Wars of the Turks with the Germans

 Wars of the Turks with the Germans

Introduction + The First War

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By Lieut.-General F. H. TYRRELL, late Indian Army.

Hört nur! Einst jugten wir Husaren

  Den Feind nach Herzenslust;
Da schoss ein Hund von Janitscharen 

Den Hauptman in die Brust.

INTRODUCTION. TODAY the German Kaiser, whose predecessors on the Imperial throne claimed to represent the Western Cæsars, appears as the friend and well-wisher of the Monarch whom the Orientals style the Kaisar of Rún, or Cæsar of Rome, the inheritor of the titles and the realm of the Roman Emperors of the East by right of conquest. Today Germany has annexed the rôle of Protector of Turkey and Defender of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire formerly played by Great Britain on the stage of European politics, and the Vazirs at the Sublime Porte and the Secretaries of Yildiz Kiosk look for advice and assistance to the Cabinet at Potsdam and the Bureaux of Berlin. German officers administer the Osmanli Army, and German commercial agents exploit the resources of Asia Minor. The military force of the Turkish Empire is to-day a weapon ready to the hand of the German Emperor, perhaps to be aimed at the threatening predominance of the Sclavonic races in the East of Europe; ready, at all events, for use as policy and occasion may dictate or require.

But in the Middle Ages the Alamán Kirali (German King) was the most redoubted enemy of the Sultan in Europe, and his subjects were the most stubborn and most successful opponents of the victorious Turk's westward march. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the plains of Hungary were the battle-field of the opposing hosts of the Crescent and the Cross, and the alternate tide of victory and defeat rolled to and fro between the bastions of Vienna and the battlements of Belgrade. There are regiments of the German Army to-day whose earliest laurels were won under Prince Maximilian of Bavaria or Ludwig of Baden in Turkish wars, and whose bayonets crossed the scimitars of the Janissaries at Buda and Salankaman.

The struggle between Turk and Teuton for the mastery in Hungary is only one episode of the eternal strife between the princes and the peoples of Europe and Asia, between the rival religions and civilisations of the West and East. The hostile nations, influenced and impelled by diametrically opposing social and political systems and ideas, meet in the clash of battle through the ages along the confines of the two Continents, and the tide of success ebbs and flows between them with almost monotonous regularity. The dawn of history shows us the Greeks encamped under the walls of Troy, and later on they are found with difficulty defending the coasts of Europe against the fleets and armies of the Persian King. Two centuries pass and Alexander the Great marches over prostrate Persia and reaches India, and the Greeks found a kingdom as far east as Bactria, in Central Asia. The Parthians again drive them back and dispute the frontier of the Euphrates with the legions of Rome. Asia Minor becomes the theatre of war between Byzantine Cæsars and Persian Sassanides till the Arab tribes issue from their native deserts to besiege Constantinople, and to revive the Semitic Empire of the Carthaginians on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The Europeans are driven out of Northern Africa, and are pursued across the Pyrenees. Another turn of the tide brings the Crusaders to Damascus and Damietta; the Moors, expelled from Sicily and Spain, hardly maintain themselves on the shores of the Barbary coast. Then the Mongols swarm from their homes on the confines of China and trample Russia and Poland under their horse hoofs; the Osmanli Turks subjugate all South-Eastern Europe, and their victorious career is only arrested under the walls of Vienna. The tide turns once more, and brings the Germans to Belgrade, the French to Algiers, the British to Cairo, and the Russians to Samarkand; and for the last two hundred years it has flowed steadily eastwards. Nor was it ever turned back towards the setting sun until the Rising Sun showed itself on the Japanese banner over the walls of Mukden and above the shattered ramparts of Port Arthur.

The Turkish invasion of South-Eastern Europe was the last wave of the receding Mogul deluge. The political fabric of the Arabian Khalifat had been shattered to pieces by Changhiz Khan and his sons at the head of their Tartar hordes; and the scattered forces of Islam found a new focus and rallying point in the horse-tail standards of Kara Othman. A revival of the old fanatic faith once more animated the Mohammedan world, and all the concentrated energies of militant Islam were guided and directed by the ambition and the ability of its Turkish leaders. The Osmanlis firmly believed that Providence had entrusted to their hands the divine mission of converting the infidel world to the true Faith, and for a time their belief was confirmed and strengthened by their success. In the space of two hundred years they had over-run and annexed all the lands of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, from Baghdad to Belgrade, from the banks of the Tigris to those of the Save; the Roman Empire of the East, the Sclavonic kingdoms of Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia, the principalities of Greece and Albania had all become the prey and spoil of their thronging squadrons, marching incessantly from conquest to conquest. “The Historie of the Turkes being,” in the words of Knolles, none other than that of the woefull Ruine of the greater part of the Christian Commonwealthe.”

