SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE
Indifference of Europe to the growth of the Turkish power--Resistance
to it local--Inherent defects of the Turks--Causes of their early
successes--Beginning of their decline--The struggle for the
Danube valley--Their antagonism to the House of Austria--Turkish
misgovernment at the beginning of the century--Mohammed Kiuprili,
grand vizier--Revival of Turkish power under the Kiuprili--Attack
upon Hungary--Capture of Candia--Condition and institutions of
Poland--Decline of its power--War with the Cossacks--Election of
Michael--War with the Turks--Victories of John Sobieski--Election of
John Sobieski--Risings in Hungary against the Emperor--War between the
Emperor and the Turks--Relief of Vienna by John Sobieski--The Holy
League--Conquest of the Danube valley and the Morea--The peace of
Carlovitz--Reconquest of the Morea--Peace of Passarovitz.
[Sidenote: =Indifference of Europe to the establishment and growth of
the Turkish power.=]
Few facts about European history are so strange as the want of interest
shown by the great powers in the empire of the Ottoman Turks until the
present century. The Eastern Question as a serious problem of European
politics, affecting the peace and welfare of the world, has sprung into
existence in consequence of the decay of the Ottoman empire. When the
Ottoman Sultans were in the zenith of their power, when Turkish armies
were marching up the Danube, when Turkish corsairs were plundering
the coasts of Italy and Spain, when Christian communities were being
enslaved, and compelled to pay to their conqueror a yearly tribute of
children, Christian and civilised Europe took very little heed about
the matter. Opposition to the advance of the infidel was mainly local.
The Popes occasionally were enabled to fit out some small expeditions.
Charles V. endeavoured to root out a troublesome nest of
corsairs at Algiers. From time to time small contingents of French
or German or Burgundian soldiers were sent to the assistance of the
Emperor or the king of Hungary. But such efforts were at the best but
fitful and self-interested, and the real work of stemming the tide of
the Turkish advance was left to the half civilised tribes, mainly of
Sclavonic blood, scattered along the valley of the Danube and the hill
country of Bosnia and Albania. The Wallach and the Serb, the Albanian
and the Magyar were the people who jeoparded their lives and sacrificed
their liberty for the salvation of Europe, while the Roman Emperor was
waging a death duel with the most Christian king, and the Vicar of
Christ was dallying with pagan philosophy. Statesmen and princes of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could not bring themselves to realise
the danger of the crisis, could not understand that the East was
about to avenge the days of the Crusades, and that the rude threat of
Mohammed II., that he would stable his horses in S. Peter’s,
might at any moment be translated into fact.
[Sidenote: =Resistance to the Turks mainly local.=]
Never was a struggle for life and death carried on in so haphazard
a fashion. Resistance in the Mediterranean was purely local. The
Knights-Hospitallers disputed for years with the conqueror for the
possession of their island fortress of Rhodes, and hurled him back
eventually in confusion from the rocks of Malta. The Venetians kept the
whole Turkish fleet at bay before Candia for twenty years at a most
critical period of Ottoman rule. The Pope and the Venetians entered
into piratical competition with the corsairs of Greece and Africa, in
which the desire to gain money was more conspicuous than the ambition
to overcome the infidel. Even the great victory of Lepanto in 1571, at
the news of which all Christendom rejoiced, was decisive, not so much
because it marked the successful effort of allied Christian powers to
resist a common danger, but because it happened to take place at the
beginning of a period of intestine troubles within the bosom of the
Ottoman empire itself. On land the story is a similar one. Piece by
piece, leaf by leaf, the artichoke of the Balkan peninsula was eaten
by the invader, but the process of digestion was a difficult one. The
crescent was first seen in the plains of Hungary in the middle of
the fifteenth century, yet at the time of their greatest power under
Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks never acquired the whole country.
Transylvania and Moldavia gave in their adherence to the Porte early in
the sixteenth century, the Tartars of the Crimea acknowledged Mohammed
II. fifty years earlier, yet they never became anything more
than vassal states. Even in Bosnia and Servia, though the Turkish
rule was everywhere established, a great deal of local independence
was left. Nothing stands out clearer in the history of the Ottoman
Turks in Europe than the fact that the limits of their conquests were
fixed not by the prowess and skill of their adversaries but by their
own inherent defects. When Sigismond of Hungary and the flower of the
Franco-Hungarian chivalry went down before Bajazet I. on the
field of Nicopolis in 1396, when the flag of Mohammed II.
floated proudly over the ramparts of Otranto in 1480, there seemed
nothing to prevent the triumphant march of the infidel to the heart of
European civilisation, over the wasted lands of the king of Hungary and
the ruins of the Christian Papacy.
[Sidenote: =Inherent defects of the Turks.=]
But fortunately for Europe the Turk had two inherent defects, which
effectually prevented him from establishing himself permanently among
civilised nations. He could not assimilate, he could not govern.
Foresight, perseverance, organisation are denied to him, and they are
among the primary and essential faculties of civilised government.
