The Polish king rode into Vienna, not waiting for Kaiser Hogmouth to return. ‘All the common people kissed my hands, my feet, my clothes,’ he boasted, sending Marysien´ka one of Mustafa’s golden stirrups. ‘Others only touched me, saying: “Ah, let us kiss so valiant a hand!”’ Hogmouth rushed back, resentful of Sobieski, and their meeting was frosty – there was nothing as cold as Habsburg ingratitude. Hogmouth presented himself as victor; the Ottoman cannon was melted down to cast new bells for St Stephen’s. Poland had saved Christendom, but Sobieski was its last great king.
In Belgrade, Mehmed sent the Tongueless to the vizier with their bowstrings. ‘Am I to die?’ Mustafa asked the Tongueless, then bowed his neck. ‘If God wishes.’ But the sultan was himself deposed and the Ottomans never regained the initiative. Hogmouth ordered his best general, Prince Eugen of Savoy, a young French officer who had fallen out with Louis XIV, to counter-attack, seizing Buda and Belgrade and so almost doubling Habsburg territory. But in the west Louis was close to dominating Europe, an achievement he celebrated by cancelling toleration of Protestants, granted by Henri IV, his grandfather.
Only William of Orange could stop ‘my mortal enemy’ Louis from seizing Universal Kingship, and to accomplish this he pulled off an extraordinary coup: on 5 November 1688, the thirty-six-year-old stadtholder of Holland and husband of Princess Mary of England invaded England.
THE CHANGELING, THE KING’S UNDERWEAR AND THE ORANGES
It was in one sense a bitter family feud, whirling around the two brothers, Charles II and James, and their first cousin William. Charles, who had fourteen illegitimate children and was nicknamed Old Rowley after a famous stallion, had no legitimate heir except his unpopular Catholic brother, James. The Protestant Parliament objected to his succession, thereby launching a deadly crisis – part of fifty years of religious and political strife.
It started in 1673, when James married a ‘tall and admirably shaped’ Italian princess, Maria of Modena, who was only a little older than his daughters Mary and Anne. ‘I’ve brought you a new play-fellow’ was how he tactlessly introduced his wife to his daughters. His ‘Popish bride’ and the possibility of a Catholic heir inspired a malicious conspiracy-theorist, Titus Oates, who had already falsely denounced a schoolmaster for abusing his pupils and now claimed that there was a Popish Plot by Maria’s doctor to kill the king (via poison or a golden bullet) and enthrone James. His allegations became the sparkwheel of hysteria and terror.* Charles interrogated Oates – this ‘wicked man’ – but was forced to approve the execution of twenty-two innocents. Pepys, now an MP and recently promoted to Admiralty secretary, decried ‘such a state of distraction and fear’ but was denounced because he was a protégé of James. But he was cleared of being a Catholic agent and reappointed.
Parliament tried to exclude James and make Charles’s eldest illegitimate son, Monmouth, the heir. Charles, whose sex life always reflected his politics, tacked towards two Protestant actresses, Moll Davis and Nell Gwynne. He had Nell painted naked, keeping the painting behind another painting and unveiling it to ogling friends. Pepys did not think much of Nell’s acting – ‘a serious part, which she do most basely’ – but she had the gift of the gab, telling a crowd that stopped her carriage and accused her of being one of Charles’s Catholic paramours: ‘Good people, you’re mistaken; I’m the
Yet Charles believed exclusion would lead to the end of his vision of monarchy. ‘I’ll never yield and won’t let myself be intimidated,’ he said. ‘Men become ordinarily more timid as they grow old; as for me, I shall be bolder.’ In any witch-hunt, it takes time, but ‘good men will be with me’. He was right. Emerging near absolute, he ruled through young ministers – nicknamed the Chits – who included Godolphin, a favourite courtier. Charles and the Chits decided to dismantle Tangier, part of the queen’s dowry, which was under pressure from a new Moroccan sultan. Pepys was sent out to supervise. Soon afterwards, it was captured by Ismail ibn Sharif, the Warrior, Moroccan empire builder, whose Alawi family, descended from the Prophet, started in Sijilmassa before uniting the country and conquering southwards to Timbuktu and the Senegal River. Ismail, son of an enslaved African mother, had seized the throne in 1672. The greatest slave trader of his time, Ismail enslaved 220,000 Africans – some of them forming crack regiments – who were joined by thousands of Europeans, enslaved by his corsairs based in Salé. All of them were treated abysmally: he used the Africans to police the whites.*
