The Turks in Hungary

 Calcutta Review, Volume 68, 1879

University of Calcutta., 1879

https://books.google.ca/books?id=oHpEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA19

ART.  II.—THE TURKS IN HUNGARY.

The conflict which was lately raging in South-Eastern Europe between Christian and Musalman, was but one episode in the world-old struggle which has gone on unceasingly in the same reg, ions, and in the countries round about them, between the rival systems and the hostile nations of the East and West, between Ormuzd and Ahriman, between light and darkness, between liberty and slavery, between democracy and despotism, between a living hope in the present and a dead faith in the past.  From the siege of Troy to the siege of Plevna history repeats the varying tale of tbe strife between Europe and Asia —

Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still and still destroying.  

It is twenty-four centuries since, at Marathon, the tyrant of the Chersonese proved himself “Freedom's best and bravest friend,” and today the despot of all the Russias stands forth as the champion of the rights of the down-trodden nationalities.

Macedonian and Persian, Roman and Parthian, Frank and Arab, Byzantine and Ottoman, have by turns held possession of the theatre, of war, and the war-cry and the battle-flag have many times changed.  Sometimes ambition and lust of sway, sometimes the impetus of national growth, sometimes the fanaticism bred by the contact of opposing faiths, have impelled the rival nations upon each other, and the tide of war has rolled backwards and forwards between the Danube and the Euphrates, from the minarets of Baghdad to the spires of Belgrade.  From the earliest dawn of history to the present day, this tide of conquest has ebbed and flowed between Western Asia and Eastern Europe with almost monotonous regularity.  The invasions of Darius and Xerxes were avenged by the victories of Alexander.  The disciplined legions of Rome carried her eagles to the banks of the Tigris, but they were again and again driven back into Syria by the swarms of the Sassapide cavalry.  The early Khalifs and their Arabs led the East to victory again; Africa was for ever severed from European domination, and the farthest kingdoms of the West felt the weight of their arms.  Another turn of the tide and the Crusaders are in Jerusalem, the orientals driven from Crete, Sicily and the Iberian peninsula, maintain themselves with difficulty in Africa and on the confines of Asia Minor.  The scene changes again, and Batu Khan and his Moguls from the East are trampling Russia under their horses hoofs, while the Ottoman crescent advances from victory to victory till it halts before the ramparts of Vienna.  There the tide turns for the last time, and has continued since to ebb Eastwards and Southwards, nor are there any signs of its staying in its course; on the contrary it continues to flow out more swiftly than ever.

One of the most interesting episodes which this long series of wars presents to the student of history, is the conquest of the kingdom of Hungary by the Ottoman Turks, and its recovery from them by the Germans.  Hungary was the most Western State in Europe which was attacked and subjugated by the Osmanlis, and its conquest brought their hitherto victorious empire face to face with a power stronger than itself, the great empire of the West, the Holy Roman Empire, as the old German empire called itself.  The Sultan of the invaders, on his part, had assumed the title of Kaisar of Rum, and claimed the inheritance of the Romans by virtue of his conquest of the City of Constantine.  The struggle between these two great monarchies of the East and the West, for the possession of prostrate Hungary, lasted for nearly two hundred years, and was only decided by the modern improvements in the art of war adopted by the Westerns which gave them an overwhelming advantage their less progressive foes.  It is this contrast between the European and Asiatic, the modern and the ancient systems of war, which gives the record of the later campaigns against the Turks in Hungary a peculiar value in the eyes of the student of military history.  Here we have not the immortals of Darius or the kushuns of Tipu Sultan, physically weak and constitutionally timid, shrinking from the shock of bolder and hardier foes.  The Turkish soldier was in strength, in physical courage, and in natural aptitude for war, superior to the Swabian or Saxon peasant who shouldered a musket under Augustus or Engene.  The Ottoman armies were always greatly superior in numbers to their antagonists.  But the lax discipline prevailing among their soldiery, their ignorance of tactics and, above all, of strategy, more than counterbalanced all their other advantages, and brought their mighty hosts, one after the other, to irretrievable ruin.

It was in the year 1363 that the Hungarians first came into contact with the Ottomans.  The rapid and conquering advance of the latter had caused a general uneasiness throughout Christendom, and Hungary, long before she was herself threatened, despatched her chivalry to the aid of the Servians against the common foe.  At this time the Sclavonic States of Servia, Bosnia and Bulgaria professing the Greek faith, looked to the Byzantine empire as their political centre; while the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland were united to Western Europe by their profession of the Catholic faith, and their acknowledgment of the Papal supremacy.  These political and religious differences were lost sight of in the necessity for combined action against a common danger, but they, unfortunately, reappeared on the first gleam of success, and no sooner was the immediate dread of subjection to the Sultan removed, than the rival claims of Pope and patriarch changed allies into bitter enemies.  The orthodox populations of the Balkan peninsula, compelled to choose between Rome and Islam, preferred the latter, like the sea-beggars of Holland and Zealand, who wore crescents in their caps as a sign that they would rather serve the Turk than the Pope.

But, even had the nations of Eastern and Western Christendom remained firmly and loyally united against the Moslem, it is unlikely that their efforts could have confined him to his Asiatic home.  The armies of the Osmanli were then as superior to the forces arrayed against them as the Anglo-Indian army is to the troops of a native State now-a-days.  The whirlwind onset of their cavalry, the firm array of the serried ranks of their Janissaries, and a little later on, the moral effect produced by their enormous trains of artillery, had no counterpart in the Christian armies, which relied for success solely on the undisciplined valour and heavy armament of their men-at-arms.  The value of infantry was only beginning to be appreciated in Western, and was unknown in Eastern, Europe.  The “chivalrous Magyars” were especially a nation of horsemen, and their cavalry was only second to that of the Turks themselves, but all their efforts to stem the tide of conquest proved fruitless.  King Sigismund of Hungary organized a regular crusade to drive the Turks back from the line of the Danube, but the crusading army was overwhelmed by Bajazet at Nicopolis.  Fifty years later, Murad II appeared before Belgrade, the frontier city and strongest bulwark of Hungary.  It was successfully defended by the famous white knight, John Hunyady, who afterwards, in concert with Scander Beg, the champion of Albania, drove the Ottomans back to the Balkans and rescued Servia and Bosnia.

A fresh crusade led to the death of king Ladislas of Hungary at the disastrous battle of Varna, and the Ottomans again recovered all that they had lost.  Mohammed, the Conqueror, after taking Constantinople, laid siege to Belgrade, to open a way for the Turkish army into Hungary, Old John Hunyady defended the city, and the Conqueror was obliged to raise the siege with the loss of all his artillery and siege equipage, after leaving 40,000 men under the walls.  Matthias Corvinus, the son of Hunyady, was elected king of Hungary, and he raised a standing army of Hussars to repel the incursions of the Turks, whose territories were now conterminous with the kingdom.  A desultory war was carried on for sometime and some brilliant victories were gained by Hungarian valour.  The Turks were for sometime engaged in wars with Persia and in the conquest of Egypt, but on the young Sultan Suliman ascending the throne in 1520, he made vast preparations for achieving the conquest of Hungary.  The following year he set out with a mighty host and laid siege to Belgrade, which fell into his hands after a gallant resistance, and other strong places in the south of the kingdom were conquered.  Having thus 'secured a base for his future operations, Suliman turned aside for a time to the conquest of Rhodes, and other enterprises in Asia and Africa.

It was not until 1526 that he found himself at liberty to renew his designs on Hungary.  He mustered a mighty host, reckoned at two hundred thousand men, of whom a large number were regular troops.  The reduction of Belgrade had left the country open to him, and he marched up the course of the Danube making straight for Buda.  The Hungarian militia were mustered in hot haste, but the military resources of the country had been neglected during the long minority of the young king, and appeals for assistance were made in vain to the king of France and the emperor of Germany.  King Lewis took the field with only twenty-five thousand men, nearly all cavalry.  John Zapolya, the governor of Transylvania, was at the head of a considerable force; but be failed to form a junction with the army of bis royal master.  His subsequent pretensions to the crown support the accusation that his delay was owing to treachery.  Lewis marching from his capital had arrived at Mohacz, a village on the Danube, half-way between Buda and Belgrade.  There he was met by the advanced guard of Turkish cavalry which was equal in numbers to the whole Magyar army.  There was hot skirmishing, and the loss and annoyance caused to his small force by the incessant attacks of the Turks, and the rash impatience of the Hungarian magnates, led the young king to take the unfortunate step of risking all on a decisive battle.

