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 SOCIALISM

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SOCIALISM

Lion", and Poland, too, was exhausted. But soon the Sultan turned his arms against Austria. Passing through Hungary, a great part of which had for one hundred and fifty years been in Turkish hands, an enormous army, reckoned at from 210,000 to .300,000 men (the latter figures are Sobieski's) marched for- ward. The Emperor Leopold fled from Vienna, and begged Sobieski's aid, which the papal nuncio also implored. Though dissuaded by Louis XIV, whose policy was always hostile to Austria, Sobieski hesi- tated not an instant. Meanwhile (July, 1683) the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha, had arrived before Vienna, and laid siege to the city, defended by the valiant Imperial General Count S'tahremberg, with a garrison of only 15,000 men, exposed to the horrors of disease and fire, as well as to hostile attacks. Sobieski started to the rescue in August, taking his son James with him; passing by Our Lady's sanctuary at Czeilstochowa, the troop.s prayed for a blessing on their arms: and in the beginning of September, having crossed the Danube and joined forces with the German armies under John George, Elector of Saxony, and Prince Charles of Lorraine, they ap- proached Vienna. On 11 Sept., Sobieski was on the heights of Kahlenberg, near the city, and the next day he gave battle in the plain below, with an army of not more than 76,000 men, the Germans forming the left wing and the Poles under Hetmans Jahonowski and Sieniawski, with General Katski in command of the artillery, forming the right. The hussars charged with their usual impetuosity, but the dense masses of the foe were impenetrable. Their retreat was taken for flight by the Turks, who rashed forward in pursuit; the hussars turned upon them with reinforcements and charged again, when their shouts made known that the "Northern Lion" was on the field and the Turks fled, panic-stricken, with Sobieski's horsemen still in pursuit. Still the battle raged for a time along all the line; both sides fought bravely, and the king was everywhere commanding, fighting, encouraging his men and urging them forward. He was the first to storm the camp: Kara Mustapha had escaped with his life, but he received the bow-string in Belgrade some months later. The Turks were routed, Vienna and Christendom saved, and the news sent to the pope along with the Standard of the Prophet, taken by Sobieski, who himself had heard Mass in the morning.

Prostrate with outstretched arras, he declared that it was God's cause he was fighting for, and ascribed the victory (Veni, vidi, Deus vicit — his letter to Innocent XI) to Him alone. Next day he entered Vienna, acclaimed by the people as their saviour. Leopold, displeased that the Polish king should have all the glory, condescended to visit and thank him, but treated his son James and the Polish hetmans with extreme and haughty coldness. Sobieski, though deeply offended, pursued the Turks into Hungary, attacked and took Ostrzyhom after a second battle, and returned to winter m Poland, with immense spoils taken in the Turkish camp. These and the glory shed upon the nation were all the immediate ad- vantages of the great victory. The Ottoman danger had vanished forever. The war still went on: step by step the foe was driven back, and sixteen years later Kamieniec and the whole of PodoUa were restored to Poland. But Sobieski did not live to see this triumph. In vain had he again and again at- tempted to retake Kamieniec, and even had built a stronghold to destroy its strategic value; this fortress enabled the Tatars to raid the Ruthenian provinces upon s(^veral occasions, even to the gates of Lemberg. He was also forced by treaty to give u|) Kicff to Russia in 1S6; nor did he succeed in .securing the crown for his son James. His last days w(^re spent in the bosom of his family, at his ciustle of Wilanow, where he died in 1696, broken down by political strife as much as

by illness. His wife, a Frenchwoman, the widow of John Zamoyski, Marie-Casimire, though not worthy of so great a hero, was tenderly beloved by him, as his letters show: she influenced him greatly and not always wisely. His family is now extinct. Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, was his great-grand- son — his son James' daughter, Clementine, having married James Stuart in 1719.

Listy Jana III. Krola polskiego, do krolowej Kazimierzy (Sobie- ski's letters to his wife), published by A. L. Helsel, 1857. Two volumes of "Acta HistoHca", published by the Academie der Wissenschaften. Tatham, John Sobieski (Oxford. 1881); Du- poNT, Memoirs pour servirdVhistoire de Sobieski (Warsaw, 1885); RiEDER, Johann III, Kinig von Polen (Vienna. 1883).

S. Tarnowski.

Socialism, a system of social and economic organi- zation that would substitute state monopoly for pri- vate ownership of the sources of production and means of distribution, and would concentrate under the con- trol of the secular governing authority the chief activities of human hfe. The term is often used vaguely to indicate any increase of collective control over individual action, or even any revolt of the dis- ])Ossessed against the rule of the possessing classes. But these are undue extensions of the term, leading to much confusion of thought. State control and even state ownership are not necessarily Socialism: they become so only when they result in or tend towards the prohibition of private ownership not only of "natural monopohes", but also of all the sources of wealth. Nor is mere revolt against economic inequality So- ciahsm: it may be Anarchism (see Anarchy); it may be mere Utopianism (see Communism); it may be a just resistance to oppression. Nor is it merely a pro- posal to make such economic changes in the social structure as would banish poverty. Socialism is this (see Collectivism) and much more. It is also a philosophy of social hfe and action, regarding all hu- man activities from a definite economic standpoint. Moreover modern SociaUsm is not a mere arbitrary exercise at .state-building, but a dehberate attempt to reheve, on explicit principles, the existing social con- ditions, which are regarded as intolerable. The great inequahties of human hfe and opportunity, produced by the excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of a comparatively small section of the community, have been the cause and still are the stimulu.s of what is called the SociaUstic movement. But, in order to understand fuUy what SociaUsm is and what it implies, it is necessary first to glance at the history of the movement, then to examine its philosophical and religious tendencies, and finally to consider how far these may be, and actually have proved to be, in- compatible with Christian thought and hfe. The first requirement is to understand the origin and growth of the movement.

It has been customary among i^Titers of the So- ciahst movement to begin with references to L'topian theories of the classical and Renaissance periods, to Plato's "Repubhc", Plutarch's "Life of Lycurgus",. More's "Utopia", Campanella's "City of the Sun", Hall's " Mundus alter et idem", and the hke. Thence the line of thought is traced through the French writers of the eighteenth century, Meslier, Montes- quieu, d'Argenson, MoreUy, Rousseau, Mably, till, with I..inguet and Necker, the eve of the Revolution is reached. In a sense, the modern movement has its roots in the ideas of these creators of ideal common- wealths. Yet there is a gulf fixed between the mod- ern Socialists and the older Utopists. Their schemes were mainly directed towards the establishment of Communism, or rather, Communism was the idea tliat gave life to their fancied states (see Communism). But tlie CoUei-tivist idea, which is the economic basis of modern Socialism (see Collecth'Ism), really emerges only with "Gracchus" Babeuf and his paper, "The Tribune of the People", in 1794. In the