THE RELIEF OF VIENNA.*

AMONG the decisive battles of Europe, few have had more preg- nant consequences than the relief of Vienna by John Sobieski, two hundred years ago, and Sir Edward Creasy certainly -neglected an opportunity when he passed it by without notice. For, at the least, it completed on land what the victory of Lepanto accomplished at sea; and when we remember the universal apprehension with which Christendom regarded the approach of the Turkish Power, it will be admitted that an event which not only dissipated that alarm, but which arrested the further course of Islam, has very solid claims on the gratitude -of posterity. We may not be able to agree with all the deductions which Mr. Malden feels bound to draw from the result of the siege, -yet we cannot fail to welcome as both appropriate and instruc- tive his account of the great overthrow of the Turks before the walls of Vienna. Mr. Malden is quite right in devoting his -opening pages to the task of showing how different was the power of the Sultan in the seventeenth century from what it is mow, and of proving that no victory was more difficult to obtain, at the same time that it was glorious and creditable, than one over the armies of the Porte. Turkey was then supreme in south-eastern Europe. The growing reputation of Russia, the chivalrous opposition of the Poles, and the consistent hostility of Austria imposed but are imperfect check on the aggressive impulses of the Porte, especially as the Christians were weak- • Vienna, 1685. The Hidory and Consequences of the Defeat of the Turks before Vienna by John Sobieski, King of Poland, and Charles Leopold, Duke of Lorraine. By Henry Elliot Malden. louden : Began Paul, Trench, and Co. 18E5. ened by many internal dissensions, and by a great mass of popular disaffection and even of open hostility on the part of the

Hungarians. So imperfect, indeed, was that check, that in the year 1683 a Turkish army made its way across Hungary and up the Valley of the Danube to Vienna, and for a moment seemed to threaten with extinction the fortunes of the House of Hapsburg. That Vienna was saved and the Turks were

driven back must be mainly attributed to a revival in the Crusading fervour, due to the impulse of the chivalrous Polish

King, John Sobieski, of which this little volume gives the salient features.

The policy of Louis XIV., and his ambition to be the chief potentate in Western Europe, had not a little to do with the revival of the power and activity of Turkey which the seven- teenth century witnessed. Although Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, to please the extreme members of the Church of Rome, he cared very little for the interests of religion if they stood in the way of his attaining any political object ; and con- sequently, he showed himself nothing loth to make use of Protestant disaffection in Hungary, and to stir up the Porte against the House of Austria, in order to embarrass the Empire, and enable him the more easily to realise his plans. " If France had but stood neutral, the controversy between Turks and Christians might soon have been decided," said the Duke of Lorraine; but the opportunity of aggrandising France, even at the risk of imperil- ling Christendom, was a temptation not to be resisted. There- fore the war of 1683 commenced, and was nearly terminating with the destruction of the House of Austria. Louis was the more impelled to this step, because his ambitious inclinations were then worked upon by a sense of danger. The Treaty of Laxen- berg, in 1682, showed that the supremacy of France had as- sumed the character of a common danger to the rest of Europe, and that the view was gaining ground which afterwards built up the Grand Alliance against her as the foe of Continental peace. Louis realised the peril in which he might stand from the combination of his neighbours, and one of the first remedies to which he had recourse was to urge on the Porte the advis- ability of invading the Austrian dominions. His overtures might have failed of their object, for the twenty years' truce agreed to after Montecuculi's victory at St. Gotthard, in 1664, had not quite expired, but for the civil war that broke out in Protestant Hungary. A portion of that kingdom was in the absolute possession of the Turks, in whom the Magyars recog- nised their natural and most efficient protectors ; and the in- judicious efforts of the Emperor Leopold to Romanise the rest led to a general insurrection. The Porte might have resisted.

the specious suggestions of France, it could not refuse to listen to the appeals of its Hungarian allies :-

" Too late," writes Mr. Malden, " in 1681 the Court of Vienna attempted a conciliatory policy in Hungary. The spirit of rebellion had been aroused, and the offers of redress and justice made by the Emperor were distrusted as a veil for treachery, or despised as the confession of weakness. Tekeli defied the Emperor, and assumed the offensive even beyond tho borders of Hungary. Neither was the Porte to be propitiated. In vain an Imperial Embassy to Constan- tinople sought a prolongation of the truce which was on the point of expiring at the end of the stipulated twenty years. The demands of the Turks rose with the progress of their preparations. A princi- pality for their ally, Count Tekeli, in Hungary ; extension of territory, with the strongest border fortresses for themselves, a great war in- demnity,—such were the terms which implied a determination not to negotiate. The ambassador, Count Caprara, was compelled as a prisoner to witness the departure of tho Turkish hosts for the frontier."

