had been previously destroyed. The fury of the assault which followed,
and the tenacity of the resistance, may be measured by the Turkish loss
of 1500 men. Two standards were at one moment planted on the rampart.
A house in the Löbelstrasse opposite the spot where this took place
is still called the Turks’ house, and bears a date and a painting
of a Turk’s head commemorative of the occurrence. On the evening of
this day, five rockets were observed to rise from the Kahlenberg.[13]
That short-lived apparition was sufficient to scatter the clouds
of despondency which had so long been gathering over the city. The
lighthouse which identifies the promontory, or the star which marks
the Pole, never sparkled on the eye of the anxious mariner with more
of comfort and assurance than that fiery sign conveyed to the watchman
on the rampart, or the Jesuit on the spire. It indicated not only that
the Imperial army had crossed the river, but that its outposts had
crowned the heights and occupied the passes which commanded its only
access to the relief of the city, heights and passes which nothing
but judicial blindness could have prevented the Turks from occupying
in force. Still the salvation of the city hung on a thread. As the
imperial army approached, the incentive to attack rose in intensity in
the same proportion with the motive to resistance, and it was to be
expected that the struggle would be waged to the last with increased
energy. Every device of war was exhausted by Stahremberg to provide
that no inch of advance should be gained by the enemy unpurchased by
streams of his blood. All the ominous preparations for a street fight
were redoubled. The houses nearest the breach were converted into
batteries; every avenue to it from the interior thronged with soldiers.
The city force was mustered at its alarm-posts, waiting for the bell
of St. Stephen’s to proclaim the moment of the assault. It never came.
The Turks, though they continued to mine under the city, pushing one
of their galleries as far as the church of the Minorites, never again
showed themselves above ground beyond the mouths of their parallels. On
the 8th September there was strange movement in their camp. Camels were
loaded, horses were saddled. More rockets rose from the Kahlenberg.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Count Daun is said to have first suggested the use of the scythe
affixed to a long staff for the defence of the breaches at this siege.
Under the name of the Lochaber axe it had long been used by the Scots.
In the recent wars of liberty in Poland it has acquired much celebrity,
and many stories are told of its terrible effects in the hands of the
peasantry. Of the weapon called the morning star, a species of club
with spikes, 600 were furnished from the arsenal.—E.

[13] I give this incident as I find it in the work from which these
pages are borrowed, and in other accounts, but I am at a loss to
account for the alleged date of its occurrence. The army of the
Christian allies had not completed its passage of the river, and
was mustering in the camp of Tuln, and I can find no account of any
reconnaissance being pushed forward at this date. The statements,
however, of the fact are numerous and positive.—E.

CHAPTER XIII.

To preserve the narrative of the siege unbroken down to the critical
period at which it has now arrived, it has been necessary to withhold
our attention from the proceedings of the Duke of Lorraine and the army
of the Empire. We left them in the early part of July unable to cope
with the tenfold numbers of the Turkish host, and compelled to await at
safe distance, and scarcely in a threatening attitude, the accession
of German levies and of the promised succour of the Poles. The former
mustered with somewhat of the slowness and circumspection which have
in all ages characterized the motions of the Germanic body. Distance
retarded the junction of the Poles, whose contingents had in many
instances to march from the Ukraine. The first care then of Lorraine,
was to bring together the troops of the Empire, and Crems, with its
bridge over the Danube, was the main position chosen for that purpose.
In the first instance, indeed, the Duke had proposed to make a stand in
the Leopoldstadt, and by means of têtes-du-pont at the several bridges
of the arms of the river, to keep up a direct communication with the
city, virtually, in fact, to make his force a part of the garrison.
The danger of such an expedient, however, became instantly palpable.
The summer was a dry one, and the small arm of the river nearest the
city was fordable in several places. To place 10,000 cavalry in a
position so acceptable to the attack of the whole Turkish army, and
which also from its relative level was commanded from the whole extent
of the opposite banks, would have been certain destruction. The army of
Tekeli, also, coming over the March field, threatened the rear of the
Imperialists, and gave them much anxiety. The Duke therefore selected
a series of positions the best calculated to prevent the enemy from
occupying the left bank of the Danube, and shifted his head-quarters
as circumstances indicated, between Jedlesee and Stockerau, till he
finally fixed them at Crems. His next care was to arm and garrison
as extensively as possible the fortified and tenable places of Lower
Austria. He confided Crems to the care of the generals Dunnewald and
Leslie, Tuln to the Baron d’Orlique; and even Closterneuburg, scarcely
five English miles from Vienna, which had beaten off an attack of
the Turks, under its commandant, Marcel Ortner, was supplied with a
garrison. Count Herberstein covered with a corps the avenues to Styria,
already threatened by the enemy. Neustadt was sufficiently garrisoned;
and in several instances from these strongholds successful sallies
were directed against the marauding bands of the enemy. Measures, late
indeed, but energetic, were also adopted for the internal defence of
the Austrian provinces. Otho, Count of Traun, in Lower, and Wolf,
Count of Weissenthurn, in Upper Austria, directed these with much
judgment and activity. The forest passes were guarded with abattis;
the fords, especially those of Ybbs and Ens, with palisaded works; and
the peasantry summoned and organised for the defence of the castles
and convents. Many more instances of courage and conduct occurred in
the defence of places than it would be possible here to particularize.
The inhabitants of Closterneuburg, commanded by the Sacristan of their
convent, Marcellin Ortner, on three occasions beat off the assault
of many thousand Turks. Gregory Müller, Abbot of Mölk, exchanged the
crosier for the sword, and at the head of the armed burghers, by the
skilful use of this irregular force, kept the Turks at a distance,
though they had encamped on the Steinfeld between St. Polten and
Wilhelmsburg, and had burnt the suburbs of St. Polten. 2000, however,
of the vassals of that rich abbey were dragged into captivity, 120
houses on its estates were burnt, and 5000 head of cattle carried off.
After the retreat of the Turks from before Vienna, the people of St.
Polten found a number of deserted children, of whom they kindly took
and kept charge, without ever discovering their parents. The defence
of the abbey of Lilienfeld forms a brilliant episode in the history of
the time. Many of the inhabitants of the adjacent districts, and among
them a large portion of the gentry, had taken refuge from the Tartar
cavalry in this place. On the nearer approach, however, of the dreaded
marauders, the greater part of these fugitives continued their retreat,
and sought a more assured refuge in Salzburg or the Tyrol. Not so the
brave abbot, Matthew Kolbries. He rallied round him his clergy and
vassals, fortified his convent, and prepared to defend it to the last.
He did a great deal more than this; for though deserted by all but a
small body of devoted adherents, after repelling several assaults,
instead of leaving his enemy to rally at leisure, he fell upon him
in a series of well-planned sallies and ambuscades, which by their
success elevated the courage of his adherents to the highest pitch of
daring. Following up these first successes, he fell by surprise on
a column of the Tartars near Mariazell, destroyed them almost to a
man, and brought back in triumph 200 rescued Christians, a mule load
of money, and forty heads of Tartars, whose bodies he had left for
example exposed on the roads. Three Turkish prisoners of distinction
were ransomed at from 2000 to 3000 ducats each. The casual accession
of a Bavarian officer and five troopers to his small force enabled him
to introduce into it something of military science and discipline.
Military genius was evidently not wanting to the man who, at the age of
sixty-three, could perform such exploits. Some Polish troops, who also
joined him, gave him more trouble by their indiscipline than assistance
by their military experience. With this motley band, however, he
struck some more severe blows on the parties of the enemy; and by
holding Lilienfeld till the Vizier was compelled to withdraw his light
troops from the country, and thus guarding the main pass into Styria,
he saved that province from all the horrors of Tartar invasion. The
value of that exemption may be gathered from the calculations made by
contemporary writers of authority, of the number of those who were
carried off into slavery from Austria, which amounts to 6000 men,
11,000 women, 19,000 girls, and 56,000 children. Among the girls were
200 of noble extraction. The example of the Abbot of Lilienfeld, though
eminently conspicuous, is not the only one which shows how much might
have been done to check the brave and rapacious, but undisciplined,
horsemen of the East, if the Austrian gentry had not, in a moment of
general consternation and depression, emigrated so largely to the
Tyrol and other places of safety. Many tales are related of troops of
marauders put to flight by the firm countenance of individual men, and
even women. No one of these stories can, perhaps, be so strictly relied
upon as to justify its insertion in the page of serious history; and
it is certain that in other instances the Tartar cavalry, by their
skill in horsemanship and individual daring, were found formidable
antagonists. Troops, however, whose occupation is plunder, and engaged
in a difficult country, are never safe from such a man as the Abbot
of Lilienfeld, and a few more such would at least have caused them to
concentrate their numbers, and to include a far less extent of country
within their ranges. On the 13th August, the Bavarian forces, 13,000 in
number, were ferried over the Danube near Mölk. They were received with
salvos of artillery and military music from the fortified abbey. The
Margrave of Bareuth crossed the river on the following day with 6000
men. The presence of this respectable force on the right bank of the
Danube freed the upper provinces from that of the invaders.

CHAPTER XIV.

From the end of July to September 11.

