suggested by a desire for further glory, or by a blindness to the
true interests of Poland. His days of warfare were past for ever.
He saw only too clearly the failure of the old constitution, and
he was anxious before his death to witness the establishment of
hereditary monarchy. In striving to have his son declared his
successor he was not actuated by merely selfish motives, for when
a subject he had held the same principles.[127] But the grandees
considered such a proposal as a direct infringement of their
privileges; and they were encouraged by Leopold, who found it his
interest to preserve Poland in a state of fermentation.
♦Affecting scene in the senate.♦ The king intended to ask this
of the republic at the Diet of Grodno; but his intention becoming
known, he was assailed with the utmost virulence in the senate.
The Grand Treasurer termed him despot, tyrant, and destructor
of the public liberty; a palatine spoke of him as the enemy of
his country. At length the king rose and addressed the senate.
He recalled the patriotism and services of his ancestors, and
protested his devotion to the cause of liberty. But he begged his
hearers to pause, and reflect on the consequences of intestine
strife. “Oh, what will be one day the sad surprise of posterity
to see that at the summit of our glory, when the name of Poland
was filling the universe, we have allowed our country to fall
in ruins, to fall, alas! for ever! For myself I have now and
then gained you a few battles; but I confess myself deprived of
all power to save you. It only remains for me to resign, not
to destiny, for I am a Christian, but to the great and mighty
God, the future of my beloved country.... I seem to hear already
resounding over our heads the cry of the prophet: ‘Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed.’ Your most illustrious
Dominations know that I do not believe in auguries. I do not
search out oracles; I give no credence to dreams; it is not
an oracle, it is faith which teaches me that the decrees of
Providence cannot fail to be accomplished.”
During this prophetic speech the voice of the old king trembled
with emotion, and the senate was deeply touched. The primate
knelt at the foot of the throne, and assured him of the loyalty
of Poland; and a cry of assent arose from all present. The
subsidies were voted by acclamation; but it was only a transient
gleam of concord. ♦Continued disturbances.♦ Next year there were
rumours of a conspiracy to dethrone the king; and amid the storms
of the Diet a bishop named Opalinski said to him haughtily, “Be
equitable, or cease to reign!” The insult was soon followed by
an apology; but the tumult continued in the assembly, and sabres
were freely used before the veto terminated the disgraceful
scene.[128] ♦Intended abdication of Sobieski.♦ The king felt
himself unable to cope with these terrible disorders, and he
instructed his chancellor to prepare an act of abdication (1689);
but the unfeigned sorrow of all classes persuaded him to withdraw
it. There was little improvement, however, in the temper of
future Diets; and the veto was employed as freely as before.
♦Discord in his family.♦ John was not more happy in his domestic
than in his public life. His imperious queen was ever his evil
genius. Not content with diminishing his popularity by mixing
too freely in public affairs,[129] she sowed dissension round
his own fireside. The king evidently designed for his successor
his eldest son James; for, besides giving him a high command
in the army, he allowed him to sit by his side in the senate.
But the queen favoured Alexander, her second son, who was
more handsome and popular[130] than his brother, and her open
partiality produced a fierce hatred between the two brothers.
When the Emperor, reminded of the value of John’s friendship by
the victories of Mustapha Köprili, gave the Princess of Neuberg
in marriage to Prince James[131] (1690), the queen took a violent
dislike to her daughter-in-law; and the family breach was widened.
♦His last campaign, in 1691.♦ Next year the king took the
field for the last time, nominally to chastise the Tartars for
an invasion in the winter, but really perhaps to escape the
miseries of his court. He took with him for the first time
his son Alexander, and this so exasperated Prince James that
he threatened to leave the country. The king told him that if
he went he would take with him a father’s curse, and he was
persuaded to repent and ask pardon for his violence. His father
said openly that in the ensuing campaign he should more easily
get the better of the enemy than of his own sons. He gained
a victory at Pererita (August 6), and took a few places in
Moldavia, and then returned to his kingdom never to leave it more.
♦His love of retirement.♦ He spent his last years in retirement,
and seldom appeared in public except in the Diet. His palace of
Willanow was his favourite residence, and from thence in the
summer he would roam from castle to castle, sometimes pitching
his tent, like his nomad forefathers, wherever a picturesque
spot or a noble landscape attracted his fancy. The queen would
have preferred the gaieties of Warsaw; but she followed him into
his solitude, and took care that balls, operas, and the other
amusements of a court should be going on around him.
