Surrounded by a vast crowd, who hailed him with enthusiastic acclamations as their deliverer, and thronged each other with a zeal approaching adoration, to kiss his hand or his stirrup, Sobieski entered Vienna through the breach on the morning of September 13, in company with the Duke of Lorraine and the electoral Prince of Bavaria, and with the horsetails found before the tent of the vizir borne in triumph before him; and having met and saluted Stahrenberg, repaired with him to a chapel in the church of the Augustin friars, to return thanks for the victory. As he entered the church, a priest cried aloud in an ecstacy of fervour—"There was a man sent from God whose name was John," and this text, which in past ages had been applied to the Hungarian paladin, John Hunyades, was again employed by the preachers throughout Europe, in celebration of the new champion of Christendom, John Sobieski. Far different to the entry of the Polish king was the return of the Emperor Leopold to his rescued capital. He had quitted it as a fugitive, amid the execrations of the people, who accused him of having drawn on them the storm of invasion, without providing means to ward off the destruction which threatened them; and having descended the Danube in a boat, he re-entered the city on the 14th in the guise of a penitent, proceeding on foot, with a taper in his hand, to the cathedral of St Stephen, where he knelt before the high altar in acknowledgement of his deliverance. But neither from his misfortunes, nor from his returning prosperity, had Leopold learned the lesson of gratitude or humility. He even attempted at first to evade an interview with Sobieski, on the ground that an elective king had never been received on terms of equality by an emperor of Germany: and, when this unworthy plea was overruled by the honest indignation of the Duke of Lorraine, the meeting of the two monarchs was formal and embarrassed: and Sobieski, disgusted at the meanness and arrogance of the prince who owed to him the preservation of his capital and throne, hastily cut short the conference, by deputing to his chancellor Zaluski the task of showing to Leopold the troops who had saved his empire; and departed on the 17th with his noble colleague in arms, the Duke of Lorraine, to follow up their triumphs by attacking the Turks in Hungary.
The battle of Vienna effectually broke the spell of the Ottoman military ascendancy, which for near three centuries had held Europe in awe;—and though the energies of the empire, and the efficacy of its institutions, had long been gradually decaying, it was this great blow which first revealed the secret of its impaired strength. The treaty of Zurawno with Poland in 1676, had raised the Ottoman dominions to the highest point of territorial extent which they ever attained. From the time of the reunion of the empire, after the confusion following the defeat of Bayezid I. by Timour, every reign had seen its boundaries enlarged by successive acquisitions; and if we except the voluntary abandonment, in 1636, of the remote and unprofitable province of Yemen, the horsetails had never receded from any territory on which they had been planted in token of permanent occupation. Besides the vast territories which were under the immediate rule of pashas sent from the Porte, and which the land and capitation taxes (ssalyaneh and kharatch,) the khan of the Krim Tartars, the otaman of the Cossacks, the vassal princes of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, the hereditary chiefs of the Circassian and Koordish tribes, and the rulers of the Barbary regencies, were all "under the shadow of the imperial horsetails," and paid tribute and allegiance to the sultan, who might boast, with no less justice than did the monarchs of the Seljookian Turks of old, that a crowd of princes arose from the dust of his footsteps. During the reign of Mohammed IV., the last relics of Venetian rule in the Levant had been extirpated by the conquest of Candia; the frontiers in Hungary and Transylvania had been strengthened by the acquisition of the important fortresses of Grosswardein and Neuhausel, with the territory attached to them; while Poland had been deprived of the province through which she had access to the undefended points of the Ottoman frontier, and the Cossacks, from restless and intractable enemies, had been converted into friends and auxiliaries. In the domestic administration, also, the wisdom and clemency of Ahmed-Kiuprili, supported by a corresponding disposition on the part of the sultan, who was naturally averse to measures of severity, had introduced a spirit of moderation and equity unknown in the Ottoman annals. Such was the condition of the foreign relations and internal government of the Turkish empire at the juncture immediately preceding the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili, whose life closed (as mentioned above) within a few days of the conclusion of the peace of Zurawno:—and the coincidence of this highest point of territorial aggrandizement and domestic prosperity, with the last days of the great minister who had so principal a share in producing them, would almost justify the superstitious belief, that the star of the Kiuprilis was in sooth the protecting talisman of the Ottoman state, and inseparably connected with its welfare and splendour.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The Poles were sometimes called Lechi, from Lech, the name of one of their ancient kings.
[C] Von Hammer describes him, without quoting his authority, as of lofty stature, and extremely fair complexion; but Rycaut's personal acquaintance insures his correctness.
[D] He subsequently became grand-vizir, and was killed at the battle of Salankaman in 1691.
[E] This name in western parlance would be Gabriel de Bethlen; in Hungary, the Christian follows the surname.
[F] The anonymous biographer of Tekoeli, believed to be M. Leclerc.
[G] After the defeat of the Turks, Scherban Cantacuzene opened a correspondence with the Emperor and the King of Poland, setting forth his hereditary claim to the imperial crown of Constantinople in the event of their expulsion from Europe! but his intrigues became known to the Ottoman ministry, and he is supposed to have been taken off by poison.
[H] A crimson banner was again sent to Rome as the Sandjak-shereef, as the green one of Hussein had been after the victory of Choczim.