Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/80

 the king, with his terrible hussars, rushed upon the lines, which were crowded by their very numbers and soon fell back. The seraskier sent next day to propose peace. He said that he knew to what a state of starvation the besieged were reduced, that the Sublime Porte would rather have such a king as their ally than their captive, and all they asked was the ratification of King Michel's treaty promising to pay tribute and an offensive alliance against Russia.

"Tell the aga," said Sobieski, "that if such propositions are again addressed to the king of Poland, he will hang the messenger." The bombardment now became terrible; neither by night nor day had the Poles any rest, and the entrenchments were continually attacked. The Christian camp had become a prison, the soldiers had hardly any food or ammunition, and discontent and even mutiny began to appear among them. Sobieski rode along the ranks. "I have brought you out of worse straits than this," said he; "do you think my head is weaker because you have placed a crown upon it?" A successful skirmish raised the spirits of the troops, the Turks fancied he must have received reinforcements, and, when at last he came out of the town with his whole army, they were seized with a panic terror, and declared that magic was being used against them. They all dreaded the approach of winter; Shaitan Pasha knew that a reverse would cost him his head, and he prudently offered an honorable peace. A part of the Ukraine and Kaminiek were given up; but the strength of the Ottoman empire was increasing, while Poland became weaker in men and money each year. To regain their fortresses, the prisoners, the frontier of the Dniester, and get rid of all pretensions to tribute, was better than a victory in such circumstances. One of the most pious of men, Sobieski stipulated that the custody of the tabernacle at Bethlehem and of the holy sepulchre should be restored to the monks who had held them before. As this favor had been long demanded in vain by Europe, the glory of Poland and her king was all the more greatly extolled.

Madame de Sévigné', a great admirer of his, writes, November, 1676, enthusiastically of his deeds: —

Peace is concluded in Poland, romantically. This hero, at the head of fifteen thousand men, surrounded by two hundred thousand, has forced them to sign a treaty, sword in hand. Since the days of the Calprenêde [in a novel of Mlle, de Scuderi] such a thing has never been heard of.

The Ottoman army, who were in desperate straits, made ready for departure, and defiled before the king, demanding to see the "invincible lion " with whom they had contended so often on the field of battle; at the same time giving into his hands fifteen thousand Russian prisoners destined to slavery.

For thirty years the Ottoman empire, at the height of its power, had been kept at bay by Poland: what might not have happened, if, masters of Buda and of the Adriatic, they had been able to turn their whole force upon Italy and Austria?

A general peace now ensued. Sobieski's grand object was to form an alliance against the Turk among the kingdoms most liable to be attacked. "Not to attempt to conquer or restrain the monster should be our object," said he, "but to fling it back to the deserts from whence it came; to exterminate it, and raise once more on its ruins a Byzantine empire. This is the only Christian, worthy, wise, and decisive course;" and for this he only required the concurrence of the four threatened powers. Innocent promised assistance "to the new Godfrey of Bouillon." But except from the pope, he could get no help from any one of them. The czar was playing a double game, as usual, and sent embassy after embassy to Warsaw, only to obtain better terms for himself at Constantinople. Leopold refused all alliance with or help to Poland; Venice would not even allow his envoy to cross her frontier; Louis XIV. ordered back a small body of French gentlemen who had been fighting for the mere love of war by Sobieski's side; Poland was again abandoned to herself to fight the battles of Christendom.

The next two years, however, there was a pause among the exhausted combatants again; and they were spent by Sobieski in trying to discipline his army, and restore order and law, which under his rule reigned in Poland to an extent unknown before.

Again in 1683, however, the indefatigable Porte prepared for another invasion, as a preliminary to which the sultan recognized Count Tekeli as prince of Hungary under his vassalage, while a confederation of Christian states, Transylvania, Wallachia, Hungary, and the 