FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[5]"If the Grand Vizier (Kiuprili) be so great a man as he is reputed in politics as well as in arms, he will never consent, by an invasion of Hungary, to make way for the advance of French progress into the Empire, which a conquest of the Low Countries would make easy and obvious; and so great accessions (with others that would lie fair and open in the Spanish provinces upon the Mediterranean) would make France a formidable power to the Turk himself, and greater than I suppose he desires to see any in Christendom."—Sir W. Temple, Works, ii. 212, edit. 1814.

[5]"If the Grand Vizier (Kiuprili) be so great a man as he is reputed in politics as well as in arms, he will never consent, by an invasion of Hungary, to make way for the advance of French progress into the Empire, which a conquest of the Low Countries would make easy and obvious; and so great accessions (with others that would lie fair and open in the Spanish provinces upon the Mediterranean) would make France a formidable power to the Turk himself, and greater than I suppose he desires to see any in Christendom."—Sir W. Temple, Works, ii. 212, edit. 1814.

To return, therefore, to the troubles in Hungary, which gave occasion for French intrigue and for the interference of the Porte. The Turks, reinvigorated by the policy of the late Vizier Kiuprili, but directed no longer by his cool experience and judgment, were now not slow to take advantage of the difficulties of Austria. After their defeat at the hands of Montecuculi at St. Gotthard in 1664, they had consented to a twenty years' truce, by which they were still left in possession of the greater part of Hungary, and of that part where the pure Magyar population most prevailed. This truce had not expired when the oppressions exercised in the part of their country remaining to the Emperor drove the Hungarians to arms, and Count Tekeli to seek aid from the Sultan. Ordinarily scrupulous in the observance of their treatyobligations, the Turks were on this occasion overcome by the temptations held out to them of an easy extension of their frontier and of their influence. With the active aid of the Hungarians, and with the tacit consent of France, they deemed it possible to deal a mortal blow at the house of Austria. The Sultan, Mahomet IV., was perhaps not over ambitious, but he was spurred on by the zeal of a servant. The Grand Vizier, Kara Mustapha, though a nephew of the great minister Kiuprili, owed his advancement more to the beauty of his person and to the favour of the Sultana Validé, or Queen Mother, who ruled the ruler of Islam, than to other connexions or to ability. His ambition, however, was believed to aim at no less than a dependent kingdom for himself in Hungary or at Vienna. Here, at all events, and not against the Poles or Russians, did Kara Mustapha determine to gather his laurels and his booty. He had, indeed, already essayed a Russian campaign with little profit. A more striking success and greater glories, more abundant plunder with fewer toils, seemed to be promised by a campaign in the valley of the Danube, than by one among the marshes and forests of Poland, or of the Ukraine.

Too late, in 1681, the court of Vienna attempted a conciliatory policy in Hungary. The spirit of rebellion had been aroused, and the offers of redress and justice made by the Emperor were distrusted as a veil for treachery, or despised as the confession of weakness. Tekeli defied the Emperor, and assumed the offensive even beyond the borders of Hungary. Neither was the Porte to be propitiated. In vain an Imperial Embassy to Constantinople sought a prolongation of the truce, which was on the point of expiring at the end of the stipulated twenty years. The demands of the Turks rose with the progress of their preparations. A principality for their ally, Count Tekeli, in Hungary; extension of territory, with the strongest border fortresses for themselves; a great war indemnity—such were the terms which implied a determination not to negotiate. The ambassador, Count Caprara, was compelled as a prisoner himself to witness the departure of the Turkish hosts for the frontier. At the end of the year 1682 the main body were drawn together at Adrianople. Mahomet IV. encouraged his troops by his countenance in the camp, and beguiled the tedium of winter quarters by his favourite pastime ofhunting. The sport was carried on upon a gigantic scale with thirty thousand beaters, many of whom perished by exhaustion. "No doubt they have spoken ill of me, and God hath dealt them their reward," was the reasonable conjecture of the Sultan upon their fate. This mighty hunter, however, relieved his army of his presence when the spring of 1683 saw it finally set in motion for the Danube. Kara Mustapha was invested with complete command. Accounts vary as to the precise point where Mahomet left his army. The ambition of his Vizier perhaps was interested in removing so soon as possible from the field the Sultan, to whom the glory of success would have been necessarily ascribed. Similar motives had, according to M. de la Guillatière, caused others before this to keep the easily persuaded prince back from the camp, whither his first impulse would have led him.

Oriental exaggeration is prone to magnify the hosts which Asiatic despots can command for their service. The muster-roll, found in the tent of the Grand Vizier after his defeat, affords a better basis for calculation. We find there, in round numbers, 275,000 fighting men enumerated, as the original strength of the Turkish army. Judging by theanalogy of our Indian armies, the attendants and camp followers of all descriptions must have doubled these numbers. In Hungary, the Vizier effected a junction with Count Tekeli, who was at the head of nearly 60,000 men—Hungarians, Transylvanians, Turks and Tartars. Even French officers and engineers were to be found in Tekeli's ranks; and the character of his cause was vindicated by coins which he caused to be struck with the inscription,Pro Deo et Patria. Half a million of men probably, of all creeds and races that lie between the Carpathian mountains and the Arabian deserts, were arrayed under the standard of the Prophet in the valley of the Danube. Again, according to the Turkish returns, of these 50,000 men perished in the operations before the decisive battle that relieved Vienna. Of the whole vast multitude not more than 50,000 it was computed, ultimately regained the Turkish frontier.

But even if drawn up with the best intentions, the accuracy of such returns and estimates can never be more than an approximation to the truth. It is sufficient that hundreds of thousands were marshalled beneath the Crescent to burst in a storm of desolating war upon the Christian lands.

