The Vizier during the above transactions had led the main army by way of Belgrade as far as Essek, where, as before related, his meeting with Tekeli took place. In the discussions of a council of war held at this place, several Pachas and Tekeli himself declared their opinions strongly against undertaking a siege of Vienna, at least in the current year. They recommended, not without substantial military grounds, the previous reduction of the strong places in Hungary still held by the Imperialists, and the establishment of a base for further operations in the complete subjugation of that kingdom. The Vizier, obstinate in his own view, and irritated by the strength of the opposition, concealed his determination, and, appearing to acquiesce in the advice of Tekeli, gave orders for an advance upon Raab, which was invested and summoned on the 30th of June. The Governor returned a reply to the summons by which, whether by collusion or accident, he played into the hands of the Vizier. It stated the impossibility of a present surrender: the Vizier would do well to pursue his march on Vienna: after the fall of that city Raab should be surrendered without resistance. In a council of war the aged Ibrahim Pacha, Governor of Pesth, strongly advocated the reduction of Raab and the other fortresses of Hungary. A king, he said, once placed a heap of gold on the middle of a carpet, and offered it to any one who could take it up without treading on the carpet. A wise man rolled up the carpet from the corner, and thus obtained possession of the gold. Hungary was the carpet, and if rolled up in like manner the gold might be reached in the autumn, or at latest in the following spring. This apologue only drew down the insolent wrath of the Vizier upon the venerable councillor, and Raab was left unmolested in the rear of the advancing army, which the Tartar hordes preceded in all directions. With the exception of a few places, which, surrendering themselves to Tekeli, were spared from destruction, the old system of havoc was everywhere pursued. The works of man were everywhere destroyed, and the population slaughtered, or dragged into captivity. The Imperial army soon beheld the flames of burning villages rising in the rear of its position. Not a moment was to be lost in effecting its retreat: the infantry had scarcely time to fling itself into the Schütt island, and thence, gaining the left bank, to pursue its retreat over the March field to Vienna. The cavalry, under the immediate command of the Duke of Lorraine, retired by Altenburg and Kitsee. Its advanced guard was, on the 7th of July, surprised near Petronel by an attack of 15,000 Tartars, and the whole body was thrown into a confusion which, but for the presence and exertions of its commander, might have been fatal. He was ably seconded by the Margrave Louis of Baden, the Duke of Sachsen Lauenberg, and others, and, order once restored, the enemy was repulsed without difficulty. About 200 men fell on the side of the Turks; the Austrians lost only sixty, but among them were a young prince of Aremberg and Louis of Savoy, elder brother of the future conqueror of the Turks, Eugene. The first fell by the Turkish sabre; the latter was crushed beneath his horse. The baggage of the Dukes of Sachsen Lauenberg and Croy, and of General Caprara, containing their plate, with which it was the fashion of the day for generals to encumber themselves, fell into the hands of the Tartars. The tidings of this action produced their immediate effects on either party. The Vizier, on the day after receiving them, crossed the Raab. He took care to disseminate through his ranks exaggerated reports of the discomfiture and confusion of the Imperialists, and of the unprovided condition of Vienna; and while he stimulated the Janissaries by the prospect of an easy triumph and boundless plunder, he silenced the opposition of the timid and the wise by the promulgation of the Sultan’s Hatti Scheriff, which invested him with sole and unlimited power of command. Some time, however, had been lost in deliberation, and in going through the formality of the investment of Raab, and these moments were precious to the defenders of Vienna. The usual tendency to exaggerate evil tidings had strongly displayed itself in that city. The skirmish of Petronel had been magnified into the total defeat and hasty flight of the Imperial army. Those who had been the first to leave the field, and therefore knew least of the actual result, were the authors of this intelligence; and it derived dismal probability from the flames which reddened the nightly horizon in many directions and at no great distance. The villages, for instance, of Schwechat and Fischamend gave this evidence of the presence of the Turkish horse. The Emperor Leopold was not one of those rare instances of military talent on the throne which appear once perhaps in a century in the shape of Gustavus Adolphus, John Sobieski, or Charles XII. Such men by their presence would have made a capital impregnable. Leopold would have been but an incumbrance during a siege; and he adopted the wiser course of removing himself and his court to a sufficient distance from the scene of danger. Before, however, he had decided on this step, events had left him little time to lose; and it had become matter of serious deliberation which road he should take to avoid the risk of falling into the hands of the Tartar cavalry. The direct road to Lintz was adjudged by his council no longer free from this danger, and it was determined that he should make his way thither by the left bank of the Danube. On the evening of the 7th, therefore, the long