The duties which had been imposed upon Charles of Lorraine were of the
most arduous kind. With a handful of troops, but slowly reinforced by
the German levies, whose assistance was rendered less useful by the
jealousies of the sovereign Princes in command, he was opposed both to
the Turks and to Tekeli. He was expected to be ready to support the
garrisons of Presburg and of Komorn, to hinder the incursions of the
enemy into Upper Austria and into Moravia--above all, to prepare the
bridges above Vienna, by which alone a relieving army could arrive.
Though driven from the Leopoldstadt island, and from all immediate
communication with the city, his presence yet animated the besieged with
hope of succour. He fixed his head-quarters finally at Krems, on the
Danube, where the Saxon contingent presently arrived, followed by the
troops of the Circles and the Bavarians. Before their arrival, towards
the end of August, he felt strong enough to advance and rescue Presburg
from Tekeli. He followed up the operation by a defeat inflicted on the
combined forces of the Turks and Hungarians upon the Marchfeld. A
detachment of four thousand Polish horse, under Lubomirski, originally
raised to assist Tekeli, were already present with the army of Lorraine.
But decisive operations were of necessity postponed till after the
coming of the King of Poland with the bulk of his forces, and of the
rest of the German troops.
Lorraine, in these movements, undoubtedly proved his title to
generalship; but nothing except the extraordinary apathy of the Vizier
rendered them possible. A skilful employment of the enormous force of
Turkish cavalry must have forced the Imperial army to retire for want of
supplies. The ravage, aimlessly and mercilessly inflicted upon Austria
and the confines of Moravia, would, if directed against Poland, have
probably prevented the march of Sobieski. An able commander, with such
forces at his command, might have prevented, or at least hindered, the
junction of the Poles and Germans. Nor were any steps taken by the
Vizier to stop the construction of the bridges at Krems and at Tuln, nor
to guard the defiles of the Wiener Wald, over which the Christian army
must advance to raise the siege. So extraordinary indeed was the neglect
of the enemy, that a secret understanding has been supposed between
Tekeli and Sobieski, by which, in return for the future good offices of
the latter, the former was not to molest Poland nor hinder the junction
of the Christian forces. Be that as it may, the secret information of
the Poles was as good as that of the Turks was bad, and the king knew
thoroughly with what foes he had to deal.[11]
Meanwhile, in spite of French intrigues, in spite of backwardness in
Lithuania and of distrust in Poland, Sobieski had left Warsaw for Cracow
on July 18. Up to the last moment the Turks disbelieved in his coming in
person, and the Emperor and the French king both doubted it. He was
gouty, he was rheumatic, he was too fat to ride; such was the tenour of
the information of the baffled French agent Vitry. Nevertheless, on the
22nd of August, he was on the Silesian frontier with the main part of
his army. It consisted mostly of cavalry, of those Polish horsemen
matchless in prowess, but the most unstable of forces. His infantry was
less numerous and inferior, their shabby accoutrements contrasting
sharply with the gaudy equipment of the cavaliers. "They have sworn to
dress themselves better in the spoils of the enemy," said the king of
one regiment, deprecating the criticism of the Germans. His march lay
through Silesia and Moravia, through the borders of the lands devastated
by the Tartars, where the trembling inhabitants thronged around him,
hailing him already as their deliverer. Urged by message after message
from Lorraine, he left his army to follow under the leadership of the
Field-Marshal Jablonowski, and hurried on himself at the head of two
thousand cavalry, his son Prince James by his side.
We can follow every movement of the campaign from the letters which,
amid the hurry of the march, during short hours snatched from sleep,
once at least during the thunder of a Turkish cannonade, he found time
to despatch continually to his queen. _Seule joie de mon âme,
char__mante et bien-aimée Mariette_, as he calls her. Her letters in
reply are his continual consolation amid the labours of the campaign,
the ingratitude of the Emperor, and the insubordination of his subjects.
"I read all your letters, my dear and incomparable Maria, thrice
over--once when I receive them, once when I retire to my tent and am
alone with my love, once when I sit down to answer them." Such is his
answer to her expression of a fear that the distractions of his
enterprise may leave no time for interest in aught besides. On August 29
he writes, from near Brunn in Moravia, sending the news of the retreat
of Tekeli after his defeat by Lorraine, and adding that he hopes the
next day, on nearing the Danube, to hear the cannon which tell that
Vienna is still untaken. On the 31st he is near Tuln, above Vienna. He
has passed the distant thunder of the cannonade upon his left hand, and
has effected his junction with the army of Lorraine. Despairing of the
arrival of the Lithuanians, he has distributed the arms intended for
them among the imperfectly equipped Poles. Still more is he distressed
at the non-appearance of the Cossacks, whom he expected, and whom he
knew as invaluable for outpost duty. Menzynski, who should have
conducted them, is lingering at Lemberg. "_C'est un grand misérable._"
Most interesting of all is the passage in which he gives his wife his
first impressions of his future colleague, the Duke of Lorraine.
