TURKISH INVASIONS OF EUROPE IN 1670-83.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Issue 4, 27 October 1877, Page 4

TURKISH INVASIONS OF EUROPE IN 1670-83.

(From the "-Contemporary Review.*] (Continued from our last issue.) Smtxam 10.—" We hope to erow the Danube to-morrow on a bridge which has still t<> be made, in order to enter the enemy's country, where we hope to find forage for tlv Borises, The Turks have stopped nowhere, and leave stragglers behind in nil directions, dying of hunger. I should wish to march directly on Buda, and so finish the war, but . . . These military details, however, will not have much interest for you, my love, you take no notice. . . ■ What a beautiful country this is, ami how these pagans have maltreated it: . . . 1 have sent the emperor some line horses, according to the hint which he sent me ; 1 put on tin in harness mounted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Ho has replied by ii tolerably handsome sword. 1 hav I . \vyi ji i [to I ifti 'ers who had foil i<i v his >i ■ • id shall lien-due. d, 1,1 ....'■•■• ■■ -. • ■ vith nothii! • left but : ' i 'aloe' and i tuuels for iny own share. People are coming to me every moment—l have not a moment of rest night nor day. Von know, " chere dame," how much I love reading; well, upon my honor, I have not even had a Look in my hands since Ratibor. A week' ago the greater part of the Turkish army disbanded, and ncithel baiter nor cold steel could stop the men The vizie* has caused the pasha of Buda to I strangled in his presence because his soldiers refused to li,'ht. He was i bra've. honest old man, who had niarriei a Pole, ami had been wounded at tin affair of Vienna. Many other execution.' have taken place, anil more are to Ik carried out near Buda. All theii treasures are taken by the vizier. " Presburg." —Wo have lost a numht r i of men lately, some from wounds, many < from dysentery. 1 have brought them I down here, where the inhabitants arc 1 kind and hospitable, like our own Voles. ' I have devoted my life to the glory of 1 •liod and of bis holy cause and 1 shall go i on with it [ln adds in answer to some of i his wife's complaints]. 1 too care foi my ; life, 1 can- for it for the service pf I Christendom and my country, for you, d.;:r heart, foi niy children, my family, and ill- - friends, but honor must be dear < to me'also. It i.-. sad to hear the officers talk. They even regret that we came to the emperor's help, and wis!, we had left this proud ran- to perish, never to rise again ; i everybody is discouraged and out of ; heart. The intense heat brings with it i fever and. something like plague. [Leopold, indeed, set mod bent on showing by his consist! Nt racaness and ingratitude how little worth saving he had been.] 1 send a list of the munitions of war taken in the Turkish camp, which are to be divided ; but there are much mon this was oniy taken after uiri • days of tin- pillage. ' I forcbade anything to be touched after the battle till night, thinking the Turks might return; but many of the soldiers have become great lords, they have grown so rich with plunder, Dells set with diamonds have been seen among them. Watches with diamonds, rich poignards, an.l knives, and quivers, etc., are in the list; carpets, coverlids, furs, the most beautiful in the world. 1 can't think what the Turks intended to do with them, as they do not wear such. Perhaps they were intended for the ladies of Vienna ! I send you one of the vizier's coverlids in white satin, embroidered with gold flowers—nothing can be warmer or more delieati—and a cushion embroidered by the vizier's chief wife; also two purple carpets woven with gold. I beg you graciously to receive these bagatelles." And now came the only reverse which Sobieski ever encountered in his life. In the hot pursuit of the Turks, the advanced guard, without the king's knowledge or orders, advanced to the Danube, and found that the Ottoman army had just crossed. The Poles had neither infantry nor cannon, and the Turk charged furiously upon them ; they were not quite live thousand men, and the Duke of Lorraine had net come up as was expected. " The Turks charged them a second and a third time; our centre and left wing began to rly. 1 cried and ordered in vain, all abandoned inc. 1 ordered Fanfan [his son] to go on with them, and not knowing what bad become of him I thought 1 should have died of grief. 1 was very near losing my life ; my hands, my thighs, all my body is as black as coal, bruised by the press of the flyers. The poor palatine of Pomcrania was pushed off his horse and fell with many others near tw. A cavalry soldier saved iiiv life ; two Turks were close upon me ; ho killed one and wounded the other. 1 had hoped to recompense the man largely, but he did not come alive out of the tight. Let particular mention be made of him in the service for the dead. I was supposed to lie among the dead, and it is Almost a miracle it was not so. Almost all my pages perished in the action, and lean hardly sit on my horse from the fatigue and" grief I hnve endured. This hodv of the poor palatine has lieen found, but'hcodlcss—these barbarians make no prisoners." Two days after, however, he had his revenge: Kar Mustapha returned in great force from Bud», with troops, inapirited by the falso news of the death of the king, and gave battle at Parkany, on tho 10th (October, with the usual results " Oh, how good Ood is, my dear Mariette, to have given us in compensation for the little confusion, a victory

