So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey, as the idle fear of an over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a half, when Popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross, and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant warfare between Christian and Moslem. That period of danger was to Poland a period of glory; and the brightest part of it is the reign of the warrior-king, John Sobieski. It proved, indeed, no better than an empty glitter, won at a vast expense of blood and treasure, the benefits of which were chiefly reaped by the faithless and ungrateful Austria.

Sobieski was the younger son of a Polish nobleman, high in rank and merit. He was born in 1629. The death of his brother, slain in warfare with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, in 1649, placed him in possession of the hereditary titles and immense estates of his house. To these distinctions he added high personal merits, an athletic body, a powerful, active, and upright mind, and, as the result proved, the qualities which make a general and statesman. It is no wonder therefore that, in the wars carried on by Poland during his youth against Tartars, Cossacks, and Swedes, he won laurels, though the Republic gained neither honour nor advantage. At an early age he acquired the confidence of Casimir, the reigning king of Poland, and was employed in various services of importance. On the revolt of Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of Poland, Sobieski was invested with that office, and soon after made Lieutenant-General (if we may so translate it) of the Polish army. In that capacity he led the royal troops against Lubomirski. The king’s obstinacy forced him to give battle at a disadvantage, and he was defeated, July 13, 1666; but the blame of this mishap was universally thrown on the right person, while the skilful conduct of Sobieski’s retreat obtained general admiration.

He married Marie de la Grange d’Arquien, a French lady of noble birth, who had accompanied the queen into Poland. She was a woman of wit and beauty, who exercised throughout life an unusual and unfortunate influence over a husband devotedly attached to her. Aided by her favour with her mistress, Sobieski obtained the highest military office, that of Grand General, in 1667. Happy for Poland, that in this instance favour and merit went hand in hand: for a host of fourscore thousand Tartars broke into the kingdom, when its exhausted finances could not maintain an army, and its exhausted population could hardly supply one. By draining his own purse, pledging his own resources, and levying recruits on his immense estates, the General raised his troops from twelve to twenty thousand, and marched fearlessly against a force four times as great. The scheme of his campaign was singularly confident, so much so as to excite the disapprobation even of the intrepid CondÉ. He detached eight thousand men in several corps, with secret orders, and took post with the remaining twelve thousand in a fortified camp at Podahiecz, a small town in the Palatinate of Russia, to stand the attack of eighty thousand Tartars, while his detachments were converging to their assigned stations. The assault was renewed for sixteen successive days; and day after day the assailants were repulsed with slaughter. On the seventeenth, Sobieski offered battle in the open field. A bloody contest ensued; but while victory was doubtful, the Polish detachments appeared on the Tartar flanks, and turned the balance. Disheartened by their loss, the Tartars made overtures of peace, which was concluded equally to the satisfaction of both the belligerents, October 19, 1667.

The circumstances attendant on the abdication of Casimir, in 1668, and the election of his successor Michael Wiesnowieski, do not demand our notice, for Sobieski took little part in the intrigues of the candidates, or the deliberations of the Diet. The new king wept and trembled as he mounted a throne to which he had never aspired, and which he protested himself incapable to fill; and the event proved that he was right. Yet, when he had tasted the sweets of power, he looked jealously on the man most highly esteemed and most able to do his country service, and therefore most formidable to a weak and suspicious prince. The Ukraine Cossacks had been converted by oppression from good subjects into bad neighbours, and on the accession of Michael they again raised the standard of war. Partly by negotiation, partly by force, the Grand General reduced all the country from the Bog to the Dniester in the campaign of 1671, and he received the thanks of the Republic for performing such eminent services with such scanty means. It is still more to his credit that he interfered, not for the first time, in favour of the revolted Cossacks, and insisted on their being received into allegiance with kindness, and encouraged to good behaviour by equitable and friendly treatment.

