York: D. Appleton & Company, 1931); Recouly, Ray-
mond, General Joffre and His Battles (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1917); Windrow, Martin, and Francis
K. Mason, “Joffre, Joseph Jacques Césaire,” in The Word-
sworth Dictionary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire,
U.K.: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 143–144.
John III Sobieski (John Sobieski, Jan Sobieski)
(1624–1696) Polish general, king of Poland
John Sobieski was born and brought up in Cracow
(modern Krakow) in southern Poland. He was the eldest
son of James Sobieski, castellan (captain of the garrison)
of Cracow, and Theofila Danillowiczowna, granddaugh-
ter of the great Hetman Zolkiewski. After completing
his education, Sobieski spent two years touring Europe
with his brother Mark and learned French, German,
and Italian, which proved extremely advantageous in his
later career.
Poland had once been the major power in eastern
Europe, but it was now under threat from the Prussians
and Swedes on its western borders and from the Aus-
trians, Turks, and Tartars of the Ukraine to the south.
After returning from his European tour, Sobieski joined
the military and fought against the Ukranian Cossack
leader Chmielnicki in the uprising when the Cossacks
attacked Poland from the south. He was also at the bat-
tles of Beresteczko (1651) and Batoka (1652). Two years
later, however, when the Swedes invaded Poland, he
joined them and helped them to win back the Prussian
provinces in 1655. (These were the coastal territories
in northwest Poland that Prussia and Poland had both
claimed.) The following year, he changed sides again and
fought with the Polish commander in chief Czarniecki
to expel the Swedes from the territories they had won in
central Poland.
In 1665, in recognition of Sobieski’s services against
the Tartars and Cossacks, King John Casimir of Poland
promoted him to Great Marshal of the Crown. In 1667,
Sobieski won another victory over the Cossacks and Tar-
tars at Podhajce. This confirmed his status as Poland’s
best general, and in 1668 he was appointed Grand Het-
man of the Crown and commander in chief of the Pol-
ish-Lithuanian army. (Lithuania was then a province of
Poland.)
In the election of candidates for the kingship of
Poland in 1669, Sobieski accepted large bribes from
the French king Louis XIV to support Louis’s candi-
date. When Michael Wisniowiecki was elected, So-
bieski and others at once began to plot to bring about
his downfall. The plot was discovered, but with the
help of the elector of Brandenburg (Prussia), the con-
spirators escaped punishment. In 1672, at a time of
great peril for Poland when the Turks were advancing
into southern Poland, the conspirators renewed their
attempt to bring down the king. With little support
or military forces, King Michael had to sign the hu-
miliating peace of Buczacz (17 October 1672), which
ceded the Ukraine as well as Podolia, Poland’s southern
province, to the Turks.
Sobieski and his army promptly went to war with
the Turks, and in a remarkable campaign, he won four
victories in 10 days (Krasnobrod, Niemirow, Komarno
and Kalusz). The peace of Buczacz was repudiated, and
Sobieski’s forces won a decisive victory at Khotin in the
western Ukraine on 10 November 1673. King Michael
died on the same day, and when Sobieski received the
news, he immediately left his army in the Ukraine and
traveled to Cracow to secure the throne for himself. Al-
though his claim to election was disputed by some, his
retinue of 6,000 veterans turned the scale, and he was
elected king of Poland on 21 May 1674.
As King John III, Sobieski at once set about
strengthening his southern border against the Turkish
threat by an offensive in 1674–75 and took the fortresses
of Kamienic Podolski, Bar, and Reszkow. In 1675, a Tar-
tar attack in the same region was defeated and a peace
treaty was made with them. Although he was still threat-
ened with warfare by the Prussians in the north and the
Austrians to the west, Sobieski set about a rapid program
of reorganizing and training his army.
While fully conscious of the threat to Poland from
his European neighbors, Sobieski realized the greatest
danger to Europe was the apparently inexorable ad-
vance into Europe of the Ottoman Turks. The rise of
Islam had seen the whole of North Africa lost to Arab
armies and the conquest of Spain and southern France,
until the great victory by charles martel in a.d. 732
pushed Islamic forces back to the Pyrenees. In eastern
Europe, the last traces of the Eastern Roman Empire had
vanished with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Over
the next 200 years, the Ottoman Turks had moved ever
westward, occupying Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia,
Rumania, much of the Ukraine, and Hungary. All of
southeast Europe was theirs, and they laid siege to Vi-
enna in 1683.John iii SobieSki