Chapter III (2)

This modified independence of Transylvania, however, often gave its princes great political importance, during the endless troubles of Hungary, as the assertors of civil and religions liberty against the tyranny and bad faith of the Austrian cabinet; which, with unaccountable infatuation, instead of striving to attach to its rule, by conciliation and good government, the remnant of the kingdom still subject to its sceptre, bent all its efforts to destroy the ancient privileges of the Magyars, and to make the crown formally, as it already was in fact, hereditary in the imperial family. The extirpation of Protestantism was another favourite object of Austrian policy: and the cruelties perpetrated with this view by George Basta and the other imperial generals at the beginning of the century was such, that a general rising took place under Stephen Boczkai, then waiwode of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, who extorted from the Emperor Rodolph, in 1607, the famous _pacification of Vienna_, which was guaranteed by the Porte, and which secured to the Hungarians full liberty of conscience, as well as the enjoyment of all their ancient rights. This agreement was soon violated; but the Protestants again found a protector in a Transylvanian prince, the celebrated Bethlen-Gabor;[E] who, assuming the royal title, occupied Presburg and Neuhausel in 1619, formed an alliance with the Bohemian revolters under Count Thurn, and was narrowly prevented from forming a junction with them under the walls of Vienna, which, if effected, would probably have overthrown the dynasty of Hapsburg. He is said to have entertained the design of uniting all Hungary east of the Theiss, with Transylvania and Wallachia, into a modern _kingdom of Dacia_, leaving the west to the Turks as a barrier against Austrian aggression--but his want of children left his schemes of aggrandizement without a motive, and at his death in 1630 they all fell to the ground. The Thirty Years' War procured the Hungarian subjects of Austria a temporary respite; but Leopold, who was elected king in 1655, and succeeded his father Ferdinand in the empire three years later, stimulated by the triumph of his predecessor over the liberties of Bohemia, resumed with fresh zeal the crusade against the privileges of the Magyars. Not only was the persecution of the Protestants recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a height that disaffection became universal even among those who had hitherto constantly adhered to the Austrian interest, so that (in the words of a writer[F] of the time,) "they began to contrast their own condition with that of the Transylvanians, who are not forced to take the turban but live quietly under the protection of the Turk--while we (as they say) are exposed to the caprices of a prince under the absolute dominion of the Jesuits, a far worse sort of people than the Dervishes!" As early as 1667, a secret communication had been made to the Porte through the envoy of Abaffi; but Kiuprili, who was then on the point of departure for Candia, and was unwilling to risk a fresh rupture with the empire in his absence, gave little encouragement either to these overtures, or to the more advantageous propositions received in 1670 from Peter Zriny, Ban of Croatia, and previously a famous partisan-leader against the Moslems; in which the malecontents offered, as the price of Ottoman aid and protection, to cede to the sultan all the fortified towns which should be taken by his arms, and to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. The conspiracy had, however, become known at Vienna; and instant measures were taken for seizing Zriny and his Croatian confederates, Nadasti, Tattenbach, and Christopher Frangipani, who were all executed in the course of the following year. The Emperor, now considering Hungary as a conquered country, formally abolished the dignity of Palatine, and nominated Gaspar Von Ampringham, grand master of the Teutonic knights, to be viceroy of the kingdom; while the Protestants were persecuted with unheard-of rigour, and many of their ministers imprisoned in the fortresses, or sent in chains to the galleys at Naples.

The confederates of Upper Hungary had been better on their guard: and on the news of the fate of Zriny and his associates, they forthwith assembled in arms at Kaschau or Cassovia, and electing Francis Racoczy, son of the late prince of Transylvania, and son-in-law of Zriny, as their leader, bade defiance to the Emperor. The civil war continued several years without decisive success on either side; till on the death, in 1676, of Racoczy, (who had previously abandoned the popular cause,) the famous Emeric Tekoeli, then only twenty years of age, was chosen general. He was the hereditary enemy of the Austrians; his father Stephen, Count of Kersmark, having been besieged in his castle by the Imperialists at the time of his death; and while he pressed the Germans in the field with such vigour as to deprive them of nearly all the fortified places they still held in Upper Hungary, the negotiation with the Porte for aid was renewed, and being backed by the diplomatic influence of France, then at war with the empire, was more favourably received by Kara-Mustapha than the former advances of the malcontents had been by his predecessor. The war with Russia, however, prevented the Turks for the present from interfering with effect, but Abaffi was authorized to support the insurgents in the mean time, while Leopold, fearing the total loss of Hungary, summoned a diet at Oedenburg (in 1681) for the redress of grievances, in which most of the ancient privileges of the kingdom were restored, full liberty of conscience promised to the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Paul Esterhazy named Palatine. But these concessions, wrung only by hard necessity from the Cabinet of Vienna, came now too late. Tekoeli replied to the amnesty proclaimed by the Emperor, by the publication of a counter-manifesto, in which were set forth a hundred grievances of the Hungarians; and, having obtained a great accession of strength by his marriage (June 1682) to Helen Zriny, the widow of Racoczy, whereby he gained all the adherents of those two powerful houses, he summoned a rival diet at Cassovia, where he openly assumed the title of sovereign prince of Upper Hungary, exercising the prerogatives of royalty, and striking money in his own name, which bore his effigy on the obverse, and on the reverse the motto inscribed on his standards--"Pro Deo, Patria, et Libertate."