It was the morning of the destruction of Mohacz.  Paul Timoreus, the warlike archbishop of Kolocza, who marshalled the Magyar army, drew them up in alternate bodies of horse and foot, to make the most of their numbers: a chosen troop of horsemen was told off to guard the person of the king.  The left of the army rested on the Danube, and the right was appuyed upon the camp, which was surrounded by an improvised fortification of wagons Opposite, on the plain, the mighty army of Suliman, tenfold in number, was arrayed in two lines.  In the centre of the first line was the dark array of the Janissaries, the lighted matches of their calivers shewing, says the quaint fancy of the Persian historian, like the star-clusters of the milky way on a moonless night: at their head rode their Agha.  In front of them, and to right and left, were the ponderous field-guns, immovable from their places till after the close of the battle, when the long teams of oxen might again be yoked to them.  The wheels of the guns were linked together by iron chains, forming a barrier against the enemy's horse, while they could be unhooked and dropped in an instant to allow the Janissaries to charge through the intervals.  It was this chain that the hero-king of Iran, Shah Ismail Saffevi, severed with his battle-axe at the battle of Chaldiran, an exploit which has been magnified by Persian tradition into his cleaving the panel of the gate of Constantinople.  The sturdy Topjis were around the cannon, “busy at their guns as ants.”  On the right wing in the first line were the feudal cavalry of Asia, on the left that of Europe; the Beglerbeg with his banner in the rear of the centre of his bands; each Bey, with his rallying standard, at the head of his squadron.  The mass of horsemen sways like a stormy.  sea, with a tossing of plumage and flags, and a rattling of harness and chain armour, and the neighing and trampling of steeds, blending in a hum above which are heard the monotonous notes of the kettledrum, and the hoarse shouts of the Begs and their Chaushes, as they ride along the ranks vainly trying to marshal the irregular ranks into a straight and unbroken line.

In rear of the Janissaries, occupying the centre of the whole first line, rode the Grand Vazír with his staff, and his standard-bearers carrying his horsetails and standards, and near him was stationed the tabalkbana, or band, whose drums, fifes, and cymbals were to give signal for the battle.

The Sultan himself rode in the centre of the second line, formed at a convenient distance for the support of the first, in a day when field-glasses and army signalling were unknown, and rifled-artillery unfeared.  The monarch was surrounded by the officers of his court, by his chaushes or aides-de-camp, and guarded by his troops of mutafarrika or lifeguards.  His companies of bustanjis or footguards were drawn up close by.  To the right and left were the paid or regular cavalry, the sipahis of the red standard on the right and the sipahis of the yellow standard upon the left, ready if needed to support the charge of the feudal cavalry with their steadier valour.

Behind the second line comes the baggage in a compact mass, the treasure chests under a strong escort of sipahis, and the rear.  of the whole is brought up by a Pasha with a strong rear-guard of troops of all arms.

Such was the scene on which a spectator might have gazed that autumn morning on the plain of Mohacz.  But not for long.  Everi since dawn the Turkish akinji, or light-horse, have been scouring the plain, annoying the Christian ranks with Parthian arrow-shots; and now the activity of the topjis and the loud booming of the great guns, tells that a more serious assualt upon their fortitude is begun.  But the intention of the Turkish cannoneers is better than their execution.  The “far-hissing globes of death” fly harmlessly above the Christian ranks; the topji Bashi misjudged the distance when he planted his guns.  The impatient Sultan will brook no longer delay, and the fierce Zaim and Timariot cavalry in the van are hardly to be kept from breaking their ranks in their eagerness for the fray.  Scimitars and battleaxes are rising and falling, and the sharp stirrups are chafing the flanks of the fretting stallions.  Now the royal signal has been given; the chaushes are speeding like lightning over the field, the ends of their turbans streaming to the breeze.  A wild wail goes up from the tabalkhana, and with its first sound the war-shout of “Allah” rings through the reverberating air, echoed and re-echoed from two hundred thousand throats until it mingles with the yell of onset.  The Janissaries are already running forward, and opening a dropping fire from their calivers as they run; and in an instant, “like bottled whirlwind now at last let loose,” the whole of the feudal cavalry of both wings bear down at racing speed upon the enemy.  The Begs and their standard-bearers and best mounted men are soon leading, the rest tailing away to the rear; so that each squadron presents the appearance of a wedge with its point to the front, before it reaches the hostile line.  Now in go the points of all the wedges almost simultaneously with a fearful crash, with whirling of swords and battleaxes, with the flash and smoke of firearms, with yells and imprecations and all the horrid sounds of combat, and in a minute the horsemen on both sides are mixed in irretrievable confusion, every man fighting as if the issue of the battle depended upon bis single arm.  But every Christian champion has two or three Musulmans upon him.  The Turkish horsemen on the left Lave turned the Magyar's right wing, and are attacking the camp.  Their numbers have forced an entrance, and the king's bodyguard has ridden to save the camp, leaving Lewis alone and unattended.  The whole army was so hotly engaged that few could extricate themselves from the carnage to fly.  The archbishop, seven bishops, and twenty-eight magnates of Hungary were slain on the spot; a small remnant fled, hotly pursued by the victors.  Many days after, an armoured corpse, fished from the muddy waters of a muddy stream which crossed the path of the fliers, was recognised by the jewels in the plume-case of its helmet as that of Lewis, king.  of Huugary, “This woeful battle," says Knolles, “not sufficiently to be lamented, as the ground of the miseries of that worthy kingdom, was fought on the 29th day of August, in the year 1526.”

After the battle, Suliman marched to Buda and took possession of it without opposition.  The whole country submitted to him.  He returned to Constantinople in triumph, carrying with him 200,000 Hungarian captives of diverse sex and age to replenish the harems of Istambol, the barracks of the Janissaries, and the row-benches of the Corsair galleys.  The Hungarian magnates who had survived the battle assembled in Pressburg and elected Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, brother of the Emperor Charles the fifth, and brother-in-law of the slain king Lewis, to the vacant throne.  But Zapolya, the Governor of Transylvania, usurped the monarchy, and he found many of the nobility to stand by him, for there was some prejudice against the occupation of the throne by a foreigner and a German, Zapolya sought and obtained the obtained the countenance of Suliman, acknowledging himself to be the vassal of the Sultan; and, though Ferdinand was willing to purchase the friendship of the Turks on the same degrading terms, his offers to them were scornfully rejected.  A war ensued between Ferdinand and Zapolya, in which the former was victorious, and drove his rival out of Hungary into Transylvania.  He called on Suliman for aid, and the Turkish hosts were mustered to drive the Germans out of Hungary.  Unusual floods and storms in the spring of 1528 caused the expedition to be deferred for another year, but in 1529 Suliman set out and marched straight on Buda.  The German soldiers in garrison there, believing themselves unable to hold out against so mighty a force, mutinied, and put their commander in arrest, and these surrendered the fortress and city to Suliman on condition of life and liberty being granted to them, But the Janissaries were wrath at losing the plunder of the town, would have been theirs after a successful assault, as well as the assault-money which was always paid to them for serving on the forlorn-hope.  They were therefore much disgusted with the Germans for surrendering without fighting what would have proved an easy conquest, and as the garrison defiled out of the castle between their ranks, they reviled them as cowards.  One of the German soldiers struck a Jannisary, who retaliated by cutting him down, and this was the signal for a general massacre, in which the whole garrison perished.

Suliman installed Zapolya as king in Buda, and then marched on to Vienna.  All the strong places on the road were reduced by the Turks or abandoned by their garrisons, and the Sultan soon sat down before the walls of the Austrian capital.  Accident delayed the arrival of bis battering cannon, and the Turks were forced to carry on operations against the city, principally by mining.  Meanwhile forty thousand akinji, or irregular horse, under the command of Mikhail Oghli, a descendant of the famous Greek renegade Mikhail Kusa (Michael of the scanty beard) swept the whole country round with fire and sword, cutting down the fruit-trees and burning the crops, and committing horrid cruelties on the inhabitants.  The peasantry, in revenge, burnt alive every Turkish straggler who was so unhappy as to fall into their hands.  Suliman remained two mouths before Vienna, aud repeatedly tried to storm the town, but the Turks were always repulsed with great slaughter.  They at length refused to go forward against the Greeks, though Suliman even distributed the assault-money to the Janissaries, which was never given but after a successful assault, in the hope of stimulating them to renewed exertions; but all was in vain, and at last he broke up his camp and returned into Hungary, abandoning all the places he had taken between Vienna and Buda which were soon re-occupied by the Germans.

