The imprint will concentrate in particular on those texts which provide an analysis of key periods or figures of modern history from a standpoint which recognizes not only the existence of religious truth but of its active and substantial role in human history. One series, for instance, that GOV Books plans to present to the reading public is the collection of historical biographies written by Hilaire Belloc. (For details

Jan Sobieski (1629-1696) The Battle of Vienna, 1683    Following their conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman Turks, in time, went on to take the Balkans. By the spring of 1683, their ruthless Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, decided to launch a major campaign to seize the rest of Hungary and advance into Central Europe. The Turks’ main rival in the region was Austria, whose monarch, Leopold I, was both the King of Austria, Bohemia and Habsburg Hungary, and Holy Roman Emperor (of a collection of feudal German states and independent cities).    On March 30, 1683, the Turks’ vanguard of Janissaries set out from Belgrade. By May, a host estimated at over 100,000 Europeans, Asians, and Africans was heading toward Vienna. The Habsburg commander-in-chief, Charles V of Lorraine, could muster only 33,000. Leopold fled his capital, and Vienna was placed under siege on July 16. Bl. Marco of Aviano (1631-1699)    Pope Innocent XI called for a Holy Alliance of Christian princes to resist the Muslim horde. Innocent was a true Defender of the West who, according to John Stoye’s The Siege of Vienna, “never slackened since the day of his election” (in 1676) to organize a Crusade against the Sultan. Innocent pledged the revenues of the Church to help raise an army.    King John Sobieski III of Poland, a veteran of the wars against the Turks, was willing to lead a contingent in support of the Habsburgs. But he had to have the unanimous approval of the Polish Diet. Louis XIV’s agents tried to bribe key members into vetoing the proposal. The papal nuncio, Pallavicini, was ordered by Innocent XI to use his powers, including those of his purse, to outbid the French. This they managed, though just barely. King John then set about to raise an army of 40,000.    While Kara Mustafa’s savage Tartar allies pillaged the surrounding countryside, the Turkish engineers went about the business of constructing siege lines and undermining the city’s defenses. Mustafa’s great gamble nearly succeeded. Dysentery, considered by Stoye to be “the Turks’ strongest ally,” spread fast among the soldiers and remaining civil population of Vienna. The Muslims were on the verge of breaching the last defensive works, when, on September 9, it was announced that a relief force was assembling nearby. King Jan III at Vienna Jan Matejko, 1883    Commanded by King John Sobieski, and including valuable reinforcements from Bavaria, Franconia, Thuringia, and Saxony, the allies attacked the Turks on September 12, a Sunday. Writes Stoye: “At last the hour was reached when the Christian army, to use the emphatic language of a contemporary Turkish writer, became a flood of black pitch coming down the mountain, consuming everything it touched.” The next day, Sobieski made his victorious entry into Vienna, in advance of Emperor Leopold, to the acclamation of the grateful Viennese public.    In what has been dubbed the Last of the Crusades (from 1683-1699), Poland, Hungary, Austria, the Papal States, and such Mediterranean powers as Savoy continued to exert military pressure against the Turks. At Zenta on September 11, 1697, Prince Eugene of Savoy caught the Ottoman army as it was trying to cross the River Tisza in Serbia, inflicting 30,000 casualties at a cost of only 300. The sultan then sued for peace, which was signed at Karlowitz in 1699. Austria gained Transylvania and most of Hungary. While the Turks retained the Banat of Temesvar, they ceded most of the Morea to Venice. Following a series of military reforms, the Turks renewed the war in 1716 but were again defeated by Prince Eugene at Peterwardein on August 5, 1716, before finally being thrown out of Belgrade on August 22, 1717. Adapted from a review by Dr. Wayne Lutton of John Stoye's Siege of Vienna, for The Occidental Quarterly. Reprinted with permission.

on the first two volumes in the series, click here.)