The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (42 page)

Ever since 1680 Du Quesne’s ships of war had been in action against the corsairs.
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In 1682 he bombarded Algiers, and in June 1683 appeared there for the second time. On this occasion, in spite of the great strength of the French, resistance was very determined and culminated in a brutal execution of the French consul in the town. Louis’ dispatch of 25 July had instructed Du Quesne to insist on the complete humiliation of the enemy. Another dispatch, of 10 August, witheringly reproached the Admiral for his failure to take the place, and pressed for a relentless bombardment with an exceptionally heavy, new type of mortar by which the French set great store; technically it was a more striking novelty than anything that either the attack or the defence at Vienna, in this very month, had to show. For another four weeks the fate of Algiers was in doubt, before the French finally withdrew. Louis continued to hope for a resounding victory over the infidel, just when the crisis in Vienna was coming to its climax. At the same moment, in the middle of August, he decided to send his troops into the Spanish Netherlands. It seemed certain that no one could help Grana, the Viceroy at Brussels, and Leopold was manifestly unable to do so. If the Spaniards collapsed in Flanders, their ambassador in Passau or Linz would in turn find it impossible to maintain the interest at Leopold’s court which still opposed a settlement in the Empire and the Netherlands on Louis’ terms. But simultaneously Louis would impress Europe as the victor at Algiers, the redeemer of all those Christian captives and slaves in north Africa.

He had other more personal factors to take into account in this crowded period.
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At the end of July the Queen of France died suddenly, the lady whom the King esteemed (as he admitted) because she never said ‘No’ to him in the whole course of her life. Louis had at once to settle with someone of far greater will-power, Mme de Maintenon, whose influence over him had been growing in the previous few years. She was perfectly capable of saying ‘No’ if the monarch asked for an irregular union. Discreet references in Mme de Maintenon’s correspondence in the months of August, September and October 1683, show that she and the King were then struggling to decide their future relationship; it was the extraordinary affair ‘sur l’article de Louis et Françoise’. On 12 August (the day the Turks entered the counterscarp of Vienna), she begged her confidante Mme de Brianon, ‘to pray constantly for the King—he needs grace more than ever, in order to behave in a manner contrary to his inclinations and habits’. The battle, for so it may be called, was fought out at Fontainebleau; early in September Louis injured an arm, and abandoned an earlier plan to take the court to Touraine for the autumn. The decision in favour of a secret marriage was reached by mid-September, and the ceremony probably took place in the second week of October. One other major domestic alteration occurred at the same moment. On 6 September Colbert died and it became necessary to choose between the candidates who competed busily for the various offices which he had held.

There is no proven connection between Louis’ personal problem and
French foreign policy in the summer and autumn of 1683, but the autocrat in Fontainebleau was surely too preoccupied to consider seriously the arguments for a spectacular intervention in the Empire, for making a positive offer to send troops at once to the Danube in return for concessions. For some years he had used Turkish pressure on the Habsburgs as a powerful lever to squeeze such concessions from Leopold. The siege screwed up that pressure to a maximum and he continued unhesitatingly to use it in August 1683. The dispatches from his ambassador in Passau suggested—at least, until the end of the month—that Vienna was unlikely to surrender; while a long series of reports from French envoys at Istanbul had usually deprecated the military efficiency of the Ottoman army. It was justifiable, on the basis of this evidence, to weaken Leopold’s powers of resistance by refusing to help him, and to rebuff the Pope who called for the collaboration of all Christian states in the hour of supreme danger. It was expedient to bully the Regensburg Diet by making one more offer—which stood open for forty days, and no longer
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—for a settlement in the Empire. But to go further, and to send troops into the Empire to enforce such a settlement, would have profoundly disturbed the French clergy and nobility when they were already worried by a serious dispute with the Pope. In 1682 Innocent had roundly condemned Louis’ ecclesiastical policy and, less directly, the fundamental statement of principle embodied in the Gallican Articles of that year.

The Church in France, the Catholic laity and the King therefore combined to support measures which effectively demonstrated their Christian zeal. The fleet’s actions in the Mediterranean was one such measure; and hostility to the Protestants was another. The quartering of soldiers on Huguenot families, as a set act of policy, began in May 1681. In July 1683 Protestants in the Vivarais and Dauphiné appeared in arms, and troops were sent to deal with them.