Though Tekoeli professed to act by the authority of the Porte, from which he had received a firman of investiture with the usual ensigns of sovereignty, no formal declaration of war had yet been issued from Constantinople; and many of the Ulemah protested against such a measure, at least till the twenty years' truce, concluded in 1664, should have expired. The aid openly afforded, however, to Tekoeli by Abaffi and the pasha of Buda, as well as the constant march of large bodies of troops to the Danube, afforded sufficient indication that an attack would not be long delayed; and Leopold, disquieted at the prospect of having at once to contend against his own revolted subjects, and the mighty force of the Ottoman empire, sent Count Caprara on a mission to Constantinople, in the hope of averting the storm; while, at the same time, he made overtures for an alliance with Poland, still smarting under her losses in the late Turkish war. The mission of Caprara led to no result, from the exorbitant demands made by the Ottoman ministers on behalf both of the Porte and its Hungarian allies, which amounted to little less than a total cession of the country, and a few days after the arrival of the ambassador, the despatch of the firman to Tekoeli, and the display of the imperial horsetails in the plain of Daood-Pasha, showed that the resolution of the Divan was fixed for war. The negotiation with Poland presented almost equal difficulties, from the rooted jealousy entertained by the Poles of the ambition of Austria, and the opposition of the French envoy, De Vitry, who even carried his intrigues so far as to embark in a plot for the death or dethronement of the king, and the substitution of the grand marshal Iablonowski. The firmness of Sobieski, however, whom no minor considerations could blind to the importance of saving Austria and Hungary from the grasp of the Osmanli, overcame all these machinations; and the ratification of the diet was eventually given to a league, offensive and defensive, with Austria, on March 31, 1683--the same day on which the vast host of the Ottomans broke up from its cantonments about Adrianople, and directed its march towards the Danube.

The sons of Naodasti and Zriny, who had been executed ten years before, were retained as hostages, under the name of chamberlains, in the imperial household; and it fell to the lot of the former to announce to Leopold, that the legions of the crescent were pouring down on Hungary. The cheek of the Emperor blanched at the tidings; for well did he know that, till the arrival of the Poles, his disposable force amounted to scarce 35,000 men, under Duke Charles of Lorraine, who could barely make head against Abaffi and Tekoeli, while so high were the hopes of the Magyars raised of a speedy and final deliverance from Austrian tyranny, that a plot is even said to have been laid between Zriny and his sister, now the wife of Tekoeli, for seizing the person of Leopold in the palace of Vienna, and giving him up to the Tartars, who had already commenced their ravages on the frontiers. The sultan meanwhile--the cumbrous luxury of whose harem and equipages had retarded the march of the army--had halted at Belgrade, after holding a grand review of his forces, and placing the standard of the Prophet in the hands of the vizier, in token of the full powers entrusted to him for the conduct of the campaign. On the 10th of June, Tekoeli, who had crossed the Danube to welcome his potent auxiliaries, was received at Essek with royal magnificence by Kara-Mustapha, who imitated, in the ceremonial observed on this occasion, the pomp of the reception of John Zapolya by Soliman, on his march against Vienna in 1529; but after receiving personal investiture of the royal dignity conferred on him by the sultan, he returned rapidly to Cassovia, where he had fixed his headquarters. The khan of the Tartars had already arrived at Stuhlweissenburg, and was speedily joined by the vizir and the main Turkish army, which, passing the Danube to the number of 140,000 men, swept like a torrent over the rich plains of Lower Hungary: the towns, abandoned by the panic-stricken German garrisons, every where opening their gates to the partisans of Zriny and Tekoeli, in the hope of escaping the fate of Veszprim, which had been sacked by the janissaries for attempting resistance. The march was pressed with unexampled rapidity, till on the 28th the whole army was mustered under the walls of Gran; and the vizir, summoning to his tent the khan and the principal pashas, announced that his orders were to make himself master of Vienna.