The corps of Tekeli had meanwhile prosecuted its operations in Upper
Hungary. As he was approaching Tyrnau, the Duke of Lorraine reinforced
the citadel of Presburg with some regiments of cavalry, and put the
remainder of his army in motion across the March field. Learning
that the town of Presburg was already occupied, and the citadel
threatened by the adherents of Tekeli, and also that 20,000 Turks and
20,000 Hungarians were encamped in the neighbourhood, he pushed on
towards the city. He succeeded in flinging an additional force into
the fortress, and, after some resistance, drove the enemy out of the
suburbs and town. The citizens, excusing their defection on the ground
of compulsion, renewed their fealty to the Emperor. The advanced guard
of the Polish army, under Prince Lubomirski, had meanwhile arrived, and
with their assistance the Duke on the following day gained a victory
which cleared the left bank of the Danube, and re-established the
communication with Komorn and Raab. The hostile camp fell entirely into
the victors’ hands. The Turks and Tekeli threw mutual blame upon each
other. To whichever it was due, their united forces, after ravaging the
March field, were overtaken by Lorraine near Stammersdorf, and again
completely defeated. The Pacha of Erlau with 1200 men were left dead
on the field, many more perished in attempting to swim the Danube, 22
standards were taken, and a body of 600 Hungarians deserted to the
enemy. Meanwhile the troops of the Empire were flocking in from all
quarters. The Bavarians have been already mentioned. The Elector of
Saxony, John George III., marched out of Dresden on the 22nd July with
12,000 men and 18 guns, and reached Crems on the 28th August. Sobieski
writes to his wife in great admiration of the Saxon troops, as well
dressed, complete in numbers, and well disciplined. “We may say of the
Germans what has been said of the horse, they do not know their own
strength.” The King of Poland left Cracow early in August. The Emperor
had undergone the humiliation of imploring the personal presence of
a sovereign whose policy and interests he had always thwarted, even
should he arrive without his army. This homage to his military talents
was doubtless grateful, but John Sobieski needed no stimulus when the
Turk was in the field. While the French ambassador was exerting all
his influence to detain him, and writing to Louis XIV. that he was
too corpulent for active service, he took leave of his wife, and,
after making his will, set out, accompanied by his son, a boy sixteen
years of age, in advance of his army. His march lay through a country
exposed to the incursions of Tartars and Hungarians, but he performed
it on horseback with an escort of some 2000 cavalry, and reached the
head-quarters of Lorraine in safety. He found them at Tuln, on the
right bank of the river, the force weak in numbers, and still employed
in the construction of the bridge which the Emperor in his letters
had announced as finished. Many of the German troops had not yet
arrived. Lorraine spake with anxiety of the condition of affairs. “Be
of good cheer,” replied Sobieski; “which of us at the head of 200,000
men would have allowed this bridge to be constructed within five
leagues of his camp? The Vizier is a man of no capacity.” The Polish
army, under Field Marshal Jablonowski, reached the bank of the Danube
opposite Tuln early in September. It amounted to about 26,000 men of
all arms, but with a very small proportion of infantry. After passing
them in review, the leaders held a council of war, in which Lorraine
suggested that the march for the relief of the city should be directed
over the Kahlenberg. The King gave an immediate assent, observing,
that he had left his royal dignity at Warsaw, and was prepared to act
with the Duke as with a friend and brother. On the other hand, no
jealousies would seem to have interfered to prevent an immediate and
frank acknowledgment of the authority of Sobieski as Commander-in-chief
of the assembled forces. It is not to be forgotten that the Duke of
Lorraine had been competitor with Sobieski for the crown of Poland.
Sobieski’s letters contain some graphic details of their first meeting,
which seems to have passed off at table with more joviality than was
consistent with the ordinary habits of Lorraine, who was free from
the German vice of drinking, but who on this occasion, beginning with
the lighter vintage of Moselle, passed on to the stronger wines of
Hungary. Sobieski describes him as modest and taciturn, strongly marked
with the small-pox, _le nez trez aquilin, et presque en peroquet_;
stooping, plain, and negligent in his attire. _Avec tout ça, il n’a
pas la mine d’un marchand mais d’un homme comme il faut, et même
d’un homme de distinction. C’est un homme avec qui je m’accorderais
facilement._ It was further decided that the Poles should cross the
river at Tuln and the Germans at Crems, so as to effect their junction
at the former place on the 5th September. The junction did not however
take place till the 7th. Three thousand Poles were detached towards the
March field to keep the Hungarians in check. The Christian army now
consisted of 85,000 men, Austrians, Poles, Bavarians, Saxons, Swabians,
and Franconians, with 186 pieces of artillery. Of this number, some
7000 were detached for the occupation of various posts, leaving about
77,000 effectives for field operations against the Turks. This force,
small in numbers if we consider the greatness of the stake at issue,
counted among its leaders four sovereigns and twenty-two other princes
of sovereign houses. The electoral houses of Germany were worthily
represented by Saxony and Bavaria. John George III., Elector of Saxony,
had seen much service in the cause of Austria, and had been the first
of the German princes to give a frank adhesion to her cause. Sobieski
describes him as speaking neither Latin nor French, and little German;
not addicted to harangues or compliments, _étourdi_, drunken, simple,
and good-natured. The man thus satirically painted was however a
sturdy specimen of the German race, and could deal hard blows in the
field. Maximilian Emanuel, of Bavaria, conspicuous in after years for
the misfortunes entailed upon him by his alliance with France against
Austria, and the principal victim of Marlborough’s success at Blenheim,
came forward now at the age of twenty-one, to save from destruction the
sovereign who, after rewarding him with the hand of a daughter, lived
to expel him for awhile from his dominions. He had the good sense now
to consign the conduct of his troops to experienced hands, and served
himself as a volunteer. Among the others were the Dukes of Sachsen
Lauenburg, Eisenach, and Weissenfels, of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Wirtemberg
and Holstein, Pfalzneuburg and Croy, the Margrave of Baireuth and Louis
of Baden afterwards so famous; the Landgrave of Hesse, the Princes of
Waldeck, Hohenzollern, Anhalt, and Salm; last and youngest, Eugene of
Savoy. The Prince of Waldeck commanded the troops of the Circles.

The literature of modern Europe, rich as it is in the correspondence
of eminent persons of both sexes, perhaps contains no collection
of letters of such engrossing interest as those written at this
period by John Sobieski to his wife, which have lately found an
eminent translator and commentator in the Count Plater. The familiar
correspondence of such a man as Sobieski, even if devoted to ordinary
occurrences and insignificant events, would derive an interest from
the character and fame of the writer which few such collections could
claim. In the case of these, however, the circumstances of the time
combine with the character of the man to enhance that interest to the
highest degree. They are the letters of an absent lover, pledged to
punctual and familiar correspondence, and consequently rich in minute
details. They are the military dispatches of one of the greatest
soldiers who ever lived, penned in moments snatched from hard-earned
repose, often when the night-lamp of his tent was growing pale before
the twilight of morning, and dealing with the hourly progress of one of
the greatest military transactions in history. Some passages of these
documents escaped at the time, and have been quoted by all writers on
the subjects concerned, from Voltaire and Madame de Sévigné to the
gazette writers of the day; but these passages, principally relating
to the great and notorious result, are not of greater interest, and
are of less historical value, than the remainder more lately rescued
from the obscurity of the Polish language which was the medium of his
most familiar intercourse with his absent wife. It is a singular trait
of ability in this mischievous woman, especially when we consider
the habitual distaste of her countrymen and countrywomen for the
acquisition of foreign languages, that she should have so completely
mastered the difficulties of a Sclavonic dialect as to speak and write
it with fluency and correctness. It is embarrassing to quote from these
letters, because there is scarcely a passage in them which does not
present the temptation. The series commences from the 29th August, the
first evening after taking leave of his wife at Cracow. This and the
five following letters carry him through the fatigues of the march, the
tedious ceremonies of his reception at Olmutz and other halting-places;
and the seventh, of the 9th September, is written from Tuln, the great
rendezvous, and one of the points of passage for the collected forces
of Poland and Germany. At every step the interest thickens; fresh
intelligence is announced of the desperate condition of the city; the
figures of men then, or afterwards, famous in history, are briefly
and graphically introduced to our notice; observations on the busy
present, and speculations on the doubtful future, are interwoven with
lively sketches of character and costume. At Tuln commenced the main
difficulties of the great operation on which the eyes of Europe were
concentered, difficulties which nothing but the gross negligence of the
Turks could have enabled the allies to surmount. The Tartar cavalry,
properly directed, might alone have rendered impossible the three days’
march, by forest paths, through a country destitute of provisions,
and scarcely practicable for artillery or carriages, which intervened
between the banks of the river and the heights of the Kahlenberg.
Baggage and commissariat were of necessity left behind, in the
neighbourhood of Tuln. It was necessary to weaken the fighting strength
of the army by a strong guard to protect these depôts from the Tartars,
and by heavy escorts for the transport of provisions from this base of
operation.

It was hardly to be expected that the heights of the Kahlenberg
themselves would be found unguarded; and to explore the condition of
this crowning post, the key to the main operation, was in itself a
task of the utmost hazard and delicacy. It was performed on the night
of the 10th by the king and the other principal commanders in person,
and this service separated him so far and so long from his army then
struggling up the precipices and through the forests behind, that the
greatest alarm was excited for his safety. The crest of the Kahlenberg,
with its castle and chapel, were found unoccupied; but the Turks, too
late aware of its importance, were moving towards it in the course
of the 11th, when, by great exertion, the first troops which came to
hand, five Saxon battalions of the left wing, with three guns, were
brought up to the summit. The Turks, finding themselves anticipated,
retired without a serious struggle, and the Saxon guns opening upon
their rear, gave signal to the city of its approaching salvation. The
king and the other commanders rejoined their several corps about midday
of the 11th, and the principal difficulties of the march having been
now overcome, the army was enabled to arrange itself in nearly the
order which was preserved through the following day of battle.[14] This
operation was conducted without disturbance from the enemy, except on
the extreme left, where General Leslie experienced some opposition
in the establishment of a battery. The report of this skirmish
roused Sobieski, not from slumber, which, as he states, was rendered
unattainable by the thunder of the Turkish batteries against the city,
but from the occupation of writing a long and detailed letter to his
wife. Disturbed in this enjoyment, the indefatigable man, described by
the French ambassador as too corpulent to ride, was again in the saddle
at three A. M. He appears to have ridden along the whole position, from
his tent on the extreme right to the Leopoldsberg on the left. This
exertion had the advantage of bringing him once more into personal
communication with Lorraine before that final issue which took place
on the following day, contrary indeed to the expectation or intention
of either, for neither contemplated at this moment the possibility of
bringing so vast an operation as the relief of the city within the
compass of a single day.

Nothing seems to have given Sobieski so much annoyance at this period
as the non-appearance of some Cossack levies, which his agents had
been despatched to raise. He writes of them in their absence in a
strain which might have been used by a Russian commander of our own
day, and which shows that the admirable qualities of the real Cossack
for the duty of light troops, especially against the Turk, had fully
displayed themselves in the seventeenth century. It is certain that
down to the latest period, the Vizier had no belief, or even suspicion,
that Sobieski had taken the field in person, or that any strong Polish
force had joined the army. The reported appearance of Polish troops was
accounted for by the known arrival of Lubomirski’s partisan corps.

The muster-roll of the Turkish army found in the tent of the Vizier
gives in round numbers a total of 160,000 men, and historians have
been ready enough to adopt a cypher, which would give a difference of
80,000 men as against the victorious party. As this document, however,
includes all detachments and garrisons, and also many commanders and
men who were certainly no longer in existence, the Pacha of Erlau,
for instance, who, with most of his troops, had perished, as has been
related, in the affair of Stammersdorf, it is as needless to dwell upon
the fallacy of such an assumption of numbers, as it would be difficult
to arrive at anything like accuracy with any other. If we accept the
statement of Kantemir, that, on the night before the battle, nearly a
fourth of the Turkish army disbanded itself, we can hardly calculate
the force remaining in the camp at more than 100,000, for whom,
exhausted and dispirited as they were, 80,000 untouched regular troops
were more than an equal match.

When the advance of the Christian army became no longer doubtful, the
Vizier called his Pachas about him to deliberate upon the mode in
which to meet the impending attack. The aged Pacha of Pesth, who has
been mentioned as adverse from the first to the march upon Vienna,
advised the Vizier to raise the siege without delay, to collect the
whole army, and, cutting down the neighbouring forests, to palisade
and entrench themselves and abide the attack. On the repulse of the
first onset, to launch the cavalry on both flanks of the enemy, and
thus decide his defeat. The majority of the council was in favour of
this proposal. The Vizier was obstinate in rejecting it, alleging, not
unjustly, that if the siege were once raised, the city would instantly
avail itself of the opportunity to repair its defences, and put itself
into condition to defy a renewed attempt. It would be difficult, if
the Janissaries were once withdrawn from the trenches, to persuade
them to return to their toil, even after the achievement of a victory
in the field. His opinion then was that a sufficient force should
be left in the approaches to carry on the siege operations without
interruption, and that the remainder should advance against the enemy,
whose inferior numbers would be easily crushed. The Pachas made some
further remonstrances, but were forced to give way to the unlimited
authority of their chief. On the 11th September all the Turkish troops
in the Leopoldstadt were withdrawn, and the greater part of the cavalry
were moved forward towards the Kahlenberg, near the base of which,
and on the Wienerberg, they threw up entrenchments; and, disposing
themselves in the shape of a crescent, they awaited the appearance
of the Imperialists. Between Weinhaus and Gerstorf are still to be
seen the traces of a considerable work, which bears the name of the
Turkenschanz, the site of one of their principal batteries. So long
previous as the 9th September, the Vizier, in his first alarm at
the approach of the enemy, had determined to collect his force on
the Wienerberg, and a field-tent had been pitched for him near the
so-called Spinnerkreuz. On the following day, however, he changed his
intention and plan, and moving the main portion of his force towards
the Kahlenberg, drew it up upon the heights between Grinzing and
Heiligenstadt. On the evening of the same day, the 10th, the advanced
guard of the Christian army arrived on the Kahlenberg, and the first
sound of its guns, as above described, was heard in Vienna, as they
opened from the heights on the columns of the Turks. The effect was one
of mingled joy and anxiety. The issue of the struggle was evidently
at hand, but that issue was still uncertain, and the night was one of
agonising suspense. The population not immediately employed in military
duty, was divided through the day between the churches and the roofs of
towers and houses; the first engaged in earnest supplication to Heaven,
the latter in surveying the movements of the Turkish camp, and watching
for the first gleam of the Christian weapons as they issued from the
wooded heights. The commandant, as evening closed in, despatched a
messenger, who swam the Danube with a letter for the Duke of Lorraine.
Its words were few. “No time to be lost!—no time indeed to be lost!”
This message was acknowledged by a cluster of rockets from Hermansdorf.
Orders were now issued by Count Stahremberg to all the troops, regular
and irregular, to hold themselves in readiness for a sally during the
expected battle of the morrow, or for joining the Christian army, and
driving the Turks out of the approaches. The night of the 11th of
September closed in upon this troubled scene. The man whose doom is
sealed will often sleep till morning calls him to the scaffold. Such
heavy sleep as his, the offspring of nervous excitement and exhaustion,
perhaps, was granted to the citizen of Vienna; but even this may be
doubted, for the criminal is assured of his fate. The doom of Vienna
was yet uncertain.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See Appendix.

