TERROR OF THE TURK 367God conquered.) Then he rode off in pursuit. After an initial rebuff on 7
October, the Turkish rearguard was destroyed at Parkany, near Estergom, on
the 9th. The memories of Varna and Mohacs were expunged. Europe was saved.
It would be wrong to say that the taste of victory soon turned sour. Such is the
nature of victory that its aftermath always comes as an anticlimax. Yet it is
undeniable that Sobieski's exploitation of his victory was markedly inferior to
his performance on the battlefield. In one view, his great mistake was not, as
some historians maintain, to have joined the relief of Vienna in the first place. It
was hardly in the Republic's interest to see any further extension of the Turks'
empire, when already, as one envoy in the Sejm put it, 'the Pasha of Buda could
easily spy out Cracow from his perch in the mountains'. At its nearest point, the
boundary of Ottoman power had reached to within forty miles of the old Polish
capital. The deflation of the Ottoman bubble, and the tremendous psychologi-
cal uplift which ensued, were obviously to the Republic's advantage. Sobieski's
great mistake, having achieved his triumph, was to commit himself in 1684 to
the subsequent wars of the Holy League. The cost was enormous; and the divi-
dend accrued almost exclusively to the Republic's neighbours and enemies.
Seventeen years of campaigning exhausted the Republic almost beyond repair,
and prevented any serious attention to internal reform. Not just the Prussian
expedition, but the whole question of the Republic's standing in the Baltic area,
was forgotten. The crucial problem of the eastern frontier, and of the Republic's
relations with Muscovy, was trivialized. In 1686, at the whim of one wayward
ambassador, the entire Ukraine, provisionally assigned to Muscovy since the
truce of 1667, was needlessly abandoned. This one step, which more than any
other marked the transformation of little Muscovy into 'great Russia' and
tipped the scales of power in Eastern Europe in Moscow's favour, was taken
casually, and accepted apathetically. How the Kremlin must have rocked with
amazement at this free gift! How much saner was their own policy of joining the
ranks of the Holy League only when their possession of the Ukraine had been
confirmed. From 1686, the Muscovites were fighting the Turks to some real pur-
pose; the Poles were fighting for nothing. The eventual recovery of Podolia at
the Treaty of Karlovitz in 1699 was small compensation. By that same treaty, an
enlarged Russia and a resurgent Austria emerged as major powers; Prussia was
poised to declare itself a Kingdom. The framework of eighteenth-century poli-
tics in this part of the world was already constructed. The Republic of
Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire were clearly recognizable as the two
invalids of Europe. The prospect of the Partitions came suddenly into view. All
was not yet lost. But it would need a new Sobieski, and a new Murad the
Conqueror, to retrieve the game.
Sobieski's powerlessness was reflected in the sorry condition of Lithuania. In
the 1670s, the Grand Duchy had been overrun by magnates of the Habsburg fac-
tion, and in the 1680s fell under a regime of terror instituted by the all-powerful
Sapieha clan. Nothing that happened thereafter could reconcile them to the
King or reintegrate them into the political life of the Republic. In 1683,