I cannot conceive, wrote Sobieski, how they can carry on the war after such a loss of _matériel_. The whole of the artillery of the Turks, their munitions, and their baggage were the spoil of the victors. Three hundred and ten pieces of cannon, twenty thousand animals, nine thousand carriages, one hundred and twenty-five thousand tents, five million pounds of powder are enumerated. The holy standard of the Prophet had been saved, but the standard of the Vizier, mistaken for it, was sent to the Pope by the conqueror, while his gilded stirrups were despatched at once to Poland to the Queen, as a token of victory. Never, perhaps, since Alexander stood a victor at Issus in the tents of Darius, or the Greeks stormed the Persian camp at Platæa, had an European army entered upon such spoil. Much money had been saved by the Turks in their flight; but precious stuffs and jewelled arms, belts thick with diamonds, intended to encircle the fair captives of Vienna, the varied plunder of many a castle of Hungary and of Lower Austria, were found piled in the encampment. In the Vizier's quarters were gardens laid out with baths and fountains, a menagerie, even a rabbit warren. His encampment alone formed a labyrinth of tents, by itself of the circumference of a little town, and with its contents declared the character of its late owner. An ostrich, previously taken from an Imperial castle, was found beheaded to prevent recapture. A parrot, more fortunate, escaped upon the wing. The Polish envoy was discovered in the camp in chains, forgotten during the turmoil, and thus saved from the death promised him if his master should take the field. The Imperial agent at the Porte, Kunitz, had escaped into the town during the battle; but the mass of Christian captives had not been so happy. Before the battle the Vizier had ordered a general massacre of prisoners, and the camp was cumbered with the bodies of men, women, and children, but for the most part of women, foully slaughtered. The benevolent energy of the Bishop of Neustadt, above-mentioned, found employment in caring for five hundred children, who had, with their mothers in a few cases, escaped the sword. The night was passed in the camp by the victors, who were intent on securing their victory or their plunder. Not till the following morning did the king meet Lorraine and exchange congratulations upon their success. Then, with the Commandant Starhemberg, they entered the city, passing over those well-contested breaches, which but for them might have been that day trodden by the Janissaries. They repaired to the churches for a solemn thanksgiving. Sobieski himself sang the _Te Deum_ in one of them. Nothing could exceed the enthusiastic gratitude of the people, who barely allowed a passage to the horse of their deliverer. The priest, after the _Te Deum_ ended, by a happy inspiration or plagiarism, gave out the words, "_There was a man sent from God, whose name was John._"[25] A salute of three hundred