Part 20 (1/2)
Indeed, Leopold presented his son in a manner which seemed to claim the crown for him as his hereditary right, and the diet did not resist that claim. France, rich and powerful, with marvelous energy breasted her host of foes. All Europe was in a blaze. The war raged on the ocean, over the marshes of Holland, along the banks of the Rhine, upon the plains of Italy, through the defiles of the Alps and far away on the steppes of Hungary and the sh.o.r.es of the Euxine. To all these points the emperor was compelled to send his troops. Year after year of carnage and woe rolled on, during which hardly a happy family could be found in all Europe.
”Man's inhumanity to man Made countless millions mourn.”
At last all parties became weary of the war, and none of the powers having gained any thing of any importance by these long years of crime and misery, for which Louis XIV., as the aggressor, is mainly responsible, peace was signed on the 30th of October, 1697. One important thing, indeed, had been accomplished. The rapacious Louis XIV.
had been checked in his career of spoliation. But his insatiate ambition was by no means subdued. He desired peace only that he might more successfully prosecute his plans of aggrandizement. He soon, by his system of robbery, involved Europe again in war. Perhaps no man has ever lived who has caused more b.l.o.o.d.y deaths and more wide-spread destruction of human happiness than Louis XIV. We wonder not that in the French Revolution an exasperated people should have rifled his sepulcher and spurned his skull over the pavements as a foot-ball.
Leopold, during the progress of these wars, by the aid of the armies which the empire furnished him, recovered all of Hungary and Transylvania, driving the Turks beyond the Danube. But the proud Hungarian n.o.bles were about as much opposed to the rule of the Austrian king as to that of the Turkish sultan. The Protestants gained but little by the change, for the Mohammedan was about as tolerant as the papist.
They all suspected Leopold of the design of establis.h.i.+ng over them despotic power, and they formed a secret confederacy for their own protection. Leopold, released from his warfare against France and the Turks, was now anxious to consolidate his power in Hungary, and justly regarding the Roman Catholic religion as the great bulwark against liberty, encouraged the Catholics to persecute the Protestants.
Leopold took advantage of this conspiracy to march an army into Hungary, and attacking the discontented n.o.bles, who had raised an army, he crushed them with terrible severity. No mercy was shown. He exhausted the energies of confiscation, exile and the scaffold upon his foes; and then, having intimidated all so that no one dared to murmur, declared the monarchy of Hungary no longer elective but hereditary, like that of Bohemia. He even had the a.s.surance to summon a diet of the n.o.bles to confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights.
The n.o.bles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into Transylvania. The despot then issued an insulting and menacing proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from G.o.d, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of his vengeance. He then extorted a large contribution of money from the kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to awe them into subjection.
This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the whole form of government of the kingdom, and establis.h.i.+ng an unlimited despotism. He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the Protestant religion. The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were inst.i.tuted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then, as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life. All the nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land.
Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil and religious outrages. They combined, and were aided both by France and Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they might enrich themselves by the spoils. A n.o.ble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots. Victory followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reestablish the ancient laws which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them.
But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious promises. They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli. The emperor, unable to meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg.
But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty thousand men. The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command of the imperial troops, was compelled to retreat precipitately before outnumbering foes, and he fled upon the Danube, pursued by the combined Hungarians and Turks, until he found refuge within the walls of Vienna.
The city was quite unprepared for resistance, its fortifications being dilapidated, and its garrison feeble. Universal consternation seized the inhabitants. All along the valley of the Danube the population fled in terror before the advance of the Turks. Leopold, with his family, at midnight, departed ingloriously from the city, to seek a distant refuge.
The citizens followed the example of their sovereign, and all the roads leading westward and northward from the city were crowded with fugitives, in carriages, on horseback and on foot, and with all kinds of vehicles laden with the treasures of the metropolis. The churches were filled with the sick and the aged, pathetically imploring the protection of Heaven.
The Duke of Lorraine conducted with great energy, repairing the dilapidated fortifications, stationing in posts of peril the veteran troops, and marshaling the citizens and the students to cooperate with the garrison. On the 14th of July, 1682, the banners of the advance guard of the Turkish army were seen from the walls of Vienna. Soon the whole mighty host, like an inundation, came surging on, and, surrounding the city, invested it on all sides. The terrific a.s.sault from innumerable batteries immediately commenced. The besieged were soon reduced to the last extremity for want of provisions, and famine and pestilence rioting within the walls, destroyed more than the shot of the enemy. The suburbs were destroyed, the princ.i.p.al outworks taken, several breaches were battered in the walls, and the terrified inhabitants were hourly in expectation that the city would be taken by storm. There can not be, this side of the world of woe, any thing more terrible than such an event.
