But we will pass over the lists of the slain, and the details of a booty almost fabulous in value, to bring our readers to the walls of Vienna, where the agony of a long suspense had been exchanged for the joy of a deliverance at once so sudden and so complete. Sobieski entered the city through the breach made by the guns of the infidels, and through which, but for his speedy succour, they would themselves have passed as victors. As he rode along by the side of Stahremberg, accompanied by the Duke of Lorraine and the Elector of Saxony, the streets resounded with the acclamations of the people who crowded about his horse. They kissed his hand, his feet, his very dress; and some were heard to exclaim, as they involuntarily compared the hero who had delivered them with the sovereign who had deserted them, “Why is he not our master?” It was evident that these demonstrations of feeling were already exciting the jealousy and displeasure of the Austrian authorities; and even in his triumphal entrance, the king was made to taste something of that ingratitude and cold neglect that was afterwards exhibited in so extraordinary and disgraceful a manner by Leopold himself. Nevertheless the people were not to be restrained by the marked discouragement of their civic rulers; they followed Sobieski in crowds to the church of the Augustines, where, finding the clergy unprepared, or hesitating, perhaps, to offer the usual service of thanksgiving, he himself, filled with impatient enthusiasm, stepped before the high altar, and commenced intoning the Te Deum, which was instantly taken up by his own Poles and the clergy of the church. The sudden stillness caused by the cessation of the firing, which had been distinctly heard, not only at Neustadt, but far over the Styrian Alps, struck terror into the surrounding population, who thought that the ancient city of the Christian Cæsars had fallen into the hands of the enemies of the faith. A welcome sound, therefore, to them was the boom of the three hundred cannons, the thunder of which accompanied the thanksgiving at the church of the Augustines. Ashamed of their neglect, the magistrates caused the ceremony to be repeated with something more of pomp and splendour in the cathedral of St. Stephen’s; and as the echoes of the chant rolled through its glorious aisles, Sobieski knelt, as his biographer relates, “prostrate, with his face upon the ground.” There was a sermon too; and if the text were a plagiarism from the lips of St. Pius, on the day of Lepanto, it was at least an appropriate one: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
Where was Kollonitsch? for his name has not appeared in the list of those who are rejoicing in the streets, or preaching in the churches. You must look for him in the camp, where, unappalled by the terrors of the scene, he is searching among the bloody corpses for any in whom life may not yet be quite extinct; and his patient noble charity has its reward; for, hiding among the tents, or even under the bodies of their mothers, he has found more than six hundred infants, and has claimed these children as his own. Nor is this all: many of the Turkish women and Christian slaves are but half murdered; and Kollonitsch has ordered carriages from the city to transport them, at his own expense, to the hospitals. As to the children, his care of them will end but with his life. “Like another St. Vincent de Paul,” says Salvandy, “he became the father of them all.”[71] He provided them with both maintenance and education, and thought himself well paid for all his sacrifices by having gained them to the Christian faith. The Pope, however, not so unmindful either of his personal merits, or of the eminent services he had rendered to religion in the hour of need, bestowed upon him the highest dignity which it was in his power to confer, by exalting him to the cardinalate.
Of Aviano we find only an allusion to his joy at the victory, and that during the whole of that eventful day, as he watched the conflict from the chapel of the Margrave, he thought he beheld, as he prayed, a white dove hovering over the Christian host. After the return of Leopold to Vienna, “disgusted with the intrigues of the court and the license of the camp,” he refused to retain the office he held in the imperial family, and returned to Italy.
