many a sad change to the position of the defenders. There have been assaults and sallies, mines and countermines, without number; the bastions are in many places a heap of ruins, smashed with shot and by the explosion of mines. There are some wherethe fire is so thick and continual, that to show yourself for a moment on them is certain death. The city lies open in many places to the enemy; but in vain have the Janizaries led their best men to the breach; each time have they been met by the heroic defenders, whose own arms have proved a surer barrier than the most skilful fortifications, and over and over again have they been compelled to retire to their trenches with loss. The progress of the Turkish miners, the most skilful of their day, has been rapid and alarming. Their excavations have reached the very heart of the city; and each house has its sentinel day and night to prevent a subterraneous surprise. In every cellar there is a large vessel of water and a drum covered with peas, that the possible presence of the enemy underground may be betrayed by their vibration. These mines were indeed extraordinary works of art, and excited the admiration of the German engineers when they inspected them at the close of the siege. They were vast excavations, often themselves fortified; for the countermines of the besieged sometimes broke into them, and then a deadly contest was carried on hand to hand in the bowels of the earth. Frequently did the brave defenders succeed in destroying not only the works but the workmen, and many hundredweights of powder were thus seized and carried off. The trenches were divided into chambers for the accommodation of the officers, and some prepared for the use of the vizier were perfectly carpeted and cushioned. He himself divided his time between the inspection of the trenches and the luxurious enjoyments of his camp. Every third day he caused himself to be carried to the works in a litter made shot-proof by strong plates of iron, and might be seen urging on the men with his words, and sometimes striking the idlers with the flat of his sabre.
But the fire of the enemy was not the only danger that now threatened the defenders. The usual consequences of a siege began to show themselves in disease, brought on by bad food and the infection from the dead bodies. Among its victims were the brave BurgomasterLiebenberg, and many of the highest functionaries and ecclesiastics of the city. The hospitals were crowded as well with the sick as with the wounded; and if the pestilence at length subsided, it was in great measure owing to the exertions of Kollonitsch, whose sagacity suggested, whilst his prompt and untiring activity carried out, every precaution that the urgency of the case required. You might see him every where: he was constantly in the hospitals, nursing the sufferers with the tenderness of a woman; and an hour after you would find him superintending the construction of drains and kennels, and working with his own hand to teach and encourage his men. His name became so familiar in people’s mouths as the chief protector of the city, that the fame of his services reached the vizier’s camp; and Kara Mustapha is said to have vowed his head to the sultan as a revenge for his success in checking the ravages of that pestilence on which he counted as his best ally. Meanwhile every man in the city was employed in his own way: the citizens were busy with carts and horses; the Jesuits had two of their number constantly perched on the tower of St. Stephen, making telescopic observations of the hostile movements. Such men as Kielmansegge turned their amateur ingenuity to account by manufacturing handmills to grind the flour; and, spite of their sufferings, no abatement of courage or spirit was observable among the ranks.
Still there was no sign of relief. Sobieski, besieged by messages from the Pope and the emperor, was indeed making prodigious efforts to raise the necessary forces; but many had to be armed and disciplined before they could be ready to meet the enemy. The small army of Lorraine maintained its position at Crems, and even showed itself on the offensive against Tekeli, whom it compelled to retire from Presburg; but its numbers were wholly inadequate to an encounter with the Turks. The alarm of Europe grew every day greater, and showed itself in generous contributions towards the expenses of the war. Every town in Italy sent its list ofvoluntary subscriptions; whilst the cardinals of Rome sold plate and carriages to offer every thing to the cause. Once more, as in the days of Lepanto, the devout hearts of the faithful were roused to prayer; and before every Catholic shrine were to be seen crowds of pilgrims and daily processions to invoke the protection of the God of armies. Something like the old enthusiasm of the crusades revived in Europe, and volunteers from all nations enrolled themselves under the banners of Lorraine. France alone was chained back by the will of her “grand monarque,” whose conduct on this occasion must remain a perpetual disgrace upon his name. The brave Conti, who had secretly set out to offer the services of his sword to the Austrian commander, was followed and arrested by the order of his royal master, who preferred the triumph of the infidel to the success of a rival. Two princes of the house of Savoy, who had accompanied Conti in his flight, succeeded, however, in making their way to the scene of war; these were the Prince of Carignan Soissons and his younger brother, known then by the name of the little Abbé of Savoy. The news of their departure was brought to the minister Louvois, who received it with an expression of contempt. “So the abbé has gone,” he said; “so much the better; he will not come back to this country very soon.” Nor, indeed, did he return till he came with arms in his hands; and then “the little Abbé of Savoy” was better known as the Great Eugene.
