Lumen 2018

wrote further in his letter to Queen Marysienka: “Our Lord God, may He be blessed forever, gave our nation a victory and fame as great as never before in history. All cannons, the entire camp, ines- timable riches fell into our hands. The enemy, having left the trenches, fields, and the camp strewn with corpses, is fleeing in confusion.” 237 After the victory, the city of Vienna opened its gates to welcome “its brave king” with shouts of enthusiasm. But the jealous and proud Emperor Leopold I greeted him coolly with reserve. 238 Afterwards, the king sent a message to the pope in the form of a brief, terse exclamation: “Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit” (We came, we saw, God won). It was the last great victory by the army of the Kingdom of Poland, which did not muster such an effort again until the time of losing its independence. At the same time, the defeat of the Turks at Vienna saw the beginning of the decline of the powerful Ottoman Empire. 239 After his return fromVienna to Poland, the king decided to enlarge the foundations for the benefit of the Institute of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception. But first, sparing no cost, he founded a chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Warsaw. Father Stanislaus, in turn, received many graces and privileges for his Congregation from the king. 240 One of the tokens of the king’s generosity is the aforementioned Turkish cope made from a caparison that was seized at Vienna. The traditional accounts of King John III Sobieski’s visits at the Korabiew Forest were immortalized in a monument in the form of a large gran- ite obelisk, placed under the king’s favorite linden tree in 1933. The following inscription was engraved on the monument: IN HONOR OF KING JOHN SOBIESKI DEFENDER OF THE HOMELAND AND THE FAITH ON THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELIEF OF VIENNA 319 Foundation of a New Religious Order