Lorraine had been a competitor with Sobieski for the crown of Poland,
and it must have been a singular meeting when the rivals first came face
to face co-operating together in a mighty enterprise. Sobieski the king,
whose offspring were not to reign; Charles the duke, the destined
ancestor of the Imperial line of Austria.[12] The one in the
semi-Oriental magnificence of his country, he went into action before
Vienna in a sky-blue silk doublet; the other in the dress of a
campaigner, best described in Sobieski's own words. The duke he finds
modest and taciturn, stooping, plain, with a hooked nose, marked with
small-pox; clad in an old grey coat, with "a fair wig ill-made," a hat
without a band, "boots of yellow leather, or rather of what was yellow
three months ago." "_Avec tout ça, il n'a pas la mine d'un marchand,
mais d'un homme comme il faut, et même d'un homme de distinction. C'est
un homme avec qui je m'accorderais facilement._" The friendship of the
former rivals was cemented by a banquet, and the duke's accustomed
monitor being first overcome, Lorraine himself was induced to proceed
from his native Moselle, which he drank usually mixed with water, to the
strong Hungarian wines--to the improvement, as the king tells his wife,
of his conversation. Besides Lorraine, Sobieski found a crowd of German
Princes awaiting his arrival: John George of Saxony, speaking no French
nor Latin, and very little German; Waldeck, of the house of
Waldeck-Wildungen,[13] William the Third's right hand man in the
Netherlands, here commanding the troops of the Circles, and winning high
praise from the king for his activity and zeal; Maximilian of Bavaria,
whose courage and ill-fortune were hereafter to be signalized at
Blenheim and at Ramilies, now aged twenty-one, wins notice as "better
dressed than the others." There were two Wurtembergers and the Prince of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, afterwards our George I.; the Prince of
Saxe-Lauenberg; a Hohenzollern and a Hessian; three Princes of Anhalt;
Hermann and Louis of Baden, the latter was with Marlborough at
Schellenberg; two sons of Montecuculi, the conqueror of St. Gotthard;
last and youngest, though not least, Eugene of Savoy, the future
conqueror of Zenta and of Belgrade, and the colleague of Marlborough in
his greatest battles. There was Count Leslie, of that Scotch house which
had given generals to half the armies of Europe; Count Taaffe, the
Irishman, afterwards Sir Francis Taaffe and Earl of Carlingford, whose
elder brother fell fighting for King James at the Boyne, but whose
services to the allies secured the earldom from forfeiture. There were
gathered veterans of the Thirty Years' War, men who might have seen
Gustavus or Wallenstein, and men who were to reap their brightest
laurels hereafter in the war of the Spanish Succession. As was wittily
said, the Empire would have been there had only the Emperor been
present. The Brandenberg troops also were wanting. The "Great Elector"
was jealous of Poland--once his superior in the Prussian duchy--had
formerly been injured by Sobieski acting with the Swedes in the
interests of France, and moreover was not on the best terms with the
Emperor. Brandenberg, then as ever, was playing with skill and patience
her own game. The fortunes of the future Prussian monarchy were not to
be lightly risked for the sake of Austria. But the Emperor himself must
not be rashly charged with want of courage for his absence from the
camp. He was not trained to war; the presence of his court would have
been embarrassing to the operations, perhaps would have been inseparable
from intrigues and jealousies that would seriously have crippled the
army. A certain stubborn manhood Leopold had shown in not yielding to
the pressure put upon him to make terms with Louis XIV. in this
extremity. The aid of France could have been purchased by the election
of the Dauphin as King of the Romans, probably by smaller sacrifices.
The Diet at Ratisbon had been not disinclined to yield, but the Emperor
had stedfastly refused to subject either his own house or the Empire to
French dictation. That one crowned head was in the field was of the
greatest importance, especially when that one was the King of Poland.
Everywhere the most cheerful deference was rendered to Sobieski by all
who were present. The Princes, jealous of each other before, now vied
with each other in zealous obedience to the conqueror of Choczim. His
experience of Turkish warfare was unique, his personal character
commanding. He tells his wife how Lorraine, Waldeck, Saxony, Bavaria
would send or even come personally for his commands. The ascendancy
exercised by Sobieski is nowhere more decisively illustrated than in the
conduct of five hundred Janissaries, a trophy of his victories, who now
formed his body guard. He offered them leave of absence from the battle,
or even a free passage to the Turkish camp, but they besought leave to
live and die with him.[14] The king himself was fully prepared to accept
the advice of generals like Lorraine and Waldeck. He had left his royal
dignity behind at Warsaw, as he told Lorraine, and at once agreed with
the latter upon a plan for crossing the Danube at Krems and at Tuln,
concentrating at Tuln and marching over the Kahlenberg to Vienna. He
only complained of the backward condition of the bridges and of the slow
assemblage of the troops, whereas the Emperor had by letter assured him
that all was ready before he had left Poland. When finally assembled,
the united armies numbered eighty-five thousand men. The Poles were
more than twenty-six thousand strong. But allowing for detachments, not
more than seventy-seven thousand men were available upon the
battle-field. The artillery numbered one hundred and sixty-eight pieces,
of which few came into action.
