The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (12 page)

Lamberg, Nostitz, Lobkowitz and Banz had toiled away; Herman of Baden also put in a brief appearance at Dresden and Berlin. The Hofburg strove to strengthen its position at the three major courts of Brandenburg, Saxony and Bavaria, hoping to use their considerable resources to check the growing ascendancy of France. No real progress was made. French reunions and encroachments continued. French diplomacy never flagged. The rulers of central Germany had not yet been convinced that their vital interests were affected by events in the Rhineland. Yet the Hofburg held to its course, it refused to listen to offers from Poland and pleas from the Pope for an
aggressive alliance against the Turks, and prepared instead to try new tactics in Germany.

In January 1681, Leopold’s commissioners at Regensburg offered a proposal to the Diet for raising 40,000 (subsequently 60,000) men from the Circles. They justified it by referring to the Turkish danger, and to the common duty of all to guarantee security within the frontiers of Germany—by which they meant the duty of the Diet to organise resistance to French designs. By the end of May there was an agreement in principle, and during the next twelve months a series of decisions in detail settled what was due from individual Circles. These were then left to divide out their quota between member-states, which could contribute with either men or money. However, the whole cumbrous scheme was not much more than a warning to Louis XIV, who had responded by sending his troops into Strasbourg on 21 September.

The immediate consequences of this great stroke are very difficult to evaluate. There were too many courts, too many conflicting interests in Germany, for the natural sentiments of alarm and indignation to bring them into harmony. The differences of opinion were accentuated because Louis now began to make offers for a permanent settlement to a conference held at Frankfurt, and then to the Diet, provided that the Empire recognised French sovereignty in Strasbourg and the places ‘reunited’ to France before Strasbourg fell. In any case, in the autumn of 1681 two points were soon clear. No organised military force was ready to oppose Louis XIV; and the campaigning season was nearly over. The future turned on the preparations, both diplomatic and military, to be made for the following year. The conference at Frankfurt continued its intermittent sessions, where Leopold’s envoy now took the lead in obstructing any serious discussion of the French offers. In Regensburg the Habsburg government still tried hard to tap the resources of the Circles.

Serious rearmament at last began elsewhere. In the disarray at Dresden which clouded the last few months of John George II’s life, this ruler contemplated asking the next meeting of his Estates for supplies to raise a new army, to be regarded as permanent (a ‘perpetuierliches Werk’) until the peace of the Empire was assured;
¹⁷
two years previously he had dismissed most of his troops. Both his government and people were distracted by the plague in 1680,
¹⁸
and the Estates did not assemble until November 1681. They soon discovered that the new ruler, John George III, indeed aspired to be ‘the Saxon Mars’. He proposed a detailed and definite military programme. He wanted one million thaler a year for a field army of 10,000 men, and payments in kind to stock the necessary magazines. He wanted the citizens to honour their immemorial obligation to provide, and exercise, a militia. Much debate followed, because the powers of prince and nobility were still evenly balanced in Saxony, but in March 1682 both parties settled for a grant of 700,000 thaler, to be raised by taxation in each of the next six years. Recruiting began at once, and the new regiments began to take shape towards the end of the year.

Max Emmanuel in Bavaria followed suit. He expressed alarm at the fall of Strasbourg, and annoyance at the uneven flow of French subsidies. Lobkowitz was sent from Vienna to try his chances in a second mission. Although the Elector refused to commit himself to an alliance with Leopold, his martial instincts developed quickly. He realised that he had it in his power to keep abreast with all the other great princes of the Empire. He wanted an army for himself. The rearmament of Bavaria began. The year 1682 is the convenient date which initiates the continuous history of a permanent, standing army in both Saxony and Bavaria.

Ernest Augustus, of the Brunswick family, had succeeded to the principality of Hanover in 1679. A man of vigorous ambition, he already ruled Osnabrück and claimed the reversion to Celle. His earlier essays in diplomacy were interrupted by a leisurely and lavish tour in Italy between November 1680 and April 1681, but no one was more alarmed by the fall of Strasbourg and he began to negotiate directly with the Habsburg court, sending his adviser Falkenhayn (a Silesian Catholic) to Vienna early in 1682 to continue the discussion.
¹⁹
For Leopold, this seemed a point gained in the uphill struggle to find allies in the Empire.

