Hawthorne.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Fact.
CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.
No. X.
THE SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA.
The Ottoman empire, exhausted by its strenuous and long-continued efforts in the death-struggle of Candia, had need of peace and repose to recruit its resources; but the calm was not of long duration. A fresh complication of interests was now arising in the north, which, by involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. Since the ill-judged and unfortunate invasion by Sultan Osman II., in 1620 the good understanding between Poland and the Porte had continued undisturbed, save by the occasional inroads of the Crim Tartars on the one side, and the Cossacks of the Dniepr on the other, which neither government was able entirely to restrain. But the oppression to which the Polish nobles attempted to subject their Cossack allies, whom they pretended to regard as serfs and vassals, was intolerable to these freeborn sons of the steppe; and an universal revolt at length broke out, which was the beginning of the evil days of Poland. For nearly twenty years, under the feeble rule of John Casimer, the country was desolated with sanguinary civil wars; the Czar Alexis Mikhailowitz, eager to regain the rich provinces lost by Russia during the reign of his father, at length appeared in the field as the protector of the Cossacks; and, in 1656, the greater part of their body, with the Ataman Bogdan Khmielniçki at their head, formally transferred their allegiance to the Russian sceptre. This fatal blow, which in effect turned the balance of power, so long fluctuating between Poland and Russia, in favour of the latter, failed, however, to teach moderation to the Polish aristocracy; and the remainder of the Cossacks, who still continued in their ancient seats under the Ataman Doroszenko, finding themselves menaced by a fresh attack, embraced the resolution of "placing themselves under the shadow of the horsetails," by becoming the voluntary vassals of the Porte, of which they had so long been the inveterate enemies. In spite of the violent reclamations of the Polish envoy Wizoçki, the offer was at once accepted, and a mace and kaftan of honour sent to the ataman as ensigns of investiture, while the Poles were warned to desist from hostilities against the subjects of the sultan. The refusal to accede to this requisition produced an instant declaration of war, addressed in an autograph letter from Kiuprili to the grand chancellor of Poland, and followed up, in the spring of 1672, by the march of an army of 100,000 men for Podolia. The sultan himself took the field for the first time, attended by Kiuprili and the other vizirs of the divan, and carrying with him his court and harem, and the whole host, after a march of four months from Adrianople, crossed the Dniester in the first days of August.
The distracted state of Poland, where the helpless Michael Coribut Wieçnowiçki bore but the empty title of king, precluded the possibility of even an attempt at resistance, and the grand marshal of the kingdom, the heroic John Sobieski, who, with only 6000 men, had held his ground against the Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars, through the preceding winter, was compelled to withdraw from Podolia. The whole province was speedily overrun; the fortresses of Kaminiec and Leopol were yielded almost without defence; and the king, terrified at the progress of the invaders, sued for peace, which was signed September 18, 1672, in the Turkish camp at Buczacz. Kaminiec, Podolia, and the Cossack territory, were by this act ceded to the Porte, besides an annual tribute from Poland of 220,000 ducats; and Mohammed, having caused proclamation to be made by the criers that "pardon for his offences had been granted to the rebel kral of the Leh,"[B] (Poles,) returned in triumph to Adrianople, leaving his army in winter quarters on the Danube.