Our people have been much annoyed and have loudly complained because the emperor never deigned to thank them not even by a bow for all their troubles and privations. They give us neither forage nor provisions; our sick are lying on dunghills and our many wounded cannot obtain a single boat to carry them down to Pressburg, where I could more easily provide for them at my own cost.... Many of our men, finding that they were dying of hunger in the country, hurried to the town to find food; but the commandant of Vienna had given orders that they should not be allowed to enter, and that they should be fired on. After this great battle in which we have lost so many members of our most illustrious families, we are treated like plague-stricken men, whom everyone must avoid. The downfall of the Turks was the more crushing because they had been accustomed to consider themselves invincible and appeared rather as a conquering cavalcade than as those who were fighting their way through a hostile country. One of their leaders on this occasion, the Vizier Kara Mustapha, had a tent made of green silk, worked with gold and silver and set with precious stones. The holy standard was carried inside it. After the battle Sobieski sent the golden stirrup of the Grand Vizier to his Queen, and the standard to the Pope. It is one of the minor ironies of history that Leopold, who after this marvellous delivery was chiefly occupied with minute points of etiquette, such as whether he ought to receive the elected King of Poland on the right or left side, should have been surnamed the Great! [Illustration: CRACOW: BARBARAKAPELLE] The chief reasons given for the fall of Poland are that she had no natural boundaries of mountain or river, and that the three powerful nations around her all wanted something she had got. This was particularly the case with Prussia, who greatly coveted the outlet to the sea by way of Dantzig. Another reason is that there was in Poland no middle class, only the nobility, and the serfs far below them, and out of touch; and it has been rightly said that the middle class is the backbone of a nation.