The veneration with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in which he failed, but even to attach a prophetic importance to his recorded sayings. A promise attributed to him, that "an Ottoman army should never pass the Raab," had been recalled at the time of the signal defeat experienced by Ahmed-Kiuprili on that river, and his memorable repulse before Vienna had been ever held as a warning, that the Ottoman arms were destined never to prevail against the ramparts of the _Kizil-Alma_. These considerations, however, had little weight with Kara-Mustapha; bridges, hastily thrown over the ill-omened stream, afforded a passage to the army, (July 8,) and the march was again directed without stop or stay on Vienna. A body of Hungarians in the pay of the emperor, under Budiani, passed over to the ranks of their insurgent countrymen on the first appearance of the standards of Tekoeli; and the Duke of Lorraine, who had withdrawn his infantry to the island of Schutt and the other bank of the Danube, was worsted in a cavalry fight at Petronel by the Tartars, whose flying squadrons were already seen from the walls of Vienna. Proclamation had been made, forbidding the citizens to _speak of the present state of affairs!_--but the emperor and court, who had confidently reckoned on the invaders being delayed by the sieges of Raab and Komorn, no sooner learned that they had passed those fortresses unheeded, and were rapidly approaching the capital, than, seized with a panic-terror, they fled from the devoted city, on the same day with the combat at Petronel, (July 7,) in such dismayed haste, that the empress was forced to lodge one night under a tree in the open air; nor did they deem themselves in safety from the terrible pursuit of the Tartars, till they reached Lintz, on the furthest western verge of the hereditary states. The Austrian towns along the Danube were overwhelmed by the advancing tide of Turks, or ravaged by the Hungarian followers of Tekoeli, who vied with their Moslem allies in animosity against the Germans; and the light troops and Tartars, overspreading the country, pushed their predatory excursions so far up the river, as even to alarm the imperial fugitives at Lintz, who consulted their safety by a second flight to Passau. The three great abbeys of Lilienfeldt, Moelk, and Klosterneuburg, were preserved from these desultory marauders by the strength of their walls, and the valour of their monastic inmates, who took arms in defence of their cloisters; but the open country was laid waste with the same ferocity as in the invasion by Soliman, and many thousands of the country people were dragged as slaves into the Turkish camp. The regular columns of the janissaries and feudatory troops, meanwhile, continuing their advance, appeared on the morning of the 14th under the walls of Vienna; the posts of the different corps were assigned on the same day, and in the course of the following night, ground was broken for the trenches on three sides of the city.

The ancient ramparts of Vienna, which had withstood the assault of the great Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the besiegers. Such preparations for defence, however, as the time allowed of, had been hastily made by the governor, Rudiger Count Stahrenberg, a descendant of the stout baron who, in the former siege, had repulsed the Tartars in the defiles near Enns, and an artillery officer of proved skill and valour. Most of the gates had been walled up, platforms and covered ways constructed, and the students of the university, with such of the citizens as were able and willing to bear arms, were organized into companies in aid of the regular troops, whose number did not exceed 14,000. But the flower of the Austrian nobility, with many gallant volunteers, not only from Germany, but from other parts of Christendom, were within the walls, and animated by their example the spirits of the defenders, whose only hope of relief lay apparently in the distant and uncertain succours of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine, with his cavalry, had still hoped to maintain himself in the Prater and the Leopoldstadt, (which were on an island separated from the city by a narrow arm of the river,) and thus to keep up the communication with the north bank:--but an overwhelming body of Turkish horse, (among whom were conspicuous the Arab chargers and gorgeous equipments of a troop of Egyptian Mamlukes, a force rarely seen in the Ottoman armies,) was directed against him on the 17th, and after a desperate conflict, he was driven across the main stream with the loss of 500 men, and with difficulty secured himself from pursuit by breaking the bridge. The suburb of Leopold, in itself a second city, was given up to the flames; and the Turks, erecting two batteries on the bank opposite Vienna, completed the investment on the only side which had hitherto remained open. Kara-Mustapha, in the confidence of anticipated triumph, now summoned Stahrenberg to surrender, by throwing a cartel into the city, wrapped up in linen and fastened to an arrow: and no answer being returned, the fire of the batteries on the Leopold island opened on the town; and in less than a week ten others were completed and mounted with cannon on the landward side.

The main point of attack, in the former siege under Soliman, had been the gate of Carinthia, (Kaernther-Thor,) and the adjoining bastions; but the weight of the Turkish fire on the land side was now directed principally against the Castle-Gate, (Burg-Thor,) lying to the left of the former, and against the curtain between the Castle bastion and that of Loebel; and on the river side from the batteries of the Leopold island against the Rothenthurm or Red Tower, at the point where the fortifications abut on the stream of the Danube. The tent of the vizir was pitched opposite the Burg-Thor, in the midst of the janissaries and Roumeliote troops, while the feudatories of Anatolia and Syria, under their pashas, were posted right and left of this central point, and the encampments of the various divisions stretched far round the city in a semi-circle many miles in extent, touching the Danube at its two extreme points of Ebersdorff below Vienna, and Nussdorff in the higher part of the stream, where a bridge thrown over the narrow channel formed a communication between the outposts on the mainland, and those on the Leopold island. The charge of this bridge was assigned to the Moldavian and Wallachian contingents, under the command of Scherban, waiwode of the latter province, and one of the most remarkable adventurers of the age. Born of a noble Wallachian family, which claimed descent from the ancient imperial house of Cantacuzene, he had earned from the Turks, not less by the reckless bravery he had displayed under the standard of the crescent in the wars of Poland, than by the consummate address with which he had steered his way through the tortuous intrigues of the Fanar, the sobriquet of Shaitan Ogblu, _son of Satan_--nor was he unknown as a gay and gallant visitor to the more polished and voluptuous courts of the west. In his elevation to the throne of his native country, he was said to have been materially assisted by the criminal favour of the consort of his predecessor, the Princess Ducas:--but in the camp before Vienna he assumed the guise of extraordinary piety--a lofty cross was erected before his tent, where the rights of the Greek Church were daily celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and the priests of that communion offered up prayers for the success of the Ottoman arms against the schismatics of the Western Church![G]

