The World полностью

On 14 July 1683, around 170,000 Ottoman troops, led by the grand vizier, Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa, surrounded the city they called the Red Apple. After the murder of the great Kösem, her female nemesis Turhan, now valide sultan, ruled for her young son Mehmed IV, solving a crisis of confidence by appointing as vizier a septuagenarian of murderous vigour: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha. Born an Albanian Christian, enslaved and enrolled as a scullion, Köprülü killed anyone who resisted, writing to a childhood friend, ‘It’s true we were both raised in the harem and both protégés of Murad IV; nevertheless be informed if the accursed Cossacks pillage any of your villages and towns, I swear I will ignore your righteous character and cut you into pieces as a warning to the world.’ It worked. Köprülü and his son added Transylvania and Crete to the empire, while Mehmed was diverted by his obsession with hunting: ‘The father [Ibrahim] was mad for cunt; the son’s mad for the hunt.’

After Mustafa, Köprülü’s son-in-law, won a limited victory against the Poles, he convinced Mehmed to Hunter that the overstretched, interbred Habsburgs were ripe for conquest.

The jaw of Emperor Leopold was so elongated he was nicknamed Hogmouth. ‘God made his skull in the shape of a gourd or a water bottle,’ noticed the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi, ‘eyes round as an owl’s; face long as that of mister fox, ears as large as a child’s slippers, nose as shrivelled as a grape, three fingers could fit inside each nostril from which black hairs like a bravo’s beard mix in confusion with his moustache; lips like a camel, and whenever he speaks, saliva pours from his camel lips.’ Hogmouth was married to his niece, Margarita, the blue-dressed, blonde infanta in Velázquez’s Las Meninas, daughter of Philip IV of Spain. He called her Gretl, she called him Uncle, and their marriage was happy, though unsurprisingly three of their four children died. Her fun-loving spirit inspired their baroque court. Hogmouth was a talented flautist and composer, and impresario of astonishing shows in which fireworks lit up the sky and carriages and horses seemed to fly through the air. Yet his empress also brought her Spanish antisemitism. Horrified to find Jews thriving within Vienna, she encouraged him to expel and plunder them.^*

Hogmouth had bigger problems. In the west, his cousin Louis had invaded the Habsburg Netherlands, and now in the east the Ottomans were coming. Hogmouth turned to the most gallant paladin of the east: the king of a Poland–Lithuania weakened by Cossack revolt and Muscovite expansion. Jan III Sobieski was a sophisticated Polish bravo, fluent in French, Turkish and Tatar, who had toured the west, married a French aristocrat Marysien´ka, (with whom he fathered twelve children) and fought with and against the Turks, Tatars and Swedes, personifying the Serene Republic at its best. His daily letters to Marysien´ka were filled with gossip and politics, but suffused with their love: he called her Cleopatra; she called him Gunpowder. Realizing that Poland would be next if Vienna fell, Sobieski, now fifty-four and fat, agreed to help Hogmouth, who abandoned the city along with 60,000 Viennese. He left a veteran, Count Ernst von Starhemberg, to hold the capital with just 15,000 men. But he had 370 cannon, while the overconfident Mustafa, accompanied by 1,500 concubines supervised by 700 black eunuchs, and with his own private zoo, had neglected his artillery, fielding just 130 cannon. The fighting was desperate, with mining and countermining of the walls. When the vizier started his bombardment, it looked as if Vienna would fall, but Sobieski took command of a papal Holy Alliance. Leading 70,000 men, starring his Ukrainian Cossacks of the Dnieper and Polish winged Hussars – who sported ostrich feathers on the back of their armour – Sobieski galloped to the rescue.

Mustafa had not covered his back, instead depending on the 40,000 horsemen of the Crimean khan who were more interested in plundering Austria. Vienna was close to catastrophe when on 9/11 1683^* Sobieski appeared behind Mustafa.

‘This man is badly encamped,’ Sobieski noted, ‘he knows nothing of war.’ At 6 p.m. on 9/11, he and 18,000 Polish winged Hussars flew (almost) down Kahlenberg Mountain through Ottoman lines and into Mustafa’s encampment. Mustafa ordered his favourite ostrich to be beheaded as he fled with his harem. ‘God and our blessed Lord forever granted us victory,’ Gunpowder told Cleopatra. ‘The tents and wagons have fallen into my hands, et mille autres galanteries fort jolies et fort riches.’^*