Chapter XII: South-Eastern Europe

Indifference of Europe to the growth of the Turkish power--Resistance to it local--Inherent defects of the Turks--Causes of their early successes--Beginning of their decline--The struggle for the Danube valley--Their antagonism to the House of Austria--Turkish misgovernment at the beginning of the century--Mohammed Kiuprili, grand vizier--Revival of Turkish power under the Kiuprili--Attack upon Hungary--Capture of Candia--Condition and institutions of Poland--Decline of its power--War with the Cossacks--Election of Michael--War with the Turks--Victories of John Sobieski--Election of John Sobieski--Risings in Hungary against the Emperor--War between the Emperor and the Turks--Relief of Vienna by John Sobieski--The Holy League--Conquest of the Danube valley and the Morea--The peace of Carlovitz--Reconquest of the Morea--Peace of Passarovitz.

[Sidenote: =Indifference of Europe to the establishment and growth of the Turkish power.=]

Few facts about European history are so strange as the want of interest shown by the great powers in the empire of the Ottoman Turks until the present century. The Eastern Question as a serious problem of European politics, affecting the peace and welfare of the world, has sprung into existence in consequence of the decay of the Ottoman empire. When the Ottoman Sultans were in the zenith of their power, when Turkish armies were marching up the Danube, when Turkish corsairs were plundering the coasts of Italy and Spain, when Christian communities were being enslaved, and compelled to pay to their conqueror a yearly tribute of children, Christian and civilised Europe took very little heed about the matter. Opposition to the advance of the infidel was mainly local. The Popes occasionally were enabled to fit out some small expeditions. Charles V. endeavoured to root out a troublesome nest of corsairs at Algiers. From time to time small contingents of French or German or Burgundian soldiers were sent to the assistance of the Emperor or the king of Hungary. But such efforts were at the best but fitful and self-interested, and the real work of stemming the tide of the Turkish advance was left to the half civilised tribes, mainly of Sclavonic blood, scattered along the valley of the Danube and the hill country of Bosnia and Albania. The Wallach and the Serb, the Albanian and the Magyar were the people who jeoparded their lives and sacrificed their liberty for the salvation of Europe, while the Roman Emperor was waging a death duel with the most Christian king, and the Vicar of Christ was dallying with pagan philosophy. Statesmen and princes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could not bring themselves to realise the danger of the crisis, could not understand that the East was about to avenge the days of the Crusades, and that the rude threat of Mohammed II., that he would stable his horses in S. Peter’s, might at any moment be translated into fact.

[Sidenote: =Resistance to the Turks mainly local.=]

Never was a struggle for life and death carried on in so haphazard a fashion. Resistance in the Mediterranean was purely local. The Knights-Hospitallers disputed for years with the conqueror for the possession of their island fortress of Rhodes, and hurled him back eventually in confusion from the rocks of Malta. The Venetians kept the whole Turkish fleet at bay before Candia for twenty years at a most critical period of Ottoman rule. The Pope and the Venetians entered into piratical competition with the corsairs of Greece and Africa, in which the desire to gain money was more conspicuous than the ambition to overcome the infidel. Even the great victory of Lepanto in 1571, at the news of which all Christendom rejoiced, was decisive, not so much because it marked the successful effort of allied Christian powers to resist a common danger, but because it happened to take place at the beginning of a period of intestine troubles within the bosom of the Ottoman empire itself. On land the story is a similar one. Piece by piece, leaf by leaf, the artichoke of the Balkan peninsula was eaten by the invader, but the process of digestion was a difficult one. The crescent was first seen in the plains of Hungary in the middle of the fifteenth century, yet at the time of their greatest power under Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks never acquired the whole country. Transylvania and Moldavia gave in their adherence to the Porte early in the sixteenth century, the Tartars of the Crimea acknowledged Mohammed II. fifty years earlier, yet they never became anything more than vassal states. Even in Bosnia and Servia, though the Turkish rule was everywhere established, a great deal of local independence was left. Nothing stands out clearer in the history of the Ottoman Turks in Europe than the fact that the limits of their conquests were fixed not by the prowess and skill of their adversaries but by their own inherent defects. When Sigismond of Hungary and the flower of the Franco-Hungarian chivalry went down before Bajazet I. on the field of Nicopolis in 1396, when the flag of Mohammed II. floated proudly over the ramparts of Otranto in 1480, there seemed nothing to prevent the triumphant march of the infidel to the heart of European civilisation, over the wasted lands of the king of Hungary and the ruins of the Christian Papacy.

