356 MICHAL
After the singing of the Te Deum before the miraculous icon of Our Lady and to the
strains of an orchestra, the young couple made their way with their retinues to a
magnificently decorated suite of rooms in the monastery ... At the banquet on the fol-
lowing day, the dishes were served in such abundance that it is hard to say whether they
caused greater hardship for the servants who had to carry them than for the guests who
had to contemplate eating them. The menu called for three hundred pheasants, five thou-
sand brace of partridge, six thousand brace of turkeys, six thousand calves, four hundred
oxen, four thousand sheep and at least as many lambs, one hundred stags, five salmon,
two thousand hares, and several dozen wild boars. Afterwards, a great quantity of fruit
and preserves was handed round, and at the end, tables were set out carrying sweets con-
structed into pyramids and colossi. Then, with the banquet finished, the King at the head
of six Senators, and the Queen at the head of her ladies, launched into a Polonaise, mak-
ing two complete circuits of the room...^2
Third, later that year, the Prussian ambassador organized a raid in Warsaw to
recapture a fugitive citizen of Konigsberg called Kalkstein. Fourth, in 1672 the
second Turkish war began with the invasion of Podolia by Sultan Muhammad
IV. The fortress of Kamieniec Podolsk was captured, and its cathedral turned
into a mosque. Fifth, on 16 October 1672, at Buczacz near Tarnopol, the royal
envoys signed a treaty of capitulation. All districts of the Ukraine still left to
Poland by the Truce of Andrusovo were signed away to the Turks. An annual
tribute of 22,000 gold ducats was to be paid. Sixth, both meetings of the Sejm in
this shameful year were cut short - once by the Liberum Veto and once by the
voice of a determined lady. A certain Kunicka, who claimed to have been
wronged by a Senator, entered the senatorial chamber of the Royal Palace in
Warsaw to seek redress in person, and to demand execution of a court order
providing for the surrender of her fugitive serfs. Angered by a long debate as to
whether the king should be allowed to wear a French perruque in public, she
launched into a tirade from the gallery:
Marshal of the Sejm: Don't interrupt, Dear Madam: we are taking counsel on the defence
of the frontiers...
Pani Kunicka: What's the defence of the frontiers to me, when the conduct of Your
Palatine there is worse than the Tartar Horde.. .?^3
The offending Palatine was exposed, and paid 2,000 zl. ex nunc and surrendered
one serf.^4 Seventh, the Austrian and the French factions among the nobility
formed armed confederations to press their rival policies against the vacillating
King.^5
On all these occasions, the textbooks underline what the King did not do. He
exercised no control over the magnates, the Army, the Turks, his wife, or the
Nuncio. It is very difficult to learn how exactly he occupied his mind. He died
on 10 November 1673 from a surfeit of gherkins, presumably in his prime.