GIOVANNI III Sobieski, re di POLONIA. - N. a Olesko (Leopoli) il 2 giugno 1624. La eminente posizione famigliare - era figlio di Jakób, primo se-
Grand Hetman of the Crown or supreme commander of the army from 1667, under King Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki he succeeded in redeeming at Chocim (1673), against Mehmed IV and Ahmed Köprülü, the humiliating Peace of Buchach (1672) by which Podolia was ceded to the Turks and Ukraine to the Cossacks. In the presence of continuous Turkish pressure on the south-eastern borders of Poland, the Polish Diet, after the death of Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, which occurred on the very eve of the battle, thought to entrust him with the crown of Poland on May 21, 1674, choosing him from among seventeen candidates. He continued the war against the Turks and Tatars, obtaining from the Porte, with the Treaty of Żurawno (1676), the restitution of two-thirds of Ukraine and all 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 of obtaining, after the war, East Prussia. Since the Turkish danger had decisively taken precedence over Western and Baltic concerns, in 1683 Sobieski approached the Empire, concluding an alliance pact against the Turk with Leopold I and Pope Innocent XI. And when the army of Kara Mustafa arrived beneath the walls of Vienna, the prompt intervention of G. at the head of a strong Polish army enabled a resounding victory for the arms of Christendom on Sept. 12, 1683. Sobieski reconquered Hungary for the Empire and continued to wage war against the Turks for a long time. These very struggles forced him to renounce, by the Moscow Agreement of 1686, Kiev and the Ukrainian territories beyond the Dnieper. Death overtook him on June 17, 1676, before Poland could recover, through the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), all the lands wrested from it by the Turk, first and foremost Kamieniec Podolski.
A brilliant commander, a man of broad humanist culture, devoted to the See of Peter (to which after Vienna he sent the green banner of the prophet), he was a patron and cultivator of the fine arts. Disdainful of the lavish court of Warsaw, where his wife held sway, he preferred to it the tranquility of Wilanów (Villa Nova), a small palace built from the designs of the Italian Locci, where he had assembled, with the help of his secretary, the Jesuit Father Vota, rich art collections, including many copies of Italian masterpieces.