French hostility to Leopold was tempered by these considerations, making an outright alliance with the Sultan unthinkable during the crisis. If Mme de Maintenon could not directly influence the policy of Louis or Louvois, it is significant that the papal nuncio in Paris, Ranuzzi, gave her a number of valuable presents during August for which she expressed great gratitude to the Pope. An absolute breach with Rome would have disgusted her whole circle of friends and dependents. For instance, we can listen to the redoubtable voice of Bossuet on this theme, as he preached the funeral oration for Maria Theresa at St Denis on 1 September.
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‘The very name and shadow of dissension,’ he declared, ‘was abhorrent to the Queen, as to all pious souls. Let there be no mistake: the Holy See can never forget France, or France be unmindful of what is due to the Holy See, which must be honoured in the lawful manner and with profound submission.’ And in more than one splendid passage he went on to warn his audience of the horrors of the Turkish invasion of Hungary and Austria, begging them to recall the great exploits in Crete and on the Rába (in 1664), when ‘Louis revived in the infidels’ breasts the opinion they had of old, of the prowess of French arms ever fatal to their tyranny, and by peerless
deeds became Austria’s bulwark after being her dread.’ On the day that Bossuet was speaking, French troops under Marshal d’Humières entered the Spanish Netherlands without a declaration of war.
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The right policy, then, was not to attack the Empire while the Turks stood outside Vienna, but to use Turkish pressure on the states of the Empire in order to squeeze a power—Spain—which those states were far too preoccupied to help, while at the same time the principalities of north Germany were distracted by the continuing Baltic crisis, in turn partly maintained by French diplomacy.
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Louis, Louvois and Colbert de Croissy had indeed judged the situation to a nicety. Although Grana published a violent manifesto of defiance, he lacked the force to offer an effective resistance. D’Humierès took Courtrai first, and then Dixmude; his colleague Créqui bombarded the town of Luxembourg while parts of Hainault and Flanders were later ravaged in a thorough and brutal fashion. The Spaniards found themselves powerless. Above all their obvious champion William of Orange, strongly opposed by many of his countrymen, was less able to help them than at any earlier or later period in his long career.

One of the many reasons for William’s weakness was the failure of his assistant, Waldeck, to win the real support of Leopold’s government.
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Having argued unsuccessfully at Vienna that Lorraine’s army ought not to advance into Hungary, Waldeck had retraced his steps to Linz. There he tried to persuade both the Habsburg counsellors and Max Emmanuel (on his way back to Bavaria) to prepare for speedy action in the Empire. On 17 November the Elector joined the ‘Association’ of states which had earlier bound themselves to defend—in principle—the Westphalian and Nymegen treaties. On 18 November Waldeck was present at a conference of Habsburg ministers which agreed that Leopold’s representative should join with envoys at The Hague early in 1684, in order to consider a common policy for dealing with the emergency in Flanders and other areas threatened by France.
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A little later the Emperor formally appointed Waldeck as one of his own spokesmen at this conference. Waldeck, much embarrassed, feared that the honour would compromise him in the view of unfriendly critics; but possibly Leopold’s advisers deliberately wished to place on his shoulders the responsibility for a policy which they themselves did not intend to carry very far. By the end of 1683 he was on his way back to The Hague where William anxiously awaited him.

