FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[11]Salvandy, p. 96, vol. ii.[12]The grandson of the Duke of Lorraine married Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, and was himself Emperor. The grand-daughter of Sobieski was the mother of Charles Edward, the hero of the Forty-five.[13]Of the family, not an ancestor, of the present Duchess of Albany.[14]Salvandy.[15]Schimmer, "Sieges of Vienna;" Count Thürheim, "Life of Starhemberg;" and Salvandy, "Hist. de Pologne," p. 172, vol. ii. misplace this solemn benediction of the army and the knighting of Prince James on the morning of the 12th. Sobieski's own testimony, in his letters to his queen, is decisive for the 8th. Nor on the 12th was there time for the ceremony.

[11]Salvandy, p. 96, vol. ii.

[12]The grandson of the Duke of Lorraine married Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, and was himself Emperor. The grand-daughter of Sobieski was the mother of Charles Edward, the hero of the Forty-five.

[13]Of the family, not an ancestor, of the present Duchess of Albany.

[14]Salvandy.

[15]Schimmer, "Sieges of Vienna;" Count Thürheim, "Life of Starhemberg;" and Salvandy, "Hist. de Pologne," p. 172, vol. ii. misplace this solemn benediction of the army and the knighting of Prince James on the morning of the 12th. Sobieski's own testimony, in his letters to his queen, is decisive for the 8th. Nor on the 12th was there time for the ceremony.

There was no time to be lost indeed. The fortifications of Vienna were a mere heap of ruins. The Imperial Palace was battered to pieces. Nearly one whole quarter of the city was in ashes. On the 3rd of September, the long contested Burg ravelin was yielded to the Turks. On the 4th, the salient angle of the Burg bastion was blown into the air, and an attack was with difficulty repelled. On the 6th, a similar mine and assault following cumbered the Löwel bastion with ruin and with corpses. For a moment, the horse tails were planted upon the ramparts. Driven back thence with difficulty, the Turks still clung to the Burg ravelin, and four pieces of cannon planted there, at frightfully close quarters, completed the ruin of the works. But no new attack came. Informed of the advance of Lorraine, though still incredulous of the presence of Sobieski, the Vizier began to draw his troopstowards the foot of the Kahlenberg. He still clung to the batteries and trenches; still kept the pick of his Janissaries grappling with the prize which but for him they might have already won. He rejected the advice of the Pasha of Pesth, to withdraw across the Wien and fortify a camp on the Wienersberg, secure that if the Christians attacked and failed Vienna would fall. He withdrew his troops indeed from the Leopoldstadt, and threw up some slight works towards the Kahlenberg, but remained otherwise irresolute, halting between his expected booty and her deliverer.

Sobieski had already taken the measure of his opponent. In reply to desponding views of Lorraine at Tuln, he had said, "Be of good cheer; which of us at the head of two hundred thousand men would have allowed this bridge to have been thrown within five leagues of his camp?" To his wife he wrote, "A commander who has thought neither of entrenching his camp, nor of concentrating his forces, but who lies encamped there as if we were one hundred miles off, is predestined to be beaten." Viewing the Turkish force from the Kahlenberg, he said to his soldiers, "This man is badly encamped, he knows nothing of war; we shall beat him."

It was well for the Christians and for Vienna that none of the great warriors who had served the Porte was now in command. No man like Kiuprili, or even like Ibrahim "the Devil," the last Turkish commander against whom Sobieski had contended, was there, to use the fidelity of the Janissaries and the valour of the Spahis to advantage. The march up the defiles of the Kahlenberg presented, even without interruptions, extraordinary difficulties. The king himself pushed forward to superintend the exploration of the way. He was so long parted from his Polish troops that they became anxious for his safety. He rejoined them at mid-day on the 11th, and encouraged them as they marched, or, as he says, ratherclimbedto the summit. Some Saxon troops, first arriving, with three guns, opened fire upon a Turkish detachment marching too late to secure the important position. The Turks retired, and the distant sound of the firing announced to Vienna the first tidings of deliverance. It was not till the evening of the 11th, however, that the main body of the army had reached the ridge. Even then many had lagged behind; the paths were nearly impracticable for artillery, and the Germans abandoned many oftheir guns in despair between Tuln and the Kahlenberg. But few pieces indeed were fired after the first beginning of the battle on the following day, Polish guns, for the most part, brought up by the vigour of the Grand Marshal of the Artillery, Kouski, the same officer who had directed the Polish field-pieces against the Turkish camp at Choczim.