On the 23d of July, two mines were fired under the counterscarp of the Loebel bastion, and though from the want of skill in the Turkish engineers, they did little damage, the alarm caused among the garrison, who called to mind the formidable use made of this species of approach in the siege of Candia, was such, that Stahrenberg issued orders that one person should be constantly on the watch in each house, to prevent the Turks from making their way into the city by these subterraneous passages. No more than forty mines, however, were sprung during the whole siege, and their effect, from the industry with which they were countermined by the garrison, was far less destructive than at Candia:--but the fire from the batteries continued without cessation, till the counterscarp and ravelin between the two bastions were reduced to a heap of ruins, and the covered approaches of the Turks, in spite of the constant sorties of the besieged, were pushed so close to the outer works that the defenders could reach the pioneers employed on the galleries by thrusting at them through the palisades with the long German pikes, the efficiency of which had been so severely experienced in the former siege. The first assault on the ravelin was made July 25--but the explosion of a mine at the instant threw the attacking column into disorder, and they were repulsed after a severe conflict, in which Stahrenberg himself was wounded. The attack was not repeated in force till the night of Aug. 3, when the troops of the pasha of Temeswar, and a select body of janissaries under their _houlkiaya_ or lieutenant-general, rushed with such fury upon the ruined rampart, that though four times driven back, they at last succeeded in effecting a lodgement in the ravelin, and threw up parapets to screen themselves from the fire of the walls. The city, meanwhile, was repeatedly set on fire by bombs thrown from the Turkish batteries; and during the confusion arising from one of these partial conflagrations, a fresh mine was run under the angle of the court bastion, and sprung with such effect as to cause a practicable breach. The quantity of powder, however, had been so greatly over calculated that great part recoiled among the Turks and the garrison, by a well-timed sortie, did great damage to the enemy's works. Before the breach, however, could be repaired, the janissaries, recovering from their panic, again assailed it, and, after a desperate struggle, established themselves in the ditch and front of the bastion, while the defenders endeavoured, by changing the direction of their guns, to enfilade the ground thus won by the enemy, so as to prevent their penetrating into the interior, which now lay open to them.

Great had been the panic throughout Europe at the advance of the Turks into Austria, and their appearance before Vienna. The infidel host was magnified, by the exaggerations of popular terror, to the number of 100,000 horse and 600,000 foot! And it was doubted whether, after destroying the power of the House of Hapsburg, the vizir would march to the Rhine, and annihilate the remaining strength of Christendom by the overthrow of Louis XIV., or would cross the Alps to fulfil the famous threat of Bayezid I., by stabbing his horse before the high altar of St Peter's. Even among those better qualified to take a calm view of the state of affairs, little hope was entertained that Vienna could hold out till the armies of Poland and the empire could be collected in sufficient force for its relief, if the Turks continued to press the siege with that vigour and stubborn perseverance, the combination of which in the attack of fortified places had hitherto been one of their most remarkable military characteristics. But Kara-Mustapha, deficient alike in martial experience and personal courage, was little qualified either to stimulate the fanatic ardour of the Ottomans or to guide it to victory. While within the wide enclosure of his own tents, carefully pitched beyond the range of cannon-shot from the ramparts, he maintained a household and harem of such luxurious magnificence as none of the sultans had ever carried with them into the field, the rations of the soldiers were reduced, on the pretext that the supplies expected from Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his own safety, that he visited the lines only in a litter rendered musket-proof by plates and lattices of iron! Whether he entertained the wild design, as asserted by Cantemir, (whose authority, as that of a contemporary, may in this case perhaps deserve some credit,) of throwing off his allegiance to the sultan, and erecting an independent _Western Empire_ of the Ottomans in Austria and Hungary, or whether he was simply instigated by his avarice to preserve the imagined treasures of the capital of the German Caesars from the pillage which must follow from its being taken by storm--he no sooner saw the imperial city apparently within his grasp, than he restrained, instead of encouraging, the spirit of the troops, endeavouring rather to wear out the garrison by an endless succession of petty alarms, than to carry the place at once by assault. The murmurs of the soldiers, who even refused to remain in the trenches, were with difficulty quieted by the exhortations of Wani-Effendi, a celebrated Moslem divine, who had accompanied the army in order to share in the merit of the _holy war_--while the remonstrances of the pashas and generals were silenced by the exhibition of the sultan's _khatt-shereef_, which conferred on the vizir plenary powers for the conduct of the war.