[Sidenote: =Inherent defects of the Turks.=]

But fortunately for Europe the Turk had two inherent defects, which effectually prevented him from establishing himself permanently among civilised nations. He could not assimilate, he could not govern. Foresight, perseverance, organisation are denied to him, and they are among the primary and essential faculties of civilised government. The Turks swept down upon Europe as a mighty river flood pours itself out from its mountain gates into the plain below. With an impetuous, irresistible rush it spreads itself wide among the fields and the gardens, submerging one by one all the accustomed landmarks of hedge and tree and hillock, till all the horizon is but a vast waste of hurrying water. But the further the flood finds its way from the bed of the stream the quieter is its course, the less the damage which it causes. Eddies and back currents check the whirling tide, and even turn its headlong course at the extreme limit of the flood into gentle, fertilising rills which irrigate the meadows in obedience to the will of man. For days or even weeks the flood may last and the swirl of waters boil along, but in the end it wears itself out, the fountains of the hills above dry up, the stream falls quickly back into its accustomed channel, and one by one again the old familiar scenes reappear. Trees and hedges, fields and buildings, greet the eye, but how different indeed from what they were. Torn, ragged, desolate, choked with sand and debris, preserving a faint life amid the desolation, all seems so unlike the once smiling valley. So unlike and yet the same, the same fields, the same trees, the same vigorous life, only for the moment obscured by the sudden catastrophe. In the light and warmth of God’s sun, with a little aid from the forethought of man, the promise of rich harvest will soon be seen again. So it has been with the Turkish power in Europe. [Sidenote: =Want of assimilation.=] The Turks submerged the civilisation of south-eastern Europe, they did not uproot it. They injured it, they did not destroy it. They had nothing better to put in its place, and so it lived on, damaged and maimed, but alive. They imposed their own government over the conquered lands, but underneath, the old laws, the old religion, the old customs were still observed. In the extreme districts beyond the Danube they were content merely to exact tribute, and left their tributaries far more independence than the British government in India allows to the native states. To the larger part of the Turkish dominions in Europe conquest chiefly meant the imposition of a new governing class and of a new dominant religion, a governing class which was intermittently tyrannical, but a religion which was seldom persecuting. Consequently many Christians, who laboured under the taint of heresy or schism, found themselves actually better off under Mussulman than under Christian rule, and it frequently happened in the wars between Venice and the Sultans that the orthodox Christians of Greece and the islands fought strenuously on behalf of their infidel conquerors, in order to avoid falling into the hands of their Latin persecutors.

[Sidenote: =Want of governance.=]

To this inability to assimilate the peoples which he conquered, the Turk added an inability to govern them. He could neither weld together the varied materials of which his loosely jointed empire was composed, nor govern the separate parts. It is singular how few administrators the Ottoman race has produced. It does not possess faculties for government, or for trade, or for art. No sooner had the Turks conquered south-eastern Europe than they found themselves obliged to intrust the administration of their provinces to the children of the people whom they had overcome. Turkish art was but a faint and spoiled copy of Christian and Arab models. Trade remained in the hands of Christian merchants, or fell into the clutches foreign of Christian powers. When the Turks ceased to conquer they ceased to prosper. They became idle, luxurious and inert, lying like an incubus upon the country, deadening and crushing its civilisation and its spirit, hindering all growth, stopping all progress, just as incapable of calling out the resources of a people as of rooting out their national life.

[Sidenote: =Reasons for their early success.=]

So as the flood of conquest began to abate the submerged races began to reappear. Christendom had not to reconquer Turkish provinces, as Germany has had to reconquer French provinces, it merely had to remove the foreign incubus which was lying upon them and crushing them, to oust the foreign garrison. Accordingly the tide of Turkish invasion had hardly ceased to flow in south-eastern Europe when it began to ebb. The Turks owed their wonderful success to three causes. The disunion of Christendom, the extraordinary vigour and ability of the earlier Ottoman Sultans, and the institution of the Janizaries which gave them the best disciplined army in Europe. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these all combined to advance their power. They came as an army, organised not as a nation but as a camp, led by men second to none among the greatest sovereigns of Europe for military and personal gifts. The strength of their forces lay in the tribute of children exacted from the Christian races, who were brought up in the faith of Islam to be its special defenders and champions in the disciplined life of an army, half fanatical and half professional. They hurled themselves upon Europe at a time when the great powers were slowly and painfully organising themselves into personal monarchies out of the ruins of feudalism, when as yet professional armies were in their cradle. Under Orchan, the founder of the institution of the tribute children, they first crossed over into Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century. Under Murad I. they overran Roumelia and Bulgaria, under Bajazet I. they carried their victorious arms into Servia and across the Danube into Wallachia, and defeated Sigismond of Hungary at the great battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Under Murad II. they spread into Macedonia and Hungary. To Mohammed II. was reserved the crowning honour of the conquest of Constantinople, but he also extended his sovereignty over Trebizond, Greece and the islands of the Ægean, Bosnia, Albania and even the Tartars of the Crimea. At the death of the great conqueror in 1481, the Turkish empire in Europe had reached the dimensions which it retained in the middle of the present century. But it still continued to grow. [Sidenote: =Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520–1566.=] Under Suleiman the Magnificent, who reigned from 1520 to 1566, it attained its greatest power. He drove the Knights-Hospitallers out of Rhodes, crossed the Danube, captured Belgrade, and turned half Hungary into a Turkish province under a pasha at Buda, while he forced the princes of Transylvania and Moldavia to pay him tribute. So powerful had he become that the powers of Europe began to realise his importance, and Francis I. of France did not disdain to purchase by his friendship the aid of the Sultan against his great enemy the Emperor, and to lay the foundations of French influence in the East by the privileges which he obtained for his countrymen at Constantinople. [Sidenote: =Alliance with France.=] From that time to the present day French policy has always had for one of its chief objects the maintenance of a group of alliances in northern and eastern Europe, which may serve to threaten Germany with the danger of being caught between two fires, should she find herself at war with France. For many years Sweden Poland and Turkey formed such a group, and the endeavour to keep them in firm friendship with France was always a leading feature of French diplomacy. In the seventeenth century, when the House of Austria was the chief opponent of France, the assistance of Poland and of the Sultan was naturally of great importance. In modern days, during the decay of the Ottoman empire and the growth of the rivalry with northern Germany, the Czar has taken the place of the Sultan as the necessary ally of France. Thus in the sixteenth century, mainly through the selfish policy of the French kings, the Ottoman Sultans found themselves admitted into friendship and alliance with European sovereigns, just at the very time when they seemed to be threatening ruin and destruction to European civilisation.

