Part 46

In this extremity, Leopold turned his eyes towards Poland. John Sobieski, the terror of the Ottomans, and perhaps the only sovereign of his age who was a great captain, was supplicated to come to the assistance of the empire and the whole Christian world. This monarch instantly responded to the summons by marching thither at the head of twenty-five thousand men. He traversed two hundred leagues of country, and on the 5th of September he crossed the bridge of Tuln with his army, five leagues above Vienna. The Polish cavalry was remarkable for its horses, uniform, and noble bearing. It might be said that they were equipped at the expense of the infantry: among the latter, there was one battalion extremely ill-clothed. Prince Lubomirski advised the king, for the honour of the country, to order them to pass in the night. Sobieski judged otherwise; and when that troop was on the bridge, he said to the spectators,--“Look well at them; that is an invincible troop of men, who have taken an oath never to wear any clothes but those of the enemy. In the last war they were all clothed in the Turkish fashion.” “If these words did not clothe them, they cuirassed them,” pleasantly observes the Abbé Cayer, whose account we follow.

The Poles, after crossing the bridge, extended themselves to the right, exposed during twenty-four hours to being cut to pieces, if Kara Mustapha had taken due advantage of their position. On the 7th, all the German troops joined their allies, and the army was then found to amount to about seventy-four thousand men. There were four sovereign princes among them,--John Sobieski of Poland, Maximilian Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, John George III., elector of Saxony, and Charles V., duke of Lorraine; and twenty-six princes of sovereign houses.

Vienna was driven to bay. The Turks and diseases carried off, as if in concert, both officers and soldiers. Almost all the leaders had disappeared; the warrior, exhausted by fatigue and want of good food, dragged himself to the breach; and he whom the fire of the enemy spared, expired with languor and debility. The people, who had at first undertaken the labours of the siege with such eagerness, now dreamt of no other defence but prayer. They filled the churches, into which bombs and cannon-balls constantly brought terror and death. On the 22nd of August, it appeared certain that they could not hold out more than three days, if the Turks gave a general assault. From that melancholy period, one mine seemed to precipitate itself upon another. The half-moon was taken; breaches of from eighteen to twenty toises laid open the two bastions and the curtain; soldiers served instead of walls. A mine was advancing under the emperor’s palace, already beaten to pieces with bombs, and close to the bastion of the court. Other mines, like snakes, were winding about in all directions; several were discovered; but the Austrian miners were timid, and could not be persuaded to go under ground when once they had heard the enemy at work there. The artillery was no longer able to respond, most of the cannons being either broken or dismounted. Staremberg scarcely preserved a ray of hope, or rather, he did not longer dare to hope; and the general who at the commencement of the siege had said, “I will only surrender the place with the last drop of my blood,” wrote to the duke of Lorraine in this critical moment: “No more time to be lost, monseigneur--no more time to be lost.” Even the most rapid activity would have been of no avail, but for the stupid inaction of the grand vizier, who, for the sake of the riches with which he thought Vienna filled, waited in the expectation of its surrendering by capitulation. Such was his blindness, that he was ignorant of the preparations of the Christians when they were upon the point of overwhelming him.

When about to march, Sobieski gave out the following order of battle, written with his own hand: “The _corps de bataille_ shall be composed of the imperial troops, to whom we will join the regiment of cavalry of the Marshal De la Cour, the Chevalier Lubomirski, and four or five squadrons of our gendarmes, in the place of whom some dragoons or other German troops shall be given. This corps shall be commanded by M. the duke of Lorraine.

“The Polish army will occupy the right wing, which will be commanded by the grand-general Jublonowski, and the other generals of that nation.

“The troops of MM. the electors of Bavaria and Saxony shall form the left wing, to whom we will give also some squadrons of our gendarmes and of our other Polish cavalry, in the place of whom they will give us some dragoons or some infantry.

“The cannons shall be divided; and in case MM. the electors have not enough, M. the duke of Lorraine will furnish them with some.

“The troops of the circles of the empire will extend along the Danube, with the left wing falling back a little on their right; and that for two reasons: the first, to alarm the enemy with the fear of being charged in flank; and the second, to be within reach of throwing succours into the city, in case we should not be able to drive the enemy as soon as we could wish. M. the prince of Waldeck will command this corps.

“The first line will consist entirely of infantry, with cannons, followed closely by a line of cavalry. If these two lines were mixed, they would doubtless embarrass each other in the passages of the defiles, woods, and mountains. But as soon as they shall be on the plain, the cavalry will take its posts in the intervals of the battalions, which will be arranged with this view, particularly our gendarmes, who will charge first.

“If we were to put all our armies in three lines only, it would require more than a German league and a half, which would not be to our advantage; and we should be obliged to cross the little river Vien, which must be our right wing: it is for this reason we must make four lines; and this fourth shall serve as a body of reserve.

