he took more care than before to regulate them. He believed that the innocence of his life ought to correspond with the purity of his faith: he knew the truth, he loved it, he followed it. With what humble reverence did he assist at the sacred mysteries! With what docility did he hear the salutary instructions of the evangelique preachers! With what submission did he adore the works of God, which the human mind cannot comprehend! True worshipper in spirit and in truth, seeking the Lord, according to the counsel of the wise, in the simplicity of his heart, irreconcilable enemy of impiety, removed from all superstition, and incapable of hypocrisy. Scarcely had he embraced the holy doctrine, when he became its defender; as soon as he had put on the armour of light, he engaged the works of darkness; he viewed in trembling the abyss whence he had escaped, and he stretched out his hands to those whom he had left there. It would seem as if he had been charged to bring back into the bosom of the Church all those whom the schism had separated from it: he invites them by his counsels, he wins them by his benefits, he presses them by his reasons, he convinces them by his experiences; he points out to them the rocks on which human reason has made so often shipwreck, and shews them behind him, according to St. Augustine's expression, the way of the mercy of God, by which he had escaped himself." But to leave the Orator. Lovers of wisdom, as well as heroic men, should study with attention the character of Turenne. They will find in him a rare union of manly firmness, noble disinterestedness, high honour, patience, magnanimity, profound piety, inspiring all the sweetness and graces of the Christian spirit, with a clearness of judgment, and an acuteness and soundness of intellect, to which few philosophers can lay claim. "The Spaniards," says Schlegel, in his Dramatic Literature, "played a memorable part in the history of the middle ages, which the ungrateful jealousy of modern times has too much forgotten. Like a sentinel exposed to the dangers of an advanced post, they kept watch for Europe, threatened by immense hordes of Arabians; and in their Peninsula, as in a vast camp, they were always ready to fight, and to fight without assistance. The foundations of the Christian kingdoms in Spain, from the moment when : the illustrious descendants of the Goths, obliged to take refuge among the rocks of the Asturies, sallied forth in arms from this asylum, down to the period when the Moors were completely driven out of Spain, all this interval, which lasted for centuries, is the poem of history, it is its miracle for the total deliverance of Christendom, which so terrible a power oppressed in this country, appears to have been a work directed from on high, and which man alone could never have accomplished." Too little is youth reminded of these great events: for the names of Charles Martel, who saved Christendom under the walls of Poitiers; of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, in the 15th century, who had the glory of stopping Mahomet II. in the midst of his conquests, and perhaps of again saving Christendom; and of John Sobieski, King of Poland, who saved the house of Austria, and probably the whole of Europe, should be associated with all the visions of greatness and glory. The Turks, with an army of 15,000 men, besieged Vienna. The Emperor Leopold, after a narrow escape, was fled to Passau, and this great bulwark of Christendom was in immediate danger of falling into the hands of the infidels. Then it was that the King and the chivalry of Poland hastened to save the Empire and Christianity. Leopold had previously injured Sobieski; but on this occasion, like a brave true knight, he thought of nothing but what he owed to an ally, to all Christendom, and to God Himself, and, with all possible expedition, he advanced to the Danube, at the head of 24,000 men. He crossed the river at Tala, and ascended the mountains of Kalemberg, whence, on the 11th of September, they had the first view of Vienna, half obscured by the volumes of smoke from the discharge of artillery, while the plain below presented the most magnificent, but awful, spectacle of the Turkish camp, adorned with all that eastern pomp could display. The letters of Sobieski to his beloved queen, which have been lately published, convey a great idea of his piety and noble simplicity. On this memorable expedition, he relates, on one occasion, how he had assisted at high mass in the Franciscan convent of Brünn : again, after crossing the Danube, he says, "we passed yesterday in prayer. Father Marco d'Avieno, who has come from the Pope, gave us his benediction. We received the bles cross. sed sacrament from his hands. After mass, he made us an address, and asked us if we had confidence in God? and on our unanimous reply that we had, he made us repeat with him, 'Jesus Maria, Jesus Maria!' He said mass with the most profound devotion; he is truly a man of God." This scene, at which the Duke of Lorraine was present, took place on the 12th of September, two hours before sun-rise, in St. Leopold's chapel. The king served at mass, holding his arms stretched out in the form of a Immediately after, the whole army was put in motion to meet the enemy. The main body was commanded by the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony, with Prince Waldee; the right wing by the King of Poland, and the left by Charles, Duke of Lorraine. Mustapha and the whole Turkish army were put to flight in the utmost