CHAPTER I.


The large and magnificent palace of Villanow, whose vast domains
stretch along the northern bank of the Vistula, was the favorite
residence of John Sobieski, King of Poland. That monarch, after
having delivered his country from innumerable enemies, rescued Vienna
and subdued the Turks, retired to this place at certain seasons, and
thence dispensed those acts of his luminous and benevolent mind which
rendered his name great and his people happy.

When Charles the Twelfth of Sweden visited the tomb of Sobieski, at
Cracow, he exclaimed, "What a pity that so great a man should ever
die!" [Footnote: In the year 1683, this hero raised the siege of
Vienna, then beleagured by the Turks; and driving them out of Europe,
saved Christendom from a Mohammedan usurpation.] Another generation
saw the spirit of this lamented hero revive in the person of his
descendant, Constantine, Count Sobieski, who, in a comparatively
private station, as Palatine of Masovia, and the friend rather than
the lord of his vassals, evinced by his actions that he was the
inheritor of his forefather's virtue as well as of his blood.

He was the first Polish nobleman who granted freedom to his peasants.
He threw down their mud hovels and built comfortable villages; he
furnished them with seed, cattle, and implements of husbandry, and
calling their families together, laid before them the deed of their
enfranchisement; but before he signed it, he expressed a fear that
they would abuse this liberty of which they had not had experience,