and sound direction by his wife, and inspired by the memories of former victories, among others of that great battle of Choczim, in which he had seen the turbans floating thick as autumnal leaves on the Dniester, he flung his powerful frame into the saddle and his great soul into the cause, and gladly forgot, in the congenial occupation of collecting and recruiting his reduced and scattered army, the perpetual intrigues of his court and household. By the treaty now concluded the two sovereigns contracted a mutual obligation to assist each other against the Turk, bringing into the field respectively 60,000 and 40,000 men. The Emperor conceded a questionable claim to the salt-mines of Wieliezka, and the more important point of a pretension to the eventual succession to the crown of Poland in favour of his son. He was well advised to exact that the treaty should be ratified by the solemn sanction of an oath administered by a Cardinal Legate. There is no doubt that the sense entertained by Sobieski of the obligation of this oath had a serious influence on his subsequent conduct. By a precaution to which Pascal, had he been alive, might have referred as illustrative of the practices which spring from the school of Loyola, the two parties to this oath bound themselves not to resort to the Pope for any dispensation from its observance. How far it was logical and consistent thus to limit the Pope’s power, and confine its valid operation to one dispensation, it is not for Protestants to decide. The Abbé Coyer quotes this as a secret article. Possibly at the moment the parties were ashamed of it; but it is extant in the copy of the treaty printed in Dumont’s _Corps Universel Diplomatique_, 1731. It was agreed that, should either sovereign take the field in person, the chief command should be vested in him. This article was doubtless intended to effect the purpose, which it accomplished, of turning to practical account the acknowledged military talents of Sobieski, and the terror which his name excited among the Turks. No provision is made in the treaty for the contingency of the appearance of both sovereigns in the field. Leopold was no soldier; and though he at one time threatened a visit to the army, from which he was judiciously dissuaded by his confessor, it is not probable that he ever contemplated an appearance on the field of battle. An anecdote however is current that, after the great success before Vienna, he reproached his minister, Sinzendorf, for having advised his absence from the field, with so much bitterness, that the latter died of the infliction. If this had been believed at the time, it is not probable that Sobieski would have failed to report so piquant an anecdote in his correspondence with his wife.