CHAPTER XV.

September 12.

At sunrise of the 12th September, the crest of the Kahlenberg was
concealed by one of those autumnal mists which give promise of a
genial, perhaps a sultry day, and which, clinging to the wooded flanks
of the acclivity, grew denser as it descended, till it rested heavily
on the shores and the stream itself of the river below. From that
summit the usual fiery signals of distress had been watched through
the night by many an eye as they rose incessantly from the tower of
St. Stephen, and now the fretted spire of that edifice, so long the
target of the ineffectual fire of the Turkish artillerists, was faintly
distinguished rising from a sea of mist. As the hour wore on, and the
exhalation dispersed, a scene was disclosed which must have made those
who witnessed it from the Kahlenberg tighten their saddle-girths or
look to their priming. A practised eye glancing over the fortifications
of the city could discern from the Burg to the Scottish gate an
interruption of their continuity, a shapeless interval of rubbish and
of ruin, which seemed as if a battalion might enter it abreast. In face
of this desolation a labyrinth of lines extended itself, differing in
design from the rectilinear zigzag of a modern approach, and formed
of short curves overlapping each other, to use a comparison of some
writers of the time, like the scales of a fish. In these, the Turkish
lines, the miner yet crawled to his task, and the storming parties
were still arrayed by order of the Vizier, ready for a renewal of the
assault so often repeated in vain. The camp behind had been evacuated
by the fighting men; the horse-tails had been plucked from before
the tents of the Pachas, but their harems still tenanted the canvass
city; masses of Christian captives awaited there their doom in chains;
camels and drivers and camp followers still peopled the long streets of
tents in all the confusion of fear and suspense. Nearer to the base
of the hilly range of the Kahlenberg and the Leopoldsberg, the still
imposing numbers of the Turkish army were drawn up in battle array
ready to dispute the egress of the Christian columns from the passes,
and prevent their deployment on the plain. To the westward, on the
reverse flank of the range, the Christian troops might be seen toiling
up the ascent. As they drew up on the crest of the Leopoldsberg they
formed a half circle round the chapel of the Margrave, and when the
bell for matins tolled, the clang of arms and the noises of the march
were silenced. On a space kept clear round the chapel a standard with
a white cross on a red ground was unfurled, as if to bid defiance to
the blood red flag planted in front of the tent of Kara Mustapha. One
shout of acclamation and defiance broke out from the modern crusaders
as this emblem of a holy war was displayed, and all again was hushed
as the gates of the castle were flung open, and a procession of the
Princes of the Empire and the other leaders of the Christian host moved
forward to the chapel. It was headed by one whose tonsured crown and
venerable beard betokened the monastic profession. The soldiers crossed
themselves as he passed, and knelt to receive the blessing which
he gave them with outstretched hands. This was the famous Capuchin
Marco Aviano, friend and confessor to the Emperor, whose acknowledged
piety and exemplary life had earned for him the general reputation
of prophetic inspiration. He had been the inseparable companion of
the Christian army in its hours of difficulty and danger, and was now
here to assist at the consummation of his prayers for its success.
Among the stately warriors who composed his train, three principally
attracted the gaze of the curious. The first in rank and station was
a man somewhat past the prime of life, strong limbed and of imposing
stature, but quick and lively in speech and gesture, his head partly
shaved in the fashion of his semi-Eastern country, his hair, eyes,
and beard, dark-coloured. His majestic bearing bespoke the soldier
king, the scourge and dread of the Moslem, the conqueror of Choczim,
John Sobieski. His own attire is said to have been plain, but we
gather from his letters that in his retinue he displayed a Sclavonic
taste for magnificence which strongly contrasted with the economical
arrangements of Lorraine, and even of the two Electors. Painters, and
others studious of accuracy, may be glad to know that on this occasion
the colour of his dress was sky blue, and that he rode a bay horse. An
attendant bearing a shield, with his arms emblazoned, always preceded
him, and his place in battle was marked by another who carried a plume
on his lance point, a signal more conspicuous, though less inseparable,
than the famous white plume of Henry IV. On his left was his youthful
son Prince James, armed with a breastplate and helmet, and, in addition
to an ordinary sword, with a short and broad-bladed sabre, a national
weapon of former ages; on his right was the illustrious and heroic
ancestor of the present reigning house of Austria, Charles of Lorraine.
Behind these moved many of the principal members of those sovereign
houses of Germany whose names and titles have been already specified.
At the side of Louis of Baden walked a youth of slender frame and
moderate stature, but with that intelligence in his eye which pierced
in after years the cloud of many a doubtful field, and swayed the
fortunes of empires. This was the young Eugene of Savoy, who drew his
maiden sword in the quarrel in which his brother had lately perished.
The service of high mass was performed in the chapel by Aviano, the
King assisting at the altar, while the distant thunder of the Turkish
batteries formed strange accompaniment to the Christian choir. The
Princes then received the sacrament, and the religious ceremony was
closed by a general benediction of the troops by Aviano. The King then
stepped forward and conferred knighthood on his son, with the usual
ceremonies, commending to him as an example for his future course the
great commander then present, the Duke of Lorraine. He then addressed
his troops in their own language to the following effect:—“Warriors
and friends! Yonder in the plain are our enemies, in numbers greater
indeed than at Choczim, where we trod them under foot. We have to fight
them on a foreign soil, but we fight for our own country, and under the
walls of Vienna we are defending those of Warsaw and Cracow. We have to
save to-day, not a single city, but the whole of Christendom, of which
that city of Vienna is the bulwark. The war is a holy one. There is a
blessing on our arms, and a crown of glory for him who falls. You fight
not for your earthly sovereign, but for the King of kings. His power
has led you unopposed up the difficult access to these heights, and
has thus placed half the victory in your hands. The infidels see you
now above their heads; and with hopes blasted and courage depressed,
are creeping among valleys destined for their graves. I have but one
command to give,—follow me. The time is come for the young to win
their spurs.” Military music and the shouts of thousands greeted this
pertinent harangue, and as it closed, five cannon shots gave the signal
for the general advance. A sharp fire of musketry from the small hamlet
of Kahlenberg near Nussdorf soon announced that the left wing, under
the immediate command of the Duke of Lorraine, had felt the enemy,
and it increased as his attack developed itself towards Heiligenstadt
and Döbling. The centre, commanded by the Elector of Bavaria and the
Prince of Waldeck, moved upon Währing and Weinhaus. The right wing,
under the King of Poland, issued from the woods near Dornbach. There
is no doubt that the general disposal of the confederated forces was
entirely arranged by the King. His rank alone would have entitled
him to a nominal precedency, which, even in the case of an ordinary
sovereign, it would have been convenient to admit; for, previously to
his arrival in the camp, disputes had already arisen between Saxony
and Bavaria, and Vienna might have been taken twice over before such
disputes between German sovereigns could have been settled. The respect
however in which John Sobieski’s military talents were held, his vast
experience of the Turkish manner of fighting, and the dread which his
presence was known to inspire amongst that people, were such as to
obtain a ready and real acquiescence in his slightest suggestions, so
long as the difficulty lasted and the danger was imminent. His order
of battle was a deep one. To avoid so great an extension of front as
would have compelled him to throw his right flank beyond the little
river Wien instead of keeping that stream on his right, he adopted a
formation in three lines, the third acting as a reserve. The troops
were strictly directed to preserve their ranks on the approach of
the enemy, and halt to receive his fire and return their own; then
to advance steadily, and make good the ground so gained—the infantry
gradually developing itself to the right and left, and allowing the
cavalry to fill up the intervals, and take its full share in the
further advance, charging as opportunity should offer.

The first operation of Kara Mustapha was worthy of one in whom the
cruelty was united with the ignorance of the savage—it was the
slaughter of the defenceless captives of all ages and either sex, with
whom, to the number it is said of 30,000, his camp was crowded. It was
obeyed to the letter; and even the inmates of the soldiers’ harems,
women far different in morals from the courtezans of the Christian
camp, are said to have perished. The command of the right wing, which
occupied strong and broken ground opposite the Duke of Lorraine, was
intrusted to the Pacha of Mesopotamia. The Vizier himself commanded
in the centre opposite Währing, and the left wing opposite Hernals
was commanded by the old Pacha of Pesth. The cavalry were in advance
towards the base of the Kahlenberg. The hollow ways between Nussdorf
and Heiligenstadt were strongly entrenched and fiercely defended.
It was, as has been noticed, the original intention of the king to
content himself on this day with the descent of the acclivity and
the establishment of the army in favourable order and position for
a general action on the morrow, and he had agreed upon this course
with Lorraine, but the fierceness of the struggle on the left of the
allies drew his forces gradually to its support, and brought on a
more immediate decision. To descend the wooded acclivities without
deranging the scientific order of battle devised and adopted was an
operation only less tedious and difficult than the ascent of the
preceding days, and it was to be performed in the presence of an
enemy for courage and numbers not to be despised. The left wing was
engaged for some hours before the Bavarians in the centre or the Poles
on the right could deploy. The defence of the broken ground near
Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt on the part of the Turks was obstinate,
but having occupied in haste and too late their present position at
the foot of the heights, they had not brought up their artillery,
and their dismounted cavalry, of which the troops here engaged were
principally composed, were not a match for the Imperialists, who drove
the enemy steadily before them from ravine to ravine, and carried the
two villages. It is probable that Lorraine, adhering to the original
scheme of action, might have contented himself with this success for
the day, and it is not certain at what period of the action a contrary
and bolder determination first suggested itself to either the King or
himself. The Duke is said to have consulted at a critical period the
Saxon Field-Marshal Geltz, who, observing the progress of the Bavarians
and Poles towards the centre and right, gave it for his opinion that
the Duke might sleep that night if he would in Vienna. Eugene of Savoy
was employed during the action in conveying a message from Lorraine
to the King. We may indulge ourselves with the conjecture that he was
charged with this decision, one worthy of such a messenger. Accounts
differ as to the hour at which the action became general by the
deployment of the Bavarians and Poles. Some put it as late as two P. M.
It is said, however, that towards eleven o’clock the Imperialists on
the left were slackening their advance to make good the ground they
had gained, and to wait for the appearance of their friends, when the
gilded cuirasses of the Polish cavalry flashed out from the defiles of
the Wenersberg, and the shout of “Live Sobieski” ran along the lines.
The heat was oppressive, and the King halted and dismounted his people
for a hasty repast. This concluded, the whole line advanced, and the
battle soon raged in every part of an amphitheatre admirably adapted
by nature for such a transaction. The Turks had profited by the lull
to bring up heavy reinforcements, and the Vizier flung himself on the
Poles in very superior numbers. In an early part of the encounter, a
body of Polish Hulans compromised itself by a rash advance, and was
for a time surrounded. It was extricated by the prompt and judicious
assistance of Waldeck and his Bavarians, but lost many officers of
distinction, and among them, a Potocki, the treasurer Modrjewski, and
the Colonel Ahasuerus. The second line was brought up by Sobieski, and
the Turks were driven before their desperate valour through ravines and
villages, and the fortified position of Hernals, back upon the glacis
of their camp. The city of tents with all its treasures was almost
within their grasp; but it is said that even with such a spectacle
before him, Sobieski’s caution all but induced him to pause till the
morrow. The approach to the camp was protected by a ravine, the ground
in front was undulating and strengthened with works, and occupied by
a strong force and a powerful artillery. The King was in face of the
centre of this position; his right covered by Jablanowski against the
attacks of the Tartar cavalry. It was five o’clock; his infantry was
not yet at hand; the only artillery which had kept pace with the speed
of his advance consisted of two or three light pieces which the veteran
commander of his artillery, Konski, had brought up by force of arm
and levers. Sobieski pointed these at the field tent of crimson silk,
from which the Vizier was giving his orders. The ammunition carriages
were, however, far behind, and a few charges carried by hand were soon
exhausted. A French officer, it is said, rammed home the last cartridge
with his gloves, his wig, and a packet of French newspapers.

