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John III Sobieski (1629-1696), King of Poland from 1674
The Polish king Jan III Sobieski combined the talent of a brave commander, a wise politician and loving husband. He spent a significant part of his life not in the palace chambers, but in military campaigns. At the head of the Polish army, he fought first against Russia, then against the invasion of Turkish troops of the Ottoman Empire, repeatedly defeating them, preparing reforms in his country, which he wanted to see as a united, prosperous hereditary kingdom.
Created in 1569 on the basis of the Union of Lublin, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth consisted of two states - the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had a common diet and a common currency. The head of state was a monarch elected for life by the Sejm, who had a special title - King of Poland and Grand Duke Lithuanian. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied vast territories of modern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, partly Russia, Estonia, Moldova and Slovakia.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered from internal contradictions. From 1648 to 1668 it was ruled by King John II Casimir Vasa of the Swedish Vasa dynasty. In 1654, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth started a war with Russia over the annexation of Ukraine to Russia. A year later, the Polish-Swedish wars began, and the Swedes entered the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
Understanding this situation was not easy. WITH youth Jan Sobieski was close to politics. His father was a diplomat; on his mother’s side he was the great-grandson of Crown Hetman Zolkiewski. He studied at the University of Krakow, then received his education at universities Western Europe. When he returned home, the Swedes were already in Poland. I had to decide which side to take—the Swedish king or the opposition.
Sobieski joined the opposition, then went over to the side of the Swedish king and in 1666 led the Polish army. A year later, Sobieski took part in the war against Russia and defeated the united detachments of Cossacks and Tatars. He was proclaimed great crown hetman. In 1667, Jan married a famous beauty, a widow, née Marquise Casimira de la Grange.
The wars with Russia ended unsuccessfully for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. According to the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, she lost Kyiv and all areas east of the Dnieper. During those difficult times, Jan Sobieski put forward his candidacy for the post of king, but lost to Michael Korybut Wisniewiecki. This purebred Pole from a princely family became king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1669. But during his reign, Poland was losing the war to the Ottoman Empire.
In 1673, Vishnevetsky died unexpectedly, and a year later Sobes was elected king. He became King John III Sobieski of Poland and immediately began fighting the Turkish troops. In 1675, he inflicted a severe defeat on the Turkish Tatar army near Lvov. But this victory did not please France, an ally of the Ottoman Empire. We had to compromise - in 1675, France and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth entered into a secret agreement, according to which Jan Sobieski had to conclude an agreement with Turkey and pledged not to help Austria in the fight against the Turks.
This forced pro-French position by Sobieski did not prevent him from preparing to expel the Turks. Finally, in 1683, an anti-Turkish alliance between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria was concluded. Sultan Mehmed IV learned about this agreement and besieged Vienna. True to his treaty obligations, Jan Sobieski with small detachments went to the rescue of the Austrians.
In September 1683, a united Polish-Austrian army defeated the Turkish army. It was a serious victory. Jan Sobieski became a European hero. But the danger of a new Turkish invasion did not pass, and in 1686 Sobieski concluded “Eternal Peace” with Russia and renounced claims to Left Bank Ukraine, Kyiv, Chernigov and Smolensk lands. Russia responded by joining the anti-Ottoman coalition.
The war with the Turks was protracted. Sobieski was ready to clear the lands of the Turks and further, but now he was prevented... by the Austrians themselves. They were afraid of displeasing Germany. The leading European powers did not want the strengthening of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; they did not allow Sobieski to introduce a hereditary monarchy into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. John III's prestige as a successful commander and king weakened significantly. He died in Wilanów Palace on the outskirts of Warsaw.
This man came from a noble family of Polish magnates Sobieski. Received a good home education. He entered the military field early. Following the example of the magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he had his own gentry military detachment, at the head of which he participated in numerous civil strife in his country, the suppression of uprisings of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and the Russian-Polish War of 1658-1666. The military leader Jan Sobieski particularly distinguished himself in defending the southern borders from frequent predatory raids by the troops of the Crimean Khanate, a vassal of the Ottoman Porte, which at that time had a land border with Poland.
Jan Sobieski rose to prominence early as a Polish military leader. Having extensive combat experience, being a brave and determined man, he, unlike most of the all-powerful magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, wanted to see his fatherland strong, independent from its neighbors, a centralized state that would not be subject to constant internal upheaval from the gentry's democratic self-will. This position brought Sobieski great prestige in Polish society.