greater than that of Vienna: in the | name of your love for me do not MMD h«hHm him, entreat him t'> continue his mercies to his faithful people. I up emit* well, thank God, and feel twenty yean younger sine- our victory—everything U repaired," K;sr liustapha had been promised the aid of Tekeli and forty thousand llungariant; the Ottoman army had recovered its vigor, and was poated so as to rtretch from Parkany to the foot of the mountains, the right resting on the gorges by which the Hungarians were to arrive. By this time, however, Kin,' John had received his contingents ami Cossacks. Before day ho hail arrangi '1 his army in three lines; he led the first himself, the Duke of Lorraine the second, ami (Tahlonowaki the third; the Turks charged this last furiously as usual, but were driven hack in disorder. Tin' king meantime advanced on the walls of th ■ fort ; the broken squadrons were alarmed: the two wings of the Christian army, forming a vast crescent, rested on lie 1 Si'li'tcaki came d vn i <lis« nleiv.l »••«.)« and • r«v« ilium into I the river. " It Wits a divorcing spectacle (')," said an eyewitness; "those who would not dare this dangerous passage were cut to pieces on the banks, and heaps of them, a fathom high, formed a sort of parapet on the edge." The bridge below broke, five pashas and a manlier of generals perished there, and the slaughter was tremendous. The Hungarians arrived too late, purposely it was said, and that Tekeli grieved equally over the check to Sobieski, which left him at the mercy of the Turks, ami at the destruction of the Turks, which left him nt the mercy of the Austrians. The king attempted in vain to save him from the consequences of his own indecision. When Sobieslci heard that Kar Mustaphahad fled to Belgrade his joy

vas great. "Here is Hungary at Fast lelivered from the infidel after three mndred years. Belgrade is not in lungary but in Servia," he explains. 1 know you are not strong in geography," le observes several times. "The Turks low have only five or six of the principal 'ortresses left, and it would only require ourteen davs to deliver this great and jeautiful kingdom entirely."

He had all along desired to attack Buda, but was pursuaded by the Duke of Lorraine to besiege Gran. It was the first time that the Turks had had to defend places since the foundation of their empire, and a new art for them to learn ; they had hitertodone nothing Imt attack, hut now, after three hundred years, they were conquered ami invaded in their turn. He writes from within the town. October 21st:—

" Although pressed by the'bad weather and the want of forage, I resolved to attack the fortress against the advice of everyone. The town has yielded; the

garrison, the pashas, and five thousand croops have marched out with anus, but without baggage or artillery ; it was the strongest place in Hungary. Mass has been celebrated for die'first time these one hundred and fifty years in the church, which had been converted into a mosque, We have taken five mosques in this way from the pagans during the year. No one, however, rpeaks of our present or our past. God and glory arc our reward. We see nothing but sickness, pillage, towns on fire, and ruined churches, in this miserable country, where every sod of earth would yield blood, it seems, if it were pressed. We are bivouacking in the open air. j we cannot even use our tents, the ground is so frozen that it is impossible to drive in the tent-pegs." Desertion, brigandage, and sickness were ravaging the ranks on both sides: but still Sobieski went on with his selfimposed task, and the Turks had such confidence in his honor that they would surrender to him at discretion, as at Schotzin, when they would trust no one else. The rain had made the roads now impracticable ; the snows which followed determined the end of the campaign for the allies, although Sobieski yet desired to carry Buda, which would have driven the Turks out of Hungary, and thus concluded the war. With a last effort to save Tekeli, and do something for Hungary, if possible, Sobieski wrote to the pope in their favor, after having vainly attempted to obtain terms for them with the emperor. Then, to the great delight of his army, he turned homewards, through mud and snow, and hardships of all kinds. On Christinas eve he reached Cracow, after only four months' absence, which had been one series of successes and triumphs. He was received with the acclamations of his people, who were half mad with pride and joy. On tho very day after, an aga of the Janissaries presented himself to Kar Mustapha at Belgrade, on the part of the sultan, to demand his head. It was said that Mahomet would have saved him, but that the exasperation of the army and the people was such that lie Was afraid for his own life ; despots arc often the greatest slaves. The disgraced vizier was sent for to Constantinople after attempting to save his treasures, by burying them and killing the Albanian workmen who had done the work. He i saw from Ids window tin- agn approaching with a numerous escourt, received him calmly, kissed the " hatti-scherif " of death, made his prayer, washed his hands, face, and head, to " receive martyrdom pure in body and soul," and then, kneeling down, adjusted the cord round his own neck. His head a few j days aft<;r decorated the gates of the j Seraglio, " another trophy to John Sobieski,"

