The booty found in the Turkish camp was immense: three hundred pieces of
heavy artillery, five thousand tents, that of the Grand Vizier with all the
military chests and the chancery. The treasures amounted to fifteen million
crowns; the tent of the Vizier alone yielded four hundred thousand crowns.
Two millions also were found in the military chest; arms studded with
precious stones, the equipments of Kara Mustapha, fell into the hands of
the victors. In their flight the Mussulmans threw away arms, baggage, and
banners, with the exception of the holy standard of the Prophet, which,
nevertheless, the imperials pretended to have seized. The King of Poland
received for his share four million florins; and in a letter to his
wife--the sole delight of his soul, his dear and well-beloved Mariette--he
speaks of that booty and of the happiness of having delivered Vienna. "All
the enemy's camp," he wrote, "with the whole of his artillery and all his
enormous riches, have fallen into our hands. We are driving before us a
host of camels, mules, and Turkish prisoners."
Count Starhemberg received the King of Poland in the magnificent tent
of the Grand Vizier and greeted him as a deliverer. Next day Sobieski,
accompanied by the Elector of Bavaria and the different commanders,
traversed the city on horseback, preceded by a great banner of cloth of
gold and two tall gilded staves bearing the horse-tails which had been
planted in front of the Grand Vizier's tent, as a symbol of supreme
command. In the Loretto chapel of the Augustins the hero threw himself upon
his face before the altar and chanted the _Te Deum_. Vienna was delivered;
the flood of Ottomans, that had beaten against its walls one hundred
fifty-four years previously, had returned more furiously, more menacing
still, against that dignified protectress of European civilization, but
this time it had been repelled never to return.
Thus vanished the insane hopes of the Grand Vizier. If Demetrius Cantemir
may be believed, Kara Mustapha had desired to capture Vienna to appropriate
it to himself and found in the West an empire of which he would have been
the sovereign. "That subject," says the historian, "who only held his power
from the Sultan, despised in his heart the Sultan himself; and as he found
himself at the head of all the disciplined troops of the empire, he looked
upon his master as a shadow denuded of strength and substance, who, being
very inferior in courage to him, could never oppose to him an army like
that which was under his command. For all that concerned the Emperor of
Germany, he appeared still less to be feared: being a prince bare and
despoiled so soon as he should have lost Vienna. It was thus that Kara
Mustapha reasoned within himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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