King Michael was of a very different mind in this matter. Determined on the subjugation of the whole Ukraine, he intrigued to hinder the Diet from confirming the peace, and thus induced the Cossacks to call in the help of Turkey, by threatening which they had stopped the progress of Sobieski. This brought on a fresh discussion in the Diet, in which Sobieski warmly urged the expediency of concession. Michael, however, persisted in his course; and from this period we may date the commencement of a league to dethrone him. In this, at first, Sobieski took no active, certainly no open, part. When compelled to declare himself, he asserted, with zeal, the right of the Republic to depose a prince who had shown himself unfit to reign. The consequences of this discord were very serious. At a Diet held in the spring of 1672, Michael was openly required to abdicate. To avoid this he summoned the minor nobility, who had no seats in the Diet, and with whom, having formerly been of their body, he was more popular, to meet in the field of Golemba, on the bank of the Vistula; and he thus raised a sort of militia, to the number of a hundred thousand, ready to uphold him as the king. Sobieski, encamped at Lowicz with an army devoted to him, maintained the cause of the confederate nobles. Neither party, however, was in haste to appeal to arms; and in the interim, Mahomet IV., with 150,000 Turks and 100,000 Tartars, invaded Poland. The king, instead of marching against the enemy, contented himself with setting a price on Sobieski’s head, in whom alone the hope of Poland rested. Too weak however to oppose the Turks, he sought the Tartars, who had dispersed to carry ruin through the country, routed them in five successive battles, and recovered an immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners from their hands. Meanwhile the Turks overran Podolia, and took its capital town, the strong fortress of Kaminiec, the bulwark of Poland. Incapable himself of action, and apprehensive alike of the failure or success of Sobieski, Michael hastily concluded an ignominious peace, by which the Ukraine and part of Podolia were ceded to Turkey, and the payment of an annual tribute was agreed upon.

This treaty of Boudchaz, signed October 8, 1672, prevented Sobieski from continuing the war, and he returned indignantly to his camp at Lowicz. Before the end of the year, the king found it necessary to adopt conciliatory measures, and Sobieski, and other nobles who had been outlawed with him, were restored to civil rights and the enjoyment of their property. At the Diet held in February, 1673, he inveighed against the scandalous treaty of Boudchaz, which, in truth, was void, being concluded without the sanction of that body, and it was resolved to renounce the treaty, and renew the war. Eighty thousand Turks were stationed in a fortified camp at Choczim, to overawe the newly-conquered provinces. November 12, 1673, Sobieski stormed their camp. Observing that the infantry wavered, he dismounted his own regiment of dragoons, and led them to the ramparts, which they were the first to scale. The infantry rushed forward to support their general; the entrenchments were won, and the Turks routed with great slaughter, and entirely disorganized. This victory was disgraced by the massacre of a great number of prisoners in cold blood. Soon after it the death of Michael relieved Poland from the burden of a weak king, and the Interrex stopped the victorious general’s progress, by requiring his attendance in Poland.

The diet of election commenced its sittings May 1, 1674. As before, there were a number of foreign candidates, but none who commanded a decisive majority among the electors; and at last the choice of the assembly fell on Sobieski, who, whatever his secret wishes or intrigues may have been, had never openly pretended to the crown. That choice was received with general rejoicing. The new king’s first care was to follow up the blow struck at Choczim, and wrest the Ukraine from Turkey. During this and the two following years, that unhappy country was again the scene of bloodshed and rapine. There is little in the history of the war to claim our attention. It was concluded at the memorable leaguer of Zurawno, where, with a policy somewhat similar to that which he pursued at Podahiecz, he advanced to meet an invading army outnumbering his own six to one. Fortunately the Turkish government stood in need of peace, and their general had authority and orders to put an end to the war in the best manner he could; and after besieging the Polish camp for five weeks, he consented to a treaty, signed October 29, 1676, the terms of which were far more favourable than could have been anticipated by Poland. Two-thirds of the Ukraine, and part of Podolia, were restored to her, and the tribute imposed by the treaty of Boudchaz was given up. These terms were ratified by the Porte, and seven years of peace succeeded to almost constant war.

This interval of rest from arms is not important in the history of Sobieski’s life. As he had anticipated, he found the throne no easy seat; and his criminal weakness in admitting the queen, who never scrupled at disturbing public affairs to gratify her own passions or prejudices, to an undue weight in his counsels, lessens our sympathy with his vexations, and casts a shade over his brilliant qualities. In 1680, greater matters began to be moved. Ever watchful of the Porte, Sobieski knew through his spies that Mahomet was preparing for war with Austria, as soon as the existing truce expired; and he conceived the project of uniting the money of Rome, and the arms of Austria and Venice, with those of Poland; and, by thus distracting the power of Turkey, to regain more easily the much coveted fortress of Kaminiec, and the remnant of Podolia. He had, indeed, sworn solemnly to maintain a treaty, which the Turks religiously observed; but the Pope was ready to absolve him from the oath, and this the morality of the age thought quite sufficient. For a time his views were frustrated, both at home and abroad; but as the political storm which was collecting grew darker and darker, both Pope and Emperor entered more heartily into the scheme, and an offensive and defensive treaty was concluded between Austria and Poland.

