The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (31 page)

To these queries, and a number of others, he expected full prompt answers.
Meanwhile he was hurrying to Cracow, having placed detachments to guard the passes which lead from Hungary to south-west Poland and Silesia. He also asked Lorraine whether or not he should send Sienawski forward. By this offer, put in the form of a question, it looks a little as if he was delaying the Field Hetman’s march southward to the battle-field although he had previously agreed to it; but perhaps he hoped to conceal the awkward fact that Sienawski could not have reached even Cracow by the time of writing.

Two days later, on 24 July, the King spent the night at Kruszyna, a property of the Denhoff family, where the palace and gardens were admired by a French contemporary as outstanding of their kind in Poland.
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Here he wrote to his chancellor at Warsaw to inform him of the most recent news. A Polish officer had arrived with letters from Lubomirski and Lorraine describing the position at the bridgehead opposite Vienna.
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The Turks were in Leopoldstadt, he learnt, and the men of the garrison were cut off from the field army. Too few defence-works protected the Habsburg encampment and a sense of gloom filled Lorraine’s headquarters. The future depended, wrote Lubomirski (well knowing whom he addressed), on the King’s speed and strength even though the Germans also promised help. The day after he had given this account to his chancellor, Sobieski replied to Lorraine from Czestochowa. He would advance at once, without waiting for the full concentration of either the Polish or the Lithuanian forces. He had sent forward a vanguard; and Sienawski followed. He begged Lorraine to fortify his camp properly and promised to do everything in his own power to further the common cause. After signing this vigorous but somewhat vague exposition of his plans, he resumed the journey to Cracow.

By now Polish statesmen could hardly complain that they were not being given detailed information. The worse the state of affairs at Vienna, the more Lorraine wished to impress on them his profound sense of alarm. During the next few weeks he answered Sobieski’s queries and described what he had done to meet or anticipate his criticism. The bridge near Krems was strongly held, a new bridge to Tulln would soon be taken in hand. He reported the victory at Pressburg, praising to the sky the exploits of the Polish soldiers who fought there, and the march of the Saxons and Franconians from Germany. He forwarded copies of the letters received from Starhemberg and Caplirs in the city. He also sent a map of the theatre of war and this, on Sobieski’s instructions, was thoroughly scrutinised by the French engineer Dupont, who had hurried from the distant front near Kamenets to southern Poland.
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Lorraine, in fact, was doing his utmost to clarify the mind of the authorities in Cracow.

Two connected problems of great difficulty preoccupied the King. One was the mustering of his forces, the other the choice of a route to Vienna. At the end of June and the beginning of July, when the situation grew threatening in western Hungary, he naturally wanted to seal off the passes by which Thököly or Tartar raiders or even the Turks could enter Silesia and Poland, while he
reckoned to leave responsibility for the defence of Moravia to Lorraine. This was probably still his view in the conferences held at Wilanów on 15 July. With definite news of the siege of Vienna it became more puzzling to know how to act. Troops moving from the area round Warsaw, or from the western Polish provinces, towards Vienna by the shortest route would pass through Czestochowa to Tarnowskie through Silesia and so southwards. The rational plan for the King would have been to advance straight to Silesia, while the ‘old’ army came up on his left, first to cover Cracow, and then taking the road via Cieszyn (Teschen) to join him. It was rational, but impossible. With only the ghost of an army ready in the west by the end of July, the King had to go himself to Cracow in order to meet the forces riding towards the same point from Podolia and Galicia. They, and they alone, could provide the solid core of an army fit to advance against the Turks and to claim pride of place among the other forces marching to relieve Vienna. The question of prestige profoundly affected the King’s dispositions: he could not afford to demean himself to the great dignitaries of Poland and Lithuania inside his own dominions, or to the Electors of the Empire who did not bear the title of King, or to the Habsburgs. Already his wife had seen fit to inform the court at Passau that her husband must be given the supreme command in the coming campaign.
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Great personal ambition, and a severe consideration of political and military interests, were linked firmly together. Whatever happened to Vienna, it was first necessary to bring together a sufficiently large army before moving out of Poland.

