Frances Parthenope Verney

“ Sobieski retired to his estates disgusted and nearly broken-hearted. He had not long been there, when the "Terror of the Turks," as he was surnamed, was accused in the Diet of having sold his country to the infidel for a bribe of twelve million florins. Enraged at such an attack on his honor, he returned to Warsaw immediately, while his army, furious at such a libel on their beloved chief, swore to avenge the insult in blood. ”

“ He discussed the qualities of the Great Condé, and then declared that "a Pole ought to reign in Poland."
There is a man among us who has saved the republic time after time by his counsels and his victories, whose patriotism and genius would maintain our country in the rank the should hold in the universe. Nothing in such a choice would be left to chance; he will not make us a vassal of the infidels. If we have a country at all, if men of illustrious dynasties care to rule over us, remember to whom we owe it, and take John Sobieski as your king! ”

“ The difficulty we have had in crossing the Danube at three in the morning opposite the Turkish camp was immense; the bridges broke down under the weight of artillery and baggage wagons; we had to seek out fords, which we found luckily on the smaller branches of the river, but the current was too rapid in the main stream; there is no river which can compare with the Danube in violence. ”

“ I too care for my life, I care for it for the service of Christendom and my country, for you, dear heart, for my children, my family, and my friends, but honor must be dear to me also.
It is sad to hear the officers talk. They even regret that we came to the emperor's help, and wish we had left this proud race to perish, never to rise again; everybody is discouraged and out of heart. The intense heat brings with it fever and something like plague. [Leopold, indeed, seemed bent on showing by his consistent meanness and ingratitude how little worth saving he had been.] ”

“ The Diet pursued its course until the end of the session with unaccustomed calm under his influence, and at its close the president declared in the same semi-Oriental style, that "the wisdom of a divinity, or, if Sobieski could be considered as a man, the excellence of a hero, had saved the liberty of his country by his virtues and its independence by his exploits. No such man had ever before been formed by nature, and probably never would be so in future!" ”

“ We shall save the republic from shame and vassalage. Soldiers of Poland, fight for your country, and remember that Jesus Christ fights for you!" Sobieski himself had heard three masses since daybreak, the army had been blessed by a priest, and now getting off his horse, sabre in hand, he led his infantry across the trenches. The Turks, who had believed an attack impossible in such weather, alarmed at the triumphant shouts of the Poles, defended themselves but ill; charge after charge of the young Polish cavalry, in full armor, cut to pieces their best troops ”

“ Some of my bodyguard, left near the Turkish cannon we have taken, lost their cloaks, their clothes, and their horses. We have never been in such bad case, and if it had not been for the oats found in the Turkish camp we should have lost all the horses; the misery is so great everywhere that it is difficult to find a truss of hay or any fresh grass; bare fields are all that remain after the passage of these clouds of pagans. ”

“ The enormous supplies of men which the Turks were able to draw from their provinces in Asia, Africa, and Europe, after the tremendous defeats which they had undergone and the waste of life, are surprising in our eyes, with whom the want of men to supply even the demands of an army in times of peace is sometimes found impossible to meet.
Sobieski, who had been called the Whirlwind, from the rapidity of his marches and the vigor of his onslaughts, was carrying all before him, when the intrigues of Leopold deprived him of half his army ”

“ The decline of the empire of the Mahomets and Solymans dates from the utter defeat of the Turks by King John at Vienna, and the battles which succeeded it. Since that time the Porte has never gained a foot of territory in Europe.
The extraordinary genius for war possessed by the Turkish race, the manner in which such bodies of men and masses of material of war were collected in those roadless days in such short periods of time, and from such distances, is almost inconceivable. Inspired by religious fanaticism, these were hurled on the foe with a force which for a time carried all before it. ”

“ Fifty years before, however, the Poles, under his father, James Sobieski, had conquered at the same spot, and the good omen gave them courage. The weather was dreadful, and the snow was falling thickly, when he disposed his troops for the attack. All night long the preparations went on. "Comrades!" cried he, passing along the ranks, his dress, his arms, his thick moustache covered with hoarfrost, "you have suffered, but the Turks are worn out; these men from Asia are half conquered already by the cold. The last twenty-four hours have fought for us. ”

“ High-minded, brave, pious, disinterested, caring much for the interests of his country, and little for his own grandeur, with a love of books which contrasted strangely with his military tastes and the life of incessant movement which fate had forced him to lead, Sobieski was indeed one of the rare instances where the highest qualities had led a man to great fortune. ”

“ We are bivouacking in the open air, we cannot even use our tents, the ground is so frozen that it is impossible to drive in the tent-pegs.
Desertion, brigandage, and sickness were ravaging the ranks on both sides; but still Sobieski went on with his selfimposed task, and the Turks had such confidence in his honor that they would surrender to him at discretion, as at Schetzin, when they would trust no one else. ”

“ The horses have nothing to eat but the leaves of the trees; we have neither food nor forage [which had been promised but never furnished by the emperor] .
Humanly speaking, however, and putting all our trust in God, I must believe that the chief of an army who, like the grand vizier, has not thought of entrenching himself or collecting his scattered troops, but has encamped there as if he were a hundred miles off, is predestined to be beaten.
I have passed the night on the extreme right; we could see the whole Turkish camp, and the noise of the cannon prevented all sleep. ”

“ The imperial palace is honey-combed with bullets, the bastions in a terrible state with great pieces of the walls about to fall over, like masses of rock. All the troops of the allies have done their duty well; they attribute the victory to God and to us. The greatest shock of the battle was just opposite where I was, in front of the vizier ”