♦His literary tastes.♦ His chief recreation now, as in his
most difficult campaigns, was the study of the sciences. He
complains to the queen, after the battle of Vienna, that with
all his love of reading he has not had a book in his hand for
more than three weeks.[132] When he read he always had a pencil
in his hand, and his marginal notes displayed uncommon powers
of mind. Dr. South--no mean judge--pronounces him to be “very
opulently stored with all polite and scholastical learning.”
He was fond of writing Polish poetry, and when his daughter
Theresa married the Elector of Bavaria he presented her with a
copy of verses on the event.[133] Like many others of the Slav
race, he was an accomplished linguist. He could converse with
ease in six languages, including Latin,[134] and learnt Spanish
when he was past fifty. His delight was to assemble around him
cultivated men like Father Vota, the French Ambassador Cardinal
Polignac, and his physicians, Connor and Jonas, and to “set them
very artfully by the ears”[135] on some question of philosophy
or natural science.[136] Nor was theology forgotten. He used to
give audiences to the schismatic bishops, and listen patiently to
their arguments for their respective creeds.
♦Patron of learning.♦ Such a prince was of course an ardent
patron of learning. During his reign more books issued from the
Polish press than in the two centuries preceding; and his liberal
views led him to reprimand the Catholic clergy for not admitting
into their schools the philosophy of Descartes. ♦Spite of the
nobles.♦ The great nobles, many of them wholly unlettered, could
not sympathise with these literary tastes, and they showed their
spite towards the king in various ways. On one occasion, when
illness kept him away from the Diet, the Sapiehas demanded that
he should be summoned to attend; and when their motion was lost,
they broke up the assembly with the veto. A Jew named Bethsal,
who collected his revenues, was condemned to death by the Diet
on an unproved charge of sacrilege,[137] and John could hardly
prevail to save his life. ♦Charge of covetousness unproved.♦ Many
imputed his love of retirement to covetousness, and asserted that
he laid up £100,000 a year for the benefit of his sons.[138] The
accusation has been often repeated, although his life abounds in
instances of his draining his private[139] coffers to serve a
pressing public need.
The disorders of the kingdom grew more frightful as John became
less able to restrain them. Street brawls between political
parties had always been of common occurrence, but the rioters now
began to use firearms,[140] and the king had to publish an edict
prohibiting the shedding of blood on pain of death. He often
sent for the chief nobles, and adjured them by the love of their
country to aid him in restoring order.[141] In 1695 the Tartars,
tempted by Polish anarchy and by a report of the king’s death,
invaded Russia, and besieged Leopol; but they disappeared as
quickly as they had come on the approach of Sobieski.
♦His feeble health.♦ Reports of his death were common in Europe,
partly from his feeble health and partly from the interest
which many sovereigns felt in the event.[142] He had long been
afflicted with dropsy; and a wound in his head, which he had
received long before in the Cossack war, now caused serious alarm.
♦Schemes of the queen.♦ The queen was most anxious that he should
make his will, and she deputed her Chancellor, Bishop Zaluski,
to make the proposal. The king received it with disfavour. “I
am surprised,” he said, “that a man of your sense and worth
should thus waste your time. Can you expect anything good of
the times in which we live? Look at the inundation of vice, the
contagion of folly; and should we believe in the execution of
our last wishes? In life we command and are not obeyed. Would
it be otherwise in death?” Soon after the queen entered, and
read in the face of the bishop the failure of her plan. Zaluski
tells us that the next day the king complained bitterly to him
of the bodily sufferings brought on by a dose of mercury which
she had given him. His frame was shaken by convulsive sobs, and
he exclaimed wildly, “Will there be no one to avenge my death?”
This was probably only the raving of a distempered brain; but the
queen has never been exempt from suspicion, and her conduct after
his death only served to confirm it.
♦His illness,♦ On the 17th of June, 1696, his seventy-second
birthday,[143] he lay at Willanow in a state of dreadful
weakness. He asked the news from Warsaw, and was told that
multitudes were flocking to the churches to pray for his
recovery. The intelligence affected him deeply, and he passed
the day in cheerful conversation; but towards evening he was
seized with an attack of apoplexy.[144] The chief officers
hastened to his chamber, and when he awoke to a short interval of
consciousness he showed how eager he was to depart by pronouncing
the words “Stava bene.” ♦And death.♦ Soon afterwards, about
sunset, he breathed his last, and his death, like his birth, was
followed by a sudden and frightful storm.