The Habsburg government, partly because the situation in eastern Europe increasingly compelled it to seize the opportunity to try to reconquer Hungary and even to encourage rebellion in the Balkans, formed a much more detached view of the whole situation in the west than did Waldeck, William, or Grana. When Borgomanero asked for help, in a personal conference with Leopold at the close of the year, threatening that without it Spain would come to terms with Louis XIV, the Emperor pointedly asked what force the Spaniards intended to put into the field to save themselves.
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Nor was the court at Linz
pleased by Madrid’s formal declaration of war in December, which made a passive policy more difficult to sustain. Leopold’s advisers appreciated, as William or Waldeck did not, that neither Brandenburg nor Saxony had any intention of opposing Louis XIV on Spanish territories, a point confirmed by Lamberg in the spring of 1684 after one more journey to Dresden and Berlin. They also knew well enough that the Hanoverian and Brunswick rulers were by this date unable to consider joining in a war against France. The combined forces of Ernest Augustus and George William, kept ready for action against the Danes and Brandenburgers at great cost throughout the winter, certainly made them formidable. But they were encircled by enemies; and Ernest Augustus had hinted to Leopold, already in July 1683, that his policy was changing, that he saw the need for an accommodation with Louis.
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By December he pressed more insistently for a peaceful settlement with France in the Empire, and he dared not contemplate joining William of Orange and Spain. When the time came to send a Hanoverian representative to The Hague conference, his instructions were so drawn that they restrained him from agreeing to any positive commitment.

The conference duly met and talked while William continued to battle with his enemies in Holland.
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He hoped that a promise by other powers to help Spain would satisfy them. But they knew well enough that reports from Dutch ambassadors abroad all testified to the weakness or the unpopularity of the Spaniards. Equally, foreign observers at The Hague soon realised that tension in the United Provinces jeopardised any chance of effective intervention by the Dutch in the dispute between Louis XIV and the King of Spain. While Waldeck began enlarging the magazines at Maestricht, of which he was governor, and William tried to assemble sufficient troops in Gelderland, the Estates of Groningen and Friesland actually called home their own soldiers.
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The Amsterdam municipality remained intransigent and the conference of William’s allies gradually petered out, after spending many hours on detailed plans for the defence of various frontiers. On 18 May Louis began the siege of Luxembourg, a powerful fortress but inadequately garrisoned. Vauban was never more skilful in his approaches, so that the swift progress of the siege left Grana and William little to hope for. As a last, desperate move Waldeck set out on another mission to Germany.
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He reckoned on the good will of Max Emmanuel, and quite unaccountably thought that Ernest Augustus still intended to intervene. Above all he wished to convince the Habsburg court that the whole future of the Empire was in the balance.

A year earlier, Waldeck might have persuaded Leopold’s ministers that after a resounding victory in Hungary they ought to throw their forces into action against France. But was such action still the paramount necessity?

Louis XIV had since then committed a sizeable part of his own armament to a campaign in Flanders and Luxembourg, revealing more clearly than ever before that in this area the potential allies of the Austrian Habsburgs were weak and divided. Yet the defence of the Empire, and the possible
recovery of Strasbourg with Alsace, depended on the deployment of forces which would have to come either from Holland and north Germany or from Bavaria and Austria. The Dutch, Spaniards and north Germans, it seemed, were unable to protect even the territory between the lower Rhine and the Meuse, while the Austrians and Bavarians were tempted by the prospect of easier successes down the Danube. A crushing series of defeats had proved the vulnerability of the Turks. As a result, and always assuming that Louis XIV did not ask for more than Strasbourg (which he already held) and Luxembourg, the old interest represented at the Habsburg court by Herman of Baden and Borgomanero continued to grow weaker. Lorraine after his victories at Vienna and Esztergom, and Max Emmanuel, both drew closer to Buonvisi and Innocent XI. Leopold listened to Marco d’Aviano
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who wanted a religious crusade, he listened less to Waldeck and Herman of Baden. During the winter of 1683–4 there were only some 10,000 Habsburg troops quartered in the Empire, and no attempt was made to transfer more regiments to the western theatre.
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The government negotiated for the entry of Venice into the League against the Sultan, and prepared for the next campaign in Hungary. Leopold personally overrode objections expressed by Herman of Baden, while Lorraine presided over important military conferences on 8 and 24 February. At these, the question of strategy was thoroughly considered and plans were made on the assumption that the Turkish war would last for several years, with Habsburg forces gradually advancing down the Danube and Drava valleys. Buonvisi, for his part, tried manfully to diminish the gaping deficits of Habsburg finance by arranging for the taxing of the Church in the Habsburg lands, and distributing funds supplied by the Pope from clerical taxation elsewhere; and both Pope and nuncio pressed more urgently than ever for a settlement with France. Their appeal accorded, at last, with a sober analysis of European politics.