Very naturally, Vienna also paid close attention to developments at The Hague.
²⁰
French aggressiveness here and the shifting alignment of powers in the Baltic—Denmark moved into the system of Louis’ alliances, and Sweden moved out—had brought William of Orange and Charles XI of Sweden together. They agreed in principle to defend the territorial settlement of Europe laid down by the great treaties of 1648 and 1678–9, and to invite other states to join their ‘Association’. The Austrian envoy was at once instructed from Vienna to agree unconditionally. It appeared a useful step forward, although politicians were well aware that an agreement of this kind was a sham, unless detailed clauses about troops and subsidies to enforce it were added later. Meanwhile, Waldeck had strengthened his own Union in Germany,
²¹
and linked it with the Franconian Circle by a compact of 31 January 1682. He championed a new plan for defending the Empire with Bavaria and Austria holding the south, the Franconians and the Union and Saxony placing 16,000 men between Philippsburg and Koblenz, and the northern Circles guarding the lower Rhineland. Something of this kind was certainly needed to strengthen the Association, if its members were to defend the Empire at all. Leopold’s ministers agreed, and when William suggested that the Diet at Regensburg should be invited to join the ‘Association’, they stipulated that the Emperor and individual German states or groups of states must first settle between them the details of a workmanlike military partnership. Equally Spain asked the Dutch for material guarantees of support in Flanders before they too entered the alliance. This sounded good sense, but it meant further delay when the matter was urgent. Everyone feared the worst for the summer months of 1682. Men asked themselves whether Louis would treat the Imperial city of Cologne as he had treated the Imperial city of Strasbourg. Many also
asked, as they measured his power, if they ought not to make the best possible bargain with him, even on unsatisfactory terms.

The more pessimistic view was not shared by the dominant factions in Vienna. They preferred a policy of appeasement in other parts of Europe, but not in the west. They decided on Caprara’s mission to Istanbul in August, 1681, and patched up a reconciliation with most of the dissident Magyars in November (see
p. 21
). They issued patents for the raising of new regiments. They welcomed the negotiations with Hanover and sent Lobkowitz once more to Munich.

Renewed contact with the major German states in 1682 produced nothing tangible. Vienna did not gain an inch at Munich, Hanover, Berlin or Dresden although the stakes rose higher every month, in that each of these powers was increasing the size of its military force; while Louis noisily threatened action. Instead the intricate diplomacy which had inspired men like Waldeck reached its curious climax, in a document finally signed in Leopold’s hunting lodge at Laxenburg
*
in June 1682 by the Habsburg ministers Hocher, Königsegg, Schwarzenberg and Herman of Baden, by a representative of the Franconian principalities, and by Waldeck on behalf of his Union. It has been described as the programme of a war-party. The Spanish ambassador in Vienna was of course its eager champion. The preamble stated that this compact anticipated a final settlement of ways and means to be devised for imperial defence by the Diet at Regensburg. Meanwhile, the signatories and their allies bound themselves to organise three armies in order to secure the Rhineland. Leopold promised some 20,000 for the south, and 3,000 from Bohemia as a reinforcement to the army of confederates holding the central stretch between Philippsburg and Koblenz. In the north reliance was somewhat piously placed on the local Circles, and on states like Hanover. Negotiations with the Elector of Bavaria and a number of other princes were promised as soon as possible. The whole scheme aimed to defend the Empire in a period of emergency, the campaigning season of 1682. Some of Leopold’s troops began to move west immediately after the treaty was signed. There was a calculation here that, in spite of the rebel Thököly’s refusal to accept the pacification of Sopron, the position in Hungary could be held; and that the Turks would not attempt anything serious before the treaty with them expired in 1684. One, if not two, years were available for mounting an efficient defence in Germany. If a stand was to be made against Louis XIV, this was the time.