♦Sorrow of the nation.♦ Only a few of the nobles welcomed
his decease; the mass of the nation remembered his glory, and
sincerely mourned his loss. The Chancellor Zaluski thus expresses
the general sorrow: “With this Atlas has fallen, in my eyes at
least (may I prove a false prophet!), the republic itself. We
seem not so much to have lost him as to have descended with him
into the tomb. At least I have but too much cause to fear that it
is all over with our power. At this news the grief is universal.
In the streets men accost each other with tears, and those who do
not weep are yet terrified at the fate which is in store for us.
Terror apart, what grief was ever more natural? He is, perhaps,
the first king in whose reign not one drop of blood has been shed
in reparation of his own wrongs. He had but one single fault--he
was not immortal.”
♦Quarrels of his family.♦ Amidst such heartfelt sorrow the
behaviour of his family alienated from them all public sympathy.
Prince James at first refused to admit the queen with the royal
corpse to the castle of Warsaw, and when at length he yielded,
he hurried away to Zolkiew to seize his father’s treasures. The
queen hastened after him to put in her claim, but he turned the
cannon of that fortress against her. Burning with indignation,
she exerted all her influence before she left the country[145]
to destroy his chances of the crown. Such was the magic of his
father’s name that at first there was a large party in his
favour; but the family quarrels weakened and dispersed it. The
Austrian party elected Augustus of Saxony; and the French party
thought it necessary to protest by seizing the remains of the
late king. The Elector, resolved not to be out-manœuvred, erected
a cenotaph to the memory of John III.; and it was not till the
next reign, thirty-six years later, that his body received
interment.[146]
♦His sons.♦ The history of his three sons deserves a word of
remark. Charles XII., who as a boy was a devoted admirer of John
Sobieski,[147] invaded Poland in 1705, and would have offered
the crown to Prince James; but the prince, being then in Germany
with his brother Constantine, was seized by the Saxon troops, and
honourably confined at Leipsic; and, as his brother Alexander
nobly refused to profit by his misfortune, the opportunity passed
by. Alexander died at Rome as a capuchin, and his two brothers
resided in Poland on their estates. James Sobieski had two
daughters, of whom the younger, Maria Clementina, was married to
the Chevalier St. George, called the “Old Pretender,” and became
the mother of the unhappy Charles Edward.
♦Character of John Sobieski,♦ The life and exploits of John
Sobieski have in modern times scarcely received their due meed
of attention. Born in a country half civilized, half barbarous,
whose independence has now been completely effaced, his glory
has not proved so enduring as that of less remarkable men who
have figured on a more conspicuous stage. As general, as patriot,
and as Christian hero, he will bear comparison with the greatest
names in any age. ♦As general.♦ No man ever won so many battles
in the most desperate situations; no man ever achieved such deeds
with forces often insignificant and always unruly. His fertility
of resource was amazing; yet it was only equal to the swiftness
of his execution. His chief glory is that, unlike any other great
conqueror, his grandest triumphs were obtained in defensive
warfare, and that all his efforts were directed either to the
salvation of his country or to the honour of his religion. ♦As
patriot.♦ His individual greatness appears most striking in the
ascendancy which he early acquired in his own country. His frank
and simple bearing, his noble mien, and his stirring eloquence,
enabled him, while he was still a subject, to sway the minds and
wills of his fellow-countrymen as if by an irresistible charm.
♦As Christian hero.♦ He laboured for the safety of Poland with
a perfect singleness of aim; and when that was fully secured,
he strove with a like fixity of purpose for the destruction of
the Ottoman power. To us his crusading ardour may seem to have
been out of date, but we must remember that in the seventeenth
century the Turks still inspired a lively alarm, and that if at
the present day we regard them with pity or contempt, the first
step towards this change was accomplished by the sword of John
Sobieski.
♦As king.♦ As a king, he is not entitled to the same high praise.