The Turks swept down upon Europe as a mighty river flood pours itself
out from its mountain gates into the plain below. With an impetuous,
irresistible rush it spreads itself wide among the fields and the
gardens, submerging one by one all the accustomed landmarks of hedge
and tree and hillock, till all the horizon is but a vast waste of
hurrying water. But the further the flood finds its way from the bed
of the stream the quieter is its course, the less the damage which
it causes. Eddies and back currents check the whirling tide, and
even turn its headlong course at the extreme limit of the flood into
gentle, fertilising rills which irrigate the meadows in obedience to
the will of man. For days or even weeks the flood may last and the
swirl of waters boil along, but in the end it wears itself out, the
fountains of the hills above dry up, the stream falls quickly back
into its accustomed channel, and one by one again the old familiar
scenes reappear. Trees and hedges, fields and buildings, greet the
eye, but how different indeed from what they were. Torn, ragged,
desolate, choked with sand and debris, preserving a faint life amid
the desolation, all seems so unlike the once smiling valley. So
unlike and yet the same, the same fields, the same trees, the same
vigorous life, only for the moment obscured by the sudden catastrophe.
In the light and warmth of God’s sun, with a little aid from the
forethought of man, the promise of rich harvest will soon be seen
again. So it has been with the Turkish power in Europe. [Sidenote:
=Want of assimilation.=] The Turks submerged the civilisation of
south-eastern Europe, they did not uproot it. They injured it, they
did not destroy it. They had nothing better to put in its place, and
so it lived on, damaged and maimed, but alive. They imposed their own
government over the conquered lands, but underneath, the old laws,
the old religion, the old customs were still observed. In the extreme
districts beyond the Danube they were content merely to exact tribute,
and left their tributaries far more independence than the British
government in India allows to the native states. To the larger part of
the Turkish dominions in Europe conquest chiefly meant the imposition
of a new governing class and of a new dominant religion, a governing
class which was intermittently tyrannical, but a religion which was
seldom persecuting. Consequently many Christians, who laboured under
the taint of heresy or schism, found themselves actually better off
under Mussulman than under Christian rule, and it frequently happened
in the wars between Venice and the Sultans that the orthodox Christians
of Greece and the islands fought strenuously on behalf of their infidel
conquerors, in order to avoid falling into the hands of their Latin
persecutors.
[Sidenote: =Want of governance.=]
To this inability to assimilate the peoples which he conquered, the
Turk added an inability to govern them. He could neither weld together
the varied materials of which his loosely jointed empire was composed,
nor govern the separate parts. It is singular how few administrators
the Ottoman race has produced. It does not possess faculties for
government, or for trade, or for art. No sooner had the Turks conquered
south-eastern Europe than they found themselves obliged to intrust the
administration of their provinces to the children of the people whom
they had overcome. Turkish art was but a faint and spoiled copy of
Christian and Arab models. Trade remained in the hands of Christian
merchants, or fell into the clutches foreign of Christian powers. When
the Turks ceased to conquer they ceased to prosper. They became idle,
luxurious and inert, lying like an incubus upon the country, deadening
and crushing its civilisation and its spirit, hindering all growth,
stopping all progress, just as incapable of calling out the resources
of a people as of rooting out their national life.
[Sidenote: =Reasons for their early success.=]
So as the flood of conquest began to abate the submerged races began
to reappear. Christendom had not to reconquer Turkish provinces, as
Germany has had to reconquer French provinces, it merely had to remove
the foreign incubus which was lying upon them and crushing them, to
oust the foreign garrison. Accordingly the tide of Turkish invasion
had hardly ceased to flow in south-eastern Europe when it began to
ebb. The Turks owed their wonderful success to three causes. The
disunion of Christendom, the extraordinary vigour and ability of the
earlier Ottoman Sultans, and the institution of the Janizaries which
gave them the best disciplined army in Europe. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries these all combined to advance their power. They
came as an army, organised not as a nation but as a camp, led by men
second to none among the greatest sovereigns of Europe for military
and personal gifts. The strength of their forces lay in the tribute
of children exacted from the Christian races, who were brought up in
the faith of Islam to be its special defenders and champions in the
disciplined life of an army, half fanatical and half professional. They
hurled themselves upon Europe at a time when the great powers were
slowly and painfully organising themselves into personal monarchies
out of the ruins of feudalism, when as yet professional armies were
in their cradle. Under Orchan, the founder of the institution of the
tribute children, they first crossed over into Europe in the middle
of the fourteenth century. Under Murad I. they overran Roumelia and
Bulgaria, under Bajazet I. they carried their victorious arms into
Servia and across the Danube into Wallachia, and defeated Sigismond of
Hungary at the great battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Under Murad II. they
spread into Macedonia and Hungary. To Mohammed II. was reserved the
crowning honour of the conquest of Constantinople, but he also extended
his sovereignty over Trebizond, Greece and the islands of the Ægean,
Bosnia, Albania and even the Tartars of the Crimea. At the death of
the great conqueror in 1481, the Turkish empire in Europe had reached
the dimensions which it retained in the middle of the present century.
But it still continued to grow. [Sidenote: =Suleiman the Magnificent,
1520–1566.=] Under Suleiman the Magnificent, who reigned from 1520 to
1566, it attained its greatest power. He drove the Knights-Hospitallers
out of Rhodes, crossed the Danube, captured Belgrade, and turned
half Hungary into a Turkish province under a pasha at Buda, while he
forced the princes of Transylvania and Moldavia to pay him tribute.
So powerful had he become that the powers of Europe began to realise
his importance, and Francis I. of France did not disdain to purchase
by his friendship the aid of the Sultan against his great enemy the
Emperor, and to lay the foundations of French influence in the East by
the privileges which he obtained for his countrymen at Constantinople.