Whilst the siege of Vienna was going on, one of Suliman's Begs, with a number of volunteers from the cavalry, set oft on an sion into the interior of Germany, and their retreat being cut off, they fought their way southwards into the Venetian territory, and at last reached the Turkish post at Essek on the Drava; all but three hundred had fallen “martyrs" in the expedition.  Their commander, Kasim Beg, received the title of Ghàzi for this exploit and afterwards became a Pasha and Begler Beg of Rumelia.

In 1532, Suliman again led a host of 300,000 men to the invasion of Germany.  The report of his designs this time thoroughly frightened the Germans and great preparations were made for his fitting reception.  The Emperor, Charles the Fifth, led to the succour of his brother Ferdinand a mighty power of a hundred thousand foot and thirty thousand horse with a huge train of artillery.  The rendezvous for the forces was Linz, but they afterwards took up a position to cover Vienna.  The terrible Spanish infantry were there, and the Swiss mercenary bands, German lanzknechts, and Italians, Flemings, and Walloons.  The order of battle in which the Turks were to be received was carefully rehearsed.  The whole of the pikemen in the army were formed into three battalia, which seem to have been immense hollow squares; the same formation adopted by the Russians against the Turks and Tartars two centuries later, and by Napoleon at the battle of the Pyramids.  These battalia were at some distance from each other, and the cavalry was to be drawn up in two divisions in the intervals between the battalia, to neutralise the great superiority of the Turks in cavalry, and prevent their overwhelming the Christian horse by the sheer weight of numbers, and out-flanking and surrounding them as they had done at Mohacz.  The Emperor himself commanded the right division of the horse, and the Archduke Ferdinand the left.  Twenty thousand arquebusiers were drawn up in line in three bodies, directly in front of the battalia of pikemen, Their lines were formed in five ranks, and it is remarkable that great exception was taken at the time by military men of experience to such a novelty as a line composed of only five ranks.  They fired by alternate ranks, the first having re-loaded by the time that the fifth had delivered its fire.  If they were oppressed by the enemy they were to retire into the square among the pikes.  The artillery was posted in front of the arquebusiers.  The Hungarian horse were to act independently as occasion offered, the swiftness of their horses and lightness of their armament enabling them to keep the field against the Turks.  “For, in light skirmishes," says Knolles, “the German horsemen are oftentimes put to the worst, who mounted upon heavy horses fitter for a set battle, can neither so readily charge the enemy, nor pursue him in his flight, as can the Turks with their nimble, ready, light horsemen, so well acquainted with that manner of dying fight, that they would with wheeling about easily frustrate the first charge of the heavy horsemen, and by-and-bye come upon them again with a fresh charge, and so often retire and come on again, until they had either wearied or overthrown them.  But the Hungarians, acquainted with that manner of fight as well as they, and also better armed,* did easily encounter the Turks and foil them, although they were in number more.”

* Knolles alludes to defensive armour.  Contemporary Christian writers often allude to he supposed disadvantage the Turks laboured under in not using armour; and speak of the Turk's horsemen being all “naked men" i.  e., unarmoured men.  At the siege of Vienna the Turks could not kill a Christian knight whom they had overthrown, not being able to get at him through his armour; nor did they know how to take off his armour.  Chain armour was little used by the Turks, and plate armour not at all.  

The eyes of the whole civilised world were bent upon the plains where the great struggle for world-empire between the two greatest monarchs of the age, the emperors of the East and West, was expected to take place.  But Suliman's heart must have failed him; he had seen the soldiers of the West fight at the siege of Vienna, and perhaps he shrank from the conflict.  At all events, instead of marching up the course of the Danube, he turned westwards across Hungary and invaded Styria.  The little fortress of Guns, lying in his path, detained his army twentyfive days, and withstood incessant assaults, and at length he raised the siege rather than waste more time under its walls.  He took Gratz in Styria, wasted the country, and returned home.  Mikhail Oyhli and the Akinji bands had, unluckily for themselves, entered Austria to repeat their former devastations.  They probably thought that the main army under Suliinan was following them.  As soon as it was known that the Sultan had entered Styria, the Christian cavalry was sent off from Vieuna and Linz to account for the akinji or "Sackmen" as the Germans called them.  They laid their plans so well that they enclosed the marauders and cut them up terribly.  They were scattered and hunted down by the troops and peasantry.  In the neighbourhood of Siebenstein many of them were forced over a precipice, which still bears the name of the “Turk's fall” Mikhail Oghli himself was slain, and his jewelled helmet, with it is vulture wings, may now be seen in a museum at Vienna.  Very few of the discomfited akinji escaped into Styria to join the main army.  

For some years an incessant frontier war was carried on, between the Germans and the partisans of Ferdinand on the one hand, and Zapolya, aided by the Turks, on the other.  Suliman, who wished to be free to carry on wars in Persia, concluded a truce with Ferdinand, who himself was nothing loth; but the German captains on the one side, and the Turkish Sarhad aghas, or lords of the marches, on the other, observed it only so far as it suited their own convenience.  Especially Muhammad Pasha of Belgrade carried on a regular system of incursions into Upper Hungary from the strong tête du point of Essek on the Drava.  Ferdinand, seeing the Sultan employed far away, thought that he had been misused in the matter of the truce, which tied his hands, when he had an opportunity through the absence of the Sultan of recovering his kingdom of Hungary.  He resolved to make a beginning by chastising the insolence of Muhammad Pasha, and forthwith assembled an army of 20,000, to the command of which he appointed John Kazzianer, one of the captains who had successfully defended Vienna.  There were some choice Italian companies of arquebusiers among the troops, commanded by an officer called Sodrone.  The rest of the foot were Germans.  The horse were Germans, Bohemians, and Hungarians.  The army was destined for the capture of Essek, and set out in the season of 1837.  This expedition thoroughly proved the superiority of the Turkish troops in campaigning and in manoeuvring.  The enterprise was a miserable failure.  From the commencement the commissariat was utterly deficient, and the activity of the Turkish horse made foraging difficult and dangerous.

The army, however, arrived before Essek, the Turks steadily refusing battle, The soldiers were starving; frequent councils of war were held.  The army left Essek to try and obtain some provisions.  The Turks followed it; no provisions were found, and it was decided to make the best of their way back to their own frontiers.  They were encombered with their artillery and with many sick and wounded.

The Turks harrassed them incessantly.  The line of march was wooded and mountainous, and the Turks, outmarching them, laid ambuscades on the road and seized the passes.  On one occasion the Hungarian horse charging, took some field pieces (falconets), but the Janissaries, charging in their turn, recovered the guns.  It is remarkable that, even in those days of matchlocks and wooden ramrods, cavalry were scarcely expected to cope with musketeers.

At length the remnant of the Christian army arrived within a day's march of the Castle of Walpo, which held for king Ferdinand, and where they expected to find supplies, and a refuge from the assaults of their untiring enemy But the forest of Walpo lay between them and safety, and it was rumoured that the Turks had felled trees across the road, and laid ambuscades in the wood.  A council of war was held, and it was determined to march off at night, secretly and in silence, for Muhammad Pasha and his troops were encamped close by within hearing of what went on in the Christian camp.

All the guns and carriages were to be left behind, and the sick and wounded to be carried en croupe behind the horsemen.  A single trumpet from the general's tent was to give the signal for the start.  No sooner had night fallen, however, than the soldiers, eager to be the first in the flight, began, without orders to steal away by whole troops, and many bad so left, when Kazzianer, finding out what was going on, and thinking the whole army was dispersing, started off himself, without even thinking of sounding the trumpet-call, so that a few of the cavalry and most of the infantry who were under better discipline than the rest stayed in their bivouac until morning expecting the sound of the trumpet, and when day dawned found themselves deserted by their general and the rest of the army.

