Everywhere the most cheerful deference was rendered to Sobieski by all who were present. The Princes, jealous of each other before, now vied with each other in zealous obedience to the conqueror of Choczim. His experience of Turkish warfare was unique, his personal character commanding. He tells his wife how Lorraine, Waldeck, Saxony, Bavaria would send or even come personally for his commands. The ascendancy exercised by Sobieski is nowhere more decisively illustrated than in the conduct of five hundred Janissaries, a trophy of his victories, who now formed his body guard. He offered them leave of absence from the battle, or even a free passage to the Turkish camp, but they besought leave to live and die with him.[14] The king himself was fully prepared to accept the advice of generals like Lorraine and Waldeck. He had left his royal dignity behind at Warsaw, as he told Lorraine, and at once agreed with the latter upon a plan for crossing the Danube at Krems and at Tuln, concentrating at Tuln and marching over the Kahlenberg to Vienna. He only complained of the backward condition of the bridges and of the slow assemblage of the troops, whereas the Emperor had by letter assured him that all was ready before he had left Poland. When finally assembled, the united armies numbered eighty-five thousand men. The Poles were more than twenty-six thousand strong. But allowing for detachments, not more than seventy-seven thousand men were available upon the battle-field. The artillery numbered one hundred and sixty-eight pieces, of which few came into action.
On September 4, the king still writes from near Tuln. If an excess of glory is often the share of a successful commander, yet an excessive toil is his always. Sobieski tells his wife that he has a continual cold and headache, and is night and day in the saddle. The French stories were so far true that he could not mount without assistance, yet in the midst of such operations no rest is possible. The Turks are, he says, either really ignorant of his presence, or refuse to believe it. The Vizier was incredibly ill-supplied with information. He really was uncertain whether Sobieski was in the field; and whether the Polish army, or partisan corps only, like that of Lubomirski, had joined Lorraine. The smallest resistance would seriously have retarded the passage of the Danube, performed by the Germans at Krems, by the Poles at Tuln. As it was, the difficulties were terrible. The pontoons sank under the weight of the artillery and waggons. The latter had to find fords over the smaller branches of the river, while the bridges upon the main stream were strengthened to sustain them. Even then much baggage was left north of the Danube; much more upon the southern side, entrenched and defended.
On September 8, when the concentration of the army upon the southern bank was being completed, Marco Aviano, the Emperor's Confessor, celebrated a solemn mass, and gave a formal benediction to the Christian army. Sobieski then stepped forward, and after addressing some words of encouragement to the assembled officers, bestowed the honour of knighthood upon his son James.[15] An enthusiastic votary of his religion, he desired to impress upon his army that their cause was the cause of God, against the enemies of the Faith. Even the Lutheran Saxons and North Germans could, with more justice than the Hungarian renegades, claim to be fighting Pro Deo et Patria. Upon the coming struggle depended the question whether the frightful devastation, which had desolated Hungary and Austria, was or was not to be repeated in all the south German lands.
The flat ground upon the southern side of the Danube, from near Krems to Tuln, the Tullner Feld, offered a convenient space for the mustering of the army after passing the river. Vienna was not further than about sixteen miles as the crow flies, but the intervening country was of a difficult nature, even should the Turks attempt no interruption to the movements of the relieving forces. The Wiener Wald, rising to more than nine hundred feet above the level of the Danube, runs into a north-easterly direction between Tuln and Vienna, and advances up to the very current of the river, which flows north-eastward and then south-eastward round the mountain barrier. The roads were few and difficult, and trees covered the slopes of the hills. Sobieski had decided to advance with his left wing covered by the Danube, and to throw succour into Vienna upon that side; while with the right he threatened the rear of the Turkish camp on the side of Dornbach and Hernals. With this object the march was directed upon the Leopoldsberg and the Kahlenberg, the last heights or ridges of the mountains above the Danube, to the north-west of Vienna.
And at length, on the 10th of September, the forward movement upon the Kahlenberg began. Already as early as the morning of the 6th, a reconnaissance had been pushed to the summit, and as evening fell had cheered Vienna with a flight of signal rockets, in answer to the fiery messengers of distress which nightly rose from the spire of St. Stephen's. But to carry an army up the Kahlenberg was a harder task. Sobieski wrote that the country was horribly wasted. There was neither food for man nor forage for horses, beyond what the army could carry with them. Indeed, the leaves of the trees upon the Kahlenberg had to eke out the supplies of the latter. There was all need for despatch. The last despairing message had come from Starhemberg, borne by a swimmer on the Danube to Lorraine, in language as brief as significant, "No time to be lost; no time indeed to be lost."
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Salvandy, p. 96, vol. ii.
[12] The grandson of the Duke of Lorraine married Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, and was himself Emperor. The grand-daughter of Sobieski was the mother of Charles Edward, the hero of the Forty-five.
[13] Of the family, not an ancestor, of the present Duchess of Albany.
[14] Salvandy.