cavalry, after the German and Polish infantry had cleared the way for them, chasing the janissaries from house to house, from vine to vine, from haystack to haystack, and, with cruel obstinacy, driving them from Neustift, from Potzleinsdorf and from Dornbach.
The Christians' hearts trembled when Kara Mustapha tried to take advantage of the enemy's moves and to drive wedges into the gaps created by their powerful advance. These attempts were, however, short-lived: Charles of Lorraine sent his Austrians in to attack, making them converge on the right. In Dornbach, they cut off the retreat of the Turks, who were trying to withdraw towards Dobling. Meanwhile, the Polish cavalry smashed through all resistance, driving the enemy back as far as Hernals.
At the centre, in the front line, while the glorious Sarmatian military ensign fluttered above, the King of Poland rode with the falcon's wing raised on the tip of his lance, splendid and indomitable, alongside Prince Jakob, barely sixteen and already a hero, flanked by his knights with their armour marvellously ornamented by their multicoloured surcoats, by plumes and by precious stones. To the cry of 'Jesumaria!' the lances of the hussars and of King Jan's heavy cavalry swept away the Spahis and charged towards the tent of Kara Mustapha.
The latter, observing the clash between his own men and the Polish cavalry from his command post, instinctively looked up to the green standard in the shade of which he stood. That sacred standard was precisely what the Christians were aiming at. He then yielded to fear, and decided to withdraw, dragging with him in his inglorious retreat, first the Pashas, then the whole body of his troops. The centre of the Turkish host then gave way, too; the rest of the army panicked, and defeat turned to disaster.
The besieged Viennese at last took courage and dared to sally forth through the Scottish Gate, while the Turks fled, abandoning to the enemy their immense encampment, overflowing with incalculable treasures; not, however, without first cutting the throats of hundreds of prisoners and dragging with them as slaves six thousand men, eleven thousand women, fourteen thousand young girls and fifty thousand children.
The military victory was so complete and triumphant that no one thought of stopping the fleeing Infidels. For fear of a return of the Turks, the Christian soldiers, on the contrary, remained on guard through the night.
The first to enter the tent of Kara iMustapha was King Jan Sobieski, who took as booty the horsetail and the steed left behind by the defeated commander, as well as the many oriental treasures and marvels abandoned by the dissolute miscreant satrap.
On the next day, the dead were counted: the Turks had lost ten thousand men on the field of battle, three hundred cannon, fifteen thousand tents and mountains of arms. The Christians mourned two thousand dead, including, alas, General de Souches and Prince Potocki; but there was no time for sadness: all Vienna yearned to welcome the victors, who entered in triumph the city which they had saved from the Infidel hordes. King Jan Sobieski wrote humbly to the Pope, attributing the victory to a miracle: venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit.*
It was, as I said, only later that we were to learn all this in detail. Yet, around the Donzello, jubilation was growing: on 24th September, * We came, we saw, God conquered. (Translator's note.) a notice was posted in all the churches of Rome ordering that the Ave Maria should be sounded that very evening by all bells to thank the Lord for the defeat of the Turks; gay lights were placed in all windows and with universal and excessive exultation the bells rang out, while rockets, Catherine wheels and little mortars went off all around. Thus, from our windows, one could hear not only the people giving vent to their joy but above all the loud explosions of the fireworks, whose flashes illuminated the roofs of embassies, the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Piazza Navona and the Campo di Fiore. Having flung open the shutters and glued ourselves to the bars of the hostelry's windows, we witnessed in the street the burning in effigy of vizirs and pashas, amidst the uncontainable joy of the populace. We beheld entire families, groups of boys, clusters of young men and old, marching back and forth bearing torches, as though crazed, lighting up the sweet September night and accompanying, with their laughter, the silvery counterpoint of the bells.
Even those who dwelled close to our hostelry and who had hitherto taken care not to approach our windows for fear of contagion, now shared with us their joy, their gibes, their cries of gladness. It seemed that they felt the approach of our liberation, almost as though the triumph of Christian arms in Vienna portended the release of our poor inn from the menace of the plague.