For the struggle between Turk and Christian was not of the character of those operations to which the term of civilized warfare is conventionally applied. Prisoners were seldom made. The Christian slaughtered; the Turk, if he spared, sold into slavery his captives; prisoners we cannot call them to whom future release was denied. Far and wide before the Turkish armies, the Tartars and the irregular horsemen, whose sole pay was plunder, whose diversion and whose business at once was rapine, spread in a desolating cloud over the country. The whole of the unconquered Hungary, the Austrian duchy, the plains of Moravia and the mountains of Styria were swept or threatened by the scourge. Poland they had long held to be their licensed field of plunder, and now Bavaria, and Bohemia even, trembled at the terror of their approach. The painful curiosity of their friends has attempted an estimate of the numbers of Turkish captives taken in this invasion. 32,000 grown persons, the great majority women, 204 of whom were maiden daughters of the nobility; 26,000 little children were, they tell us, carried off into slavery. This return seems to make no mention of lads, nor of elder girls, who would perhaps formthe majority of those spared for the slave-market. How many of these perished under their hardships, or by the Turkish disasters; how many others tasted death, but before slavery; how many others may have lost home, wealth and honour, must remain beyond enumeration or even conjecture. It is said that in lower Austria and on the frontiers of Hungary alone, 4936 villages and hamlets were given to the flames in 1683.

To meet this torrent of devastation, the Emperor Leopold could muster but scanty forces. A full half of the territory now united under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was in the hands of the Turks, or of the Hungarian rebels; or then formed part of the territories of Poland. The finances of Vienna have never been a source of strength. "Business men laugh at our finance, for my part I weep over it," said Eugene to the Emperor not long afterwards, lamenting the want of the sinews of war. The Imperial influence of Leopold in Germany was small. The German princes were distant, jealous, slow to move. Brandenberg was irritated over the Silesian claims, that fruitful source of future war. France was all but openly hostile. Spain was powerless. Venice, a shadowof her former self. Poland alone, under her heroic monarch, John Sobieski, might give present and substantial assistance. Yet all knew that to lean upon the support of Poland was to risk leaning upon a bruised reed indeed.

Poland was, indeed, to all appearance, still a great country. The Russian province of Poland, Lithuania, Gallicia, Posen, part of Prussia proper, were Polish. Roughly speaking, her frontiers stretched from the Dneiper to near the Oder, from the Baltic to the Carpathians. But a great territory does not make a great nation. The approaching fall of Poland was foreshadowed by her fortunes, even in the seventeenth century.

The extraordinary calamities of that country should not blind us to the means by which she brought some of her misfortunes upon her own head. Her constitution seemed skilfully contrived to unite the vices of aristocratic and democratic governments with the virtues of neither. Her people were turbulent without freedom, proud without steadiness of purpose. She lacked the equality and the popular support proper to a republic, as she lacked the fixed succession to the highest office and the consistent policy which aresupposed to be the advantages of monarchy. A mob of tens of thousands of armed citizens pretended to form a deliberative diet. Their convention was always a signal for confusion; their dissolution was often the prelude to civil war. In the huge concourse a singlevetocould stay proceedings, unless indeed the malcontent paid for his opposition with his life. An attempt to introduce representative assemblies was always resented, and the experiment restricted, by the jealousy of the citizens. Delegates, not representatives, came to the meetings. They were vigilantly observed, and strictly cross-examined on their return, by self-constituted judges, as to the performance of their mandate. Real debate and deliberation, free judgment and rational decision, were as impossible in one kind of assembly as in the other. Below these citizen-nobles, the people were slaves. The two halves of the state, Poland and Lithuania, were set against each other continually. The monarchy became purely elective in the sixteenth century. The king was the nominee of some foreign court, or of some domestic party, or family. Factions nourished from abroad were thus kept alive. Once elected,the king found his power curtailed on every side; and was generally as solicitous for the advancement, and future succession perhaps, of his family, as for the good of the state. He might be a stranger, or he might owe his position to the support of a foreign power. He seldom or never could be more than the nominee of some faction, the king of a party to the end of his days.

John Sobieski, the Polish king, and himself once a Polish nobleman, was not a candidate put forward by France for the Polish crown, but was generally supposed to lean towards a French connexion. His wife was French; he had passed some of his earlier years in France, and had served in Louis' musketeers of the Guard. His most formidable rival for the crown had been Charles Leopold of Lorraine,[6]the Austrian candidate, who was now commanding the Imperial armies. An ill omen for any unity of action in the future, between the two, against the Turks.

Sobieski had fought his way to royalty. He had contended against the enemies, from Sweden toTurkey, with whom Poland was continually embroiled. His medals bore the proud device of a sword piercing three laurel crowns, with on its point a royal diadem, and the truthful motto below,Per has ad istam. Poland had been afflicted by Cossack insurrection, Tartar devastation and Turkish conquest. The king, Michael, had signed the disgraceful peace of Buksacs, by which the Poles became Turkish tributaries. Sobieski and the other nobles repudiated the treaty; and at Choczim, in 1673, Sobieski overthrew the Turks with such slaughter that "the turbans were floating thick as autumnal leaves upon the Dneister." The crown of Poland rewarded his victory; but the turbulence and inconstancy of his subjects prevented his reaping the fruits of success. At the most critical moments he was left destitute of men and of money, in the face of a host of Turks and Tartars. At Lemberg before his coronation, and at Zurawna after it, he was glad to have successfully defended the remainder of his country. The peace named from the latter town, left part of the Ukraine and nearly all Podolia with the fortress of Kaminiec, in Turkish hands.