While Kara Mustapha thus lay inactive in his lines before Vienna, Tekoeli, who had been detached with his Hungarian followers and an auxiliary Turkish corps to reduce the castle of Presburg, which held out after the surrender of the town, had been defeated by the Duke of Lorraine, aided by a body of Polish cavalry under Lubomirski, the forerunners of the army now assembling at Cracow. All the European princes, meanwhile, with the exception of Louis XIV., who, even in the danger of their common faith, forgot not his hostility to the house of Hapsburg, vied with each other in forwarding the equipment of the host which was to save the bulwark of Christendom. The cardinals at Rome sold their plate to supply funds for the German levies; Cardinal Barberini alone contributed 20,000 florins, and the Pope was profuse in his indulgences to those who joined the new crusade. The emperor, meanwhile, from his retreat at Passau, was abject in his entreaties to Sobieski for speedy succour, offering to cede to him his rights upon Hungary if he could preserve his Austrian capital; but the zeal of the Polish hero needed no stimulus. Though so disabled by the gout as to be unable to mount his horse without help, he was indefatigable in his exertions to hasten the march of his troops, to whom he gave the rendezvous, "Under the counterscarp at Vienna." On his march into Germany, he was every where received as a deliverer; the Jesuits of Olmutz erected, at his entrance into the town, a triumphal arch, with the inscription, "Salvatorem expectamus;" and all hailed, as a sure omen of victory, the presence of the champion whose very name had become a byword of terror among the Turks. The beleaguered garrison was, meanwhile, cheered by frequent messages promising speedy relief from the Duke of Lorraine, whose emissaries, selected for their knowledge of the Turkish language, contrived to pass and re-pass securely; but an epidemic disease, in addition to the sword and the bombardment, was rapidly thinning their numbers; and Callonitz, bishop of Neustadt, who, in his younger days, had gained distinction against the Turks in Candia, now acquired a holier fame by his pious care of the sick and wounded, who crowded the hospitals and houses. The siege had been languidly carried on during the greater part of August, but at the end of the month fresh symptoms of activity were observed in the Ottoman lines; several mines were sprung on the 27th and 28th, and the fire from the batteries was so warmly kept up, that on the 29th the garrison, conjecturing that the anniversary of the battle of Mohacz had been chosen for the general assault, stood to their arms in anxious suspense. But the day passed over without any alarm, and it was not till September 4, that, having blown up great part of the right face of the court bastion by a powerful mine, 5000 of the _elite_ of the janissaries sprang, sword in hand, with loud shouts and the clangour of martial music, into the breach thus made, and forcing their way, with the fanatic valour which had in their best days characterized the sons of Hadji-Bektash, into the interior of the bastion, planted their _bairahs_, or pennons, on the ruined ramparts. Stahrenberg himself, with his officers and guards, was fortunately going the rounds at the menaced point at the moment of the explosion and assault, but the Osmanlis held firm the ground they had gained; and Stahrenberg, seeing the enemy thus fairly established within the defences, directed barriers to be constructed and trenches sunk at the head of the streets nearest the breach, while thirty rockets, fired in the night from the steeple of St Stephen's Domkirch, announced the extremity of their distress to their approaching friends; and all eyes were turned to the rocky heights of the Kahlenberg, which bounded the prospect to the west, in hope of descrying the standards of the Christian army.

It was at Tuln, six leagues above Vienna, that Sobieski received, the day after this assault, a despatch from Stahrenberg, containing only the words--"There is no time to be lost!" On the 6th the Poles passed the river by the bridge of Tuln, and the king, amazed at the supineness of the vizir in suffering this movement to be effected without molestation, exclaimed, "Against such a general the victory is already gained!"--and advanced as to an assured triumph. Though far inferior in numbers to the Turks, who, after all their losses by the sword and desertion, still mustered 120,000 effective men, when passed in review on the 8th by the vizir, it was in truth a gallant army which Sobieski now saw united under his command. The Imperialists, under the Duke of Lorraine, were not more than 20,000; but the Saxons and Bavarians, led by their respective electors, and the contingents of the lesser states of the empire, with the fiery hussars and cuirassiers of Poland, formed an aggregate of 65,000 men, more than half of whom were cavalry; while in the ranks were found, besides the German chivalry who fought for their fatherland, many noble volunteers, who had hastened from Spain and Italy to share in the glories anticipated under the leadership of Sobieski. Among these illustrious auxiliaries was a young hero, who had escaped from France in defiance of the mandate of Louis XIV., to flesh his maiden sword in view of the Polish king, and who at a later period, under the well-known name of Prince Eugene, himself earned deathless fame by his achievements against those redoubted enemies, whose first great overthrow he was destined to witness.