file of the Imperial carriages issuing from the Rothenthurm gate crossed the Leopoldstadt island and the Tabor bridge, and reached that evening the village of Chor Neuburg, some fifteen miles from Vienna, which had been previously occupied by a small detachment of musketeers under an Irish officer, whose name, probably O’Haggerty, has been Germanized into Von Haffti. Thence he pursued his journey to Lintz, but not without serious risk. It is said that but for the prompt and able interference of the French envoy, the Marquis de Sepville, who caused a part of the bridge at Crems to be removed, the Emperor and his entire suite would have fallen into the hands of the Tartars. It would be a curious matter of inquiry how far this important service was approved of at Versailles. It is evident that the first route proposed would have consigned the head of the empire, his consort, far advanced in pregnancy, and the Empress mother, to the hands of the Tartars. Even Lintz was considered insecure; and the Royal party continued its discreditable flight till it found refuge beyond the frontier of its own dominion in the Bavarian fortress of Passau. From nine in the evening till two of the following morning the carriages of the wealthier fugitives, who followed the example of the court, filed over the Tabor bridge, lighted on their route by the flames of the Carmelite convent on the Kahlenberg. They left the city in a state of well-grounded alarm and discontent bordering upon revolt. The public feeling was strongly evinced against the Jesuits, who were not unjustly accused of having instigated the naturally mild disposition of the Emperor to courses which had alienated the affections of the Protestants, and driven them into the arms of an infidel enemy. The city also, thus left to itself, was at this moment nearly without a garrison. Besides the usual burgher guard, a mere police force, the regiment of Kaiserstein, about 1000 strong, were the only troops within the walls. The palisades were not fixed, the bastions were unprovided with artillery or gabions. The number of those who left the city on the 6th and 7th of July amounted to 60,000, of whom a large proportion, whose means of conveyance failed them on the way, and all those who took the road of Styria, fell into the hands of the enemy. The Turks are said to have used bloodhounds to hunt down those who fled to the woods. So large an emigration reduced to a fearful extent the number of citizens capable of bearing arms. The courage, however, of this remnant was somewhat restored on the 8th by the appearance of the cavalry, who filed through the city with much military clangour and display, and encamped in the meadows near the Tabor. This substantial contradiction of the rumour previously circulated of the total destruction of the imperial army was well calculated to produce a reaction on the public mind; but a still happier impression was made by the arrival on the same day of Ernest Rudiger, Count Stahremberg, another pupil of the Montecuculi school, to whom, on the score of his successful defence of Moravia against the incursions of Tekeli in 1681, the Emperor now confided the command and defence of the city. He lost no time in setting all hands to work on the fortifications; but at first little more could be done than to complete the fixing of the palisades, for the scarcely credible fact is on record that the necessary works for the main defence of the city could not be prosecuted for want of the common and essential tools. The annals of the city are silent as to the parties responsible for this monstrous neglect; but it is certain that if the Turks had not lingered before Raab, or if by greater expedition on the march they had arrived before Vienna a few hours sooner than they did, that city must have fallen without a blow, and with all its treasures, into the hands of the destroyer. It was not till the following day after Stahremberg’s arrival that, by the unwearied exertions of the Imperial Chancellor Benedict Geizer, the contents of the secret archives and the treasury were conveyed away by the Danube under circumstances of imminent peril. The population of all classes, the richest citizens, and even women and ecclesiastics, now laboured unremittingly at the fortifications. The burgomaster, Von Liebenberg, set the example, doing active service with a wheelbarrow. The wood stored for building or fuel without the walls was conveyed into the town; every householder was enjoined to have water ready on his roof, and all persons whose usual employment would be in abeyance during the siege were armed and taken into the regular service of the state. They formed a body of 1200. The most important works were conducted between the 7th and the 12th July, and towards the end of that period almost under the eye of the enemy, who on the 10th had crossed the Austrian frontier at Hungarian Altenburg, destroying everything as he advanced. At Klosterneuburg a number of boats were collected for the construction of a floating bridge there in case of necessity, and the arsenals were well stored with ammunition brought by water from Crems. On the 12th the nearer vicinity of the enemy was evinced by the contracting circle of blazing villages. From the Hungarian frontier to the neighbourhood of the Kahlenberg every unfortified place bore lurid token of Turkish occupation—Baden, Mödling, Ebenfurt, Inzersdorf, Pellendorf, Laxenburg, Laa. Neustadt alone held out by the strength of its walls and the gallantry of its inmates. Perchtolsdorf emulated this example in the first instance, but its ulterior fate demands separate and particular narration.
