having, for nearly thirty years, maintained
himself at the head of affairs as Grand Chancellor
of Poland, despite the intrigues of faction;
though a civilian by education, he took the
command of the army when almost a middle-
aged man, and achieved great successes against
the Russians, Swedes, and Tartars. It was he
who, in the diet held a little before his death, told
the king, Sigismund the Third, that, having
misgoverned the country, with a view to his
own interests, he might be deposed; and added,
seeing the monarch lay his hand on his sword,
"Withdraw your hand from your sword, prince.
Do not oblige history to record that we were
Brutuses, and you a Cæsar."

For several centuries, the acquisitions of
territory to the Polish crown were considerable,
and exhibit a striking contrast to the present
debased and mangled condition of the country.
Galicia (now Austrian Poland) was wrested
from Russia in the fourteenth century, during
the reign of Casimir the Great, who conferred
still greater services on his people, by curbing
the tyranny of the nobles over the peasants.
Lithuania was united with Poland towards the
close of the same century, in consequence of the
reigning queen, Hedvige, marrying the grand-
duke of the smaller state—a pagan prince, who
thereupon became christianised. In the middle
of the fifteenth century, Poland was augmented
by some of the eastern provinces of Prussia.
In 1510, the reigning prince of Moldavia and
Wallachia was compelled to acknowledge
himself a vassal of the powerful sovereigns who
ruled at Cracow; and less than fifty years later,
Livonia voluntarily placed itself under Polish
rule, to avert the danger of subjection by Russia,
to which empire the province now belongs, after
having for a brief period been incorporated with
Sweden. The history of the greater part of the
seventeenth century is a record of perpetual
contests with Russia, during which the Poles
twice penetrated to Moscow, and which, early
in the century, led to a cession of Muscovite
territory to Poland. One disastrous incident of
the period however, must not be forgotten—the
temporary conquest of Poland by Charles
Gustavus of Sweden. It was not long before
the Swedes were expelled; but the reputation of
the country suffered, until restored shortly afterwards
by the famous John Sobieski.

That truly noble man was the sunset of
Polish glory. He was bom in Galicia in
1629, and was partially educated in France,
where he served as one of the Musketeers of
Louis the Fourteenth. An alarming insurrection
of Cossacks, joined by Polish serfs, called
him in haste from Constantinople, and, joining
the national army, he fought with great distinction.
Poland was at that time assailed by the
Cossacks, the Tartars, the Swedes, and the
Russians. The king, John Casimir, was weak
and incompetent, and Sobieski soon became the
hope of the nation. He rose to the head of tin;
army; defeated the Cossacks and Tartars; and
drove out the Turks, who, led by the Sultan,
Mahomet the Fourth, in person, had invaded the
country. The throne becoming vacant, Sobieski
was elected by acclamation as its next occupant.
A fresh Turkish invasion speedily called him
into the field. He routed one army, and was
soon afterwards compelled to encounter another,
led by the Pasha of Damascus, who was called
by his followers " the Devil," being deemed by
them invincible. The Polish warrior, at the
head of only ten thousand men—a mere handful
in comparison with the legions of the enemy—
entrenched himself between two villages on the
banks of the Dniester, and for twenty days
withstood a furious cannonade by the Moslems. On
the 14th of October, 1676, he suddenly sallied
forth, and, drawing up in order of battle, struck
a panic terror into the Turks, who conceived
that Sobieski could be nothing short of a wizard
to defy such odds, and whose commander
accordingly offered him honourable terms of peace,
which were accepted. During the few years of
tranquillity which followed this exploit,
Sobieski endeavoured to introduce reforms into
the Polish constitution; but he was always
defeated by the selfish prejudices of the nobles. It
was not long, however, before the European
encroachments of the Turks again summoned
the king to the active pursuits of war, and
gave him the opportunity for the greatest of his
military achievements. This time it was not
Poland, but the Austrian capital, that was
threatened by the Moslem. Vienna was closely
beleaguered by the Grand Vizier, Kara
Mustapha; and all Europe awaited the issue of the
siege with breathless anxiety. Hungary had
been already overrun, though the country of the
Magyars was generally regarded as the eastern
bulwark of Christianity against the tide of
Mussulman power. Had Vienna fallen, it is
impossible to say where that tide would have
stopped; and the crisis was looked upon with
the utmost gravity and alarm. At the head of
sixteen thousand Poles, Sobieski advanced to
the relief of Vienna; being joined by
several German contingents, he found himself
on the 11th of September, 1683, in command of
an army of seventy thousand men. From the
mountain ridge of Kalemberg, which dominates
Vienna, he saw the plain below covered with
the Ottoman hosts. On the following day,
the Turks were driven into their entrenchments;
but here Sobieski paused, conceiving
the position to be too strong for attack. A
trifling incident, however, had the effect of
suddenly provoking him into a change of purpose
which had the happiest results. In the early
evening, he caught sight of the Grand Vizier
seated at the entrance to his tent, sipping coffee.
The cool indifference of this proceeding irritated
the Polish king to such a degree that he gave
orders for an immediate assault; the Christians
dashed like a thunderbolt into the Moslem ranks;
and the Turks, after a brief resistance, fled,
leaving their enemies in possession of the ground,
the whole camp, the artillery, and the baggage.

The latter end of the seventeenth and
commencement of the eighteenth centuries, mark a
period of history memorable for the production