Not for the first time, in the summer of that year, Europe trembled at the progress of the Crescent. Since then, the tide of victory has run almost uninterruptedly in favour of the Cross, and Turkey has sunk from being the terror to the position of protégée, tool, victim, or tolerated scandal of Europe.
The decline of her forces, the reversal of the former position of Turk and Christian in the East, date from this great catastrophe of Islam. For Eastern Europe at least the battle before Vienna was a decisive battle. We must remember, indeed, what is meant by a decisive battle, or by any other so-called decisive event. They are rather the occasions than the causes of the transference of power. The causes lie deep which can produce such great and such lasting results. The operation of many influences, throughout a length of time, brings about ultimately the striking revolutions in the history of mankind. No chance bullet which strikes down, or avoids, a commander; no brilliant display of military genius in the person of one man; no incapacity of a single officer, can do more than alter the minor circumstances of great events. The great man is not successfully great, unless his genius can seize upon the opportunities offered by a rising tide of popular opinion, or profit by the accumulated energy of a nation. The incapable leader can seldom make shipwreck of a power unless it be built upon unsafe lines. The presence of a thoroughly incapable commander argues something rotten in his cause. The revolution, the reformation, the reaction, the transference of empire will come; if not in one way, in another; if not in one year, in the next, or in following years. The foundations of success and of failure, are laid deep in the moral, religious and political habits and institutions of nations. The invincible determination and high political and military training of the Roman aristocracy bore them safely through the catastrophes of a Second Punic War and the revolt of their allies. The ordered liberty, and the generations of successful adventure, which were the heritage of the English nation, had won Trafalgar before a shot had been fired from the _Victory_. The Persian host went forth predestined to choke the Gulf of Salamis with corpses. No Kosciusko's valour could redeem the long anarchy and blindness of Poland. Napoleon, marching from victory to victory, but approached the nearer to that fall, which must await one man against a continent in arms. So the Turkish myriads, victorious at Vienna, would have fallen upon some less noble field before the skill of some other Sobieski. But the genius and courage of individuals may well determine the fate of armies for a day. One day's victory may call for years of warfare to accomplish its undoing. A few years of delay may work great changes in the fortunes of men.