In 1668, King John II Casimir abdicated the throne in Poland. A fierce struggle for the throne broke out among the magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which Jan Sobieski, who was elected as the great crown hetman (commander-in-chief of the Polish army), took an active part.
Sobieski first gained fame as a commander in the Polish-Turkish wars. In 1667, at the head of a 10,000-strong crown army, he marched to the fortress city of Kamenets-Podolsk, besieged by significant forces of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Cossacks. A battle took place near the village of Podgaitsy, in which the Poles completely defeated the enemy besieging Kamenets-Podolsky, although he had a significant numerical superiority. After the defeat, the Crimean cavalry and Cossack detachments had to leave Polish possessions with heavy losses. The victory at Podhajce glorified Jan Sobieski.
The struggle for the royal throne in Poland ended in victory for the Vishnewiecki group of magnates. Mikhail Vishnevetsky reigned from 1669 to 1673 and proved himself to be an incompetent monarch. His reign was distinguished by unrest and struggle between supporters and opponents of the new king. Among his opponents was the great crown hetman.
When the Polish-Russian war ended, the territory of Ukraine was divided between Poland and the Russian kingdom. The lands east of the Dnieper River were given to him. Then Hetman Peter Doroshenko, the head of the Cossacks of the Dnieper Right Bank, refused to submit to Polish power and instead accepted Turkish suzerainty in 1668. An attempt by the Poles to suppress the Cossack uprising by military force led to Istanbul demanding that King Michael Vishnevetsky cede right-bank Ukraine to him. Poland, although not ready for war, refused.
Then, in December 1671, Sultan Mehmed IV declared war on the Kingdom of Poland. In summer next year The invasion of Poland by a huge Ottoman army under the command of the Grand Vizier Ahmed began. In his 200 thousand army, a significant part was made up of the Crimean Tatar cavalry and the Cossack allies of Hetman Petro Doroshenko. The Turkish army besieged and took the strategically important fortress of Kremenets. Most The Polish garrison, numbering 1,100 people, died under the rubble of the Kremenets castle, which the defenders blew up on the twelfth day of the siege.
After this victory (the crown army of Poland still could not gather its strength), Grand Vizier Ahmed led his troops to the city of Lublin, encountering almost no resistance along the way, and took it. So a huge Turkish army ended up in the south of Poland proper. In October 1672, the Buchach Peace Treaty was concluded. King Mikhail Vishnevetsky, whose huge kingdom was disintegrating before his eyes, ceded the Podolsk province to Istanbul. Western Ukraine, led by Hetman Petro Doroshenko, gained independence from Poland. She, as the defeated side, agreed to pay an annual tribute to the Ottoman Empire. However, the Polish Sejm, under pressure from the gentry, did not ratify the agreements concluded by the king.
In the same 1672, the great crown hetman Jan Sobieski raised all of Poland to fight the Turkish invaders. He managed to unite the military forces of the country (and political passions were forgotten for a while) and became the head of the 40 thousandth crown army, which set out on a campaign on the southern border of the Kingdom of Poland.
The commander led Polish and Lithuanian troops to the strong Turkish border fortress of Khotyn, on which the Sultan's army under the command of Hussein Pasha relied. On November 11, 1673, the Second Battle of Khotyn took place (the first was in 1621), in which the almost 80 thousand strong Turkish army was completely defeated.
During the battle, the Turks occupied a heavily fortified position on hilly terrain. The Great Crown Hetman decided to take it by storm, attacking both along the front and from the flanks. During hand-to-hand fighting, the Turks were pushed back from the heights to the banks of the Dniester River, losing about half their number. The garrison of the Khotyn fortress capitulated after the defeat of Hussein Pasha's army. Another Sultan's army, under the command of Kaplan Pasha, rushing to help, learned of the defeat of its forces and turned back. Turkish troops, together with the Crimean Tatars, left Polish territory.
Commander Jan Sobieski had an excellent opportunity to pursue and finish off the remnants of the defeated enemy army. But on the eve of the battle, King Mikhail Vishnevetsky died. Having received this news, the Great Crown Hetman stopped the offensive operation and stationed his troops on the state border. After this, he and a detachment of loyal supporters hurried to Warsaw, where the Polish Sejm was to elect a new monarch.