Although still sequestered, we too were overcome by immense joy; it was I myself who brought the news to each of the guests. We all celebrated together in the chambers on the ground floor, embracing each other and drinking toasts with the greatest and most cheerful exultation. I, above all, was in seventh heaven; Dulcibeni's plan to strike at the heart of Christian Europe had come too late, even if I was still anxious about the health of the Pope.
Besides all these genuine manifestations of joy, in the news which was circulating among the populace and which reached us from the street, there were two circumstances which I found somewhat unexpected and worthy of reflection.
First, from one of the watchmen (who were continuing to keep an eye on the inn, in the absence of further orders) we came to know that the Christian victory had been aided by an inexplicable series of errors on the part of the Turks.
The armies of Kara Mustapha had, in fact, by means of the novel technique of mines and trenches, reduced the city walls of Vienna and, in the opinion of the victors themselves, could unquestionably have carried out a concentrated and victorious assault long before the arrival of King Jan Sobieski's reinforcements. Yet, instead of rapidly unleashing the decisive attack, Kara Mustapha had, quite inexplicably, made no move, wasting several precious days. Nor had the Turks taken the trouble to occupy the heights of the Kahlenberg, which would have given them a decisive tactical advantage. Not only that: they had neglected to confront the Christian reinforcements before they crossed the Danube, thus allowing them to draw irremediably close to the beleaguered city.
Why all this had happened, no one could tell. It was as though the Turks had been waiting for something… Something which made them feel sure of victory. But, what could that be?
Secondly, another strange circumstance: the outbreak of the plague, which had been ravaging the city for months, suddenly died out, for no apparent reason.
To the victors, this series of miracles was seen as a sign from divine providence, the same benign providence which had to the last sustained the desperate forces of the besieged and Jan Sobieski's liberating troops.
The culmination of the festivities in Rome took place on the 25th day; of that, I shall recount more later, since my concern here is to tell of other important facts which came to my acquaintance during those days of sequestration.
The strange manner in which the plague in Vienna had suddenly been extinguished gave me no little cause for reflection. After terrorising the besieged even more than the Ottoman foe could, the pestilence had rapidly and mysteriously petered out. This factor had been decisive: had the infection persisted and spread among the population ofVienna, the Turks would certainly have prevailed without the slightest difficulty.
It was impossible not to consider that news in the light of what Atto and I had so laboriously uncovered or deduced, all of which I strove to sum up in my mind. Louis XIV hoped for a Turkish victory in Vienna, the better to carve up Europe with the Infidels. In order to achieve his dreams of dominion, the Sun King counted upon using the infectious principle of the secretum pestis, in other words the secretum morbi, which he had at last succeeded in extracting from Fouquet. At the same time, however, the consort of the Most Christian King, Maria Teresa, was striving to achieve a diametrically opposed design. Proudly attached to the destiny of the House of Habsburg which occupied the imperial throne and of which she herself was a scion, the Queen of France strove secretly to impede her husband's plans. Indeed, according to the theory advanced by Atto, Fouquet had succeeded in delivering to Maria Teresa, through Lauzun and Mademoiselle (both of whom detested the Sovereign no less than Maria Teresa herself), the only antidote capable of countering the secret weapon of the plague: the secretum vitae, that is, the rondeau with which Devize had beguiled us during those days at the Donzello, and which seemed even to have cured Bedfordi.
Nor was it by chance that the antidote should have been in the hands of Devize; the rondeau, although probably composed by Kircher in its original, crude form, had been perfected and consigned to paper by the guitarist Francesco Corbetta, a past master of the art of enciphering secret messages in musical notes.
Even thus simplified, the picture was as hard on the intellect as on the memory. Yet, if the method which Atto Melani had taught me held water (to act on suppositions, where one has not the benefit of knowledge), then everything fell into place. One must use one's powers of reasoning persistently in order to uncover what was needed to explain patent absurdities.
I therefore asked myself: if Louis XIV had wished to deliver the coup de grace to the dreaded Habsburgs, who