On the evening of the 10th the two armies were separated only by the ridge of the Kahlenberg, and the thick forests covering its sides; and a still more urgent message arrived from the governor, who intimated that he had little chance of repelling another assault. "On the same night, however," (says the diary of a Dutch officer in the garrison,) "we saw on the hills many fires, and rockets thrown up, as signals of our approaching succours, which we joyfully answered in like manner ... and next day the Turks were moving, and their cavalry riding about in confusion, till about four P.M. we saw several of their regiments drawing off towards the hills, and those in Leopoldstadt marching over the bridge." The knowledge, indeed, that the terrible Sobieski was at the head of the Christian army, had spread such a panic among the Osmanli, that several thousands left the camp the same night; but Kara-Mustapha, though urged by all his officers to march with his whole force to meet the coming storm, contented himself with sending 10,000 men, under Kara-Ibrahim, pasha of Buda, to watch the Poles, while the rest were kept in their lines before the city, which was cannonaded with redoubled fury throughout the 11th and the night following. The summits of the Kahlenberg glittered with the arms of the confederates, who bivouacked there during the night, being unable to pitch their tents from the violence of the wind, which Sobieski, in one of his letters to his queen, (his "charmante et bien aimee Mariette,") says, was attributed by the soldiers to the incantations of the vizir, "who is known to be a great magician." From the top of the Leopoldsberg, the king and the Duke of Lorraine reconnoitred the Turkish camp, which lay in all its wide extent before them, from the opposite skirts of the Wienerberg almost to the foot of the ridge on which they stood, with the lofty pavilions and scarlet screens of the vizir's quarters conspicuous in the midst, while the incessant roar of the artillery rose from the midst of the smoke which enveloped the city.

At five in the morning of the 12th, the sound of musketry was heard from the thickets and wooded ravines at the foot of the Kahlenberg, where the Saxons were already engaged with the Turkish division under Ibrahim-Pasha; and the king, having heard mass on the Leopoldsberg from his chaplain Aviano, mounted his favourite sorrel charger, and, preceded by his son James, whom he had just dubbed a knight in front of the army, and by his esquire bearing his shield and banner, led the Poles, who held the right of the allied line, down the slopes of the mountain. The left wing, which lay nearest the river, was commanded by the Duke of Lorraine, and the columns in the centre were under the orders of the two electors, and the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg and Eisenach. By eight A.M. the action had become warm along the skirts of the Kahlenberg--the Turks, who were principally horse, dismounting to fight on foot behind hastily-constructed abattis of trees and earth, as the nature of the ground was unfavourable to cavalry, and keeping up a heavy fire on the enemy while they were entangled in the ravines. The ardour of the Christians, however, speedily overcame these obstacles; and by ten A.M., their van was debouching from the defiles into the plain with loud shouts of battle; and the Turks, though from time to time receiving reinforcements from the camp, were gradually obliged to give ground. The vizir, meanwhile, remaining immovable in his tent, directed a fresh cannonade to be directed against the city, under cover of which a general assault was to be made; but the long files of camels laden with the spoils of Austria, which were sent off in haste on the road to Hungary, revealed his secret disquietude--and the troops in the trenches, effectually disheartened by the delay and privations of the siege, showed little inclination again to advance against the shattered bastions. The towers and steeples of Vienna were thronged with anxious spectators, who with throbbing hearts watched the advance of their deliverers, who pressed on at all points, "making the Turks give way" (says the diary above quoted) "whenever they came to a shock." The villages of Nussdorff and Heiligenstadt on the Danube, where several _odas_ of janissaries, with heavy cannon, were posted, checked for some time the progress of the Austrians on the left; the Duc de Croye, a gallant French volunteer, fell in leading the attack, but a body of Polish cuirassiers were at last sent to their aid, who, levelling their lances, and dashing with loud shouts against the flank of the Turkish batteries, carried the position, and put the defenders to the sword. It was not so much a battle, as a series of desperate but irregular skirmishes scattered over wide extent of ground--the Turkish troops (who were almost all cavalry, as most of the regulars and artillery were still in the camp) gradually receding before the heavy advancing columns of the Christians. By four P.M. they were driven so close to their intrenchments, that Sobieski could descry the vizir, seated in a small crimson tent, and tranquilly drinking coffee with his two sons. At this moment, a torrent of the wild cavalry of the Tartars, headed by the khan in person, poured forth from the Moslem lines, and thundered upon the right of the Poles, only to recoil in disorder before the lances of Iablonowski and the Lithuanians, who pushed in pursuit close to a deep ravine, which covered the redoubts of the Turks. But the khan had recognized in the melee the well-known figure of Sobieski, whose personal presence had been as yet uncertain. "By Allah!" said he to the vizir on his return from his unsuccessful charge, "the heavens have fallen upon us; for the ill-omened _kral_ of the _Leh_ (Poles) of a truth is with the infidels!"