"An hour before sunset," September 11, as Sobieski and the generals stood at length upon the crest of the hill, "they saw outspread before them one of the most magnificent yet terrible displays of human power which man has seen. There lay the valley and the islands of the Danube, covered with an encampment, the sumptuousness of which seemed better suited for an excursion of pleasure than for the hardships of war. Within it stood an innumerable multitude of animals—horses, camels, and oxen. Two hundred thousand fighting men moved in order here and there, while along the foot of the hills below swarms of Tartars roamed at will. A frightful cannonade was raging vigorously from the one side, in feeble reply from the other. Beneath the canopy of smoke lay a great city, visible only by her spires and her pinnacles, which pierced the overwhelming cloudand flame."[16]Sobieski estimated the force before him at one hundred thousand tents and three hundred thousand men. Including the non-combatants, he was, perhaps, not far wrong; but the fighting men in the Turkish army by this time would be by many fewer than that number. One hundred and sixty-eight thousand men is the most which may be allowed from the muster-rolls found in the Vizier's tent, and that certainly exceeds the truth.[17]All around, except where in the encampment the magnificence of the invader was proudly flaunted in the face of the ruin that he had made, the prospect was desolated by war. Whatever might be the fortune of the coming day, a generation at least must elapse before those suburbs are rebuilt, those villages restored and repeopled, those fields fully cultivated again. The army felt that it lay with them, under God, to provide against that further extension of the ravage which would follow,should the bulwark of theOesterreich, the Eastern March of the Empire, be forced by Hun and Tartar.

Not distinguishable from the distance at which they stood, thousands of Christian captives lay in the encampment below. The morrow might deliver up the people of Vienna to a like fate with theirs. The city, as the king declared on entering it after the relief, could not have held out five days. As the wind now lifted the cloud of smoke, where should have been the fortifications, the eye could discern nothing but a circle of shapeless ruin, reaching from the Scottish gate to what had been the Burg bastion. Up to and on to it climbed the curving lines of the Turkish approaches.

Sobieski had only hoped gradually to fight his way into a position whence he could communicate with the besieged, and he had arranged his plan of battle at Tuln with that idea. But the inequalities of the country between the Kahlenberg and Vienna, broken with vines, villages, small hills and hollow ways, together with the unexpectedly rapid development of the attack when once it began, seem to have interfered with his original disposition.

His army occupied a front of half a Polish mile, or about an English mile and three quarters. Itwas drawn up in three supporting lines that faced south-eastward.

The first line of the right wing was composed of nineteen Polish (cavalry) divisions and four battalions; the second, of six Polish and eight Austrian divisions, and four Polish battalions; the third, of nine Polish, six Austrian, three German divisions, three Polish and one German battalion.

The centre was composed in the first line of nine Austrian and eleven German divisions, and thirteen German battalions; in the second, of six German divisions, ten German and six Austrian battalions; in the third, of five German and two Austrian battalions.

The left wing shewed in the first line, ten Austrian and five German divisions, and six Austrian battalions; in the second line, four German and eight Austrian divisions; in the third line, three German and seven Austrian battalions.

Lubomirski with his irregular Poles was on the left; the Polish Field-Marshal, Jablonowski, commanded on the right; the Prince of Waldeck, with the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony, the centre; the Duke of Lorraine and Louis of Baden, with Counts Leslie and Caprara, were on the left. The kingwas upon the right or right centre throughout the day. The total force, including detachments not actually engaged, was 46,700 cavalry and dragoons, 38,700 infantry; in all 85,400 men, with some irregulars, and 168 guns, many of them not in action at all. The dragoons fought on foot in the battle.[18]The army was, roughly, one-third Poles, one-third Austrians, one-third Bavarians, Saxons, and other Germans.[19]The fatigues of the march from Tuln would naturally diminish the number of effective soldiers on the day of battle; and the troops were not all in position when the evening of Saturday, September 11, fell. As the night however wore away, the rear guard gained the summit of the hills, and snatched a brief repose before the labours of the morrow.

But for the king there was no rest. The man whom the French ambassador had described as unable to ride, who was tormented certainly by wearing pains, after three days of incessant toil,passed a sleepless night preparatory to fourteen hours in the saddle upon the battle-field. The season of repose was dedicated to the duties of a general and the affection of a husband. At three a.m. on Sunday, the 12th, the king is again writing to hisbien-aimée Mariette. He has been toiling all day in bringing his troops up the ravines. "We are so thin," he writes, "we might run down the stags on the mountains." As to the pomp or even comfort of a king, that is not to be thought of. "All my luggage which we have got up here is in the two lightest carts." He has some more upon mules, but has not seen them for forty-eight hours. He had no thought of sleep; indeed, the thunder of the Turkish cannon made it impossible; and a gale of wind, which he describes as "sufficient to blow the men off their horses," bore the noise of their discharge with redoubled clamour to the relieving army. Moreover, the king writes, he must be in the saddle before daybreak, riding down from the right to the extreme left, to consult with Lorraine, opposite whom the enemy lies in force; not entrenched, he hopes, as on that side he means to break through to the city. A two days' affair, at least, he thinks. Then, "my eighth letter to yoursixth," he adds, with other familiar and gentle conversation, with tidings of her son and of other friends, but with no word of fear or of apprehension. He had made his will before setting out from Warsaw, but he entertained no thought of failure. Then closing his wife's letter, the affectionate husband becomes again the heroic king and careful general. He rides from right to left along the lines, in that boisterous autumnal morning, makes the last dispositions with Lorraine, with him and with a few others takes again the Holy Communion from the hands of Marco Aviano before the sun has risen, and then returns to his post upon the right wing, ready for the advance that was to save Vienna. His next letter to his wife was dated "September 13, night. The tents of the Vizier."