This Turkish army is computed to have numbered not far short of 300,000 fighting men, and the Grand Vizier, Kara Mustapha, a nephew of the celebrated Kiuprili, was entrusted with the command. Kara Mustapha, although he had acquired the influence, possessed little of the capacity of his uncle. His military incapacity was proved to be so great, that it entailed the almost complete destruction of, perhaps, the very finest army that was ever sent by a Mahonimedan potentate to harry the lands of Christendom, or to exalt the glory of the Crescent at the expense of the Cross. The forces which Leopold could muster to oppose the approaching host were extremely scanty and com- paratively insignificant. His allies were either weak in themselves, or suspicious and distrustful of his policy; and the embarrassment of the Austrian ruler, then as now, arose principally from financial causes. Prince Eugene, the most illustrious as well as the most honourable of all the brave men who have championed the House of Austria in the field, said of the pecuniary resources of that State, that " business men laugh at our finance, for my part, I weep over it." The only possible ally was one whom

Leopold, in his heart of hearts, despised as of inferior rank, and one with whom he could not condescend to arrange any harmony of action. That ally, John Sobieski of Poland, although notoriously hostile to Turkey, was also believed to lean very much in the direction of France, and he was certainly sym- pathetic towards the wishes of the Hungarians. A former rival of his for the throne of Poland was the foremost and, be it added, the most capable of the Austrian Generals, Charles Leopold, Duke of Lorraine. At Vienna, however much the want of an ally might incline statesmen to look in the direction of Warsaw, there was as good reason to expect a policy of indifference on the part of Sobieski as one of practical help to Austria, and of active intervention against the Turks. But, fortunately for the House of Hapsburg, and perhaps even for Europe, the Polish King was of a different temper from the calculating monarch at Versailles ; and the danger of his neigh- bour from the advance of the Crescent aroused in him all the nobler fury and enthusiasm of the old Crusaders. He rejected every temptation to preserve the ignoble attitude of a neutral in face of a common peril to humanity and civilisation ; and, with the pecuniary aid of the other States and potentates, including the Pope, he arrayed the not over-enthusiastic nobles of his country to proceed against the Moslim.

The advance of the Turkish host had not been hindered by any similar dissensions to those which prevented the States of Central and Eastern Europe from uniting against a common foe. The forces of which the Duke of Lorraine could dispose were quite incapable of arresting its progress, and the precipitate flight of the Emperor and his Court to the Bavarian fortress of Passau was followed by the arrival of the Sultan's army at the gates of Vienna. There was small ground for hope that the capital itself could hold out until relief came, and among its inhabitants there was a deep disgust at the bigotry of Leopold, whose Jesuit policy had lost Hungary, and provided the hordes of Asia with an easy road into the heart of the empire. " The fortifications were old and imperfect, the suburbs encroached upon the works, the number of the defenders was small. Thirteen thousand infantry, supplied by the army of Lorraine, and seven thousand armed citizens formed the garrison ; and besides these, about sixty thousand souls were in the city. The command was en- trusted. to Ernest Rudiger, Count Starhemberg, an officer of tried skill and courage." A warrior-prelate, the Bishop of Neustadt, shared with him the danger and the glory of the defence. The Turkish army took up its position outside the walls on July 14th, and the bombardment, which commenced as soon as the batteries were placed, continued with unabated fury until the relief of the city, two months later. If we only consider the immense superiority of the besiegers over the besieged, and the uncertainty in the minds of the defenders as to whence any effectual aid could come, we can but arrive at the conclusion that the siege of Vienna was in all respects the most remarkable of modern sieges, or if equalled, then by that of Saragossa alone.

The blunders of Kara Mustapha opened the way for the triumph of Christendom. He wasted his opportunities before Vienna, and he neglected the many means in his power to retard, if he could not repel, the approach of Sobieski. Four days after the arrival of the Turks at the gates of Vienna, Sobieski left Warsaw for Cracow. A mouth later he was on the frontiers of Silesia, at the head of his incomparable cavalry and a certain number of poorly accoutred infantry, who had, however, as their leader wisely declared, " sworn to dress themselves better in the spoils of the enemy." On the last day of August he effected his junction with the forces of the Duke of Lorraine to the west of Vienna, and without the least attempt to make diffi- culties by standing on his dignity as a sovereign, hastened to concert with Lorraine a plan of action for effecting the relief of Vienna, now reduced to the last stage of distress. The passage of the Danube represented the first obstacle to be overcome, and its successful accomplishment was only due to the apathy or ignorance of the Turkish commander, who steadily refused to believe in the reported arrival of the Polish King. The crisis in the siege had indeed arrived, for the relieving forces had scarcely been arrayed on the Tullner Feld south of the Danube, when the last despairing message carried by a swimmer up the river from the beleaguered city arrived from Starhemberg,—" No time is to be lost ; no time indeed to be lost."

