114

DEATH OF JOHN SOBIESKI.

[BOOK V. with France, had probably a view to the recovery of his patrimonial dominions. The Emperor himself, elated by his successes against the Turks, was inclined to listen to the Margrave; he dreamt of nothing less than putting an end to the Turkish empire in Europe, and effecting the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The war therefore went on, and the result of the campaign of 1689 seemed to justify the advice of the Margrave Louis. That commander, carrying the war from Bosnia into Servia, inflicted several severe defeats upon the Turks, occupied the passes of the Balkan from the borders of Roumelia to the Herzegovina, and captured all the fortresses on the Danube from Widdin to Nicopolis, so that he was enabled to take up his winter quarters in Wallachia.

The Turks, however, after the rejection of their proposals, prepared to recover their losses. Mustapha Köprili, who had now been appointed Grand Vizier, infused more vigour into the government; and with the assistance of Tekeli, who had been appointed Prince of Transylvania, after the death of Michael Apafy in April 1690, the Turks this year recovered almost all that they had previously lost. Belgrade was retaken, to the great alarm of the Viennese; and even in the winter time Turkish divisions pushed on to Temesvar, Great Waradin, and even into Transylvania. But in 1691, the Margrave Louis, though he had only about 45,000 men to oppose to more than double that number of Turks, completely defeated them at Salankemen, August 19th; in which battle Mustapha Köprili was slain. The victory, however, had not the important consequences that might have been anticipated, and the next four or five years are barren of great events.. They were, however, marked by a frequent change of sultans. Solyman II. died in June 1691, and was succeeded by his brother Achmet II., who in February 1695 in turn gave place to Mustapha II. Mustapha was an energetic prince, and having determined to put himself at the head of his armies, he crossed the Danube, captured several places, and in 1696 defeated the Imperialists at Bega.

The death of John Sobieski, King of Poland, in that year had indirectly an important effect on the war in Hungary. In order to withdraw Poland from Austrian influence, Louis XIV. strained every nerve to obtain the crown of that kingdom for his cousin, the Prince of Conti. The Emperor Leopold, on the other hand, unwilling to have a French prince for his neighbour, incited Augustus of Saxony, surnamed the Strong, to become a candidate for the vacant dignity; and his cause was espoused by the Pope, the Jesuits, the Czar of Russia, and the Elector of Brandenburg.

The last-named prince, always subservient to Austrian policy, had an additional motive in the promise of Augustus to recognise the royal title which he contemplated assuming. As a candidate. for the Polish crown, to which none but a Roman Catholic was eligible, Augustus was obliged to change his religion; with him, however, a matter of no great difficulty; for though the hereditary head of the Lutheran Confession, Augustus had in. fact little religion of any kind. He made his confession of the Roman Catholic faith in June 1697, in the imperial chapel at Baden, near Vienna. His election was purchased with his own money and that of the Emperor. The Prince of Conti was indeed chosen by a majority at Warsaw, June 27th 1697; but the minority proclaimed Augustus, who hastening into the kingdom with his Saxon troops, was crowned at Cracow, September 15th.12

The acceptance of the Polish crown obliged Augustus to resign the command of the Imperial army, which he had conducted without much ability or success. His retirement made room for one of the greatest generals of the age. Prince Eugene of SoissonsSavoy, descended from a younger branch of the House of Savoy, was by his mother, Olimpia Mancini, a great nephew of Cardinal Mazarine. Noted during the early years of Louis XIV. for her intriguing and lively temper, Olimpia had in 1680 become implicated in some suspicion of poisoning, and Louis, as an act of grace, permitted her to leave France. Her disgrace fell upon her family. Eugene, her youngest son, who from being first destined for the Church was called the Abbé of Savoy, having demanded a commission in the army, was refused by the King. This refusal was afterwards to cost Louis dear. Eugene offered his sword to the Emperor, and in the battle of Zenta on the Theiss, September 11th 1697, he inflicted on the Turks a signal defeat, by which they lost their camp, artillery, stores, and military chest.13 The Grand Vizier Mustapha Köprili was slain in this battle. Eugene could not follow up his victory, except by a short incursion into Bosnia; but it may be said to have been one of the principal causes of the peace which soon afterwards ensued. To this, however, the successes of the Venetians and Russians also contributed, to which we must briefly advert.

