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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END.

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Archiducatus Austriae Inferioris Geographics et Noviter Emendata Accuratissima Descriptio.
(1697.)