They were saved by John Sobieski, a king who had raised Poland to one of her rare outflashing periods of splendor. With his small but gallant Polish army he came to the rescue of Christendom, charged furiously upon the huge Turkish horde, and swept it from the field in utter flight. The tide of Turkish power receded forever; that was its last great wave which broke before the walls of Vienna. All Hungary was regained, mainly through the efforts of Austria's greatest general, Prince Eugene of Savoy. The centre of the centuries of strife shifted back where it had been in Hunyady's time, from Vienna to the mighty frontier fortress of Belgrad, which was taken and retaken by opposing forces. LATER EFFORTS OF LOUIS XIV The earlier career of Louis XIV seems to have been mainly influenced by his passion for personal renown; but he had always been a serious Catholic, and in his later life his interest in religion became a most important factor in his world. The Protestants of France had for wellnigh a century held their faith unmolested, safeguarded by that Edict of Nantes, which had been granted by Henry IV, a Catholic at least in name, and confirmed by Cardinal Richelieu, a Catholic by profession. Persuasive measures had indeed been frequently employed to win the deserters back to the ancient Church; but now under Louis's direction, a harsher course was attempted. The celebrated "dragonades" quartered a wild and licentious soldiery in Protestant localities, in the homes of Protestant house-owners, with special orders to make themselves offensive to their hosts. Under this grim discouragement Protestantism seemed dying out of France, and at last, in 1685, Louis, encouraged by success, took the final step and revoked the Edict of Nantes, commanding all his subjects to accept Catholicism, while at the same time forbidding any to leave the country. Huguenots who attempted flight were seized; many were slain. Externally at least, the reformed religion disappeared from France.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Revocation of the Edict of Nantes_, page 180.] Of course, despite the edict restraining them, many Huguenots, the most earnest and vigorous of the sect, did escape by flight; and some hundred thousands of France's ablest citizens were thus lost to her forever. Large numbers found a welcome in neighboring Holland; the Great Elector stood forward and gave homes to a wandering host of the exiles. England received colonies of them; and even distant America was benefited by the numbers who sought her freer shores. No enemy to France in all the world but received a welcome accession to its strength against her.