He then informed the pope that the Emperor of Russia had resolved to make war against the Turks, that he wished to see all Christian princes unite against those enemies of humanity and religion, that for that purpose he had sent embassadors to all the potentates of Europe, and that he exhorted his holiness to place himself at the head of a league so powerful, so necessary for the protection of the church, and from which every Christian State might derive the greatest advantages. Foolish punctilios of etiquette interfered with any efficient arrangements with the court of Rome, and though the embassadors of other powers were received with the most marked respect, these powers were all too much engrossed with their own internal affairs to enlist in this enterprise for the public good. The Turks were, however, alarmed
by these formidable movements, and, fearing such an alliance, were somewhat checked in their career of conquest.
On the 10th of November, 1674, the King of Poland died, and again there was an attempt on the part of Russia to unite Poland and the empire under the same crown. All the monarchies in Europe were involved in intrigues for the Polish crown. The electors, however, chose John Sobieski, a renowned Polish general, for their sovereign. The tzar was very apprehensive that the Poles would make peace with the Turks, and thus leave the sultan at liberty to concentrate all his tremendous resources upon Russia. Alexis raised three large armies, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, which he sent into the Ukraine, as the frontier country, watered by the lower Dnieper, was then called.
The Turkish army, which was spread over the country between the Danube and the Dniester, now crossed this latter stream, and, in solid battalions, four hundred thousand strong, penetrated the Ukraine. They immediately commenced the fiend-like work of reducing the whole province to a desert. The process of destruction is swift. Flames, in a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the Russians. One hundred thousand Polish troops immediately besieged the great city of Humau, which the Turks had taken, midway between the Dnieper and the Dniester.
John Sobieski, the newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other divisions of the army, and endeavored to
distract the enemy and to divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any further, sullenly returned to their own country by the way of the Danube. Upon the retirement of the Turks, the Russians and the Poles began to quarrel respecting the possession of the Ukraine. Affairs were in this condition when the tzar Alexis, in all the vigor of manhood, was taken sick and died. He was then in the forty-sixth year of his age. His first wife, Maria Miloslouski, had died several years before him, leaving two sons and four daughters. His second wife, Natalia Nariskin, to whom he was married in the year 1671, still lived with her two children, a son, Peter, who was subsequently entitled the Great, as being the most illustrious monarch Russia has known, and a daughter Natalia.
Alexis, notwithstanding the unpropitious promise of his youth, proved one of the wisest and best princes Russia had known for years. He was a lover of peace, and yet prosecuted war with energy when it was forced upon him. His oldest surviving son, Feodor, who was but eighteen years of age at the time of his father's death, succeeded to the crown. Feodor, following the counsel which his father gave him on his dying bed, soon took military possession of nearly all of the Ukraine. The Turks entered the country again, but were repulsed with severe loss. Apprehensive that they would speedily return, the tzar made great efforts to secure a friendly alliance with Poland, in which he succeeded by paying a large sum of money in requital for the provinces of Smolensk and Kiof which his arms had recovered.
In the spring of 1678, the Turks again entered the Ukraine with a still more formidable army than the year before. The campaign was opened by laying siege to the city Czeherin, which was encompassed by nearly four hundred thousand men, and, after a destructive cannonade, was carried by storm.
The garrison, consisting of thirty thousand men, were put to the sword. The Russian troops were so panic-stricken by this defeat, that they speedily retreated. The Turks pursued them a long distance, constantly harassing their rear. But the Turks, in their turn, were compelled to retire, being driven back by famine, a foe against whom their weapons could make no impression.
The Ottoman Porte soon found that little was gained by waging war with an empire so vast and sparsely settled as Russia, and that their conquest of the desolated and depopulated lands of the Ukraine, was by no means worth the expenses of the war. The Porte was therefore inclined to make peace with Russia, that the Turkish armies might fall upon Poland again, which presented a much more inviting field of conquest. The Poles were informed of this through their embassador at Constantinople, and earnestly appealed to the tzar of Russia, and to all the princes in Christendom to come to their aid. The selfishness which every court manifested is humiliating to human nature. Each court seemed only to think of its own aggrandizement. Feodor consented to aid them only on condition that the Poles should renounce all pretension to any places then in possession of Russia. To this the Polish king assented, and the armies of Russia and Poland were again combined to repel the Turks.