At this moment of hesitation the infantry came up. They were led by
the Count Maligni, the King’s brother-in-law, against a height which
commanded the quarters of the Vizier. The attack was successful,
and the King determined on the instant to pursue his fortune. As he
led his troops in a direct line for the Vizier’s tent, his terrible
presence was recognized by the infidel. “By Allah the King is really
among us,” exclaimed the Khan of the Crimea, Selim Gieray. The mass
retreated in confusion. Those who awaited the attack went down before
those lances of the Polish cavalry of which it was said by a Polish
noble to one of their kings, that if the heavens were to fall they
would sustain them on their points. The Pachas of Aleppo and Silistria
perished in the fray. The panic became universal and the rout complete.
The Vizier, hurried along with the stream, weeping and cursing by
turns—had neither time to deliberate nor power to command. By six
o’clock his gorgeous tent was in possession of Sobieski. His charger,
too heavily caparisoned for rapid flight, was still held by a slave
at the entrance. One of the golden stirrups was instantly sent off by
the conqueror to the Queen as a token of the defeat and flight of its
late owner. On the left, meanwhile, the progress of Lorraine, though
less rapid from the difficulties of the ground and the tenacity of the
resistance, had been equally victorious. The great Turkish redoubt, of
which the traces yet remain, held out against repeated assaults till
near five o’clock, when Louis of Baden, at the head of a regiment of
Saxon dragoons, dismounted for the purpose, and two Austrian regiments
of infantry, carried the work. The Turks now gave way at every point,
and poured into their camp in the wildest confusion. The Margrave
Louis, at the head of a squadron of dragoons, was the first to open
a communication with the city from the counterscarp of the Scottish
gate. Stahremberg ordered an immediate sally against the approaches
of the enemy, from which they had maintained through the day as heavy
a fire as on any previous day of the siege, though no assault had
been attempted by the strong body of Janissaries left in them for
that purpose. These men, abandoned now without orders to their fate,
endeavoured to turn the guns of the batteries upon the Imperialists.
The attempt, however, in the general confusion which ensued, was vain,
and the main body of the Janissaries, unable or unwilling to retreat,
was cut to pieces in the course of the night. The camp meanwhile fell
into the undisputed possession of the Poles.

Previous precaution, or a few moments’ halt at St. Ulric, enabled
the Vizier to save the sacred standard of the Prophet. One of the
many standards captured was sent by Sobieski to the Pope under the
supposition that it was the famous Palladium in question, but this
proved to be a mistake. It is probable also that the mass of the
treasure, which is supposed to have been very great in the Vizier’s
exchequer, had been removed; and we learn from the King of Poland’s
letters that considerable sums of coin were hastily divided among the
Vizier’s attendants at the last moment, and carried off. No great
amount of coin or bullion was found in the tents. Every other item in
the long catalogue of the treasures and luxuries which the Vizier had
accumulated round his person fell into the hands of the Poles. The
Turks continued their flight without intermission in the direction of
Raab, where the force still employed in the blockade of that fortress
afforded them a rallying point. It was, however, impossible for the
Christian leaders to assure themselves at so late an hour of the full
extent of the enemy’s discomfiture, or even to consider themselves
secure against a night attack. Great exertions were therefore made both
by the King and the Duke to keep their troops well in hand through the
night. The King, whose advance had led him to the very centre of the
camp, found it necessary to resort to threats of summary and capital
punishment to prevent his whole army from dispersing itself at once
to gather the rich harvest of the Turkish tents. These threats were,
as may be imagined, only partially effectual. Tents guarded in front
were cut open from behind, and discipline as usual gave way before the
attraction of spoil. The Germans had no such immediate opportunities
for plunder. Two regiments only of Austrian dragoons were despatched
in pursuit as far as the Fischa stream. The slaughter of this great
battle was not great in proportion to the numbers engaged and the
results obtained. The loss of the Turks has been computed at 25,000
men. Among these was that body of Janissaries, who were forgotten, and
left without orders in the trenches, and were cut to pieces during the
night. The King describes the Turks as defending themselves desperately
even in full flight. In this point of view, he says, they made the
finest retreat in the world. That of the Christians has been stated
at 1000 killed and 3000 wounded, which is probably far less than the
truth, for the Poles alone lost 100 officers, among them some of their
first nobles. In the centre the loss of the Bavarians was probably
trifling, but on the left the struggle was long and severe. A Prince
of Croy fell here in the early part of the action. In the Vizier’s
encampment was found the Polish envoy Proski, who, from the period of
his sovereign’s junction with Austria, had been kept in fetters, under
constant menace of the sabre or the bowstring, and now owed his life
and liberation to the confusion of the moment. Kunitz also, an agent
in Caprara’s suite, who had been detained in the Turkish camp, and had
found means to send occasional intelligence to Stahremberg, escaped
in a Turkish disguise during the action. A Polish writer, Rubinkoski,
gives a rough list of the artillery and its appurtenances abandoned in
the lines:—60 guns of 48 lbs., 60 of 24 lbs., 150 of various lesser
calibre, 40 mortars, 9000 ammunition waggons, 100,000 oxen, 25,000
tents, 1,000,000 lbs. of powder. To this may be added 10,000 camels,
5000 oxen, mules, sheep, &c., and immense stores of other provision.
Among those accidental results of events which the political economist
and the philosopher loves to notice, is the fact that the popular
use of coffee in Germany is to be dated from this period, and is due
to the plunder of the Turkish camp. Stahremberg’s brave and faithful
messenger, Kolschitzki, was rewarded by permission to set up the first
coffee-house in Vienna. The head of the corporation of coffee providers
is bound to this day to have in his house a portrait of this patriarch
of his profession.[15] Another inventory of the siege-stores actually
brought into the arsenal of Vienna shows a considerable amount, as well
as variety of articles, but can give but an imperfect notion of the
vast provision accumulated, as the army authorities could but glean
after the plunderers of the three first days. The King writes to his
wife that the quantity of ammunition saved was at most a third of the
whole, and says that the continual explosions in the camp were like
the last judgment. His letters give some very amusing details of that
portion of the spoils of the Vizier’s tent which he contrived to rescue
for his own share from the fangs of his officers. They illustrate also
the character of the man whose penetralia were thus rudely exposed
to investigation, and show that Kara Mustapha had superadded every
description of refinement to the simpler sensuality of the East.
Tissues and carpets and furs are natural appendages of Oriental rank
and wealth, and jewelled arms and quivers, studded with rubies and
pearls, were equally consistent with his functions as commander of
the armies of the faithful. Baths, fountains, a rabbit warren, and a
menagerie, were found within the encampment. A parrot took wing and
foiled the pursuit of the soldiers. An ostrich had been beheaded by
the Vizier’s own hand, as if it had been a woman of the harem, to
prevent its falling into Christian hands. This rarity had been taken
from the Imperial Menagerie at the Favorita, where the King mentions
having found a famished lioness and a small body of Janissaries, who
had been left behind at that post, and still held out some days after
the action. The Janissaries surrendered to the personal summons of the
King. Their lives were spared, and the lioness fed by order of the
good-natured conqueror. “The Vizier,” writes the King, “is a _galant
homme_, and has made us fine presents: everything in particular which
came near his person is of the most _mignon_ and refined description.
Father Louis will have reason to rejoice, for I have in my possession
the medicine chest of the Vizier. Among its contents are oils, and
gums, and balms, which Pecovini[16] is never tired of admiring. Among
other things we have found some rare fishes called Eperlans de mer.
_Informez-vous-en, mon cœur, chez le Père Louis; ce doit être une chose
précieuse pour rechauffer les entrailles._” Among the treasures of the
Vizier, diamonds were found in great profusion; many, set in girdles
and otherwise, fell into the hands of the King, and many more carried
off by the officers and soldiers. The King remarks that they were not
used for ornament by the Turks of his day, and conjectures that they
were destined to adorn the ladies of Vienna when transferred to the
harems of the Vizier and his Pachas.

Among other trophies of interest, Roman Catholic historians have
particularized an oaken cross six ells in height, remarkable from
the fact that in the camp of the infidel it was set up for the daily
celebration of mass by one of their Christian allies, Servanus
Kantacuzenos, Prince of Wallachia. A chapel was built for it in the
so-called Gatterholz, near Schönbrunn, on the spot where it had thus
braved the scoffs of the Moslem. It was stolen thence in 1785.

As far as a considerable lapse of intervening years permits us to
decide, this great action appears to have been planned with surpassing
judgment, and conducted with that steady valour and perseverance on the
part both of officers and men, to give scope and effect to which all
rules of war were invented, and without which these rules are useless.
History presents few instances in which an extensive operation has
been conducted with such cordial concert between bodies of different
nations commanded in several cases by their respective sovereigns,
and in which jealousies of precedence and professional rivalries
appear to have been so completely laid aside during the action. The
only instance of any apparent deficiency in this respect is that of
a refusal of the Prince of Waldeck to support an attack directed by
the Duke of Lorraine; but even in this case there is every reason to
suppose that he considered it to involve a departure from the earnest
injunctions of the chief in command, the King, who had directed him to
keep his troops in hand for the support of the right wing. When the
discomfiture of the Polish cavalry had compromised the safety of that
wing, and with it the fate of the battle, we find the German troops,
probably the Bavarians, prompt and efficient to the rescue; and on
the left, Saxons, intermingled with Austrians, fought together, as if
under one common banner. The stout elector himself was in the thickest
of the fray. He is said to have been splashed with Turkish blood so as
scarcely to be recognised. With the exception of the first somewhat
rash attack of the Poles, there is no appearance of any indulgence of
that untempered enthusiasm which the occasion might have excused. Order
and steadiness seem to have pervaded the whole area of the Christian
operations. Attacks were everywhere duly supported, failures retrieved,
and obstacles of ground successively overcome, in a manner which showed
a grave consciousness of the magnitude of the stake at issue.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] The first coffee-house in Europe was established in Constantinople
in 1551. A century later, in 1652, a Greek established one in London.
The first in France was at Marseilles in 1671, in Paris the following
year. In Germany that of Kolschitzki was the first, the second was
opened at Leipzic in 1694. In 1700 Vienna counted four, in 1737 eleven.
In the city and suburbs there are now one hundred.