Sobieski himself soon left the city to return to the camp, and prepare for the following up of this victory by a march into Hungary. Indeed, anyhow he was unwilling to remain in Vienna; for, strange to say, Leopold would not enter his capital until the man who had saved it from destruction was at a distance from its walls. And what do our readers suppose was the pretext for so ungracious a proceeding? A scruple of ceremony; a piece of court-etiquette! How should the emperor receive him? Were he an hereditary monarch, courtesy would place him on the imperial right hand; but to one who was but an elective king, how could so high a dignity be accorded? When the question, how such a one should be received, was proposed to Charles of Lorraine, the Duke magnanimously replied: “With open arms, if he has saved the empire!” But the generosity of this sentiment found but little response in hearts which a narrow jealousy and pride had closed to every noble impulse. The simple straightforwardness of Sobieski at last solved the difficult problem. Finding himself put off from day to day by clumsily invented excuses, he bluntly asked one of the imperial courtiers whether the right hand were the obstacle to the interview so long delayed; and on being answered as simply in the affirmative, he ingeniously suggested that the meeting should be one of face to face, each on horseback, the emperor, accompanied by his suite, and himself, at the head of the Polish troops. And thus it actually took place, as described in the king’s own words: “We saluted each other civilly enough. I made him my compliments in Latin, and in few words. He answered in the same language, in a studied style. As we stood thus, face to face, I presented to him my son, who came forward and saluted him. The emperor did not even put his hand to his hat. I was wholly taken by surprise. However, to avoid scandal and public remarks, I addressed a few more words to the emperor, and then turned my horse round. We again saluted each other, and I returned to my own camp.[72] The Palatine of Russia, at the emperor’s desire, passed our army in review before him. But our men have felt greatly affronted, and have complained loudly that the emperor did not condescend to thank them, even with a bow, for all they had done and suffered. Since this parting, a sudden change has come over every thing: they take not the slightest notice of us; they supply us with neither forage nor provisions. The Holy Father had sent money for these to the Abbé Buonvisi, but he has stopped short at Lintz.”
The conclusion of the memorable campaign to which we have adverted forms no part of our present subject. It is enough for us to remember, that in spite of every insult offered him; the ingratitude shown him by the emperor, nay, the cruel insolence which denied hospitals to his sick and burial to his dead, and which formally refused all redress when the Poles were robbed of their baggage and their horses by the followers of Leopold himself; the artillerymen pillaged of their effects while on guard over the very guns they had taken from the enemy;—in spite of all this, and of the marked personal affronts which (as just related) the emperor put upon his gallant deliverer on the plain of Ebersdorf, Sobieski did not desert him; or rather, he would not desert the cause of Christendom, to which his solemn oath, as a Christian king, bound him by an obligation which he felt to be inviolable. His letters to his queen abound with the expressions of this loyalty to his plighted word: “I know there are many,” he says, “who wish me to return to Poland; but for me, I have devoted my life to the glory of God and His holy cause, and in that I shall persist. I too cling to life,” he adds; “I cling to it for the service of Christendom, and of my country, for you, my children, and my friends; but my honour is yet dearer to me. Have no fear: we shall reconcile all these things if God give His help.”
If gratitude and joy were wanting where they seemed most due, Europe took the burden on itself, and paid the debt of Vienna. The news of the great event, which fixed the destinies of the West, flew from country to country, and every where roused the enthusiasm of the people. Protestant and Catholic states united in decreeing public thanksgiving to be offered in the churches for the great victory obtained; and every where it was celebrated with rejoicings at court and in the houses of the nobility. Even in England, severed as she was from Catholic unity, the pulpits rang with the triumphs of the Polish king. At Rome, the feast of thanksgiving lasted an entire month. When the news of the victory reached the ears of Innocent XI., he cast himself at the foot of the crucifix, and melted into tears. The night saw the magical dome of St. Peter’s blazing with its fiery illumination; and within that dome, a few days later, the great banner of the vizier, which had been despatched to the Pontiff in the first moment of victory, was solemnly suspended side by side with the captured standards of Choczim.
But it was not to Sobieski’s name alone that the glory and honour of Her great deliverance was ascribed by the voice of Christendom. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, had been his battle-cry in the front of the Turkish lines; and it was taken up and re-echoed by the Church. Europe, in its gratitude, gave thanks to the interceding love of Her whose image, on the shattered and crumbling walls of Vienna, had remained untouched by all the batteries of the infidels; and by order of Innocent, the Sunday within the octave of our Lady’s Nativity, on which day the memorable action was fought, was thenceforward kept as a solemn festival of thanksgiving for this and all the other mercies bestowed on the Church through her gracious intercession, and has received the title of the Feast of the Name of Mary.
THE END.
BURNS AND OATES, PRINTERS, LONDON.