[Sidenote: =Beginning of Turkish decline, 1566.=]

In reality, however, the flood had already reached high-water mark. The Sultans had begun to prefer a life of ease in the palace of Stamboul to the active leadership of the army, or the laborious administration of the empire. Suleiman himself farmed out the taxes and left the management of the affairs of state mainly to his ministers. Under his feeble successors degeneration grew apace. The reins of power fell from the listless hands of the Sultans into those of incapable and despicable favourites. Palace intrigues decided important affairs of state, and ministers were made and unmade by the cabals of women and eunuchs. Corruption spread like a cancer over the whole administration. Discipline became deteriorated in the army, and the Janizaries, like the Praetorian guard, ceased to be the champions of their country’s ambition, and became but the heroes of domestic revolutions. In a loosely organised empire like that of the Turks, which stretched from Buda to Bagdad, from the Caspian to the Pillars of Hercules, there was no cohesive force except that of the central government, no centre of unity except that of the ruler of Stamboul in his double capacity of Sultan and Caliph. When the head became effete and incapable the life blood of the whole organism failed and decay began. Under Selim the Sot, the successor of Suleiman, Christendom won its great victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571; a battle, which, though its loss was repaired with incredible energy and counterbalanced by the conquest of Cyprus, has nevertheless set for all time the limits of Turkish rule in the Mediterranean, just as the failure of Suleiman’s attack upon Vienna in 1529, and the subsequent partition of Hungary, had fixed the extreme boundaries of Turkish power in the valley of the Danube.

[Sidenote: =Loss of the command of the Danube valley in the seventeenth century.=]

The close of the sixteenth century therefore fixed the limits of Turkish advance. The opening years of the seventeenth century marked the first beginnings of Turkish retreat. By the treaty of Sitvatorok, concluded between the Emperor and the Sultan in 1606, the annual tribute of 30,000 ducats agreed to be paid by the Emperor for the portion of Hungary which he still retained under his own government was abolished. From that day to the present the history of the Ottoman Turks in Europe has been that of a gradual but steady decline in the strength of their authority over south-eastern Europe. In the seventeenth century the struggle was for the possession of the valley of the Danube. The contest was a severe one. The Turks fought more strenuously for the command of the Danube than they did for Greece or Bulgaria. Bit by bit with many changes of fortune they were slowly driven back, until soon after the end of the century not an acre of land on the northern bank of the river between the Theiss and the Pruth was still in their possession. Since then the work of liberation has progressed steadily but slowly. One by one the Crimea, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bessarabia, Servia, Greece, Bosnia, and Bulgaria have been won back by Christendom from the rule of the Turk, either to complete independence or to subjection to a neighbouring Christian power. But just as it was the mutual disunion of Christian powers which enabled the Turks to conquer south-eastern Europe so easily in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so it has been the mutual jealousy of Christian powers which has made the task of emancipation so slow and so difficult in the nineteenth century. For many years the Ottoman Sultans have lived in Europe on sufferance, because it has seemed a lesser evil to the great powers of Europe to retain the Turk than to aggrandise the Czar.

[Sidenote: =Antagonism to the House of Austria.=]

Before the ambition of Russia gave rise to the Eastern Question the House of Austria was the Christian power chiefly interested in beating back the Turks. The Emperors no doubt felt somewhat the obligation which lay upon them, as the traditional lords of Christendom, to take the lead in the work of emancipating Christian lands and imperial vassals from the yoke of the infidel. But much more did they feel the political necessity which forced them, as kings of Hungary and Croatia and overlords of Transylvania, to make themselves undisputed masters of the valleys of the Danube the Drave and the Save. With the Turks securely planted at Buda, and within striking distance of Agram, Vienna itself was unsafe, and the communications between Austria and Italy liable at any moment to be cut. The more the Emperor was being deprived of leadership in Germany, the more he was being ousted from influence on the Rhine, the more essential it became to him to retain his hold upon the Danube. So during the whole of the seventeenth century the history of south-eastern Europe is the history of a duel between the House of Austria and the Sultans for political and military supremacy on the Danube and the Save. Other combatants such as the French, the Venetians, the Poles and the Russians, appear from time to time and take part in the struggle from motives of ambition or patriotism or interest and most powerfully affect its fortunes, but the essential character of the contest remains unchanged. Austria and the Turks fight for pre-eminence on the Danube, just as Germany and France fight for pre-eminence on the Rhine.

