Silva Rerum | 08.09.2015 “May the Lord God be forever blessed, who everyday sends us such graces from his ineffable goodness! Despite the opinion and imagination of everyone, we resolved for the fortress in the rain, cold, without any feed for the horses or meals for ourselves; through a miracle of God, it happened that although the enemy had three mosques [in the city], he surrendered this night, only the fourth day of the siege, in my name, or our troops’ […].”
With these words, Jan III begins his letter to his wife, dated 28 October 1683, “in Strygonium itself”. In the following sentences, the king presents the general characteristics of the ongoing events. “There were five thousand Turks in this fortress, two pashas (the commander was Pasha of Aleppo, one of the most excellent pashas), whom the vizier commanded to defend the fortress to their last drop of blood, himself having fled Buda, and they spoke of it, too, all the bad Turks, that he himself ran and told others to fight or he would kill them by beheading. Only with their souls and hand weapons will they leave for Buda.”
The letter from which the quoted fragments come, is another joyful description of the victory by Jan III and the Christian armies, this one achieved more quickly than could be expected, since Esztergom surrendered only after four days of intensive assault. What led to such a rapid capitulation? As the King’s words about the Turks’ surrender “in my name or my our troops’” show, among the other causes of the capitulation had to be the awareness that the fortress was being assaulted, among with allied troops by the Lion of Lechistan himself, “cursed and traitorous Sobieski”, the victor of the Battle of Vienna and the second confrontation at Párkány, which weakened the battle morale and fighting spirit of the adversaries...
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