CHAPTER I.
THE SIEGE.
State of the city—Situation of the Empire—Rapid advance of the Turks—The massacre of Perchtoldsdorf—The Turkish camp—Kollonitsch—View without the walls—Ditto within—Progress of the siege—The camp of Crems—Desperate condition of the citizens—The signal-rockets.
On the evening of the 7th of July 1683 the city of Vienna presented a strange and melancholy spectacle. The road leading out of the Rothenthurm Gate was crowded by a dense mass of carriages and other vehicles, as well as by a vast multitude of foot-passengers, who, by their anxious and terrified looks, seemed to be flying from a pressing danger. Hour after hour you might have watched the stream of fugitives, and still it flowed on without intermission, till you would have thought the city emptied of its inhabitants, or at least of all those of the noble and wealthier classes. And had you sought the reason of so strange a spectacle, the red glare of the distant horizon, lit up by the flames of burning villages, and nearer still, those that enveloped the Carmelite Convent on the heights of the Kahlenberg, would have furnished you with the answer. Those fires were the tokens that Vienna was surrounded by the dreaded forces of the Turks. Every post, for weeks past, had brought the intelligence of some fresh disaster. Hungary was in open revolt; and 400,000 Turks, under the command of the Vizier Kara Mustapha, had poured into the territories of the empire, invited by the treachery of the insurgents. Then came the news that Emerick Tekeli had accepted the investiture of the Hungarian kingdom at the hands of the infidels, and basely acknowledged himself and his countrymen vassals to the Porte. And at last, on that very morning, the city had been thrown into a very panic of alarm by the hasty entrance of fugitives of the imperial cavalry; and the rumour quickly spread that the forces of the Duke of Lorraine had been surprised and totally defeated at Petrouel by the Tartar horse, and that the remains of the imperial army were falling back in disordered flight upon the capital. This, as it afterwards proved, was a false report; as Lorraine, although surprised by the enemy, had succeeded in repulsing them, and was effecting his retreat in good order. But the Emperor Leopold did not wait for the confirmation or contradiction of the intelligence; and at seven o’clock on the same evening the imperial carriages were seen hastily passing over the Tabor Bridge on their way to Lintz, thus giving an example of flight which was quickly followed by the greater portion of the wealthier citizens. It is calculated that upwards of 60,000 persons left the city during that memorable night, the confused masses being lighted on their way by the flames of the burning convent. A great number of these having no conveyances fell into the hands of the very enemy from whom they sought to escape; and the roads leading to Styria were covered with unhappy fugitives, whom the Turks are even said to have hunted down with bloodhounds: some perished of hunger in the woods; others met a cruel death from their barbarous pursuers; the rest succeeded in reaching the Bavarian dominions, where Leopold had already found refuge, after narrowly escaping the Tartar cavalry, who occupied the very line of route which had been originally proposed for him to take.
Our present business, however, is rather with the story of the few who, resisting the infection of terror, remained at their post, and prepared, as best they could, to offer a determined resistance to the besiegers. Their numbers were fearfully small. One regiment of troops only was within the walls, and the citizens capable of bearing arms were reckoned at no more than 1200 men. Ernest Ruchjer, Count of Stahremberg, was the heroic governor to whom the defence of the city was intrusted and if his scanty forces, and the utter want of all preparation for a warlike emergency, might well have made his heart sink at the task before him, yet his own gallantry and the active co-operation of some of his followers and of the burgher authorities almost supplied for the want of other resources. The works necessary for the defence of the city were not yet begun; for even the ordinary engineering tools were wanting. The supplies of fuel, water, and provisions requisite for sustaining a long siege were still unprovided; and all this had to be done, and was done, by the astonishing exertions of a few men within the space of a single week. The spectacle which their courage and activity presented formed a striking contrast to that which had been displayed only a few days previously by the flight of the court and of so many of their fellow-citizens. Men of all classes, priests, and even women, were to be seen labouring at the fortifications: the burgomaster, Von Liebenberg, was foremost with his wheelbarrow among the workmen, cheering them on by his example and words of encouragement; some carried loads of wood from the suburbs to the city-stores; whilst the circle of flames from the burning villages, denoting the advance of the enemy, drew nearer and nearer, so that by the 12th of July they were working under the very eyes of the Turks.