[Sidenote: =Misgovernment at Constantinople, 1603–1656.=]

Fortunately for the house of Habsburg the time of their greatest weakness was also a time of impotence and degeneracy among their foes. From the death of Mohammed III. in 1603 to the death of Murad IV. in 1640 the Ottoman empire was the prey of revolution anarchy and crime. The Sultans, effeminate puppets of a day, were in no position to take advantage of the opportunities given to them by the Thirty Years’ War. The satisfaction of their own pleasures and the preservation of their own lives were much more in their thoughts than the extension of their power. Murad IV. during the eight years of his personal rule (1632–1640) did much by a relentless severity to crush out the spirit of faction, and reduce the turbulent Janizaries to obedience, but on his death after a drinking bout in 1640, anarchy broke out again. Ibrahim I. his successor, having been with difficulty prevented from ordering a general massacre of the Christians all over the empire, contented himself by fitting out a fleet in 1645 which undertook the conquest of Candia; but the disorganisation of the government was far too great to enable the attempt to be made with any chance of success. It only provoked reprisals on the part of the Venetians and the Knights-Hospitallers. The miserable Sultan himself was deposed and murdered in 1648, the Ottoman fleet was defeated in the Ægean in 1649, civil war raged in Asia Minor, while at Stamboul ministers rapidly succeeded one another in obedience to the caprices of the harem or the demand of the soldiery. In 1656 Mocenigo the Venetian admiral occupied the Dardanelles and threatened Constantinople itself. It seemed as if the Ottoman empire was about to fall to pieces through sheer want of governance.

[Sidenote: =Mohammed Kiuprili appointed grand vizier, 1656.=]

From this fate it was preserved by the firmness of one man and the genius of a family. The Kiuprili were of Albanian blood, but had long been settled in Constantinople, where the head of the family, Mohammed, now an old man of seventy, was universally respected for the vigour of his mind and the strength of his character. The mother of the young Sultan, in whose hands the chief political power had fallen, turned to Mohammed Kiuprili in her despair, and begged him to accept the office of grand vizier in 1656. He consented on the condition that his authority should be uncontrolled. For twenty years he and his family were the real rulers of the empire, and to them is due the astonishing revival of the Ottoman power in the latter half of the seventeenth century. True to the genius of Oriental monarchies they sought for the sources of strength, not in adaptation to new demands, but in the resuscitation of the ancient spirit. They resolutely shut their eyes to the attractions of European civilisation. They refused as far as possible to have dealings with European powers. Treaties, concessions, arts were evidences of weakness, admissions of a brotherhood which could never exist between Christianity and Islam. The ideal of government ever present to their minds was that of Mohammed II. and the earlier Sultans. The relation of governors to governed was that of master and slave in a well-ordered household, where strict justice on the one hand expected and necessitated implicit obedience on the other. The mission of the Turks was to conquer opponents and to dictate terms to the vanquished. Wherever there yet remained an organised power, Christian in its principles and Western in its civilisation, there was the enemy.

[Sidenote: =Restoration of order and discipline, 1656–1661.=]

Success was instantaneous. The Turks at once felt that they had got a leader who understood them, who was actuated by principles which were their own. Obediently they fell in to the bugle call. Anarchy disappeared. Discipline re-established itself. The Greek Patriarch and 4000 Janizaries were the only victims required. In the very next year the Venetian fleet was forced to leave the Dardanelles, Mocenigo was killed, and Lemnos and Tenedos recovered. In 1659 the old alliance with France was broken by the imprisonment of the ambassador’s son, and the refusal of all compensation. The siege of Candia was pushed on with redoubled zeal, and preparations were made for the renewal of the war of European conquest. When Mohammed Kiuprili died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of seeing the Ottoman empire once more united from end to end of its vast extent, and its energies once more directed to a war of aggression against its hereditary enemy the Emperor.

The mantle of Mohammed fell upon his son Achmet, who succeeded him in his office, inherited his ability, and pursued his policy. [Sidenote: =Attack upon Hungary under Achmet Kiuprili, 1663.=] Placing himself at the head of 200,000 men he burst into Austrian Hungary in 1663, crossed the Danube at Gran, captured the fortress of Neuhäusel, and ravaged Moravia up to the walls of Olmütz. But Louis XIV., irritated at the insult offered to his ambassador by Mohammed Kiuprili, came to the aid of the Emperor. With the assistance of 30,000 men in French pay Montecuculli the imperialist general felt himself strong enough to threaten the Turkish flank by an advance from Vienna. Achmet at once retired south to cover Buda, and the two armies met at S. Gothard on the Raab, where Achmet and his army proved themselves no match for the talents of his opponent or the wild valour of the French cavalry. Leopold, however, saw only in this great victory the opportunity of making peace, and of ridding himself of any further obligations to France. [Sidenote: =Treaty of Vasvar, 1664.=] Ten days after the battle of S. Gothard he signed the treaty of Vasvar (10th August 1664), by which he recognised the suzerainty of the Sultan over Transylvania, and permitted him to retain the important fortress of Neuhäusel in Hungary. Elated with this success Achmet turned his attention to the war with Venice. He took personal charge of the siege operations before Candia, and in spite of all that European engineering skill could do, it soon became obvious that the end could not long be delayed. Morosini the heroic defender of the town made the capitulation the occasion of negotiating a general treaty. [Sidenote: =Capture of Candia, 1669.=] On the 17th September 1669 Crete passed into the hands of the Ottomans, and peace was restored between Venice and the Porte. It was the last conquest Islam has made from Christianity.