The Turks scrupulously observing their part of the agreement, believed that they thereby secured the neutrality of Poland. Sobieski had suffered injuries and affronts at the hands of Austria. The punctilious pride of the Emperor was likely to add to the difficulty of forgetting these. At the last moment only would Leopold consent to address the man who was to save his empire by the title of Majesty. The Poles either were loth to begin a new Turkish war at all, or represented the advantage which might be gained by holding aloof, till both combatants were exhausted. If they fought, Podolia, not Hungary, the recovery of Kaminiec in the former, not the relief of Vienna, should be their object. The Lithuanians were specially jealous of Sobieski, and slow to move. The Cossacks were not to be depended upon. The country was exhausted of men and money by former campaigns. The French ambassador, Forbin, Cardinal de Janson, was instructed to work upon the king by promises of the future support of Louis, of visionary crowns in Hungary, and of lands in Silesia as the price of his inactivity. No means were to be spared to detach Poland from Austria. The Cardinal workedcautiously, being an old friend and in expectation of future favours from Sobieski; but a special agent who was with him, the Marquis de Vitry, spared no pains to foment jealousies and to excite fears, and distributed money among the partisans of a peace policy. An abortive scheme was entertained for supplanting the king himself by another, more amenable to French influence. But the conspiracy was discovered, and the effect was disastrous to the French faction. The Poles rallied round the victor of Choczim and of Lemberg, and the authors of the intrigue against him were thrown into prison, or left the country. The French agent, Vitry, himself retired from Poland. Fortunately also for Christendom, and for the house of Austria, the wife of Sobieski, Marie Casimire de la Grange d'Arquien, a Frenchwoman, had determined to thwart the diplomacy of her native land. The failure of an intrigue, by which her father, a needy Marquis, was to have been converted into a wealthy Duke; a refusal of the French court to receive her, a French subject by birth, as an equal should she revisit France;—these causes made her an Austrian partisan. Sobieski, at the age of fifty-three, still burnedwith youthful ardour for his wife of forty-one, though scandal would have it that this King Arthur had his Lancelot in the Field-Marshal Jablonowski, one of the foremost of his officers. "His incomparable Maria," as the king addressed his queen in his frequent letters, was at all events vain and intriguing, and seldom influenced for good the husband whom she also adored. Yet on this occasion her persuasions seconded the arguments which would undoubtedly have swayed Sobieski apart from her. His true atmosphere was that of the battle-field. His most glorious victories were won over the infidels. The danger which menaced Austria was a common menace to Christendom. Warsaw itself would not be safe if Vienna fell. The foremost champion of the Cross would not be wanting in such a crisis. In his enthusiasm he deemed it possible to unite the jarring elements of European society in a grand crusade. Visions floated before him of a great League, including the Christian powers and the Persians, by which the Turkish Empire should be overthrown, Constantinople recovered, Moldavia and Wallachia united to the Polish crown, and a republic of Athens and the Morea established.A scheme too great for accomplishment in the face of the selfishness of France and Austria and the inherent weakness of Poland.

But a general subscription was needed to put any army into the field at all. Rome and Italy were foremost in contributions; even ecclesiastical property was allowed to be mortgaged in the cause. The Pope, an economical reformer in Rome, as befitted the member of a banking family, the Odescalchi, was able to provide two millionscudi. Christina, ex-Queen of Sweden, bestirred herself to increase the fund. The Regent of Portugal sent money, and sanctified the gift by a simultaneous holocaust of Jews. 1,200,000 florins were to be advanced by the Emperor to pay the Polish troops. The Pope undertook to guarantee the repayment, and contributions were expected from the King of Spain. Both these latter alike were swayed by the double motive—fear of the Turks, and the desire to set free the Empire to act against France again. Leopold, as his contribution to the harmony of the allies, had condescended to yield the title of "Majesty" to the King of Poland, and had held out hopes of a marriage between the son of Sobieski and an Austrian Archduchess, which might ensurethe succession of the former to his father's throne. A dispensation from the Pope released the Poles from the duty of keeping their oaths to the Turks. The Emperor and the King exchanged oaths not to resort to such a dispensation from their engagements to each other. The treaty of alliance was signed; but before the Polish troops could be mustered in any numbers, the Turkish armies had united with those of Tekeli, and were pouring across the frontier.

FOOTNOTE:[6]The Duke of Lorraine had married the Emperor's sister, the widow of the late Polish king, Michael. The French had driven him from his hereditary states, and he found employment at the head of his brother-in-law's armies, against them and the Turks.

[6]The Duke of Lorraine had married the Emperor's sister, the widow of the late Polish king, Michael. The French had driven him from his hereditary states, and he found employment at the head of his brother-in-law's armies, against them and the Turks.

Charles of Lorraine, the Imperial commander, had under his orders less than 40,000. The levyen masseof Hungary produced 3000 soldiers only for the Emperor's service, so wide was the sway of the Turks, or so universal the sympathy for Tekeli. Six thousand Hungarians, supposed to be raised for the Emperor, went over to the enemy as soon as they advanced. Yet, contrary to his own opinion, Lorraine began with offensive operations against the Turkish fortress of Neuhausel. A partial success was followed by a disastrous repulse, and the army withdrew south of the Danube, as the main Turkish force approached upon that same side of the river. Lorraine had some idea of making a stand near the Raab to cover the Austrian frontier, but the number of the enemy and the temper of his own soldiers rendered such an attempt too hazardous.He determined to retreat, and await the reinforcements already promised by the Princes of the Empire. Garrisons were hastily flung into Raab, Komorn, and Leopoldstadt.[7]The infantry then recrossed the Danube and fell back towards Vienna along the Schütt island, under Count Leslie's orders. The cavalry marched upon the southern side of the river, but the superior rapidity of their retreat did not save them from molestation. On July 7 at Petronel, some twenty miles below Vienna, 15,000 Spahis and Tartars burst upon their march. For a time Count Taaffe, with the rear guard of 400 men, was in extreme danger. The exertions of Lorraine and of Louis of Baden rallied the cavalry and speedily repulsed their disorderly assailants, but in the confusion several of the officers fell, including Prince Aremberg and Julius Louis of Savoy, an elder brother of Prince Eugene, and much of the baggage became the prey of the Tartars. Altenburg and Haimburg, posts upon the Danube, had been already stormed, after a brief resistance, by the Turkish infantry.