On September 4, the king still writes from near Tuln. If an excess of
glory is often the share of a successful commander, yet an excessive
toil is his always. Sobieski tells his wife that he has a continual cold
and headache, and is night and day in the saddle. The French stories
were so far true that he could not mount without assistance, yet in the
midst of such operations no rest is possible. The Turks are, he says,
either really ignorant of his presence, or refuse to believe it. The
Vizier was incredibly ill-supplied with information. He really was
uncertain whether Sobieski was in the field; and whether the Polish
army, or partisan corps only, like that of Lubomirski, had joined
Lorraine. The smallest resistance would seriously have retarded the
passage of the Danube, performed by the Germans at Krems, by the Poles
at Tuln. As it was, the difficulties were terrible. The pontoons sank
under the weight of the artillery and waggons. The latter had to find
fords over the smaller branches of the river, while the bridges upon the
main stream were strengthened to sustain them. Even then much baggage
was left north of the Danube; much more upon the southern side,
entrenched and defended.
On September 8, when the concentration of the army upon the southern
bank was being completed, Marco Aviano, the Emperor's Confessor,
celebrated a solemn mass, and gave a formal benediction to the Christian
army. Sobieski then stepped forward, and after addressing some words of
encouragement to the assembled officers, bestowed the honour of
knighthood upon his son James.[15] An enthusiastic votary of his
religion, he desired to impress upon his army that their cause was the
cause of God, against the enemies of the Faith. Even the Lutheran Saxons
and North Germans could, with more justice than the Hungarian renegades,
claim to be fighting _Pro Deo et Patria_. Upon the coming struggle
depended the question whether the frightful devastation, which had
desolated Hungary and Austria, was or was not to be repeated in all the
south German lands.
The flat ground upon the southern side of the Danube, from near Krems to
Tuln, the Tullner Feld, offered a convenient space for the mustering of
the army after passing the river. Vienna was not further than about
sixteen miles as the crow flies, but the intervening country was of a
difficult nature, even should the Turks attempt no interruption to the
movements of the relieving forces. The Wiener Wald, rising to more than
nine hundred feet above the level of the Danube, runs into a
north-easterly direction between Tuln and Vienna, and advances up to the
very current of the river, which flows north-eastward and then
south-eastward round the mountain barrier. The roads were few and
difficult, and trees covered the slopes of the hills. Sobieski had
decided to advance with his left wing covered by the Danube, and to
throw succour into Vienna upon that side; while with the right he
threatened the rear of the Turkish camp on the side of Dornbach and
Hernals. With this object the march was directed upon the Leopoldsberg
and the Kahlenberg, the last heights or ridges of the mountains above
the Danube, to the north-west of Vienna.
And at length, on the 10th of September, the forward movement upon the
Kahlenberg began. Already as early as the morning of the 6th, a
reconnaissance had been pushed to the summit, and as evening fell had
cheered Vienna with a flight of signal rockets, in answer to the fiery
messengers of distress which nightly rose from the spire of St.
Stephen's. But to carry an army up the Kahlenberg was a harder task.
Sobieski wrote that the country was horribly wasted. There was neither
food for man nor forage for horses, beyond what the army could carry
with them. Indeed, the leaves of the trees upon the Kahlenberg had to
eke out the supplies of the latter. There was all need for despatch. The
last despairing message had come from Starhemberg, borne by a swimmer on
the Danube to Lorraine, in language as brief as significant, "_No time
to be lost; no time indeed to be lost._"
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Salvandy, p. 96, vol. ii.
[12] The grandson of the Duke of Lorraine married Maria Theresa, Queen
of Hungary, and was himself Emperor. The grand-daughter of Sobieski was
the mother of Charles Edward, the hero of the Forty-five.
[13] Of the family, not an ancestor, of the present Duchess of Albany.
[14] Salvandy.
[15] Schimmer, "Sieges of Vienna;" Count Thürheim, "Life of
Starhemberg;" and Salvandy, "Hist. de Pologne," p. 172, vol. ii.
misplace this solemn benediction of the army and the knighting of Prince
James on the morning of the 12th. Sobieski's own testimony, in his
letters to his queen, is decisive for the 8th. Nor on the 12th was there
time for the ceremony.