FOOTNOTES:[16]Coyer, "Memoires de Sobieski."[17]The roll includes the forces of Tekeli, who was not in the Turkish camp at all, and takes no count of the last losses which the Turkish detachments had suffered, nor of the loss from desertion the night before the battle, when many of the irregulars went off with their booty. The Turks had lost, according to this roll, 48,500 men before the battle.—See Thürheim's "Starhemberg," pp. 150 andseq.[18]The dragoons were mounted infantry, using horses to reach the scene of action only. They carried the infantry weapons, sword and musket, but not pikes. The bayonet was just coming into use, but was still fixed in the muzzle of the gun, and had to be removed before firing.[19]Count Thürheim, "Starhemberg," p. 163 andseqq.; and Sobieski to his wife, September 13.

[16]Coyer, "Memoires de Sobieski."

[17]The roll includes the forces of Tekeli, who was not in the Turkish camp at all, and takes no count of the last losses which the Turkish detachments had suffered, nor of the loss from desertion the night before the battle, when many of the irregulars went off with their booty. The Turks had lost, according to this roll, 48,500 men before the battle.—See Thürheim's "Starhemberg," pp. 150 andseq.

[18]The dragoons were mounted infantry, using horses to reach the scene of action only. They carried the infantry weapons, sword and musket, but not pikes. The bayonet was just coming into use, but was still fixed in the muzzle of the gun, and had to be removed before firing.

[19]Count Thürheim, "Starhemberg," p. 163 andseqq.; and Sobieski to his wife, September 13.

The position of the Christian army on the Kahlenberg was, from the left wing, the nearest point, about four miles from Vienna. The centre and right were further removed. The intervening country, far from being a plain, as Sobieski had been led to believe when he formed his first plan of battle, is broken up into hillocks and little valleys, intersected by streams, full of vineyards, and interspersed with the ruins of numerous villages burnt by the Turks. Beyond these lay the Turkish encampment and approaches, mingled with the vestiges of the suburbs destroyed by Starhemberg at the beginning of the siege.

The Turkish army was stretched over a front of about four miles from point to point, but slightly curving with the convex side towards the attacking force. Their right rested upon the Danube, andheld the Nussberg before the villages of Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt; their left reached towards Breitensee near the Wien, and the Tartars swarmed still further on the broken ground beyond. Their camp straggled in an irregular half-moon from the river above Vienna to beyond the Wien, and their troops were, at the beginning of the action, drawn up before it. Some hasty entrenchments had been thrown up by them here and there, of which the most considerable was a battery between Währing, Gerstorf and Weinhaus;[20]but the bulk of their artillery remained in their lines, pointed against the city, and the clamour of the ensuing battle was swelled by the continuous roar of their bombardment, kept up as on previous days. In the trenches lay a great body of Janissaries; and the Turkish army was further weakened by the dispersal of Tartars and irregulars on the night before the fight, doubtful of the event, and anxious at any rate to secure their plunder. As the king had said, the Turks were badly posted, their camp was long and straggling, too valuable to be abandoned and not easy to defend. In case of a reverse, their right wing would run the risk of being driven into theDanube, or else have to fall back upon their centre and left, to the confusion of the whole army. Fighting with a river and a fortified city upon their flank and rear, repulse for them would mean certain disaster. But the incapacity of the Vizier could not be fully fathomed till the attack began. We have the assurance of Sobieski himself that he hoped upon the first day merely to bring his army within striking distance of the enemy, and to establish his left well forward near the bank of the Danube, ready to deal a decisive blow, or to throw succour into Vienna on the morrow or following day. He closed his letter to his wife in the grey of the windy morning of the 12th of September, ignorant that the decisive moment, bringing a victory greater than that of Choczim, was at hand.

