John Sobieski: Lothian prize essay for 1881

by Edward H. R. Tatham

Confederations.When the Diet was not sitting, the Senate, with the king as its president, was responsible for the government. But if the nobles were dissatisfied with their measures, or if the veto had hopelessly clogged the wheels of state, recourse was had to an extraordinary assembly called a “confederation.” Convocations.This was formed sometimes to resist, sometimes to enforce the established law; and in the latter case it often took the shape of a “convocation,” which exactly resembled the Diet except that the veto was inadmissible. The Poles were always more happy in organising anarchy than in organising their institutions. Of course, the authority of a confederation depended upon the number and weight of its adherents; and it frequently happened that several of these bodies were sitting at the same time. We sometimes find in Polish history the Senate at variance with the Diet, the Diet with the king, the king with the grandees, the greater with the lesser nobles, and the whole nobility with their armed serfs. Strife among the nobles—how caused.Among the nobles religious inequality was the principal cause of dissension. Although none but Catholics could hold offices of state, a large number of the poorer nobles were “Dissidents,” and belonged to the Greek or Protestant persuasion. Their three main classes.They were thus naturally jealous of the official families; for, though all were theoretically equal, the differences of wealth and prestige tended to divide them into three classes: first, a few princely families who owned whole provinces and aspired to the posts of the supreme executive; secondly, the average gentry, who scrambled for the lesser offices, or were indignant at their religious disabilities; and thirdly, the poorer freemen, who made up for their lack of power by a spirit of captious disaffection. In stormy times the confusion was increased by half the middle gentry taking part with the grandees and half with the freemen.

Ancestry of John Sobieski.From the highest of these classes was sprung John Sobieski. He belonged to that group of families, whose ancestral device was the Buckler—the most illustrious of the rude Polish coats of arms. Far back in the mist of ages are placed the exploits of Janik—the Polish Hercules—the founder of his house. His immediate ancestors had gained less doubtful laurels. His grandfather, Mark Sobieski, palatine of Lublin, had so great a military reputation that King Stephen Bathori (1575-1586) was wont to say that he would not fear to entrust to his single arm the defence of the fortunes of Poland. His father, James Sobieski, was not only an able general, but a man of cultivated mind, and of some diplomatic skill. To him belonged the real credit of the famous victory of Kotzim in 1621 over a vast host of Turks and Tartars, although the nominal commander of the Poles was the young Prince Wladislas, son of Sigismund III. His success in negotiating the treaty that followed was so conspicuous that he was afterwards sent on several foreign embassies to the Western Powers. Such eminence in peace as in war doubtless procured for him the post of castellan of Cracow[12]—the first secular senator of Poland, inferior only to the archbishop of Guesna. He had also been four times elected Marshal of the Diet—an office resembling that of Speaker of the House of Commons. In or about 1620 he married Theophila Danilowiczowna, grand-daughter[13] of the famous Zolkiewski. That heroic general, after taking Moscow (1610), and carrying off to Poland the Czar Basil VI., met his death (October 5th, 1620) at Kobylta on the Dniester, with a band of 8,000 men, at the hands of 70,000[14] Turks and Tartars. Thus on both sides the ancestors of Sobieski were worthy of his subsequent fame. Birth.The circumstances of his birth are romantic; but they rest on no less an authority than a manuscript in his own hand. On the 17th of June, 1624,[15] his father’s castle of Zloçkow in the palatinate of Red Russia[16] was visited by a storm of unprecedented violence. The old mansion, which stood exposed on the bare summit of a vast “mohila” or Slavonic tumulus, was shaken to its foundations, and some of the attendants were rendered deaf for life. Amid the raging of the elements was born John Sobieski, in the presence of the widow of the conqueror of Moscow; and the respect for prodigies,[17] which distinguishes the Poles above all other modern nations, must have marked him out in their eyes for an exceptional career. Yet his youth was singularly peaceful. Except for the war against Gustavus Adolphus, which was terminated by the peace of Altmark (September 15th, 1629), and an incursion of the Tartars (1636), successfully repelled by Wladislas VII., Poland enjoyed from the time of his birth an unexampled respite of more than twenty years.