On May 21, 1674, Jan Sobieski was elected King of Poland under the name John III Sobieski. Under this name he ruled until his death in 1696, failing to rid the Polish state of internal strife and intrigue.
In 1675, approximately 60 thousand Turks and 100 thousand Crimean cavalry invaded Podolia, the Polish part of Ukraine. The Ottomans again captured the Khotyn fortress and began to threaten the city of Lviv. Jan Sobieski, having gathered a large crown army, inflicted defeat on the Turkish army in the Battle of Lviv and, during subsequent clashes, liberated all Polish territory from the enemy with the exception of Kamenets. The king had to stop military operations that year due to internal strife in the country.
The next Polish-Turkish war did not end there. In September 1676, a Turkish army of almost 200 thousand, dominated by the cavalry of the Crimean Khanate, again invaded South-Eastern Poland. The army of the Ottoman Porte was commanded by the experienced commander Ibrahim Pasha. Enemy cavalry began to devastate the Ukrainian border regions.
At the end of September of the same year, the Battle of Zoravna took place, which lasted two weeks. The confrontation between two large armies ended with King John III Sobieski, who had only 16 thousand troops, but possessed good firearms, repelling the Turks and the Crimean cavalry from his fortified camp on the high banks of the Dniester River. The matter did not come to a real clash with the entire mass of troops. Neither Ibrahim Pasha nor Jan Sobieski wanted to risk the fate of the military campaign and everything was limited to fleeting battles of small cavalry detachments testing each other’s strength, and the Ottomans’ attempts to gain a foothold near the Polish camp.
In the same 1676, the warring parties fought each other several more times, and each time the crown army of Poland gained the upper hand, as was the case, for example, near Zlochev. The war was of no small importance for Istanbul. In case of victory, Ukrainian lands were annexed to the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, Sultan Mehmed IV himself arrived in the active army with his guard. However, his personal presence in the war did not bring victory to the Ottoman weapons.
A big battle took place near the city of Suceava, in the northern part of Moldova (modern Romania). The armies were commanded by two monarchs - King John III Sobieski and Sultan Mehmed IV. If the first sought to repel the enemy from the borders of his kingdom, then the second wanted to defeat Poland and tear away a significant part of its southern and southeastern possessions.
By the day of the Battle of Suceava, commander Jan Sobieski had significantly strengthened the crown army with Lithuanian troops. This greatly affected the outcome of the battle. The Turks were defeated, the Crimean cavalry was put to flight. The Sultan's army, despite its enormous numerical superiority, retreated to Kamenets and stopped offensive operations. However, the Poles did not achieve the main thing in the won battle - the complete defeat of the enemy.
Since Istanbul did not win the war, the Sultan agreed to negotiate peace. In October 1676, the Zarovsky Peace Treaty was concluded. Türkiye returned Western Ukraine to Poland, but retained Podolia and two important border fortresses - Kamenets (now Kamenetsk Podolsky) and Khotyn.
After the war with the Kingdom of Poland, the Ottoman Porte went to war against neighboring Austria, whose capital, Vienna, was also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. The “bone of discord” was primarily the lands of Hungary and Transylvania, a large principality in the Southern Carpathians. Both the Austrian Habsburg Emperor Leopold I and the Turkish Sultan have historically laid claim to them.
King Jan III Sobieski decided to take advantage of the current situation and acquire a strong ally. He, not without reason, believed that if Austria did not resist the Turkish army, then the Turks would strike the next blow at the heart of what was then Poland - the city of Krakow. Sobieski concluded a defensive-offensive military alliance against Turkey with the Holy Roman Empire. Poland began to prepare for another war with the Ottomans.
The cause of the new big war in Central Europe was the anti-Austrian rebellion of the Hungarians under the leadership of Count Imre Tekeli, who established control over almost all of northern and western Hungary. Emperor Leopold I made concessions to the rebels, and then Count Tekeli began to lose support among the people. To maintain the conquered power, he turned to the Turks for help. An Ottoman army sent by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa helped the rebel count subjugate northeastern Hungary.
After this, Tekeli recognized himself as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire and was proclaimed King of Hungary. Vienna did not recognize the newly-minted monarch in its own domains. The Turks, in response, began to prepare for a large military invasion of Austria the following year. The head of the Holy Roman Empire hastened to recognize Tekeli's power over all of Hungary, except Transylvania, and made peace with him.