[16] The King’s Italian physician.

CHAPTER XVI.

September 13.

At sunrise of the 13th the Viennese rushed forth in crowds to taste the
first sweets of their liberation from a two months’ imprisonment. The
only gate yet open, the Stuben, was soon clogged with the multitude,
and the greater number clambered over the rubbish of the breaches,
eager to gratify in the Turkish camp their curiosity, or their
rapacity, or both. With respect to the more transportable articles of
value, the Pole had been before them; but in the article of provisions
there was yet much for hungry men to glean. Prices rapidly fell, and
superfluity succeeded to starvation.

Among those who sought the camp with other purposes than plunder
or curiosity, was the good Bishop Kollonitsch. His inexhaustible
benevolence found employment there in collecting and saving some 500
infants, whose mothers, many of them, as is supposed, Turkish women,
had perished by the swords of their ruthless masters. The King mentions
one instance of a beautiful child whom he saw lying with its skull
cloven; but in general even Turkish inhumanity had shrunk from the
task of child-murder. These, with many half-murdered mothers and some
Christian adult survivors of the massacre, the Bishop transported to
the city in carriages, at his own cost, and took measures for the
future support and education of the infants thus rescued. Popes may
spare themselves the trouble of the forms, the ceremonies, and the
intrigues necessary for adding such names as that of Kollonitsch to the
list of saints in the Romish calendar: the recital of these actions
puts the Devil’s advocate out of court, and the simple record, though
traced by a Protestant pen, is their best canonization. Another worthy
member of the church, the Father Aviano, had recently performed a
service for which the Duke of Lorraine and the army had doubtless
reason to thank him. As confessor to the Emperor he had used his
influence to prevent the latter from embarrassing the army with his
presence at Crems, and distracting men and officers from their duty by
the etiquettes and ceremonies which that presence would have inflicted,
and the intrigues which it would have fostered. On the news, however,
of the victory, the Emperor had dropped down the river as far as
Durrenstein, and thither the Duke of Lorraine despatched the Count
Auersperg with the details of the late occurrences. At ten A. M. of
the 13th, the Commandant Stahremberg issued forth from the walls he
had so stoutly defended to visit the camp and exchange congratulations
with the leaders of the liberating army. On this morning, too, the Duke
of Lorraine and the Elector of Saxony met with the King of Poland for
the first time since the mass of the Kahlenberg. The meeting between
all these worthies had every appearance, in the first instance, of
cordiality. They perambulated the camp and the approaches together amid
the acclamations of the troops; but when they entered the town, the
King had the shrewdness soon to perceive that, though the gratitude of
the people was as warm as the cordial and kindly nature of the Viennese
could make it, its full expression was checked by authority. In two
churches which he entered the people pressed to kiss his hand; but when
a few voices uttered the _vivat_, which had evidently been forbidden by
the police, he recognised at once in the clouded mien of the Austrian
authorities that jealousy and ingratitude which proved afterwards the
only guerdon of his vast services. At an angle of the wall between the
Burg and Scottish gates, the King, wearied by the heat of the day,
rested for awhile; a stone, with his name inscribed, marked the spot
till the year 1809, when the French engineers blew up the rampart.
In one of the above-mentioned churches, that of the Augustines, a
grand _Te Deum_ was sung. The Abbé Coyer remarks that the magistracy
were absent from this ceremony, which perhaps explains a passage in
a letter of the King, in which he says:—“I perceive that Stahremberg
is not on a good understanding with the magistrates of the city.” The
sermon was preached from the famous text—“There was a man sent from
God, and his name was John”—a happy plagiarism from the quotation of
Scripture by Pope Pius V. on the occasion of the victory of Lepanto.
The service concluded, 300 cannon shots from the ramparts spread wide
the intelligence of the relief of the city—no superfluous announcement;
for in Wiener Neustadt and other places the trembling inhabitants had
drawn a contrary conclusion from the sudden cessation of the firing,
and thought the city lost. The King, after dining with the commandant,
only delayed his departure to hold a long discourse with a man of much
accomplishment, the court interpreter, Meninski, whose conversation had
probably more charms for him than that of the dull notabilities by whom
he was surrounded. He was himself a good linguist, and a proficient in
the Turkish language. This over, he hastened to quit the scene of cold
civilities for the camp. He was escorted to the gates by the populace.
It may be mentioned that during the dinner an alarm was raised that the
Turks had rallied, and were advancing. The King desired his officers
present to leave the feast and mount, and was doubtless preparing to
follow, when they returned with assurance of the falsehood of the
report. This circumstance is mentioned in a very simple and detailed
diary of the siege by the Doctor of Laws, Nicholas Hocke, one of the
most curious of the many contemporary publications. The electors of
Saxony and Bavaria appear to have been exempt from any share of the
feeling of jealousy manifested by Austria. Both in the first hour of
enthusiasm offered to accompany the King to the end of the world. The
former indeed soon found his appetite for a Hungarian campaign subside,
and shortly withdrew with his army to his electoral dominions. The
younger Bavarian thought fit to pass a longer apprenticeship under
so great a master in the art of war. The Duke of Lorraine had little
exercise of his own discretion; he knew too well by what tenure the
command of the army of Austria was held to do otherwise than reflect
the livid colour of the spirit in which the hereditary sovereign of the
House of Hapsburg contemplated the elective King of Poland. The King’s
letters are full of complaints of the unworthy treatment which he daily
received from the Duke and his subordinates; but we may charitably
ascribe such mean conduct on the part of so great a commander to
influence from above. In an early letter the King describes him by
report as speaking little, and timidly, from the constant dread of
infringing on the instructions of the court. Some jealous feeling was
doubtless excited, and might be excused by the fact that the chances
of battle had given the Polish sovereign and his army prior and
exclusive possession of the spoils.

The King, immediately on his return to his quarters, directed a removal
of them in advance. Some of his cavalry indeed were already on the
track of the enemy, killing and taking prisoners in great numbers.
There were cogent reasons, both political as well as military, for his
removing himself as soon as possible from the immediate neighbourhood
of Vienna. The heat of the autumnal season had made the camp and
its environs one vast charnel, swarming with flies and vermin. This
circumstance had caused the Duke of Lorraine to transfer his quarters
from Ebersdorf to Mansdorf, and would alone have induced the King
to follow such example. He was however also aware that his presence
at Vienna was an obstacle to the expected entrance of the Emperor,
who shrunk from any public acknowledgment of the services which had
saved his crown from danger and his capital from destruction, at
the expense of the most trifling infringement of etiquette, or the
momentary concession of a point of which he was peculiarly tenacious.
The practice, as regarded the reception of crowned heads in general,
offered no difficulty. It was not derogatory to the Imperial dignity in
French phraseology to give them the right; but the claim of an elective
monarch to this distinction had always been disputed by Austria. “Je
suis fort aise,” writes the King, “d’éviter toutes ces cérémonies.”
He moved to the neighbourhood of Schwechat in the first instance.
He writes on the 17th from Schonau, some fifteen miles from Vienna,
on the road to Presburg, describing the interview which, after the
removal of difficulties, did take place with the Emperor. The latter,
having ascertained the departure of the King, landed at Nussdorf on
the 19th, where he was received by the princes and other commanders
of the German troops. After inspecting the camp and defences, he
attended a solemn thanksgiving in the cathedral, at which the bishop
Kollonitsch presided, and reviewed and thanked the burgher guard and
free companies, &c. who lined the streets. On the 15th he reviewed the
Bavarian forces near St. Marx, and afterwards took heart of grace and
accomplished the dreaded interview with the King at Schwechat. That
it ever took place at all was due, however, to the straightforward
proceeding of the King, who, finding himself put off with excuses of
the clumsiest manufacture, asked the courtier Schafgotsch the plain
question whether the ceremonial of the right hand was or was not the
cause of the delay. He extorted for once the plain answer, Yes, and
gravely proposed an expedient for obviating the difficulty, which was,
that the two sovereigns should meet face to face on horseback, and
remain in that position, at the head the one of his army, the other of
his suite; the one attended by his son, the other, as the head of the
Empire, by the Electors. This happy expedient was accepted, and the
interview took place.

The King’s own account of this singular interview is doubtless more
to be depended upon than the numerous Austrian relations, which extol
the condescension and cordiality of the Emperor. “Of the Electors,
the Emperor was only accompanied by the Bavarian. Saxony had already
quitted him. He had in his suite some fifty horsemen, employés, and
ministers of his court. He was preceded by trumpets, and followed by
body guards and ten foot attendants. I will not draw you a portrait
of the Emperor, for he is well known. He was mounted on a Spanish bay
horse. He wore an embroidered _juste au corps_, a French hat, with an
agrafe and red and white plumes; a belt mounted with sapphires and
diamonds; a sword the same. I made him my compliments in Latin, and in
few words.[17] He answered in prepared phrases in the same language.
Being thus facing each other, I presented to him my son, who advanced
and saluted him. The Emperor did not even put his hand to his hat.
I remained like one terrified. He used the same behaviour towards
the senators and Hetmans, and even towards his connexion the prince
palatine of Belz.[18] To avoid scandal and public remarks, I addressed
a few more words to the Emperor, after which I turned my horse round;
we saluted, and I retook the route for my camp. The Palatine of
Russia[19] showed my army to the Emperor, at his desire; but our people
have been much provoked, and complain loudly that the Emperor did
not deign to thank them, even with his hat, for all their pains and
privations. Since this separation, every thing has suddenly changed;
it is as if they knew us no longer. They give us neither forage nor
provisions. The Pope had sent money for these to the Abbé Buonvisi, but
he is stopped at Lintz.”

The King does not mention the words of his reply to the Emperor’s
harangue, “I am glad, Sire, to have rendered you this small service.”
The Emperor is said two days afterwards to have sent, with a present of
a sword for Prince James, a clumsy apology for the silence and coldness
of his demeanour.

