DISTINGUISHED MEN OF MODERN TIM E S. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. NEW-YORK PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET. 1842 211968 CTIOG M2 V.2 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York. gift 1-27-30 INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1 LIVES OF DISTINGUISHED MEN OF MODERN TIMES. SOBIESKI. So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey as the idle fear of an over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a half, when popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross, and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant warfare between Christian and Moslem. That period of danger was to Poland a period of glory, and the brightest part of it is the reign of the warrior-king, John Sobieski. It proved, indeed, no better than an empty glitter, won at a vast expense of blood and treasure, the benefits of which were chiefly reaped by the faith. less and ungrateful Austria. |