We Came, We Saw . . .
We came, we saw . . . how does that go? Pacificism is not a Christian doctrine. Yes, there have always been some Christian pacifists, but that is a personal choice. And yes, the “Good Fight” that St. Paul urges Timothy (and all of us) to fight is the battle against sin. Nevertheless, sometimes Christians need to fight in the literal, worldly sense. September 12th 1683, 341 years ago today, was one of those times.
The city of Vienna had been under attacked for two months. A Muslim army of Ottoman Turks was besieging the city. It was on verge of falling, a fall which would leave all of central Europe at the mercy of Kara Mustafa’s marauding army. Just in time, a Christian relief force led by Polish King Jan III Sobieski decisively defeated the Turks. Sobieski released Vienna from a cruel siege and freed Europe, for a time, from the fear of Islamic conquest.
Different Visions of God
The Battle of Vienna in 1683 was the final salvo of a millennium-long war. The opening phase ended when Charles Martel’s victory at Tours in 732 stemmed the first Muslim incursion into Europe. For most of the next thousand years the Christian West was constantly under the threat of subjugation by the followers of Mohammed. Had Charles Martel failed, or Sobieski, or any of the other Christian commanders in between, our world today would be very different. Consider what Tunisia, Libya, or Egypt might be like today – or Syria – if they had remained part of Christendom. Does anyone doubt that things there would be better, probably much better?
We need to bear in mind that this was really a struggle not simply of peoples or of nations, but between Christendom and Islam. In other words, between radically different visions of God. Sobieski’s force was called The Holy League, the same name borne by that alliance which defeated the Turks in the naval battle of Lepanto in the previous century. Like those earlier Christian soldiers, who prayed the Rosary before going into battle with the Turkish fleet, Sobieski’s army prayed: they attended Mass, after which Sobieski formed up his army and “commended their mission and their souls to the care of the Blessed Virgin.”
God Conquered
After he gained the victory, the Polish king informed the Pope that “we came, we saw, God conquered.” This was an echo of Julius Caesar’s famous report to the Roman Senate after the Battle of Zela: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Sobieski, however, turned Caesar’s proud boast upside down. Instead of vaunting his own achievement, he was humbly acknowledging his dependence on God’s saving Grace.
There are two points that stand out here. One is that we need to recognize that sometimes it is necessary to fight. There are people who want to subjugate us and eradicate the Faith handed on to us by Jesus Christ through his Apostles (just as they do the faith of our Jewish predecessors). They have been at it for almost a millennium and a half, and there’s no indication that they are any more interested in compromise, or anything short of total victory, than they were at any point since Mohammed emerged from his cave with the Koran. Certainly, the outlook and behavior we’re seeing from the Taliban or ISIS or Hamas is nothing new: during the battle for Vienna, the Turks murdered 30,000 defenseless Christian hostages.
“Unless The Lord builds the house . . .”
The second point is that we will fail, unless we rely on God: “Unless the LORD builds the house those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127.1). Our prevailing secular culture has shown it can’t do the job. Today’s Jihadists, enabled by the moral decay and post-Christian depopulation of Europe, are gradually achieving by peaceful migration (although it’s becoming less peaceful) the capture of that continent that eluded the strongest armies of their forebears.
This last point applies to more than just the potential loss of Europe. It applies to everything we set out to do. Christ has promised us that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). That promise doesn’t apply to local churches. Christian Europe can go the way of Christianity in North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. On a personal level, each one of us is capable of losing his or her salvation. None of us conquer on our own. As Jan Sobieski reminds us, only God conquers.
Featured image top of page: “Jan Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna,” by Julius Kossak, 1882.
