On the 8th December, 1682, the servants of Count Caprara had reached Vienna with tidings of the enormous preparations of the Turks. The reports from Hungary were also unfavourable, and the necessity for immediate measures of defence was palpable as it was urgent. The first requisite, money, was sought for in an impost of a hundredth part of the means of the higher and lower nobility, and of the clergy, usually exempt from such burthens, but considered liable in the case of invasion by the enemy of Christendom. It was, however, to Poland that Austria now looked with the deepest anxiety, though it must have been with profound reluctance, and at first with little expectation of success, that the Emperor could turn to that quarter for assistance. The fate of Hungary at the least, and of the Austrian capital, hung, however, on the success of Austrian diplomacy with the great soldier, John Sobieski, who now filled the throne of Poland. His neutrality alone would have left both to a certain fate, and even that neutrality was hardly to be depended upon; for at a recent period French officers in the service of Tekeli had been allowed to commence the levy of a force in Poland for the support of that dangerous ally of the Turks. Mohacs had been lost by the defection of Zapolya. John Sobieski as a leader was as much superior to Zapolya as the 20,000 Sarmatian horse which he and he alone could bring into the field were superior to Zapolya’s Transylvanian cavalry. A long course of slights received and interests thwarted had alienated him from the throne of Austria, and cemented the connexion which his education, his marriage, and his political interests had hitherto maintained with France. To remove these obstacles it was necessary in the first instance for the hereditary sovereign of the House of Hapsburg to concede to the Elective King of Poland the title of Majesty. This was an act of derogation which nothing but hard necessity could have wrung from a sovereign so faithful to the traditions of Austrian etiquette as Leopold. It was easier to hold out hopes, which he never intended to realise, of more substantial advantages, of a marriage between Prince James, the heir of Sobieski, and an Austrian Archduchess, and of the establishment of themselves and their descendants on an hereditary throne. The devices, however, of diplomacy would probably have been unavailing to overthrow the influence of France, which was unceasingly exerted against that of Vienna, but for an accident of the time. “Porta salutis Quâ minimè reris Graiâ pandetur ab urbe.”