Education.During this period John and his elder brother Mark were enjoying all the benefits of a careful education. Their father chiefly resided at his princely estate of Zolkiew, which had come to him through his wife—a domain as large as some of our English counties, and embracing a hundred and fifty villages. He had engaged as their tutor the learned Stanislas Orchowski; but he himself superintended their more important studies. The treatise which he has left upon education is alone enough to show how well the task must have been performed. Besides instructing them in several languages he imparted to them his own skill in music, painting, and the other fine arts; and they had the rare advantage of a home in which to the barbaric splendour of a Polish noble were added some of the refined tastes of an Italian court. Ardent and robust by nature, John early distinguished himself by his activity in hunting, and in the use of the small sword; and the traditions of his family soon taught him against whom his strength was to be employed. The inscription[18] on his great grandfather’s tomb in the neighbouring Dominican chapel, erected by his mother, aroused in his mind what may be called his life-purpose—to curb at all hazards the advance of the Turkish power.

His travels.At length in 1643 the castellan sent his two sons to travel in the West. Their longest stay was made in France—at that time closely united to Poland by the marriage of Wladislas with a French princess[19]—but they also visited England[20] and Italy. At Paris they frequented the salon of the Duchesse de Longueville, sister of the great Condé; and it was here that an intimacy sprang up between John Sobieski and the French general, who, though only three years his senior, was already crowned with the laurels of Rocroi. The prince procured for his friend the honour of a commission in the king’s Grands Mousquetaires, and continued in correspondence with him during the remainder of his life. Quitting France before the disturbances of the Fronde, the brothers took the measure of the Ottoman power at Constantinople, and were preparing to pass into Asia, when news arrived which called them home to defend not only their country but their own fireside. It was to the effect that the Cossack serfs had revolted, and were carrying all before them.

Cossack revolt caused by the oppression of the serfs.Of the grinding oppression under which the serf class laboured we have already spoken. Some efforts had been made by Casimir the Great (1347) to give them a legal footing in the state; and he had even succeeded so far as to provide that the murderer of a serf should pay a fine of ten marks.[21] But his regulations were soon broken, and the condition of the peasants in the outlying districts became more hopeless than before. The Cossacks.The situation of the Cossacks was peculiar. Inhabiting a wild though fertile country on the borders of Poland and Muscovy called the Ukraine (Slavonic for “borderland,” exactly the French “marche”), they had long retained their independence, and had only been incorporated in the kingdom by the wise measures of Stephen Bathori (1582). Under Stephen Bathori. Originally deserters from the armies of the republic, they had betaken themselves to the almost inaccessible isles of the Borysthenes, where they led a life of plunder in defiance of their neighbours. Their piratical skiffs were an object of terror even to the dwellers on the Golden Horn. Bathori did all that lay in his power to conciliate a people who, in spite of their savage habits, were noted for their fidelity. He gave them the city of Tretchimirow in Kiowia, and formed them into regiments, for the defence of Poland against the Tartars. They were granted the power of electing their own hetman, or Grand General, who, on doing homage to the king, received as the symbols of his office a flag, a horsetail, a staff, and a looking-glass. James Sobieski in his historical work[22] notices the value to a retreating Polish army of their waggon-camps, which they called “Tabors,”[23] and which they seem to have drawn up after the fashion of a Dutch “laager.” Unfortunately their independence was confined to the period of military service. The Ukraine, like other parts of the kingdom of Poland, was divided into estates of crown land, which, like fiefs,[24] were held by the nobles on condition of furnishing the state with troops. But this condition was seldom fulfilled even in Great Poland, and never in a distant province, such as the Ukraine, where all the nobles were absentees.

Their grievances.There was thus no tie except that of gratitude for their honourable position in war to bind the Cossacks to Poland; and this was soon broken by the outrageous rapacity of the Jewish stewards to whom the nobles entrusted their lands. Complaints were lodged in the Diet by the Cossack chiefs, who claimed to send thither their own representatives; but the nobles, whose love of domination was as strong as their love of liberty, turned a deaf ear; and Wladislas VII., seeing the fatal tendency of this policy, had the hardihood to remind the Cossacks that they still possessed their sabres.[25] Success of their revolt.At length, in 1648, a dastardly outrage by a steward on Bogdan Chmielniçki, one of their chiefs, forced them to follow this hint; and electing the injured man as their hetman, they poured into Poland with the Tartars as their allies. Bogdan was an experienced soldier. He completely defeated Potoçki, the Grand General of Poland, at Korsun (May 26th, 1648); and numbers of disaffected Poles—Arian nobles, Calvinistic burghers, outlawed serfs—at once flocked to his standard. Death of Wladislas VII.Six days before this disaster Wladislas VII. expired at Warsaw; and his death at this moment blighted the hopes of the moderate party. James Sobieski, who had done all he could to save Bogdan from oppression, had died in March (1648) when the king was on the point of naming him the representative of Poland at the congress in Westphalia. Danger of Poland.The nobility in general were bent on revenge. Assembling their forces in haste, they suffered an ignominious defeat at Pilawiecz (September 23rd); and Poland was left exposed to the Cossacks. Madame Sobieska, with her two daughters, and many others of the nobility, took refuge within the walls of Zamosç, and was soon joined by her sons, who had evaded without difficulty the undisciplined besiegers.

