348 VASA
Under the Ottoman bunchuk with its crescent moon,
He blazed like a comet between the stars...
Beside the janissaries, to left and right,
We looked on wonders strange to our eyes,
On fearsome elephants with trunks and pointed ivories:
Each bore thirty archers in lofty towers...
There stood the wondrous Moors, ranged in gloomy clouds.
Out of their swollen lips and faces black as pitch
Shined pearly tusks, as bright as ice,
Like the sparks that glitter on a charred log.
Here stood the Mamelukes in broad, white robes,
Scattered across the field like a flight of swans
Beside the ravens...
And as for ordnance, they had surrounded their camp
With cannon, which crowded the ditch and breastworks,
Thundering beyond belief. Chodkiewicz himself,
Our old commander, since he joined the trade of Mars
Had never seen such mortars, that shook the very ground
As they belched forth shot of wellnigh sixty pound.^20
The pride of the Turks preceded a great fall. Incessant attacks and bombard-
ments throughout the month of September failed to dislodge the defenders, who
were said to have fought to their last barrel of gunpowder. In October, like
Tarnowski's men at Obertyn, the Polish cavalry rode out to the counterattack
and broke the will of the besiegers. The Sultan sued for peace. Both sides real-
ized that there was no real basis for hostility. The Sejm, which had paid out a
record eightfold land-tax for the emergency, was persuaded to treat the Turks
with greater circumspection. The King and his adventurous son were warned to
avoid unnecessary military commitments. Henceforth, having made peace with
the Turks, they also steered clear of the Thirty Years War, and left their
Habsburg relatives to their own devices.
Oddly enough, one of the most serious losses to the Republic in Vasa times
was inflicted not by enemy action but by the diplomatic manoeuvres of a slip-
pery vassal. Ever since 1525, the successors of Albrecht von Hohenzollern had
sworn fealty to the Polish Crown for their Duchy of (East) Prussia, and had
made annual contributions to the Crown Treasury and Army. At the same time,
they had pursued a policy of dynastic aggrandizement of unrelenting single-
mindedness. In 1563, five years before his death, Duke Albrecht had arranged
for his co-enfeoffment together with Joachim II Hohenzollern of Brandenburg-
Anspach, thereby securing the reversion of the fief within the family. In 1577, the
Brandenburgers had bought the wardship over Duke Albrecht's grandson from
King Stefan Bathory, thereby establishing a regime which continued during their
ward's long illness and insanity. This was the state of affairs inherited by the
Vasas. Finally in 1614, Johann Sigismund of Brandenburg, who was married to
the heiress of the Prussian line, succeeded in uniting both parts of the family's
inheritance in his own person. Yet it was not until two generations later that