The Turks had pushed their outposts forward up the banks of the river, and soon after daybreak Lorraine upon the left was engaged, and the fight thickened as his attack towards Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt was developed. Eugene of Savoy began his distinguished career in arms by carrying tidings from Lorraine to the king that the battle had commenced in earnest. Eugene, barely twenty, had left Paris that year, slighted by Louis, and hadentered the service of the Emperor. His memoirs dismiss briefly this his first essay in war. "The confusion of that day can be but confusedly described. The Poles, who had clambered up to the Leopoldsberg—I know not why—went down again like madmen and fought like lions. The Turks, encamped where I threw up lines in 1703, did not know which way to front, neglected the eminences, and behaved like idiots."[21]The young aide-de-camp, carrying orders through the hottest of the fire, could not yet penetrate the system which underlay the apparent confusion of the march and battle. Advancing in columns with a comparatively narrow front down the difficult slope of the hills, the infantry gradually deployed right and left upon the lower ground, while the cavalry of the second line advanced to fill the gaps thus left in the foremost The Turks resisted gallantly, but they were principally dismounted Spahis, not a match for Lorraine's favourite troops, the German foot, though regaining their horses they would retreat with great rapidity, to again dismount, and againresist, as each favourable position offered itself. The fighting was obstinate, and the losses heavy upon both sides, but the tide of fight rolled steadily towards Vienna. The Germans carried the height of the Nussberg, above Nussdorf, and their guns planted there disordered the whole of the Turkish right with their plunging fire. Osman Ogoli, Pasha of Kutaya, the Turkish general of division, pushed forward three columns in a counter-attack, boldly and skilfully directed. The Imperial infantry were shaken, but five Saxon battalions, inclining to their left from the Christian centre, checked in turn the onset of the Ottomans, and restored the current of the battle. But had the whole force of the enemy been commanded as their right wing, the allies would scarcely that night have been greeted in Vienna. No false move in the advance escaped the skill of Osman. As the Turkish attack recoiled, the Prince of Croy had dashed forward with two battalions to carry with a rush the village of Nussdorf. Checked and overwhelmed, he fell back again, himself wounded, his brother slain. Louis of Baden, with his dismounted dragoons, came up to the rescue, and checked the pursuing enemy. As they recoiledslowly the fight grew fiercer, and then more stationary about Nussdorf and about Döbling. Houses, gardens, and vineyards formed a series of entrenchments, sharply attacked and obstinately defended. A third time the fiery valour of the Turks, charging home with their sabres among the pikes and muskets, disordered the allies, and all but regained the summit of the Nussberg. Again the superior cohesion of the Christians prevailed, and the Turkish column outflanked fell back, still stubbornly contesting every foot of ground. From the long extended centre and left of their line no support came to them, as the Vizier in anxious irresolution expected the advance of the centre of the allies and of the Poles upon their right. His infatuation, moreover, had kept in the batteries the bulk of his artillery, and in the trenches the best of his Janissaries. In dire want of the guns, which roared idly upon the already shattered defences of the city, Osman was driven through Nussdorf and through Heiligenstadt, upon the fortified defiles of Döbling, where at last a battery of ten guns and a force of Janissaries opposed a steadier resistance to the advancing Germans. It was now noon. Lorraine had already won the position which hadbeen marked out for his achievement for the day, and slackened his attack while he reformed his victorious battalions. The centre and right of the Christian army, separated by a longer distance from their foes, had been slowly gaining the field of action, and had scarce fired a shot nor struck a blow, except for the support accorded to the left by the centre. The whole of the infantry and cavalry had at mid-day gained the positions assigned to them, and, in the absence of most of his artillery, Sobieski would have hesitated to continue his advance had not his lines, upon the left especially, become so deeply involved that it was difficult to suspend the conflict for long. Yet a momentary lull succeeded to the sharp sounds of close combat. A sultry autumn day had followed the boisterous night and morning, and the heat was oppressive.[22]The Poles upon the right halted and snatched a hasty meal from the provisions they had brought with them. But as the rattle of the small arms and the clash of weapons died away, the roar of the battering guns and the answering fire of the city rose in overwhelming distinctness.Behind the smoky veil, Starhemberg and his gallant garrison could perchance barely guess, by sounds of conflict, the progress of their deliverers. Tidings from the watch-chair on St. Stephen's would spread alternate hope and despair among the citizens. The fate of Vienna trembled in the balance. The garrison stood ready in the breaches, the rest of the inhabitants cowered upon the housetops to watch, or knelt in the churches to pray; but to the Vizier came swiftly tidings of the foe with whom he had to deal, the foe whose presence he had obstinately refused to credit.

Reforming after their brief delay, the Polish cavalry in gorgeous arms came flashing from the woods and defiles near Dornbach on his left. Those who had before fought against him, knew the plume raised upon a spear point, the shield borne before him, thebanderolleson the lances of his body guard, which declared the presence of the terrible Sobieski. "By Allah, but the king is really among them," cried Gieray, Khan of the Crimea. And all doubt was at an end as the shout of "Vivat Sobieski" rolled along the Christian lines, in dread and significant answer to the discordant clamour of the Infidels.

Profiting, however, by the interruption in the battle, the Vizier had reformed his line, brought up infantry from the trenches, and now directed his attack upon the Poles and the most formidable of his opponents, hoping by their overthrow to change the fortune of the day, while the Imperialists and Saxons still halted before his entrenchments at Döbling. The Turks advanced with courage. For a moment a regiment of Polish lancers were thrown into confusion, and the officers, members of the nobility of Poland, who strove to rally their lines, fell; but Waldeck, moving up his Bavarians from the centre, restored the fight. The attack was defeated, and advancing in turn the headlong valour of the Poles drove the Turks back from point to point, over the Alserbach and its branches upon the confines of their camp. To relieve the pressure upon the right and centre, Lorraine had renewed his attack with the left of the allies. Horses and men had recovered breath and order, and their artillery had moved up in support. The defiles of Döbling were cleared by the Saxons; and at about four or five o'clock the Turkish redoubt before Währing was carried by Louis of Baden with his dismounted dragoons. Falling back inconfusion upon their approaches and batteries, the Turks desperately endeavoured, too late, to turn the siege guns upon the enemy, whose advance now threatened them upon all sides. The caution of Sobieski had, up to the last moment, inclined him to respect the superior numbers and the desperation of his foes, and to rest content with the advantage won; but now, in the growing confusion, he saw that the decisive hour had arrived. The Elector of Bavaria and the Prince of Waldeck hastening from the centre already saluted him as conqueror.

