The Emperor was exposed on either side to these two implacable enemies.
At Versailles, as at the Porte, had the destruction of the house of
Austria been sworn.
But France was the power which, in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, menaced most seriously the independence of her neighbours.
Turkey was, perhaps, from her internal weakness and faulty constitution,
in no condition to effect a lasting conquest, however great her mere
destructive energies might be. An ingenious nation and an ambitious
king, able ministers and skilful generals, revenues, ships, colonies,
commercial enterprise, a central situation among divided foes, combined
to render France the dominant power of the age.
The great Turkish Vizier, the restorer of order and prosperity, Ahmed
Kiuprili, had had a greater counterpart in the French minister,
Cardinal Richelieu. The Sultan, Mahomet IV., was wanting in all those
qualities which made Louis XIV. for long the successful administrator of
a despotic power. The armies of France, under the leadership of a Condé,
a Turenne, a Luxembourg, were the finest of the world, the envy of
neighbouring princes, the pattern for all soldiers. The Duke of
Marlborough and John Sobieski both learnt their first lessons in
military affairs under French command. Prince Eugene vainly sought
employment in the French troops; their opposition to himself taught
William III. the art of war.
Nor was the French ascendency won by arms alone. The order and splendour
of her government, the genius of her authors, the attractions of her
society, the diplomatic skill of her ambassadors, made a French party in
every court in Europe.
Portugal may be said to have owed her independent existence to France;
Holland till 1672 ranked as a French ally; Sweden, too far removed to be
a rival, was an almost constant friend, till Louis' aggressions
alienated her also in 1681. France had a party in Poland; the petty
princes and republics of Italy vacillated between her and the Empire;
in England she had had Cromwell as an ally, and she held both Charles
II. and his opponents in her pay. She maintained an understanding with
Turkey. Discontented Romanists in England and Ireland, unruly
Protestants in Hungary, were alike taught to look to her for advice and
for assistance. Her frontiers were steadily advancing at the expense of
Spain and of the German princes. Neither force nor treaties seemed to
avail aught against her superior strength and cunning. The Lotharingian
bishoprics and their dependencies; Elsass, Breisach and Bar, Roussillon,
Franche Comté, parts of Flanders, of Artois, of Hainault and Luxemburg,
the free imperial city of Strassburg, the territory of Orange, were
steadily absorbed by her, and thoroughly incorporated with the French
kingdom.
Her opponents saw no possibility of resistance, save in a great
confederacy against her. Her power was not finally checked, nor her
ambition confined within bounds, till such a confederacy was made. But
it is hardly too much to say that such a confederacy would have been
scarcely possible had the Turks been completely victorious at Vienna in
1683.
Three years later than that deliverance, in 1686, the League of
Augsburg was formed. It was ultimately the union of the Emperor, the
German princes, Sweden, Spain, Holland and the Pope, against an ambition
that menaced all. This League was the basis of that Grand Alliance which
finally defeated France under Marlborough and Eugene. But the true
foundations of a similar alliance had been laid before, in 1682,
principally by the endeavours of the Prince of Waldeck, in the treaty of
Laxenberg between the Circles of Upper Germany and the Emperor.
This incipient League against France had been practically suspended by
the Turkish invasion. A Turkish success must have dissolved it. The Pope
had been zealous in forming the "Holy League" against the Turks and in
promoting union against France. Had Vienna fallen, fear of the Sultan
would have driven him into the arms of Louis, and he would have drawn
the Catholic powers at least along with him. Probably all the States
united in the "Holy League" must have demanded French support for their
own salvation. With Austria and Poland beaten, France, and France alone,
could have assumed the leadership of Europe against the East. The German
Protestant princes would have been ranged under the command of
Luxembourg and of Vendôme; Louis would have triumphed upon the Danube;
the house of Austria would have existed only by the sufferance of her
ancient enemy; and French influence would have been riveted, as a chain,
by the force of admiration and of gratitude, upon the neck of Europe.
Such an event Louis expected, and the Emperor feared. As the Turks drew
near, the French armies lay ready upon the frontier, ready to take
advantage of the approaching catastrophe--ready to avenge, but not to
save the Empire.
We in England, safe as we were from Turkish invasion, were by no means
unaffected by the struggle. Nothing which tended to increase or diminish
the power of France or of the German princes could be indifferent to us,
and at that particular time our fortunes were closely bound up with
those of the powers opposing France.
