In the seventeenth century, when the great empire of Spain was fast approaching dissolution, when France was the great power of Western Europe, the Turks were still the great power of the East, with territories even more widely extended than in the previous age. It is true that, after the death of Solyman, a series of incapable rulers and the natural decay of an eastern despotism had paralyzed the great powers of Turkey; but the stern reforming vigour of Amurath IV. (1623-40), and, still more, the wise administration of the first two Grand Viziers of the house of Kiuprili, had done much to restore good government, vigour and efficiency to the Ottomans.[2] Their empire, the speedy downfall of which had been predicted by the English Ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, had since fully recovered its former reputation. A clever Frenchman, M. de la Guillatière, who visited the camp of Kiuprili in Candia in 1669, formed the highest estimate of the military genius of the Turks, and of their political insight into the power and designs of the Christians. He judged of the greatness of the Sultan by considering the number and quality of the persons who feared his displeasure. "When he makes any great preparation, Malta trembles, Spain is fearful for his kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the Venetian anxious for what he holds in Greece—Dalmatia and Friuli, the Germans apprehensive for what remains to them in Hungary, Poland is alarmed, and the consternation passes on as far as Muscovy, and, not resting there, expands itself to the Christian princes in Gourgistan and Mingrelia; Persia, Arabia, the Abyssinians are all in confusion, whilst neither man nor woman nor beast in all this vast tract but looks out for refuge till they be certain whither his great force is intended."[3] It is a striking estimate of Turkish power, but not beyond what experience confirmed. It was not till the second siege of Vienna, and her relief by Sobieski in 1683, that the real instability of the power of the Sultan was disclosed, that his armies were routed, his frontiers curtailed, his power rolled back within the Save and the Carpathians.
Not for the first time, in the summer of that year, Europe trembled at the progress of the Crescent. Since then, the tide of victory has run almost uninterruptedly in favour of the Cross, and Turkey has sunk from being the terror to the position of protégée, tool, victim, or tolerated scandal of Europe.
The decline of her forces, the reversal of the former position of Turk and Christian in the East, date from this great catastrophe of Islam. For Eastern Europe at least the battle before Vienna was a decisive battle. We must remember, indeed, what is meant by a decisive battle, or by any other so-called decisive event. They are rather the occasions than the causes of the transference of power. The causes lie deep which can produce such great and such lasting results. The operation of many influences, throughout a length of time, brings about ultimately the striking revolutions in the history of mankind. No chance bullet which strikes down, or avoids, a commander; no brilliant display of military genius in the person of one man; no incapacity of a single officer, can do more than alter the minor circumstances of great events. The great man is not successfully great, unless his genius can seize upon the opportunities offered by a rising tide of popular opinion, or profit by the accumulated energy of a nation. The incapable leader can seldom make shipwreck of a power unless it be built upon unsafe lines. The presence of a thoroughly incapable commander argues something rotten in his cause. The revolution, the reformation, the reaction, the transference of empire will come; if not in one way, in another; if not in one year, in the next, or in following years. The foundations of success and of failure, are laid deep in the moral, religious and political habits and institutions of nations. The invincible determination and high political and military training of the Roman aristocracy bore them safely through the catastrophes of a Second Punic War and the revolt of their allies. The ordered liberty, and the generations of successful adventure, which were the heritage of the English nation, had won Trafalgar before a shot had been fired from the Victory. The Persian host went forth predestined to choke the Gulf of Salamis with corpses. No Kosciusko's valour could redeem the long anarchy and blindness of Poland. Napoleon, marching from victory to victory, but approached the nearer to that fall, which must await one man against a continent in arms. So the Turkish myriads, victorious at Vienna, would have fallen upon some less noble field before the skill of some other Sobieski. But the genius and courage of individuals may well determine the fate of armies for a day. One day's victory may call for years of warfare to accomplish its undoing. A few years of delay may work great changes in the fortunes of men.
It is no mistaken estimate of the relative value of causes, it is no unintelligent interest which makes us prone to linger over the one dramatic moment—that moment when the courses of the tendencies of ages are declared within the compass of a day. By no hard effort of imagination we identify our interest with that of the actors in the scene. To them, however confident, the result is never clear; to them the delay of a few years in the overthrow of some inevitably falling wrong may make that difference for which no ultimate success can compensate. It was cold comfort to the inhabitants of Vienna, or to the King of Poland, to know that even if St. Stephen's had shared the fate of St. Sophia and become a mosque of Allah, and if the Polish standards had been borne in triumph to the Bosphorus, yet that, nevertheless, the undisciplined Ottomans would infallibly have been scattered by French, German and Swedish armies on the fields of Bavaria or of Saxony. Vienna would have been sacked; Poland would have been a prey to internal anarchy and to Tartar invasion. The ultimate triumph of their cause would have consoled few for their individual destruction.
Prompted by feelings such as these we dwell upon the decisive hours, when the long assured superiority asserts itself, for good and all. We can hail Marathon, Salamis, Tours, or Vienna as the occasion, if not the cause, of the triumph of civilization over barbarism, of Europe over Asia. We must remember, too, that, if the day for a permanent advance of Turkish power was over, yet that a temporary Turkish victory, and a protracted war in Germany, could not have been confined in their influence to the seat of war alone. So cool and experienced a diplomatist as Sir William Temple did indeed believe, at the time, that the fall of Vienna would have been followed by a great and permanent increase of Turkish power.[4] Putting this aside however, there were other results likely to spring from Turkish success. The Turks constantly made a powerful diversion in favour of France and her ambitious designs. Turkish victories upon the one side of Germany meant successful French aggressions upon the other, and Turkish schemes were promoted with that object by the French. The author of the memoirs of Prince Eugene writes bitterly, but truly enough, of this crisis: "Le roi très-chrétien avant d'être dévot, secourait les chrétiens contre les infidèles (at St. Gotthard and at Candia), devenu pourtant un grand homme de bien, il les agaçait contre l'empereur, et soutenait les rebelles de Hongrie. Sans lui ils ne seraient jamais venus, les uns et les autres, aux portes de Vienne."
"If France would but stand neutral, the controversy between Turks and Christians might soon be decided," says the Duke of Lorraine. But France would not stand neutral.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Renegade," Act. iv. sc. 3.
[2] Ahmed Kiuprili, the second Vizier of his race, was one of the greatest ministers of his day. He was described by the Turkish historians as "the light and splendour of the nation, the preserver and administrator of good laws, the vicar of the shadow of God, the thrice learned and all accomplished Grand Vizier." He seems to have really deserved some of the praise.
[3] De la Guillatière, "Account of a Late Voyage, etc., and State of the Turkish Empire." Trans. 1676.