[Sidenote: =Alliance with France.=] From that time to the present
day French policy has always had for one of its chief objects the
maintenance of a group of alliances in northern and eastern Europe,
which may serve to threaten Germany with the danger of being caught
between two fires, should she find herself at war with France. For many
years Sweden Poland and Turkey formed such a group, and the endeavour
to keep them in firm friendship with France was always a leading
feature of French diplomacy. In the seventeenth century, when the House
of Austria was the chief opponent of France, the assistance of Poland
and of the Sultan was naturally of great importance. In modern days,
during the decay of the Ottoman empire and the growth of the rivalry
with northern Germany, the Czar has taken the place of the Sultan as
the necessary ally of France. Thus in the sixteenth century, mainly
through the selfish policy of the French kings, the Ottoman Sultans
found themselves admitted into friendship and alliance with European
sovereigns, just at the very time when they seemed to be threatening
ruin and destruction to European civilisation.
[Sidenote: =Beginning of Turkish decline, 1566.=]
In reality, however, the flood had already reached high-water mark. The
Sultans had begun to prefer a life of ease in the palace of Stamboul
to the active leadership of the army, or the laborious administration
of the empire. Suleiman himself farmed out the taxes and left the
management of the affairs of state mainly to his ministers. Under his
feeble successors degeneration grew apace. The reins of power fell
from the listless hands of the Sultans into those of incapable and
despicable favourites. Palace intrigues decided important affairs of
state, and ministers were made and unmade by the cabals of women and
eunuchs. Corruption spread like a cancer over the whole administration.
Discipline became deteriorated in the army, and the Janizaries, like
the Praetorian guard, ceased to be the champions of their country’s
ambition, and became but the heroes of domestic revolutions. In a
loosely organised empire like that of the Turks, which stretched from
Buda to Bagdad, from the Caspian to the Pillars of Hercules, there was
no cohesive force except that of the central government, no centre of
unity except that of the ruler of Stamboul in his double capacity of
Sultan and Caliph. When the head became effete and incapable the life
blood of the whole organism failed and decay began. Under Selim the
Sot, the successor of Suleiman, Christendom won its great victory over
the Turks at Lepanto in 1571; a battle, which, though its loss was
repaired with incredible energy and counterbalanced by the conquest of
Cyprus, has nevertheless set for all time the limits of Turkish rule in
the Mediterranean, just as the failure of Suleiman’s attack upon Vienna
in 1529, and the subsequent partition of Hungary, had fixed the extreme
boundaries of Turkish power in the valley of the Danube.
[Sidenote: =Loss of the command of the Danube valley in the
seventeenth century.=]
The close of the sixteenth century therefore fixed the limits of
Turkish advance. The opening years of the seventeenth century marked
the first beginnings of Turkish retreat. By the treaty of Sitvatorok,
concluded between the Emperor and the Sultan in 1606, the annual
tribute of 30,000 ducats agreed to be paid by the Emperor for the
portion of Hungary which he still retained under his own government
was abolished. From that day to the present the history of the Ottoman
Turks in Europe has been that of a gradual but steady decline in
the strength of their authority over south-eastern Europe. In the
seventeenth century the struggle was for the possession of the valley
of the Danube. The contest was a severe one. The Turks fought more
strenuously for the command of the Danube than they did for Greece or
Bulgaria. Bit by bit with many changes of fortune they were slowly
driven back, until soon after the end of the century not an acre of
land on the northern bank of the river between the Theiss and the Pruth
was still in their possession. Since then the work of liberation has
progressed steadily but slowly. One by one the Crimea, Wallachia,
Moldavia, Bessarabia, Servia, Greece, Bosnia, and Bulgaria have been
won back by Christendom from the rule of the Turk, either to complete
independence or to subjection to a neighbouring Christian power. But
just as it was the mutual disunion of Christian powers which enabled
the Turks to conquer south-eastern Europe so easily in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, so it has been the mutual jealousy of
Christian powers which has made the task of emancipation so slow and so
difficult in the nineteenth century. For many years the Ottoman Sultans
have lived in Europe on sufferance, because it has seemed a lesser evil
to the great powers of Europe to retain the Turk than to aggrandise the
Czar.
[Sidenote: =Antagonism to the House of Austria.=]
Before the ambition of Russia gave rise to the Eastern Question the
House of Austria was the Christian power chiefly interested in beating
back the Turks. The Emperors no doubt felt somewhat the obligation
which lay upon them, as the traditional lords of Christendom, to take
the lead in the work of emancipating Christian lands and imperial
vassals from the yoke of the infidel. But much more did they feel the
political necessity which forced them, as kings of Hungary and Croatia
and overlords of Transylvania, to make themselves undisputed masters
of the valleys of the Danube the Drave and the Save. With the Turks
securely planted at Buda, and within striking distance of Agram, Vienna
itself was unsafe, and the communications between Austria and Italy
liable at any moment to be cut. The more the Emperor was being deprived
of leadership in Germany, the more he was being ousted from influence
on the Rhine, the more essential it became to him to retain his hold
upon the Danube. So during the whole of the seventeenth century the
history of south-eastern Europe is the history of a duel between the
House of Austria and the Sultans for political and military supremacy
on the Danube and the Save. Other combatants such as the French, the
Venetians, the Poles and the Russians, appear from time to time and
take part in the struggle from motives of ambition or patriotism or
interest and most powerfully affect its fortunes, but the essential
character of the contest remains unchanged. Austria and the Turks fight
for pre-eminence on the Danube, just as Germany and France fight for
pre-eminence on the Rhine.