A number of factors still obscured the issue. Louis temptingly offered first to return Freiburg if his main demands were accepted, then to give up certain claims in Flanders if Spain gave him Luxembourg. The Spaniards refused, and thereupon asked for help from the Dutch; the Dutch finally promised to send an expeditionary force of 8,000 to Flanders if Louis would not come to
terms. But William of Orange realised at the same time how inflammable the situation had recently grown in north Germany. Charles XI of Sweden stood to lose his valuable possessions, the prizes of the Thirty Years War, which stretched from Pomerania to the lands of the old archbishoprics of Bremen and Verden; while his enemies—Denmark and Brandenburg and Münster, cleverly egged on by France—hoped to win them. The future of such areas as Holstein and East Friesland
*
was equally in the balance, depending on the feverish rivalry of their stronger neighbours. The Hanoverians, aggressive but vulnerable, were arming furiously. All this made the Dutch very unwilling to expose themselves in the Rhineland, where the ecclesiastical Electors remained obsequious to French pressure. News of Thököly’s successes in Hungary caused further alarm during August and September, suggesting that Leopold could no longer dare to resist Louis’ demands for a new settlement in the Empire. Fortunately, Louis in fact still hoped to get what he wanted by substituting, for open conflict, menaces one stage removed from a direct French attack. And the Sultan, as everyone realised, had his part to play in this context.

Louis XIV’s earlier attempts, in 1679 and 1680, to persuade Kara Mustafa to intervene as a principal in the Magyar rebellion had not been successful. His talented envoy at the Porte, Guilleragues, was unable to prevent the two governments drifting still farther apart in the course of 1681, when the occupation of Strasbourg (and of Casale in northern Italy) by French troops coincided with Admiral Du Quesne’s accidental bombardment of Chios. Guilleragues and the Grand Vezir also quarrelled bitterly over the treatment to be accorded to the ambassador at formal audiences, a dispute taken very seriously by the Turks and by the French. In 1682 Louis shifted his ground and adopted more subtle tactics. As in the past, the ambassador was to impress on the Sultan and his ministers the grandeur and power of the French King, but he was ordered to settle peaceably the problem of ceremonial, and to transmit to them Louis’ expression of regret for the misadventure at Chios. Above all, while steering clear of any commitment by the French to attack Leopold he was to point out, insistently, that the dispute between Leopold and Louis XIV in the Empire offered the Grand Vezir a marvellous opportunity for aggressive action.
²²
The King of France, instructed by many passages from Guilleragues’ reports, never rated the Ottoman armament highly; but he did consider it menacing enough to force Leopold to come to terms—with the King of France.

Then, having tightened one screw, he tried to tighten another. In April 1682 he withdrew his forces from Luxembourg, which his troops had been blockading for many months, and gave wide publicity to his alleged motive for the generous gesture: the peril, for central Europe, of an Ottoman invasion.
²³
But he informed Guilleragues that his real intention—which could be
explained to the Grand Vezir—was to be in a position to threaten the Emperor with his whole force. Meanwhile the French ambassador still feared that the Turks proposed to attack Poland, not Austria; and he therefore pointed out to them, as we have seen, that Louis might judge it necessary to help John Sobieski, whereas French aid for Leopold was out of the question.
²⁴
This was important, because the Turks remembered well enough that the French had sent one powerful expeditionary force to assist Austria in 1664, and another to Crete in 1669. In fact Louis did his diplomatic best to push the Ottoman army into Hungary, and the threat to Austria from the eastern front grew stronger with every month that passed in the second half of 1682. To strengthen it still further, Louis announced in September that his offers to negotiate a settlement in the Empire would lapse on the last day of November.
²⁵

By then Leopold knew that an immense Ottoman army was being assembled in the Balkans. But he did not move. He did not contemplate any surrender to Louis XIV. The campaigning season for 1682 was over, and he believed that he still had time in which to seek allies and to raise armies.

*
It was inspired by George Frederick, Count Waldeck, the militant ruler of three tiny principalities in that area, and from 1
672
until 1690 the trusted adviser of William of Orange.