The motive which induced the Dutch government and the other allies of
Augsburg to sanction the descent of William III. upon our shores, and to
withdraw, at a critical moment, the flower of their forces upon such a
doubtful enterprise, was the necessity of including England in their
league. Though James II. would no doubt have awakened resistance in
some form or other anyhow, the plot which actually overthrew him was
hatched abroad among the allies, and executed by the help of foreign
troops and foreign money. English men, ships, and money were needed to
beat the French. No method was open for obtaining them except by the
superseding of King James, entirely or practically, by William, as king
or regent. No personal aims nor admiration of Whig principles would have
justified the risks William ran. In truth, neither the allies nor the
Dutch government would have allowed him to run such risk at all, save
for the common good of the League and of Europe. But a Turkish victory
at Vienna would have meant the probable non-existence of the League, by
the rallying of half its members to the side of France. It would
certainly have meant such a change of circumstances upon the continent,
as would have rendered it highly improbable that an army, principally
furnished from Germany, could be spared to go to England. James and the
Whig nobility would have fought their quarrel alone, with the
High-Church Tory majority of the country as arbiters of the strife.
Therefore, had the battle of Vienna been fought differently, the Boyne,
La Hogue and Blenheim might never have been fought at all. Forces
supplied by England, or paid by England, commanded by Marlborough at
Blenheim and at Ramilies, broke French power. The power of making the
alliance which fought at Blenheim and at Ramilies was won at Vienna.
To turn to Sir William Temple's views again, so convinced was he that a
Turkish invasion of Austria would tend to the great advantage of France,
that he believed that the Turks themselves would see it, and for that
very reason refrain from the enterprise; it being against their interest
to make any one Christian power so strong as France would then
become.[5]
It is certain that Louis XIV. fully appreciated the value of that
diversion of their attention from himself, which an attack from Hungary
upon the rear of the German powers would cause. It is equally certain
that he, the eldest son of the Church, the most Christian King, the
persecutor of the Huguenots, had some understanding with Mohammedans and
with Hungarian Protestant malcontents. And this, too, at a time when
religious passions still ran high; when the forces of Europe were
everywhere divided, owing to religious intolerance; when France herself
was about to be fatally injured by the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. Louis, however, intrigued as readily with Hungarian Protestants
as with Irish Romanists, and the intolerance of the Emperor gave every
opportunity for interference. Indeed, the attacks of the Emperor Leopold
upon the religion of some of his Hungarian subjects well nigh proved
fatal to Austria. The Protestants preferred Mohammedan rule, which, if
contemptuous, may he just, and is not avowedly persecuting, to the
oppressions of a court dominated by the Jesuit fathers. Attempts to
Germanize their nation and to override their laws united Hungarians of
all religions in a common hostility to Vienna. A dangerous conspiracy,
fomented by France, was discovered, and crushed in 1671 by the execution
of the principal leaders. But Emerich Count Tekeli, the son of one of
the chiefs involved, escaping into Transylvania, threw himself upon the
protection of the Turks, and with their assistance commenced a guerilla
warfare in Hungary. Numbers of the inhabitants, irrespective of their
religion, joined his standard. A levy, under French officers, was made
even in Poland for the assistance of the insurgents. With the almost
open aid of the Pasha of Buda, their operations assumed the character of
regular warfare, and they fully held their own against the Imperial
generals.
It was fortunate for Austria that, just as the obligations of a peace
and internal confusion had prevented the Turks from attacking Hungary
during the Thirty Years' War, so this rising was not taken advantage of
by the Porte, in spite of French solicitations, till after the peace of
Nimuegen in 1679. During the contest with France, from 1673 to 1679, the
Polish war had occupied the attention of the Turks, and the Austrian
government had been untroubled. They had not at the same time to wage
open war with the East and West. Yet even now, though peace nominally
continued in Western Europe, France was glad to avail herself of those
difficulties of the Court of Vienna, to which she herself was
contributing. Louis seized Strassburg, and quietly annexed other places
by the pretended legal decisions of packed tribunals. He attacked the
Spanish Netherlands, and conceived himself to be acting generously in
that he refrained from taking Luxemburg. It was enough that Austria
should be spared the task of fighting, at the same time, on behalf of
Spain against the French, and on her own behalf against the Infidels.
That the house of Bourbon should strive to embarrass the house of
Hapsburg, by intrigues in Turkey, in Hungary and in Poland, was but in
accord with a traditional policy, which no danger to their common
Christendom could be expected to overrule.
But 1683 was a year of disaster for Louis. In that year he lost two of
his natural sons, his Queen, and his greatest minister, Colbert. Above
all, in that year his designs against the Emperor were destined to be
foiled by the interference of Sobieski, the _Deus ex machina_ for
Christendom and for the Empire.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] "If the Grand Vizier (Kiuprili) be so great a man as he is reputed
in politics as well as in arms, he will never consent, by an invasion of
Hungary, to make way for the advance of French progress into the Empire,
which a conquest of the Low Countries would make easy and obvious; and
so great accessions (with others that would lie fair and open in the
Spanish provinces upon the Mediterranean) would make France a formidable
power to the Turk himself, and greater than I suppose he desires to see
any in Christendom."--Sir W. Temple, Works, ii. 212, edit. 1814.