Before proceeding to the story of the siege, it may be necessary to say a few words on the position of the two parties in the struggle about to commence, so as to give some idea of their relative chances of success. The hostilities between the Turks and the Empire had been interrupted only by occasional truces, from the first occupation of Constantinople by the former two centuries previously. The present invasion had been brought about mainly through the means of the Hungarian insurgents; and however much we may be disposed to allow that the severity of the Austrian government to a conquered country provoked the assertion of national independence on the part of its oppressed people, yet we cannot but withhold the title of “patriots” from those who, in their hatred to Austria, were ready to sacrifice the very safety of Christendom, and whose notions of national independence consisted in exchanging subjection to the Austrians for a far more degrading vassalage to the infidels. When the news of the vast preparations of the Ottomans reached Vienna, it found the imperial government almost without defence. The day was past when Christian Europe could be roused to a crusade in defence of its faith, or even of its freedom; nay, in the history of this contest we are met at every page by the details of secret negotiations and most unworthy intrigues, by which the emissaries of the “Most Christian King,” Louis XIV., encouraged and assisted the invasion of the infidels to gratify his personal jealousy against the House of Hapsburgh. In the day of his distress and humiliation Leopold was compelled to seek for assistance from one whom till then it had been the policy of his government to slight and thwart on all occasions, and from whom, according to the calculations of a selfish policy, he had certainly nothing to expect. This was John Sobieski, the elective king of Poland, whose former exploits had rendered his name a very watchword of terror to the Turks, but on whom the Austrian sovereign had but little claim. The interests of the Polish king were all opposed to his taking any part in the hostilities. After years of civil war and foreign invasion, his surpassing genius had but just obtained for Poland a profound and honourable peace. An alliance with the House of Hapsburgh was at variance with the close and intimate connection existing between himself and the court of Versailles; and the favour and protection of the French king was of no small importance to the distracted councils of Poland; whilst the contemptuous and unfriendly treatment he had ever received from the Austrian sovereign might very naturally have prompted him to refuse the sacrifice of his own interests in that monarch’s behalf. But none of these considerations had any weight in the noble heart of Sobieski, who looked on the question simply as one involving his faith and honour as a Christian king. “For thirty years,” to use the words of Pope Innocent XI., “he had been the bulwark of the Christian republic—the wall of brass against which all the efforts of the barbarians had been broken in pieces.” Indeed, if we may so say, he had come to look on war with the infidel as his special vocation: the victories of Podhaiski and Choczim, and that other wonderful series of achievements, to which history has given the title, adopted from the gazette of Louis XIV., of the “Miraculous Campaign,” had, as it were, installed him in his glorious office; and when the same Pope called him in council “the lieutenant of God” he did but give expression to the feeling with which all Christian Europe looked to him as her hero and protector. It is not a little striking that the greater number of the semi-infidel historians of the eighteenth century, while doing full justice to the gallantry and genius of this extraordinary man, have condemned his enterprise against the Turks as proceeding only from a religious and chivalrous impulse, undirected by any views of sound state-policy. Whether the policy which saved Europe from the horrors[67] of an Ottoman invasion can rightly be termed unsound, our readers may determine; it was doubtless unselfish, and probably its very generosity has been the principal cause of its condemnation by these writers; but we refer to their criticism as an unquestionable testimony in proof of the real character of this campaign, and of the motives from which it was undertaken; and we think, on their own showing, we can scarcely be wrong in representing this war as purely a religious one, entered on in defence of the Christian faith, and without any mixture of those political motives, the want of which is so deplored by the historians of that sceptical age, but which renders its history so glorious in the eyes of the Christian student.
The treaty between the two sovereigns, signed on the 31st of March 1683, was confirmed by the solemnity of an oath administered by the cardinal-legate, the obligation of which on the conscience of Sobieski will be found to have exercised a marked influence on his future conduct. At the time when the treaty was concluded the invader had not yet set foot in Hungary. To approach the Austrian capital they would have to pass a number of strongly fortified towns, which, according to the ordinary course of military proceedings, must first be reduced before pushing further into the enemy’s country. Nevertheless, the intelligence which reached Sobieski from his secret spies and envoys in the Turkish dominions all pointed to Vienna itself as the object of attack. But in spite of his representations to Leopold, that monarch could not be induced to believe himself in danger, or to prepare for an emergency; and thus, when the heights of the surrounding hills blazed with the camp-fires of the Tartars, the city, as we have seen, was taken by surprise; and the inhabitants of the surrounding country were quietly at work in the harvest-fields, when the hosts of the enemy came on them like some sudden inundation. Indeed, the march of Kara Mustapha was without a precedent. To advance from the borders of Hungary to the walls of Vienna, leaving in his rear all the fortresses of the imperialists, was the affair of a week; before another had closed, his trenches were opened and the siege begun; and this extraordinary rapidity must account, both for the defenceless state of the capital and for the time which necessarily elapsed before the Polish king could come to its relief.