Those stragglers who first leave the field arealways apt to cover their own flight by the report of an universal overthrow. So fugitives came galloping to Vienna with a tale of disaster. They spread the rumour that the Duke of Lorraine was killed and the army totally defeated, while their alarm seemed amply confirmed by the glow of burning villages that brightened upon the twilight of the eastern horizon. The Imperial court, which had delayed its flight so far, in the hope that the enemy might linger about the fortresses of Raab or of Komorn, tarried now no longer. "Leopold could never bear to hear plain truths but when he was afraid," says Eugene. He had refused to recognize the imminence of the peril until now; and by his confidence had involved in his destruction others, who had not the same means of escape at the last moment which he himself possessed. Yet means of escape were barely open to him, when at length he understood that he must defend or abandon his capital. The roads to Upper Austria and to Bavaria, along the southern shore of the Danube, were rightly distrusted. The Emperor, his Empress, and the Empress Mother, with all their train of courtiers, of ladies, and of servants, shorn of pomp and bereft of dignity in their flight, pouredover the Leopoldstadt island and the Tabor bridge in all the misery of panic fear. The prompt destruction of the bridge of Crems, above Vienna, is said alone to have saved their route from interception by the Tartars. A part of their baggage actually became the prey of the marauders. The whole court, including even the Empress herself, who was far advanced in pregnancy, were driven to seek rest in farms and cottages. Once they passed the night under a temporary shelter of boughs. In the universal panic, small room was left for hopes of a return to the capital and to the palaces that they had quitted. Milan, Innspruck, Prague were thought of as their future refuge. On to Lintz, and from Lintz to the frontier they fled, till their confidence at last returned behind the fortifications of the Bavarian city of Passau. But they were not the only fugitives from Vienna. The bold march of the Vizier upon the city, leaving Raab, Komorn, and Presburg in his rear, to fall an easy prey when once the great prize was captured; this had taken the citizens by surprise. The retreat of Lorraine, and the skirmish at Petronel, had filled them with abject terror.

People from the surrounding country who hadtaken shelter in Vienna no longer relied upon her as a stronghold, but turned their thoughts to an escape to Bavaria, or to Styria, or even to the distant Tirol. From nine o'clock in the evening till two o'clock in the morning, on the 7th and 8th of July, a never-ending stream of carriages and of fugitives were following in the track of the Imperialcortège. East and south, upon the horizon, the glare of burning villages told that the Turkish horsemen were there. High on the summit of the Kahlenberg, the flames of the Camalduline Convent dreadfully illuminated the track of the fugitives. Sixty thousand persons, it was believed, left the city in the course of a few days. Of those who, crossing the Danube, took the roads into Upper Austria or into Moravia, some fell into the hands of the Hungarian and Tartar marauders. But few of those who attempted to escape into Styria succeeded in reaching a place of safety. They perished by thousands, enveloped by the flying squadrons of the invaders.

In Vienna herself, deserted by her leaders and by so many of her children, violent tumult raged against the Government, and against the Jesuits, who were supposed to have instigated thepersecution of the Protestants of Hungary. There was ample cause for terror. The fortifications were old and imperfect, the suburbs encroached upon the works, the number of the defenders was small. Thirteen thousand infantry, supplied by the army of Lorraine, and seven thousand armed citizens formed the garrison; and, besides these, about sixty thousand souls were in the city. The command was entrusted to Ernest Rudiger Count Starhemberg, an officer of tried skill and courage. He had served with Montecuculi against the Turks, and against both Condé and Turenne with the same commander and with the Prince of Orange. He entered the city as the fugitives forsook it. He set the people to work upon the fortifications, organized them for defence, and assured them that he would live and die with them. But while writing to the Emperor that he would joyfully spend the last drop of his blood in defence of his charge, he confesses that the place is in want of everything, and the inhabitants panic-stricken. Fortunately he and others with him were the class of men to restore confidence in the rest. Under him served many noble volunteers, for the example of the Emperor was not universally followed. The Bishop ofNeustadt, once himself a soldier and a knight of Malta, was conspicuous among many brave and devoted men for his liberal donations to the troops, and for his superintendence of the sanitary state of the city. In one respect alone the place was well furnished; three hundred and twenty-one pieces of artillery were supplied by the Imperial arsenal for the fortifications.[8]The city was defended after the existing fashion, with ten bastions, the curtains covered by ravelines, with a ditch mostly dry. On the side of the Danube was merely a wall with towers and platforms, and all the works were more or less uncared for and decayed. The work of fixing palisades was postponed till the Turkish army was in sight. It is possible that by a slightly more rapid march the Vizier might have secured Vienna by acoup de main.

On July 13, the Turkish regular cavalry came in sight, preceding the infantry of the main army; and at the last possible moment fire was set to the suburbs, which impeded the defence. A high wind speedily caused them to be consumed. On the14th, the Turkish army took up its position, encamping in a semicircle, round the whole of the circuit of the defences not washed by the Danube. A city, surpassing in size and population the beleaguered capital, sprang up about the walls of Vienna. The tents of the Vizier were pitched opposite the Burg bastion, in the suburb of St. Ulric. The camp was crowded not only by soldiers, but by the merchants of the East, who thronged thither as to a fair to deal in the plunder of the Christians. The Imperial troops still attempted to hold the Leopoldstadt island; but on July 16, the Turks threw bridges across the arm of the Danube, and shortly drove the Christians to the northern bank of the river. The houses of the Leopoldstadt were given up to fire by the Turks; and the bridge, leading to the northern shore, destroyed by the Imperialists. The investment of Vienna was now completed upon every side. Batteries from the Leopoldstadt, and from the south and west, crossed it with fire in all directions. Trenches were opened, and the elaborate approaches and frequent mines of the Turks, advancing with alarming rapidity, enveloped the western and south-western face of the works from the Scottish gate to the Burg bastion.

Upwards of three hundred pieces of artillery played upon the crumbling defences and the devastated city. The pavement of the streets was torn up, that the balls might bury themselves in the soft earth where they fell. The upper floors and roofs of the houses were barricaded with heavy timber, or covered with sandbags, to guard against the fire of the dropping shells. The streets themselves were blocked behind the walls, chains drawn across them, and the houses loop-holed and prepared for defence to the last extremity. All the gates had been walled up but one, the Stuben gate, which, being partially covered by the stream of the Wien, was left open as a sally-port. Early in the siege, the assailed, frequently issuing forth, returned the attacks of the enemy, frustrated their operations, and even captured provisions in the hostile lines. But as time went on, the diminishing numbers of the garrison forbade the waste of life incurred even in successful sorties.