The King waited at Cracow from 29 July until 10 August.
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Pallavicini reports that troops came in almost daily. Field Hetman Sienawski arrived on 2 August, Crown Hetman Jablonowski on the 8th, the soldiers of both halted outside the city, and the King inspected them. Obviously very great efforts were made and a foreign eyewitness admitted the fact, testifying that ‘everything which occurred in this period of preparation for the war was a real miracle, considering the state of this country where fulfilment rather lags behind intentions’. Against such praise must be set Sobieski’s frank confession to Lorraine (on the 8th) that he would be leaving many troops behind, including the whole Lithuanian army and several thousand Cossacks. Nor did he allow any detailed specification of his force to be delivered to the Habsburg officials who would be responsible for quartering and provisioning the Polish army in Silesia and Moravia. The best calculation they could make put its size at 16,000 men, and this was somewhat higher than another estimate, of 13,000 or 14,000, given by Sobieski’s secretary in a letter to Rome as late as 18 August.
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But a Polish artillery officer states that Hetman Jablonowski’s force was small when it left Cracow, and increased in the course of the march; while there is other evidence that large numbers only came up considerably later. A Moravian record mentions Polish contingents passing through a particular place on the road to Vienna every day between 1 and 26 September—some of them, therefore, after the defeat of the Turks outside the city.
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On 22 July the King had offered to send Sienawski forward independently of the main army, and on the strength of this Lorraine wrote directly to the Hetman requesting him to advance with all possible speed. The King next informed Lorraine that a vanguard was already on its way to him, which would be followed by those under the Field Hetman’s command. But on the 10th he wrote that both contingents would wait near Olomouc for his own arrival—unless an emergency compelled Lorraine to ask them to move forward immediately. This delay occurred partly because the ‘old’ army did not get to Cracow until 2 August; partly (there is a suspiciously long interval between the 2nd and 10th) because the King was anxious not to lose touch with the Hetman by letting him move too far ahead. Polish military strength had not only to be sufficient; it was necessary for the King’s control to be as complete as possible. The more difficult it was to raise new troops, the more important it became to keep a firm hold on the older troops and their commanders.

The problem of the itinerary to be followed concerned not only Sobieski and the Poles but the population and administrators of Silesia, Moravia and Austria. The passage of a sizeable army through these lands was bound to add to the troubles of a country-side already heavily taxed for the war. Some areas and towns, if they were lucky, might hope to escape actual contact with the advancing soldiers. On the other hand, the commissariats of this period had found it a matter of common experience that the supplies and communications of any one region could not bear the strain of excessive numbers passing through, and they preferred to spread them out widely, in order to gather forage and food from as many places as possible. Considerations of this kind at first disposed the King, partly advised by the Habsburg government at Breslau, to plan a threefold line of advance to the Danube. Sobieski reserved for himself a line of march through Opava (Troppau) to Brno, while the left wing went via Cieszyn (Teschen), and Crown Hetman Jablonowski was to take a wide sweep through Tarnowskie to the right, possibly as far west as Bohemia.
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In the end Sobieski also went to Tarnowskie—the ‘general rendezvous’—but the Crown Hetman and the main body of troops accompanied him through Moravia to Vienna. The route via Cieszyn was still assigned to Sienawski.

The administrative reasons for spreading out the Polish forces, which would also have given the Hetman an independent command, were less urgent than the King’s need to lead his own troops. And he argued, as the authorities in Passau were arguing to Lorraine, that it was military madness to try to lift the siege of Vienna without employing the maximum force available. It turned out that the King’s calculations, and theirs, were correct by the barest possible margin.