“For the greater security of the infantry against the first charge of the Turkish cavalry, which is always impetuous, it will be desirable to employ _spanchéraistres_, or _chevaux de frise_, but very light, for convenience of carriage, and at every halt place them in front of the battalions.

“I beg all the messieurs the generals, that as fast as the armies shall descend from the last mountain, as they shall enter the plain, every one will take its post as it is set down in this present order.”

There were but five leagues between them and the Turks, from whom they were separated by that chain of mountains which surrounded the vast plain on which they were encamped. Two routes presented themselves: one by the more elevated part; the other, by the side where the summit, sinking, became more practicable. The first was fixed upon: it was true it was the more difficult, but it was the shorter. On the 9th of September all the troops moved forward. The Germans, after many attempts to bring up their cannon, gave the matter up in despair, and left them in the plain. The Poles had more spirit and perseverance. By manual strength and address they contrived to get over twenty-eight pieces, and these alone were used on the day of battle. This march, bristling with difficulties, lasted three days. At length they approached the last mountain, called Calemberg. There was yet plenty of time for the vizier to repair his faults: he had only to take possession of this height, and mark the defiles, and he would have stopped the Christian army. But he did not do so; and it was at this moment that the Janissaries, indignant at so many blunders, exclaimed: “Come on, come on, ye infidels! The sight of your hats alone will put us to flight.”

This summit of Calemberg, still left free, discovered to the Christians, an hour before nightfall, both the innumerable hosts of the Turks and Tartars, and the smoking ruins of Vienna. Signals incontinently informed the besieged of the succour at hand. We must have suffered all the dangers and miseries of a long siege, and have felt ourselves, our wives, and our children doomed to the sword of a victor, or slavery in a barbarous country, to have an idea of the joy the city experienced. Sobieski, after having examined all the positions of the vizier, said to the German generals, “That man is very badly encamped; he is an ignorant fellow: we shall beat him.” The cannon, on both sides, played the prelude to the grand scene of the morrow. It was the 12th of September. Two hours before dawn, the king, the duke of Lorraine, and several other generals, performed a religious duty, very little practised in our time,--they received the communion; whilst the Mussulmans were crying to the only and solitary God of Abraham, _Allah! Allah!_

At sunrise, the Christian army descended with slow and measured steps, closing their ranks, rolling their cannon before them, and halting at every thirty or forty paces to fire and reload. This front widened, and took more depth as the space became greater. The Turks were in the greatest astonishment. The khan of the Tartars drew the vizier’s attention to the lances ornamented with banderoles of the Polish gendarmerie, and said, “The king is at their head!”--and terror seized upon the heart of Kara Mustapha. Immediately, after having commanded the Tartars to put all their captives to death, to the amount of thirty thousand, he ordered half of his army to march towards the mountain, whilst the other half approached the walls of the city, to give a general assault. But the besieged had resumed their courage. The hope, and even the certainty of victory, had rendered them invincible.

The Christians continued to descend, and the Turks moved upwards. The action commenced. The first line of the Imperialists, all infantry, charged with so much impetuosity, that it gave place for a line of cavalry, which took part in the intervals of the battalions. The king, the princes, and the generals gained the head, and fought, sometimes with the cavalry and sometimes with the infantry. The two other lines urged the first on warmly, protected by the fire of the artillery, which was incessant and very near. The field of the first shock, between the plain and the mountain, was intersected with vineyards, heights, and small valleys. The enemy having left their cannon at the beginning of the vineyards, suffered greatly from those of the Christians. The combatants, spread over this unequal ground, fought with inveteracy up to mid-day. At length the infidels, taken in flank, and driven from hill to hill, retired into the plain, lining their camp.