In a land of peace and order he might have ranked as a benefactor
to his people, but in the home of licence and anarchy his temper
was too gentle and refined to employ the severity which was
needed. A king of Poland, if he was to heal the disorders of
his realm, must first have made himself feared; the natural
temperament of Sobieski made him prefer to be loved. Clemency and
generous forgiveness were parts of his disposition;[148] and the
necessary result upon his policy was that he resigned himself too
easily to bear the vexations which surrounded him. When he did
act, his method was most unwise; for in his principal attempt at
reform--when he aimed at establishing hereditary succession--he
exposed himself to the charge of a grasping self-interest.
♦As head of his family.♦ But we cannot acquit him of deplorable
weakness in the management of his own family. A hasty passion
had thrown him into the power of an unscrupulous and despotic
woman, and his uxorious fondness left her only too much scope for
the activity of her caprice. We have seen more than once that he
could oppose her when his duty seemed clearly marked out for him;
but, for the sake of his own peace, he allowed her to intermeddle
without ceasing in the affairs of Poland. The only result of his
indulgence was that very misery in his domestic circle which he
had sought to avoid. Of the charge against him of avarice we
have already spoken. His chivalrous enthusiasm and cultivated
intelligence would have gone far to disprove it, even if the
treasure which he left behind him had not been found to be only
moderate.
♦His great services,♦ His services to his country were
extraordinary, although he himself confessed that he could not
arrest her fall. He found her at the opening of his career
plunged in civil strife and beset with foreign enemies; he left
her at its close with peace fully assured to her, and with
her glory at its zenith. Within two years of his death the
peace of Carlowitz was signed with the Turks, by which they
renounced all claim to Kaminiec, Podolia, and the Ukraine. The
fruit of his victories was thus fully reaped; but his efforts
to revive commerce and to form an infantry among the serfs,
which would have been the first step to their emancipation,
were never afterwards renewed. ♦Could only retard the fall of
Poland.♦ A patriot life like his may be said to have tried the
institutions of his country, and to have found them wanting.
After seventy-five years of anarchy, that dreaded Partition,
which had been mooted in his day[149] but which he had postponed
for a hundred years, was at length carried into effect. Austria,
whom he had saved by his prowess, Prussia, whom he had hoped
to reunite to his country, Russia, whom his ancestor[150] had
laid at her feet--each took a share of the spoil. No other
patriot arose to save Poland from her rapid decline; and John
Sobieski may be called the last, as he was the greatest, of her
independent kings.
Oxford: A. Thomas Shrimpton and Son, 23 and 24, Broad Street.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The burghers, however, were under a separate civil
jurisdiction. A tribunal for administering this foreign or
Teutonic law was established in 1347 in six principal towns.
[2] Poland in the seventeenth century measured 2600 miles in
circumference, while France measured only 2040.
[3] _Cosmography_, by Peter Heylin, published in 1648, reprinted
from his _Microcosmus_, published in 1621.
[4] _Relatione di Polonia_ (1598), quoted by Ranke (App. No. 66
to his _History of the Popes_). The same Nuncio says the Poles
confessed to him that they preferred a weak monarch to an able
one.
[5] The whole of the country called Prussia once belonged to
Poland. Part of it, after being lost in the eleventh century,
eventually came into the hands of the Elector of Brandenburg,
who acknowledged the nominal suzerainty of Poland; the other
part--Polish Prussia--was not lost till the eighteenth century.
[6] See Dr. South’s letter to Dr. Edward Pococke, Hebrew lecturer
at Oxford, describing his travels in Poland. (p 71.) He mentions
that he had heard them make this remark: and it is curious that
his letter bears date Dec. 16th, 1677--six years before the
relief of Vienna.
[7] This is denied by Salvandy, _Histoire du Roi Jean Sobieski_,
vol. ii. p. 52, ed. 1876, though he has elsewhere admitted it by
implication (vol. i. p. 402-3).
[8] The generals had no seat in the Senate by virtue of their
office, but the king always made them palatines or castellans.
DALEYRAC, _Polish Manuscripts or Secret History of the reign of
John Sobieski_, ch. i. p. 9.
[9] DALEYRAC, ch. i. p. 34.
[10] The first was simply “veto,” the second “veto, sisto
activitatem.”
[11] They were always prolonged, however, when public business
was pressing.