The Turkish troops assembled in the plains of Adrianople, in May, 1683, in number, according to the calculations of historians, upwards of 200,000 fighting men. The brave Hungarians, heretofore the bulwark of Austria against the Ottoman, but now alienated by oppression and misgovernment, revolted under the celebrated Tekeli, and opened a way into the heart of the Austrian empire. Kara Mustapha commanded the immense army destined by the Porte for this warfare, and for once he showed judgment and decision in neglecting small objects and pushing forward at once to Vienna. Leopold fled in haste with his court: the Imperial General, the brave Charles of Lorraine, threw in part of his small army to reinforce the garrison, but was unable to oppose the progress of the besiegers. The trenches were opened July 14, and the heavy artillery of the Turks crumbled the weak ramparts, and carried destruction into the interior of the city. Unhappy is the country which trusts to foreign aid in such a strait! The German princes had not yet brought up their contingents; and even Sobieski, the last man to delay in such a cause, could not collect his army fast enough to meet the pressing need of the occasion. Letter reached him after letter, entreating that he would at least bring the terror of his name and profound military skill to the relief of Austria; and he set off to traverse Moravia with an escort of only two thousand horse, leaving the Grand General Jablonowski to bring up the army with the utmost speed. After all, the Polish troops reached Tuln, on the Danube, the place of rendezvous, before the Bavarians, Saxons, and other German auxiliaries were collected. September 7, the whole army was assembled, in number about 74,000. Vienna was already in the utmost distress. Stahremberg, the brave commandant, had written to the Duke of Lorraine a letter, containing only these pithy words, “No more time to lose, my Lord; no more time to lose.” Incapable of resisting with its enfeebled garrison a general assault, the place must have fallen but for the avarice and stupid pride of Mustapha, who thought that the imperial capital must contain immense treasures, which he was loth to give up to indiscriminate plunder; and never dreamed that any one would be hardy enough to contest the prize with his multitudes before it fell into his hands from mere exhaustion. There was indeed no more time to lose: it was calculated on August 22, that Vienna could only hold out three days against a general assault; and September 9 arrived before the Christian army moved from Tuln. Five leagues of mountain road still separated it from Vienna, in any part of which its progress might have been stopped by such a detachment as the immense Turkish army might well have spared.

The battle of deliverance, fought September 12, 1683, was short and decisive: the Turks were disgusted and disheartened by their general’s misconduct. Sobieski was not expected to command in person; but the Tartars had seen him lead his cavalry to the charge too often to overlook the signs which marked his presence, and the knowledge of it sunk their hearts still more. “Allah!” said the brave Khan of the Tartars, as he pointed out to the Visir the pennoned lances of the Polish Horse Guards, “Allah! but the wizard is amongst them, sure enough.” The Visir attempted to atone by courage for his past errors, but despair or disaffection had seized on soldiers and officers. Even the veteran Tartar chief replied to his entreaties,—“The Polish king is there. I know him well. Did I not tell you that all we had to do was to get away as fast as possible?” The Polish cavalry pushed forward to the Visir’s tent, and cut their way through the Spahis, who alone disputed the victory; and with the capture of their great standard the consternation and confusion of the Turks became final and complete. Entering Vienna the next day, Sobieski was received with an enthusiasm little pleasant to the jealous temper of the Emperor, who manifested his incurable meanness of disposition, not only in his cold reception and ungracious thanks of the deliverer of his kingdom, but in the ingratitude and perfidy of all his subsequent conduct.

Whether from pure love of beating the Turks, or from a false hope that Leopold might be induced to perform his promises, Sobieski, contrary to the wishes of the Republic, pursued the flying enemy into Hungary. Near Gran, on the Danube, he met with a severe check, in which his own life had nearly been sacrificed to the desire of showing the Imperialists that he could conquer without their help. This he acknowledged after his junction with the Duke of Lorraine. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I confess I wanted to conquer without you, for the honour of my own nation. I have suffered severely for it, being soundly beat; but I will take my revenge both with you and for you. To effect this must be the chief object of our thoughts.” The disgrace was soon wiped off by a decisive victory gained nearly on the same spot. Gran capitulated, and the king led his army back to Poland in the month of December.