The desperate efforts of the Vizier to gain room by moving troops towards his left from the centre, and so extending his lines beyond the Polish right, served but to increase the confusion. The Field-Marshal Jablonowski covered that wing, and the Queen of Poland's brother, the Count de Maligni, pushing forward with infantry, seized a mound, whence his musketry fire dominated the spot where the Vizier stood. The last shots were fired from the two or three cannon which had kept pace with the advance. A French officer rammed home the last charge with his gloves, his wig, and a packet of French papers. Already the roads to Hungarywere thronged with fugitives, whose course was marked by dust in columns, when the king decided to seize the victory all but in his grasp already.Non nobis, non nobis, Domine exercituum, sed Nomini Tuo des gloriam, he cried in answer to the congratulations of his friends, as he began the decisive movement.

Concentrating as rapidly as possible the bulk of the cavalry of the whole army, German and Polish, upon the right wing,[23]he led them to the charge, directly upon the spot where the Vizier with blows, tears, and curses, was endeavouring to rally the soldiers, whom his own ill-conduct had deprived of their wonted valour. The Turkish infantry without pikes, their cavalry without heavy armour, were incapable of withstanding the shock of the heavy German cuirassiers, or of arresting the rush of the Polish nobles, whose spears, as they boasted to their kings, would uphold the heavens should they fall. Their king at their head, they came down like a whirlwind to the shout of "God preserve Poland." The spears of the first line were splintered against the few who awaited them, but their onset was irresistible. Spahis and Janissaries,Tartars and Christian allies alike went down before the Polish lances, or turned and fled in headlong confusion. The old Pasha of Pesth, the greatest of the Turkish warriors in reputation, had fled already. The Pashas of Aleppo and of Silistria perished in themelée. "Can you not help me?" cried the Vizier, turning to the Khan of the Crimea. "No," was the reply; "I know the King of Poland well, it is impossible to resist him; think only of flight."[24]

Away through the wasted borders of Austria, away to the Hungarian frontier, to their army that lay before Raab, poured the fugitives. There seldom has been a deliverance more complete and more decisive. The terror which had so long weighed upon Eastern Christendom was dissolved in that headlong rout. It was more than the scattering of an army; the strength of an empire was dissipated on that day. Resources which had been accumulating for years were destroyed; and such an expedition, so numerous and so well furnished, never was sent forth by the Ottomanagain. The victory lacked nothing to render it more striking, either in suddenness, in completeness, or in situation. The whole action had been comprised in the hours between sunrise and sunset, before the gates of one of the greatest capitals in Europe. We may borrow indeed the words of Eugene, used in his despatch describing the last victory of the war at Zenta, to picture the last hours of that evening before Vienna. For upon the summits of the Weiner-Wald, whence the allies had descended that morning to a yet doubtful field, "the sun seemed to linger, loath to leave the day, until his rays had illumined to the end the triumph of the glorious arms" of Poland and "of the Empire."

There was no want of individual courage among the Turks. "They made the best retreat you can conceive," wrote the king, for hard pressed they would turn sword in hand upon their pursuers. But the head which should have directed that courage was wanting; and for that want they were a gallant mob, but no longer an army. Grateful for the result though we may be, there is something pathetic in the magnificent valour of a race of soldiers being frustrated by such incapacity. The Christians, exhausted by the toils of the last fewdays, could not pursue to any distance. The Imperial General Dünewald indeed with a few squadrons of Austrians and Poles, the stoutest steeds or the keenest riders, despising both plunder and fatigue, pushed straight on through the twilight to Enzersdorf, where the road crossed the stream of the Fischa, ten miles from Vienna, and there bursting on the line of flight made a slaughter of the fugitives, which showed how much they owed to the night and to the weariness of their conquerors. But there was no general pursuit on the part of the allies. Their commanders were doubtful of the full extent of their victory, and feared lest from such a multitude some part might rally and destroy the too eager followers whom they still outnumbered. But without pursuit their work was done. At seven, Louis of Baden had opened a communication with the besieged, and the garrison sallying forth joined the relieving army in the slaughter of the Janissaries who had remained, neglected or forgotten, in the trenches. Even then one miner was found, doggedly toiling in his gallery beneath the ramparts, ignorant of the flight or death of his companions; perhaps from among so many the last staunch soldier of the Prophet.

