1682-3] Turkish advance against Austria 359 intimations went, be directed against Austria or Poland or the republic of Venice. It was not until December 21 that the mask was finally thrown aside. In a last interview Caprara was informed that the Turks would not renew the treaty unless Leopoldstadt were razed, a number of towns near Neuhäusel surrendered, and Tökölyi recognised as King of Upper Hungary under Turkish suzerainty. Such demands were equivalent to a declaration of war from a State which refused to respect the rules of international etiquette. In the spring of 1683 the nucleus of an enormous army was collected at Adrianople; and on March 31 the Sultan and his Vezir started on their eventful march. At Belgrade Mohammad IV entrusted the sacred banner to Kara Mustafa, who now assumed the supreme command. As the army advanced, it received recruits from all the vassal provinces of Turkey; and, by the time it reached Essek on the Drave, its numbers had swollen to over 250,000 men. Once convinced that Austria was again threatened with a Turkish invasion, the Imperial Ministers showed no lack of energy. Agents were sent to all Christian States to urge them to combine their efforts against the common foe. Although, as Louis XIV sneeringly remarked, crusades had gone out of fashion since the days of St Louis, the response was not wholly discreditable to the fellow-feeling which still feebly survived in Christendom. It is true that some States held selfishly aloof. Charles II of England was the pensioner of France, and had had quite enough of wars and of parliaments. William of Orange was powerless, against the opposition of the republican party, to send aid to an ally whose overthrow would be as fatal to Holland as to Austria itself. Frederick William of Brandenburg was playing his own game, and it was not the correct move at the moment to support a prince who disputed his claims in Silesia and who would not agree to help him to drive the Swedes from Pomerania. Spain was too anxiously watching France to be able to spare assistance even for her closest ally. But Innocent XI worthily discharged the duties of the first bishop of western Christendom. He sent money to Austria, and fatherly exhortations to all the rulers who belonged to his communion. Venice eagerly promised help against its old oppressor. The sluggish Germanic Diet voted money, and among the Princes who promised to lead their troops to the defence of their suzerain were Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria, Leopold's prospective son-in-law, John George of Saxony, and the young George Lewis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, afterwards King George I of Great Britain (four of whose brothers likewise served against the Turks). But the nearest and most invaluable ally was the most experienced and successful of living combatants against the Turk, the King of Poland. On March 31, 1683, John Sobieski signed the momentous treaty by which he undertook to furnish a force of 40,000 men. The French envoy, Vitry, resorted to the tactics which Louis XIV had prescribed as the only safeguard, if Poland were alienated from 360 Louis XIV and the Turks [1676-83 France, and tried to stir up opposition in the Diet. But he had to deal with a King who knew all the methods of French diplomacy in the past. His letters were discovered, and he was dismissed with contumely from Warsaw. Louis had to pay a heavy penalty for his creditable refusal to bestow unmerited rank upon the Marquis d'Arquien. For, after all, the French King was as keenly interested in the Turkish invasion as the Emperor himself - not that, as some thought, he had brought it about. Constantinople was the only European Court at which his influence counted for nothing. The most haughty and imperious of rulers in insisting upon the privileges of his representatives, he could not protect his envoys from contemptuous treatment and even from imprisonment at the hands of the Turks. But he had known of Kara Mustafa's design in 1676, had welcomed the Turkish peace with Russia as enabling the Vezir to put it into execution, had planned his aggressive Reunions in the confident hope that his foremost opponent would be paralysed by the task of defending his own country. Louis XIV would never have admitted that he was a traitor to the Christian cause. The Turk, according to Louis' purpose, was to be a tool and not a master. As soon as he had swept the Habsburgs out of the way and advanced with his hordes to the upper Danube, Germany must appeal to the Most Christian King, and Louis as the victorious champion of the Cross would recover that imperial dignity which, according to the belief and teaching of French historians, had been wrongfully wrested from their kings as the heirs of Charlemagne. Crusades would have come into fashion again, when they fitted in with the interests of France. The criminal blindness of the Austrian Government had delayed the appeal for help so long that it nearly came too late. For some months the Habsburg dominions had to provide their own defence. The veteran Montecuculi, who had so often urged the maintenance of a standing army as the one defence