Map

The progress of the Turks was rapid with sap and mine. They were famed for their skill with entrenching and engineering tools, and the Christians learnt much from them, though their approaches were unlike the ordinary European works.Instead of parallel lines to the defences they drew curves, overlapping each other and continually approaching the place attacked. The trenches were deep, and fifteen or sixteen feet wide at the bottom where the ground allowed. The depth of the Turkish works effectually protected their soldiers, even when they had made a lodgment in the ditch; for the besieged could not depress their cannon sufficiently to hurt them.[9]They were protected skilfully by bomb-proof shelters of timber and of turf, beneath which thousands of men, hidden and shielded, crouched ready for attack, or for the repulse of sorties. Their mines penetrated in every direction to the counterscarp of the place, and ultimately to the walls themselves. At length the very cellars of the nearest houses were threatened by a subterranean enemy; and water and drums strewn with peas were placed in them, to tell, by the slightest vibration, of the work of the Turkish miner's pick below.

The Turkish miners were bolder than those of the garrison. The latter were hired labourers of the lowest class, of whom Starhemberg wrote to Lorraine that nothing would induce them tore-enter a mine after they had heard the sound of the enemy working near them. On the part of the enemy, men who had applied for aTimar, or military fief, often volunteered as miners to prove their courage and to win its reward.

At the very beginning of operations the city all but perished through a fire, which actually reached the windows of the Imperial arsenal stored with eighteen hundred barrels of powder. An explosion there would have opened a road for the Turkish army into Vienna, at once deprived of the means of resistance and reduced to ruins. The exertions of Captain Count Guido Starhemberg, nephew of the commandant, who personally superintended the removal of the powder through the opposite windows, together with a lucky change of wind, saved the city. Rightly or wrongly, an incendiary was suspected. The fear of treachery was added to the legitimate terrors of the citizens. Desertions took place to the enemy, and spies were actually apprehended within the walls. Hungarians and other Christians were arrayed upon both sides, and this community of language and manners, between besiegers and besieged, rendered such a danger more real.

But from the open force of the attack the worst calamities were to be feared. On the 23rd, 25th, and 27th of July the opening assaults were delivered. All were repulsed, but with loss of lives ill-spared.

Closer and closer crept the Turkish sappers. Assault after assault upon the outer fortifications gradually wrested important positions from the besieged. The Burg and Löwel bastions, with the connecting curtain between them and the Burg ravelin, were reduced to an almost shapeless ruin by the Turkish mines and artillery. Every device was tried to retard the attack. The arts and ingenuity of a great city were at the service of the besieged. They made their own powder; and, when hand-grenades began to fail, the invention of an officer supplied their place with grenades of earthenware. Nevertheless, on August 7, the Turks made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, after twenty-three days of firing and terrible losses upon both sides.

The Janissaries now stood upon the very threshold of the city. Hand to hand fighting was carried on in the ditches. The citizens armed with scythes upon the end of poles contended withadvantage from above against the Turkish sabres. Boiling pitch and water stood continually ready to overwhelm the assailants as they struggled up the shattered slope of the ramparts. Besiegers and besieged were continually within pistol shot of each other, and showers of Turkish arrows descended on the town. As yet no footing was obtained by the Turks within the body of the place, though the streets and houses stood ready barricaded against such an event. But the Vizier commanded two hundred thousand men, Starhemberg but twenty thousand. Disease and the toils and losses of the defence told fearfully upon the latter. Starhemberg himself was disabled by dysentery early in the siege, and did all that man could do, carried in a chair from post to post, amidst the hottest of the fire. On the other side, Kara Mustapha made his rounds in a litter rendered shot-proof by plates of iron. The chief engineer of the garrison, Rimpler, fell. Colonel Bärner, commanding the artillery, and the Prince of Wurtemberg were disabled. Five thousand men, more than a third of the regular soldiers, perished. Food became scarce, vermin were eagerly sought for by the poor, and dysentery followed inevitablyin the train of want. Fever sprang from the confinement, filth, and bad air inseparable from their condition. Sixty persons a day were dying of dysentery alone towards the conclusion of the siege. But the humour of the Viennese asserted itself still among their calamities, and the spoils of nocturnal chase upon the tiles were sold as "Roof Hares" in the market. The courage of long endurance, that rarest of all courage, was tried to the uttermost. The Bishop of Neustadt, bravest of the brave defenders, laboured unremittingly among the sick, nor cared less for the safety of the whole, by undertaking the control of sanitary measures. The otherwise useless non-combatants were organized by him into bands of scavengers, hospital attendants, and carriers of the wounded.

A despatch from Starhemberg, dated August 18, came safely to the hands of Lorraine. The commandant wrote boldly, perhaps with an eye to the probability of his intelligence reaching the Turkish and not the Imperial general. "I must in the first place, tell your Highness that we have up to this moment disputed the works with the enemy, foot by foot, and that they have not gainedan inch of ground without paying for it dearly. Every time that, sword in hand, they have attempted a lodgment, they have been vigorously repulsed by our men, with such loss that they no longer dare to put their heads out of their holes." Nevertheless, he was providing for the worst. "I have caused a new work, well ditched, to be made in the middle of the Burg ravelin; the Löwel and Burg bastions are also defended by a second line; and I am even now beginning another work behind these same bastions. I write this that your Highness may know that we are forgetting nothing, that we are wide awake, and taking all imaginable precautions. As in duty bound I assure your Highness, that to show myself worthy of the confidence which your Highness, and more especially his Majesty my master, repose in my small services, I shall never yield the place but with the last drop of my blood."

This despatch was safely carried to Lorraine by Kolschitzki, a Pole. Many other letters had miscarried, for few messengers penetrated, at the risk of life, between the city and the slowly mustering forces of Lorraine. Some swam the arms of the Danube. The most skilful, however, was thisKolschitzki, who relied upon his knowledge of the Turkish tongue and manners, and in Turkish dress penetrated the besieging lines, much as a countryman of our own relied on similar knowledge in a scarcely less memorable siege. The name of Kolschitzki of Vienna may be named side by side with that of "Lucknow" Kavanagh, though the Pole not only passed out through the besiegers, but succeeded in returning again in a like manner into the city with despatches, to sustain the courage of the defenders. From his stone chair, high up in the fretted spire of St. Stephen's, the watchman saw the rockets which rose as signals from the Christian outposts north of the Danube. But from the southern bank must the march be made for the deliverance of the city; and was it possible that Lorraine, or even Sobieski, could carry a force across the river in the face of such an army?