[Sidenote: =Misgovernment at Constantinople, 1603–1656.=]
Fortunately for the house of Habsburg the time of their greatest
weakness was also a time of impotence and degeneracy among their foes.
From the death of Mohammed III. in 1603 to the death of Murad
IV. in 1640 the Ottoman empire was the prey of revolution
anarchy and crime. The Sultans, effeminate puppets of a day, were in
no position to take advantage of the opportunities given to them by
the Thirty Years’ War. The satisfaction of their own pleasures and the
preservation of their own lives were much more in their thoughts than
the extension of their power. Murad IV. during the eight years
of his personal rule (1632–1640) did much by a relentless severity to
crush out the spirit of faction, and reduce the turbulent Janizaries
to obedience, but on his death after a drinking bout in 1640, anarchy
broke out again. Ibrahim I. his successor, having been with
difficulty prevented from ordering a general massacre of the Christians
all over the empire, contented himself by fitting out a fleet in 1645
which undertook the conquest of Candia; but the disorganisation of the
government was far too great to enable the attempt to be made with
any chance of success. It only provoked reprisals on the part of the
Venetians and the Knights-Hospitallers. The miserable Sultan himself
was deposed and murdered in 1648, the Ottoman fleet was defeated in
the Ægean in 1649, civil war raged in Asia Minor, while at Stamboul
ministers rapidly succeeded one another in obedience to the caprices of
the harem or the demand of the soldiery. In 1656 Mocenigo the Venetian
admiral occupied the Dardanelles and threatened Constantinople itself.
It seemed as if the Ottoman empire was about to fall to pieces through
sheer want of governance.
[Sidenote: =Mohammed Kiuprili appointed grand vizier, 1656.=]
From this fate it was preserved by the firmness of one man and the
genius of a family. The Kiuprili were of Albanian blood, but had
long been settled in Constantinople, where the head of the family,
Mohammed, now an old man of seventy, was universally respected for the
vigour of his mind and the strength of his character. The mother of
the young Sultan, in whose hands the chief political power had fallen,
turned to Mohammed Kiuprili in her despair, and begged him to accept
the office of grand vizier in 1656. He consented on the condition
that his authority should be uncontrolled. For twenty years he and
his family were the real rulers of the empire, and to them is due the
astonishing revival of the Ottoman power in the latter half of the
seventeenth century. True to the genius of Oriental monarchies they
sought for the sources of strength, not in adaptation to new demands,
but in the resuscitation of the ancient spirit. They resolutely shut
their eyes to the attractions of European civilisation. They refused
as far as possible to have dealings with European powers. Treaties,
concessions, arts were evidences of weakness, admissions of a
brotherhood which could never exist between Christianity and Islam. The
ideal of government ever present to their minds was that of Mohammed
II. and the earlier Sultans. The relation of governors to
governed was that of master and slave in a well-ordered household,
where strict justice on the one hand expected and necessitated implicit
obedience on the other. The mission of the Turks was to conquer
opponents and to dictate terms to the vanquished. Wherever there yet
remained an organised power, Christian in its principles and Western in
its civilisation, there was the enemy.
[Sidenote: =Restoration of order and discipline, 1656–1661.=]
Success was instantaneous. The Turks at once felt that they had got
a leader who understood them, who was actuated by principles which
were their own. Obediently they fell in to the bugle call. Anarchy
disappeared. Discipline re-established itself. The Greek Patriarch and
4000 Janizaries were the only victims required. In the very next year
the Venetian fleet was forced to leave the Dardanelles, Mocenigo was
killed, and Lemnos and Tenedos recovered. In 1659 the old alliance with
France was broken by the imprisonment of the ambassador’s son, and the
refusal of all compensation. The siege of Candia was pushed on with
redoubled zeal, and preparations were made for the renewal of the war
of European conquest. When Mohammed Kiuprili died in 1661 he had the
satisfaction of seeing the Ottoman empire once more united from end to
end of its vast extent, and its energies once more directed to a war of
aggression against its hereditary enemy the Emperor.
The mantle of Mohammed fell upon his son Achmet, who succeeded him in
his office, inherited his ability, and pursued his policy. [Sidenote:
=Attack upon Hungary under Achmet Kiuprili, 1663.=] Placing
himself at the head of 200,000 men he burst into Austrian Hungary in
1663, crossed the Danube at Gran, captured the fortress of Neuhäusel,
and ravaged Moravia up to the walls of Olmütz. But Louis XIV.,
irritated at the insult offered to his ambassador by Mohammed Kiuprili,
came to the aid of the Emperor. With the assistance of 30,000 men in
French pay Montecuculli the imperialist general felt himself strong
enough to threaten the Turkish flank by an advance from Vienna.
