Previous precaution, or a few moments’ halt at St. Ulric, enabled the Vizier to save the sacred standard of the Prophet. One of the many standards captured was sent by Sobieski to the Pope under the supposition that it was the famous Palladium in question, but this proved to be a mistake. It is probable also that the mass of the treasure, which is supposed to have been very great in the Vizier’s exchequer, had been removed; and we learn from the King of Poland’s letters that considerable sums of coin were hastily divided among the Vizier’s attendants at the last moment, and carried off. No great amount of coin or bullion was found in the tents. Every other item in the long catalogue of the treasures and luxuries which the Vizier had accumulated round his person fell into the hands of the Poles. The Turks continued their flight without intermission in the direction of Raab, where the force still employed in the blockade of that fortress afforded them a rallying point. It was, however, impossible for the Christian leaders to assure themselves at so late an hour of the full extent of the enemy’s discomfiture, or even to consider themselves secure against a night attack. Great exertions were therefore made both by the King and the Duke to keep their troops well in hand through the night. The King, whose advance had led him to the very centre of the camp, found it necessary to resort to threats of summary and capital punishment to prevent his whole army from dispersing itself at once to gather the rich harvest of the Turkish tents. These threats were, as may be imagined, only partially effectual. Tents guarded in front were cut open from behind, and discipline as usual gave way before the attraction of spoil. The Germans had no such immediate opportunities for plunder. Two regiments only of Austrian dragoons were despatched in pursuit as far as the Fischa stream. The slaughter of this great battle was not great in proportion to the numbers engaged and the results obtained. The loss of the Turks has been computed at 25,000 men. Among these was that body of Janissaries, who were forgotten, and left without orders in the trenches, and were cut to pieces during the night. The King describes the Turks as defending themselves desperately even in full flight. In this point of view, he says, they made the finest retreat in the world. That of the Christians has been stated at 1000 killed and 3000 wounded, which is probably far less than the truth, for the Poles alone lost 100 officers, among them some of their first nobles. In the centre the loss of the Bavarians was probably trifling, but on the left the struggle was long and severe. A Prince of Croy fell here in the early part of the action. In the Vizier’s encampment was found the Polish envoy Proski, who, from the period of his sovereign’s junction with Austria, had been kept in fetters, under constant menace of the sabre or the bowstring, and now owed his life and liberation to the confusion of the moment. Kunitz also, an agent in Caprara’s suite, who had been detained in the Turkish camp, and had found means to send occasional intelligence to Stahremberg, escaped in a Turkish disguise during the action. A Polish writer, Rubinkoski, gives a rough list of the artillery and its appurtenances abandoned in the lines:—60 guns of 48 lbs., 60 of 24 lbs., 150 of various lesser calibre, 40 mortars, 9000 ammunition waggons, 100,000 oxen, 25,000 tents, 1,000,000 lbs. of powder. To this may be added 10,000 camels, 5000 oxen, mules, sheep, &c., and immense stores of other provision. Among those accidental results of events which the political economist and the philosopher loves to notice, is the fact that the popular use of coffee in Germany is to be dated from this period, and is due to the plunder of the Turkish camp. Stahremberg’s brave and faithful messenger, Kolschitzki, was rewarded by permission to set up the first coffee-house in Vienna. The head of the corporation of coffee providers is bound to this day to have in his house a portrait of this patriarch of his profession.[15] Another inventory of the siege-stores actually brought into the arsenal of Vienna shows a considerable amount, as well as variety of articles, but can give but an imperfect notion of the vast provision accumulated, as the army authorities could but glean after the plunderers of the three first days. The King writes to his wife that the quantity of ammunition saved was at most a third of the whole, and says that the continual explosions in the camp were like the last judgment. His letters give some very amusing details of that portion of the spoils of the Vizier’s tent which he contrived to rescue for his own share from the fangs of his officers. They illustrate also the character of the man whose penetralia were thus rudely exposed to investigation, and show that Kara Mustapha had superadded every description of refinement to the simpler sensuality of the East. Tissues and carpets and furs are natural appendages of Oriental rank and wealth, and jewelled arms and quivers, studded with rubies and pearls, were equally consistent with his functions as commander of the armies of the faithful. Baths, fountains, a rabbit warren, and a menagerie, were found within the encampment. A parrot took wing and foiled the pursuit of the soldiers. An ostrich had been beheaded by the Vizier’s own hand, as if it had been a woman of the harem, to prevent its falling into Christian hands. This rarity had been taken from the Imperial Menagerie at the Favorita, where the King mentions having found a famished lioness and a small body of Janissaries, who had been left behind at that post, and still held out some days after the action. The Janissaries surrendered to the personal summons of the King. Their lives were spared, and the lioness fed by order of the good-natured conqueror. “The Vizier,” writes the King, “is a galant homme, and has made us fine presents: everything in particular which came near his person is of the most mignon and refined description. Father Louis will have reason to rejoice, for I have in my possession the medicine chest of the Vizier. Among its contents are oils, and gums, and balms, which Pecovini[16] is never tired of admiring. Among other things we have found some rare fishes called Eperlans de mer. Informez-vous-en, mon cœur, chez le Père Louis; ce doit être une chose précieuse pour rechauffer les entrailles.” Among the treasures of the Vizier, diamonds were found in great profusion; many, set in girdles and otherwise, fell into the hands of the King, and many more carried off by the officers and soldiers. The King remarks that they were not used for ornament by the Turks of his day, and conjectures that they were destined to adorn the ladies of Vienna when transferred to the harems of the Vizier and his Pachas.
