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Sobieski?

Jan III Sobieski in Roman costume.
Detail of a 1686 painting by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter.
Not content merely to bless the world with (possibly its first) flesh-and-blood “Feramorz,” James and Susanna Little had already hung on our future Uncle Edwin an equally-uncommon middle name. One that the Littles and their Young kin would give to a number of later family members. And by which we gather that they were well-read in history as in literature.

In this case, the unfamiliarity of the name reflects more on us than on the Littles. If we were taught world history properly, we would recognize the name of King Jan III Sobieski of Poland as readily as that of George Washington. Here’s the story, which James Little of upstate New York apparently knew and respected:
“…Jan III Sobieski (17 August 1629 - 17 June 1696) was one of the most notable monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1674 until his death King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. …Popular among his subjects, he was also a brilliant military commander, most famous for the victory over the Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna. For his victories over the Ottoman Empire, he was dubbed by the Turks the “Lion of Lechistan.” 1
Why should we care about the Battle of Vienna, ’way back in 1683? Well, if Sobieski and his friends hadn’t turned back the Ottoman Turks at those gates, we might well be speaking a variety of Turkish, rather than a kind of German. Those Turks were doing their best to conquer Europe, where our ancestors all lived in those days.

We remember (or should) the 11th of September, 1683, as the date of a big triumph for our side. Our Muslim friends remember it better than we, but in their books it’s presented as one of the great disasters of history.

Battle of Vienna on September 11, 1683
Nine-eleven, hmm… Do you think there’s any possibility that Osama bin Laden picked that date at random? Or that he had in mind the numbers we punch for an emergency?

1Quoted text, images, and captions from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_III_Sobieski
and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna.

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