Achmet at once retired south to cover Buda, and the two armies met at
S. Gothard on the Raab, where Achmet and his army proved themselves
no match for the talents of his opponent or the wild valour of the
French cavalry. Leopold, however, saw only in this great victory the
opportunity of making peace, and of ridding himself of any further
obligations to France. [Sidenote: =Treaty of Vasvar, 1664.=] Ten
days after the battle of S. Gothard he signed the treaty of Vasvar
(10th August 1664), by which he recognised the suzerainty of the Sultan
over Transylvania, and permitted him to retain the important fortress
of Neuhäusel in Hungary. Elated with this success Achmet turned his
attention to the war with Venice. He took personal charge of the
siege operations before Candia, and in spite of all that European
engineering skill could do, it soon became obvious that the end could
not long be delayed. Morosini the heroic defender of the town made the
capitulation the occasion of negotiating a general treaty. [Sidenote:
=Capture of Candia, 1669.=] On the 17th September 1669 Crete
passed into the hands of the Ottomans, and peace was restored between
Venice and the Porte. It was the last conquest Islam has made from
Christianity.
[Sidenote: =Condition of Poland.=]
No sooner was the war with Venice over than Achmet found himself
involved with a very different Christian power in the extreme northern
frontier of the empire. The kingdom of Poland, to which was joined
the grand duchy of Lithuania, had discharged during the Middle Ages
the office of the sentinel of Western civilisation on its northern
frontier. But the civilisation to which it had itself attained was very
inferior to that of its southern and western neighbours. Extending
as it did, so late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, from
Livonia and Courland on the Baltic to Podolia and the lower waters of
the Dniester on the confines of the Black Sea, it could not fail to be
subject to the dangers of disunion and disorganisation. Its interests
were so varied, its territories so impassable and heterogeneous, its
people so untameable and independent, that it was almost a hopeless
task for even a great statesman to inspire the country with a sense of
national unity, and to lead it along the path of national progress.
Yet forces which under happier circumstances might have led to
contralization were not wanting. Poland occupied geographically the
centre of Europe. Until the rise of Russia on the north and Prussia
to the west it was free from serious danger of conquest. Its people
were Sclavonic by race and Catholic by religion. With the exception of
a few years at the end of the sixteenth century it was untroubled by
religious or racial discord. Brave and chivalrous by nature the Poles
were distinguished for their personal loyalty and their affection for
their country. [Sidenote: =Turbulence of the Poles.=] But all
these promising elements of union and strength weighed as nothing
in the balance, when compared with the evils of their political and
social institutions. The Poles were absolutely deficient in the
capacity for being governed. They never appreciated the advantages of
the reign of law. They never understood that individuals must submit
to some restrictions if the community is to prosper. Discipline was a
virtue wholly unrecognised by them. This lawless and turbulent spirit
was fostered instead of being checked by their social institutions.
[Sidenote: =Their social and constitutional institutions.=] There
were but two classes in Poland, the aristocracy in whose hands lay
the whole of the wealth and the whole of the political power, and the
serfs who were little better than slaves, and had no rights of life or
property against their masters. As in all countries where one class is
dominant, justice and patriotism shrank and withered before the claims
of privilege and selfishness. The determination to use the power which
it has got solely for its own purposes, is not the monopoly of one
class more than another. It has been the characteristic of the petty
democracy of Florence, as of the trading aristocracy of Amsterdam,
or the militant democracy of modern France. The landlord aristocracy
of Poland pushed it to excess. They mistook licence for liberty, and
put personal power in the place of patriotism as unhesitatingly as
a Robespierre or a Napoleon. Their great fear was to find that they
had unwittingly given themselves a master, so they did all they could
to divert the kingship of all real power, and wilfully deprived the
country of the only possible centre of unity. During the Middle Ages
the kingship, though always nominally elective, was in fact hereditary,
but on the death of Sigismond Augustus in 1572 it became wholly
elective, and on his election the king was obliged to sign a compact
by which he practically divested himself of all the usual functions of
royalty except the appointment of the officials and the command of the
army. The government of the country was really vested in the senate,
in which the bishops and the higher magistrates as well as the twelve
great executive officials sat, and in the diet. Originally the whole
adult nobility had the right of attending the diet, but since 1466 it
had become merely a body of delegates, who received the mandate from
the provincial assemblies of nobles, and were not permitted to vary it
in the least. The diet sat for six weeks and all its decisions had to
be unanimous, consequently it was in the power of every member of the
diet to put a stop to all business whatever either by obstructing all
progress for six weeks (drawing out the diet), or by voting against
the proposal (the veto), or by simply withdrawing altogether, which of
course rendered all decision impossible and so practically dissolved
the assembly.
[Sidenote: =Poland the battle-ground of French and Austrian
interests.=]
A constitution such as this might have been thought to have been the
work of some cynical philosopher anxious to exhibit on a large scale
the inconceivable folly of human nature. In reality it was dictated
by the malignant spirit of fear and selfishness. In the hands of a
quick-tempered and turbulent people it could not fail to lead to
anarchy, and anarchy quickly proved itself the parent of corruption.