Lodrone, who was the senior captain left, encouraged the men, and hamstrung his horse with his own hand to shew them that he was resolved to cast in his lot with them, and exhorted them all to hold together as the only means of reaching Walpo in safety.  So they set out, but soon found themselves followed and out-marched by Muhammad's forces, now much superior in number to themselves, the Turkish horse threatening to charge, while the Janissaries sorely galled them with arrows and shot, to which their baste to escape prevented them replying.  At last they came to a place where there was a hedge running parallel to the road.  The Janissaries and Turkish bowmen, running on before, had lined it, and from its shelter poured so heavy a fire on the infantry that they could no longer keep their ranks, and Lodrone was desperately wounded, and at the same time the Turkish horse from the other side charged and broke in upon them when a general slaughter took place, all who survived being made prisoners.  As the Turks feared Lodrone might recover from his wounds, they made sure of him by striking off his head, which they sent to Constantinople to be presented to Sulimaa.  Kazzianer was disgraced for his misconduct of this campaign, and was tried for his life, but he escaped from prison and took refuge with the Turks.  This was one of the most signal successes ever gained by the Turks over the Germans in Hungary, for they destroyed and dispersed the enemy's army, taking all their guns and equipage, with a very trifling loss to themselves.  Their success was no doubt partly due to the faults committed by the Christians; but their own commander, Muhammad Pasha, by his skill and prudence, contributed much to the successful issue of the campaign.

Ferdinand, having lost his army, and despairing of further success, was desirous of ending the war; and Zapolya was no less weary of it, for the unfortunate Hungarians were the only sufferers by all the raiding and harrying that went op, the Turks, who had no stake in the country, looking on the war as a pastime and source of profit.  Ferdinand and Zapolya therefore agreed to conclude a peace, the former consenting to recognise the latter as king of Hungary; but there was a secret article in the treaty by which the kingdom, after the death of Zapolya, who had no children, was to devolve on Ferdinand.  This article was to be kept carefully secret from Suliman; but Ferdinand, in the hope of injuring Zapolya's interest with him, treacherously divulged it to him.  Suliman, who looked on the kingdom of Hungary as his own to do what he liked with, was furious when he heard of it; but dividing Ferdinand's motives for letting him into the secret, he dissembled his wrath, and did not alter bis behaviour to Zapolya.  The latter meantime married a daughter of the king of Poland, and by her had a son, shortly after whose birth he died, leaving the kingdom by will to his son, and commending the infant to the protection of Suliman, in spite of bis compact with Ferdinand.

The latter in vain claimed the kingdom in right of his treaty with Zapolya.  Most of the Hungarians rallied round the queen, who proclaimed herself regent during the minority of her son, and called on Suliman for aid.  Ferdinand sent down a German army under the command of Count Roggendorff.  They took Pesth and laid siege to Buda.  Meanwhile he sent an ambassador to conciliate and offer tribute to the Sultan.  But the envoy happening in his address to use the title of Kaiser in speaking of Charles the Fifth, Suliman flew into a passion and sent him to prison; and despatched orders to the Pashas of Belgrade and Bosnia to march at once to the succour of the queen They set out with all the forces they could muster, conveying their guns and stores up the stream of the Danube in a flotilla; but the river freezing, their progress was stopped, and they had to encamp on the open plains of Hungary during the whole of a most rigorous winter, during which time the Turkish soldiers suffered the extremity both of cold and want with exemplary fortitude.  The Germans had gone into winter-quarters, and in the spring resumed the siege of Buda, but the Turkish Pashas soon arriving to raise the siege, the Germans in their lines were more besieged than besieging.

Experienced officers in vain besought Roggendorff to withdraw the army across the river to Pesthi he obstinately maintained his ground.  Both sides had flotillas in the river; and an incessant war of posts and skirmishes was carried on along the banks, the Turks gradually winning ground, and hemming in the Germans.  Suddenly news arrived that Suliman himself was coming up to Buda with his grand army; and Roggendorff now thought it high time to be gone.  On a dark night, the German army began to cross over to Pesth; but the Turks, who always had intelligence of the enemy's movements from Hungarian spies, immediately commenced a general attack by land and water.  They set fire to some stacks of forage by the river side, the flames of which made the whole scene as bright as day, and enabled the Turks to direct their guns upon the point of embarkation and the bridge of boats which the Germans had constructed.  The latter was soon adrift, and the Turkish flotilla coming up, the stream became almost choked with craft.  The Germans in Pesth, on the lookout to receive their own countrymen, seeing the white caps of the Turks in the boats approaching the shore, fled panic-struck; and a few boatloads of Janissaries took possession of the fortress.  Some of the Germans escaped in boats up the river to Gran.  Among them was their general Roggendorff who had been badly wounded and disabled in the beginning of the rout; many were killed and more drowned, and a thousand were made prisoners.  All the camp and stores of the Germans, and nearly 200 pieces of cannon were the Turks' trophies of victory.

Soon after this success Suliman arrived with his grand army and found the work already accomplished.  He bestowed rewards and commendations on the victors, and made Muhammad Pasha of Belgrade, and Beglerbeg of Rumelia.  He then held a grand parade of his whole force, when the German prisoners taken in the late battle were brought out bound with ropes, and murdered in cold blood by the Turkish recruits.  Knolles relates an instance of the refinement of Turkish cruelty on this occasion.

“Among the prisoners was one soldier of Bavaria, of an exceeding high stature.  Him, the Sultan, in despite of the German nation, delivered to a little dwarf (whom his sons made great account of) to be slain, whose head was scarce so high as the knees of the tall captive, with that cruel spite to aggravate the indignity of his death.  Whereas that goodly tall man, mangled about the legs a long time by that apish dwarf with his little scimitar, as if it had been in disport, fell down, and was with many feeble blows hardly at last slain by that wretch, still heartened on by others, to satisfy the eyes of the princes beholding it for their sport.”

Suliman now put in force the scheme he had long meditated.  His camp lay outside the walls, but the Turkish soldiery used freely to come and go in the city.  One day so many Janissaries were passing and repassing at one of the gates that they made quite à crowd, and lo! suddenly they fell in as if at guard mounting before the guard-house, while sentinels quietly posted themselves on the different beats.  At the same time their comrades, who had been lounging in the streets or chaffering at the shops, drew up in military array in the market-place and a large body of troops marched through the occupied gate into he town.  Buda was seized by the Turks thus without a blow: hardly was even a word spoken.

The persons of the queen-regent and the young king having been secured, Sultan Suliman announced the annexation of Hungary to the Turkish empire, and its division into Pasbaliks; while the dethroned son of Zapolya was created tributary prince of Transylvania, to which country be and his mother were sent under escort of a Turkish army.  Turkish garrisons were stationed in all the fortresses of Hungary, and the land parcelled out in fiefs for the support of the Turkish cavalry.  Suliman then returned to Constantinople.

No sooner had he gone than Ferdinand sent another army to attempt the conquest of Hungary; but he was again unfortunate in the choice of his general, the Marquis of Brandenburg.  The famous Maurice of Saxony served as a volunteer with this expedition: it miscaried like the preceeding ones.  After some skirmishing, with varied success, the Germans laid siege to Pesth, which was defended by a weak' Turkish garrison, and soon by battery made “a saultable breach;” but the Turks, with great diligence, cut away the rampart inside from the crest of the breach, so that when the stormers topped it, they could not leap down into the place but at the risk of their lives, and stood there, exposed to the galling fire of the arquebusiers and archers of the Turks, who knelt behind breastworks of sandbags on the terreplein, and on the ramparts on each side.  The assault failed, and the news of the Sultan's coming to the relief of the place having reached the besiegers, they decamped with precipitation.  The Turks were at once on their heels, and a catastrophe, like these which overtook Kazzianer and Roggendorff, was very nearly ensuing, and was only averted by the courage and steadiness of three companies of chosen Italian soldiers who had been lent by the Pope to Ferdinand.  It is said that some of the Turks who knew Italian, called out in that language during the fight, telling the Italians, not to sacrifice their gallant lives for the sake of the lazy and cowardly Germans.  It is remarkable that, at this time, the Spaniards, Italians and Walloons, as well as the Swiss, were looked on as the best soldiers in Europe, while the military character of the Germans stood very low.

Suliman had returned to Hungary immediately ou Learing of the danger of Pesth, and he now determined to teach the Germans a lesson.  He marched from Buda to Gran which lay on the road to Vienna, a strong castle and city, called by the Turks Usturghun (from the Latin name Strigonium).