I cannot conceive, wrote Sobieski, how they can carry on the war after such a loss ofmatériel. The whole of the artillery of the Turks, their munitions, and their baggage were the spoil of the victors. Three hundred and ten pieces of cannon, twenty thousand animals, nine thousand carriages, one hundred and twenty-five thousand tents, five million pounds of powder are enumerated. The holy standard of the Prophet had been saved, but the standard of the Vizier, mistaken for it, was sent to the Pope by the conqueror, while his gilded stirrups were despatched at once to Poland to the Queen, as a token of victory. Never, perhaps, since Alexander stood a victor at Issus in the tents of Darius, or the Greeks stormed the Persian camp at Platæa, had an European army entered upon such spoil. Much money had been saved by the Turks in their flight; but precious stuffs and jewelled arms, belts thick with diamonds, intended to encircle the fair captives of Vienna, the varied plunder of many a castle of Hungary and of Lower Austria, were found piled in the encampment. In the Vizier's quarters were gardens laid out with baths and fountains, a menagerie, even a rabbit warren. His encampment alone formed a labyrinth of tents, by itself ofthe circumference of a little town, and with its contents declared the character of its late owner. An ostrich, previously taken from an Imperial castle, was found beheaded to prevent recapture. A parrot, more fortunate, escaped upon the wing. The Polish envoy was discovered in the camp in chains, forgotten during the turmoil, and thus saved from the death promised him if his master should take the field. The Imperial agent at the Porte, Kunitz, had escaped into the town during the battle; but the mass of Christian captives had not been so happy. Before the battle the Vizier had ordered a general massacre of prisoners, and the camp was cumbered with the bodies of men, women, and children, but for the most part of women, foully slaughtered. The benevolent energy of the Bishop of Neustadt, above-mentioned, found employment in caring for five hundred children, who had, with their mothers in a few cases, escaped the sword. The night was passed in the camp by the victors, who were intent on securing their victory or their plunder. Not till the following morning did the king meet Lorraine and exchange congratulations upon their success. Then, with the Commandant Starhemberg, they entered the city,passing over those well-contested breaches, which but for them might have been that day trodden by the Janissaries. They repaired to the churches for a solemn thanksgiving. Sobieski himself sang theTe Deumin one of them. Nothing could exceed the enthusiastic gratitude of the people, who barely allowed a passage to the horse of their deliverer. The priest, after theTe Deumended, by a happy inspiration or plagiarism, gave out the words, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John."[25]A salute of three hundred guns proclaimed the victory far and wide, and the shouts of "Vivat Sobieski!" that filled the city out-thundered the thunder of the cannon. Their walls were a chaos, their habitations a ruin, but the citizens rejoiced as those rejoice whom the Lord hath redeemed and delivered from the hand of the enemy. They were as men released not only from the sword, pestilence, and famine, but from prison besides. They poured forth to taste again the sweets of liberty, wondered at the trenches, or joined in the pillage of the camp, where the air was already sickening from the thousands of the slain,and foul from the refuse of the barbaric encampment. But amid all the popular rejoicing, the king could not but observe the coldness of the magistracy. The Emperor could not endure that any but himself should triumph in Vienna, and his feelings were reflected in his servants. On hearing of the victory he had returned to the neighbourhood of the city. A council was held to settle the weighty point as to how the elective Emperor was to receive the elective King. "With open arms, since he has saved the Empire," said Lorraine; but Leopold would not descend to such an indecorum. He strove to avoid a meeting with the deliverer of his capital, and when the meeting was arranged could barely speak a few cold words in Latin, well answered by Sobieski, who, saying, "I am happy, Sire, to have been able to render you this slight service," turned his horse, saluted, and rode away. A few complimentary presents to Prince James and to the Polish nobles did not efface the impression of ingratitude. The German writers minimize the coldness of the Emperor, but Sobieski was at the moment undoubtedly aggrieved, and others were discontented.

FOOTNOTES:[20]TheTurkenschanze, traces of which lately remained.[21]In 1717 Eugene, in like case with the Vizier now, was besieging Belgrade, and was himself surrounded by a large Turkish army. However, he defeated the relieving army and took the city.[22]There is a proverb, "Vienna aut venenosa aut ventosa." She was giving to her deliverers successive displays of her character.[23]Sobieski's letter of September 13.[24]Sobieski's letter of September 13. He must have heard of the conversation from the Vizier's attendants taken in his encampment.[25]It was the exclamation of the Pope, Pius V., on hearing of the victory of Don John of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto, in 1571.

[20]TheTurkenschanze, traces of which lately remained.

[21]In 1717 Eugene, in like case with the Vizier now, was besieging Belgrade, and was himself surrounded by a large Turkish army. However, he defeated the relieving army and took the city.

[22]There is a proverb, "Vienna aut venenosa aut ventosa." She was giving to her deliverers successive displays of her character.

[23]Sobieski's letter of September 13.

[24]Sobieski's letter of September 13. He must have heard of the conversation from the Vizier's attendants taken in his encampment.

[25]It was the exclamation of the Pope, Pius V., on hearing of the victory of Don John of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto, in 1571.

Neglected and distrusted by the sovereign whom he had delivered, Sobieski found consolation in detailing his victory, his spoil, and his wrongs alike to his wife. We find the great soldier again, in the full flush of his victory, writing indefatigably to hisMariette. It is on the night of the 13th, in the Vizier's late quarters, in the camp still cumbered with the slaughter of the combatants and of prisoners. The loss had been heavy in the fighting upon both sides, he tells us; and such an estimate, formed at such a moment by the victorious general, by far outweighs the accounts by which the French above all tried to minimize the slaughter made, and with it the greatness of the victory won.[26]Hebegins his letter: "God be blessed for ever. He has given victory to our people; He has given them such a triumph that past ages have not seen the like." All around, the explosions of the Turkish ammunition, fired by the plunderers from city and army, "make a din like the last judgment." He plunges into a description of the riches that the camp contains. "The Vizier has made me his heir; he has done everythingen galant homme." "You cannot say to me, 'You are no warrior,' as the Tartar women say to their husbands when they return empty-handed." "For two nights and a day plunder has gone on at will; even the townsfolk have taken their share, and I am sure that there is enough left for eight days more. The plunder we got at Choczim was nothing to this."