France soon saw the advantages which the command of a great central
warlike state like Poland would be to her in her duel with the house
of Austria. The Emperor was alarmed by the prospect of seeing his
hereditary dominions almost encircled by the vassal states of France,
and strained every nerve to secure the election of a king opposed to
French interests. But the purse of France was deeper, and the policy
of France was more continuous than that of the embarrassed Emperor,
and so it happened that except under the pressure of some special
danger, the diplomacy and the gold of France could always maintain a
close alliance between the two countries, and prevent the election
of a strongly imperialist candidate. It thus became the interests of
the greater powers of Europe to keep Poland in a state of anarchy,
in order that they might the easier obtain a decisive voice in her
destinies. Her neighbours were not slow to recognise the advantage
thus offered to them. Poland was getting weaker and weaker through the
increase of anarchy, as they were getting stronger and stronger through
centralisation. The rise of Sweden to pre-eminence on the Baltic
under Gustavus Adolphus, the restoration of peace to Russia after
the ‘troublous times’ under the house of Romanoff, the successful war
and cunning diplomacy of the Great Elector all had among their other
results the effect of weakening Poland. By the treaty of Wehlau, 1657,
Poland lost her suzerainty over east Prussia. By the peace of Oliva in
1660 she had to surrender Livonia to Sweden. By the treaty of Andrusoff
in 1667 she was obliged to give up to Russia almost all her possessions
east of the Dnieper, including the important towns of Smolensk and
Kief, which she had gained from her earlier in the century, and the
suzerainty over half the tribes of the Cossacks of the Ukraine.
[Sidenote: =War with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, 1648–1667.=]
It was through her relations with these wild horsemen of the borderland
that Poland became eventually involved in a war with the Ottoman Turks.
The yoke of Poland had always sat heavily upon the Cossack tribes.
Proud independent and high-spirited by nature, they could not brook
the insolence of the Polish nobles, or tamely submit to the rapacity
and extortion of their Jewish stewards. In 1648 they boldly rose in
rebellion and assisted by the Tartars offered their allegiance to
Alexis of Russia. The rising was well-timed, for owing to the ambition
of Charles X. of Sweden, John Casimir of Poland soon found his
country attacked on all sides by Sweden Brandenburg and Russia, his
capital in the hands of his foes, and himself a fugitive in Silesia.
When, however, peace was restored on the Baltic by the treaties of
Oliva, Copenhagen, and Kardis in 1660, Poland found herself able to
cope with her revolted subjects and their protector. Through the
consummate generalship and high personal qualities of John Sobieski,
who was sprung from one of the oldest and staunchest of Polish noble
families, Alexis and his allies were compelled to sue for peace, and
accept the compromise concluded at Andrusoff in 1667. Two years later
John Casimir abdicated the throne, and the usual intrigues began
between the adherents of France and the Empire to secure a favourable
election. [Sidenote: =Election of Michael as king, 1669.=]
But at the moment through the misfortunes of John Casimir, and the
unpopularity of Louise de Nevers, his French wife, the Poles would
have no one of French blood or French connections, and even John
Sobieski who had married a French woman, and belonged to the French
interest, was passed over in favour of a national representative,
Michael Wiesnowiescki, who had nothing but his good looks and his name
to recommend him. The Cossacks regarded the election as an earnest of
the recommencement of persecution, for the new king was the son of one
of their greatest oppressors. [Sidenote: =Request for protection by
the Cossacks to the Turks, 1671.=] In 1670 they rushed to arms but
were easily defeated by Sobieski. Despairing of all hope of justice
from the king they turned to the Turks, and offered to recognise the
suzerainty of the Sultan if he would protect them from the tyrant of
Poland. Achmet Kiuprili gladly seized the opportunity, and in 1671
declared war against Poland as the champion of her oppressed subjects.
[Sidenote: =War between Poland and the Turks, 1672–1676.=]
In June 1672 the preparations were finished and the Sultan himself
accompanied by the grand vizier appeared before the almost impregnable
fortress of Kaminiec, the key of Podolia. In less than a month it fell,
and the craven-hearted king Michael, dismayed at the blow, negotiated a
treaty at Buczacz by which he surrendered Podolia and the Ukraine and
consented to pay tribute. Stung with indignation at such a disgrace
the diet refused to ratify the treaty, and rallied all the forces of
the nation under John Sobieski to resist to the uttermost. For four
years the heroic struggle continued. Without receiving any help from
the great powers, now, through the ambition of Louis XIV.,
engaged in a deadly conflict on the Rhine and the Scheldt, threatened
by intrigues behind his back at court, endangered by insubordination
in his camp, John Sobieski, by sheer ascendency of personal character
and commanding military talent, managed not only to stem the Turkish
advance into Podolia and Galicia, but to inflict on the best of the
Turkish generals crushing defeats at Choczim (1673) and Lemberg (1675),
and to drive them back in confusion across the Danube. In 1674 in the
very midst of the struggle the incapable Michael died, and the Poles
hailed with enthusiasm their hero as their king. Yet characteristically
enough they did not for that serve him one whit the better. [Sidenote:
=John Sobieski elected King, 1674.=] Two years later he found
himself in the direst straits, with his small army hemmed in by the
swarming enemy at Zurawno on the Dniester, unable to break out of the
enclosing lines, without any hope of timely relief. But even at this
crisis the magic of his name prevailed, and Ibrahim the Turkish general
preferred to make peace rather than to run the risk of encounter with
the lion in his den. [Sidenote: =Peace of Zurawno, 1676.=] The
peace of Zurawno, concluded in October 1676, secured to the Sultan
the possession of Kaminiec and part of the Ukraine, but it marks by
these very concessions the failure of Achmet Kiuprili’s great design
of binding upon the brows of his master the laurel wreath of Mohammed
II.
