In June 1672 the preparations were finished and the Sultan himself accompanied by the grand vizier appeared before the almost impregnable fortress of Kaminiec, the key of Podolia. In less than a month it fell, and the craven-hearted king Michael, dismayed at the blow, negotiated a treaty at Buczacz by which he surrendered Podolia and the Ukraine and consented to pay tribute. Stung with indignation at such a disgrace the diet refused to ratify the treaty, and rallied all the forces of the nation under John Sobieski to resist to the uttermost. For four years the heroic struggle continued. Without receiving any help from the great powers, now, through the ambition of Louis XIV., engaged in a deadly conflict on the Rhine and the Scheldt, threatened by intrigues behind his back at court, endangered by insubordination in his camp, John Sobieski, by sheer ascendency of personal character and commanding military talent, managed not only to stem the Turkish advance into Podolia and Galicia, but to inflict on the best of the Turkish generals crushing defeats at Choczim (1673) and Lemberg (1675), and to drive them back in confusion across the Danube. In 1674 in the very midst of the struggle the incapable Michael died, and the Poles hailed with enthusiasm their hero as their king. Yet characteristically enough they did not for that serve him one whit the better. [Sidenote: =John Sobieski elected King, 1674.=] Two years later he found himself in the direst straits, with his small army hemmed in by the swarming enemy at Zurawno on the Dniester, unable to break out of the enclosing lines, without any hope of timely relief. But even at this crisis the magic of his name prevailed, and Ibrahim the Turkish general preferred to make peace rather than to run the risk of encounter with the lion in his den. [Sidenote: =Peace of Zurawno, 1676.=] The peace of Zurawno, concluded in October 1676, secured to the Sultan the possession of Kaminiec and part of the Ukraine, but it marks by these very concessions the failure of Achmet Kiuprili’s great design of binding upon the brows of his master the laurel wreath of Mohammed II. [Sidenote: =Kara Mustafa made grand vizier, 1676.=]