Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 56023-h.htm or 56023-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/56023/56023-h/56023-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/56023/56023-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/viennahistorycons00mald VIENNA 1683 The History and Consequences of the Defeat of the Turks before Vienna, September 12, 1683 by John Sobieski, King of Poland and Charles Leopold, Duke of Lorraine by HENRY ELLIOT MALDEN London Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1, Paternoster Square 1883 "Think of that age's awful birth, When Europe echoed, terror-riven, That a new foot was on the earth, And a new name come down from Heaven When over Calpe's straits and steeps The Moor had bridged his royal road, And Othman's sons from Asia's deeps The conquests of the Cross o'erflowed. * * * * * "Think with what passionate delight The tale was told in Christian halls, How Sobieski turned to flight The Muslim from Vienna's walls; How, when his horse triumphant trod The burghers' richest robes upon, The ancient words rose loud, 'From God A man was sent whose name was John.'" LORD HOUGHTON. (_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._) PREFACE. The historical scholar will find nothing new in the following pages; but I have thought it worth while to tell to the general reader a story worth the telling, and to explain not only the details, but the wider bearings also, of a great crisis in European history, no satisfactory account of which exists, I believe, in English, and the two hundredth anniversary of which is now upon us. My principal authorities are "Sobieski's Letters to his Queen," edited by Count Plater, Paris, 1826; Starhemberg's "Life and Despatches," edited by Count Thürheim, Vienna, 1882; "Campaigns of Prince Eugene, of Savoy," Vienna, 1876, etc.; Schimmer's "Sieges of Vienna;" Von Hammer's "History of the Turks;" Salvandy's "History of Poland;" "Memoirs of Eugene," by De Ligne; "Memoirs of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, and his Military Maxims," published late in the seventeenth century; "Works of Montecuculi;" De la Guillatière's "View of the Present State of the Turkish Empire, etc.," translated, London, 1676, etc. I have been obliged to reject some statements of Salvandy's, such, for instance, as that the _crescent moon_ was eclipsed on the day of the battle before Vienna. I regret that I have been unable to use the account of the campaign of 1683 published in Vienna, by the Director of the War Archives, since this went to press. Some of the matter of it is, I believe, contained in the "Campaigns of Eugene," published under the same authority mentioned above, and in Schimmer's work.