The Turks pushed on the siege briskly, as usual, and one of their gunners knocking the brazen cross off the Cathedral roof by a well-aimed shot, its fall was looked on by both besiegers and besieged as an omen of the fall of the place.  The garrison soon agreed to capitulate on condition of their lives being spared, and the Janissaries were admitted at the gates.  An unfortunate accident had nearly brought on the usual massacre, for, as the Christian soldiers were commanded to throw down their arms and accoutrements before the Janissaries, who were drawn up to take over charge, one of the soldiers carelessly threw down his arquebus with the match burning, which set fire to the powder in a powder-flask, whereby the heap of weapons was blown all over the place and among the ranks of the Janissaries, who hardly knowing what had happened, began to attack and kill the Christians, but their officers seeing it was an accident, managed to pacify them and saved the lives of most of the garrison.

Suliman next marched to Stublweissenburg, another fortified city, which he also took after a desperate siege in which a great slaughter was made of the garrison; for the city was surrounded by marshes and only approached by causeways leading through them, the heads of the causeways being strongly fortified.  The Turks confined their attention to one of these fortifications, and though it was almost surrounded by swamps, in a few days their multitudes of men filled the swamp by bringing fascines from the neighbouring woods, and they then gave the assault so suddenly that the Christians had not time to open the great gates at the causeway head which communicated with the city, and the throng of fugitives got jammed in the wicket.  There was no escape; numbers leaped into the marsh and there served as targets for the Turkish archers and arquebusiers; the rest were put to the sword.  This event so terrified the garrison of the city that they capitulated on condition that the German and Italian soldiers should be allowed to march out with the honours

These terms were granted, and, for a wonder, observed by the Turks, who took nothing from them but the horse-pistols wbich the German reiters carried at their saddle-bows.  These had the newly-invented wheel-locks, which much excited the astonishment and admiration of the Turks who had never seen any firearms except matchlocks.

Suliman left strong garrisons in Gran and Stuhlweissenburg (the latter was called by the Turks Istuli), to prevent the Germans again penetrating into the heart of Hungary, and returned home.  His lieutenants had meantime taken Funfkischen and other cities in Southern Hungary, and had extended the Turkish frontiers in those quarters to the westward.  On the Sultan's departure, the Pasha of Buda continued the war, but without gaining any great success, and in 1562 Ferdinand, weary of the endless and profitless strife, obtained a truce for eight years on the condition of his paying tribute to Suliman for the part of Hungary which remained in his possession.  In 1664 Ferdinand died, and was succeeded in the empire and in the archduchy of Austria by his son Maximilian, whose captains on the frontiers first broke the truce, and the Turkish Pashas not being slow in making reprisals, the border-war began with renewed vigour.  The Pasha of Buda was twice repulsed with loss from the walls of Sigeth, and Maximilian, bringing a considerable force into the field, pressed the Turks hard, driving them for refuge into their fortified towns.  Transylvania was invaded by a German army from the north, and Suliman sent an army of Krim Tartars to aid the prince of Transylvania, the first time these wild horsemen had taken part in the wars of Hungary.  Their depredations forced the prince to turn bis arms against them, and while he was driving these ruinous allies out of his country, the Germans reduced many of his castles and towns.  Suliman with a great army now entered Hungary for the sixth time, and ordering the Pasha of Buda with the forces of Hungary to observe Maximilian's army on the Danube, he himself laid siege to Sigeth, intending to open up the way to enter Austria and turn the flank of the Emperor's position.  The story of the heroic defence of Sigeth by Count Zriny, the Leonidas of Hungary, is well known.  After holding out with the most heroic constancy and fortitude for seventeen days, against repeated assaults, the garrison, reduced from 2,500 to 600 men, had been driven into the upper castle, the buildings of which were set on fire by the enemy.  Zriny seeing that all was lost, put himself at their head and made a desperate sally in which he and nearly all his men were slain fighting like heroes.  Some of the Janissaries saved a few of them from the fury of their comrades by putting their own caps upon their heads, a deed of chivalry worthy to be recorded; unhappily there are few such to be found in the records of the Turkish army.  Christian writers state that the incredible number of 35,000 Turkish soldiers perished at the siege of Sigeth, but it is evident that, in all the wars with the Turks, the estimates of the strength of his armies and the numbers of his slain, "greatly exceed the reality." Unfortunately the statistics of the Turks themselves are not more trustworthy.

The great Sultan himself expired during the siege of Sigeth.

The concealment of his death from the army, ensured by the truly Turkish expedient of the murder of the physician who attended him, averted the disgrace which would have attached to the Ottoman arms by the abandonment of the siege, and sealed the fate of Zriny and his companions.  The Turks repaired Sigeth and put a garrison into it, and the grand army left Hungary to meet the new emperor, Salém II.

The war continued, after a desultory fashion, for two years more.  In 1568 Maximilian and Salím agreed to a truce for eight years on the basis of uti possidetis, Maximilian to pay the tribute for his half of Hungary, and moreover to pay up all arrears.

After the conclusion of this truce there was a long interval of peace between the German and Ottoman empires, for the truce was renewed in 1575 and again in 1583.  Yet the petty war of surprises and raids, in which the Turks took such delight, was kept up fitfully in the debateable ground which lay along the ill-defined frontiers of both empires.  The articles of the truce always stipulate that persons who may have paid taxes to the tax-collectors of one empire, should not be required to pay them to those of the other.  The state of affairs along the frontier indeed much resembled that obtaining on the borders of England and Scotland during the reigns of the Plantagenet kings.  The Turkish province of Hungary extended along both banks of the Danube to a point between Gran and Raab; comprising about one-third of the kingdom.  It was bounded on the east by the principality of Transylvania which was governed by a native prince elected by the assembly of nobles, subject to the confirmation of the election by the Sultan.  But, whenever war broke out, the Emperor of Germany used also to lay claim to the suzerainty of Transylvania, and between the Germans and the Turks, and the conflicting claims of rival pretenders to the dignity of Prince, the country had a troubled time of it.  It was continually ravaged by the Turkish and Tartar armies in the guise sometimes of friends, sometimes of foes.  The Hungarian nation itself was cruelly circumstanced, its high spirited nobles hated both the Turkish and Austrian despotisms and could only find a refuge from one in the other.  A large party of the Magyars were Protestants, who were bitterly persecuted by the Austrian Jesuits, while under the rule of the Turks they enjoyed a share of the contemptuous toleration afforded by the Ottomans to all Christian sects.

The peace

In race, and in their habits of life, there was a strong affinity between the Magyars, and their Turkish conquerors.  The Osmanlis classed the Majar (Magyar) with the Saklav (Sclavonians) among oriental nations, and did not include them among the hateful Farang.  The Hungarian resembled the Turk in his horsemanship, his mode of fighting, his arms and even his dress.  The kalpah and the long straight upright plume, the curved sabre and the dalimar or pelisse were common to both nations.  In the early days of the Turkish occupation, we find the Magyar magnates and the Osmanli Pashas frequently feasting together, but the conversion of their lands into Turkish fiefs, and their churches into Musalman musjids, alienated both the nobles and the priests from the usurpers, and the faith of the Cross was sufficient to turn the scale with the masses, wavering in their allegiance between the German Catholic, and the Turkish Infidel.  But for another century-and-a-half their country was destined to be the scene of incessant wars and continual bloodshed as the debateable land between the frontiers of Christendom and Islam.

In 1593 the smouldering flames of war broke out again.  The Basha of Buda made a great foray into the Christian lands, but, as he was returning with many captives and great spoil, be fell into an ambuscade and lost nearly all his men.  As he had been unsuccessful he was strangled by the Sultan's command for having broken the peace without waiting for orders.  once broken, however, was not easy to mend or to keep, and the forces on both sides were mustered for the fray.  Hosan Pasha of Bosnia, besieging Sissek on the Unna, was defeated and drowned, but Sultan Murad III sent Sinan Pasha with a great army who avenged his fall by the capture of Sissek.

The Basha of Buda was, however, beaten in a battle fought near Stublweissenburg, which so intimidated the Janissaries that they refused to leave their garrisons to assemble for the relief of Filek; and that strong fortress was taken by the Germans, who overran a large part of the Turks' country before the close of the year.  During the winter the Emperor Rudolph made great preparations for war, and next spring (1594) his brothers, the Archdukes Matthias and Maximilian, took the field at the head of large and well appointed armies, wherein many gallant knights from all parts of Christendom served as volunteers.  Maximilian drove the Turks out of Croatia; Matthias besieged Gran and had well-nigh taken it, but the Turkish garrison defended it with heroic bravery.  The Hungarian peasantry rose in insurrection and cut off the Turks' supplies.  The Prince of Transylvania renounced bis allegiance to the Sultan and declared for the Emperor.