However, in Istanbul they did not postpone the military campaign in Europe, and the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa continued to gather troops in the vicinity of the city of Adrianople (modern Edirne in Turkey). Under such conditions, the Polish-Austrian military alliance against the Ottoman Empire was concluded on March 31, 1683.
In March of this year, the Turkish army set out on a campaign from Adrianople to border Belgrade. The army was commanded by Sultan Mehmed IV himself (the troops were actually led by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa). Along the way, the Turks united with the troops of their vassal, the Transylvanian prince Mihai Apafi I, and the combined army reached a strength of 200 thousand people. Meanwhile, the Hungarian army, commanded by King Tekeli, launched an offensive against the Austrians in Slovakia, but it was repulsed near the city of Pressburg.
The invasion of Austria proper began in June 1683. Part of the Sultan's army remained to besiege the city of Gyor, and the 150 thousandth army approached Vienna. Emperor Leopold I fled with his court to the city of Passau in advance, and the 30 thousand-strong Austrian army under the command of Duke Charles of Lorraine retreated from the capital to Linz. A garrison of about 15 thousand people remained in Vienna under the command of Count Rüdiger von Staremberg. When the Ottomans besieged the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, it turned out that they had almost no siege cannons.
Having learned about the enemy invasion of allied Austria, King John III Sobieski remained faithful to the concluded agreement and responded to the call of Pope Innocent XI. A hastily assembled crown army of 30 thousand rushed to the rescue of besieged Vienna. Jan Sobieski made a 320-kilometer journey from Warsaw to Vienna with his main forces in 15 days, and his appearance in front of the Turkish camp came as a complete surprise to the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa.
On September 12, 1683, the Battle of Vienna took place, in which the 158 thousand Turkish army was opposed by the 76 thousand allied (Poles, Austrians, Germans) led by King John III Sobieski. The Poles occupied the right flank, the Austrians, led by Duke Charles of Lorraine, lined up in the center of the position, and German troops stood on the left flank. Difficult terrain prevented the battle from starting early that day. Only at 5 pm Jan Sobieski ordered an attack on the Turkish army along the entire line. The Allied attacking efforts were supported by a sortie from the Viennese garrison, which had been reduced by half during the siege.
For a full hour the battle raged between the Ottoman and Christian infantry between the banks of the Danube and the Turkish camp. Neither side could achieve a noticeable advantage. Commander Jan Sobieski, who was carefully watching the progress of the battle from above, decided to launch a cavalry strike at the clearly visible tent of the Grand Vizier. The Polish cavalry brilliantly coped with the task, breaking through to the very tent of the Turkish commander-in-chief. Kara Mustafa fled in panic. The entire Turkish army, which until that moment had fought steadfastly and did not even think about retreating from the besieged Austrian capital, followed him into a panicked flight.
The Turks, defeated in the Battle of Vienna, suffered heavy losses. Six of the Sultan's military commanders were killed by the pashas. The winners received rich spoils, including a huge enemy camp. The Allies began pursuing the Turks, but as darkness fell, Jan Sobieski ordered it to stop, fearing that they would run into an enemy ambush in the night. At the headquarters of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, the sacred Muslim Banner of the Prophet was captured, which the Polish king ordered to be sent as an honorary military trophy as a gift to Pope Innocent XI. The victory in the Battle of Vienna became the pinnacle of the military career of King John III Sobieski and one of the most striking victories of Polish weapons in history.
The Austrian Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg, who was jealous of the glorious victory of John III Sobieski, showed extreme coldness towards the true savior of Vienna. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, the Polish king liberated part of the northwestern lands of Hungary, including the city of Graz, from the Turks.
After winning the Battle of Vienna, the Austrian Habsburg dynasty began its conquest of Hungary, which was under nominal Turkish rule. However, she was not able to do this on her own. Then, on March 31, 1684, at the insistence of Pope Innocent XI, the so-called Holy League was created against Ottoman Turkey. Initially it consisted of three European countries- The Holy Roman Empire, Poland and Venice. All three of these countries often fought against Turkey. In April 1686, Russia also joined the Holy League.
After border clashes, the Allies began to advance south. Austrian troops captured the city of Belgrade and, after defeating the Turks in the 1687 battle of Nagyharsany (or Harkan), extended the power of Vienna to the Hungarian lands and part of Transylvania. The Magyars were forced to recognize the Habsburgs as the hereditary monarchs of Hungary.