The tide of conquest had turned, the Turks were driven back never again to trouble Europe by their invaaioas, We have forgotten the political and religious horror which followed the long aeries of triumphs that carried the standard of Mahomet from Mecca, Jerusalem, and Damascus, into the very heart of Europe, So!.it-ski was spoken of as a B rod MacabeUS who had saved Christianity itself, as well aa the Holy Land. En three months he had recovered all that the Porte had conquered during two hundred yearn. The decline of the

empire of the Mahomets and Solyutans dale-, from the utter defeat of the Turks by King John at Vienna, and the battles which succeeded it. Since that time the Porte h:is never gained afoot of territory in Europe. The extraordinary genius for war possessed by the Turkish race, the manner in which such bodies of men and masses of material of war were collected in lln.se roadless days ill such short periods of lime, and from such short distances, is rdmi s- inconceivable. Inspired by reii'dous fanaticism, these were Inn led on

lit ; >• with a force which for a miscarried ail before it. But although their powers of destruction were enormous, the utter absence of all capacity for ruling or amalgamating with their subject races is even more remarkable. The Turks have never been aide to use their acquisitions, except to derive tribute I'rom them. Their existence has always and everywhere been that of a garrison in a conquered country —aliens in faith, in race, and manners, they have continued apart to the present day. Literature they have none, trade they have left to the despised Giaour: they seem incapable of progress, in the European sense of the word. The fierce hordes which have overrun so large a portion of the world have apparently been urged on by the blind instinct that leads the locust or soldier-crab afield, more than by any more human feeling. Von Hammer, at the end of one of his volumes, summing up the principal invasions of the thirty previous yens, mentions six in Styria, six in Carinthia, nine in Carniola, without counting the great number of smaller attempts, twenty-seven in Carniola alone from 1400 to 1518.

The Turk has lost his savage energy of conquest since those days, but though the common people are said to be brave, sober, and trustworthy, the hopeless corruption of the ruling class in Constantinople and the provinces is as great or greater than ever, the social conditions are utterly rotten, and the general disorganization complete. The problem of our dealings with the Port" is, however, of course complicated by the fact that it is only the advanced guard of the enormous Mussulman population scattered over the world, and that our queen rules over a greater number of Mahometans than does any other sovereign, even the sultan and the shah. The history of Sobieski has a peculiar interest at the present moment, as helping co interpret that present which has its roots, as ever, in the oast. The " Bulgarian atrocities." which have shocked the world, arc seen to be merely " a survival " (as Mr. Taylor would call it) of the ordinary usages of the Turks in war and in the suppression of the rebellion. The antagonism between the Porte and •' Muscovy," the friendly feeling between

Turkey and Hungary, which has helped to paralyze Austria at the present crisis. existed in the days of King John as now. If the jealousies of the European powers had not prevented the formation of that great confederation which he strove so earnestly to organize, and he had heen able to carry on his victorious campaign after the relief of Vienna as he desired, the " Turkish difficulty " would not have heen troubling Europe at the present moment. It is almost the only consolation in the conduct of the Conference that, though the Porte continues much as she was two hundred years ago, the great powers have certainly been acting a more Christian part. Such conduct as that of Louis XIV. and Leopold would at least he now impossible in the face of international public opinion ; and we may therefore still entertain a faint hope that ihe honest efforts of the Christian nations combined may bring about a better result than lias followed the campaigns of 1670-83, successful OS they were. But the time for action is indeed short. F. P. Vebney.