everybody and to have nothing to expect except from God..

is not the least extraordinary thing we have experienced that we do not know what is going to become of us. It would only have been right, I think, to ask me how I intend to go on with the war, but they have no communication with me. If they would at least declare frankly that they do not want us any more, I should be free to go where I please. "The Turks are marching day and night in a straight line on Belgrade, where is the Sultan, abandoning their baggage at the defiles or river-fords. "The soldiers and officers are suffering from fever and dysentery, brought on by fatigue, the want of nourishment, and the excessive heat. The Duke of Lorraine comes often to see me; 'le pauvre diable' has neither spoils from the enemy nor honours from the Emperor."

Ingratitude was the order of the day at Vienna, and generals, feudatories, and allies were all treated with the same coldness.

"Sept. 19.-We hope to cross the Danube to-morrow on a bridge which has still to be made, in order to enter the enemy's country, where we hope to find forage for the horses. The Turks have stopped nowhere, and leave stragglers behind in all 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, for I often observe that when you hear them, you take no notice. What a beautiful country this is, and how these pagans have maltreated it! I have sent the Emperor some fine horses, according to the hint which he sent me; I put on them harness mounted with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. He has replied by a tolerably handsome sword. I have given presents [to the officers who had fought by his side], and shall be reduced, most likely, to come home with nothing left but buffaloes and camels for my own share. People are coming to me every moment— I have not a moment of rest night nor day. You know, chère dame, how much I love reading; well, upon my honour, I have not ever had a book in my hands since Ratibor.

"A week ago the greater part of the Turkish army disbanded, and neither halter nor cold steel could stop the men. The Vizier has caused the Pasha of Buda to be strangled in his presence because his soldiers refused to fight. He was a brave, honest old man, who had married a Pole, and had been wounded at the affair of Vienna. Many other executions have taken place, and more are to be carried out near Buda. All their treasures are taken by the Vizier.

"Presburg. We have lost a number of men lately, some from wounds, many from dysentery. I have brought them down here, where the inhabitants are kind and hospitable, like our own Poles. . . . I have devoted my life to the glory of God and of His holy cause and I shall go on with it," he adds in answer to some of his wife's complaints. "I too care for my life, I care for it for the service of Christendom and my country, for you, dear heart, for my children, my family, and my friends, but honour must be dear to me also.

"It is sad to hear the officers talk. They even regret that we came to the Emperor's help, and wish we had left this proud race to perish, never to rise again; everybody is discouraged and out of heart. The intense heat brings with it fever and something like plague. [Leopold, indeed, seemed bent on showing by his consistent meanness and ingratitude how little worth saving he had been.]

"I send a list of the munitions of war taken in the Turkish camp, which are to be divided; but there was much more-this was only taken after three days of pillage. I forbade 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. Belts

set with diamonds have been seen among them. Watches with diamonds, rich poignards, and knives, and quivers, &c., are in the list; carpets, coverlids, furs, the most beautiful in the world.

"I 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 delicate-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 five thousand men, and the Duke of Lorraine had not come up as was expected.

"The Turks charged them a second and a third time; our centre and left wing began to fly. I cried and ordered in vain, all abandoned me. I ordered Fanfan [his son] to go on with them, and not knowing what had become of him I thought I should have died of grief. I was very near losing ny life; my hands, my thighs, all my body is as black as coal, bruised by the press of the flyers. The poor Palatine of Pomerania was pushed off his horse and fell with many others near me." "A cavalry soldier saved my life; two Turks were close upon me; he killed one and wounded the other. I had hoped to recompense the man largely, but he did not come alive out of the fight. Let particular mention be made of him in the service for the dead. I was supposed to be among the dead, and it is almost a miracle it was not so. Almost all my pages perished in the action, and I can hardly sit on my horse from the fatigue and grief I have endured. The body of the poor Palatine has been found, but headlessthese barbarians make no prisoners."

Two days after, however, he had his revenge: Kara Mustapha returned in great force from Buda, with troops, inspirited by the false news of the death of the King, and gave battle at Parkany, on the 10th October, with the usual results.

