FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is difficult to illustrate the very peculiar institutions of Hungary by reference to those of any other state, as I know of none which presents any near analogy to the office of Palatine. He is chosen by the king out of four magnates presented for election by the states of the kingdom. He represents the king, and is the constitutional mediator between him and his subjects in all matters at issue between them. As President of the highest court of appeal, he resembles our Lord Chancellor, and, like him, takes precedence of all subjects except the primate, the Archbishop of Gran. From 1765 to Joseph II.’s death in 1790 the office remained vacant. It has since been usually filled by an Austrian Archduke.—E.
[2] “The Besieging of the City of Vienna in Austria by the cruel Tyrant and Destroyer of Christendom, the Turkish Emperor, as it lately befell, in the Month of September, 1529.”
[3] These instances illustrate the fact that Soliman was ill provided with siege artillery. The Turks at this period, as will be seen in the case of Vienna, relied principally on their skill in mining for the capture of strong places, a method very effective in their hands, but slow.—E.
[4] These commissioners were civilians. One of them was a lawyer, answering probably to our barrister of six years’ standing.—E.
[5] See Ränke, “Deutsche Geschichte,” vol. iii. p. 202.
[6] The distance of this spot from the wall would be about one-third of the extreme breadth of the city.—T.
[7] The vast pecuniary resources of the Turkish empire at this period, and the profusion with which they were dispensed abroad, offers a striking contrast to the poverty and niggardliness of the House of Austria and the Germanic body. While Soliman was marching upon Pesth the operations of the Austrian flotilla on the Danube were paralyzed for want of 40,000 florins to pay the arrears of the crews. With great difficulty 800 florins were raised for the purpose.—See Ränke, “Fursten und Volker,” vol. iii. p. 191.—E.
[8] The purse held 500 piastres, or 60,000 aspers, which, at 50 aspers to the ducat, makes 6000 ducats.
[9] This specimen of favouritism, won, not by mean arts, but by soldierlike and simple bearing, does honour to both parties. No one in these days would, like the Chronicler, give credit to the tale of slow poison with which his credulity impairs the merit justly due to the Turk. Even were it more consistent than it is with the character of Soliman or his minister, it is obviously irreconcilable with the other facts recorded.—E.
[10] Sigbert Count von Heister, one of the best soldiers of his day. At the beginning of the siege his hat was shot through by a Turkish arrow. Arrow and hat are preserved in the Ambros collection at Vienna.
[11] Kolschitzki’s services would appear to have made a deep impression on the public mind. Several narratives of his adventures were published at the time; and his portrait, in his Turkish costume, figures in the frontispiece of most of them.—E.
[12] Count Daun is said to have first suggested the use of the scythe affixed to a long staff for the defence of the breaches at this siege. Under the name of the Lochaber axe it had long been used by the Scots. In the recent wars of liberty in Poland it has acquired much celebrity, and many stories are told of its terrible effects in the hands of the peasantry. Of the weapon called the morning star, a species of club with spikes, 600 were furnished from the arsenal.—E.
[13] I give this incident as I find it in the work from which these pages are borrowed, and in other accounts, but I am at a loss to account for the alleged date of its occurrence. The army of the Christian allies had not completed its passage of the river, and was mustering in the camp of Tuln, and I can find no account of any reconnaissance being pushed forward at this date. The statements, however, of the fact are numerous and positive.—E.
[14] See Appendix.
[15] The first coffee-house in Europe was established in Constantinople in 1551. A century later, in 1652, a Greek established one in London. The first in France was at Marseilles in 1671, in Paris the following year. In Germany that of Kolschitzki was the first, the second was opened at Leipzic in 1694. In 1700 Vienna counted four, in 1737 eleven. In the city and suburbs there are now one hundred.
[16] The King’s Italian physician.
[17] The King was practised in this language, which he always used in his addresses to the Polish diets. When the young Charles XII. of Sweden opposed the usual resistance of boyhood to his Latin preceptor, he was informed of this fact; and the example of the great soldier proved an efficient substitute for flogging. Sobieski learned Spanish at the age of fifty.
[18] Constantine Wisnowiecki, allied to the Imperial family by the marriage of the king Michael with the Archduchess Eleanor.
[19] The appellation of Russia was at this period applied to the province of Gallicia. The territories of the Tzar, which have since assumed it, came under the general designation of Muscovy.
[20] In the intervals of war and business the King had always been devoted to the chase. One of his objects of pursuit was the aurochs, now confined to a single forest of Lithuania, where alone it continues its species under imperial protection. One of the most eminent of living geologists, Sir R. I. Murchison, has broached a theory, founded at least on a profound investigation of the features of the district, that the species is a sole survivor of one of those great geological changes which have obliterated other forms of animal life. Sobieski’s Queen wore a girdle of the skin of this animal. Down to a recent period it was an object of royal chase in Poland. Sir C. Hanbury Williams, in a letter from Brodi, describes a royal battue in which many of them were surrounded and driven over a steep bank into the river.