disorder, and before night there was not a Turk to be seen. The conquerors found immense riches. Sobieski wrote to his queen that the Grand Vizier had made him his sole executor. The great standard that was found in his tent, made of the hair of a sea-horse, wrought with a needle, and embroidered with Arabic figures, was hung up by order of the emperor in the cathedral of St. Stephen, where I have seen it. The Christians lost but 600 men. Sobieski, the modest religious hero, entered Vienna amidst the tears and the blessings of innumerable people; he went directly to the high altar, and joined in the solemn Te Deum which was sung, with his countenance turned to the ground, and with every expression of humility and gratitude. The Emperor returned to his capital on the 14th, and treated his deliverer with haughtiness. The brave Sobieski, despising the ceremonial of courts, content to meet his imperial majesty on horseback, was satisfied when he had said, "I am glad to have rendered your majesty this little service.' He pursued the Ottoman army, fought many battles, and returned to Warsaw crowned with laurels. the taking of Strygonia from the Turks, he wrote to his queen in these words: "The great church in which St. Adalbert baptized King Stephen, the first Christian King of Hungary, had been converted into a mosque. A solemn mass will be sung there shortly." Again, on the taking of Schetzin, "to-morrow the divine office is to be celebrated in the two mosques. Thus we have regained five in On this year from the Paynims, thanks to Almighty God!" Again, describing the cruelty inflicted upon his brave army by the Hungarian Calvinists, though he had always declared that he made no war upon them, but only upon the Turks, he writes thus: They hunt us as if we were wolves. Many of our officers have had their horses shot in midst of the camp, without our having given the smallest cause for such attacks. However, I take into consideration that there are in this city many peaceable innocent Catholics, who would all perish if we made an assault." What battle of antiquity is more deserving of everlasting fame than that of Las Navas de Tolosa, which saved Spain, and perhaps all Europe? Illustrious Spain ! Alas, what various fortunes has she known! This memorable victory was obtained in the year 1212, on the ground between Albiso and Venta de Miranda, near the Sierra Morena, on the Puerto Real, as it was called from that day. The King of Navarre commanded the right wing of the Christian army, the King of Arragon the left; Alphonso VIII. of Castile took the centre, as the post of most danger. Muhamed sat enthroned on a buckler, amidst a corps of reserve, holding the Koran in one hand, and a sword in the other, and surrounded by chains of iron. In consequence of the King of Navarre having burst his way through this iron barrier, chains are still borne quarterly in the shield of France. But no more of these glorious records. It is to be feared that these sentiments of chivalry were sometimes entertained to a vicious excess, and that in this, as in every other circumstance of men's conduct, the bad passions of the human heart were sometimes permitted to alloy the purity of virtue. Men are so fond of themselves, that they will, if possible, mix up something belonging to their miserable selves even with religion. The gentle knight and poet Camoens warns his countrymen from so doing: You, sent by Heaven His labours to renew, 1 Letter xxviii. 2 Camoens. Vain is the impious toil with borrowed grace When St. Ignatius set out from Loyola for Montserrat, before he had renounced the world and acquired a knowledge proportionate to his zeal, hearing a certain Moresco or Mahometan speak injuriously of our blessed Lady, he deliberated whether, being an officer, he ought not to kill him; but he says, "the divine protection preserved him from so criminal an action." Political and human motives in a later age often put on the mask of severe religious zeal. Princes may have sometimes sought the restoration of religion because they hoped that it would be the means of enabling them to govern in peace and safety; for if a French monarch banished from his own dominions men who had renounced the religion of their fathers, he protected and encouraged their brethren in Hungary, where, by joining the Turks, they were endangering his great enemy the house of Austria. I do not, however, conclude that the law of chivalry will authorise the censure which it has incurred, even though it be said in the exaggerated style of romance, that if an infidel were to impugn the doctrines of the Christian faith before a Churchman, he has to reply to him by argument; but a knight was to render no other reason to the infidel than six inches of his falchion thrust into his bowels. The accomplished writer2 of a late very ingenious and interesting memoir upon chivalry has, however, justly remarked upon this passage, that" even courtesy, and the respect due to ladies of high degree, gave way when they chanced to be infidels.' The renowned Sir Bevis of Hamptoun, being invited by the fair Princess Josiane to come to her bower, replies to the paynims who brought the message, I will ne gou one foot on ground For to speke with an heathen hound; That doughty knight Wolfdietrich, in the book of heroes, displays a similar feeling towards the fair Marpaly, who was so moved by his beauty, that she excepted him from the fatal doom which all other knights had experienced in 1 Lusiad, x. 2 Encyclop. Brit. Suppl. vol. iii. |