An incident may here be related which will show the nature of the warfare waged by the infidels, and the treatment which the Viennese might expect at their hands. In the neighbourhood of the city was the small town of Perchtoldsdorf; and as one of the first objects of the invaders was to secure all the places capable of being fortified within a short distance of Vienna, a detachment was sent to take possession. The inhabitants, under the direction of their bailiff, at first endeavoured to hold the town; but owing to the superior numbers of the enemy and the failure of ammunition, they were soon compelled to abandon it, and to betake themselves to the tower of the church and its precincts, which, on the approach of the Turks, they had diligently fortified, as their forefathers had done 150 years before. Small hope, however, was there that they should be able to keep the enemy at bay; and when a horseman, bearing a flag of truce, summoned them to surrender, with the offer of security to life and property in case of immediate compliance, they did not hesitate to accept the terms. On the morning of July 17th a pasha arrived from the camp, and, seating himself on a red carpet opposite the church, announced to the besieged the conditions of surrender; which were, that the inhabitants should pay a contribution of 6000 florins, and, as a token that they had not yielded up the place, but had honourably capitulated, the keys were to be delivered by a young maiden with her hair flowing and a garland on her head. These terms concluded, the citizens left their stronghold; and the daughter of the bailiff, arrayed as described, bore the keys of the place on a cushion, and presented them to the pasha. The latter now required that all the men capable of bearing arms should be drawn up in the market-place, on pretence of ascertaining what number of troops were needed for the occupation of the town. It was too late to retreat, and the order was obeyed. As the inhabitants came out, the Turkish soldiers closed about them, and deprived them of their arms; such as hesitated were overpowered, and those who paused in the gateway, reluctant to proceed, were dragged out by the hair of their heads. The unfortunate people were no sooner all assembled than their persons were searched, and every thing they had about them was taken away. At the same time the entrance-gate was strongly guarded. Some of the townsmen, seized with alarm, endeavoured, with the bailiff at their head, to regain the church; but the Turks rushed upon them with drawn sabres, and the bailiff was cut down on the threshold. At that instant the pasha rose from his seat, flung down the table before him, and gave the signal for a general massacre, himself setting the example by cutting down with his own hand the trembling girl at his side. The slaughter raged for two hours without intermission; 3500 persons were put to the sword, and in a space so confined that the expression “torrents of blood,” so often a figure of speech, was fully applicable to the case. The women and children, who still remained within the church, together with the parish-priest and his coadjutor, were dragged into slavery, and never heard of more. Among the victims, numbers of whom were inhabitants of adjacent places who had taken refuge in the town, some, it is conjectured, were people of condition; for, in the course of excavations which lately took place on the scene of the massacre, valuable rings set with precious stones have been discovered.[68] To this day the Holy Sacrifice is offered every year for those who perished on the fatal 17th of July by this act of savage treachery.
But to return. Thirteen thousand regular troops from the army of Lorraine were assembled within the walls of Vienna by the evening of the 13th; and at sunrise on the following day a dusky moving mass appeared on the heights of the Weinerberg, which was the main body of the enemy. Scarcely could the most practised eye distinguish one object from another in the confusion of the crowd. Men, horses, camels, and carriages, formed a mixed multitude, which from the ramparts of the city seemed like some swarm of locusts, and extended for miles along the plains of the Danube and the surrounding hills. The formation of the besieging camp was immediately begun, and within a few hours 25,000 tents had risen as if by magic out of the ground. Luxury and magnificence formed the very tradition of an eastern army; and since the days of Xerxes perhaps no such host had been seen, either for numbers or for splendour of equipment, as that which now spread around the walls of the devoted city of Vienna. We should form an imperfect notion of the spectacle presented to the eyes of its defenders, if our idea of the Turkish camp were modelled on the usual military equipages of European nations. The pavilion of the vizier and his principal officers blazed with a wealth which the imperial palaces could hardly rival. That of Kara Mustapha was a town in itself: the canvas walls formed streets and houses, and included within one enclosure baths, fountains, and flower-gardens, and even a menagerie stocked from the imperial collection of the Favorita, which had fallen into the hands of the invaders. Within the mazy labyrinth of these luxurious alleys stood the pavilion of Mustapha himself. The material was of green silk, worked in gold and silver, and it was furnished with the richest oriental carpets and dazzling with precious stones. In a yet more magnificent sanctuary, forming the centre of the whole, was preserved the sacred standard of the Prophet, which had been solemnly intrusted to the care of the vizier by the sultan’s own hands. The display of the inferior officers was on a corresponding scale.