“ A successful skirmish raised the spirits of the troops, the Turks fancied he must have received reinforcements, and, when at last he came out of the town with his whole army, they were seized with a panic terror, and declared that magic was being used against them. They all dreaded the approach of winter; Shaitan Pasha knew that a reverse would cost him his head, and he prudently offered an honorable peace. A part of the Ukraine and Kaminiek were given up; but the strength of the Ottoman empire was increasing, while Poland became weaker in men and money each year. ”

“ The preparations of the Porte were enormous: Tartars were arriving in hordes, Moldavia was full of battalions of strange men from the heart of Asia, the immense siege trains from Candia, consisting of between three and four hundred pieces of cannon, a number hitherto unheard of, were being carried up the Danube, and a numerous fleet was collecting in the Black Sea; seven hundred camels had arrived in Thrace with corn from Egypt; soldiers from Attica and the Peloponnesus, from east and west, filled a vast camp near Adrianople where Mahomet and his vizier held perpetual reviews. ”

“ When Sobieski heard that Kara Mustapha had fled to Belgrade his joy was great. "Here is Hungary at last delivered from the infidel after three hundred years. Belgrade is not in Hungary but in Servia," he explains. "I know you are not strong in geography," he observes several times. "The Turks now have only five or six of the principal fortresses left, and it would only require fourteen days to deliver this great and beautiful kingdom entirely." ”

“ After a short and brilliant campaign against the Cossacks, Tartars, and wild hordes under the khan, the allies and what might be called the advanced guard of the Turk, finding that no money and no help were to be had for the impending invasion, Sobieski fell dangerously ill with anxiety and fatigue, and the army, which for many years had received from him their only pay and rations, and had been led on to constant victory, indignant now at his treatment by the king, disbanded, and declared they would only serve under a chief of their own choice. ”

“ The history of Sobieski has a peculiar interest at the present moment, as helping to interpret that present which has its roots, as ever, in the past. The "Bulgarian atrocities," which have shocked the world, are seen to be merely "a survival" (as Mr. Tylor would call it) of the ordinary usages of the Turks in war and in the suppression of rebellion. The antagonism between the Porte and "Muscovy," the friendly feeling between Turkey and Hungary, which has helped to paralyze Austria at the present crisis, existed in the days of King John as now. ”

“ A vast circle of white tents surrounded the whole space — those belonging to the nobles were built like sham fortresses, castles, towers, or long galleries, containing stables, bath-rooms, kitchens, council-chambers, formed of silk and rich stuffs, often booty taken from the Turk, with a profusion of golden crescents, balls, and ornaments, rivalling each other in expense and savage and inordinate luxury. ”

“ Austria did not yet consider herself beaten; every possible calumny was disseminated against Sobieski, while the jealousy of the great Polish ladies was excited against his wife, Marie Casimire, daughter of a French marquis, captain of the guard to the brother of Louis XIV. Would they consent that a foreigner should be queen when no Pole had ever attained to such honor? At all events if Sobieski were elected he should be required to marry the widow of the last king ”

“ Sobieski's grand object was to form an alliance against the Turk among the kingdoms most liable to be attacked. "Not to attempt to conquer or restrain the monster should be our object," said he, "but to fling it back to the deserts from whence it came; to exterminate it, and raise once more on its ruins a Byzantine empire. This is the only Christian, worthy, wise, and decisive course;" ”

“ It was now necessary to elect another monarch — a difficult and dangerous operation in Poland, even in the calmest times. The Poles were the only people in Europe who still preserved the ancient usage of a national assembly where the deliberations were carried on by a whole nation in arms. The difficulty of feeding two hundred thousand citizens thus collected together had constantly obliged them to separate without having settled affairs, and on this occasion a Diet, composed of the senate and of members elected by the country, was directed to choose the new chief of the nation. ”

“ The Turks have never been able to use their acquisitions, except to derive tribute from them. Their existence has always and everywhere been that of a garrison in a conquered country — aliens in faith, in race, and manners, they have continued apart to the present day. Literature they have none, trade they have left to the despised Giaour: they seem incapable of progress, in the European sense of the word. ”

“ I am quite well, thank God, and feel twenty years younger since our victory — everything is repaired.
Kara Mustapha had been promised the aid of Tekeli and forty thousand Hungarians; the Ottoman army had recovered its vigor, and was posted so as to stretch from Parkany to the foot of the mountains, the right resting on the gorges by which the Hungarians were to arrive. ”

“ The fierce hordes which have overrun so large a portion of the world have apparently been urged on by the blind instinct that leads the locust or the soldier-crab afield, more than by any more human feeling. ”

“ Sobieski would have made any efforts to detach Hungary from the Turks, and had an interview with Tekeli, but without success, as he could give no pledges for Leopold's good faith. He made an alliance with Sweden and the Ukraine, and attempted negotiations with the czar, with Persia, Venice, and Louis XIV. His cabinet was said to be the best served in Europe, the East was open to his spies, and he had friends even in the Divan; and he now warned the emperor that the Porte was marching on Vienna, and that the suburbs ought to be demolished lest they should afford shelter to the enemy ”

“ He then went on to look at our army with the palatine of Russia, but our people are extremely piqued, and complain openly that the emperor did not deign to thank them for all the privations and pains they have endured, even by saluting them.
Our sick have nothing but dung to lie on; the wounded, of whom there are a great number, cannot obtain boats to go down the river to Presburg, where I could have them nursed at my own cost. They refuse to allow our dead to be buried in the cemeteries of Vienna, even the superior officers. They pillage our baggage and carry away the horses following us. ”