[Sidenote: =Condition of Poland.=]

No sooner was the war with Venice over than Achmet found himself involved with a very different Christian power in the extreme northern frontier of the empire. The kingdom of Poland, to which was joined the grand duchy of Lithuania, had discharged during the Middle Ages the office of the sentinel of Western civilisation on its northern frontier. But the civilisation to which it had itself attained was very inferior to that of its southern and western neighbours. Extending as it did, so late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, from Livonia and Courland on the Baltic to Podolia and the lower waters of the Dniester on the confines of the Black Sea, it could not fail to be subject to the dangers of disunion and disorganisation. Its interests were so varied, its territories so impassable and heterogeneous, its people so untameable and independent, that it was almost a hopeless task for even a great statesman to inspire the country with a sense of national unity, and to lead it along the path of national progress. Yet forces which under happier circumstances might have led to contralization were not wanting. Poland occupied geographically the centre of Europe. Until the rise of Russia on the north and Prussia to the west it was free from serious danger of conquest. Its people were Sclavonic by race and Catholic by religion. With the exception of a few years at the end of the sixteenth century it was untroubled by religious or racial discord. Brave and chivalrous by nature the Poles were distinguished for their personal loyalty and their affection for their country. [Sidenote: =Turbulence of the Poles.=] But all these promising elements of union and strength weighed as nothing in the balance, when compared with the evils of their political and social institutions. The Poles were absolutely deficient in the capacity for being governed. They never appreciated the advantages of the reign of law. They never understood that individuals must submit to some restrictions if the community is to prosper. Discipline was a virtue wholly unrecognised by them. This lawless and turbulent spirit was fostered instead of being checked by their social institutions. [Sidenote: =Their social and constitutional institutions.=] There were but two classes in Poland, the aristocracy in whose hands lay the whole of the wealth and the whole of the political power, and the serfs who were little better than slaves, and had no rights of life or property against their masters. As in all countries where one class is dominant, justice and patriotism shrank and withered before the claims of privilege and selfishness. The determination to use the power which it has got solely for its own purposes, is not the monopoly of one class more than another. It has been the characteristic of the petty democracy of Florence, as of the trading aristocracy of Amsterdam, or the militant democracy of modern France. The landlord aristocracy of Poland pushed it to excess. They mistook licence for liberty, and put personal power in the place of patriotism as unhesitatingly as a Robespierre or a Napoleon. Their great fear was to find that they had unwittingly given themselves a master, so they did all they could to divert the kingship of all real power, and wilfully deprived the country of the only possible centre of unity. During the Middle Ages the kingship, though always nominally elective, was in fact hereditary, but on the death of Sigismond Augustus in 1572 it became wholly elective, and on his election the king was obliged to sign a compact by which he practically divested himself of all the usual functions of royalty except the appointment of the officials and the command of the army. The government of the country was really vested in the senate, in which the bishops and the higher magistrates as well as the twelve great executive officials sat, and in the diet. Originally the whole adult nobility had the right of attending the diet, but since 1466 it had become merely a body of delegates, who received the mandate from the provincial assemblies of nobles, and were not permitted to vary it in the least. The diet sat for six weeks and all its decisions had to be unanimous, consequently it was in the power of every member of the diet to put a stop to all business whatever either by obstructing all progress for six weeks (drawing out the diet), or by voting against the proposal (the veto), or by simply withdrawing altogether, which of course rendered all decision impossible and so practically dissolved the assembly.

[Sidenote: =Poland the battle-ground of French and Austrian interests.=]

A constitution such as this might have been thought to have been the work of some cynical philosopher anxious to exhibit on a large scale the inconceivable folly of human nature. In reality it was dictated by the malignant spirit of fear and selfishness. In the hands of a quick-tempered and turbulent people it could not fail to lead to anarchy, and anarchy quickly proved itself the parent of corruption. France soon saw the advantages which the command of a great central warlike state like Poland would be to her in her duel with the house of Austria. The Emperor was alarmed by the prospect of seeing his hereditary dominions almost encircled by the vassal states of France, and strained every nerve to secure the election of a king opposed to French interests. But the purse of France was deeper, and the policy of France was more continuous than that of the embarrassed Emperor, and so it happened that except under the pressure of some special danger, the diplomacy and the gold of France could always maintain a close alliance between the two countries, and prevent the election of a strongly imperialist candidate. It thus became the interests of the greater powers of Europe to keep Poland in a state of anarchy, in order that they might the easier obtain a decisive voice in her destinies. Her neighbours were not slow to recognise the advantage thus offered to them. Poland was getting weaker and weaker through the increase of anarchy, as they were getting stronger and stronger through centralisation. The rise of Sweden to pre-eminence on the Baltic under Gustavus Adolphus, the restoration of peace to Russia after the ‘troublous times’ under the house of Romanoff, the successful war and cunning diplomacy of the Great Elector all had among their other results the effect of weakening Poland. By the treaty of Wehlau, 1657, Poland lost her suzerainty over east Prussia. By the peace of Oliva in 1660 she had to surrender Livonia to Sweden. By the treaty of Andrusoff in 1667 she was obliged to give up to Russia almost all her possessions east of the Dnieper, including the important towns of Smolensk and Kief, which she had gained from her earlier in the century, and the suzerainty over half the tribes of the Cossacks of the Ukraine.

