Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/87

 to carry Buda, which would have driven the Turks out of Hungary, and thus concluded the war.

With a last effort to save Tekeli, and do something for Hungary, if possible, Sobieski wrote to the pope in their favor, after having vainly attempted to obtain terms for them with the emperor. Then, to the great delight of his army, he turned homewards, through mud and snow, and hardships of all kinds. On Christmas eve he reached Cracow, after only four months' absence, which had been one series of successes and triumphs. He was received with the acclamations of his people, who were half mad with pride and joy.

On the very day after, an aga of the Janissaries presented himself to Kara Mastapha at Belgrade, on the part of the sultan, to demand his head. It was said that Mahomet would have saved him, but that the exasperation of the army and the people was such that he was afraid for his own life; despots are often the greatest slaves. The disgraced vizier was sent for to Constantinople after attempting to save his treasures, by burying them and killing the Albanian workmen who had done the work. He saw from his windows the aga approaching with a numerous escort, received him calmly, kissed the hatti-scherif of death, made his prayer, washed his hands, face, and head, to "receive martyrdom pure in body and soul," and then, kneeling down, adjusted the cord round his own neck. His head a few days after decorated the gates of the Seraglio, "another trophy to John Sobieski."

The tide of conquest had turned; the Turks were driven back never again to trouble Europe by their invasions. We have forgotten the political and religious horror which followed the long series of triumphs that carried the standard of Mahomet from Mecca, Jerusalem, and Damascus, into the very heart of Europe. Sobieski was spoken of as a second Maccabeus who had saved Christianity itself, as well as the Holy Land. In three months he had recovered all that the Porte had conquered during two hundred years. The decline of the empire of the Mahomets and Solymans dates from the utter defeat of the Turks by King John at Vienna, and the battles which succeeded it. Since that time the Porte has never gained a foot of territory in Europe.

The extraordinary genius for war possessed by the Turkish race, the manner in which such bodies of men and masses of material of war were collected in those roadless days in such short periods of time, and from such distances, is almost inconceivable. Inspired by religious fanaticism, these were hurled on the foe with a force which for a time carried all before it. But although their powers of destruction were enormous, the utter absence of all capacity for ruling or amalgamating with their subject races is even more remarkable. The Turks have never been able to use their acquisitions, except to derive tribute from them. Their existence has always and everywhere been that of a garrison in a conquered country — aliens in faith, in race, and manners, they have continued apart to the present day. Literature they have none, trade they have left to the despised Giaour: they seem incapable of progress, in the European sense of the word. The fierce hordes which have overrun so large a portion of the world have apparently been urged on by the blind instinct that leads the locust or the soldier-crab afield, more than by any more human feeling. Von Hammer, at the end of one of his volumes, summing up the principal invasions of the thirty previous years, mentions six in Styria, six in Carinthia, nine in Carniola, without counting the great number of smaller attempts, twenty-seven in Carniola alone from 1460 to 1518.

The Turk has lost his savage energy of conquest since those days, but though the common people are said to be brave, sober, and trustworthy, the hopeless corruption of the ruling class in Constantinople and the provinces is as great or greater than ever, the social conditions are utterly rotten, and the general disorganization complete.

The problem of our dealings with the Porte is, however, of course complicated by the fact that it is only the advanced guard of the enormous Mussulman population scattered over the world, and that our queen rules over a greater number of Mahometans than does any other sovereign, even the sultan and the shah.

The history of Sobieski has a peculiar interest at the present moment, as helping to interpret that present which has its roots, as ever, in the past. The "Bulgarian atrocities," which have shocked the world, are seen to be merely "a survival" (as Mr. Tylor would call it) of the ordinary usages of the Turks in war and in the suppression of rebellion. The antagonism between the Porte and "Muscovy," the friendly feeling between Turkey and Hungary, which has helped to paralyze Austria at the present crisis, existed in the days of King John as now. If the 