The garrison record, with painful exactness, the terrible annals of the siege; what ravelin is deluged with the blood of assailants and of defenders; where mines have blown the counterscarp into the ditch, or shattered the salient angle of a bastion; what new quarter of the city is devastated by the cannonade; what much-prizedlife is taken; when the bread begins to fail; what false hopes of relief, or what exaggerated tidings of calamity, circulate among the citizens. These details, of overwhelming interest to every man at the moment, and printed indelibly upon his mind, bring to the distant observer but one confused and appalling panorama of suffering and of endurance, of courage and of despair.

The growing anxiety of the city appears in a second despatch of Starhemberg's, dated August 27. He still tells of attacks repulsed, of sorties boldly executed, and of mines discovered and foiled, but he acknowledges the need of succour. "We are losing many men and many officers, more from dysentery than from the enemy's fire, the deaths from that disease alone are sixty daily. We have no more grenades, which were our best defence; our guns are some of them destroyed by the enemy's fire, some of them burst before firing fifty rounds, from the bad material used by the founder; and the enemy, seeing they can hold their lodgments in the ditch with a few men, are massing great numbers on the counterscarp, to have a large force ready there for some extraordinary effort.... We await, therefore, yourHighness's arrival with extreme impatience; for my own part not so much from a wish to be relieved as that I may have the honour of respectfully assuring your Highness of my obedience, being, as I am, your Highness's most humble and obedient servant,Starhemberg." The courtly bravado of the subscription is in strong contrast with the hurried postscript that follows:—"My miners tell me that they hear the enemy working beneath them under the Burg bastion; they must have run their gallery from the other side of the ditch, and there is no time to be lost." When this despatch was written, both sides believed that the supreme crisis was at hand.

The 29th of August was looked for as the decisive day. On that anniversary Stuhlweissenberg and Belgrade had fallen before the Ottomans.[10]Above all, on that day the strength of Hungary had been smitten, and her king, Louis, had died, before the hosts of the great Solyman, on the disastrous field of "The Destruction of Mohacs"—that battle which first opened Hungary and Austria to the invader.

But the 29th came and passed, with no general attack from the besiegers. A mine was sprung under the Burg ravelin, nearly completing the ruin of the work; and three or four hundred Turks attempted to establish themselves upon the remains, but were driven back again. Another mine was sprung by the Burg bastion, but no assault followed. From St. Stephen's considerable movement was noticed among the Turkish detachments on the left bank of the Danube, occasioned by the march of Lorraine's army.

In the camp murmurs and dissensions ran high. The Janissaries clamoured at their lengthy detention in the trenches. They openly accused the incapacity, or worse faults, of the Vizier. There seems little doubt but that he had it in his power to have overwhelmed the defenders by a general and prolonged assault, towards the end of August.

Ottoman leaders had known well how to avail themselves of the obedience and fatalist courage of their soldiers. Amurath IV., when he won back Baghdad from the Persians, Mahomet II., at the taking of Constantinople, had shown how cities could be won. Before the city of the Khalifsfor three days, before the city of the Cæsars from a May sunrise till well nigh noon, had torrent after torrent of brave, devoted, undisciplined soldiers wearied the arms and exhausted the ammunition of the defenders, until the Janissaries arose, fresh and invincible for the decisive charge. Wave after wave of stormers, fed from inexhaustible multitudes, had rolled upon the besieged, and, like broken waves, had rolled back in ruin, until the last and greatest should burst in overwhelming force upon the breaches. Such an assault would have been surely successful against Vienna. But the Vizier, in vain security, pictured to himself the advantages of a surrender, which should preserve the city as a trophy of his conquest—the seat, perchance, of his sovereignty. The riches which he dreamed it to contain, he hoped to receive as his own spoil; not to yield as the booty of the army after a storm. So, while the decisive days passed, the signal for attack was delayed, except by small bodies upon single points, until the courage of his soldiers was dissipated and their confidence destroyed. On the contrary, the unexpected reprieve gave courage to the defenders. The Janissaries, on the other hand,impatiently invoked the appearance of the relieving army to end their sojourn in the trenches by the decisive event of a stricken field. Slowly, but at last, ere yet too late, that army was approaching.

FOOTNOTES:[7]That is the Leopoldstadt over against Neuhausel, not the island suburb of Vienna.[8]Together with forty-two guns and eight howitzers from the city arsenal. Among the Emperor's pieces were eleven gigantic mortars, described as 100, 150, and 200-pounders, but two hundred and fifty-three of the guns were smaller than 12-pounders.[9]Starhemberg to Duke of Lorraine, August 18.[10]Not Pesth and Rhodes, which are sometimes added. Rhodes fell on Christmas day.

[7]That is the Leopoldstadt over against Neuhausel, not the island suburb of Vienna.

[8]Together with forty-two guns and eight howitzers from the city arsenal. Among the Emperor's pieces were eleven gigantic mortars, described as 100, 150, and 200-pounders, but two hundred and fifty-three of the guns were smaller than 12-pounders.

[9]Starhemberg to Duke of Lorraine, August 18.

[10]Not Pesth and Rhodes, which are sometimes added. Rhodes fell on Christmas day.

The duties which had been imposed upon Charles of Lorraine were of the most arduous kind. With a handful of troops, but slowly reinforced by the German levies, whose assistance was rendered less useful by the jealousies of the sovereign Princes in command, he was opposed both to the Turks and to Tekeli. He was expected to be ready to support the garrisons of Presburg and of Komorn, to hinder the incursions of the enemy into Upper Austria and into Moravia—above all, to prepare the bridges above Vienna, by which alone a relieving army could arrive. Though driven from the Leopoldstadt island, and from all immediate communication with the city, his presence yet animated the besieged with hope of succour. He fixed his head-quarters finally at Krems, on the Danube, where the Saxon contingent presentlyarrived, followed by the troops of the Circles and the Bavarians. Before their arrival, towards the end of August, he felt strong enough to advance and rescue Presburg from Tekeli. He followed up the operation by a defeat inflicted on the combined forces of the Turks and Hungarians upon the Marchfeld. A detachment of four thousand Polish horse, under Lubomirski, originally raised to assist Tekeli, were already present with the army of Lorraine. But decisive operations were of necessity postponed till after the coming of the King of Poland with the bulk of his forces, and of the rest of the German troops.