But Sinan Pasha again entered Hungary with a mighty host and forced Matthias to raise the siege of Gran.  He himself then laid siege to Raab, and Matthias encamped in the neighbourhood to interrupt his operations, but Sinan surprised his camp and the Germans were routed with the loss of all their guns and baggage.  Raab surrendered, under strong suspicions of treachery on the part of the Governor, Count Hardegg.  He was afterwards tried for having delivered up a tenable fortress, provisioned for one year,

women and was condemned and executed.  Fifty thousand Krim Tartars came through Valachia and Transylvania to join Siuan's army in Hungary, and they pushed their raids to within a few miles of Vienna.  They swam the Danube and other broad rivers on horseback, so that the Christians were never safe from their surprises.

The next year, 1595, the Emperor had assembled a splendid army under the Archduke Matthias, who was assisted by Count Mavsfeld, one of the best generals of the time.  Many fortresses were taken from the Turks, and Gran capitulated after a long and obstinate defence.  Count Mansfeld died during the siege.  The Germans pushed their incursions up to the walls of Buda, and crossing the Danube took the town of Hatvan by assault, where they committed cruelties on the Turks that shocked the public opinion even of those times.  Ripping up with child and spitting infants on pikes were among the least of the cruelties practised by the Walloons at Hatvan, cruelties which the same troops not long afterwards repeated on the Protestants of Magdeburg Their captains endeavoured to excuse these excesses by alleging that they were only retaliations for similar deeds inflicted on Christians by the Turks.  It is sad to say that the indiscriminate murder of Turkish women and children formed the rule and not the exception at the capture of a town by assault in these savage wars.  Sinan Pasha had gone into Translyvania to suppress the revolt there, but he was more than once grievously beaten by Sigismund Bathory, the gallant prince of that country.  The Sclavonians in the South of Hungary rose in revolt, and the Turks' affairs seemed on every hand to be going to wrack and ruin.

The clamours of his subjects at length stirred the indolent Muhammad III to some exertion, and he took the field, sorely against his will, and entered Huugary with an army of 200,000 men.  After mustering his forces at Buda he marched against the Christians in Eastern Hungary and besieged and took Erlan.  The Archduke Maximilian, who had succeeded his brother Matthias in the command, hastened to its relief and met the Turks' army returning after its capture.  The Christian army numbered thirty-two thousand horse and twenty-eight thousand foot: the Turks were over one hundred thousand.  The armies occupied opposite banks of the stream of Cerestes, which runs through a marshy plain.  The advanced guard of the Turks, who had occupied the banks of the rivulet, were driven back upon the main body.  Next day the Turks commenced a general attack, but they were repulsed, and the Christians attacked in their turn,

coming on through the marshes,” says the Turkish historian Naima, like an immense herd of swine."  They carried all before them, and had penetrated to the Sultan's tents, when the whole army seems to have dispersed to plunder the Turks' camp, and a sudden counter-attack of the Turks causing a panic among them, they shamefully took to fight, abandoning all they had taken and their own guns and camp to boot.  Some say that the panic was caused by the Sultan's household troops, who guarded his pavilion, making a desperate charge upon the Christian spoilers; others that the cry that the treasure chest was in danger rallied the flying Turks; others that the famous Italian renegade, Jaghalazada, (Cicala's son) charged the disordered victors with a body of horsemen who had been left in reserve.  At all events the panic of the Christians was complete and their rout irretrievable; many of their best captains were slain trying to rally their men.  The Turks were nearly as much frightened; Muhammad himself and most of his army had fled, and it was some time before their scattered troops could be re-assembled.  Jaghalazada, however, kept possession of the field and of the spoils of victory.

After the battle Muhammad returned to Constantinople to boast of his victory, and the war continued with varying success in Hungary.  Hardly a day passed without some border foray or fierce skirmish taking place, but few important events happened.  Neither side possessed a large army in the field, and the war was mostly one of sieges.

In 1598 Raab was recovered for the emperor.  Some Italian soldiers who had been taken prisoners by the Turks in Raab escaped, and flying to Comorn, told the Governor of that place of the weakness of the Turks' garrison in Raab and of the negligent watch which they kept.  He laid a plan for the surprise of the town, and on a dark night blew open one of the gates with a petard and forced his way in.  The Turks made a desperate resistance, their women defending the houses and hurling missiles on the assailants from the roofs and windows; but the place was won and the beads of two Turkish Pashas who had been slain in the defence were sent to the Emperor Rudolph at Prague.  After this the Archduke Maximilian, now again at the head of a large army, reduced both Gran and Stuhlweissenburg after long sieges and laid siege to Buda, where the Turks forsook the town and retired into the citadel; but the approach of winter compelled the Archduke's army to go into winter-quarters.  Next year they resumed their attempt on Buda and took Pesth by surprise; while the Turkish army under Hasan Pasha besieged Stuhlweissenburg.  The city was hard pressed, and the soldiers of the garrison became mutinous and compelled the Governor, Count Isolani, to beat a parley, and the terms had been arranged for the garrison's marching out with the honours of war, when the soldiers at the breaches, fearing to be behindhand in the preparations for departure, left their posts without orders.  The Turks and Tartars seeing the walls undefended, also without orders, scaled then, and entering the place commenced a general massacre of the garrison and inhabitants, hardly sparing one of them, and then sacked the town.  After this, Hasan Pasha laid siege to Pesth, while the Imperialists were besieging Buda on the other side of the river; but the approach of winter caused both sieges to be raised, and the armies went into winter-quarters within their own frontiers, there being no supplies in the desolated country.  The garrisons of Buda and Pesth began cannonading each other across the river, but by mutual agreement soon desisted and agreed to spend the winter in peace; but when the river was frozen over they began to cross on the ice, to surprise each other's posts and cut off each other's supplies, and hostilities were resumed.  Next year Hasan Pasha again entering Hungary with a mighty army, the Governor of Pesth, out of fear, shamefully abandoned the town, blowing up the fortifications, and in his flight met reinforcements coming to strengthen him, but it was too late to return.  He was thrown into prison by the Emperor for bis cowardice.  Hasan Pasha afterwards besieged Gran, the recovery of which was the most cherished project of the Turks, but after several assaults bad been repulsed, the Janissaries flatly refused to try the fortune of war any more, and, insisting that they had done all that they could be expected to do, compelled the Pasha to raise the siege.  

The war now assumed a new complexion owing to the general defection of the Transylvanians and Hungarians from the cause of the Emperor, which was brought about by the persecution of the Protestants and the prohibition of their rites; measures introduced by the Emperor at the instigation of the Jesuits, and which soon afterwards brought about the Thirty Years' War in Germany.  The Transylvanians who had placed themselves under the protection of the Emperor, revolted from him, and chose as their chief one Stephen Botchkai, who was joined by the malcontent Hungarians, and made himself master of Northern Hungary.  He allied himself with the Turks and consented to pay tribute to the Sultan, who in return recognised him as Prince of Transylvania.  The Germans, having now lost the aid of the Hungarians, could hardly maintain themselves in the West of the kingdom.  The Krim Tartars came in hordes every year and plundered the country to the confines of Germany.  Many towns and castles were also delivered over by the treachery of the mercenary garrisons to the Turks.  Kanisa was yielded by its commandant, he being bribed thereto.  The French and Walloon soldiers in Pappa mutinied for their arrears of pay, and offered to deliver up the town to the Turks at Stuhlweissenburg on payment of a certain sum, of which they received part, and had agreed to take service under the Sultan, but were prevented by the German army laying regular siege to Pappa.  The mutineers defended themselves stoutly, but they being at last overcome, many were slain, and the rest made prisoners, and put to death with most horrid tortures, all the captains and soldiers of the victorious army vying with each other in inventing exquisite torments for men who could betray a Christian town to the Turks and who were therefore looked on as enemies of God.  Many barbarous executions of soldiers and captains for treachery or cowardice took place at this time among the Imperialists.  But the most infamous instance of the kind happened at the siege of Gran, when it was renewed by the Turks' grand army, under Sardar Pasha.  