During the heat of the _mêlée_, all the bodies of the Christian army having fought sometimes on the heights, and sometimes in the valleys, they had necessarily doubled over each other, and deranged the order of battle. A short time was given to re-establish it; and the plain became the theatre of a triumph which posterity will always feel difficulty in believing. Seventy thousand men boldly attacked more than two hundred thousand! In the Turkish army, the pacha of Diarbeker commanded the right wing, the pacha of Buda the left. The vizier was in the centre, having by his side the aga of the Janissaries and the general of the Spahis. The two armies remained motionless for some time, the Christians in silence, whilst the Turks and Tartars emulated the clarions with their cries. At length Sobieski gave the signal, and, sabre in hand, the Polish cavalry charged straight upon the vizier in the centre. They broke through the front ranks, they even pierced through the numerous squadrons which surrounded Mustapha. The Spahis disputed the victory; but all the others,--the Wallachians, the Moldavians, the Transylvanians, the Tartars, and even the Janissaries, fought without spirit. In vain the Ottoman general endeavoured to revive confidence: they despised him and disregarded his words. He addressed himself to the pacha of Buda, and to other chiefs, but their only reply was desponding silence. “And thou!” cried he then to the Tartar prince, “wilt not thou assist me?” The khan saw no safety but in flight. The Spahis were making their last efforts: the Polish cavalry opened and dispersed them. The vizier then turned his back, and spread consternation by his flight. The discouragement extended to the wings, which all the bodies of the Christian army pressed at once. Terror deprived of both reflection and strength this immense multitude of men, who ought, in an open plain like that they fought on, to have completely enveloped and crushed their enemy. But all dispersed, and all disappeared, as if by magic; that vast camp, which the eye could not measure, resembled a frightful desert. Night stopped the victorious progress of the Christians, who remained upon the field of battle till daybreak. At six o’clock in the morning, the enemy’s camp was given up to the soldiery, whose cupidity was at first suspended by a horrible spectacle; mothers lay stretched about in all directions, with their throats cut, many of them with their infants still clinging to their breasts. These women were not like those who follow Christian armies--courtesans, as fatal to health as to morals; these were wives, whom the Turks preferred sacrificing thus to exposing them to becoming the victims of unbridled conquerors. They had spared a great part of the children. Live or six hundred of these little innocent victims of war were collected by the bishop of Newstadt, and were fed and brought up in the Christian religion. The Germans and the Poles were greatly enriched by the spoils of the Mussulmans. It was upon this occasion the king wrote to the queen, his wife: “The grand vizier has made me his heir, and I have found in his tents to the value of many millions of ducats. So you will not have to say of me as the Tartar wives say when they see their husbands return empty-handed: ‘You are not men, you come home without booty.’” Thus, without much bloodshed, the valour and skill of John Sobieski saved Vienna, the empire, and religion. In fact, if Vienna had been taken, as at Constantinople, churches would have been changed into mosques, and nobody can say where Mahometanism, which already was spread over so much of the globe, might have ended. Staremberg came, immediately after the victory, to salute the preserver and liberator of Vienna, into which city the hero entered over ruins, but amidst the acclamations of the people. His horse could scarcely pierce through the crowd who prostrated themselves before him, who would kiss his feet, calling him their father, their avenger, the greatest of monarchs. Leopold seemed to be forgotten--they only saw Sobieski.

But, alas for the gratitude of peoples! Poland, whose king thus successfully interfered between Mahometanism and Christianity, to the shame of the European powers is no longer a nation! The great error of its constitution, which made the monarchy elective, created feuds, of which three powerful neighbouring countries took advantage. Poland was, by degrees, partitioned amongst them, and Austria, which owed it so much, was one of the most eager and greedy of the plunderers.

ALGIERS.

A.D. 1541.

The never-ending piracies of Algiers had for centuries made this city or state the object of the hatred of all Christian princes, and the dread of all Christian peoples. The opinion entertained by Europeans of the pirates of Algiers can be compared to nothing but that inculcated of the demons of another world. Among the most daring, ambitious, and successful of this race of marauders was Barbarossa: he aspired to something above the character of a “salt-water thief,” and intruded upon the lands as well as the vessels and subjects of his opposite neighbour, Charles I. of Spain, and V. of Germany.

The emperor was politic as well as brave; he watched for an opportunity of avenging himself with safety; and he thought he had found this when he learnt that the emperor of the corsairs was gone to Constantinople. A volume written upon the power of Barbarossa could not display it so eloquently as the circumstance of the monarch, possessed of more extensive territories in Europe than had been held by one man since the time of Charlemagne, being obliged to wait till this Cacus was absent from his den before he would venture to assail it. Charles prided himself upon being a brave knight, but this was a wide departure from the laws of chivalry, which commanded all who acknowledged them to send due notice to an enemy of an intended hostile attack.

