John could now no longer resist the eagerness of his nobles to return to Poland. ♦Return of the Poles.♦ Early in November the armies separated, and the Poles retraced their steps through Hungary. Before their departure the king had endeavoured to mediate between Tekeli and the commissioners of the Emperor, but the sole favour which he could obtain for the insurgents was the promise of a general amnesty, and his disinterested efforts only resulted in increasing Leopold’s suspicions of his motive. ♦His efforts on behalf of the Hungarians.♦ Yet he could not give up the attempt; he longed to establish the strong barrier of a free people against the Turkish advance; and as a last resource he begged for the help of the Holy See. In his instructions to his minister at Rome,[119] he claims this favour from the Imperial Court as his due, and indignantly disowns the unworthy motives imputed to him. “The sole interest of his Sacred Majesty is to rally the nations against the pagans. For that end he demands that the nation which he has re-conquered for Christendom should be treated after a Christian fashion.” But the Pope was so closely bound to the policy of Leopold that he cared not to interfere; and nothing was done to restore the ancient liberties of Hungary. John was deeply indignant, but his conscience would not permit him to insist on this concession as the price of his sworn alliance. ♦Their hostility to his army.♦ His friendly relations with Tekeli were broken off by the rapine of the Lithuanians, who, on hearing of the spoils of which their tardiness had deprived them, had set off in haste towards the south, and were plundering Upper Hungary. The inhabitants, regarding John as responsible for these reckless freebooters, and knowing nothing of his efforts in their behalf, shut themselves up in their towns and treated him as an enemy. Though he could scarcely obtain provisions for his troops, he was loth to relinquish his design of quartering them in Hungary. But the queen had hit on a new method of preventing him, which was more effective than the murmurs of his men. She suddenly ceased to answer his letters. “For five weeks,” he complains, “I really have not known whether there is a Poland in the world.”[120] ♦Triumphal entry into Cracow.♦ He closed the campaign gloriously on the anniversary of Kotzim (November 11th), by capturing Schetzin after a few hours’ siege, and then returned home through the Carpathian Mountains. The ground was frozen so hard that the tents could not be pitched, and it was Christmas-eve before the victorious army, laden with the spoils of the East, entered Cracow in triumph. A few days later the Grand Vizier received with resignation his sentence of death from the Sultan, and ere long the head which had dreamed of the conquest of Europe was adorning the gates of the seraglio.