against the Turks, had died in 1681. His last service was to persuade his master to retain some 30,000 of the troops which had been raised in the recent war with France. These formed the nucleus of the Imperial army which was placed under the command of Leopold's brother-in-law, Charles of Lorraine, and which was joined by the youthful Eugene of Savoy, among other volunteers. For a moment the Imperial general meditated aggression as the best method of defence and advanced to attack Neuhäusel. But the risk of being cut off from the Austrian frontier was too great, and the Duke fell back to cover Vienna. On July 7, the Emperor with his wife and family quitted his capital amidst the murmurs of his subjects, to seek a safer refuge in Passau. Only at the last moment were measures taken to destroy the defenceless suburbs and to strengthen the neglected fortifications of the city. If Kara Mustafa had hurried his advance, he could hardly have failed to carry Vienna by storm. But he lost several precious days on the way, and it was not till July 17 that he completed the blockade of 1683] Siege of Vienna 361 the city, which was to last for two anxious months. Charles of Lorraine had left a garrison of 13,000 regular troops, but had himself withdrawn with his main force, in order to harass the besiegers until the arrival of foreign aid should enable him to make a strenuous attempt to force the raising of the siege. The story of the defence of Vienna is the most heroic page in the stirring annals of the city. Grateful recollection has preserved the memory of all who played a prominent part in the obstinate resistance which was offered to the overwhelming force of the enemy, from the Governor, Count Rüdiger Starhemberg, to the leader of the corps of University volunteers. Local tradition preserved a record of every sally, of the desperate struggles which raged round each bastion. Kara Mustafa might have taken the city over and over again, if he had pressed the attack with that obstinate determination and that disregard of human life which had been shown by Mohammad II in the storming of Constantinople. But he preferred to wait until exhaustion, plague, and famine compelled an unconditional surrender. And even so he came within measurable distance of success. The limits of human endurance had almost been reached, when on September 11 the relieving army appeared on the slopes of the Kahlenberg. Charles of Lorraine had played his part manfully. He had impeded the supplies and interrupted the communications of the besiegers, and he had successfully defended Pressburg from the attack of Tökölyi. But his chief care had been to hasten the assembling of the relieving forces from Germany and from Poland. In response to the Duke's urgent appeals, John Sobieski commenced his march with only 26,000 men, instead of waiting for the collection of the full contingent fixed by the treaty. At Hollabrunn he was joined by Charles of Lorraine, who accompanied him to Tuln, where a bridge of boats had been carefully protected to secure the crossing of the Danube. To Tuln came the Bavarians and Saxons with a number of German volunteers, who had already assembled at Krems. On the southern bank of the river the whole Christian force, numbering nearly 70,000 men, was marshalled, and without delay set out on the difficult march through the Wiener Wald to the hills commanding a view of the city of Vienna and the eastward plain. Some fears had been entertained that difficulty might be caused by the jealous rivalry of a King, two Electors, and an Imperial general. To avert this, the Emperor actually started down the river with the intention of assuming the command in person. But his arrival would certainly have irritated the Polish King, whose superior rank and experience were not disputed by his colleagues. It was under his supreme command that the army was drawn up on the morning of the eventful September 12. On the left, nearest the river, were the Imperial troops under the Duke of Lorraine; in the centre were the Germans under the two Electors; while the right wing was formed by the Poles with an Austrian contingent. 362 Relief of Vienna [1683 It was no easy task which lay before them; but it was facilitated by the gross ignorance and incompetence of Kara Mustafa. He had refused to believe till the last minute in the arrival of the Poles, and he had taken no precautions to cover the besieging army. He could easily have detached sufficient troops to destroy the bridge at Tuln or to hold the passes of the Wiener Wald. Even when the enemy was in sight, he refused to follow the advice of Ibrahim, the Pasha of Buda, to withdraw his seasoned troops from the trenches and to fortify a strong position on his western front. Between the Kahlenberg and the plain were a number of valleys formed by streams running into the Danube. Each of the intervening slopes might have been held by the Turks, and days must then have been spent in forcing an arduous path to the city walls. But all precautions had been neglected. The left wing of the allies, which had the hardest task, swept away the Moldavian and Wallachian auxiliaries, and the whole line threw itself with