The Turks were now every where driven within their lines, and the battle appeared over for the day; but the Poles, with cries of triumph, demanded to be led to the attack of the camp, and Sobieski exclaiming, "Not unto us, O Lord, but to thy name be the praise!" directed the assault. In a moment the Polish chivalry spurred up the steep side of the ravine in the teeth of the Turkish artillery--a redoubt in the centre of the lines was stormed through the gorge by Maligny, brother-in-law of the king--the Pashas of Aleppo and Silistria, whose prowess sustained the fainting courage of their troops, were slain in the front of the battle--and, after a conflict of less than an hour, the whole vast array of the Osmanlis, pierced through the centre by the onset of the Polish lances, gave way in hopeless, irremediable confusion, and, abandoning their camp, artillery, and baggage, fled in wild confusion on the road to Hungary. By 6 P.M. the Polish King reached the tent of the vizir; but Kara-Mustapha had not awaited the arrival of the victor. In an agony of despair at the mighty ruin which he now saw to be inevitable, he gave the barbarous order (which was but partially executed) for the massacre of the women of his harem, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy; and, seizing the Sandjak-shereef,[H] mounted an Arabian camel of surpassing swiftness, and accompanied, or perhaps preceded, the flight of his army. Such was the panic haste of the rout, that, before sunset the next day, the whole host swept past the walls of Raab, the garrison of which thus gained the first tidings of the catastrophe--nor have the crimson banners of the crescent been ever again seen on the soil of Germany.

From the desultory character of the action, in which little use was made of artillery, and the headlong dismay in which the Turks at last took to flight, not more than 10,000 of their number, according to the most probable accounts, fell in the battle; of the allies, scarcely 3000 were killed or wounded. Three hundred pieces of cannon of various calibres, many of them taken in former wars by the Turks, and still bearing the arms of Poland or the empire--a countless quantity of arms, ammunition, and warlike implements of all kinds--were found in the abandoned intrenchments; and the abundance of cattle, with the amply stored magazines of provisions, afforded instant relief to the famine from which the citizens had been for some time suffering.

Surrounded by a vast crowd, who hailed him with enthusiastic acclamations as their deliverer, and thronged each other with a zeal approaching adoration, to kiss his hand or his stirrup, Sobieski entered Vienna through the breach on the morning of September 13, in company with the Duke of Lorraine and the electoral Prince of Bavaria, and with the horsetails found before the tent of the vizir borne in triumph before him; and having met and saluted Stahrenberg, repaired with him to a chapel in the church of the Augustin friars, to return thanks for the victory. As he entered the church, a priest cried aloud in an ecstacy of fervour--"There was a man sent from God whose name was John," and this text, which in past ages had been applied to the Hungarian paladin, John Hunyades, was again employed by the preachers throughout Europe, in celebration of the new champion of Christendom, John Sobieski. Far different to the entry of the Polish king was the return of the Emperor Leopold to his rescued capital. He had quitted it as a fugitive, amid the execrations of the people, who accused him of having drawn on them the storm of invasion, without providing means to ward off the destruction which threatened them; and having descended the Danube in a boat, he re-entered the city on the 14th in the guise of a penitent, proceeding on foot, with a taper in his hand, to the cathedral of St Stephen, where he knelt before the high altar in acknowledgement of his deliverance. But neither from his misfortunes, nor from his returning prosperity, had Leopold learned the lesson of gratitude or humility. He even attempted at first to evade an interview with Sobieski, on the ground that an elective king had never been received on terms of equality by an emperor of Germany: and, when this unworthy plea was overruled by the honest indignation of the Duke of Lorraine, the meeting of the two monarchs was formal and embarrassed: and Sobieski, disgusted at the meanness and arrogance of the prince who owed to him the preservation of his capital and throne, hastily cut short the conference, by deputing to his chancellor Zaluski the task of showing to Leopold the troops who had saved his empire; and departed on the 17th with his noble colleague in arms, the Duke of Lorraine, to follow up their triumphs by attacking the Turks in Hungary.

The battle of Vienna effectually broke the spell of the Ottoman military ascendancy, which for near three centuries had held Europe in awe;--and though the energies of the empire, and the efficacy of its institutions, had long been gradually decaying, it was this great blow which first revealed the secret of its impaired strength. The treaty of Zurawno with Poland in 1676, had raised the Ottoman dominions to the highest point of territorial extent which they ever attained. From the time of the reunion of the empire, after the confusion following the defeat of Bayezid I. by Timour, every reign had seen its boundaries enlarged by successive acquisitions; and if we except the voluntary abandonment, in 1636, of the remote and unprofitable province of Yemen, the horsetails had never receded from any territory on which they had been planted in token of permanent occupation. Besides the vast territories which were under the immediate rule of pashas sent from the Porte, and which the land and capitation taxes (_ssalyaneh_ and _kharatch_,) the khan of the Krim Tartars, the otaman of the Cossacks, the vassal princes of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, the hereditary chiefs of the Circassian and Koordish tribes, and the rulers of the Barbary regencies, were all "under the shadow of the imperial horsetails," and paid tribute and allegiance to the sultan, who might boast, with no less justice than did the monarchs of the Seljookian Turks of old, that a crowd of princes arose from the dust of his footsteps. During the reign of Mohammed IV., the last relics of Venetian rule in the Levant had been extirpated by the conquest of Candia; the frontiers in Hungary and Transylvania had been strengthened by the acquisition of the important fortresses of Grosswardein and Neuhausel, with the territory attached to them; while Poland had been deprived of the province through which she had access to the undefended points of the Ottoman frontier, and the Cossacks, from restless and intractable enemies, had been converted into friends and auxiliaries. In the domestic administration, also, the wisdom and clemency of Ahmed-Kiuprili, supported by a corresponding disposition on the part of the sultan, who was naturally averse to measures of severity, had introduced a spirit of moderation and equity unknown in the Ottoman annals. Such was the condition of the foreign relations and internal government of the Turkish empire at the juncture immediately preceding the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili, whose life closed (as mentioned above) within a few days of the conclusion of the peace of Zurawno:--and the coincidence of this highest point of territorial aggrandizement and domestic prosperity, with the last days of the great minister who had so principal a share in producing them, would almost justify the superstitious belief, that the star of the Kiuprilis was in sooth the protecting talisman of the Ottoman state, and inseparably connected with its welfare and splendour.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: The Poles were sometimes called _Lechi_, from Lech, the name of one of their ancient kings.]