Lorraine, in these movements, undoubtedly proved his title to generalship; but nothing except the extraordinary apathy of the Vizier rendered them possible. A skilful employment of the enormous force of Turkish cavalry must have forced the Imperial army to retire for want of supplies. The ravage, aimlessly and mercilessly inflicted upon Austria and the confines of Moravia, would, if directed against Poland, have probably prevented the march of Sobieski. An able commander, with such forces at his command, might have prevented, or at least hindered,the junction of the Poles and Germans. Nor were any steps taken by the Vizier to stop the construction of the bridges at Krems and at Tuln, nor to guard the defiles of the Wiener Wald, over which the Christian army must advance to raise the siege. So extraordinary indeed was the neglect of the enemy, that a secret understanding has been supposed between Tekeli and Sobieski, by which, in return for the future good offices of the latter, the former was not to molest Poland nor hinder the junction of the Christian forces. Be that as it may, the secret information of the Poles was as good as that of the Turks was bad, and the king knew thoroughly with what foes he had to deal.[11]

Meanwhile, in spite of French intrigues, in spite of backwardness in Lithuania and of distrust in Poland, Sobieski had left Warsaw for Cracow on July 18. Up to the last moment the Turks disbelieved in his coming in person, and the Emperor and the French king both doubted it. He was gouty, he was rheumatic, he was too fat to ride; such was the tenour of the information of the baffled French agent Vitry. Nevertheless, onthe 22nd of August, he was on the Silesian frontier with the main part of his army. It consisted mostly of cavalry, of those Polish horsemen matchless in prowess, but the most unstable of forces. His infantry was less numerous and inferior, their shabby accoutrements contrasting sharply with the gaudy equipment of the cavaliers. "They have sworn to dress themselves better in the spoils of the enemy," said the king of one regiment, deprecating the criticism of the Germans. His march lay through Silesia and Moravia, through the borders of the lands devastated by the Tartars, where the trembling inhabitants thronged around him, hailing him already as their deliverer. Urged by message after message from Lorraine, he left his army to follow under the leadership of the Field-Marshal Jablonowski, and hurried on himself at the head of two thousand cavalry, his son Prince James by his side.

We can follow every movement of the campaign from the letters which, amid the hurry of the march, during short hours snatched from sleep, once at least during the thunder of a Turkish cannonade, he found time to despatch continually to his queen.Seule joie de mon âme, charmante et bien-aimée Mariette, as he calls her. Her letters in reply are his continual consolation amid the labours of the campaign, the ingratitude of the Emperor, and the insubordination of his subjects. "I read all your letters, my dear and incomparable Maria, thrice over—once when I receive them, once when I retire to my tent and am alone with my love, once when I sit down to answer them." Such is his answer to her expression of a fear that the distractions of his enterprise may leave no time for interest in aught besides. On August 29 he writes, from near Brunn in Moravia, sending the news of the retreat of Tekeli after his defeat by Lorraine, and adding that he hopes the next day, on nearing the Danube, to hear the cannon which tell that Vienna is still untaken. On the 31st he is near Tuln, above Vienna. He has passed the distant thunder of the cannonade upon his left hand, and has effected his junction with the army of Lorraine. Despairing of the arrival of the Lithuanians, he has distributed the arms intended for them among the imperfectly equipped Poles. Still more is he distressed at the non-appearance of the Cossacks, whom he expected, and whom he knew as invaluable for outpost duty. Menzynski,who should have conducted them, is lingering at Lemberg. "C'est un grand misérable."

Most interesting of all is the passage in which he gives his wife his first impressions of his future colleague, the Duke of Lorraine. Lorraine had been a competitor with Sobieski for the crown of Poland, and it must have been a singular meeting when the rivals first came face to face co-operating together in a mighty enterprise. Sobieski the king, whose offspring were not to reign; Charles the duke, the destined ancestor of the Imperial line of Austria.[12]The one in the semi-Oriental magnificence of his country, he went into action before Vienna in a sky-blue silk doublet; the other in the dress of a campaigner, best described in Sobieski's own words. The duke he finds modest and taciturn, stooping, plain, with a hooked nose, marked with small-pox; clad in an old grey coat, with "a fair wig ill-made," a hat without a band, "boots of yellow leather, or rather of what was yellow three months ago." "Avec tout ça, il n'a pas la mine d'un marchand, mais d'un homme comme il faut, et mêmed'un homme de distinction. C'est un homme avec qui je m'accorderais facilement." The friendship of the former rivals was cemented by a banquet, and the duke's accustomed monitor being first overcome, Lorraine himself was induced to proceed from his native Moselle, which he drank usually mixed with water, to the strong Hungarian wines—to the improvement, as the king tells his wife, of his conversation. Besides Lorraine, Sobieski found a crowd of German Princes awaiting his arrival: John George of Saxony, speaking no French nor Latin, and very little German; Waldeck, of the house of Waldeck-Wildungen,[13]William the Third's right hand man in the Netherlands, here commanding the troops of the Circles, and winning high praise from the king for his activity and zeal; Maximilian of Bavaria, whose courage and ill-fortune were hereafter to be signalized at Blenheim and at Ramilies, now aged twenty-one, wins notice as "better dressed than the others." There were two Wurtembergers and the Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, afterwards our George I.; the Prince of Saxe-Lauenberg; a Hohenzollern and a Hessian;three Princes of Anhalt; Hermann and Louis of Baden, the latter was with Marlborough at Schellenberg; two sons of Montecuculi, the conqueror of St. Gotthard; last and youngest, though not least, Eugene of Savoy, the future conqueror of Zenta and of Belgrade, and the colleague of Marlborough in his greatest battles. There was Count Leslie, of that Scotch house which had given generals to half the armies of Europe; Count Taaffe, the Irishman, afterwards Sir Francis Taaffe and Earl of Carlingford, whose elder brother fell fighting for King James at the Boyne, but whose services to the allies secured the earldom from forfeiture. There were gathered veterans of the Thirty Years' War, men who might have seen Gustavus or Wallenstein, and men who were to reap their brightest laurels hereafter in the war of the Spanish Succession. As was wittily said, the Empire would have been there had only the Emperor been present. The Brandenberg troops also were wanting. The "Great Elector" was jealous of Poland—once his superior in the Prussian duchy—had formerly been injured by Sobieski acting with the Swedes in the interests of France, and moreover was not on the best terms with the Emperor.Brandenberg, then as ever, was playing with skill and patience her own game. The fortunes of the future Prussian monarchy were not to be lightly risked for the sake of Austria. But the Emperor himself must not be rashly charged with want of courage for his absence from the camp. He was not trained to war; the presence of his court would have been embarrassing to the operations, perhaps would have been inseparable from intrigues and jealousies that would seriously have crippled the army. A certain stubborn manhood Leopold had shown in not yielding to the pressure put upon him to make terms with Louis XIV. in this extremity. The aid of France could have been purchased by the election of the Dauphin as King of the Romans, probably by smaller sacrifices. The Diet at Ratisbon had been not disinclined to yield, but the Emperor had stedfastly refused to subject either his own house or the Empire to French dictation. That one crowned head was in the field was of the greatest importance, especially when that one was the King of Poland.

