[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.