This generous forwardness on the part of the king of France and his allies merited, no doubt, the gratitude of Leopold; but, what is difficult to be believed, the zeal they showed for the common cause, and which exceeded what was first hoped for, only awakened the jealous uneasiness of the emperor. We have even reason to think that this uneasiness extended to the sovereign pontiff; for his holiness welcomed the propositions of Louis XIV. very coldly; and when the resolutions of the Germanic body reached Rome, Alexander received with indifference news for which any other pope, say the memoirs of the time, would not have failed to go and return solemn thanks in the church of St. Peter or of St. John of the Lateran. The king of France could not dissemble his surprise; and in a letter, which he caused to be written to his ambassador, are these remarkable words: “For the rest, it is more an affair of his holiness than ours; it will suffice for his majesty, for his own satisfaction and his duty towards God, to have made all the advances with respect to this league, that a king, the eldest son of the Church, and the principal defender of religion, could do in a danger imminent for Christendom.”
It was soon known that the Turks were making progress, and had penetrated into Moravia. The emperor Leopold, at their approach, quitted his capital. The pope then consented to resume the suspended negotiations. But they were resumed with a sentiment of jealousy and reciprocal mistrust, that left no hope of a happy result. Louis XIV., nevertheless, omitted nothing to prove the frankness of his intentions, or to forward the formation of a league. It was then believed that an enterprise against the Turks was the business of all Christendom, and that, in this case, one Christian power alone, ought not to decide for peace or war.
We enter into some details here, because these details have not been hitherto generally known, and that present circumstances may give them additional interest. We know, likewise, in the days in which we live, we must search for examples in old remembrances, and often for our true titles to glory likewise.
The emperor could not be reassured by the demonstrations of the French monarch; and the rancour which he retained on account of the treaty of Westphalia, made him forgetful of his own dangers and of those of the Germanic body. Louis XIV. engaged to set on foot an army of twenty thousand men, and the confederates of Germany offered as many. Leopold feared this army on his own account. In the end, Louis satisfied himself with furnishing six thousand soldiers, under the command of the count de Coligny and the marquis de la Feuillade. The pope, not to remain neuter in a war against the Mussulmans, granted the emperor a subsidy of 70,000 florins, and the faculty of levying tenths upon all the ecclesiastical property in the Austrian states. All the united succours of Germany, the king of France, and the other confederate states, formed an army of thirty thousand men. This army marched to Hungary. When united to the troops of the emperor, they gained many advantages over the Turks, and defeated them completely at the battle of St. Gothard. The Ottomans solicited a suspension of arms, and the jealous passions which had at first prevented the war being carried on with vigour, allowed the Divan to conclude an advantageous peace.
The Ottomans, thus delivered from a formidable war, were able to direct all their strength against Candia, which Venice, now left alone, was not strong enough to defend. A great number of French warriors then flew to the succour of a Christian city besieged by the infidels: among the knights whom the love of glory led to this perilous and distant war, history takes pleasure in naming the marquis de Fénelon, whose care had brought up the archbishop of Cambrai, and whom his age considered as the model of gallant gentlemen. His young son, whom he took with him, was wounded in an affair against the Turks, and died of his wounds. France, in the same expedition, had to lament another hero, the young duke of Beaufort; Mascaron, who pronounced the funeral oration of this new Maccabeus, thus describes his death: “After the flight of all the others, yielding rather to number than to strength, he fell upon his own trophies, and died the most glorious death that a Christian hero could wish, sword in hand against the enemies of his God and his king, in the sight of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and more than all that, in the sight of God and his angels.” Louis XIV., always considering it consistent with his glory to protect the Christian states, sent fresh succours to Candia: four French vessels appeared before the isle; but they arrived too late; the city of Candia, after a siege of two years and four months, had just capitulated.
This conquest revived the courage of the Turks, and their power, sustained by the genius of Kiouprouli, whom the Mussulmans called the great destroyer of the bells of impiety, might have still rendered themselves formidable to the Christian nations, if their policy had not been governed by a foolish pride. Intoxicated with some trifling successes, the Turks resumed their project of invading Germany. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, they made a last attempt, and the capital of Austria beheld beneath its walls an army of two hundred thousand infidels.
Germany was exhausted by the thirty years’ war. The king of Poland, urged by the pope to come to the succour of the Germanic empire, hastened with his Polish cavalry to the scene of action, and revived the courage of the Germans and the garrison of Vienna. The Turks, upon being attacked with impetuosity, abandoned their camp, their artillery, and their baggage. The wreck of the Ottoman army did not rally till they reached the banks of the Raab, where they encamped around the tent of the grand vizier, the only one that had not fallen into the hands of the conquerors. John Sobieski entered in triumph into the city he had saved by his courage. This happy event was celebrated throughout Germany by public rejoicings; and, as had been done after the victory gained by Don John of Austria, amidst the ceremonies of the Church, these words from Scripture were repeated: “There was a man sent from God, named John.”
The defeat of Vienna was for the Turks a signal for the greatest reverses. The vengeance of the people and the army pursued the grand vizier, who had conducted the war; and the sultan, Mahomet IV., fell from the throne at the report of these sanguinary disasters, the effects of which were felt to the very heart of the empire. The famous treaty of Carlowitz testifies the losses that the Ottoman nation had undergone, and the incontestable superiority of its enemies. The decline of Turkey, as a maritime power, had commenced at the battle of Lepanto; its decline as a military or conquering power, dates from the defeat of Vienna. History has two things to remark in the negotiations of Carlowitz. Hungary, which had for so long a time resisted the Turks, weakened at length by civil discords and foreign wars, and given up at the same time to the emperors of Germany and the sultans of Constantinople, then lost its national independence, and became united to the possessions of the house of Austria. Among the states and princes who signed the treaty, the czars of Muscovy, who were destined, at a later period, to inflict such terrible blows upon the Ottoman empire, appeared for the first time as a power interested in the Christian struggle against the infidels.
We have described the origin and progress of the Turks; it only remains for us now to speak of the causes of their decline.
The Turks were only constituted to contend with a barbarous people, like themselves, or with a degenerate people, like the Greeks. When they met with nations that were not corrupted, and were not deficient in bravery or patriotism, their career was checked. It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that they were never able to make an impression upon any of the nations of the Latin Church; the only nation that was separated from Christendom by the conquests of the Turks was one that had separated itself from it. When the Ottomans were no longer able to prosecute their scheme of general invasion, all the passions which had stimulated them to conquest only served to disturb their own empire; which is the ordinary destiny of mere conquering nations.