Henry Elliot Malden - Vienna 1683

"Think of that age's awful birth,
When Europe echoed, terror-riven,
That a new foot was on the earth,
And a new name come down from Heaven
When over Calpe's straits and steeps
The Moor had bridged his royal road,
And Othman's sons from Asia's deeps
The conquests of the Cross o'erflowed.
* * * * *
"Think with what passionate delight
The tale was told in Christian halls,
How Sobieski turned to flight
The Muslim from Vienna's walls;
How, when his horse triumphant trod
The burghers' richest robes upon,
The ancient words rose loud, 'From God
A man was sent whose name was John.'"
Lord Houghton .

The historical scholar will find nothing new in the followingpages; but I have thought it worth while to tell to the generalreader a story worth the telling, and to explain not only thedetails, but the wider bearings also, of a great crisis in Europeanhistory, no satisfactory account of which exists, I believe, inEnglish, and the two hundredth anniversary of which is now uponus.
My principal authorities are "Sobieski's Letters to his Queen,"edited by Count Plater, Paris, 1826; Starhemberg's "Life andDespatches," edited by Count Thrheim, Vienna, 1882; "Campaigns ofPrince Eugene, of Savoy," Vienna, 1876, etc.; Schimmer's "Sieges ofVienna;" Von Hammer's "History of the Turks;" Salvandy's "Historyof Poland;" "Memoirs of Eugene," by De Ligne; "Memoirs of Charles,Duke of Lorraine, and his Military Maxims," published late in theseventeenth century; "Works of Montecuculi;" De la Guillatire's"View of the Present State of the Turkish Empire, etc.,"translated, London, 1676, etc.
I have been obliged to reject some statements of Salvandy's, such,for instance, as that the crescent moon was eclipsed onthe day of the battle before Vienna.
I regret that I have been unable to use the account of the campaignof 1683 published in Vienna, by the Director of the War Archives,since this went to press. Some of the matter of it is, I believe,contained in the "Campaigns of Eugene," published under the sameauthority mentioned above, and in Schimmer's work.
Kitlands , 1883.

1663. Ahmed Kiuprili Grand Vizier.
1664. Montecuculi defeats the Turks at St. Gotthard. Twenty years'truce with Austria, by which the Turks retain most ofHungary.
1669. The Turks take Candia from the Venetians.
1671. Conspiracy in Hungary against the Emperor crushed.
1672. French attack upon Holland provokes a general war. Treaty ofBuksacs between the Turks and Poles. Poland cedes most of Podoliaand the Ukraine, and pays tribute to Turkey.
1673. The Polish nobles break the treaty. Great victory of Sobieskiover the Turks at Choczim.
1675. Sobieski crowned King of Poland.
1676. Treaty of Zurawna between Turks and Poles; the former retainmost of their conquests.
1677. Death of Ahmed Kiuprili. Kara Mustapha Grand Vizier.
1678. Tekeli heads an insurrection in Hungary against the Emperor.The French intrigue with him.
1678-79. Treaties of Nimuegen between the French and theallies.
1681. Louis XIV. seizes Strassburg and makes other aggressions uponthe Empire. Treaty between Holland and Sweden against France.
1682. Treaty of Laxenberg between the Emperor and the Upper GermanCircles against France, followed by similar treaties between theother Circles, the Emperor and Sweden. The Turks openly aid theHungarians.
1683. League of the Empire, Poland and the Pope, supported by otheranti-French powers, against the Turks. Turkish invasion of Austria.Siege of Vienna. Defeat of the Turks by John Sobieski and the Dukeof Lorraine, September 12. The French attack the SpanishNetherlands in the autumn.
1684. Truce of Ratisbon between France and the Empire.
1686. Buda recovered from the Turks. League of Augsburg between theEmperor and the Circles of Western Germany, joined ultimately bySpain, Holland, the Pope, Savoy and other Princes of the Empire,against the French.
1688. The English Revolution secures England for the side of theLeague, which she joins next year. General war with Francefollows.
1696. Death of Sobieski.
1697. Treaty of Ryswick between France and the allies. Eugenedefeats the Turks at Zenta, in Hungary.
1699. Peace of Carlowitz. The Turks cede nearly all Hungary,Transylvania, Podolia, the Ukraine, the Morea and Azof. The firstgreat diminution of Turkish territory in Europe.
VIENNA.
1683.

At the present moment, in 1883, the power of Austria is driven as awedge into the midst of the former dominions of the Sultan. Thatthis is so, perhaps that Austria even exists as a great power, andcan hope to be a greater in south-eastern Europe, is owing in nosmall degree to the Polish aid which in 1683 defeated the Turkisharmies before the gates, and saved Vienna. The victor, JohnSobieski, King of Poland, then deserved and enjoyed the gratitudeof Christendom. But the unequal fate of a man great in characterand in abilities, but born out of due time, in an incongruous ageand in a state unworthy of him, has seldom been more conspicuouslyillustrated than in his career. The great men of the last quarterof the seventeenth century whom we most readily remember are men ofwestern Europe. Louis XIV., with the resources of France behindhim, William III., wielding the power of England, of Holland, andof Protestant Germany, are the kings who fill the stage. Thehalf-crazy hero, Charles XII. of Sweden, is a more familiarcharacter than the great Polish king, the deliverer first ofPoland, secondly of Germany, perhaps of Europe. The causes are notfar to seek. The country which he ruled has disappeared from theroll of European nations. The enemy whom he defeated has become, inhis last decrepitude, the object merely of scorn, or of notdisinterested care. It seems now so incredible that the Turksshould have been a menace to Europe, that it is no great claim toremembrance to have defeated them. Sobieski, too, in his greatnessand in his weakness, was a medival hero. He was out of place inthe age of Louis XIV. He was a great soldier rather than a greatgeneral, a national hero rather than a great king. His faith hadthe robust sincerity of that of a thirteenth-century knight, hischaracter was marred by the violent passions of a medival baron.His head was full of crusading projectsof the expulsion of theTurks, of the revival of a Catholic Greek state, not withoutprincipalities for his own house. His plans would have commandedsupport in the days of St. Louis, but were impracticable in aEurope whose rulers schemed for a balance of power. Poland herselfperished, partly through clinging to a medival constitution in themidst of modern states. Her medivally-minded king and his exploitsare eclipsed by other memories, even upon the scene of his greatestachievement.
For the traveller who from the Tower of St. Stephen's, in thecentre of the old-town of Vienna, looks down upon the places maderemarkable by great historic actions in the valley of the Danube,has his eye turned first northward and eastward upon the Marchfeld.There, he is told, are Aspern and Essling, where the ArchdukeCharles beat Napoleon in 1809. There is the island of Lobau, whereNapoleon repaired his forces, and whence he issued to fight yonderthe great and terrible conflict of Wagram. The scene, not of agreater slaughter, not of a more obstinately contested fight, thanWagram, but the scene of a battle more momentous in itsconsequences, lies upon the other side. Among the vineyards,villages, and chateaux which cover the lower slopes of the WienerWald, among the suburbs of Nussdorf and of Hernals, Charles ofLorraine and John Sobieski smote the Turkish armies in 1683. Thereat one blow they frustrated the last great Mohammedan aggressionagainst Christendom, and set free the minds and arms of the Germansto combine against French ambition upon their western frontier. Thevictory was one of those decisive events which complete longpending revolutions, and inaugurate new political conditions inEurope.