"Oh, how good God is, my dear Mariette, to have given us in compensation for a little confusion, a victory greater than that of Vienna! In the name of your love for me do not cease thanking Him, entreat Him to continue His mercies to His faithful people. I am quite well, thank God, and feel twenty years younger since our victory-everything is repaired."

Kara Mustapha had been promised the aid of Tekeli and 40,000 Hungarians; the Ottoman army had recovered its vigour, and was posted so as to stretch 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, King John had received his contingents and Cossacks. Before day he had arranged his army in three lines; he led the first himself, the Duke of Lorraine the second, and Jablonowski the t furiously as usual, bere

the Turks charged this last ack in disorder. The King e fort; the broken squadrons

were alarmed; the two wings of the Christian army, forming a vast crescent, rested on the Danube; Sobieski came down on the disordered troops and drove them into the river. "It was a diverting 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 number 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, and at the destruction of the Turks, which left him at the mercy of the Austrians. The King attempted in vain to save him from the consequences of his own indecision. When Sobieski heard that Kara Mustapha had fled to Belgrade his joy was great. "Here is Hungary at last delivered from the Infidel after 300 years. Belgrade is not in Hungary but in Servia," he explains. "I know you are not strong in geography," he observes several times. "The Turks now have only five or six of the principal fortresses left, and it would only require fourteen days to deliver this great and beautiful kingdom entirely."

He had all along desired to attack Buda, but was persuaded 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 hitherto done nothing but attack, but now, after 300 years, they were conquered and 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 every one. The town has yielded; the garrison, two Pashas, and 5,000 troops have marched out with arms but without baggage or artillery; it was the strongest place in Hungary. Mass has been celebrated for the first time these 150 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, speaks either of our present or our past. God and glory are 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, 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 self-imposed task, and the Turks had such confidence in his honour that they would surrender to him at discretion, as at Schetzin, 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 favour, 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 Christmas 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 the very day after, an Aga of the Janissaries presented himself to Kara 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 he was afraid for his own life; despots are 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 saw from his windows the Aga approaching with a numerous escort, received him calmly, kissed the hatti-scherif of death, made his prayer, washed his hands, face, and head, to "receive martyrdom pure in body soul," and then, kneeling down, adjusted the cord round his own neck. His head a few days after decorated the gates of the Seraglio, "another trophy to John Sobieski."

The tide of conquest had turned; the Turks were driven back never again to trouble Europe by their invasions. We have forgotten the political and religious horror which followed the long series of triumphs that carried the standard of Mahomet from Mecca, Jerusalem, and Damascus, into the very heart of Europe. Sobieski was spoken of as a second Maccabæus who had saved Christianity itself, as well as the Holy Land. In three months he had recovered all that the Porte had conquered during two hundred years. The decline of the Empire of the Mahomets and Solymans dates from the utter defeat of the Turks by King John at Vienna, and the battles which succeeded it. Since that time the Porte has never gained a foot 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 those roadless days in such short periods of time, and from such distances, is almost inconceivable. Inspired by religious fanaticism, these were hurled on the foe with a force which for a time carried all 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 ha been able to use their acquisitions, except to d

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 the soldiercrabs 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 years, mentions six in Styria, six in Carinthia, nine in Carniola, without counting the great number of smaller attempts, twenty-seven in Carniola alone from 1460 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 Porte 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 to interpret that present which has its roots, as ever, in the past. The "Bulgarian atrocities," which have shocked the world, are seen to be merely "a survival" (as Mr. Tylor would call it) of the ordinary usages of the Turks in war and in the suppression of 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 been able to carry on his victorious campaign after the relief of Vienna as he desired, the "Turkish difficulty" would not have been 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 be now impossible in the face of international public opinion; and we may therefore still entertain a faint hope that the honest efforts of the Christian nations combined may bring about a better result than has followed the campaigns of 1670-83, successful as they were. But the time for action is indeed short. F. P. VERNEY.