JOHN III SOBIESKI, King of POLAND. — Born at Olesko (Leopold) on 2 June 1624. His eminent family position — he was the son of Jakub, first senator of the Kingdom of Poland — his wide experience gained through study at Cracow and travels abroad (England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey), and his outstanding political and especially military abilities soon brought him to the highest ranks.
Grand Standard-Bearer of the Crown, or supreme commander of the army, from 1667, under King Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki he succeeded in redeeming at Chocim (1673), against Mehemet IV and Ahmed Köprülü, the humiliating Peace of Buczacz (1672), by which Podolia was ceded to the Turks and the Ukraine to the Cossacks. In view of the continuing Turkish pressure on the south-eastern frontiers of Poland, the Polish Diet, after the death of Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, which occurred on the very eve of the battle, decided on 21 May 1674 to entrust the Polish crown to him, choosing him from among seventeen candidates. He continued the war against the Turks and Tartars, obtaining from the Sublime Porte, through the Peace of Żurawno (1676), the return of two-thirds of the Ukraine and all the prisoners held in Turkey; on the other hand, not without the influence of his wife Marysieńka, the Frenchwoman Marie de la Grange d’Arquien, he concluded with Louis XIV the Treaty of Jaworów directed against Austria and Brandenburg (1675), with the understanding that after the war he would obtain East Prussia. Since the Turkish danger had clearly taken precedence over western and Baltic concerns, in 1683 the king allied himself with the Empire, concluding with Leopold I and Pope Innocent XI a pact of alliance against the Turk. And when Kara Mustafa’s army arrived beneath the walls of Vienna, Sobieski’s prompt intervention at the head of a strong Polish army secured on 12 September 1683 a decisive victory for the arms of Christendom. He reconquered Hungary for the Empire and continued the war against the Turks for a long time. It was precisely this struggle that forced him, by the Treaty of Moscow in 1686, to renounce Kiev and the Ukrainian territories beyond the Dnieper. Death overtook him on 17 June 1696, before Poland could recover, through the Peace of Carlowitz (1699), all the lands wrested from the Turk, first and foremost Kamenets Podolsk.
A brilliant captain, a man of wide, humanistic culture, devoted to the See of Peter (to which after Vienna he sent the green banner of the Prophet), he was a patron and connoisseur of the fine arts. Scornful of the ostentatious court of Warsaw, where his wife held sway, he preferred to it the tranquillity of Wilanów (Villa Nova), a small palace built to a design by the Italian Locci, where with the help of his secretary, the Jesuit Fr. Vota, he assembled rich collections of art, including many copies of Italian masterpieces.