Thus, by degrees, the imperial camp of Crems became the rendezvous for all the gallant spirits of the time; but no means had yet been found of communicating with the city, which was closely hemmed in on all sides by the besieging forces, and thus cut off from all knowledge of the chances of its relief. At length, on the 6th of August, a trooper of Lorraine’s succeeded in the daring enterprise of swimming across the Danube in the face of the enemy, and making his way into the city, bearing despatches from the duke, secured from the water in a thick envelope of wax. On his return,however, he fell into the hands of the Turks; and, on being questioned concerning the state of the city, saved his life by a cunningly invented tale of the despair of the besieged and their approaching surrender. After this, a great number of others were found to imitate his exploit; and, in spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the communication between the city and the camp was continually carried on; the safe arrival of their respective messengers being announced by a shower of rockets. Many are the stratagems and hair-breadth escapes which the annals of the siege record. There we read of the brave Pole, Kolschitzki, attended by a countryman as daring as himself, strolling in disguise through the Turkish camp, and singing gaily as he goes; drinking coffee at his ease in an aga’s tent, and entertaining his host the while with many a song and careless jest, telling him he had followed the army of the vizier from sheer love of fighting and adventure; and dismissed with a caution to beware of falling into Christian hands: so pursuing his perilous journey, and returning unscathed, with precious despatches from the duke.[69]We read, too, of his intrepid attendant twice repeating the hazardous exploit alone; how, on his second return, with an autograph letter from the emperor, after having all but passed the enemy’s lines, he is joined by a Turkish horseman, and, unable to shake off his unwelcome companion, he suddenly turns upon him, strikes off his head at a blow, and springing on the now riderless steed, reaches the city-gates in safety.
Meanwhile deputies from all the imperial dominions were sent to hasten the preparations of the Polish king, to whose warlike spirit the delay he was forced to endurewas as painful as it was to them. Once the apostolic nuncio and the imperial minister surprised him alone, and, throwing themselves at his feet, embraced his knees in a very agony of distress. Leopold condescended to the most extraordinary promises, in case he should succeed in delivering him and his capital. The kingdom of Hungary was to be his; his eldest son should form an alliance with the imperial family; he was to name his own conditions, only he must come, and come quickly. Sobieski’s reply to these offers was worthy of himself: “I desire no other reward than the glory of doing right before God and man.” At last, on the 15th of August,—a day he had chosen as being the Feast of the Assumption of the glorious Mother of God, to whom he had consecrated his arms and his enterprise,—the royal lance of Poland, surmounted by a white plume, was displayed in the streets of Cracow; the usual signal for the gathering of the forces destined for war. Sobieski commenced the day by performing the stations on foot to the different churches of the city; then, without waiting for the troops expected from Lithuania, he set out at the head of the Polish forces for the frontier of Germany. Caraffa, the Austrian general, pushed forward to meet him, impatient to know if the report of the king’s presence with the army were indeed true; for so extraordinary was the power of his name, that—as Lorraine expressed it—that one man was an army in himself. He was instantly introduced to Sobieski, who eagerly inquired from him the disposition of the Ottoman troops, and the ground they occupied. “They occupy every space and height around the city,” replied Caraffa, “the Kahlenberg alone excepted.” “Then the Kahlenberg will be the point of attack,” replied Sobieski; and in the rapid conception of genius the whole plan of the campaign was before him in that single phrase. In fact, the neglect of the Turks in leaving these important heights unguarded forms an unaccountable blunder in the otherwise skilful dispositions of the vizier.They commanded the whole of the adjacent plains, and in their present state offered a cover for the approach, and a strong post for the occupation, of the relieving army. This the quick eye of Sobieski at once perceived. Had it been otherwise, the event of the coming struggle might have been very different; and the singular oversight of the Turkish commander was felt in the hour of the Christian success to be explained only by the superintending influence of that God to whom the cause had been so solemnly committed.