The Tartar bands in the course of this day ventured as far as St. Marks, and to the present Theresianum. All that man can do to blast the results of human labour and defeat the powers of production inherent in a fruitful soil was performed by this tribe of human locusts. One spot alone was held sacred by them: this was the imperial villa at Sommering, occupying and nearly co-extensive with the site of Soliman’s tent at the former siege. From respect to his memory this building was spared and converted into a magazine. These scenes of desolation were not confined to Lower Austria. The marauders followed the course of the Danube into the Upper Province, and even in Bavaria and Suabia the terror of their rumoured approach was such that many of the inhabitants fled with their moveable effects to Switzerland and over the Rhine. On the 13th July, towards 8 A. M., several bodies of Turkish horse showed themselves on the Wienerberg, whence they spread themselves towards Schönbrunn, Hietzing, Ottakrin, Hernals, and Währing as far as Döbling and Nussdorf. Towards 2 P. M. another numerous body showed itself from St. Marks, which took possession of the whole ground from the so-called Gatterholzel to the Hundsthurm. The first fire from the city was opened on these troops, which caused them to retire behind the enclosures of the numerous vineyards of this neighbourhood. At this, the last available moment, the commandant gave the order, which an hour’s delay would have made impossible of execution, to set fire to the suburbs, the inhabitants of which had on the previous day removed their property into the city. The conflagration was general and effective for its purpose: many costly buildings, public as well as private, were its victims, and many valuable contents still remaining in them shared their fate. A high wind sprung up at the same time, and as much timber was still accumulated near the palisades and up to the walls of the city, it required all the exertions of the commandant and the city authorities to prevent the city itself from sharing the disaster which was intended for its preservation.
Stahremberg has been by some blamed for postponing so long the destruction of the suburbs. Others would have been found to blame him if, while a hope or a possibility remained of an abandonment of their undertaking by the Turks, he had given so many costly public edifices, so many abodes of luxury and comfort, so much wealth, to the flames. To the last moment that hope was probably entertained—that possibility might reasonably be held to exist. The disputes in the Turkish council were no secret, and perhaps were exaggerated in the imperfect reports which reached Vienna. The movement on Vienna might be an empty menace; even if serious, it might be frustrated by a counter-advance of the forces of the Empire. If these or other possible contingencies had occurred, what complaints of ruined proprietors would have assailed him—what a stigma of useless barbarity would chroniclers have attached to the name since become so famous! The circumstances were very different in 1529. The suburban buildings of that day were of far less extent and value, but approached much nearer to the city; and the necessity of their demolition was much more palpable, inasmuch as after the fall of Pesth the advance of such a leader as Soliman was a matter of far greater certainty than that of the Vizier in this instance; the more so because in the former case there was no regular force whatever to oppose the invasion—in the present, an army of some strength, well disciplined, and ably commanded, was in the path of the invader. The ultimate event certainly justified the wary advice of the old Pacha of Pesth, but it was rather in the execution of his plan than in its conception that the Vizier can now be held to have failed. If Vienna had fallen, we should have heard little of the rashness of the rapid and daring march by which so great a blow had been struck, and the operation would have been possibly considered as an anticipation of the system of Napoleon by a semi-barbarian but kindred genius. As such indeed it is now considered by some military critics.
CHAPTER VIII.
From the 13th to the 19th July.
In the evening of the 13th, the infantry of the Imperial army destined for the garrison of Vienna marched into the city; and now all the gates, even including that of the Rothenthurm, by which these troops had entered, were built up and barricaded. On the same day two summonses in the Latin language were thrown over the counterscarp. They remained unanswered. The following were the military arrangements for the defence:—Stahremberg’s principal subordinates in command were the Generals Daun and Serini; the Brigadiers Souches and Scheffenberg; the Marquis of Obizzi, commander of the city guard; Colonels the Duke of Wirtemberg, the Baron von Beck; Counts Dupigny and Heister—all men of experience and proved courage.[10] The affairs of the city were managed by a separate and secret college of Imperial Councillors of State, of which the President was Count Cappliers. The other members were Count Molart, Marshal of Austria; the Baron von Belchamin; Hartmann von Hüttendorf, and the Secretaries Haekl and Fux. Among those who volunteered their services in any capacity, the worthy Bishop of Neustadt, Leopold Count von Kollonitsch, demands special mention. The Bishop of Vienna, Emerich Sinellius, had accompanied the Emperor to Passau, and had thus left the affairs of his see to be administered by one who by his discharge of spiritual functions, by his expenditure on works of charity, and by his attendance on the sick and wounded, earned a reputation as sound and as honourable as could be obtained by others in the battery or the breach. Nor was his ministry confined to these sacred functions. He had served as a Knight of Malta in his youth