The Peace of Karlovac in 1699 was concluded after the death of the Polish king John III Sobieski. Under its terms, Austria received all of Hungary and Transylvania, except for the Banat. The Peloponnese and many lands of Dalmatia went to Venice. The Podolsk region was returned to Poland. Belgrade and the Khotyn fortress remained with Turkey.
Returning to Poland, the victorious king concluded the “Eternal Peace” with Russia in 1686, which could not eliminate territorial contradictions between the two neighboring states. The desire of John III Sobieski to introduce a hereditary monarchy into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and turn Poland into a centralized state encountered strong opposition from Polish magnates and opposition from Western neighbors in the person of Austria and Brandenburg.
The continuation of the state of war between Poland and Turkey resulted in a series of border clashes in Podolia. Polish troops held onto Ukrainian territories with great difficulty. Within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth itself, internal strife and intrigue among various groups of Polish magnates did not stop. Affairs in the state fell into complete disarray, and King John III Sobieski was powerless to do anything. In such a situation, the commander, famous for his victories over the Turks, passed away.
Yana Dubinyanskaya
JAN III SOBIESKI: ETERNAL WAR
“The Lord our God, blessed forever and ever, has given victory and glory to our people, such as centuries past have never heard of. All the guns, the entire camp, invaluable goods fell into our hands..."
“White Chinese satin blanket with golden flowers, new, unused. There is nothing more tender in the world. To accompany this blanket I am sending you a pillow to sit on; it was embroidered by the vizier’s first wife with her own hands...”
“They don’t want to bury many of the noble warriors who died in this war in the church or in the city, pointing to the field or to the burnt out suburb and the cemeteries of infidels full of corpses...”
“By the grace of God, I am healthy after yesterday’s victory, it’s like my twenty years have returned to me...”
From Jan Sobieski's letters to his wife Marysenka
His birth became the main legend of the tourist attraction of the Lviv region - Olesko Castle. TO early XVII century castle, the garrison of which had previously successfully repelled more than one Tatar invasion, as a result of several marriage unions between magnate families came into the possession of the Chigirin elder Ivan Danilovich. Having advantageously married the daughter of the crown hetman Stanislav Zholkiewski, Danilovich made a career to become the castellan of Lviv and then the governor of the Rus. The voivode married his youngest daughter Sofia Teofilia to the headman of Krasnostavy Jakub Sobieski - Olesko Castle was her dowry.
On August 17, 1619, Theophilia gave birth to a son - during a terrible, unprecedented thunderstorm. It was said that the top of a marble table, from which a swaddled newborn had just been removed, split in two, as if struck by lightning. And according to one version, in the same room ten years later another Polish king was born - Mikhail Koribut-Wishnewiecki, Sobieski's predecessor on the throne.
Jan spent his childhood in different family residences: in Oleskoe, in Zolochev, and from the late thirties, together with his older brother Marek and his younger sister Katarzyna, he lived in Zhovkva, in the castle of the famous great-grandfather, who once took Moscow. The young Sobieskis received their patriotic education in the image of Crown Hetman Zolkiewski. The first phrase that Ian memorized in Latin was the epitaph from his tombstone - Horace’s saying “O, quam dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”*.
At the insistence of Jakub Sobieski, his sons were taught foreign languages and other subjects. The daughter did not receive such an education (at the age of sixteen she became the wife of Prince Ostrog, and after his death - Hetman Radziwill), but still went down in history as the “wise Katarzyna”: they said that the king often consulted with his sister on a variety of issues.
In 1640, the brothers were brought to Krakow, and they entered the Novodvorsky Collegium - one of the oldest Polish lyceums, where they taught poetry, rhetoric, dialectics and other humanitarian disciplines. In 1643, Jan and Marek graduated from the college and entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the Krakow Academy (now the Jagiellonian University), where they spent three years. From the walls of the Academy, Jan Sobieski emerged as a polyglot: in addition to Polish, he spoke French, German, Greek and Latin (and later learned Turkish and Tatar languages), - and with extraordinary knowledge for that time in mathematics, astronomy, architecture, and engineering. He will go down in history as the most educated of the Polish kings.
