The King’s own account of this singular interview is doubtless more to be depended upon than the numerous Austrian relations, which extol the condescension and cordiality of the Emperor. “Of the Electors, the Emperor was only accompanied by the Bavarian. Saxony had already quitted him. He had in his suite some fifty horsemen, employés, and ministers of his court. He was preceded by trumpets, and followed by body guards and ten foot attendants. I will not draw you a portrait of the Emperor, for he is well known. He was mounted on a Spanish bay horse. He wore an embroidered juste au corps, a French hat, with an agrafe and red and white plumes; a belt mounted with sapphires and diamonds; a sword the same. I made him my compliments in Latin, and in few words.[17] He answered in prepared phrases in the same language. Being thus facing each other, I presented to him my son, who advanced and saluted him. The Emperor did not even put his hand to his hat. I remained like one terrified. He used the same behaviour towards the senators and Hetmans, and even towards his connexion the prince palatine of Belz.[18] To avoid scandal and public remarks, I addressed a few more words to the Emperor, after which I turned my horse round; we saluted, and I retook the route for my camp. The Palatine of Russia[19] showed my army to the Emperor, at his desire; but our people have been much provoked, and complain loudly that the Emperor did not deign to thank them, even with his hat, for all their pains and privations. Since this separation, every thing has suddenly changed; it is as if they knew us no longer. They give us neither forage nor provisions. The Pope had sent money for these to the Abbé Buonvisi, but he is stopped at Lintz.”
The King does not mention the words of his reply to the Emperor’s harangue, “I am glad, Sire, to have rendered you this small service.” The Emperor is said two days afterwards to have sent, with a present of a sword for Prince James, a clumsy apology for the silence and coldness of his demeanour.
We cannot certainly judge of passages like these by the standard of our present modes of European thought and action. There may be circumstances under which these apparent air-bubbles become ponderable realities. In dealing, for instance, with the Emperor of China, the slightest abandonment of a point of etiquette might involve the most serious consequences, and the concession of a diplomatist could perhaps only be retrieved by the guns of an admiral. At the worst we might smile at the pedantic tenacity of the courts of Vienna or Versailles of the seventeenth century on points of ceremonial and precedence, but no such considerations can temper the indignation which the perusal of Sobieski’s letters excites, at the practical and substantial ingratitude and neglect he experienced at the hands of Austria from the moment that his services ceased to be indispensable. That some quarrels and jealousies should arise from the juxtaposition of the Sclavonic and Teutonic elements was perhaps inevitable. To be cheated, starved, and neglected, is usually the lot of armies serving in the territory of an ally whom they cannot openly coerce and pillage; but the Polish sovereign had to endure more than this. His sick were denied boats to remove them down the river from the pestilential atmosphere of the camp; his dead, even the officers, were denied burial in the public cemeteries. The starving soldier who approached the town in search of provisions was threatened to be fired upon. The baggage, including that of the King, was pillaged—the horses of stragglers on their road to rejoin the army carried off by force—men on guard over the guns they had taken, robbed of their effects; and every complaint treated with cold neglect and every requisition dismissed almost without an answer. The royal tents, which before the battle, though, as the King observes, spacious enough, could not contain the throng of distinguished visitors, were now deserted, and the demeanour of the Duke of Lorraine himself and every other Austrian authority, showed that this treatment was deliberate and systematic. It may have been some satisfaction to Sobieski, it almost becomes one to his admirers now, to find that the Austrian government was impartial in its ingratitude, and exercised on others, besides the Poles, its singular talent for disgusting and offending those who had done it service. The Elector of Saxony, as we have seen, lost no time in withdrawing his person and his troops. The father Aviano departed for Italy, disgusted with the intrigues of the court and the licence of the camp. The Duke of Saxe Lauenburg retired, offended by the only instance in which the Emperor appears to have shown a creditable sense of his obligations. The hero of the defence, Count Stahremberg, was justly rewarded with 100,000 crowns, the golden fleece, and the rank of field-marshal. The Duke of Saxe Lauenburg, who had held high command in the late action, considered himself ill-used by this promotion over his head of an officer inferior to himself, as also to Caprara and to Leslie, in length of service. Lastly, the Duke of Lorraine himself had as little reason as any one to be satisfied. The King writes of him later, more in pity than in anger, “the poor devil has neither any of the spoils of war, nor any gratification from the Emperor.” We have indeed met with no instance but that of Stahremberg in which any signal mark of favour or munificence was bestowed on any party conspicuous in the late transactions. Gold medals and nominations to the dignity of state counsellor were indeed awarded to many of the city officials. The young volunteer, Eugene, was attached to the service for which he had quitted that of France by his nomination to the Colonelcy of a regiment of dragoons which still bears his name; but this promotion only took place in December, and was rather a retaining fee to a young man of high rank and promise than a reward for positive service. Kollonitsch received a cardinal’s hat from the Pope; and Daun, Sereni, and other distinguished officers, obtained from the liberality of the city rewards in plate and money, more commensurate with the exhausted state of the municipal exchequer than with the value of their services; the sums varying from 400 rix-dollars to 100 florins.
The state of affairs above described affords some reason for surprise, that the King should have persevered any further in his co-operation with the Imperial troops. He was as free to depart as the Emperor of Saxony. The Abbé Coyer supposes that he still entertained hopes of procuring a bride for his son in the person of an Austrian Archduchess, and, as a consequence of such a connexion, the establishment of his descendants on an hereditary throne in Poland. The treatment, however, which he experienced at the hands of Austria could have left him little reliance on such expectations, and his letters to the Queen indicate a higher motive for his perseverance, in a sense of the obligation of the oath by which he had bound himself to the assistance of the Emperor. This, and his appetite for military success, are sufficient to account for his endurance. The Emperor, on the other hand, if we may trust the Abbé, would have heard of his departure for Warsaw with pleasure, being advised of some Hungarian intrigues for raising up a rival to Tekeli in the person of the young Prince James, and placing him on the throne of Hungary. There is no evidence to show that Sobieski was influenced by any ambition but that of serving the common cause of Christianity, and adding to the military laurels which, in his case, almost hid the crown. One satisfaction Sobieski allowed himself in writing an autograph letter to the King of France, to whom, as the writer well knew, the tidings it contained would be gall and wormwood. The King also made over to the Elector of Bavaria some choice articles of the Turkish plunder, in the hope that, through him, they might find their way to the Dauphiness of France, and to the Tuileries. The following Pasquinade of the time is neat and bitter enough to deserve insertion here:—
Tria Miranda!
Omnes Christiani arma sumunt contra Turcam,
Præter Christianissimum.
Omnes filii Ecclesiæ bellum contra Turcam parant,
Præter Primogenitum.