The Emperor was so weakened by the revolt of the Hungarians and by the religious troubles in Germany, and withal so impoverished by the long war, that he had not wherewitbal to pay his soldiers, or to entertain new ones, and could not keep a respectable army in the field; so that Sardar Pasha had no interruption to fear when he sat down before Gran with an army of Turks, Tartars, and Hungarian rebels.  After some desperate fighting the Turks won the lower town and sprung mines under the walls of the upper town, making a large breach, when the Christian soldiers began clamouring for a surrender, in spite of the exhortations and example of their officers.  They at length proceeded to open mutiny, arrested the Governor, Count Dampier, and themselves entered into treaty with the Pasha, who was overjoyed at the prospect of so easily winning the city.  The terms were soon agreed upon, and the cowardly mutineers, leaving the guns and military stores to the Turks, marched out with their own arms and baggage, and with the honors of war, ensigns frilled up and fire in their matches.” On their arrival at the Christian head-quarters at Komorn, they were disarmed and the ringleaders arrested and tried.  They were sentenced to have their tongues torn out, their right hands cut off and nailed to the gallows, and to be afterwards hanged or beheaded; but the sentences were afterwards commuted to simple beheading.

The fall of Gran removed the chief obstacle to the conclusion of peace, for the Turks had always refused to make terms while it remained in the bands of the Christians; the Ottoman pride not consenting that a place which had ever been Darul Islam should again remain in the hands of the Giaurs.  But the internal dissensions of their empire made them sincerely desirous of peace, and the Emperor was not less eager for it.  By the peace or truce of Sitvatorok, concluded in 1606, between the Emperor Rudolph and Sultan Ahmad I, the Turks resigned their claim to tribute for Hungary, and agreed to grant the title of Emperor to the sovereign of Germany.  The possessions on both sides were to remain in statu quo, and the truce was to last for twenty years.  The relative position of the two combatants, as regarded territory, was almost the same as when the war commenced: it had been waged for fifteen years with hardly any result.  Transylvania was to remain tributary to the Sultan.  The Krim Tartars and the Hungarian rebels were to be included in the peace.

This peace or truce between the two empires lasted almost fifty years.  It was renewed by the Sultan Murad 1 V and the Emperor Ferdinand II.  The Germans were busy with their Thirty Years' War, and the Turks with domestic troubles.  Rebellious Pashas and riotous soldiers defied or dethroned successive Sultans.  The degenerate representatives of the House of Othman passed from a prison to a throne only to become the slaves of sensuality and the servants of their own mutinous soldiery.

Meantime the "little war” went on as usual on the Hungarian border marches, not regarded of any body so long as- no great power and no field-pieces were employed on either side.  The Turks were the most active in this guerilla war.  The Janis saries of Buda stoned the Pasha in the streets because he wished to observe the terms of the peace faithfully.  When Bethlem Gabor, the Turks' tributary prince of Transylvania, made war on the Emperor in the Protestant cause, and marched to the gates of Kenwa, many Turks served as volunteers with his army.  The Emperor had his hands too full to resent these injuries, and the disorders among the Turks prevented them from taking advantage of his weakness.  These disorders were rife during the long minority of Sultan Muhammad IV, but they were at last appeased by the conduct and vigour of the Grand Vazír Muhammad Kupríli.  The cessation of domestic broils was at once the signal for foreign war to the restless Osmanlis.  George Rakockzy, the prince of Transylvania, was putting forward pretensions which were displeasing to Kuprili; in the unsettled state of affairs in Hungary a pretext for hostilities was never wanting.  A Turkish army invaded Transylvania and defeated Rakockzy.  This was the signal for a general war.  Rakockzy appealed for aid to the Emperor.  The Hungarians revolted against the Turks.  The Pasha of Buda was defeated by the rebels.  For this he was disgraced, and Seidi Ahmad Pasha was appointed in his room.  "The new Governor invaded Transylvania and gave battle," says the Turkish historian, Aoliya Afandi, “ to the detested Rakockzy's army." After narrating the defeat of the Christians, he goes on to say:  “The white bodies of the infidels were strewed upon the white snow, and the carriages, cannon and tents were sent to Constantinople, where, however, no thanks were voted to Seidi Pasha for the victory, nor was even a well-done said on the occasion, although it was a victory not less brilliant than that of Erla by Muhammad III; for Seiủi Pasha had no more than eleven thousand men opposed to a hundred and sixty thousand infidels, now inhabitants of hell.” Soon afterwards the victorious Seidi Pasha brought " the vile Rakockzy” to battle again at Koljovar.  The Transylvanian prince was again defeated and was this time mortally wounded.  “ He expired," says the Musalman chronicler, calling out Receive me, O Jesus.' Jesus, however, would not receive him, but he was seized by the angel Azraíl.  Seidi Pasha carried an immense booty with several thousand heads to Constantinople."

The Transylvanian estate chose a nobleman of the name of Kemeny to succeed Rakockzy, but the Turks set up a rival candidate in the person of Michael Assaffy.  The Grand Vazir Kupríli Muhammad Pasha, took the field in person against Kemeny, and he had already entered Transylvania when he received an imperial khatt-i-sharif informing him of the revolt of Kara Husain Pasha in Anatolia, and summoning him to quell it.

« Well done Kara Husain,” exclaimed Kupríli, "to come at this moment to the aid of the Hungarian infidel; may thy end be fortunate !" He, however, left an army of seventy sanjaks (standards) of cavalry and twenty regiments of Janissaries and Topjis under the command of Seidi Pasha, in Transylvania.  They defeated and slew Kemeny, proclaimed “the infidel Assaffy Michael” king, and collected the arrears of tribute which had been due for three years.  They also carried off with them one hundred thousand captives as slaves.  The new Grand Vazír, Fazil Ahmad Pasha Kupríli Oghli, who succeeded to the seals on his father's death, assembled a great army for the war against Austria, for the German Emperor had espoused the quarrel of the Transylvanians and German forces were besieging the Turkish frontier fortresses: they were forced to abandon their enterprise and concentrate at the approach of the Vazir's army.  Ahmad Kuprílí took Varadin, and then, marching up the Danube, he took the city and fortress of Neuhausel He then marched against the Imperial army which was drawn up on the banks of the Raab, near the monastery of St.  Gothard, which gave its name to the battle which followed.  The Imperialists were commanded by Count Raymond of Montecuculi, the best tactician of his time, while the Grand Vazír had no real military education.  Noble volunteers served in the German ranks, who had thronged to Hungary from all parts of Christendom at the news of a Turkish war, and especially there was a body of 6,000 French horsemen under the Duc de Feuillade.  The Turks called bim Fuladi, the man of steel, from the cuirasses which he and his men wore.  The battle was obstinate and bloody.  The Turks, flushed with success, and believing in the fortune of the Vazír, fought as men assured of victory, but their army was completely out-generalled and out-manoeuvred, and many thousands of Moslems, their retreat being cut off, were drowned in the Raab.  Their total loss was supposed to be 17,000 men.  The French volunteers greatly distinguished themselves, riding down and scattering the Janissaries, the flower of the Turkish army.  This battle opened the eyes of Christian Europe to the weakness of the Turkish military power.  The Vazír fled to Stuhlweissenburg, whence he sent proposals of peace.

The Emperor himself was very desirous of peace, and, to obtain it he consented that the Turks should retain their latest conquests of Varadin and Neuhausel.  These were the last conquests made by the Turks in Hungary.  The Turkish protegé was also recognised as Prince of Transylvania.  This peace, which was signed at Basvar, was to last twenty years.

Turkish Hungary had now attained its utmost limits.  It was divided into five provinces: Buda in the centre, Nehausel, the new conquest, in the north-west, Varadin, also a new conquest, in the north-east, Kanisa in the south-west, Temeswar in the south-east.  Buda had 8 sanjaks, the seats of Sanjak Begs, or lords of the feudal cavalry, Neubausel bad 5, Varadin had 4, Kanisa had 4, Temeswar had 7.  These Sanjak Begs had the title of Pasha in these later times and carried one horse-tail.  The Pashas, who were governors of each of the five provinces, had two tails, except the Pasha of Buda, who, as Viceroy of the whole country of Hungary, had the style of Vazír and three horse-tails.  He had a divan also composed of the Government officials at Buda and the chief officers of the Janissaries, an humble imitation of his great master's divan at.  Constantinople.  As it behoved in a warlike and conquering nation like the Turks, the frontier province, thrust forward like a wedge into the heart of Christendom, enjoyed the highest rank amongst its fellows.  The Pash of Buda ranked above all the Pashas of the empire in Europe, and only next to the Pasbas of Baghdad and Cairo in Asia and Africa, and he wore a plume like the Sultans, but upon the left side of his turban.