The state where Jan Sobieski was born, grew up and which will be ruled was called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - this is literal translation in Polish Latin Res Publica, "common cause". Formed as a result of the union of two kingdoms, Polish and Lithuanian, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of course, was not a republic in modern understanding, but had a unique state structure: historians call it “gentry democracy.” The gentry elected a king - for life, but without the right to transfer the throne by inheritance. Royal power was limited by parliament - the Sejm, as well as by a set of laws that the king's decrees could not contradict. The central government had virtually no influence on the regions where the magnates ruled, every now and then sorting out relations in civil strife - “rokosh”, and the self-government of cities was regulated by Magdeburg law.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had close ties with Western Europe. The first of its elected kings was the French prince Henry of Valois, who left the Polish throne for the French, and the wife of King Władysław IV Vasa was Ludovica Maria Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Navarre. Poles in civilized Europe were considered a savage, warlike people and prone to violent excesses; Polish magnates, in turn, sought to “cut down” children in the West.
It is not surprising that after graduating from the Academy, the Sobieski brothers were sent to continue their education abroad for two years. Marek and Jan visited Germany, the Netherlands, France and England, and were introduced to Prince Conti, King Charles II Stuart, and William of Orange. The Thirty Years' War was going on in Europe, and young nobles along the way studied military affairs, studying the tactics and strategies of the French, Swedish and Spanish armies, inspected fortifications in the Netherlands, and while in Paris, perhaps they even managed to serve briefly in the royal “Red Guard”, that itself, where the poet and brat Cyrano de Bergerac served several years earlier. In the French capital in 1648, the brothers were overtaken by the news of the death of their father, Jakub Sobieski.
Meanwhile, an uprising broke out on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, which quickly spread to almost the entire Right Bank of Ukraine, fusing together social, national and religious protest. “There was not a single village, not a single city in which calls for self-will were not heard and where they did not plot for the lives and property of their lords and tenants,” the Great Crown Hetman Nikolai Pototsky reported to King Vladislav IV.
* “It is beautiful and sweet to die for the fatherland.”
In the history of Poland, Jan III Sobieski left a memory of himself as the most outstanding and educated man of his time, an intelligent politician and a valiant commander. He was born near Lvov on August 17, 1629 in the family of parliamentary figure and diplomat Jakub Sobieski. The mother of the future king of Poland, Sophia Teofilia, came from a noble and wealthy Danilovich family and was the granddaughter of the famous hetman Stanislav Zholkiewski, who conquered Moscow during the Battle of Klushin.
Jan received his education at the Jagiellonian Academy. After studying at the Faculty of Philosophy in Krakow, he and his brother Marek improved and supplemented their knowledge for two years by studying at universities in Western Europe. The son of a small-scale governor mastered five languages: German, Italian, Latin, French, and later also Tatar.
Returning to Poland, the nineteen-year-old boy found himself straight on the stage of a military theater, where the main actors on one side were the magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and on the other, Colonel of the Zaporozhye Army Bogdan Khmelnytsky, who organized and led the uprising against social, religious and national inequality. Both brothers, Jan and Marek, joined the Polish army as volunteers, but only the youngest son of Jakub Sobieski was lucky enough to survive and even distinguish himself in the battle of Berestechko.
The efforts and successes of the young commander did not go unnoticed by the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jan Casimir, and at the age of 36, Jan Sobieski was appointed grand marshal of the crown. From that moment on, the future king of Poland was constantly accompanied by luck on the battlefield, which ensured him a quick career growth and widespread popularity among residents of the state.
Beautiful, French and just an ambitious woman
In 1665, the life of Jan Sobieski on the personal front was marked by important event- marriage to a twenty-four-year-old Frenchwoman, Marquise Marie Casimira Louise de La Grange d'Arquien, widow of the Sandomierz governor, who was 12 years younger than the future Polish monarch. Their marriage produced thirteen children, nine of whom died in infancy.
Marzenka, as her loving husband called her in the Polish manner, before her marriage was in the retinue of Queen Marie Louise; such connections favored the appointment of Jan Sobieski to the post of crown hetman in 1666. Mařenka turned out to be very ambitious and ambitious: she contributed in every possible way to her husband’s advancement in career ladder, other things are king.
When Jan Casimir was deposed, Marie took an active part in the elections, but the crown went to a more successful rival, Mikhail Vishnevetsky. But the Frenchwoman showed enviable stubbornness and went to her homeland for the protection of King Louis XIV. In her hands, as a sophisticated politician and diplomat, she had a trump card - an oath of alliance against the Habsburg dynasty if her husband was elected to the Polish throne.