The same military incapacity which had allowed Sobieski to march unhindered the whole way from Poland facilitated the execution of hie plans in front of Vienna. The chances of victory were at the end of August wholly on the side of the Turks. The relieving army mustered less than eighty thousand men, the garrison of Vienna was reduced to such extremity, that it could barely hold its last defences. To a vast superiority in numbers, Kara Mustapha added all the advantages of the stronger position. When his over-confidence lost him the latter, the former proved of but little avail ; and as soon as Sobieski had scaled the heights of the Kahlenberg, and sur- veyed the Turkish positions extending below, he is reported to have exclaimed, with the happy insight of a good soldier "This man is badly encamped; he knows nothing of war ; we shall beat him." Mr. Malden gives a very clear and spirited account of the battle, or rather of the series of encounters out- side Vienna, that were fought throughout September 12th, 1683. Up to the last, the Turkish commanders were disposed to disbelieve in the reported arrival of Sobieski, and to consider the attack as little more than a diversion on the part of Lorraine to encourage the despairing garrison. Mr. Malden thus describes their discovery of the truth :—

" Re-forming after their brief delay, the Polish cavalry in gorgeous arms came flashing from the woods and defiles near Dornbach on his left. Those who had before fought against him knew the plumes raised upon a spear point, the shield borne before him, the banderolles on the lances of his bodyguard, which declared the presence of the terrible Sobieski. `By Allah, but the King is really among them,' cried Gieray Khan, of the Crimea ; and all doubt was at an end as the shout of Vivat Sobieski !' rolled along the Christian lines, in dread and significant answer to the discordant clamour of the infidels."

The Turkish troops fought with their accustomed valour, but, badly led, their defeat was assured beforehand by the apprehen- sion caused throughout their ranks by the presence of the victor of Choczim. Their loss in men was enormous—barely fifty thou- sand in all are credibly affirmed to have regained Turkey—but it was surpassed by the loss in materiel :-

" I cannot conceive," wrote Sobieski, "how they can carry on the war, after such a loss of utateriei. The whole of the artillery of the Turks, their munitions, and their baggage were the spoil of the vie- tors. Three hundred and ten pieces of cannon, 20,000 animals, 9,000 carriages, 125,000 tents, 5,000,000 pounds of powder are enumerated. The holy standard of the Prophet had been saved, but the standard of the Vizier, mistaken for it, was sent to the Pope by the conqueror ; while his gilded stirrups were dispatched at once to 'Poland, to the Queen, as a token of victory. Never perhaps since Alexander stood a victor at Issas in the tents of Darius, or the Greeks stormed the Persian camp at PlatEea, had an European army entered upon such spoil."

Although we cannot attempt to enter here upon the many interesting speculations which Mr. Malden's volume excites and goes far towards solving, we can express our sense of the very useful service he has rendered by recalling, and so well describing, the picturesque and important episode in the history of Europe that centred round the siege and relief of Vienna. Although the day has completely passed away when Turkish aggression was the most formidable menace to the peace of Europe, we cannot be too often reminded of the circumstances which had such an important part in shaping the policy, and even in moulding the form, of the States of Central and Eastern Europe. Personally, Sobieski derived little advantage from his brilliant achievement. The Poles obtained no equivalent recompense for the danger they had incurred in behalf of the Austrian dominions, and the ingratitude of Leopold was as rudely expressed as it was inexcusable. He could not avoid, although he postponed as long as possible, a meeting with his deliverer; but then he addressed him in a few cold words in Latin, although Lorraine had recommended that he should receive him "with open arms, since he had saved the Empire." Bat the sullen pride of the Hapsburg ruler could not obscure from his contemporaries, and certainly has not blinded posterity to, the magnitude of the service Sobieski had rendered to Europe and to Christendom. On the one hand, it was proclaimed from the pulpits that " there was a man sent from God whose name was John," and Queen Christina of Sweden wrote that "the Empire of the World was his due, if Heaven had intended it for a single potentate." And on the other hand, the preparations now in progress at Vienna for the celebration of its two-hundredth anniversary show that the Austrians of to-day are not insensible of the timely aid they received from the chivalrous King of Poland, at the moment when they were reduced to the last gasp, and when their fairest provinces were overrun by an Asiatic soldiery. Of that event, too, and its consequences, Mr. Malden's essay will be for the English reader a useful reminder.