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John Sobieski Biography

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JOHN III, SOBIESKI (1624-96). King of Poland from 1674 to 1696 and one of the greatest warriors of the seventeenth century. He was born at Olesko, Galicia, June 2, 1624, and was educated with great care, together with his brother Mark, by his father, James Sobieski, Castellan of Cracow, a man distinguished in the civil and military life of Poland. The brothers traveled in France, England, Italy, and Germany, until their father's death recalled them home in 1648. Poland was then on the decline and involved in constant wars with Sweden, Brandenburg, Russia, the Tatars, the Turks, and the Cossacks. The Sobieskis, as became their rank and training, entered the military service. Mark fell in battle against the Cossacks; John distinguished himself by his valor and became the most efficient Polish leader of his time. He became grand marshal in 1665 and commander in chief of the Polish forces and Waywode of Cracow in 1667. On Nov. 11, 1673, he defeated the Turks in the great battle of Khotin in Bessarabia. After the death of King Michael Wisniowiecki (1673) he was unanimously elected King of Poland (May 21, 1674). He turned from the French alliance, which seemed cemented by his election, to that of Austria because of a pique on the part of his wife, and when the Turks besieged Vienna in 1683 John hastened to its to its relief with 20,000 Polish troops. Near Vienna he was joined by the Duke of Lorraine and the Imperial troops, and on September 12 the combined array of 70,000 assailed the Turkish forces under Kara Mustapha in their camp around Vienna. The enemy, whose numbers are estimated at 275,000 men, were overwhelmingly defeated and driven back to the Raab. Sobieski was received with acclaim by the Viennese, but the Emperor Leopold showed strange ingratitude in his treatment of the deliverer and of the Polish army. Sobieski became the hero of Christendom, but this was the climax of his career. He was hampered by the wretched politics of the aristocratic Polish Republic and by the intrigues of foreign parties in his court, and the later years of his life were full of disappointment. He died of apoplexy, June 17, 1696. John Sobieski was not only a statesman and warrior, but a patron of science and literature. His constant wars, however, prevented that attention to the internal condition of Poland which its critical situation urgently required. He had, too many of the faults of the high Polish nobility, and he was too much under the influence of his wife, an intriguing and frivolous woman. The family of Sobieski was extinguished with the death of the last descendant, in 1875.