The emperor, in his terror, had dispatched envoys all over Germany to rally troops for the defense of Vienna and the empire. He himself had hastened to Poland, where, with frantic intreaties, he pressed the king, the renowned John Sobieski, whose very name was a terror, to rush to his relief. Sobieski left orders for a powerful army immediately to commence their march. But, without waiting for their comparatively slow movements, he placed himself at the head of three thousand Polish hors.e.m.e.n, and, without inc.u.mbering himself with luggage, like the sweep of the whirlwind traversed Silesia and Moravia, and reached Tulen, on the banks of the Danube, about twenty miles above Vienna. He had been told by the emperor that here he would find an army awaiting him, and a bridge constructed, by which he could cross the stream. But, to his bitter disappointment, he found no army, and the bridge unfinished.
Indignantly he exclaimed,
”What does the emperor mean? Does he think me a mere adventurer? I left my own army that I might take command of his. It is not for myself that I fight, but for him.”
Notwithstanding this disappointment, he called into requisition all his energies to meet the crisis. The bridge was pushed forward to its completion. The loitering German troops were hurried on to the rendezvous. After a few days the Polish troops, by forced marches, arrived, and Sobieski found himself at the head of sixty thousand men, experienced soldiers, and well supplied with all the munitions of war.
On the 11th of September the inhabitants of the city were overjoyed, in descrying from the towers of the city, in the distance, the approaching banners of the Polish and German army. Sobieski ascended an elevation, and long and carefully scrutinized the position of the besieging host.
He then calmly remarked,
”The grand vizier has selected a bad position. I understand him. He is ignorant of the arts of war, and yet thinks that he has military genius.
It will be so easy to conquer him, that we shall obtain no honor from the victory.”
Early the next morning, the 12th of September, the Polish and German troops rushed to the a.s.sault, with such amazing impetuosity, and guided by such military skill, that the Turks were swept before them as by a torrent. The army of the grand vizier, seized by a panic, fled so precipitately, that they left baggage, tents, ammunition and provisions behind. The garrison emerged from the city, and cooperated with the victors, and booty of indescribable value fell into their hands. As Sobieski took possession of the abandoned camp, stored with all the wealth and luxuries of the East, he wrote, in a tone of pleasantry to his wife,
”The grand vizier has left me his heir, and I inherit millions of ducats. When I return home I shall not be met with the reproach of the Tartar wives, 'You are not a man, because you have come back without booty.'”
The inhabitants of Vienna flocked out from the city to greet the king as an angel deliverer sent from heaven. The next morning the gates of the city were thrown open, the streets were garlanded with flowers, and the King of Poland had a triumphal reception in the streets of the metropolis. The enthusiasm and grat.i.tude of the people pa.s.sed all ordinary bounds. The bells rang their merriest peals; files of maidens lined his path, and acclamations, bursting from the heart, greeted him every step of his way. They called him their father and deliverer. They struggled to kiss his feet and even to touch his garments. With difficulty he pressed through the grateful crowd to the cathedral, where he prostrated himself before the altar, and returned thanks to G.o.d for the signal victory. As he returned, after a public dinner, to his camp, he said, ”This is the happiest day of my life.”
Two days after this, Leopold returned, trembling and humiliated to his capital. He was received in silence, and with undisguised contempt. His mortification was intense, and he could not endure to hear the praises which were everywhere lavished upon Sobieski. Jealousy rankled in his heart, and he vented his spite upon all around him. It was necessary that he should have an interview with the heroic king who had so n.o.bly come to his rescue. But instead of meeting him with a warm and grateful heart, he began to study the punctilios of etiquette, that the dreaded interview might be rendered as cold and formal as possible.
Sobieski was merely an elective monarch. Leopold was a hereditary king and an emperor. Leopold even expressed some doubt whether it were consistent with his exalted dignity to grant the Polish king the honor of an audience. He inquired whether an _elected monarch_ had ever been admitted to the presence of an _emperor_; and if so, with what forms, in the present case, the king should be received. The Duke of Lorraine, of whom he made the inquiry, disgusted with the mean spirit of the emperor, n.o.bly replied, ”With open arms.”
But the soulless Leopold had every movement punctiliously arranged according to the dictates of his ign.o.ble spirit. The Polish and Austrian armies were drawn up in opposite lines upon the plain before the city.
At a concerted signal the emperor and the king emerged from their respective ranks, and rode out upon the open plain to meet each other.