Election of John Casimir.At this crisis the nobles assembled at Warsaw to elect a king. They chose (November 20th) Cardinal John Casimir, brother of the late king, who put off the purple to assume the crown. The new prince saw the necessity of conciliation, and had the courage, in spite of the opposition of the nobles, to open a negotiation with the rebels. Bogdan, who had been deserted by the Tartars, was not disinclined for peace, and, in order to show his respect for the king, retired thirty leagues from Zamosç. His peace violated by the nobles.But the treachery of the nobles frustrated the intentions of their sovereign. Jeremiah Wiesnowiesçki, the harsh oppressor of the serfs, fell suddenly upon the unsuspecting Cossacks, and routed them with great slaughter. After this the war broke out afresh. Bogdan sought and obtained the alliance of Isla, khan of the Crim Tartars, and in an engagement at Zbaraz, in Volhynia (June 30th, 1649) he gained another great victory. Sobieski joins the army,At this news the king hastened to join the remnants of the defeated army, and was accompanied by John Sobieski in command of a select troop. The young noble had been prevented taking part in the events of the past six months by a wound which he had received in a duel with one of the family of Paz, the most powerful clan in Lithuania; and he afterwards had cause to regret the quarrel. His presence with the king at this juncture was destined to be of some importance. No sooner had Casimir assembled the discomfited Poles, than half his available force, terrified at the enemy’s numbers, insisted on retreat, and proceeded to put their threat into execution. And quells a mutiny.Sobieski galloped into their midst, and, exerting that native eloquence of which he possessed no common share, succeeded in restoring them to their allegiance. His efforts were rewarded by the starosty of Javarow—a military post which had been previously held by his father and by the great Zolkiewski. Peace of Zborow.One of the immediate results of the bold front now presented by the Poles, was the conclusion of the peace of Zborow (August 18th), in which the Cossack chief displayed remarkable moderation. He consented to do homage to the king and to forego his just demands for vengeance upon his oppressors, on condition that all his adherents should receive a free pardon.

Broken by the Poles. June 30th, 1651.But the Polish nobility were incapable of learning any lesson from their recent reverses. War was again declared by the Diet in 1650; and the next year Bogdan was defeated by Casimir at Berestezko, owing principally to the desertion of the Tartars. In this battle, John Sobieski received a wound in his head, from the effects of which he suffered constantly until his death. A transitory peace which followed this success was again broken by the Poles, who attacked Bogdan’s son Timothy at Batowitz (June 2nd, 1652), but were surrounded and annihilated. Death of Mark Sobieski.The prisoners, among whom was Mark Sobieski,[26] were all massacred after the battle by the Tartar khan. Another duel wound fortunately prevented John from being among the victims. But he had the pain of seeing that his folly had made his mother despair of the name of Sobieski. Overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her favourite son, and auguring ill from the headstrong passions of John, she quitted Poland and took refuge in Italy.

Lessons of the Cossack War.The Cossack war, which had now lasted with little intermission for four years, demands considerable attention. It throws a lurid light on the vices of the Polish constitution, and its bitter lessons cannot have been lost upon a thoughtful mind like that of John Sobieski. By oppression the Polish nobility had converted faithful subjects into deadly foes; and their pride and treachery contrast most unfavourably with the moderation of the Cossack chief. Although we have little information about this period of Sobieski’s life, his ardent temper makes it probable that he joined at first with the most uncompromising of the nobles. But their independence of the regal authority, their disregard for treaties with the serf class, and, above all, their unprecedented employment of the fatal veto (1652), must have soon convinced him that the discipline of self-restraint was the only means left to save his country. Hereafter we shall see him nobly practising this lesson under the most fearful provocation.

Anarchy.At this period (1654) Poland was distracted by anarchy at home, and in the next six years she suffered all the usual consequences of civil strife. Henceforward the Cossack war loses its character of a struggle between the republic and her rebellious subjects. The Cossacks call in Muscovy.Its natural result was to draw into the contest those neighbouring nations who might hope to gain advantage from the distracted state of Poland. Bogdan, despairing of concluding any definitive peace without foreign aid, persuaded the Czar Alexis to declare war against Poland, and, on the frivolous pretext that his titles had not received due respect, that monarch invaded Lithuania and took Smolensko (Sept. 10th, 1654).