d from
Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other
towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little
did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his own safety, that he
visited the lines only in a litter rendered musket-proof by plates and
lattices of iron! Whether he entertained the wild design, as asserted by
Cantemir, (whose authority, as that of a contemporary, may in this case
perhaps deserve some credit,) of throwing off his allegiance to the
sultan, and erecting an independent _Western Empire_ of the Ottomans in
Austria and Hungary, or whether he was simply instigated by his avarice
to preserve the imagined treasures of the capital of the German Caesars
from the pillage which must follow from its being taken by storm--he no
sooner saw the imperial city apparently within his grasp, than he
restrained, instead of encouraging, the spirit of the troops,
endeavouring rather to wear out the garrison by an endless succession of
petty alarms, than to carry the place at once by assault. The murmurs of
the soldiers, who even refused to remain in the trenches, were with
difficulty quieted by the exhortations of Wani-Effendi, a celebrated
Moslem divine, who had accompanied the army in order to share in the
merit of the _holy war_--while the remonstrances of the pashas and
generals were silenced by the exhibition of the sultan's
_khatt-shereef_, which conferred on the vizir plenary powers for the
conduct of the war.

While Kara Mustapha thus lay inactive in his lines before Vienna,
Tekoeli, who had been detached with his Hungarian followers and an
auxiliary Turkish corps to reduce the castle of Presburg, which held out
after the surrender of the town, had been defeated by the Duke of
Lorraine, aided by a body of Polish cavalry under Lubomirski, the
forerunners of the army now assembling at Cracow. All the European
princes, meanwhile, with the exception of Louis XIV., who, even in the
danger of their common faith, forgot not his hostility to the house of
Hapsburg, vied with each other in forwarding the equipment of the host
which was to save the bulwark of Christendom. The cardinals at Rome sold
their plate to supply funds for the German levies; Cardinal Barberini
alone contributed 20,000 florins, and the Pope was profuse in his
indulgences to those who joined the new crusade. The emperor, meanwhile,
from his retreat at Passau, was abject in his entreaties to Sobieski for
speed