The Turkish population in Hungary was not large.  The Turks never seem to have thoroughly colonised the country as they colonised the Grecian peninsula.  Their immigration appears to have reached its extreme limits in the reign of Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, who made the first settlements of Turks in Hungary.  The chief strength of the Ottomans in the province consisted of the regiments of Janissaries who formed the permanent garrisons of the large fortresses, and who had each a depôt at Constantinople.  The men were mostly married and they formed a large proportion of the Turkish inhabitants of the towns.  The “ Kirk Bin Kul,” or forty thousand slaves as they were generally styled, were at this time the real masters of the Ottoman empire.  Though forty thousand was the number supposed to be actually under arms with the kettles, double the number were borne on the rolls.  These men who enjoyed the privileges and prestige of Janissaries without serving as soldiers, were called yangichari yamaki, or assistant Janissaries, and were held liable to be called out to fill vacancies in the ranks of those on active service.  Their real use was to swell the political faction which the Janissaries dominated, and to enable it to dictate to the rest of the nation.  Some of the most famous regiments of Janissaries were quartered in Hungary.  The Turnajis (Guards of the Cranes) were quartered at Belgrade.  The origin of their name we do not know, but probably they were originally men who assisted the Sultan in bis field-sports, for we find other favourite regiments bearing the names of Samsunjis (guards of the mastiffs) and Zagbarjis (guards of the pointers).  Dogs of these kinds were led before the Sultan by Janissaries of these regiments at Constantinople in his triumphal processions.

The Janissaries were still armed with the matchlock, arquebus and scimitar, besides a yataghan for cutting off the heads of their fallen enemies.  It was remarked, at the battle of St. Gothard, that their armament made it physically impossible for them to sustain the charge of determined cavalry.  Still the Turks could not be induced to adopt the pike, nor, later on, the bayonet, as a weapon for infantry.  'Military science among the Turks had made absolutely no progress since the Sultans bad themselves ceased to take an interest in their army.  Suliman the Magnificent was the last of their monarchs who had made war his pastime.  In his time things were different.  Knolles writes at the commencement of the seventeenth century: "The Turks can very well learn of us that which is for them profitable, and make use thereof to their own advantage." By the end of the same century their pride and foolishness had made them unable to borrow inventions which were absolutely necessary to military efficiency.  The discipline of their Šipahis and Janissaries had become so relaxed that the officers feared the men more than their men feared them, and they always had to be bribed or cajoled into doing their duty.

The feudal cavalry of the Turks had also degenerated in point of training; but the men, having a stake in the country, had an interest in maintaining good order, and were made use of to curb the license of the Janissaries.  The decay of the Turkish military system was as yet hardly suspected by the nations of Christendom, and the vigorous administration of the two Kuprilis and the general success of their foreign wars, obtained by their own energy, backed by the resources in men and money at their command, had infused afresh a warlike spirit into the Turks.  Their old lust of conquest was aroused, and the new Grand Vazír, who had succeeded to the seals on the death of Ahmad Kupríli, was not the man to let it slumber.  He was vain, rash, and ambitious; and he found the vast resources of the empire, well husbanded by the the Kuprilis, at his own absolute command, for the indolent Sultan interfered as little as possible in public affairs.  Events soon offered Kara Mustafa (Black Mustafa) the opportunity for distinction that he eagerly sought.  

Austrian encroachments on civil and religious liberty provoked a rebellion against the Emperor's authority in Hungary.  It was headed by Emeric Tekeli, a young nobleman whose father had perished on an Austrian scaffold.  Despairing of ultimate success he craved aid from the Sultan.  The latter, on the advice of Kara Mustafa, afforded it, and promised to him the Emperor's half of Hungary, to hold as a tributary vassal of the Porte, like the Prince of Transylvania.  The armistice of Basvar had not yet expired, and there were wise counsellors who urged the Sultan not to put himself in the wrong by breaking the truce, but to wait a couple of years more till its expiration.  But Black Mustafa was too impatient for glory and spoil.  The Hungarian rebellion and the known unprepared state of Austria offered too favourable a conjunction of affairs, to be passed over: an ambassador sent by the Emperor Leopold to offer any reasonable concessions to avert the storm was insulted and imprisoned.  The Vazír of Buda was instructed to assist Tekeli, and the order went forth for a general muster of the forces of the empire at Adrianople.  Turks, Tartars, Moors, Arabs, and Mamelukes swelled the numbers at the rendezvous.  The Sultan himself was present, and the horsetails were pitched to the north-west of the Imperial pavilion to indicate the direction of the road to Hungary.  The total number of the fighting men that were, as we should say in modern parlance, 'mobilised' for the war, reached 275,000.  Probably not more than half of these were ever assembled at one time under the Vazír's immediate orders.  Sultan Muhammed IV confided the sacred standard of the prophet to Kara Mustafa and saw him set out with his host to the con quest of Germany.  This the Turks gave out as their avowed object, and pretended prophecies in Arabic were circulated foretelling the extension of the sway of Islam over the kingdoms of the West.  After the defeat at Vienna it was too late to be remembered that the unusual storms which had wrecked the camp and blown down the banners of the army were the sure signs of the wrath of the Almighty on the perfidious truce-breakers, and the presage of the fulfilment of the curse which Sultan Suliman had imprecated on any of his descendants who should undertake the enterprise in which he had himself failed.

The Emperor Leopold had only thirty thousand regular soldiers wherewith to meet this formidable invasion.  He sent pressing entreaties for assistance to all the Princes of the empire and induced John Sobieski, king of Poland, to join him in a defensive alliance.  Poland was under treaty-obligations to the Turks; but the Pope was happy to grant a dispensation from the duty of keeping faith with infidels.  The recovery of Kaminiek and the country round about it, which had been wrested from the Poles by Ahmad Kupríli, was a favourite object of Sobieski's, and be prepared to lead an army of 40,000 men to the assistance of the Germans.  The Austrian army was under the command of Charles Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, who had learned the art of war under Montecuculi and had fought the Turks at St Gothard: he was a brave soldier and a clever general.  He gained some successes over the rebels and the Turks in Hungary and laid siege to Neuhausel, but at the news of the approach of the Vazir's grand army he raised the siege and retired within the Austrian frontiers.  Kara Mustafa halted at Essek where he was joined by Tekeli.  He then marched on to Raab and laid siege to it.  Salím Girai, Khan of the Crimea, joined bim with a horde of Tartar horsemen.  This remnant of the great Horde then inhabited not only the Crimea but all the coasts of the Black Sea from thence to the mouth of the Danube, a region called by the European geographers of those days Little Tartary, to distinguish it from the great Tartary in Central Asia.  They could send a hundred thousand horsemen to serve the Sultan in bis wars.  Khan Salim Girai was one of the most renowned of his illustrious family, a man of letters and a poet, and an expert soldier in the Turkish acceptation of the term.

Many councils of war were held in the Turks' camp to decide on the plan of the campaign.  The Vizír was all for an attempt on Vienna.  He imagined, as was natural to an Oriental mind, that the fall of the capital would ensure the fall of the monarchy; but Tekeli and Ibrahim Pasha the Vazir of Buda, who knew the Germans better, earnestly endeavoured to dissuade him.  Tekeli wanted first to be put in real possession of his visionary kingdom of Hungary.  Ibrahim Pasha spoke in parables and said: “A certain king once put a pile of gold pieces in the centre of a spacious carpet in his hall of audience, and said that whoever could take up the gold without treading on the carpet should have the money for his painsA wise man took hold of the corner of the carpet and rolled it up before him, and thus reached the gold.  Hungary must be rolled up in like manner before we can reach Vienna with safety.  Raab and Comorn should be ours first.”

Kara Mustafa, however, rejected these prudent councils.  Hoping to take Vienna before a sufficient army could be raised to cover it, be broke up from before Raab and marched straight on the capital.  The Duke of Lorraine threw part of his army into the city to reinforce the garrison, and with the rest took up a strong position in the neighbourhood, waiting for his Polish and German allies.  The Emperor Leopold and many of the inhabitants left the city and betook themselves into Bavaria for safety.  Kara Mustafa sat down before Vienna on the 15th July 1683

(To be continued).