[Sidenote: =War with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, 1648–1667.=]

It was through her relations with these wild horsemen of the borderland that Poland became eventually involved in a war with the Ottoman Turks. The yoke of Poland had always sat heavily upon the Cossack tribes. Proud independent and high-spirited by nature, they could not brook the insolence of the Polish nobles, or tamely submit to the rapacity and extortion of their Jewish stewards. In 1648 they boldly rose in rebellion and assisted by the Tartars offered their allegiance to Alexis of Russia. The rising was well-timed, for owing to the ambition of Charles X. of Sweden, John Casimir of Poland soon found his country attacked on all sides by Sweden Brandenburg and Russia, his capital in the hands of his foes, and himself a fugitive in Silesia. When, however, peace was restored on the Baltic by the treaties of Oliva, Copenhagen, and Kardis in 1660, Poland found herself able to cope with her revolted subjects and their protector. Through the consummate generalship and high personal qualities of John Sobieski, who was sprung from one of the oldest and staunchest of Polish noble families, Alexis and his allies were compelled to sue for peace, and accept the compromise concluded at Andrusoff in 1667. Two years later John Casimir abdicated the throne, and the usual intrigues began between the adherents of France and the Empire to secure a favourable election. [Sidenote: =Election of Michael as king, 1669.=] But at the moment through the misfortunes of John Casimir, and the unpopularity of Louise de Nevers, his French wife, the Poles would have no one of French blood or French connections, and even John Sobieski who had married a French woman, and belonged to the French interest, was passed over in favour of a national representative, Michael Wiesnowiescki, who had nothing but his good looks and his name to recommend him. The Cossacks regarded the election as an earnest of the recommencement of persecution, for the new king was the son of one of their greatest oppressors. [Sidenote: =Request for protection by the Cossacks to the Turks, 1671.=] In 1670 they rushed to arms but were easily defeated by Sobieski. Despairing of all hope of justice from the king they turned to the Turks, and offered to recognise the suzerainty of the Sultan if he would protect them from the tyrant of Poland. Achmet Kiuprili gladly seized the opportunity, and in 1671 declared war against Poland as the champion of her oppressed subjects.

[Sidenote: =War between Poland and the Turks, 1672–1676.=]

In June 1672 the preparations were finished and the Sultan himself accompanied by the grand vizier appeared before the almost impregnable fortress of Kaminiec, the key of Podolia. In less than a month it fell, and the craven-hearted king Michael, dismayed at the blow, negotiated a treaty at Buczacz by which he surrendered Podolia and the Ukraine and consented to pay tribute. Stung with indignation at such a disgrace the diet refused to ratify the treaty, and rallied all the forces of the nation under John Sobieski to resist to the uttermost. For four years the heroic struggle continued. Without receiving any help from the great powers, now, through the ambition of Louis XIV., engaged in a deadly conflict on the Rhine and the Scheldt, threatened by intrigues behind his back at court, endangered by insubordination in his camp, John Sobieski, by sheer ascendency of personal character and commanding military talent, managed not only to stem the Turkish advance into Podolia and Galicia, but to inflict on the best of the Turkish generals crushing defeats at Choczim (1673) and Lemberg (1675), and to drive them back in confusion across the Danube. In 1674 in the very midst of the struggle the incapable Michael died, and the Poles hailed with enthusiasm their hero as their king. Yet characteristically enough they did not for that serve him one whit the better. [Sidenote: =John Sobieski elected King, 1674.=] Two years later he found himself in the direst straits, with his small army hemmed in by the swarming enemy at Zurawno on the Dniester, unable to break out of the enclosing lines, without any hope of timely relief. But even at this crisis the magic of his name prevailed, and Ibrahim the Turkish general preferred to make peace rather than to run the risk of encounter with the lion in his den. [Sidenote: =Peace of Zurawno, 1676.=] The peace of Zurawno, concluded in October 1676, secured to the Sultan the possession of Kaminiec and part of the Ukraine, but it marks by these very concessions the failure of Achmet Kiuprili’s great design of binding upon the brows of his master the laurel wreath of Mohammed II.