We cannot certainly judge of passages like these by the standard
of our present modes of European thought and action. There may be
circumstances under which these apparent air-bubbles become ponderable
realities. In dealing, for instance, with the Emperor of China, the
slightest abandonment of a point of etiquette might involve the most
serious consequences, and the concession of a diplomatist could perhaps
only be retrieved by the guns of an admiral. At the worst we might
smile at the pedantic tenacity of the courts of Vienna or Versailles
of the seventeenth century on points of ceremonial and precedence, but
no such considerations can temper the indignation which the perusal
of Sobieski’s letters excites, at the practical and substantial
ingratitude and neglect he experienced at the hands of Austria from the
moment that his services ceased to be indispensable. That some quarrels
and jealousies should arise from the juxtaposition of the Sclavonic
and Teutonic elements was perhaps inevitable. To be cheated, starved,
and neglected, is usually the lot of armies serving in the territory
of an ally whom they cannot openly coerce and pillage; but the Polish
sovereign had to endure more than this. His sick were denied boats to
remove them down the river from the pestilential atmosphere of the
camp; his dead, even the officers, were denied burial in the public
cemeteries. The starving soldier who approached the town in search
of provisions was threatened to be fired upon. The baggage, including
that of the King, was pillaged—the horses of stragglers on their road
to rejoin the army carried off by force—men on guard over the guns they
had taken, robbed of their effects; and every complaint treated with
cold neglect and every requisition dismissed almost without an answer.
The royal tents, which before the battle, though, as the King observes,
spacious enough, could not contain the throng of distinguished
visitors, were now deserted, and the demeanour of the Duke of Lorraine
himself and every other Austrian authority, showed that this treatment
was deliberate and systematic. It may have been some satisfaction to
Sobieski, it almost becomes one to his admirers now, to find that the
Austrian government was impartial in its ingratitude, and exercised
on others, besides the Poles, its singular talent for disgusting and
offending those who had done it service. The Elector of Saxony, as we
have seen, lost no time in withdrawing his person and his troops. The
father Aviano departed for Italy, disgusted with the intrigues of the
court and the licence of the camp. The Duke of Saxe Lauenburg retired,
offended by the only instance in which the Emperor appears to have
shown a creditable sense of his obligations. The hero of the defence,
Count Stahremberg, was justly rewarded with 100,000 crowns, the golden
fleece, and the rank of field-marshal. The Duke of Saxe Lauenburg, who
had held high command in the late action, considered himself ill-used
by this promotion over his head of an officer inferior to himself, as
also to Caprara and to Leslie, in length of service. Lastly, the Duke
of Lorraine himself had as little reason as any one to be satisfied.
The King writes of him later, more in pity than in anger, “the poor
devil has neither any of the spoils of war, nor any gratification
from the Emperor.” We have indeed met with no instance but that of
Stahremberg in which any signal mark of favour or munificence was
bestowed on any party conspicuous in the late transactions. Gold
medals and nominations to the dignity of state counsellor were indeed
awarded to many of the city officials. The young volunteer, Eugene,
was attached to the service for which he had quitted that of France by
his nomination to the Colonelcy of a regiment of dragoons which still
bears his name; but this promotion only took place in December, and was
rather a retaining fee to a young man of high rank and promise than a
reward for positive service. Kollonitsch received a cardinal’s hat from
the Pope; and Daun, Sereni, and other distinguished officers, obtained
from the liberality of the city rewards in plate and money, more
commensurate with the exhausted state of the municipal exchequer than
with the value of their services; the sums varying from 400 rix-dollars
to 100 florins.

The state of affairs above described affords some reason for surprise,
that the King should have persevered any further in his co-operation
with the Imperial troops. He was as free to depart as the Emperor of
Saxony. The Abbé Coyer supposes that he still entertained hopes of
procuring a bride for his son in the person of an Austrian Archduchess,
and, as a consequence of such a connexion, the establishment of his
descendants on an hereditary throne in Poland. The treatment, however,
which he experienced at the hands of Austria could have left him little
reliance on such expectations, and his letters to the Queen indicate a
higher motive for his perseverance, in a sense of the obligation of the
oath by which he had bound himself to the assistance of the Emperor.
This, and his appetite for military success, are sufficient to account
for his endurance. The Emperor, on the other hand, if we may trust the
Abbé, would have heard of his departure for Warsaw with pleasure, being
advised of some Hungarian intrigues for raising up a rival to Tekeli
in the person of the young Prince James, and placing him on the throne
of Hungary. There is no evidence to show that Sobieski was influenced
by any ambition but that of serving the common cause of Christianity,
and adding to the military laurels which, in his case, almost hid
the crown. One satisfaction Sobieski allowed himself in writing an
autograph letter to the King of France, to whom, as the writer well
knew, the tidings it contained would be gall and wormwood. The King
also made over to the Elector of Bavaria some choice articles of the
Turkish plunder, in the hope that, through him, they might find their
way to the Dauphiness of France, and to the Tuileries. The following
Pasquinade of the time is neat and bitter enough to deserve insertion
here:—

                  TRIA MIRANDA!
    Omnes Christiani arma sumunt contra Turcam,
                      Præter Christianissimum.
    Omnes filii Ecclesiæ bellum contra Turcam parant,
                      Præter Primogenitum.
    Omnia animalia laudant Deum ob partam de Turcis victoriam,
                      Præter Gallum.

The endeavours which Louis XIV. had made to detach, at all risks
to Christendom, the King of Poland from the Austrian alliance, and
the satisfaction with which he had viewed the critical position of
the Austrian capital, were no secret. It is true that, to preserve
appearances, he had raised the siege of Luxemburg and forborne an
invasion of the Spanish Netherlands on pretence of setting free
the King of Spain to assist his Austrian relations. These devices,
however, deceived no one, and it was generally believed that it was
his intention, after the humiliation of Austria should have been
accomplished, to come forward at the head of the large force he was
collecting on the Rhine as the saviour of Christendom.

A sovereign more deeply concerned in the issue than Louis, the
Sultan, was perhaps the better prepared of the two for the reception
of the unwelcome tidings of the relief of Vienna. The report of the
confidential emissary despatched by him to the camp had been so
unfavourable as to dissipate at once the expectation of success which
no one down to that period had dared to represent as doubtful. Every
preparation indeed had been made at Constantinople for a general
illumination, and effigies of the Pope and of the principal Christian
sovereigns had been prepared as materials for a bonfire. The report in
question raised the Sultan to such a pitch of fury, that it required
the influence of the Mufti to restrain him from directing a general
massacre of all the Christians in his dominions. It had, however, the
further effect of preparing him for the news of failure, and before it
reached Constantinople, his rage had subsided into a deep melancholy.
No sudden order for the destitution or death of Kara Mustapha betrayed
his indignation, and the Vizier continued for a while to exercise and
to abuse the powers with which he had been intrusted.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The King was practised in this language, which he always used
in his addresses to the Polish diets. When the young Charles XII. of
Sweden opposed the usual resistance of boyhood to his Latin preceptor,
he was informed of this fact; and the example of the great soldier
proved an efficient substitute for flogging. Sobieski learned Spanish
at the age of fifty.

[18] Constantine Wisnowiecki, allied to the Imperial family by the
marriage of the king Michael with the Archduchess Eleanor.

[19] The appellation of Russia was at this period applied to the
province of Gallicia. The territories of the Tzar, which have since
assumed it, came under the general designation of Muscovy.

CHAPTER XVII.

From the end of September to the end of December, 1683.

The Emperor’s stay in his rescued capital was brief. He quitted it
for Lintz on the 16th, leaving to the local authorities a heavy task
to be performed of repair, and reconstruction, and purification.
The Christian prisoners had been compelled to labour in the Turkish
trenches, and in like manner Turkish captives were now compelled to
repair the damage they had contributed to effect. The events of the
siege had shown the danger occasioned by the near vicinity of suburban
buildings in possession of an enemy, and an order was now issued for
preventing the establishment either of buildings or gardens within a
distance of 600 paces from the city rampart, to which edict the present
glacis owes its origin. In this, the metropolitan seat of wealth and
power, the work of restoration proceeded with speed and regularity;
the affairs of mankind soon fell into their accustomed order, and
material objects resumed their former aspect. It was far different in
the country, where, through whole districts, human hands were wanting
to build upon the sites of ruined villages, to replant the vineyard and
orchard, and to restore to cultivation the fields which the Tartar had
converted into a wilderness. It was necessary in many instances for the
Government to colonize before it could cultivate, and it required years
of peace and security to repair the ravages of a few hours of Turkish
occupation.

The failure of so vast a scheme of invasion produced in the minds of
the Viennese a reasonable sense of security against any reappearance
of the horse-tails before their walls. It might be long, indeed,
before the aggressive power of the Porte should be restrained within
the limits of a well-defined frontier, and awed into quiescence by
experience of its inability to cope with Christian Europe. The Turk was
still in possession of fortresses, such as Neuhaüsel, within a few
hours’ march of the capital, but another investment of Vienna was an
event not within the scope of reasonable calculation. It was therefore
now determined to remove from public gaze a conspicuous and not very
creditable memorial of the former liability of the city to the insult
which it had twice experienced: namely, the crescent, which, since
the siege of 1529, had surmounted the spire of the Christian Temple
of St. Stephen. It was generally held to have been placed there on an
understanding with Soliman, that, like the black flag, which in modern
warfare frequently protects an hospital, it should exempt the building
beneath from the fire of an attack. Some writers, jealous of their
country’s honour, have indeed disputed this version of its origin. Be
this as it may, the talisman had lost its virtue, for the malignity
of Kara Mustapha had selected the cathedral as a principal object for
his batteries, though the Turkish gunners had only succeeded in two
or three instances in disturbing the celebration of its services,
and the return of killed and wounded in its congregations exhibited
only one old woman whose leg had been carried off by a shell. At the
suggestion, according to some authors, of Sobieski, but more probably
of Kollonitsch, the crescent was now removed to the arsenal, where
it is still preserved, and replaced in the first instance by an iron
cross, which being fixed was shortly carried away by a storm. In 1587,
a rotatory double eagle of brass was placed on the pinnacle, which it
still adorns.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Though the main interest of the drama ceases with the liberation of
the city, the fate of a principal actor, Kara Mustapha, remains to be
noticed; and some further events of the campaign will be found neither
deficient in historical importance nor destitute of instruction to the
soldier.

The situation of the Polish army, and the general prospect of affairs
some days after the battle, can hardly be better indicated than by
the following extract from Sobieski’s letter to the Queen of the 17th
September. After giving a long list of the grievances and sufferings of
his people, whose condition on the banks of the Danube he compares to
that of the Israelites by the waters of Babylon, he proceeds:—“You will
extract from this letter a gazette article, with the understanding,
however, that all my topics of grievance are to be kept out of sight.
We must not forget the old adage of Kochanouski, ‘the man who knows not
how to conceal his disgust makes his enemy to laugh.’ Say only that
the commissaries of the Emperor have deceived our army with respect to
the provisions and forage which they promised us, and for which the
Pope has destined considerable sums; that the bridge is not finished;
that the army suffers much; that the Imperial troops are still under
the walls of Vienna; that the Saxons have retired; that the King is
in advance; that his light cavalry is pressing the enemy; that if it
were not for the horrible devastation of the country not a Turk would
have escaped; that the King is constantly sending to the Emperor to
press him to enter the enemy’s territory and to invest at the least two
fortresses; that Tekeli has sent emissaries to me submitting everything
to my decision; and so on.”

Of the Hungarian fortresses at this time in the hands of the Turks,
Neuhaüsel and Gran were the two which the Imperial commanders were most
desirous to reduce. Neuhaüsel derived importance from its proximity
to Presburg and Vienna, and from its situation in face of that vast
Schütt island of the Danube of which the fortress of Komorn fortunately
gave the Imperialists the command. Gran, often mentioned by authors
by its Latin name Strigonium, was situated lower down the river on
the right bank of the Danube. Its bridge, protected on the northern
shore by the fortress of Barkan, gave the Turks the power of operating
on both sides of the river; and a strong body of Turkish cavalry
had thrown itself into the tête-du-pont, under the command of Kara
Mehemet, a young Pacha, worthy, by his courage, of the charge of a
post of so much military importance. Some difference of opinion seems
to have arisen in the first instance between the King and the Imperial
generals, the former inclining to postpone operations against Neuhaüsel
and to move at once upon Gran, with the view of ulterior operations
against the still more important city of Pesth, to which the Vizier
had transferred his head quarters. The King, however, acquiesced in
the views of the Imperialists, which were influenced by the proximity
of Neuhaüsel to the capital; but the decision of both was overruled
by events. In any case it became necessary to throw a bridge over the
river in the neighbourhood of Komorn, and the King complains in his
letters of the delay in this operation. He was anxious to cross the
river, both for the purpose of further encounter with the enemy and
from the exhausted state of the country on the left bank. The passage
of the river was effected on the 4th or 5th October. The troops, during
their occupation of the rich island of the Schütt, had been better
supplied with forage and provisions, but had suffered dreadfully from
the various forms of contagious and deadly disease for which the
autumnal climate of Hungary is notorious. Sobieski remarks that the
Germans, generally more delicate than the Poles, suffered less by the
prevalent fever which decimated officers and men in his own army.
He describes his own people as dissatisfied with the rich wines of
Hungary, and pining for their beer and smoky cottages. Drunkenness,
it would appear, was a preservative against the prevalent fever,
and possibly the Poles were less addicted than the Germans to this
prophylactic. Many Polish officers of distinction were swept off.