By the capture of Malvasia in 1690, the Venetians completed the conquest of the Morea. The Isle of Chios, taken in 1694, was again lost the following year; but in Dalmatia and Albania the Venetian Republic made many permanent conquests, from the

12 As King of Poland he was Augustus II.; as Elector of Saxony, Augustus I.

13 See D'Artanville, Mem. du prince Eugène, t. ii. p. 98 sqq.

116

14

PEACE OF CARLOWITZ.

[Book V. mountains of Montenegro to the borders of Croatia and the banks of the Unna. The operations of the Poles in the Turkish war were insignificant; but in July 1696, the Russians, under the Czar Peter, after many long and fruitless attempts, at length succeeded in taking Azov, at the mouth of the Don; a most important conquest as securing for them the entry into the Black Sea. It was the fall of this place, combined with the defeat at Zenta, that chiefly induced the Porte to enter into negociations for a peace; which England and Holland, that is to say, William III., had been long endeavouring to bring about, but which France, on the other hand, did everything in her power to prevent. Conferences were at length opened at Carlowitz, near Peterwaradin, in October 1698; and on January 26th 1699, treaties were signed between the Porte on one side and the Emperor, the King of Poland, and the Republic of Venice on the other. By the treaty with the Emperor the Porte ceded all Hungary (except the Banat of Temesvar), Transylvania, the greater part of Slavonia, and Croatia as far as the Unna. The armistice was to last twenty-five years-for the Turks never made what was called a perpetual peace-subject to prolongation.15 Poland obtained by her treaty, Kameniek, Podolia, and the Ukraine. To Venice were ceded the Morea, the Isles of St. Maura and Egina, and several fortresses in Dalmatia. Count Tekeli was totally disregarded in these treaties. He had lived since 1695 in a remote quarter of Constantinople on a small pension allowed him by the Sultan. He was afterwards banished to Nicomedia, where he died in 1704.

The negociations between Russia and the Porte were long protracted, as the latter was very loth to part with Azov. A Russian ship of war of thirty-six guns, built at that port and commanded by a Dutch captain, which arrived at Constantinople in the summer of 1699, opened the eyes of the Turks to the consequences of their loss, and made them fear a less civil visit if hostilities should again break out. Nevertheless, in July 1702, a treaty was at length concluded, by which Azov, with about eighty miles of territory, was ceded to the Czar, who converted it into one of the most formidable fortresses in Europe.

Such was the end of the Holy War. We now pass on to the affairs of Sweden and the North, after mentioning the only occurrence of any moment at this period in the affairs of the German Empire as a confederate body. This was the erection by the

14 Peter had assumed the government in 1689, while his brother Ivan was still living. We shall return to this subject in

another chapter.

15 Katona, t. xxxvi. p. 106 sqq.

Emperor of a ninth electorate, that of Hanover, in 1692, in favour of Duke Ernest Augustus of Hanover. The terms, however, on which it was granted were such as made the new elector a mere satellite of the Imperial House. In return for the electoral hat and the office of archbanneret of the Holy Roman Empire, the new elector was to place 6000 men, over and above his ordinary contingent, at the service of the Emperor so long as the war in Hungary and Germany should last, and to pay during the same time a subsidy of 500,000 crowns; if the King of Spain should die without issue, he was to employ all his forces to procure the throne of that kingdom for an Austrian archduke; he was to use all his credit and influence to re-establish the King of Bohemia in the exercise of all the rights, privileges, and prerogatives enjoyed by the other electors; 16 he was to engage for himself, his heirs, and successors in perpetuity, that they should never give their electoral suffrage in the election of future Emperors and Kings of the Romans except in favour of the eldest archdukes of the House of Austria; that he should act in concert with the Imperial Court in all the assemblies of the Empire; and that he should accord to the Catholics the public exercise of their religion in Hanover and Zell.17

