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94 DARIUSZ KOŁODZIEJCZYKAfter three years of successive campaigns with no results, the armisticeat Zuravno was signed in October 1676. It is not surprising that among theintermediaries were the Moldavian hospodar Duca and the Crimean khan.Duca wanted to throw off the burden of provisioning Kam "janee', and thekhan was furious that the Ottomans had succeeded in protecting their newsubjects against the Tatars more efficiently than the Poles had done. BothDuca and the khan, as well as the serasker Şeytan Ibrahim Paşa, led thePoles to believe that their ambassador in Istanbul would obtain much betterpeace conditions for them than had been provided in the Buoać treaty.Sobieski hoped that, after signing the new treaty, the Commonwealthwould attack Prussia-Brandenburg, as part of a secret alliance with LouisXIV. Contrary to expectations, however, the mission of the palatine JanGniński in Istanbul proved to be very difficult. The new treaty was in fact aconfirmation of Bućać, with the exemption of the tribute known as pişkeş.Only two small fortresses in Right-Bank Ukraine—Bila Cerkva (Polish,Biała Cerkiew) and Pavoloc"—were left in Polish hands. When Gnińskireturned to Poland in 1678, it was too late to attack Prussia. In the sameyear the treaty at Nijmegen was signed, and Louis XIV was no longerinterested in an alliance with Poland.The crude manners of the new grand vizier Kara Mustafa toward Europeanenvoys are well known and his treatment of Gniński was long rememberedin Poland. 23 The peace treaty was accepted by the Diet, but the senseof threat and feeling of humiliation were not erased. The possibility of Ottomanoccupation may appear to us today to have been unlikely, but theseventeenth-century Poles felt surrounded. The new Ottoman border wasonly one hundred kilometers from Lviv, and less than two hundred kilometersfrom Cracow. There was another factor in Polish internal policy which,combined with Catholic propaganda, forced the king to join the Habsburgsin 1683: nobles from the lost territories preserved their provincial diets andtheir seats in the Diet; with their famous right of veto, these men couldparalyze every legislative or fiscal decision. Every diet held in the secondhalf of the seventeenth century began with a reassurance that the so-calledexulantes would regain their provinces.In the nineteenth century, after the partitions, some Polish historiansbegan to treat the victory of Vienna as a great mistake. Some of themasserted that it would have been better to help the Turks seize Vienna ratherthan defend it. The recent works of Zbigniew Wójcik, the foremost expert23Gninski's report from the mission was read to the Diet in 1679. It has been published,together with a diary and collection of letters, in F. Pułaski, Źródła do poselstwa JanaGnińskiego wojewody chełmińskiego do Turcyi w latach 1677-1678 (Warsaw, 1907).