This absence appeared to Charles a favourable opportunity for attempting the subjugation or destruction of Algiers. It was the autumn of 1541, the season of storms at sea and of diseases and plagues on the coast of Africa. Ambitious princes do not often benefit by the study of history; they think their own genius or their own power can overcome obstacles that have been fatal to others; otherwise Charles might have learnt what would be the issue of his enterprise by turning to the melancholy story of the death of Louis IX. of France. Neither did he want for prudent advice from living counsellors. The great seaman Admiral Doria, who was likewise an excellent general, and of approved valour, when consulted by the emperor on the subject, said: “_Let me persuade you from this enterprise; for, par Dieu, if we go thither, we shall all perish._” But Charles was never easily turned aside from a favourite project by good advice, and he replied: “_Twenty-two years of empire for me, and seventy-two years of life for you, ought to be sufficient to make us both die content._” A few days after this advice had been asked and refused, the emperor and his army embarked; and upon their landing in Africa, were immediately assailed by the diseases and subjected to the famine that had been predicted. Before they commenced the attack, an eloquent and politic gentleman was sent to the old eunuch Hasem, who commanded in the absence of Barbarossa, to endeavour to intimidate him, and, if that could not be effected, to corrupt him. But this trustworthy governor replied, that “_it was very foolish to attempt to give advice to an enemy, but it would be still more foolish for the enemy to attend to that advice when it was given_.” These dispositions reduced the emperor to the necessity of attacking the place in form. The defence of the Algerines was firm and vigorous; and their valour, assisted by frightful tempests, compelled the emperor to raise a siege in which his army was perishing with famine and misery. When he returned to Europe, Charles V. instantly sent Aretin a gold chain of the value of a hundred ducats, to engage him to be silent on the subject of his disaster. “_This_,” said Aretin, “_is but a poor present for such an enormous piece of folly._” Aretin, we should inform our young readers, was an Italian writer, who by some bold satires directed against princes and other conspicuous characters, had elevated himself to the position of a kind of European censor. As in most such cases, the persons attacked really gave importance to satires which, if they had been left alone, like other bubbles, would have burst very innocuously. But the speculation answered: potentates vied with each other in throwing sops to this Cerberus, whose own life as a man, like, we fear, that of most other satirists, was as obnoxious to censure as any of those he unscrupulously attacked.

SECOND SIEGE, A.D. 1682.

Although the following short passage cannot be said to relate to a siege, yet as it concerns the introduction of an _arm_ employed in sieges, particularly such as are maritime, it becomes our duty to repeat it.

Louis XIV., ever anxious to extend what he and his nation called his _glory_, turned his attention to the sea. He saw what the Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards, and English were doing; he knew what Venice, Genoa, and other Italian states had done on that element; and he deemed it inconsistent with that universal fame to which he aspired, to neglect this wide field of enterprise. With her coasts, and her possessions on so many seas, France is legitimately a naval power, and Colbert was not a minister to leave natural advantages unemployed. When the reader of history pauses at this period of the reign of Louis XIV., and contemplates his grandeur,--we may say true grandeur,--the principal thing he must be struck with is the astonishing influence of one great master mind. When Mazarin died, he bequeathed Colbert to Louis XIV., and never did dying minister bestow a richer treasure upon his master: the portion of their ill-got wealth, which Richelieu and Mazarin left to Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., as an indemnity for the rest, was nothing when compared with a bequest which we strongly suspect the cunning Italian would not have ventured to make a gift whilst living: he might avail himself of Colbert’s talents, and take the credit of their efforts, but he would not have proposed that he should assume the place while he lived, which he knew it was for the king’s interest he should occupy when he was gone. The date standing at the head of this passage is only one year before the death of Colbert, and of the decline of all that was great in the reign of Louis XIV. Mazarin died in 1661, Colbert in 1683; and in these twenty-two years alone, out of a reign of more than seventy, did Louis XIV. earn any part of the proud title which is claimed for him.

Under the auspices of Colbert, Louis had a hundred ships of the line built, and engaged sixty thousand sailors. Although he restrained as much as possible these rude men by stringent laws, he did not think it prudent to let them remain idle in port. His squadrons, commanded by Duquesne, swept the seas infested by the pirates of Algiers and Tunis. To punish Algiers, he employed a new invention. This fatal but admirable means of destruction was that of _bomb-vessels_, with which maritime cities may be reduced to ashes. There was a young man named Bernard Renaud, known by the name of _Little Renaud_, who, without having served, had become, by the influence of genius, an excellent shipbuilder. Colbert, who always knew how to discern and employ merit wherever he found it, had often consulted him upon naval affairs, even in the king’s presence. It was by the cares and from the intelligence of Renaud that a better plan of shipbuilding was shortly adopted. He ventured to propose in council to have Algiers bombarded by a fleet. Till that time no idea was entertained that bomb-mortars could be placed upon anything but solid ground. This proposition appeared ridiculous, and Renaud met with all the contradictions and railleries that every inventor must expect; but his firmness, and that eloquence which men properly impressed with their inventions generally have, made the king determine to permit a trial of this novelty. Renaud had some vessels constructed, smaller than usual, but stronger with regard to wood, without upper decks, but with a false deck at the bottom of the hold, upon which hollows were built for the reception of mortars. He set sail with this preparation, under the orders of old Duquesne, who was charged with the enterprise, but who anticipated no success from it. But Duquesne and the Algerines were equally astonished at the effects of these bombs; a large part of the city was quickly battered to pieces and consumed by them.

THIRD SIEGE, A.D. 1683.