[Sidenote: =Kara Mustafa made grand vizier, 1676.=]
Seven days after the peace of Zurawno Achmet Kiuprili died, but his
policy did not die with him. His successor and brother-in-law, Kara
Mustafa, was fired with an equal ambition but was not possessed of
equal talent. Haughty luxurious and boastful he soon began to destroy,
while seeking to extend, the power which Mohammed and Achmet had so
diligently built up. He determined to win his way to the heart of
Christendom at a blow by the conquest of Vienna itself. Preparations
for an invasion on a scale unexampled and irresistible were secretly
set on foot. The old alliance with France was renewed by the grant
of fresh trade and diplomatic privileges. Peace was made with Russia
and ratified with Poland. By these measures the grand vizier hoped to
procure the isolation of the Emperor, and he very nearly succeeded.
For some years the Hungarians had been on bad terms with the Emperor.
Leopold had pursued a policy both of religious and political
repression. With the object of introducing more centralisation into
the government, he abolished the office of palatine, and ruled
Hungary through Viennese officials. [Sidenote: =Risings against the
Emperor in Hungary, 1674–1681.=] With the object of rooting out
Protestantism he handed over the management of religious affairs to the
Jesuits, and banished and sent to the galleys Protestant ministers on
the pretext of seditious agitation. Measures so high-handed and unjust
brought about the usual result. The Hungarians took advantage of the
war with France on the Rhine, rose against their oppressor in 1674
under Tököli, and were joined by Apafy, the prince of Transylvania. In
1681 they found themselves strong enough to force the Emperor to revive
the office of palatine and grant religious toleration. But Tököli was
not content with this. He desired to become ruler of Hungary himself,
and willingly listened to the persuasions of Kara Mustafa to join the
Turkish invasion, and accept the government of Hungary as the tributary
of the Porte. [Sidenote: =War between the Emperor and the Turks,
1682.=] All was now ready. Trusting to Louis XIV. to keep
Germany from assisting the Emperor, and to Tököli to raise Hungary
against him, Kara Mustafa threw off the mask in 1682, declared Hungary
tributary to the Sultan, and crossed the Danube in the spring of 1683
at the head of 150,000 men.
[Sidenote: =Alliance between Poland and the Emperor, 1683.=]
He had not reckoned on his allies in vain. Wherever the anxious Emperor
turned for help in his extremity, he found himself thwarted by the
diplomacy of France. In Germany Louis was completely successful. The
diet assembled at Ratisbon separated without granting any aid to
its chief. In Poland the struggle was intense, but in the end the
indomitable energy and quick tact of John Sobieski prevailed. All
grumbling at the selfishness and cowardice of Austria in the days of
Poland’s need was chivalrously silenced in the presence of the common
danger to Christianity and civilisation. On March 31st an alliance
was concluded with the Emperor by which Poland bound herself to place
40,000 men in the field. Meanwhile the Turkish war rolled on. Leopold
and the court removed for safety to Passau. The duke of Lorraine, the
imperialist general, abandoning Hungary, intrusted the defence of
Vienna to count Starhemberg, and posted himself a little lower down the
Danube to wait for the Polish reinforcements. On July 9th the Turkish
standards appeared before the walls, on the 14th the city was invested
and trenches opened.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Vienna, 1683.=]
The city was ill prepared for a siege. The garrison only numbered
14,000 men, the town was crowded with peasants from the country, the
walls were old and out of repair, while the Turkish engineers and
artillery were among the best in Europe. But Mustafa was in no haste to
seize the prize. On the 7th of August he drove the imperialists from
their fortification on the counterscarp, and the city lay open to the
attack from all sides. Yet he hesitated to give the word. He wanted
the glory of a capitulation, and the booty of the town for himself.
Meanwhile John Sobieski was collecting his forces with all haste at
Cracow. Lorraine did not dare to move till he came. As usual money
was short, delays were long. It was the 15th August before Sobieski
could begin his march, and even then he had to leave the Lithuanians
behind. On the 2d of September he was on the Danube at the head of
his cavalry. On the 5th he took over the command of the united armies
of the Empire and of Poland. On the 6th he crossed the Danube by the
bridge at Tuln. On the 11th he reached the height of the Kahlenberg
and looked down on the vast camp of the Turks encumbering the plain
which stretches between the heights and the spire of St. Stephen’s.
He had come not a moment too soon. The Turkish engineers had already
undermined the walls, disease had broken out in the crowded city, but
when they saw his signal-fires from the mountain the besieged felt
that the end of their trials had come and victory was within their
grasp. [Sidenote: =Defeat of the Turks by John Sobieski, 1683.=]
They were not disappointed. On the morning of the 12th, after having
received the Holy Communion at the chapel of the Leopoldsberg, John
Sobieski ordered the attack. Quickly driving the Turkish advance guard
from the vineyards which clothe the sides of the Kahlenberg he found
himself opposite the main Turkish battle in the plain about noon. As
his Poles charged with the war shout ‘Sobieski for ever’ the Turks were
seized with a panic at the sound of the dreaded name and fled on all
sides. Sobieski seized the favourable moment with his usual tactical
skill, and threw his whole army upon the retreating masses with a
tremendous shock before they had time to recover themselves. The battle
was won, Vienna was saved, and Christendom preserved. The whole camp of
the invader with its streets of tents, its bazaars, its mosques, its
luxury, all fell into the hands of the victor. Kara Mustafa himself
hardly escaped with his life in the general confusion, and only rallied
the remains of his beaten army at Belgrade.
