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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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