JOHN III., SomesKi (1624 96). King of Po land from 1674 to 1696. and one of the greatest warriors of the seventeenth century. lie 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 Ciacow. a man distinguished in the ( ivil and military life of Poland. The brothers traveled in France. England. Daly. and Germany. until their father's death recalled them home in 164S. Poland \vas then on the decline and in volved in constant wars with Sweden. Branden• burg. 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 t ossacks: John dis tinguished himself 1w his valor. and became the most efficient Polish leader of his time. Ile be came grand marshal in 1665. and commander in-chief of the Polish forces and Waywode of Cra cow in 1667. tin 11. 1673. he defeated the Turks in the great battle of Khotin in Bes sarabia. Alter the death of King Wis niowiecki ( 1673 I he was unaidunmsly elected King of Poland (Slay 21. 167 1) . lh! 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 1653 John hastened 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 12th the combined army of 70. 000 assailed the Turkish forces under Kara Slus tapha in their camp around Vienna. The enemy, whose numbers are estimated at 275.000 men,
were overwhelm irady defeated and driven back to the Raab. Sobieski was received with acclaim by the Viennese. hut the Emperor Leopold showed strange ingratitude in his treatment of the de liverer and of the Polish army. Sobieski became the hero of C1 ristendom. hut this was the climax of his career. Ile was hampered by the wretched polities of the aristocratic Polish Republic and by the intrigues of foreign parties in his Conrt. and the later years of his life were full of dis appointment. Be died of apoplexy June 17. 1696. .trim Sobieski was not only a statesman and war rior. but a patron of science and literature. Ms 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. Con suit: Tatham. John Nobieski (4)xiord. ltiR11. the Lothian prize essay at Oxford in that year; Dupont. Ill'inoircg pour serrir a l'histoire de (War,:aw..IRS51. by a French officer in the Polish service under Salvandy, Histoire de Pologne arant ct .cons fe roi Jean Sobieski (2 vols.. new ed.. Paris. 1S55) Coyer, Tlistorrc de Jean Sobieski (Amsterdam, 1761 and 17S3) : Waliszewski. Arta. extracts from the for eign archives of France in regard to the rela tions of Sobieski with that country (3 vols., Cracow, 1684) ; Rieder, Johann III., Iionig von Polin (Vienna,