The Turks, meanwhile, were little in condition to take advantage of
Austrian delays, or Polish sickness, for the purpose of stemming the
tide of victory and pursuit. Detractors from the reputation of Sobieski
have not been wanting to censure the laxity of the pursuit, and to
ascribe it to the attractions of the Vizier’s tents. That he was fond
of money his admirers have not denied. His apologists have alleged
in his defence, on this head, the temptation to which the holder of
a life interest in a crown is exposed to accumulate wealth for those
descendants who on his decease may sink into a private station. Perhaps
a law of celibacy would be no unreasonable condition of elective
sovereignty. No female reader of his letters will, however, blame the
complacency with which he describes the treasures destined for the
boudoir of the wife whom he styles “his incomparable,” but who appears,
by her taste for dress and intrigue, to have been very comparable
indeed to many of her countrywomen. It is unnecessary to detail the
many circumstances which must have made an active and immediate pursuit
of the flying foe a military impossibility. It is sufficient to point
to the forest defiles through which the allied force had toiled for
three weary days from the Danube to the heights of the Kahlenberg,
during which time the horses had fed on nothing but the leaves of the
trees which impeded their progress. The Vizier’s first halt was under
the walls of Raab; his first reassertion of his authority, which, in
the confusion of defeat and flight, had been in abeyance, was to select
a man he hated as an expiatory victim. The veteran Pacha of Pesth,
whose original counsels, if followed, would have probably led to less
fatal results, was ready to his hand. This old and distinguished man,
with two other Pachas and the Aga of the Janissaries, were beheaded
on a charge of cowardice, and some fifty other officers of less note
strangled. After a halt of three days, employed in such proceedings as
these, and in rallying and collecting the troops, he pursued his march
towards Pesth, not unmolested by the garrison of Raab, but throwing
reinforcements into Neuhaüsel and Gran as he passed.

The Polish army had, as has been stated, crossed the Danube near Komorn
on the 4th and 5th, and the Imperial cavalry had followed; but the
mass of the infantry was still behind. The King took the advance with
a small body of his own cavalry, in the hopes of an easy conquest of
the Turks, whom he knew to have hastily occupied the _tête-du-pont_
of Barkan. Forgetting, in his contempt for a beaten enemy, and in
his anxiety to seize the Turkish bridge of boats near Barkan, the
first rules of military science, and pressing forward without support
or reserve, and without due security for co-operation from the more
cautious Lorraine, he sacrificed some of his best troops, and narrowly
escaped, in his own person and that of his son, the last penalty a
soldier can pay for imprudence. The affair began with the advanced
guard, which, according to the King’s rather exculpatory but graphic
report to his wife, committed itself prematurely, and contrary to
his orders, in a skirmish with the Turks near Barkan. Some accounts
state that the latter were crafty enough to lure them on, by causing
a herd of oxen to retire slowly before them. The Palatine of Russia,
proceeding to the front, found it necessary to send in all haste
for assistance, and the King in person brought up to the rescue his
whole disposable force, making his numbers in the field some 5000
men, without infantry or artillery. He would have done more wisely to
have left his advanced guard to their fate. He found it routed and
disorganized, and himself with his small force, not yet deployed,
within some hundred paces of an enemy flushed with success, and
immensely superior in numbers. The Palatine of Russia, who saw the
danger, implored him to leave the field. He replied to this invitation
by charging at the head of his best available squadron. The charge
succeeded, but at the same moment the centre and left wing, though not
yet engaged with the enemy, gave way, and the conflict degenerated
into a race for life and death. The young Prince, who in this affair,
as in the battle of Vienna, had followed his father like his shadow,
received from him a positive command to fly. The King himself lingered
till every effort he could make to rally his people had utterly failed,
and he was left with six companions. To two of these, Czerkass, a
Lithuanian gentleman, and a nameless soldier of heavy cavalry, he
himself mainly attributed his salvation. The latter, who shot down
with his carbine one of two horsemen who had come up with the King,
and wounded the other, perished; the former lived to enjoy a pension
of 500 crowns paid to him by the Queen on every anniversary of this
disastrous skirmish. For some two miles and more the furious race
continued: the Palatine of Pomerelia fell, horse and man, and was cut
to pieces. The ground was heavy, and intersected with deep furrows: the
King, though not so inactive as the French ambassador had described
him, was both tall and corpulent; and when at length he pulled up
and rallied his people on the cavalry and guns of the German troops,
which at the instance of the Austrian General Dunnewald, attached in
this affair to the staff of the King, were coming up to his support,
breathless, and covered with bruises from rough contact with the
companions of his flight, he lay for a while exhausted on a heap of
straw. The Abbé Coyer has a story of the King’s witnessing the escape
of his son, as he left his cloak in the hand of a Turkish horseman.
The King expressly states that Fanfan, as he always calls his son, was
_bien en avant_ with the grand _écuyer_ Mateinski, to whom the Abbé
and others also have attributed the preservation of the King. Most of
the King’s personal attendants, pages, &c., perished; he mentions a
negro boy, a young Hungarian, master of several languages, but dwells
with most interest on the fate of a little Calmuck, a famous rider in
the King’s hare-coursing pastimes.[20] In spite of his horsemanship he
was captured, but by some strange accident spared by the Turks. After
their subsequent defeat he was found in their camp and recognised by
the Poles, but an unlucky German cut him down. There are many instances
in which the greatest commanders have had to ride for their lives.
In our own times the list would comprise names no less than those
of Napoleon, Murat, and Blücher; but the Cossack hourra of Brenne,
and the skirmish near Leipzick, were accidents of warfare which no
prudence could avert, and the gallant charge of Ligny few would be
found to censure. The race of Barkan is historically valuable for the
lesson it conveys of caution in the hour of success. An adherence to
the simplest rules of military science would have saved two thousand
lives. Sobieski’s character shines out conspicuously in the manner in
which he took this severe check. Like the old Prussian of 1815, though
bruised and stiffened, and scarcely able to sit his horse, he was up
and ready on the following day, pressing the Duke of Lorraine to move
against the Turks. In his religious convictions he was earnest, perhaps
to the verge of bigotry, and in his letters to his wife in tracing the
disaster to the judgment of Providence on the licence and crimes of the
army, he passes over rather lightly the share which his own incaution
had in producing it.

It required all the magic of Sobieski’s influence to repair the moral
consequences of this discomfiture in his own ranks, in which at first
an ominous inclination displayed itself to concede the post of honour,
the right of the line, to the German troops. We can hardly believe, on
the sole authority of Rycaut, that the King himself was disposed to
yield to this suggestion. His letter, written on the field, breathes
nothing but an impatience for the arrival of the imperial infantry.
Lorraine, on his part, seems to have needed no pressing, and it was
determined to attack the enemy on the 9th. The young Pacha, who had
struck so serious a blow at the veteran conqueror of Choczim and
Vienna, now himself fell into the error of abiding the chances of
unequal battle; for though he had been strongly reinforced from Gran,
he had but 25,000 men to oppose to some 50,000. Tekeli, too wise to
believe the Vizier’s message announcing the total destruction of the
Christian army, and engaged in tortuous negotiations with Sobieski, was
hovering almost within sight, but kept aloof from action. The Pacha
fell into the still graver error of meeting the enemy with a chain of
hills on his right, the river of Gran in his rear, and no retreat but
by the bridge over the Danube. The consequence of this arrangement was
a defeat, rendered bloody and complete by the failure of the bridge,
which gave way under the fugitives. Barkan itself was carried by storm.
Kara Mohammed himself escaped, but the Pacha of Karamania was killed,
and the Pacha of Silistria taken. The amount of the Turkish loss is
variously stated. The Poles, eager for vengeance, and excited by the
sight of the heads of their countrymen stuck on the palisades of the
fort, gave little quarter, and artillery was brought to bear upon the
crowds who attempted to swim the river. This success was purchased
at the loss of 400 Poles and 70 of the imperial troops. Sobieski, in
the moment of victory, writes of it as a victory greater than that of
Vienna—an exaggeration only to be excused by the excitement of the
moment. Its importance, however, was manifested by the speedy fall
of Gran, the seat of the Hungarian primacy, containing the tomb of
Stephen, the first Christian King of Hungary, but which from the year
1605 had been desecrated by Turkish occupation. The Turkish bridge
having been demolished during the battle, the Imperialists brought
down their own bridge of boats from Komorn, which was ready for the
passage of the troops a league above the city on the 13th. The town was
carried by storm. The garrison, some 4000 strong, which had retired
into the citadel, surrendered on the 27th, on condition of their safe
conveyance to Buda, with their women and children, and retaining
their small arms. The Vizier, on receiving at Buda intelligence of
the fall of Gran, departed in haste for Belgrade, but left with Kara
Mehemet an order for the execution of the officers who had signed
the surrender. His own bloody rule was meanwhile drawing to a close.
His first reports and excuses for his failure before Vienna had been
received at the court of Adrianople with simulated favour, and his
messenger had returned with the usual tokens of royal approbation, a
sword and a pelisse. Influence, however, both male and female, was
busy for his destruction; the friends of the murdered Pacha of Pesth,
and all those who had originally opposed the expedition, were powerful
and zealous. Tekeli, and the dying Sultana mother, Validè, threw their
influence into the scale. At length the vacillation of the Sultan was
overcome, and a chamberlain of the court rode out from Adrianople
with the simple order to return as soon as might be with the head of
Kara Mustapha. The officer, on approaching Belgrade, communicated his
mission to the Aga of the Janissaries, who gave his prompt acquiescence
and ready assistance to the objects of the mission. The transaction was
conducted, on the part of the servants of the crown, with that decent
privacy and convenient expedition which usually attend the execution of
Turkish justice, and submitted to by the patient with the quiet dignity
with which the predestinarian doctrine of Islam arms its votaries
against all accidents. The insignia of authority were politely demanded
and quietly resigned. The carpet was spread, the short prayer uttered,
the bowstring adjusted. In a few moments the late dispenser of life and
death, the uncontrolled commander of 200,000 men, was a corpse, and his
head on the road to Adrianople. It met with some subsequent adventures;
for, having been returned to Belgrade by the Sultan, and deposited
in a mosque, it was discovered after the surrender of that city to
the Christians, and forwarded by them to the Bishop Kollonitsch. The
prelate made over the grisly memorial of the man, who had threatened to
send his own head on a lance’s point to the Sultan, to the arsenal of
Vienna, where it still keeps its place among the other trophies of a
long struggle of race and religion.

