King Jan III Sobieski meets Emperor Leopold I. Painting by Artur Grottger
On the day after Sobieski’s conference with Zierowski, unknown to them both, a messenger set out at top speed on the long journey from Vienna. Count Thurn covered 350 miles in 11 days, and arrived at the royal residence of Wilanów outside Warsaw on 15 July. Austria was being invaded, its capital city was in danger, he reported, and the Emperor appealed to the King of Poland for help….
The King left Warsaw on 18July and reached Cracow on the 29th…. [S]obieski had to visit Our Lady of Czestochowa, then and now the greatest shrine in Poland, to beg her good offices for the coming campaign….
It was time to go, and right to go, on the day of Our Lady’s Assumption the 15th August.
John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (New York: Pegasus Books, 2007), 131, 138.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 403