Desired triumph
Fate favored Jan Sobieski: on November 11, 1673, the great crown hetman won a brilliant victory over the Turks at Khotyn, and exactly one day before the events described above, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Mikhail Vishnewiecki, died. According to the Austrians, the death of the monarch occurred as a result of poisoning during communion in the cathedral; according to the official version of the court doctors, the cause of death was gluttony on cucumbers.
In May 1674, elections for the Polish king took place: with an overwhelming majority of votes, Jan Sobieski was elected to the post of head of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In addition to the military merits of the commander, the favorable outcome of the vote was predetermined by the patronage of France. Due to the unfinished war with the Turks, the coronation had to be postponed for two years. But on February 14, 1676, Marie’s dream came true in Krakow: the solemn accession to the Polish throne of Jan Sobieski marked the beginning new era in the life of the Lyash people.
Valiant commander and selfless patriot
Being at the helm of power, Yang soon realized that friendship with neighbors is much more profitable than enmity, especially given the fact of the constant threat from the Ottoman Empire. In 1683, the King of Poland concluded an agreement on allied relations with the Archduke of Austria Leopold I. For the emperor, this agreement became fateful, because in the same year, in July, the Turks, led by Kara Mustafa, besieged Vienna.
The determination and courage of Sobieski, who personally took part in the attack, prevented Austria from inevitably losing its capital. By the number of killed and wounded Ottomans, one can judge the crushing blow of the Polish king: 15 thousand Turks remained lying near the walls of the fortress, which they had recently besieged. But the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth never received gratitude from Leopold I: the cold reception and arrogance on the part of the emperor for a man of his position were, to say the least, insulting.
The behavior of ordinary residents of Austria turned out to be much more consistent: the church on top of the Kahlenberg hill was erected as a tribute to the merits of Jan Sobieski. And the captured cannons, which the commander’s army inherited from the retreating Turks in a hurry, were used to make a bell, which, with its chime in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, reminded of the glorious victory of the great Pole.
Jan III sought to succeed not only in military campaigns, but also in state affairs. The specifics of the liberum veto had its drawbacks, which favored the intervention of neighboring states in domestic policy The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the new king tried to limit the operation of this principle of parliamentary structure, but, however, came across fierce resistance from the gentry. Jan Sobieski also failed in his attempt to introduce a hereditary monarchy into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which would have provided the war-weakened country with a stronger position on the world political stage.
The last years of the life of the King of Poland were not joyful; numerous illnesses, including syphilis, coupled with unsafe treatment with mercury, led to a sad outcome: two months before he turned 67, the king died in Wilanów Castle, which he loved very much.
His desire to introduce a hereditary monarchy into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and turn Poland into a centralized state was not realized due to the resistance of Polish magnates and opposition from Austria and Brandenburg. This also prevented Sobieski from profitably using the military successes achieved in the wars with the Turks and led to a further deterioration in the foreign policy and internal situation of Poland.
Jan Sobieski rose to prominence early as a Polish military leader. Having extensive military experience, being a brave and determined man, he, unlike most of the all-powerful magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, wanted to see his fatherland strong, independent from its neighbors, a centralized state that would not be subject to constant internal upheaval from the gentry's democratic self-will. This position brought Sobieski great prestige in Polish society.
In 1668, King John II Casimir abdicated the throne in Poland. A fierce struggle for the throne broke out among the magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which Jan Sobieski, who was elected great crown hetman that same year, took an active part.
In December 1671, Sultan Mohammed IV declared war on the Kingdom of Poland. The following summer, the invasion of Poland by a huge Ottoman army under the command of Grand Vizier Ahmed began. The Turkish army besieged and took the strategically important fortress of Kremenets. Most of the Polish garrison, numbering 1,100 people, died under the rubble of the Kremenets castle, which the defenders blew up on the twelfth day of the siege.
After this victory, Grand Vizier Ahmed led his troops to the city of Lublin, encountering almost no resistance along the way, and took it. So a huge Turkish army ended up in the south of Poland proper. In October 1672, the Buchach Peace Treaty was concluded. King Mikhail Vishnevetsky, whose huge kingdom was disintegrating before his eyes, ceded the Podolsk province to Istanbul.