There was a touch of the barbaric chieftain in the Polish king, and he keenly enjoyed not merelythe victory, but the spoil which he had won. At the end of the seventeenth century, the character of this general of the school of Montecuculi, this admirer of Condé, recalls to us at once the ardour of a crusader, and the affectionate rapacity of a moss-trooper, reserving the richest plunder of a foray to deck his wife at home. He exults in the belts and in the watches studded with jewels, the stuffs and the embroideries which are to adorn his wife's boudoir. But he is still bent on action. "We must march to-morrow for Hungary," he says, "and start at the double, to escape the smell of the camp and its refuse, with the thousands of bodies of men and of animals lying unburied."

One letter, at least, he had despatched before writing to his wife. He knew well the feelings with which the King of France would regard the salvation of the Empire, and the setting free of the attention of Germany to be directed to his own designs. In Sobieski's own words to his wife, he thus reveals his triumph over the French king, whose intrigues had been ceaselessly directed to prevent his coming: "I have written to the King of France; I have told him that it was to him especially, as to the Most Christian King, that Ifelt bound to convey the information of the battle that we have won, and of the safety of Christendom." This letter remained unanswered. It is said that the proofs of Louis' dealings with the Turks had at that moment passed into the hands of the victors, amid the plunder of the Vizier's quarters.

No sooner had Louis heard that the intrigues of his agents had failed, and that Sobieski was actually in the field, than his armies were let loose upon the Spanish Netherlands. Unable to anticipate the victory at Vienna, the French revenged it by seizing Courtrai and Dixmunde in the autumn, and bombarding Luxemburg before the end of the year. The French nobility had been forbidden to hasten to the defence of Christendom; and now were inclined to depreciate, at least in words, the victory they had not shared.

Amidst the general chorus of admiration and of thankfulness which rose from Europe, in France, and in France alone, were the deeds of Sobieski slighted. He had cut in pieces not only the Turks, but the prophecies which had filled Paris of the approaching downfall of the house of Austria. The allies of that house took a boldertone; Spain talked of the declaration of that war against Louis which he had provoked for so long; the United Provinces listened to the warlike councils of the Prince of Orange; the Emperor spoke decidedly of succouring all his friends.

Far different was to be the progress of Louis' aggressions upon Germany, now that the overmastering fear of Turkish invasion was done away with, and the Turkish hold upon Hungary loosened. The alliance of Laxenberg and the other leagues were now to ripen into the great confederacy of Augsburg and the Grand Alliance.

Upon the Ottoman power the effect of the victory was decisive. Turkish rule in Hungary had received a blow from which it never recovered. It is true that Sobieski, advancing rashly with his cavalry alone, shortly involved himself in a disaster, near the bridge of the Danube, opposite Gran. The king himself had to ride for his life from the Turkish horsemen. The check, however, was avenged by the complete destruction of the force which had inflicted it; and the fortress of Gran, the most important place upon that side of Hungary, became the prize of the conqueror.

The views of Sobieski embraced the reductionof Buda, and, perhaps, of the whole of Hungary, in this campaign. But this was forbidden by the lateness of the season, still more by the jealousy of the Emperor. The king warred against the Turks, but not against the Hungarians. He sympathized with their efforts to regain their liberties, and strove to reconcile rather than to subdue Tekeli. Leopold was fearful of the establishment of a Polish interest in the country, and showed a studied neglect of his allies. But had other causes allowed, the insubordination of the Poles would have prevented further conquests. The Polish nobility, the political masters of their king, were foremost in clamouring for a return to their native country. A prolonged career of conquest was impossible at the head of such a State and army. The hopes of a Hungarian alliance died away. Tekeli, after much hesitation, refused to enter into the negotiations which the king proposed; and reluctantly the deliverer of Christendom withdrew through Upper Hungary into Poland again, reducing some towns upon the road, but leaving his great work half done. His army melted in his hands. The tardy Lithuanians, too late for the fighting, arrived to add to his vexationin Moravia, where they disgraced their country by pillaging the people whom they had not helped to save.

But Sobieski was not alone in suffering from the Emperor's ingratitude. Starhemberg, the defender of the city, was deservedly rewarded; but most of the others, from Lorraine downwards, who had participated in the battle, had little recompense for their services. Even the ardour of the Elector of Bavaria was for a time cooled by the coolness of the Emperor, though he returned again to the service of his future father-in-law. The Elector of Saxony, Waldeck, and others left the scene of the campaign to enjoy their triumph, or to plunge into other enterprises; but under Lorraine, and a series of generals, culminating in that Eugene of Savoy, who had seen his first service at Vienna, the Turks were driven foot by foot from Hungary. Kara Mustapha shortly paid for his defeat, as Ottoman commanders did pay—with his head, suffering not unjustly. But his successors, though less incompetent, were scarcely on the whole more fortunate than he.