[Sidenote: =Kara Mustafa made grand vizier, 1676.=]

Seven days after the peace of Zurawno Achmet Kiuprili died, but his policy did not die with him. His successor and brother-in-law, Kara Mustafa, was fired with an equal ambition but was not possessed of equal talent. Haughty luxurious and boastful he soon began to destroy, while seeking to extend, the power which Mohammed and Achmet had so diligently built up. He determined to win his way to the heart of Christendom at a blow by the conquest of Vienna itself. Preparations for an invasion on a scale unexampled and irresistible were secretly set on foot. The old alliance with France was renewed by the grant of fresh trade and diplomatic privileges. Peace was made with Russia and ratified with Poland. By these measures the grand vizier hoped to procure the isolation of the Emperor, and he very nearly succeeded. For some years the Hungarians had been on bad terms with the Emperor. Leopold had pursued a policy both of religious and political repression. With the object of introducing more centralisation into the government, he abolished the office of palatine, and ruled Hungary through Viennese officials. [Sidenote: =Risings against the Emperor in Hungary, 1674–1681.=] With the object of rooting out Protestantism he handed over the management of religious affairs to the Jesuits, and banished and sent to the galleys Protestant ministers on the pretext of seditious agitation. Measures so high-handed and unjust brought about the usual result. The Hungarians took advantage of the war with France on the Rhine, rose against their oppressor in 1674 under Tököli, and were joined by Apafy, the prince of Transylvania. In 1681 they found themselves strong enough to force the Emperor to revive the office of palatine and grant religious toleration. But Tököli was not content with this. He desired to become ruler of Hungary himself, and willingly listened to the persuasions of Kara Mustafa to join the Turkish invasion, and accept the government of Hungary as the tributary of the Porte. [Sidenote: =War between the Emperor and the Turks, 1682.=] All was now ready. Trusting to Louis XIV. to keep Germany from assisting the Emperor, and to Tököli to raise Hungary against him, Kara Mustafa threw off the mask in 1682, declared Hungary tributary to the Sultan, and crossed the Danube in the spring of 1683 at the head of 150,000 men.

[Sidenote: =Alliance between Poland and the Emperor, 1683.=]

He had not reckoned on his allies in vain. Wherever the anxious Emperor turned for help in his extremity, he found himself thwarted by the diplomacy of France. In Germany Louis was completely successful. The diet assembled at Ratisbon separated without granting any aid to its chief. In Poland the struggle was intense, but in the end the indomitable energy and quick tact of John Sobieski prevailed. All grumbling at the selfishness and cowardice of Austria in the days of Poland’s need was chivalrously silenced in the presence of the common danger to Christianity and civilisation. On March 31st an alliance was concluded with the Emperor by which Poland bound herself to place 40,000 men in the field. Meanwhile the Turkish war rolled on. Leopold and the court removed for safety to Passau. The duke of Lorraine, the imperialist general, abandoning Hungary, intrusted the defence of Vienna to count Starhemberg, and posted himself a little lower down the Danube to wait for the Polish reinforcements. On July 9th the Turkish standards appeared before the walls, on the 14th the city was invested and trenches opened.

[Sidenote: =Siege of Vienna, 1683.=]

The city was ill prepared for a siege. The garrison only numbered 14,000 men, the town was crowded with peasants from the country, the walls were old and out of repair, while the Turkish engineers and artillery were among the best in Europe. But Mustafa was in no haste to seize the prize. On the 7th of August he drove the imperialists from their fortification on the counterscarp, and the city lay open to the attack from all sides. Yet he hesitated to give the word. He wanted the glory of a capitulation, and the booty of the town for himself. Meanwhile John Sobieski was collecting his forces with all haste at Cracow. Lorraine did not dare to move till he came. As usual money was short, delays were long. It was the 15th August before Sobieski could begin his march, and even then he had to leave the Lithuanians behind. On the 2d of September he was on the Danube at the head of his cavalry. On the 5th he took over the command of the united armies of the Empire and of Poland. On the 6th he crossed the Danube by the bridge at Tuln. On the 11th he reached the height of the Kahlenberg and looked down on the vast camp of the Turks encumbering the plain which stretches between the heights and the spire of St. Stephen’s. He had come not a moment too soon. The Turkish engineers had already undermined the walls, disease had broken out in the crowded city, but when they saw his signal-fires from the mountain the besieged felt that the end of their trials had come and victory was within their grasp. [Sidenote: =Defeat of the Turks by John Sobieski, 1683.=] They were not disappointed. On the morning of the 12th, after having received the Holy Communion at the chapel of the Leopoldsberg, John Sobieski ordered the attack. Quickly driving the Turkish advance guard from the vineyards which clothe the sides of the Kahlenberg he found himself opposite the main Turkish battle in the plain about noon. As his Poles charged with the war shout ‘Sobieski for ever’ the Turks were seized with a panic at the sound of the dreaded name and fled on all sides. Sobieski seized the favourable moment with his usual tactical skill, and threw his whole army upon the retreating masses with a tremendous shock before they had time to recover themselves. The battle was won, Vienna was saved, and Christendom preserved. The whole camp of the invader with its streets of tents, its bazaars, its mosques, its luxury, all fell into the hands of the victor. Kara Mustafa himself hardly escaped with his life in the general confusion, and only rallied the remains of his beaten army at Belgrade.