In the same 1672, the great crown hetman Jan Sobieski raised all of Poland to fight the Turkish invaders. He managed to unite the country's military forces and became the head of the 40,000-strong crown army, which set out on a campaign to the southern border of the Kingdom of Poland.
The commander led Polish and Lithuanian troops to the strong Turkish border fortress of Khotyn, on which the Sultan's army under the command of Hussein Pasha relied. On November 11, 1673, the Second Battle of Khotyn took place, in which the almost 80,000-strong Turkish army was completely defeated.
On May 21, 1674, Jan Sobieski was elected King of Poland under the name of John III Sobieski. Under this name he ruled until his death in 1696, failing to rid the Polish state of internal strife and intrigue.
In 1675, approximately 60 thousand Turks and 100 thousand Crimean cavalry invaded Podolia, the Polish part of Ukraine. The Ottomans again captured the Khotyn fortress and began to threaten the city of Lviv. Jan Sobieski, having gathered a large crown army, inflicted defeat on the Turkish army in the Battle of Lviv and, during subsequent clashes, liberated all Polish territory from the enemy with the exception of Kamenets. The king had to stop military operations that year due to internal strife in the country.
The next Polish-Turkish war did not end there. In September 1676, a Turkish army of almost 200 thousand, dominated by the cavalry of the Crimean Khanate, again invaded South-Eastern Poland. The army of the Ottoman Porte was commanded by the experienced commander Ibrahim Pasha. Enemy cavalry began to devastate the Ukrainian border regions.
In 1676, the warring parties fought each other several more times, and each time the crown army of Poland gained the upper hand, as was the case, for example, near Zlochev. The war was of no small importance for Istanbul. In case of victory, Ukrainian lands were annexed to the Ottoman Empire.
A big battle took place near the city of Suceava, in the northern part of Moldova. The armies were commanded by two monarchs - King John III Sobieski and Sultan Mehmed IV. If the first sought to repel the enemy from the borders of his kingdom, then the second wanted to defeat Poland and seize a significant part of its southern and south-eastern possessions.
By the day of the Battle of Suceava, commander Jan Sobieski had significantly strengthened the crown army with Lithuanian troops. This greatly affected the outcome of the battle. The Turks were defeated, the Crimean cavalry was put to flight.
After the war with the Kingdom of Poland, the Ottoman Porte went to war against neighboring Austria, whose capital, Vienna, was also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. The “bone of discord” was primarily the lands of Hungary and Transylvania, a large principality in the Southern Carpathians. Both the Austrian Habsburg Emperor Leopold I and the Turkish Sultan have historically laid claim to them.
King Jan III Sobieski decided to take advantage of the current situation and acquire a strong ally. He, not without reason, believed that if Austria did not resist the Turkish army, then the Turks would strike the next blow at the heart of what was then Poland - the city of Krakow. Sobieski concluded a defensive-offensive military alliance against Turkey with the Holy Roman Empire. Poland began to prepare for another war with the Ottomans.
Having learned about the enemy invasion of allied Austria, King John III Sobieski remained faithful to the concluded agreement and responded to the call of Pope Innocent XI. A hastily assembled crown army of 30,000 rushed to the rescue of besieged Vienna. Jan Sobieski made a 320-kilometer journey from Warsaw to Vienna with his main forces in 15 days, and his appearance in front of the Turkish camp came as a complete surprise to the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa.
On September 12, 1683, the Battle of Vienna took place, in which the 158,000-strong Turkish army was opposed by the 76,000-strong allied army led by King John III Sobieski.
The Turks, defeated in the Battle of Vienna, suffered heavy losses. Six of the Sultan's military commanders-pashas were killed. The winners received rich spoils, including a huge enemy camp.
Returning to Poland, the victorious king concluded the “Eternal Peace” with Russia in 1686, which failed to eliminate territorial contradictions between the two neighboring states. The desire of John III Sobieski to introduce a hereditary monarchy into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and turn Poland into a centralized state encountered strong opposition from Polish magnates and opposition from Western neighbors in the person of Austria and Brandenburg.
The continuation of the state of war between Poland and Turkey resulted in a series of border clashes in Podolia. Polish troops held onto Ukrainian territories with great difficulty. Within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth itself, internal strife and intrigue among various groups of Polish magnates did not stop. Affairs in the state fell into complete disarray, and King John III Sobieski was powerless to do anything. In such a situation, the commander, famous for his victories over the Turks, passed away."