In vain a new Kiuprili was found to head the Turkish armies and to reform the Turkish State.A short gleam of success under his leadership was ended by his death in battle. In vain a Sultan, Mustapha II., again appeared himself at the head of his armies. The means of warfare of the Ottomans were to a great extent expended and lost beyond repair in the great disaster at Vienna. New enemies rose up against them in their weakness. Russia in the Ukraine, Venice in the Morea and in Dalmatia, began conquests at the expense of the Porte. The war indeed dragged on, delayed by the renewed contest between France and the Augsburg league; but the very weakness of Austria served merely to show more clearly the fallen fortunes of the Turks, who could make no lasting stand against her. Steadily upon the whole the fortunes of the Ottomans declined, though it was not till the great victory of Eugene at Zenta, in 1697, that they were driven reluctantly to treat. The peace signed at Carlowitz, in 1699, illustrates the altered relations of Europe since the beginning of the war, when the Turks had been a menace to Germany.

For the first time, an European conference considered the affairs of Turkey. England and Holland were mediators of the peace, that theEmperor might be more free to act with them in the coming war of the Spanish Succession. Sobieski had nearly three years earlier become a memory, with his victories, his schemes, and his disappointments, in the grave; and with him ended the ever unstable greatness of Poland. Another yet more notable northern sovereign, Peter the Czar, was a party to the negotiations. Everywhere was territory rent from Turkey. To Austria, she yielded nearly all of Hungary and Transylvania, with most of the Sclavonian lands between the Save and the Drave; to Poland, she gave up Podolia; to Russia, Azof; to Venice, the Morea and parts of Dalmatia. One point she proudly refused to yield. The Hungarian Tekeli and his friends, who had sought her hospitality, were retained by her, safe from the vengeance of the Emperor; as in 1849 other Hungarian exiles were shielded by the Turks, against the vengeance of Austria and of Russia combined. This was the first peace which had permanently reduced the frontiers of the Ottomans; it marked the termination of the last of the great Mohammedan aggressions upon Christendom; it saw the end of the secret understandings by which, since thedays of Francis I., France had endeavoured to use Turkey for the subversion of Austria and for the ends of her own ambition. The complete reversal of the former positions of the combatants, the disastrous termination of the war for Turkey, the "rolling away of the stone of Tantalus that hung abovetheirheads, the intolerable woe for theGermans",[27]the far-reaching results of the struggle in the future history of Europe—all are traceable to the day when the genius of Sobieski marked triumphantly, from the windy heights of the Kahlenberg, that fatal incapacity which should open for him the way, as victorious deliverer, to the foot of the ruined ramparts of Vienna.

But naturally, before concluding our consideration of the subject, we ask what gain did Poland, or the King of Poland, gather from the enterprise in which he had played so glorious a part? For a few months he was the centre of the admiring eyes of Christendom. "L'empire du monde vous serait du si le ciel l'eût réservé à un seul potentat," wrote Christinaof Sweden from Rome, not without a glance at the pretensions of Louis XIV. to supremacy, and of Leopold to an imperial primacy in Europe. Never before had Poland filled so great a place in the eyes of the world. The cautious Venetians sought her special alliance. In the language of diplomacy she wasRespublica Serenissima; but untroubled she never was, and her greatness was of short duration. It is true that the frontiers of the State were relieved of a constant fear. The Turks were for the time broken, the Tartars were crushed, the Cossacks of the Ukraine again reduced to submission. But Sobieski had fought and had conquered for others. His country was incapable of gathering the fruits of victory; incapable of prolonged effort, and therefore of lasting success. At the peace of Carlowitz, Podolia, with the fortress of Kaminiec, was recovered; but Moldavia had been in vain invaded by the Poles; and the Turks, it was soon seen, were beaten for the benefit of Austria; the Tartars for the benefit of Russia.

The King of Poland, alive to the shortcomings of his countrymen, was unable to correct them. A man who was at least the most eminent soldier, general we may not say, of Europe; a man whoabove all others living fulfilled the character of a hero; a king who had saved his country; a husband who was devoted to his wife, found himself thwarted by his subjects, and distracted by quarrels in his family. No doubt he laboured to render the crown hereditary in his house, a service to his country it would have been had he succeeded; but the jealousy of the Poles, still more that of the neighbouring sovereigns, and to some extent the misconduct of his wife, rendered this impossible. He found himself the object of an empty respect, but the wielder of no authority; he saw his country without order, without steadiness of purpose, unable to follow any settled policy in conjunction either with France or with the enemies of France. The factions of the Diet left him without soldiers and without money. Not for the first, but nearly for the last time, the Poles were victorious in battle, but were destined to fail woefully in attaining the objects of war. The end was not far off. Sobieski was followed by a foreigner upon the throne, and within ten years of his death, Charles XII. of Sweden was disposing as a conqueror of the crown of Poland. The prey to the ambition of her neighbours his country has remained, now like her kinga memory, to serve as a lesson of the consequences of the disregard of those restraints and of that self-control which alone can render freedom safe and liberty a blessing. For want of these her place has vanished from the map of Europe, sooner even than that of the foe whom she destroyed.

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