[Sidenote: =The Holy League, 1684.=]

From the date of the failure of the great attempt upon Vienna in 1683 the fortunes of the Ottoman Turks in Europe quickly declined. Kara Mustafa paid the penalty of his defeat with his head, but Ibrahim who succeeded him fared no better in the war. John Sobieski himself inflicted another defeat upon the Turks in the October of the same year at Parkan, and drove them out of Hungary. In the following year Venice joined in the pursuit of the beaten infidel, and the Holy League was formed between the Emperor Poland and Venice against the Sultan. Its effects were quickly seen. In spite of the retirement of John Sobieski in 1685, through ill health and increasing infirmity, the tide of conquest continued to flow steadily on the Danube and was augmented by new victories on the Mediterranean. In 1685 the duke of Lorraine won back the whole of Turkish Hungary except the fortress of Buda, while Morosini, the hero of Candia, at the head of the Venetian fleet, seized several places on the Albanian coast. The years 1686 and 1687 were still more unfortunate for the Sultan. On the Danube, Buda fell into the hands of Lorraine in September 1686. Pushing back Tököli and his rebel army before him into Transylvania, the imperialist general once more united all Hungary under the Emperor, and left the Hungarian rebels to the tender mercies of Leopold and his Jesuit advisers. [Sidenote: =Conquest of Turkish Hungary, 1686.=] In 1687 he inflicted a crushing defeat upon the grand vizier on the historical field of Mohacz and recovered possession of Croatia and Sclavonia. In 1688 he procured the submission of Transylvania and crossing the Danube captured Belgrade and even penetrated as far as Nisch. During the same time Morosini was no less active in the Mediterranean. [Sidenote: =Conquest of the Morea, 1686.=]In 1686 he made himself master of all the chief towns in the Morea. Corinth and Athens next acknowledged his sway, where the Parthenon, which had hitherto survived so many sieges of Romans and barbarians almost unhurt, was hurled into ruins by the explosion of a Venetian bomb. To the spoils of Athens were soon added those of Negropont, Thebes, and Dalmatia, until by 1694 the Turks were stripped of all their posessions in Greece and on the coast of the Adriatic.

[Sidenote: =Mustafa Kiuprili grand vizier, 1688.=]

So continuous a series of misfortunes demanded a victim. In 1688 a palace revolution replaced Mohammed IV. by his brother Suleiman II., and the new Sultan once more intrusted the affairs of the empire to a Kiuprili. Mustafa Kiuprili, the brother of Achmet, showed the vigour of character for which his family were noted. By pursuing a policy of toleration for the Christians and restoring stern discipline to the army, he was soon enabled to bring victory back to the Turkish standards, although he was but two years in his office. In 1690 he recovered Nisch and Belgrade and invaded Hungary, but he was met, defeated, and killed by the margrave of Baden at the battle of Szcelankemen in 1691. With him perished the last chances of the Turks. Although the war continued for eight years with varying success the imperialists and the Venetians never really lost their hold upon Hungary, Transylvania and the Morea. In 1697 prince Eugene won one of the greatest of his victories over Sultan Mustafa II. in person, at Zenta, and Peter the Great marked the first serious entrance of Russia into the politics of south-eastern Europe by the capture of Azof. The Sultan realised that with the Kiuprili the possibility of fresh conquests had passed away, and he must content himself with the boundary of the Danube. [Sidenote: =The peace of Carlowitz, 1699.=] By the peace of Carlowitz, concluded in January 1699, the Emperor recovered the whole of Hungary, except the district of Temesvar, the larger part of Croatia and Sclavonia, and the suzerainty over Transylvania. Poland retained Podolia, including Kaminiec, and Russia Azof, while the Morea fell to Venice. Thus the Turkish frontier was practically reduced to the Danube, and the seeds of the Eastern Question were sown in the decay of the Ottoman empire and the advance of Russia, and a new epoch in the history of south-eastern Europe began.

[Sidenote: =Reconquest of the Morea, 1715.=]

The conquests on the Danube were more permanent than those in the Mediterranean. Fifteen years later the grand vizier, Ali Cumurgi, flushed with an unexpected triumph over the Czar Peter on the Pruth in 1711, and trusting in the exhaustion of the Empire after the war of the Spanish Succession, determined to make a great effort to wipe out the disgrace of Carlowitz, and recover Hungary and the Morea. The Venetians had no longer a hero like Morosini to lead them. The Greek population in spite of the benefits they had received from Venetian administration were too faithless and too dispirited to offer serious opposition. One campaign proved sufficient for the work. In June 1715 Ali Cumurgi passed the isthmus of Corinth. In September he returned in triumph to Constantinople the conqueror of the Morea. But there his success stopped. On the Danube he met more than his match. In August 1716 the Turks were completely defeated by prince Eugene at Peterwardein in Hungary and the grand vizier himself was killed. In 1717 Belgrade again passed into the Emperor’s hands, and the road into the heart of the Ottoman empire was open. The Porte saw the necessity of peace. [Sidenote: =The peace of Passarovitz, 1718.=] By the treaty of Passarovitz signed in 1718 the Turks left Austria in possession of Temesvar and Belgrade but retained the Morea. More than a century was to elapse, and the proud republic of Venice pass herself into slavery, before Greece could win her freedom.