The new elector, however, did not obtain his title without great opposition. The electors of Trèves, Cologne, and the Palatine protested against it, as well as many princes of the Duke of Hanover's own religious persuasion, and among them his cousin, Anthony Ulrich, of Wolfenbüttel, the head of the House of Brunswick, out of jealousy at seeing his relative thus preferred before him. In the following year the Dukes of Saxe Gotha, Saxe Coburg, Brunswick Wolfenbüttel, and Mecklenburg, the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein-Glückstadt, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, the Margraves of Brandenburg Culmbach (or Baireuth), and Baden Baden, the Bishops of Münster, Bamberg and Eichstädt, formed a League at Ratisbon, under the name of the Correspondent Princes, to oppose the designs of the Imperial Court, and declared the investiture of the new elector to be null and void. This did not prevent Duke Ernest from making use of his new title,

16 The Kings of Bohemia had lost, by disuse, their electoral privileges, especially those of sitting in the general or particular assemblies of the Electoral College, and of assenting to the imperial capitulations drawn up in the electoral diets. This had arisen either through their own negligence in not making use of privileges which seemed to fortify their dependence on the empire; or through their being de

prived of them by a wrongful interpretation of the letters patent of the Emperor Frederick II., according to the kings of Bohemia, as matter of grace and favour, a dispensation from attending all diets except those held at Bamberg or Nuremberg. Pfeffel, t. ii. p. 473.

17 Lünig, Reichs Archiv., Pars spec., t. v. p. 167 sqq. Menzel, B. iv. S. 495.

118

REVOLUTION IN DENMARK.

[BOOK V. though the contest was prolonged into the following century; and the full and recognised possession of the electoral dignity and rights was only at length obtained by Ernest Augustus's son, George Louis. The most important part of this transaction with regard to the general affairs of Europe was, that it afforded Louis XIV. an opportunity of again intervening in the affairs of the empire, and forming a French party in Germany. The protesting princes required the diplomatic intervention of France, as guarantee of the Treaty of Westphalia, of which they represented the Emperor's proceedings to be a breach; and Louis entered a protest against them at the Diet of Ratisbon (October 14th 1700).

We now revert to the history of the Scandinavian kingdoms since the Peace of Copenhagen in 1660, which we have recorded in Chapter II.

The events of the war with Sweden, and the exhausted state in which Denmark had been left by the struggle, showed the indispensable necessity for some alteration in the Danish constitution. Her misfortunes might be traced chiefly to the oligarchy of nobles, who administered the finances and diverted them to their own purposes. The freedom of that order from taxes, and the other privileges and immunities which they enjoyed, were also highly detrimental to the state. The jealousy and hatred of this privileged class had been enhanced by its conduct in the war. During the siege of Copenhagen the nobles had displayed the greatest indifference, and had sheltered themselves under their privileges from taking any part in its defence; which the King had been obliged to conduct with the assistance of the citizens, the students, and the mercenary troops. It was natural enough, therefore, at the end of the war, to think of using this army in order to compel the nobles to relinquish their pernicious immunities. Already in 1658, after the rupture of the Peace of Roskild, Frederick had gained the affections of the burgher class by granting them some extraordinary privileges. Every citizen who distinguished himself by his courage was to be ennobled; every serf who enrolled himself as a soldier was to earn the freedom of himself and his children. The right of staple was conferred on Copenhagen; it was made a free city and one of the states of the kingdom, with a voice in public affairs; the citizens were empowered to buy the estates of nobles, and were placed on a like footing with them with regard to tolls and taxes, the quartering of troops, the accession to public offices, and the like.

The Queen of Denmark,18 who had distinguished herself by her

1 Sophia Amelia, a Hanoverian princess.