against the Turks, and his military experience now became scarcely of less value than his spiritual labours. He was among the most active at the side of Stahremberg; was his companion daily at the posts of greatest danger, encouraging the combatants by his example, tending the wounded, and administering the rites of religion to the dying. The systematic arrangements for the extinction of fires, for the collection and distribution of provisions, and for the prevention of extortion during the siege, were all due to this remarkable man. In the crowded hospital, where the mien of death is most hideous, he was to be found dispensing hopes of heaven to those who had no longer hope on earth. Women, children, and old men, usually the burthens of a besieged place, were by him organized and disciplined for services which would have otherwise drawn off defenders from the walls. Through his exertions also a subscription was set on foot, which, backed by his own liberal contributions, and those of other leading men, such as Prince Ferdinand of Schwarzenberg, who contributed 50,000 florins and 3000 eimers of wine, reached the sum of 600,000 florins. The example of this prelate was emulated by Maximilian, Count of Trautmansdorf; Charles, Count of Fünfkirchen; Godfrey, Count of Salzburg; Count Vignoncourt; Matthew, Count of Colalto; Frederick, Baron of Kielmansegg, who besides his services in action assisted the defence by the invention of a powder-mill, and of a hand-grenade. To the above names are to be added those of Zetteritz, Rünnlingen and Rosstauscher. The garrison consisted of 13,000 regular troops from the regiments of Stahremberg (now of the Archduke Louis, No. 8); Mansfield (now Duke of Lucca, No. 24); Souches (now Archduke Rainer, No. 11); Bock (now Grand Duke of Baden, No. 59); Scherfenberg; of the half regiments Pfalz Newburg (now Hohenegg, No. 20); Thungen (now Wellington, No. 42); Heister, and nine companies of Dupigny’s horse; finally of the usual city-guard, 1200 strong. In addition to these, all men capable of bearing arms were called out and divided into companies. These amounted to 2382, and were commanded first by the burgomaster, John Andrew von Liebenberg, and after his death by fever, by his successor, Daniel Focky. Ambros Frank, a member of the inferior town-council, formed a free corps 255 strong, principally composed of tavern-keepers. In the University, 700 students armed themselves and were distributed into three companies under the command of the Rector Magnifiens, Laurence Grüner. The merchants and wholesale dealers formed a company of 250 men. The officials and servants of the Imperial household formed a corps of nearly 1000 men, commanded by Maximilian, Count of Trautmansdorf. Finally, many guilds and corporations formed themselves into companies either separate or conjoined. Thus, for example, the butchers with the brewers, 294 strong. The bakers, 150. The shoemakers, 288. The remaining handicraftsmen, 300 in number, were distributed into two companies; some others were employed in the arsenals. The guilds furnished in all 1293 men. The number under arms altogether amounted to about 20,000. The remaining population was not less than 60,000 souls.
At sunrise of the 14th July the main force of the enemy showed itself on the heights of the Wienerberg. It was difficult for the most practised eye to distinguish particular objects from amidst the multitudinous crowd of men, horses, camels, and carriages. The mass extended itself from the Lauer wood to near the Hundsthurm, by Gumpendorf, Penzing, Ottakring, Hernals, Währing and Döbling, towards Nussdorf and the Danube, in a circuit of some 25,000 paces. The camp was marked out in the form of a half-moon. In a few hours 25,000 tents had risen from the ground. That of the Vizier was pitched on the high ground in the present suburb of St. Ulric, behind the walls of the houses which had been burned. It rivalled in beauty and splendour of decoration Soliman’s famous pavilion of 1529, being of green silk worked with gold and silver, and adorned within with pearls, precious stones, and carpets, and contained in a central sanctuary the sacred standard of the Prophet. Within its precincts were baths, fountains, and flower-gardens, and even a menagerie. In respect of its numerous alleys and compartments, it was likened to a town of canvas. The value of it with its contents was estimated at a million dollars. Under St. Ulric, towards the Burg gate, the Aga of the Janissaries had arrayed his forces: the precincts of St. Ulric itself were occupied by the Tartars under Kara Mehemed. The other Pachas were stationed opposite the Kärnthner and Stuben gates, and the city was threatened from five distinct quarters, though it was soon easy to perceive that the main attack would be directed against the Burg and the Löbelbastion. The first care of the Turks was to plunder and destroy the few buildings which had escaped destruction in the suburbs.
The church of the Servites in the Rossau was the only edifice that escaped, and this exception was due to a singular incident. Its distance from the town had preserved it from the general conflagration. The Turks are said to have taken the Patriarchs depicted on the ceiling, with their long beards and Oriental costume, for followers of Mahomet, and under this misapprehension to have spared the church. Such is the solution of the fact to be found in all the accounts of the time, but it is probable that there was no misapprehension in the case. The Mussulman holds the Jewish Patriarchs in as much respect as does the Christian, and has even adopted their names, for Ibrahim is nothing but Abraham, Musa Moses, &c. &c. It is not therefore necessary to suppose that the Turks entertained the absurd notion imputed to them that a Christian temple could have been decorated with portraits of Mahometan saints.