the impetuosity of assured success upon the Turkish camp. The Vezir was carried away with his panic-stricken troops. The Janissaries, surprised in the trenches between the relieving vanguard and the exultant garrison, were cut to pieces. Darkness was setting in, when the eight hours' combat came to an end, and the relief of Vienna was accomplished. The victors had so little anticipated such a speedy and complete triumph that they remained under arms all night, in the belief that the Turkish retreat must have been of the nature of a stratagem. It was not till day dawned that they discovered that the vast encampment which surrounded Vienna was deserted. As a matter of fact the flight of the Turks was so hasty that by 10 o'clock the next morning the foremost fugitives had reached Raab, a journey which it had taken the army eight days to cover on its advance. It is saddening to turn from a heroic deed of arms, in which all worked together with complete enthusiasm and harmony, to the pitiful misunderstandings which followed. To a coalition success is almost as disintegrating as defeat. The Elector of Saxony stayed to escort the Emperor to the thanksgiving service in St Stephen's on the 14th, but started homewards with his troops that very evening, declaring that Protestants were regarded with little favour in Vienna and that the Saxons had no share in the spoils. He had some grounds for the complaint that the saving of Vienna was celebrated rather as a Roman Catholic than as a Christian victory. More serious was the want of concord between the Emperor and the King of Poland, and yet it was almost inevitable. Leopold, grateful as he was, could not but feel that he was dwarfed in his own and in his subjects' estimation by the magnificent achievements of his preserver. He had been willing to take the command, but had feared to come forward, lest he should hurt the susceptibilities of his ally; and now he was an outsider in the celebration of the defence of his own capital. The susceptible Viennese had crowded to kiss the hands of Sobieski; they looked with some coldness on the 1683] Retreat of the Turks 363 ruler who had been safe on the upper Danube during both the siege and the final battle. John III of Poland, on his side, was eager for fame, greedy of praise, and inclined to resent anything which seemed to suggest an inadequate recognition of his own or his soldiers' services. But he could not prevent people from saying, with truth, that the Poles (through no fault of their own) had had less fighting to do than the Germans, and, with equal truth, that they had taken a larger share of the booty. From this it was easy to deduce the insulting insinuation that they were more efficient plunderers than soldiers. The two rulers did not meet till the 17th, and their interview did not make them better friends. Leopold strove to be cordial; but it was not in his nature to unbend, and he was bound by the strictest rules of imperial etiquette to remain covered and to withhold the coveted title of "Majesty." The King naturally thought that it was an occasion when strict etiquette was rather out of place; and he was still more annoyed when his eldest son on his approach failed to attract the notice of the preoccupied Emperor. He withdrew rather sullenly to his tent, and left his marshal to do the honours of the Polish camp to his visitors. Incipient quarrels, and the miasma emitted by the imperfectly cleared battlefield, made it imperative to remove the troops from Vienna; and on September 18 the pursuit of the enemy was begun. It was, however, too late to overtake the Turkish army. At Raab Kara Mustafa had put to death Ibrahim Pasha, whose advice he had rejected, and whose accusations before the Sultan he had good reason to dread. Thence the defeated Vezir made his way to Buda. Meanwhile, the Christian army had crossed the Danube at Pressburg by the bridge of boats which had been brought down from Tuln, and after a few days' rest continued their march along the north bank. Near Parkány the Poles, who were in advance, were routed on October 7 by a superior Turkish force; but their flight was stopped by the arrival of the Imperial cavalry under Charles of Lorraine. Two days later, when the infantry had come up, the Turks were again attacked and completely routed. This victory was followed not only by the surrender of Parkány, but also by the capture of Gran, the frontier fortress of the Turkish dominions on the right bank of the Danube. This disaster, the first in which an actual possession of the Turks had been regained by a Christian force, completed the alienation of the Sultan from his Vezir. Kara Mustafa, instead of attempting to relieve Gran, had continued his retreat to Essek and Belgrade. The blame for the defeat at Parkány he laid upon Tökölyi, who had been within easy march of the battlefield but had rendered no assistance to his allies. The Hungarian leader, whose following had been diminished by a well-timed offer of amnesty from the Emperor, and whose efforts to make terms for himself through Sobieski had failed, was now absolutely dependent upon Turkish assistance. To defend himself against the charges of |