[Footnote C: Von Hammer describes him, without quoting his authority, as of lofty stature, and extremely fair complexion; but Rycaut's personal acquaintance insures his correctness.]

[Footnote D: He subsequently became grand-vizir, and was killed at the battle of Salankaman in 1691.]

[Footnote E: This name in western parlance would be Gabriel de Bethlen; in Hungary, the Christian _follows_ the surname.]

[Footnote F: The anonymous biographer of Tekoeli, believed to be M. Leclerc.]

[Footnote G: After the defeat of the Turks, Scherban Cantacuzene opened a correspondence with the Emperor and the King of Poland, setting forth his hereditary claim to the imperial crown of Constantinople in the event of their expulsion from Europe! but his intrigues became known to the Ottoman ministry, and he is supposed to have been taken off by poison.]

[Footnote H: A _crimson_ banner was again sent to Rome as the Sandjak-shereef, as the green one of Hussein had been after the victory of Choczim.]

EXHIBITIONS

British art is in a transition state. Remembering many a year past our Academy Exhibitions, and the general, the family resemblance the works bore to each other, the little variety either in style or execution; and of later years noticing the gradual change, the adoption of a new class of subjects, and more varied styles; we are yet struck with the manifest difference between the present and any other we ever remember to have seen. There is, in fact, more originality. There are, indeed, mannerists enough; and we mean not here to use the word in its reprehensive sense but they stand more alone. There are far fewer imitators--some, of course, there must be, but they are chiefly in those classes where imitation is less easily avoided. Common-place subjects will ever be treated in a common-place manner, and resemble each other. Few venture now to follow even erratic genius in its wild vagaries. Turner has no rivals in the "dissolving view" style. By those who look to one or two favourite masters, who have hitherto given the character to our exhibitions, perhaps some disappointment may be felt. Edwin Landseer has but two pictures--Sir Augustus Calleott not one; and herein is a great loss, speaking not with reference to his very late pictures, his English landscape, or even his Italian views, but in vivid recollection of his fascinating river views, with their busy boats, under illuminating skies, such as, alas! he has ceased to paint.

With regard to landscape, we progress slowly. Yet we fancy we can perceive indications there, that are of a better promise; although of the higher class of landscape there is not one this year. The promise is in the pencil of Creswick. He labours to unite great finish, too minute finish, with breadth and boldness of effect. His is unquestionably a new style; his subjects are all pleasing, bordering on the poetical; we only question if his aim at minute finishing does not challenge a scrutiny into the accuracy and infinite variety of the detail of nature, that few pictures ought to require, and his certainly do not satisfy the demand. For, after all, there is a great sameness, where there ought to be variety, particularly in his foliage: it is safer, by a greater generality, to leave much to the imagination. We do not, however, mean to quarrel with this his peculiar style, nor to limit its power. There is something yet not achieved.

Mr Maclise has likewise originated a new style, and if not altogether a new class of subjects, one so richly, so luxuriantly treated as to be fairly considered new. He has given to humour a gentle satire, and more especially to works of creative fancy an historical importance; for herein he is essentially different from all other painters of this class, that none of his pieces, we might almost say none of his figures, are, or pretend to be, real life. If it be said that they are theatrical, we know not but that the term expresses their merit; for as Sir Joshua has well observed, there must be in the theatrical a certain ideal--which is, nevertheless, the higher representative of nature. Mr Maclise has adopted the elaborate finish and lavish ornament, but with so much breadth, and powerful execution, that the display scarcely offends--and he generally seeks subjects that will bear it. As a fault it was conspicuous in his Lady Macbeth: the strong emotions of that banquet-scene are of too hurrying, too absorbent a nature, to admit either the conspicuous multiplicity of parts, or the excess of ornament which that work exhibited. It was the very perfection of the "Sleeping Beauty," and singularly enough, begat a repose; for the mind was fascinated into the notion of the long sleep, by the very leisure required and taken to examine the all-quiescent detail.