Among other trophies of interest, Roman Catholic historians have particularized an oaken cross six ells in height, remarkable from the fact that in the camp of the infidel it was set up for the daily celebration of mass by one of their Christian allies, Servanus Kantacuzenos, Prince of Wallachia. A chapel was built for it in the so-called Gatterholz, near Schönbrunn, on the spot where it had thus braved the scoffs of the Moslem. It was stolen thence in 1785.
As far as a considerable lapse of intervening years permits us to decide, this great action appears to have been planned with surpassing judgment, and conducted with that steady valour and perseverance on the part both of officers and men, to give scope and effect to which all rules of war were invented, and without which these rules are useless. History presents few instances in which an extensive operation has been conducted with such cordial concert between bodies of different nations commanded in several cases by their respective sovereigns, and in which jealousies of precedence and professional rivalries appear to have been so completely laid aside during the action. The only instance of any apparent deficiency in this respect is that of a refusal of the Prince of Waldeck to support an attack directed by the Duke of Lorraine; but even in this case there is every reason to suppose that he considered it to involve a departure from the earnest injunctions of the chief in command, the King, who had directed him to keep his troops in hand for the support of the right wing. When the discomfiture of the Polish cavalry had compromised the safety of that wing, and with it the fate of the battle, we find the German troops, probably the Bavarians, prompt and efficient to the rescue; and on the left, Saxons, intermingled with Austrians, fought together, as if under one common banner. The stout elector himself was in the thickest of the fray. He is said to have been splashed with Turkish blood so as scarcely to be recognised. With the exception of the first somewhat rash attack of the Poles, there is no appearance of any indulgence of that untempered enthusiasm which the occasion might have excused. Order and steadiness seem to have pervaded the whole area of the Christian operations. Attacks were everywhere duly supported, failures retrieved, and obstacles of ground successively overcome, in a manner which showed a grave consciousness of the magnitude of the stake at issue.
CHAPTER XVI.
September 13.
At sunrise of the 13th the Viennese rushed forth in crowds to taste the first sweets of their liberation from a two months’ imprisonment. The only gate yet open, the Stuben, was soon clogged with the multitude, and the greater number clambered over the rubbish of the breaches, eager to gratify in the Turkish camp their curiosity, or their rapacity, or both. With respect to the more transportable articles of value, the Pole had been before them; but in the article of provisions there was yet much for hungry men to glean. Prices rapidly fell, and superfluity succeeded to starvation.
Among those who sought the camp with other purposes than plunder or curiosity, was the good Bishop Kollonitsch. His inexhaustible benevolence found employment there in collecting and saving some 500 infants, whose mothers, many of them, as is supposed, Turkish women, had perished by the swords of their ruthless masters. The King mentions one instance of a beautiful child whom he saw lying with its skull cloven; but in general even Turkish inhumanity had shrunk from the task of child-murder. These, with many half-murdered mothers and some Christian adult survivors of the massacre, the Bishop transported to the city in carriages, at his own cost, and took measures for the future support and education of the infants thus rescued. Popes may spare themselves the trouble of the forms, the ceremonies, and the intrigues necessary for adding such names as that of Kollonitsch to the list of saints in the Romish calendar: the recital of these actions puts the Devil’s advocate out of court, and the simple record, though traced by a Protestant pen, is their best canonization. Another worthy member of the church, the Father Aviano, had recently performed a service for which the Duke of Lorraine and the army had doubtless reason to thank him. As confessor to the Emperor he had used his influence to prevent the latter from embarrassing the army with his presence at Crems, and distracting men and officers from their duty by the etiquettes and ceremonies which that presence would have inflicted, and the intrigues which it would have fostered. On the news, however, of the victory, the Emperor had dropped down the river as far as Durrenstein, and thither the Duke of Lorraine despatched the Count Auersperg with the details of the late occurrences. At ten A. M. of the 13th, the Commandant Stahremberg issued forth from the walls he had so stoutly defended to visit the camp and exchange congratulations with the leaders of the liberating army. On this morning, too, the Duke of Lorraine and the Elector of Saxony met with the King of Poland for the first time since the mass of the Kahlenberg. The meeting between all these worthies had every appearance, in the first instance, of cordiality. They perambulated the camp and the approaches together amid the acclamations of the troops; but when they entered the town, the King had the shrewdness soon to perceive that, though the gratitude of the people was as warm as the cordial and kindly nature of the Viennese could make it, its full expression was checked by authority. In two churches which he entered the people pressed to kiss his hand; but when a few voices uttered the vivat, which had evidently been forbidden by the police, he recognised at once in the clouded mien of the Austrian authorities that jealousy and ingratitude which proved afterwards the only guerdon of his vast services. At an angle of the wall between the Burg and Scottish gates, the King, wearied by the heat of the day, rested for awhile; a stone, with his name inscribed, marked the spot