Note 384 — EPILOGUE TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. BY MR N. LEE, 1684.
Reading edition
The severity of the Austrian government, in Hungary particularly, towards those who dissented from the Roman Catholic faith, occasioned several insurrections. The most memorable was headed by Count Teckeli, who allied himself with the sultan, assumed the crown of Transylvania, as a vassal of the Porte, and joined, with a considerable force, the large army of Turks which besieged Vienna, and threatened to annihilate the Austrian empire. A similarity of situation and of interest induced the Whig party in England to look with a favourable eye upon this Hungarian insurgent, as may be fully inferred from the following passage in De Foe's "Appeal to Honour and Justice:"
"The first time I had the misfortune to differ with my friends, was about the year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the Whigs in England, generally speaking, were for the Turks taking it; which I, having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the Christian religion in above threescore and ten kingdoms, could by no means agree with; and, though then but a young man, and a younger author, I opposed it, and wrote against it, which was taken very unkindly indeed."
The incongruity of the opinion combated by De Foe, with the high pretences of religion set up by the Whigs, was the constant subject of ridicule to the Tory wits. In a poem, entitled, "The Third Part of Advice to the Painter," dated by Luttrell 28th May, 1684, we find the following passage:
Paint me that mighty powerful state a shaking, And their great prophet, Teckely, a quaking; Who for religion made such bustling work, That, to reform it, he brought in the Turk. Next, paint our English muftis of the tub, Those great promoters of the Teckelites' club. Draw me them praying for the Turkish cause, And for the overthrow of Christian laws.
Another Tory poet prophecies of the infant son of James II.,—
His conquering arm shall soon subdue Teckelite Turks and home-bred Jew, Such as our great forefathers never knew. Pindaric Ode on the Queen's Delivery, by Caleb Calle.
Another ballad, written shortly after the defeat of Monmouth, is entitled, "A Song upon the Rendezvous on Hounsley-heath, with a Parallel of the Destruction of our English Turks in the West, and the Mahometans in Hungary." The expression occurs also in the Address of the Carlisle Citizens on the Declaration of Indulgence, who "thank his majesty for his royal army, which is really both the honour and safety of the nation, let the Teckelites think and say what they will." An indignant Whig commentator on this effusion of loyalty, says, "What the good men of Carlisle mean by Teckelites, we know not any more than they know themselves. However, the word has a pretty effect at a time when the Protestant Hungarians, under Count Teckely, were well beaten by the Popish standing army in Hungary." History of Addresses, p. 161.