Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/75

 pleasure and pillage," penetrated even to the imperial tents and the women's quarters, and "the young lord who ruled at Athens and Memphis, Jerusalem and Babylon," on this his first campaign was obliged to fly to save his life.

But the miserable Polish king suddenly gave up the struggle and threw himself on the mercy of the invaders, abandoning the Ukraine and Podolia to the Turk, and reducing his country to the condition of a vassal state by promising an annual tribute.

Sobieski retired to his estates disgusted and nearly broken-hearted. He had not long been there, when the "Terror of the Turks," as he was surnamed, was accused in the Diet of having sold his country to the infidel for a bribe of twelve million florins. Enraged at such an attack on his honor, he returned to Warsaw immediately, while his army, furious at such a libel on their beloved chief, swore to avenge the insult in blood. After calming them with much difficulty he proceeded to the Diet, where the very sight of him produced such an impression that when he claimed the punishment of his caluminator from the assembly, and excuses from all members who could for a moment have listened to such an accusation, his demands were accepted in a transport of enthusiasm. The Diet in a pressing message entreated his help against the Turks, and in the strangely hyperbolical language so often used in Poland, termed him "the hero of whom it might be believed, according to the system of Pythagoras, that all the souls of the great captains and good citizens lived again, as not one of their virtues was wanting in him."

The miserable informer confessed that he had been been bribed to make the accusation, and was condemned to death, but Sobieski would not allow the sentence to be carried out.

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

The Diet then decreed a levy of sixty thousand men, and committed full power over it to the "great hetman."

The summer was spent in preparations such as might be expected from Poland; "no men, no material of war, no money, were to be had."

For the time, however, disorders in Constantinople, and an insurrection in the Peloponnesus, had checked the projects of the vizier. In November, 1673, however, seven bridges were by his orders thrown across the Dniester, and eighty thousand veterans advanced under the command of the Seraskier Hussein Pasha.

A division of Sobieski's small army was sent forward to carry the Turkish outposts; but when they found that they were required to cross a river full of floating ice, to put such a barrier between themselves and their homes, that they were being led into a country without towns or villages, and surrounded by innumerable Turks, they broke out into open mutiny. Once before Sobieski had quelled a similar revolt; now with his imperious eloquence he called upon his man in the name of their duty and their country to follow him, and, as always was the case both with friends and foes, he gained the day. He led them to the battle of Kotzim, on the other side of the Dniester, where Hussein had established himself in a camp defended by strong fortifications, natural and artificial, and by rocks and marshes. To attack such a position with such troops as Sobieski could command, at such a time of year, without provisions and with weak artillery, seemed an impossible task in all eyes but his own. Fifty years before, however, the Poles, under his father, James Sobieski, had conquered at the same spot, and the good omen gave them courage. The weather was dreadful, and the snow was falling thickly, when he disposed his troops for the attack. All night long the preparations went on. "Comrades!" cried he, passing along the ranks, his dress, his arms, his thick moustache covered with hoarfrost, "you have 