till the year 1809, when the French engineers blew up the rampart. In one of the above-mentioned churches, that of the Augustines, a grand Te Deum was sung. The Abbé Coyer remarks that the magistracy were absent from this ceremony, which perhaps explains a passage in a letter of the King, in which he says:—“I perceive that Stahremberg is not on a good understanding with the magistrates of the city.” The sermon was preached from the famous text—“There was a man sent from God, and his name was John”—a happy plagiarism from the quotation of Scripture by Pope Pius V. on the occasion of the victory of Lepanto. The service concluded, 300 cannon shots from the ramparts spread wide the intelligence of the relief of the city—no superfluous announcement; for in Wiener Neustadt and other places the trembling inhabitants had drawn a contrary conclusion from the sudden cessation of the firing, and thought the city lost. The King, after dining with the commandant, only delayed his departure to hold a long discourse with a man of much accomplishment, the court interpreter, Meninski, whose conversation had probably more charms for him than that of the dull notabilities by whom he was surrounded. He was himself a good linguist, and a proficient in the Turkish language. This over, he hastened to quit the scene of cold civilities for the camp. He was escorted to the gates by the populace. It may be mentioned that during the dinner an alarm was raised that the Turks had rallied, and were advancing. The King desired his officers present to leave the feast and mount, and was doubtless preparing to follow, when they returned with assurance of the falsehood of the report. This circumstance is mentioned in a very simple and detailed diary of the siege by the Doctor of Laws, Nicholas Hocke, one of the most curious of the many contemporary publications. The electors of Saxony and Bavaria appear to have been exempt from any share of the feeling of jealousy manifested by Austria. Both in the first hour of enthusiasm offered to accompany the King to the end of the world. The former indeed soon found his appetite for a Hungarian campaign subside, and shortly withdrew with his army to his electoral dominions. The younger Bavarian thought fit to pass a longer apprenticeship under so great a master in the art of war. The Duke of Lorraine had little exercise of his own discretion; he knew too well by what tenure the command of the army of Austria was held to do otherwise than reflect the livid colour of the spirit in which the hereditary sovereign of the House of Hapsburg contemplated the elective King of Poland. The King’s letters are full of complaints of the unworthy treatment which he daily received from the Duke and his subordinates; but we may charitably ascribe such mean conduct on the part of so great a commander to influence from above. In an early letter the King describes him by report as speaking little, and timidly, from the constant dread of infringing on the instructions of the court. Some jealous feeling was doubtless excited, and might be excused by the fact that the chances of battle had given the Polish sovereign and his army prior and exclusive possession of the spoils.
The King, immediately on his return to his quarters, directed a removal of them in advance. Some of his cavalry indeed were already on the track of the enemy, killing and taking prisoners in great numbers. There were cogent reasons, both political as well as military, for his removing himself as soon as possible from the immediate neighbourhood of Vienna. The heat of the autumnal season had made the camp and its environs one vast charnel, swarming with flies and vermin. This circumstance had caused the Duke of Lorraine to transfer his quarters from Ebersdorf to Mansdorf, and would alone have induced the King to follow such example. He was however also aware that his presence at Vienna was an obstacle to the expected entrance of the Emperor, who shrunk from any public acknowledgment of the services which had saved his crown from danger and his capital from destruction, at the expense of the most trifling infringement of etiquette, or the momentary concession of a point of which he was peculiarly tenacious. The practice, as regarded the reception of crowned heads in general, offered no difficulty. It was not derogatory to the Imperial dignity in French phraseology to give them the right; but the claim of an elective monarch to this distinction had always been disputed by Austria. “Je suis fort aise,” writes the King, “d’éviter toutes ces cérémonies.” He moved to the neighbourhood of Schwechat in the first instance. He writes on the 17th from Schonau, some fifteen miles from Vienna, on the road to Presburg, describing the interview which, after the removal of difficulties, did take place with the Emperor. The latter, having ascertained the departure of the King, landed at Nussdorf on the 19th, where he was received by the princes and other commanders of the German troops. After inspecting the camp and defences, he attended a solemn thanksgiving in the cathedral, at which the bishop Kollonitsch presided, and reviewed and thanked the burgher guard and free companies, &c. who lined the streets. On the 15th he reviewed the Bavarian forces near St. Marx, and afterwards took heart of grace and accomplished the dreaded interview with the King at Schwechat. That it ever took place at all was due, however, to the straightforward proceeding of the King, who, finding himself put off with excuses of the clumsiest manufacture, asked the courtier Schafgotsch the plain question whether the ceremonial of the right hand was or was not the cause of the delay. He extorted for once the plain answer, Yes, and gravely proposed an expedient for obviating the difficulty, which was, that the two sovereigns should meet face to face on horseback, and remain in that position, at the head the one of his army, the other of his suite; the one attended by his son, the other, as the head of the Empire, by the Electors. This happy expedient was accepted, and the interview took place.