So the Turkish myriads, victorious at Vienna, would have fallen upon some less noble field before the skill of some other Sobieski. But the genius and courage of individuals may well determine the fate of armies for a day. One day's victory may call for years of warfare to accomplish its undoing. A few years of delay may work great changes in the fortunes of men. It is no mistaken estimate of the relative value of causes, it is no unintelligent interest which makes us prone to linger over the one dramatic moment--that moment when the courses of the tendencies of ages are declared within the compass of a day. By no hard effort of imagination we identify our interest with that of the actors in the scene. To them, however confident, the result is never clear; to them the delay of a few years in the overthrow of some inevitably falling wrong may make that difference for which no ultimate success can compensate. It was cold comfort to the inhabitants of Vienna, or to the King of Poland, to know that even if St. Stephen's had shared the fate of St. Sophia and become a mosque of Allah, and if the Polish standards had been borne in triumph to the Bosphorus, yet that, nevertheless, the undisciplined Ottomans would infallibly have been scattered by French, German and Swedish armies on the fields of Bavaria or of Saxony. Vienna would have been sacked; Poland would have been a prey to internal anarchy and to Tartar invasion. The ultimate triumph of their cause would have consoled few for their individual destruction.