During the long halt at Cracow, other pieces of news were recorded by observers. Sobieski sent an envoy to negotiate with Thököly,
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and his critics condemn this as obvious double-dealing; but the intention must have been to dissuade the Magyars from trying to raid into Poland during the King’s
absence. Of greater popular interest was the celebration of St Laurence’s day (10 August) in the Cathedral. Amid a gathering of King, Queen, princes, bishops, generals, palatines, soldiers and people, the nuncio published the Pope’s indulgence for all men going out to battle in this Holy War. After hearing a powerful sermon on the same theme, the King moved down from his throne to the altar steps for the benediction, and was blessed by the nuncio. Pallavicini, writing afterwards to Innocent, recalled the singing, his sense of the King’s intense devotion, and the weeping of the Queen. The apostolic brief was translated, and thousands of copies were printed and published.
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The general enthusiasm ran high, enhanced by reports of Polish feats of arms under Lorraine and Lubomirski. It was time to go, and right to go, on the day of Our Lady’s Assumption the 15 August.

Sienawski had now hastened after his men, the forces under Jablonowski were on their way to Tarnowskie. The King and Queen with their household, and household troops, followed them up the Vistula valley and then turned north again. It took no less than five days to cover this stretch of country.
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Tarnowskie is thirty miles from Czestochowa, and the King of Poland had therefore spent twenty-five days in getting from one to the other. It must have seemed an eternity to the Austrian ambassador who accompanied him. But the King had at last collected his forces. A part of the ‘old’ troops first received their marching orders in Podolia, others on the Moldavian frontier: they rode 250 miles to reach Cracow. Many of the ‘new’ men came an equal distance from northern and central regions of the country. Only the Lithuanians and the Cossacks defaulted completely. Nor could there be any doubt of the King’s energy, and of his determination to play the most conspicuous part possible in a crisis which involved all his future prospects in Poland, and stirred up his military ambition and his Christian fervour. As it happened, for the last time in John Sobieski’s lifetime his physique was equal to a grand occasion. He was fifty-one years old in 1683, though already ailing too often, and far too fat.

On 19 August when the King was still some distance from Tarnowskie, General Caraffa arrived from Lorraine’s headquarters.
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He brought news of the greatest importance.

So far, information from Vienna emphasised that the relieving army must not dawdle, but sounded hopeful enough to suggest that there was still time to get such an army together. If there was not time, there was equally no point in exposing too weak a force too far from Poland itself. And the contemporary science of war tended to affirm that fortified cities with large garrisons did not fall quickly. And conditions in Poland slowed down the King’s advance. This sequence of facts and calculations acted together like a drag on the Polish military effort between mid-June and mid-August. The King had left Warsaw later than he originally intended. He left Cracow later than he said he would. He moved slowly even after leaving Cracow, and seemed increasingly preoccupied by political and military arguments for keeping all his forces together. This meant holding back the vanguard, and reducing the speed of his
lighter troops. Lorraine’s plea, that Sienawski should go forward at once, met with a more and more guarded response. Hetman Jablonowski waited for the King. The King waited for the Queen, who appeared to dictate his speed by the pace of her own carriage. This could not go on indefinitely, and Caraffa came to clinch the view that it could not. He carried a letter from Lorraine of 15 August with copies of the first messages brought out of Vienna by Koltschitzky: the commandant Starhemberg was ill, Rimpler the chief engineer was dead, the garrison greatly weakened, the Turks were attaching their mines to one of the ravelins—‘I therefore beg your Majesty to come quickly, and in person with the foremost troops of your army, to assist us . . .” A similar appeal was addressed on two successive days to Hetman Jablonowski.
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Accompanied by Caraffa the King continued on his way to Tarnowskie. It was the rendezvous, and the first halt beyond the boundaries of old Poland. Final preparations were made, and a great review was held on the 22nd. One witness says that the Poles preferred to conceal from Caraffa their inadequate artillery and infantry by sending them on ahead.
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Another, the enterprising reporter who sent an account to the Breslau newsheet,
Neu-Ankommender Kriegs-Curirer,
described the splendour of the scene with 50,000 men, 6,000 wagons and twenty-eight cannon on the field.
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The first figure is incredible, the third sounds plausible. The King wrote once more to Lorraine and anticipated Caraffa’s criticisms of the army, which they had inspected together, by giving his own view: it was not large enough, but the daily arrival of old and new troops, and their extraordinary spirit, now encouraged him to go forward. After one more day’s march at the usual speed he himself proposed to advance with a picked body of fast troops.
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