August, therefore, is now closing in; and far away on the frontier the warriors of Poland are making their way to the scene of combat over the rocky heights of the Carpathians. The fast-crumbling walls of Vienna are now no longer the defence of the city, but the rough battle-ground on which the besieged and their enemies meet daily hand to hand. Strange sights may be seen in those deadly combats: musket and matchlock are laid aside, for there is scarcely room to use them; and the keenTurkish scimitar ismet on the side of the besieged with battle-axe and halberd, and with uncouth and frightful weapons fashioned for the purpose. There is the morning-star, a hideous club covered with spikes of brass; long scythes fixed to the ends of poles, like the Lochaber axes of the Highlanders; and in every street in the city you may see huge fires, over which there boil caldrons of water and pitch, which the women and children carry to the battlements, and which, dashed in the faces of the advancing squadrons, prove a deadly means of offence. What cries of pain and baffled rage, what wild shouts and imprecations, rise from those savage Tartar tribes! They fall by hundreds into the ditch, pushed back by the strong arm of their opponents; and the scalding, blinding deluge from above pours down on them, like the brimstone tempest of Gomorrah! But the daring defence is not kept up with impunity; the air is darkened with the shower of Turkish arrows, whose poisoned wounds are almost certain death. They have for days past kept off the enemyfrom the shattered ravelin of the Burg by wooden palisades erected in the very face of their fire. Now the whole work is in flames; the Turks press hard behind the burning timbers, and threaten to overwhelm the scanty troop of defenders, rendered helpless by the scorching heat. But in another moment the tide of fortune has turned again; for the soldiers, tearing off their steel head-pieces, fill them with water, and rushing into the midst of the blazing mass, extinguish it, and drive back their assailants.
Still they advanced step by step,—slowly, yet with a terrible certainly. Above, the ruined bastions became in turn the batteries for the guns which they turned against the town; whilst still the war was carried on underground between the desperate combatants, and no less than 16,000 of the Turkish miners were slain in these subterranean conflicts. Famine was beginning to show itself; and he who could succeed in getting a shot at some wandering cat was considered a fortunate speculator with his prize. The chase of these poor animals, indeed, became a regular trade; and, keeping up their spirits in the midst of their sufferings, the Viennese bestowed on this new game, which they hunted over the roofs of the houses, the truly German appellation of “dachshase,” or roof-hare.
At length, the vizier prepared for a vigorous assault; and had it been conducted by the mass of the besieging force, there can be little doubt that the result would have been fatal. As it was, a portion only of his troops were despatched to the breach. This want of energy at the very crisis of the siege proceeded from a covetous fear on the part of the Turkish chief, that, in the license of a general assault, he should lose the enormous plunder which he promised himself, could he reduce the city by less violent measures. Nevertheless, on the morning of the 4th of September, a column of smoke rising from the Burg bastion announced an enormous explosion, and 4000 Turks rushed to the breach. They were met by Stahremberg and his wholestaff, who, hopeless of success, prepared to die at the post of honour. On came the Moslems, carrying baskets of earth on their backs, to form a way for those who followed, and the horse-tail standards were even planted on the rampart crest; but again and again they were driven back with loss. Then came a breathing-space of a single day; and the interval was occupied by the heroic defenders in filling up the yawning breaches in their walls with mattresses, sandbags, and every imaginable material they could supply. A yet more furious assault followed on the 6th; but still the result was the same, and 1500 bodies of the infidels remained heaped on the summit of the strange barrier. Alas, this was almost the energy of a death agony; and, nobly as they fought for faith and fatherland, each one well knew, if relief did not quickly come, the fate of the city might be delayed from day to day, but must be sealed at last. Every night, fires from the spire of St. Stephen’s, and the graceful fall of those beautiful rockets,—the sad signals of distress,—were to be seen, notifying to the distant army of the Imperialists the urgency of the danger. The evening of that day, which had witnessed so obstinate a repulse of the last assault, closed in more sadly for the victors than for the defeated infidels. The bodies of 117 brave men of their little army were lying among the corpses of their enemies; the town was crumbling into ruins; and the hearts of the besieged were at last giving way under exhaustion and despair. Kollonitsch might be seen going from house to house, striving to reanimate the courage of the citizens with the hopes of speedy succour; but he was met with a moody and disspiriting silence. Suddenly there was a cry from the ramparts, a signal from the watch-tower of the Jesuits, and thousands hurried to the shattered walls, expecting some surprise from the enemy. What did they see? and why did men cast themselves into one another’s arms, and weep like women; and women kneel by their side, as they gazed on the distant horizon, giving thanks toGod and to the Mother of God for their answered prayers? There was the clear starlit sky of a summer’s night, and the far outline of the Kahlenberg cutting the sapphire canopy overhead with its deep dark mass of shadow; and there, on the very summit of its rocky height, rising into the air and floating in its glorious vault, like a string of jewels, were the gleaming tracks and the fiery stars of five signal-rockets from the advanced guard of the imperial army. They had, then, crossed the river; the outposts were already in possession of those rampart hills; and, as the blessed truth came home to the hearts of the beholders, they were filled with a fresh courage; and, cheered on by their noble leader, they prepared to prolong a yet more obstinate resistance, till the hour of their deliverance should arrive. Nor were theirs the only eyes who had marked those signal-rockets; and the preparations for a street-fight within the walls of Vienna were accompanied by redoubled preparations for hostilities in the Ottoman camp.