With the catastrophe of so leading a personage this work may properly
reach the termination which its limits now demand. For the winter
march by which Sobieski withdrew his forces to his own frontier, and
the fortresses which he picked up by the way, his negotiations with
Tekeli, and his passing successes over the Turks, the reader who wishes
to pursue the subject will do well to consult his correspondence so
often quoted, and the ample work of M. de Salvandy. From the above
pages, concerned as they have been with a principal passage in the
public career of one of the greatest characters in modern history, some
faint idea may be derived of his qualities as a soldier. As a king,
a statesman, an orator, and a man of letters, he must be estimated
from other and fuller sources. After learning what he was in all these
respects, we shall be prone to conjecture what he might have been. As
a husband and a father, if he had not married a bad and mischievous
woman, _daturam progeniem vitiosiorem_—as a commander, if, instead of
leading ill-disciplined levies to transient victories by the example
and personal exposure of a partisan, he had brandished the staff of
a Marlborough or an Eugene at the head of a permanent and organized
force—as a king and a statesman, if his better fortune had placed him
at the head, not of a horde of turbulent, intriguing, and ungovernable
slave-owners, but of a civilized, free, and united people—it is
scarcely too much to suppose that he might have realized the greater
projects which it is known entered into his large conception, that the
Turk would have been rolled back upon Asia, and that Greece might have
dated her emancipation from the seventeenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] In the intervals of war and business the King had always been
devoted to the chase. One of his objects of pursuit was the aurochs,
now confined to a single forest of Lithuania, where alone it continues
its species under imperial protection. One of the most eminent of
living geologists, Sir R. I. Murchison, has broached a theory, founded
at least on a profound investigation of the features of the district,
that the species is a sole survivor of one of those great geological
changes which have obliterated other forms of animal life. Sobieski’s
Queen wore a girdle of the skin of this animal. Down to a recent period
it was an object of royal chase in Poland. Sir C. Hanbury Williams, in
a letter from Brodi, describes a royal battue in which many of them
were surrounded and driven over a steep bank into the river.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

The number of pieces of artillery furnished from the imperial arsenal
of Vienna for the defence in 1683 was 262. The thirty years’ war had
led to many improvements in the construction and use of artillery.
Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein had both effected important
alterations, and in 1650 a Jesuit of Warsaw had invented the elevating
screw as a substitute for the quoin. Whatever improvement, however,
had taken place in the system as applied to field movements, it would
appear that for purposes of stationary defence it was still one of much
complexity and confusion. The 262 pieces used at Vienna were of no less
than 26 denominations and calibres, the capacity of the latter ranging
from 1 lb. to 48, and in the case of some large pieces called böller
or pöller, used as mortars for vertical fire and discharging stone
shot, from 60 to 200 lbs. There were of these four of 200, two of 150,
five of 100, and ten of 60. Fifty other pieces furnished from the city
arsenal were planted, not on the defences, but at various points in
the city, and worked by 100 men of the burgher force. Of these hundred
volunteer artillerists 16 were killed and 5 of the pieces ruined: 72
pieces in all had been rendered unserviceable at the close of the siege.

Thirty-seven officers were killed, which, considering the frequency of
assaults and sallies, operations which require great personal exposure
on the part of the leaders, would appear rather a small proportion to
that of 5000 rank and file among the regular troops. The loss in action
among the citizens is scarcely possible to arrive at. The only two
officers of much distinction who fell were the Col. Count Dupigny and
the engineer, Rimpler.

The Turkish loss is stated at 48,544. It appears to have fallen
heaviest on the miners, of whom 16,000 perished, and 6000 of their
artillerists. The formidable corps of the Janissaries was reduced by a
loss of 10,000: 544 officers, including 3 pachas, were also killed. As
this list is taken from a return found in the tent of the Vizier, it
does not include the loss of the Turks in the battle. These statements
are naturally liable to much allowance for inaccuracy from many causes.
A comparison of the various sources of information leads to a rough
conclusion that the Vizier sat down before the place with about 220,000
men. Of these it is supposed not more than 50,000 regained the Turkish
frontier.

 No. 2.—_Order of battle of the Christian army before Vienna on the
 13th September._

The left wing was commanded by the Duke of Lorraine; the centre by the
Elector of Saxony and the Prince Christian Louis von Waldeck (it is
idle to adjoin to these the Bavarian Elector, who was present, but had
the good sense to consign the direction of his troops to Waldeck); the
right wing by the Polish Field-Marshal Jablonowski; the whole by the
King of Poland. The army was drawn up in three lines.

FIRST LINE.

_Right wing._—19 divisions and 4 battalions of Poles; 8560 cavalry,
3120 infantry.

_Centre._—9 divisions, Austrians; 7 divisions, Bavarians; 4 divisions,
troops of the Circles; 5 battalions, Bavarians; 3 battalions, Circles;
5 battalions, Saxons; 5768 cavalry, 8600 infantry: commanders, the
Elector of Saxony and the Prince of Waldeck.

_Left wing._—10 divisions, Austrians; 5 divisions, Saxons; 6
battalions, Austrians; 5660 cavalry, 4242 infantry; commanded by the
Duke of Baden.

Total of first line, 19,788 cavalry, 15,962 infantry.

SECOND LINE.

_Right wing._—6 divisions, Poles; 8 divisions, Austrians; 4 battalions,
Poles; 5568 cavalry, 3120 infantry: commanders, Generals Siniousky and
Rabatta.

_Centre._—5 divisions, Bavarians; 3 divisions, Circles; 4 battalions,
Bavarians; 5 battalions, Circles; 3 battalions, Saxons; 6 battalions,
Austrians; 1725 cavalry, 11,442 infantry: commanders, Field-Marshal
Golz and Field-Marshal the Prince of Baireuth.

_Left wing._—4 divisions, Saxons; 8 divisions, Austrians; 4528 cavalry:
commanders, Field-Marshal Leslie and Prince Lubomirski.

Total of second line, 11,819 cavalry, 12,562 infantry.

THIRD LINE OR RESERVE.

_Right wing._—9 divisions, Poles; 6 divisions, Austrians; 3 divisions,
Bavarians; 3 battalions, Poles; 1 battalion, Bavarians; 6855 cavalry,
2940 infantry: commanders, great standard-bearer Lesno Lescynski and
Field-Marshal Dunnewald.

_Centre._—3 battalions, Bavarians; 2 battalions, Saxons; 2 battalions,
Austrians; 4014 infantry: commander, Field-Marshal Leika.

_Left wing._—3 divisions, Saxons; 7 divisions, Austrians; 3762 cavalry:
commander, Field-Marshal Margrave Louis of Baden.

Total of third line, 10,617 cavalry, 6954 infantry.

Total force in the battle—

  Cavalry    42,224
  Infantry   35,478
             ——————
             77,702

Total of the army, including detachments—

  Cavalry, 127 divisions    46,100
  Infantry, 57 battalions   38,700
                            ——————
                            84,800

Artillery, 168 pieces, of all calibres, of which the Austrians counted
70, the Saxons 30, the Bavarians 26, the Franconians 12, and the Poles,
30. It is impossible, considering the difficulties of the march from
Tuln, that all these pieces should have been brought into action: they
were distributed along all parts of the line of battle.

To the above may be added Croats and other irregulars, and volunteers
about 10,000. This detail of the force is extracted from the Military
Conversations Lexicon, art. ‘Wien.’

 No. 3.—_Anecdotes of the Siege, from a Tract by the Advocate Christian
 W. Huhn, an eye-witness._

In the night of August 2nd some troopers of Dupigny’s regiment with
divers foot soldiers of the garrison, made a sally by the covered way
at the Scottish gate, and returned with forty-seven head of oxen and a
captured Turk. The cattle were allotted partly to the wounded and sick
soldiers, and partly to the captors, who made their gain from them,
inasmuch as meat, which when the siege began had fetched one grosch the
lb., rose afterwards to nine and more, and a fresh egg did not wait for
a customer at half a dollar. Whosoever also fancied Italian cookery
might purchase of one of the women who sat in the high market a roof
hare (cat), roast and larded, for one florin, to be washed down with
a cup of muscat wine at the Italian vintners; and truth to say, this
animal, when the sweetness of the flesh was tempered with the salted
lard, was an unusual, indeed, but not an unacceptable morsel. The 9th
August was a fine clear day, on which a young and spirited Turk chose
to disport himself for bravado on a caparisoned horse, performing
strange antics with a lance in his right hand. While he was caracoling
at a distance of full 300 paces from the counterscarp, Henry Count von
Kielmansegge, who happened to be with his foresters on the Kärnthner
bastion, took such good aim at him with a fowling-piece that he jumped
up with a spring from the saddle and fell dead amid shouts and laughter
from the besieged. A lucky shot of the same kind was executed by a
student of the university, who sent a bullet through the head of a
Turk near the counterscarp palisade, and dragged the body to him with
a halberd. Having learned from experience of others that the Turks,
_either to strengthen the stomach_, or when mortally wounded, to rob
the Christians of their booty, were accustomed to roll up their ducats
together and swallow them, without further ceremony he ripped up the
corpse and found six ducats so rolled up within it. The head he cut off
and bore it round the city upon a lance-point as a spectacle of his
ovation. In the assault of the 17th August a common soldier, having
mastered and beheaded a Turk, and finding 100 ducats upon him sewed
up in a dirty cloth, as one who had never seen so much money together
before, went about the city like one distracted, clapping his hands and
showing his booty to all he met, encouraging them by his example to win
the like, as though it rained money from Heaven.

On the 13th September, the day following the relief of the city, the
Poles being masters of the Turkish camp, many soldiers, citizens, and
inhabitants, while as yet no gate was opened, clambered down over the
breaches and by the secret sallyports to pick up what they might of
provisions, ammunition, or other articles of small value. The King
of Poland and his people having fallen on the military chest and the
Vizier’s tent, had carried off many millions in money, and the Vizier’s
war-horse, his quivers, bows, and arrows, all of countless value,
together with the great standard of their Prophet, inscribed with
Turkish characters, and two horsetail standards. I, with many others
who had been enrolled in a volunteer body during the siege, thought to
pick up our share of the spoil. I, therefore, gained the counterscarp
by the Stuben gate, passing between the ruined palisades on horseback
to the Turkish camp. I did not, however, dare to dismount, by reason
of the innumerable quantity of flies and vermin, which, although at so
advanced a time of the month of September, swarmed up from the bodies
of more than 20,000 dead horses and mules, so as to darken the air, and
so covering my horse, that not the space of a needle point remained
free from them, the which was so insufferable to him, that he began to
plunge and kick in front and rear, so that I was fain to get me clear
of the press and make my way back to the city, but not till I had
persuaded a passer-by to reach to me the bow and arrows of one who lay
there, and also the cap of a Janissary, and some books which lay about,
and which had been plundered in the country, and secured them in my
saddle-bags. After the which I re-entered the city, not as one _ovans_
on foot, but _triumphans_ on horseback with my _spolia_. I had no want
of predecessors before or followers behind, for every one who had legs
to carry him had betaken himself to the camp to plunder it. Although
I had gained the counterscarp and the inner defences, I passed a good
hour making my way through the pass, and my unruly horse was compelled
to move step by step for such time before I could extricate him and
regain my quarters.

 No. 4.—_Specification of the Christians carried off into Turkish
 slavery out of Hungary, Austria, and the adjacent districts in 1683.
 From a contemporary MS._

  Old men                         6,000
  Women                          11,215
  Unmarried women, 26
    years of age at the
    oldest, of whom 204
    were noble                   14,922
  Children, boys and girls,
    the oldest between 4
    and 5 years of age           26,093
                                 ——————
            Total                57,220

  Villages and hamlets
    burnt in the Viennese
    territory                     4,092
  In that of Presburg               871
                                  ————-
                                  4,963

THE END.

London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford-street.

Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

March field and Marchfield has been standardised on March field.

Komorn and Comorn has been standardised on Komorn.

The following changes have been made:

Book 1 Chapter VIII being conversant in the Slave language, changed to
Slav.

Book 2 Chapter VIII Godfrey, Count of Salaburg, changed to Salzburg.

Chapter XVIII have hastily occupied the _tête-du-pont_ of Barham,
changed to Barkan.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.