The glory of this celebrated campaign fell to Poland, the profit accrued to Austria. Kaminiec was still in the possession of Turkey, and continued so during the whole reign of Sobieski: not from want of effort, for the recovery of that important fortress was the leading object of the campaigns of 1684, 5, and 7; but the Polish army was better suited for the open field than for the tedious and expensive process of a siege. In 1686, Leopold, apprehensive lest Sobieski should break off an alliance distasteful to his subjects and unsatisfactory to himself, (for the Emperor had broken every promise and failed in every inducement which he had held out to the Polish sovereign,) threw out another bait, which succeeded better than the duplicity and ingratitude of the contriver deserved. He suggested the idea of wresting from the Turks Moldavia and Wallachia, to be held as an independent and hereditary kingdom by Sobieski and his family, and promised a body of troops to assist in the undertaking. The great object of Sobieski’s ambition, by pursuing which he lost much of his popularity and incurred just censure, as aiming at an unconstitutional object by unconstitutional means, was to hand the crown of Poland to his son at his own decease, and render it, if possible, hereditary in his family. The possession of the above-named provinces was most desirable as a step to this; or, if this wish were still frustrated, it was yet desirable as placing his posterity among the royal houses of Europe: and with a preference of private to public interest, which is not less censurable for being common, he rejected an offer made by Mahomet to restore Kaminiec, and to pay a large sum to indemnify Poland for the expenses of the war, that he might pursue his favourite scheme of family aggrandizement. Satisfied, however, with having engaged him in this new diversion of the Turkish power, Leopold had not the smallest intention of sending the promised troops; and the King of Poland was involved in great danger from their non-appearance at the expected place. This campaign, however, was so far satisfactory, that Moldavia yielded without resistance or bloodshed; a second and a third expedition, undertaken in 1688 and 1691, to consolidate and extend this conquest, were unsuccessful, and the sovereignty soon passed back into the hands of Turkey. The campaign of 1691 was the last in which Sobieski appeared in the field.

The reader will see from this brief account that he added few laurels, after the campaign of Vienna, to those by which his brows were so profusely garlanded. Indeed he scarcely deserved to do so; for great and disinterested as his conduct often was, in this juncture he sacrificed national to family interests, and consumed the blood and riches of his countrymen in a needless and fruitless war.

Sobieski’s internal policy has little to recommend it, or to exalt his fame. Devoted to his wife, who proved herself unworthy his affection by the most harassing demands upon his time and attention, and still more by a pertinacious, unwise, and unconstitutional interference in state affairs, which had not even the excuse of being well directed, but was continually employed to promote private interests, to gratify private prejudices, and, ultimately, at once to violate the laws and sow dissension in her own family by securing the crown of Poland to her own son, and choosing a younger in preference to the elder branch, the king lowered his popularity and reputation by thus weakly yielding to an unworthy influence, and, as the natural consequence, he was continually thwarted by a harassing and often factious opposition. Civil discord, family quarrels, and the infirmities of a body worn out prematurely by unsparing exposure for more than forty years to the toils of war, combined to embitter the decline of his life. In the five years which elapsed from Sobieski’s last campaign to his death, the history of Poland records much of unprincipled intriguing, much personal ingratitude, and some upright opposition to his measures, but nothing of material importance to his personal history. He died June 17, 1696, on the double anniversary, it is said, of his birth and his accession to the throne; and by another singular coincidence, his birth and death were alike heralded by storms of unusual violence.

The character of Sobieski is one of great brilliancy and considerable faults. As a subject, he displayed genuine, disinterested patriotism; as a king, the welfare of his family seems to have been dearer to him than that of his country. Nor did his domestic government display the vigour and decision which we might reasonably have expected from his powerful mind. But his justice was unimpeachable; he was temperate, and unrevengeful even when personally affronted, which often happened in the tumultuous Diets of Poland; and, in a bigoted age, he displayed the virtue of toleration. The constant labours of an active life did not choke his literary taste, and his literary attainments were considerable; he spoke several languages, aspired to be a poet, and loved the company of learned men. He was remarkable for the suavity of his temper and the charms of his conversation. Such a character, though far from perfection, is entitled to the epithet GREAT, which he won and enjoyed; and, as a soldier, he has a claim to our gratitude, which not every soldier possesses. His warfare was almost uniformly waged against an aggressive and barbarian power, which, in the utmost need of Christian Europe, he stood forward to resist, and finally broke. Like other nations, Turkey has had its alternations of success and loss; but never, since the campaign of Vienna, have the arms of the East threatened the repose of Europe.

The history of Sobieski’s life and reign is told at large in the works of his countryman Zaluski; in the Life by the AbbÉ Coyer, of which there is an English translation; and in a recent publication by M. Salvandy. The same writer has republished a most interesting collection of Letters, written by Sobieski to his queen during the campaign of Vienna, printed for the first time in Poland about ten years ago.