[Sidenote: =The Holy League, 1684.=]
From the date of the failure of the great attempt upon Vienna in 1683
the fortunes of the Ottoman Turks in Europe quickly declined. Kara
Mustafa paid the penalty of his defeat with his head, but Ibrahim
who succeeded him fared no better in the war. John Sobieski himself
inflicted another defeat upon the Turks in the October of the same
year at Parkan, and drove them out of Hungary. In the following year
Venice joined in the pursuit of the beaten infidel, and the Holy
League was formed between the Emperor Poland and Venice against the
Sultan. Its effects were quickly seen. In spite of the retirement of
John Sobieski in 1685, through ill health and increasing infirmity,
the tide of conquest continued to flow steadily on the Danube and was
augmented by new victories on the Mediterranean. In 1685 the duke of
Lorraine won back the whole of Turkish Hungary except the fortress of
Buda, while Morosini, the hero of Candia, at the head of the Venetian
fleet, seized several places on the Albanian coast. The years 1686
and 1687 were still more unfortunate for the Sultan. On the Danube,
Buda fell into the hands of Lorraine in September 1686. Pushing back
Tököli and his rebel army before him into Transylvania, the imperialist
general once more united all Hungary under the Emperor, and left
the Hungarian rebels to the tender mercies of Leopold and his Jesuit
advisers. [Sidenote: =Conquest of Turkish Hungary, 1686.=] In 1687
he inflicted a crushing defeat upon the grand vizier on the historical
field of Mohacz and recovered possession of Croatia and Sclavonia. In
1688 he procured the submission of Transylvania and crossing the Danube
captured Belgrade and even penetrated as far as Nisch. During the same
time Morosini was no less active in the Mediterranean. [Sidenote:
=Conquest of the Morea, 1686.=]In 1686 he made himself master of
all the chief towns in the Morea. Corinth and Athens next acknowledged
his sway, where the Parthenon, which had hitherto survived so many
sieges of Romans and barbarians almost unhurt, was hurled into ruins
by the explosion of a Venetian bomb. To the spoils of Athens were soon
added those of Negropont, Thebes, and Dalmatia, until by 1694 the Turks
were stripped of all their posessions in Greece and on the coast of the
Adriatic.
[Sidenote: =Mustafa Kiuprili grand vizier, 1688.=]
So continuous a series of misfortunes demanded a victim. In 1688 a
palace revolution replaced Mohammed IV. by his brother Suleiman II.,
and the new Sultan once more intrusted the affairs of the empire to a
Kiuprili. Mustafa Kiuprili, the brother of Achmet, showed the vigour
of character for which his family were noted. By pursuing a policy
of toleration for the Christians and restoring stern discipline to
the army, he was soon enabled to bring victory back to the Turkish
standards, although he was but two years in his office. In 1690 he
recovered Nisch and Belgrade and invaded Hungary, but he was met,
defeated, and killed by the margrave of Baden at the battle of
Szcelankemen in 1691. With him perished the last chances of the Turks.
Although the war continued for eight years with varying success the
imperialists and the Venetians never really lost their hold upon
Hungary, Transylvania and the Morea. In 1697 prince Eugene won one
of the greatest of his victories over Sultan Mustafa II. in person,
at Zenta, and Peter the Great marked the first serious entrance of
Russia into the politics of south-eastern Europe by the capture of
Azof. The Sultan realised that with the Kiuprili the possibility of
fresh conquests had passed away, and he must content himself with the
boundary of the Danube. [Sidenote: =The peace of Carlowitz, 1699.=]
By the peace of Carlowitz, concluded in January 1699, the Emperor
recovered the whole of Hungary, except the district of Temesvar,
the larger part of Croatia and Sclavonia, and the suzerainty over
Transylvania. Poland retained Podolia, including Kaminiec, and Russia
Azof, while the Morea fell to Venice. Thus the Turkish frontier was
practically reduced to the Danube, and the seeds of the Eastern
Question were sown in the decay of the Ottoman empire and the advance
of Russia, and a new epoch in the history of south-eastern Europe began.
[Sidenote: =Reconquest of the Morea, 1715.=]
The conquests on the Danube were more permanent than those in the
Mediterranean. Fifteen years later the grand vizier, Ali Cumurgi,
flushed with an unexpected triumph over the Czar Peter on the Pruth in
1711, and trusting in the exhaustion of the Empire after the war of the
Spanish Succession, determined to make a great effort to wipe out the
disgrace of Carlowitz, and recover Hungary and the Morea. The Venetians
had no longer a hero like Morosini to lead them. The Greek population
in spite of the benefits they had received from Venetian administration
were too faithless and too dispirited to offer serious opposition.
One campaign proved sufficient for the work. In June 1715 Ali Cumurgi
passed the isthmus of Corinth. In September he returned in triumph
to Constantinople the conqueror of the Morea. But there his success
stopped. On the Danube he met more than his match. In August 1716
the Turks were completely defeated by prince Eugene at Peterwardein
in Hungary and the grand vizier himself was killed. In 1717 Belgrade
again passed into the Emperor’s hands, and the road into the heart of
the Ottoman empire was open. The Porte saw the necessity of peace.
[Sidenote: =The peace of Passarovitz, 1718.=] By the treaty of
Passarovitz signed in 1718 the Turks left Austria in possession of
Temesvar and Belgrade but retained the Morea. More than a century was
to elapse, and the proud republic of Venice pass herself into slavery,
before Greece could win her freedom.