Everywhere the most cheerful deference was rendered to Sobieski by all who were present. The Princes, jealous of each other before, now vied witheach other in zealous obedience to the conqueror of Choczim. His experience of Turkish warfare was unique, his personal character commanding. He tells his wife how Lorraine, Waldeck, Saxony, Bavaria would send or even come personally for his commands. The ascendancy exercised by Sobieski is nowhere more decisively illustrated than in the conduct of five hundred Janissaries, a trophy of his victories, who now formed his body guard. He offered them leave of absence from the battle, or even a free passage to the Turkish camp, but they besought leave to live and die with him.[14]The king himself was fully prepared to accept the advice of generals like Lorraine and Waldeck. He had left his royal dignity behind at Warsaw, as he told Lorraine, and at once agreed with the latter upon a plan for crossing the Danube at Krems and at Tuln, concentrating at Tuln and marching over the Kahlenberg to Vienna. He only complained of the backward condition of the bridges and of the slow assemblage of the troops, whereas the Emperor had by letter assured him that all was ready before he had left Poland. When finally assembled, the united armies numbered eighty-five thousand men.The Poles were more than twenty-six thousand strong. But allowing for detachments, not more than seventy-seven thousand men were available upon the battle-field. The artillery numbered one hundred and sixty-eight pieces, of which few came into action.

On September 4, the king still writes from near Tuln. If an excess of glory is often the share of a successful commander, yet an excessive toil is his always. Sobieski tells his wife that he has a continual cold and headache, and is night and day in the saddle. The French stories were so far true that he could not mount without assistance, yet in the midst of such operations no rest is possible. The Turks are, he says, either really ignorant of his presence, or refuse to believe it. The Vizier was incredibly ill-supplied with information. He really was uncertain whether Sobieski was in the field; and whether the Polish army, or partisan corps only, like that of Lubomirski, had joined Lorraine. The smallest resistance would seriously have retarded the passage of the Danube, performed by the Germans at Krems, by the Poles at Tuln. As it was, the difficulties were terrible. The pontoons sank under the weight of the artillery and waggons.The latter had to find fords over the smaller branches of the river, while the bridges upon the main stream were strengthened to sustain them. Even then much baggage was left north of the Danube; much more upon the southern side, entrenched and defended.

On September 8, when the concentration of the army upon the southern bank was being completed, Marco Aviano, the Emperor's Confessor, celebrated a solemn mass, and gave a formal benediction to the Christian army. Sobieski then stepped forward, and after addressing some words of encouragement to the assembled officers, bestowed the honour of knighthood upon his son James.[15]An enthusiastic votary of his religion, he desired to impress upon his army that their cause was the cause of God, against the enemies of the Faith. Even the Lutheran Saxons and North Germans could, with more justice than the Hungarian renegades, claim to be fightingPro Deo et Patria. Upon the comingstruggle depended the question whether the frightful devastation, which had desolated Hungary and Austria, was or was not to be repeated in all the south German lands.

The flat ground upon the southern side of the Danube, from near Krems to Tuln, the Tullner Feld, offered a convenient space for the mustering of the army after passing the river. Vienna was not further than about sixteen miles as the crow flies, but the intervening country was of a difficult nature, even should the Turks attempt no interruption to the movements of the relieving forces. The Wiener Wald, rising to more than nine hundred feet above the level of the Danube, runs into a north-easterly direction between Tuln and Vienna, and advances up to the very current of the river, which flows north-eastward and then south-eastward round the mountain barrier. The roads were few and difficult, and trees covered the slopes of the hills. Sobieski had decided to advance with his left wing covered by the Danube, and to throw succour into Vienna upon that side; while with the right he threatened the rear of the Turkish camp on the side of Dornbach and Hernals. With this object the march was directed upon the Leopoldsberg and theKahlenberg, the last heights or ridges of the mountains above the Danube, to the north-west of Vienna.

And at length, on the 10th of September, the forward movement upon the Kahlenberg began. Already as early as the morning of the 6th, a reconnaissance had been pushed to the summit, and as evening fell had cheered Vienna with a flight of signal rockets, in answer to the fiery messengers of distress which nightly rose from the spire of St. Stephen's. But to carry an army up the Kahlenberg was a harder task. Sobieski wrote that the country was horribly wasted. There was neither food for man nor forage for horses, beyond what the army could carry with them. Indeed, the leaves of the trees upon the Kahlenberg had to eke out the supplies of the latter. There was all need for despatch. The last despairing message had come from Starhemberg, borne by a swimmer on the Danube to Lorraine, in language as brief as significant, "No time to be lost; no time indeed to be lost."

Back to Index Next