[12] This castellan ranked even above all the palatines, and
headed the Pospolite. The story is that in an important battle
the palatine of Cracow ran away, while the castellan stood his
ground, and their rank was thus reversed. (COYER, _Histoire de
Sobieski_, p. 69, 8vo ed.)
[13] The Abbé Coyer makes her his daughter; but he is wrong. The
daughter of Zolkiewski married into the family of Danilowicz, and
was the mother of Theophila. (SALVANDY, vol. i. 145-147.)
[14] The disparity is said to have been much greater, but it is
necessary to bear in mind throughout the life of Sobieski that
the numbers of the combatants are uncertain, owing to the Polish
habit of exaggeration.
[15] Most historians (and Salvandy in his first edition, 1827)
follow Coyer in giving the date 1629. Salvandy gives no reason
for the change in his later editions; but Sobieski must have
been older than fourteen when he travelled in France; and it
appears that his manuscript favours the earlier date. Coyer is
most inaccurate until the campaign of Podhaic, where his original
authorities begin, and is untrustworthy afterwards.
[16] Russia, properly so called, was at this time a province of
Poland. The empire of the Czars was termed Muscovy.
[17] Sobieski himself was not free from this feeling. See the
collection of his letters by M. le Comte Plater (Letter xvii.).
[18] It was part of Dido’s dying speech:
“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.”
Theophila is said to have shown her sons the hero’s shield while
repeating the Spartan injunction “with it or upon it.”
[19] Louise de Nevers. The Sobieskis were in France when the
embassy came to fetch her. She also married Casimir, the next
king.
[20] We find only the bare statement that they visited England
(Salvandy; Palmer, _Memoirs of John Sobieski_). It is possible
the civil war may have deterred them.
[21] Of these only five were paid to the family of the murdered
man, the other five going to his lord.
[22] _Commentariorum Chotimensis belli libri tres._ CRACOW, 1646.
[23] These were not broken during a march, differing in this from
the laager. See DALEYRAC, ch. i. p. 24.
[24] It was not a feudal tenure, however, for the nobles did
not acknowledge any vassalage to the king. It was merely a
bargain.--DALEYRAC, ch. i. p. 23.
[25] Dyer (_Modern Europe_, vol. iii. p. 42, ed. 1864) gives no
authority for his extraordinary statement that Wladislas entered
into an elaborate conspiracy with the Cossacks against his own
kingdom. Nothing could be more foreign to his character.
[26] Coyer makes Mark Sobieski die four years earlier, but his
account of the Cossack war is so confused, that it is difficult
to tell to what events he refers.
[27] He was descended from the elder branch of the house of
Vasa--that of his grandfather, John III. of Sweden. His father,
Sigismund III. of Poland, had by his Polish sympathies and
Catholic education, alienated the affections of the Swedes.
[28] The Polish regular army was so called because a fourth of
the royal revenues was employed to maintain them. SALVANDY, i. p.
404.
[29] Coyer, who is followed by other writers, says that Sobieski
was once a hostage with the khan of the Tartars at his own
request, and made him a steady friend of Poland.
[30] Frederic William, the founder of the greatness of the house
of Hohenzollern.
[31] He only carried the standard in the Pospolite; his office
was a high military command. Coyer makes this the reward of his
quelling the mutiny at Zborow, which seems most improbable.
[32] Daleyrac (ch. i. p. 28) represents the army as being at the
mercy of the Grand Treasurer, who frequently pocketed the money.
[33] The mansion of a Polish noble was called his “court.”
[34] But he says she was then only thirty-three, and she was
certainly six years older. Louise de Nevers would not have taken
away to Poland a child of five years as part of her suite.
[35] Connor (_Letters on Poland_, Letter iv.) actually represents
that he was unwilling to marry her until tempted by a large dowry.
[36] A letter of Sobieski, describing this plan to his wife, who
was staying in France, was shown to Condé, who had no hope of its
success.
[37] He was tormented with remorse for marrying his brother’s
widow.
[38] Connor (Letter iii.) mentions having heard this from aged
Poles.
[39] He stayed till the diet of election was opened.
[40] The next king, though related to it, could hardly be said
to belong to it, as he was descended from Korybuth, uncle of
Jagellon.
[41] Connor, Letter iv.
[42] Begun by his duel with one of their clan in 1648.
[43] Married to Radziwill, the Croesus of Lithuania.