Capture of Strigonia.John was anxious at once to lay siege to Buda, which he regarded as the goal of the campaign, but the Duke of Lorraine persuaded him to begin with Strigonia. This was one of the strongest fortresses in Hungary, and had been occupied by the Turks for a hundred and forty years. Yet the place surrendered in a fortnight, although the garrison was composed of 5,000 janissaries. Well might the Turkish pachas exclaim to the Poles that their king was raised up by God to be the scourge of Islam.[118]
John could now no longer resist the eagerness of his nobles to return to Poland. Return of the Poles.Early in November the armies separated, and the Poles retraced their steps through Hungary. Before their departure the king had endeavoured to mediate between Tekeli and the commissioners of the Emperor, but the sole favour which he could obtain for the insurgents was the promise of a general amnesty, and his disinterested efforts only resulted in increasing Leopold’s suspicions of his motive.His efforts on behalf of the Hungarians. Yet he could not give up the attempt; he longed to establish the strong barrier of a free people against the Turkish advance; and as a last resource he begged for the help of the Holy See. In his instructions to his minister at Rome,[119] he claims this favour from the Imperial Court as his due, and indignantly disowns the unworthy motives imputed to him. “The sole interest of his Sacred Majesty is to rally the nations against the pagans. For that end he demands that the nation which he has re-conquered for Christendom should be treated after a Christian fashion.” But the Pope was so closely bound to the policy of Leopold that he cared not to interfere; and nothing was done to restore the ancient liberties of Hungary. John was deeply indignant, but his conscience would not permit him to insist on this concession as the price of his sworn alliance.
Their hostility to his army.His friendly relations with Tekeli were broken off by the rapine of the Lithuanians, who, on hearing of the spoils of which their tardiness had deprived them, had set off in haste towards the south, and were plundering Upper Hungary. The inhabitants, regarding John as responsible for these reckless freebooters, and knowing nothing of his efforts in their behalf, shut themselves up in their towns and treated him as an enemy. Though he could scarcely obtain provisions for his troops, he was loth to relinquish his design of quartering them in Hungary. But the queen had hit on a new method of preventing him, which was more effective than the murmurs of his men. She suddenly ceased to answer his letters. “For five weeks,” he complains, “I really have not known whether there is a Poland in the world.”[120]
Triumphal entry into Cracow.He closed the campaign gloriously on the anniversary of Kotzim (November 11th), by capturing Schetzin after a few hours’ siege, and then returned home through the Carpathian Mountains. The ground was frozen so hard that the tents could not be pitched, and it was Christmas-eve before the victorious army, laden with the spoils of the East, entered Cracow in triumph. A few days later the Grand Vizier received with resignation his sentence of death from the Sultan, and ere long the head which had dreamed of the conquest of Europe was adorning the gates of the seraglio.
General results of the campaign.The result of this grand campaign was to change the course of history. Hitherto, as at Lepanto and at St. Gothard, the Ottoman arms had never received more than a temporary check; from henceforward we find the empire of the Sultan constantly losing ground in Europe. John Sobieski had recovered in two months more than had been gained in a hundred years. The chief explanation of this decline is doubtless internal decay; but the glory of the Polish hero consists in the singleness of aim which enabled him in a moment of supreme danger to disregard old enmities, and to fly to the defence of Western Christendom, then too disunited to defend itself.
Advantages to Poland.Poland gained more by this campaign than she was ready to confess. The Turks had for ever lost the offensive, and were so much engaged in their conflict with the Empire, that they could not think of revenging themselves upon the republic. But they still retained the fortress of Kaminiec; and until this sore was closed, the danger seemed ever present. The Cossacks however, from whom that danger had first arisen, now acknowledged the king’s authority, and falling upon the Tartars as they returned from Vienna, routed them with immense slaughter. But the renown procured by the victories of the king was more advantageous still. Venice and Muscovy besought the honour of an alliance with Poland; and she never stood higher among the nations than at this moment.
Campaign of 1684.Civil troubles prevented John taking the field early the next year (1684).[121] In August, however, he marched into Podolia, and after taking Jaslowicz, approached the walls of Kaminiec. Since he could not hope to reduce it by blockade, his only resource was to erect a fort in the neighbourhood; and this he effected in the face of the enemy, who dared not risk a battle.
He returned to Zolkiew in November, dissatisfied with the results of the campaign. Jealousy of John’s generals.At its outset he had been attended by numbers of distinguished foreigners, anxious to serve under so great a prince, but he had found himself enfeebled by the lukewarm support of his two Grand Generals, Jablonowski and Sapieha. Both were jealous of his monopolising the glory by commanding in every campaign; but each of them had ulterior reasons. Jablonowski was the chief of the faction of Louis XIV., who was straining every nerve to gain over Poland; Sapieha dreamed of separating Lithuania from Poland, and becoming sovereign of the Grand Duchy. In the ensuing Diet the faction of each had its complaints against the king. The former blamed him for his ill-success against Kaminiec; the latter accused him of depriving Lithuania of her rights by summoning the Diet to meet at Warsaw instead of at Grodno. The Lithuanians at first refused to attend it, but they yielded on the king’s proposal that it should be called the Diet of Grodno. Their opposition to his plans, however, was relentless, and one of the family of Paz[122] carried his abuse so far as to threaten to make him feel the weight of his arm. Such was the treatment that was reserved for the saviour of Europe at the hands of his own subjects!
Unsuccessful campaign of 1685.His health had now become so feeble that in the next campaign (1685) he was able to gratify Jablonowski by leaving him in command. His loss was at once keenly felt. Skilful though he was, the Grand General allowed his army to be caught in a defile in the forest of Bucovina, and it required all his ability to rescue it from utter annihilation. Ashamed at his own pride no less than at his reverse he shunned the royal presence.[123]
Perfidy of Leopold.The zeal of the king for the cause of the Emperor was cooled about this time by the marriage of the archduchess, who had been promised to Prince James, to the Elector of Bavaria. The queen[124] was impelled by her resentment to join the French party, and Leopold had too much cause to fear that she would induce John to make a separate peace. Father Vota.He therefore sent a Jesuit named Vota as his secret agent to the court of Warsaw. The mission of the holy father was not openly political; his journey was supposed to have been undertaken to convert the heretics of the Greek church; but the Emperor trusted that his literary and social talents would procure him an ascendancy over the king of Poland. He is described as a man of wide knowledge and wonderful powers of conversation; and his religious habits and unobtrusive demeanour preserved him from suspicion. He devoted himself to the king’s pleasure, and often slept on the floor of an ante-chamber in order to be at hand to entertain his weary hours. He easily kept him faithful to the league against the infidel, and hinted that the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia might, if subdued by his arms, become hereditary in his family. John knew well that they would merely become provinces of Poland; but he was anxious to extend her frontiers to the shores of the Black Sea. The king tries to revive commerce.In spite of the opposition of the nobles he wished to revive her commerce; and a mercantile treaty which he contemplated with Holland would have been assisted by the acquisition of a double sea-front.