The Germans had gained experience of Oriental warfare and of Turkish tactics in the Crusades, in which more than one Emperor and many princes of Germany had taken part. The Teutonic knights had shared with the Poles and the Hungarians the disasters of the field of Liegnitz, when Batu Khan's Moguls had filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain Christians. German knights and men-at-arms had fought in the heterogeneous armies of Crusaders overthrown by Bajazet at Nicopolis, and by Murad II. at Varna; but the religious question dominated political combinations in those times, and all efiective co-operation between the West and the East of Europe to check the progress of the Turk was rendered impossible by the schism between the Latin and Greek churches. And in after times, when the tide of conquest had again turned, this religious divergence was always a heavy drag on the eastward progress of Germany. Not until the rise of Russia did the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula hail a Protector and Deliverer of their own Faith. The Pole, the Hungarian, and the Austrian always stipulated for religious conformity as the price of their assistance; and the chiefs and captains of Bosnia preferred embracing the faith of the Prophet to submission to the claims of the Pope. But it was now the turn of the Latins to be attacked, and the Turks moved on from the conquest of Servia and Bosnia to that of Hungary. Belgrade had been held by the Hungarians as the frontier fortress of Christendom, and the conquering Sultans, Murad II. and Muhammad II., were both repulsed from its .walls. But in 1520 it was captured by the young Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, and the way into Hungary lay open to the Turkish Army. For some time the doomed nation had a respite; the Sultan was employing his forces in maritime wars, and was busy expelling the Knights of St. John from their island fortress of Rhodes. That feat accomplished, he resumed his designs on Hungary, and in 1526 invaded that country with an army of 200,000 men. The Hungarians in vain called on the Emperor of Germany to help them; he had his hands full with the French foe on the west. The young King Lewis of Hungary took up a position at Mohacz to intercept the march of the Turks on Buda. He had only 25,000 men with him, but he expected a strong reinforcement from Transylvania under Prince John Zapolya, which never arrived, and Zapolya's subsequent conduct lends support to the charge of treachery levelled against him. The King drew up his little army with its left resting on the Danube and its right on his entrenched camp. The first charge of the Turks decided the battle, all resistance being crushed by their overwhelming numbers. The King and all his nobles perished on the field or in the flight, and few escaped from the carnage.

“This woefull battle,” says Knolles, “not sufficiently to be lamented as the ground of all the miseries of that worthy Kingdom, was fought on the 29th day of August, in the yeare 1526.”

After the battle, Zapolya made his submission to the Sultan, and was rewarded with the investiture of the tributary kingdom of Hungary. The Sultan marched on Buda and occupied the city without opposition. The surviving bishops and magnates of Hungary took counsel together, and offered the Crown to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, brother to the Emperor Charles V. He accepted it, and immediately began to take steps to make good his claim. The Sultan had withdrawn with his army into winter quarters, as was the invariable custom of the Turks, and so in the spring of next year Ferdinand sent a German army into Hungary, which expelled Zapolya, and placed a German garrison in Buda-Pesth. Suliman was furious when he heard of this, and he ordered his forces to rendezvous at Adrianople the next spring with the purpose of expelling the Germans from Hungary.

At this time the Ottoman Empire was the greatest military Power in the world. It occupied on the south-eastern verge of civilised Europe the same commanding position which is to-day occupied by the great military force of the Russian Empire on the north-east. The Turkish nation and army were synonymous terms, and the State was organised entirely for war, the civil administration being completely subservient to the military. The Sultan was the Commander-in-Chief; on his accession he was ceremoniously girt with the sword of Kara Othman, and was solemnly enrolled as a private soldier in the First Bulúk (company) of the Corps of Janissaries; the Grand Vazir was his Lieutenant and War Minister. Every Mussulman subject of the Empire had his place in the ranks of the armed nation. The organisation of the forces was superior to anything that Europe could show at that time, and their numerical strength was more than double that of the forces at the disposal of the Emperor of Germany, even when he could draw upon the resources of Spain and the Low Countries. The Turkish Army was divided into two categories: the Kápi Kuli (Slaves of the Porte), or Regular troops, and the Sarhad Kuli (Slaves of the Frontiers), or Irregular troops. The first category comprised six corps of cavalry, Sipáhis, Silahdárs, two of Ulúfaji (Soldati), and two of Ghurabá (foreigners), two hundred companies of Janissaries (infantry), about fifty companies of Topjis (gunners) and Jebejis (ordnance store corps), a corps of Top-arábajis (artillery train), and thirty or forty companies of recruits called Ajam Oghlans (foreign boys), who were the human tribute levied quinquennially from all the Christian families of the Empire. These boys, taken at the age of from ten to fifteen, were forcibly converted to Islamism and trained as soldiers, and were subsequently drafted into the Janissaries and the other corps of the Standing Army. All these Regular troops were regularly paid, rationed, clothed, and lodged by the State, were governed by a military code, and had fixed establishments of officers and systems of promotion and superannuation. Many of the customs afterwards observed in the Standing Armies of Europe were in force in the corps of Janissaries, and perhaps were copied from them. In the time of Sultan Suliman the Magnificent, the total number of these paid or Regular troops amounted to something under 40,000 men.

The second category of Sarhad Kuli comprised the Provincial Militia, which formed the bulk of the military forces of the Empire. All the lands of the Ottoman conquests were parcelled out into military fiefs charged with the maintenance of the Turkish horsemen. These fiefs were of three classes: the Sanják (Standard), which maintained at least a hundred horsemen, the Ziámat, which supported from twenty to fifty, and the Timar, which had three to five. Each province of the Empire was governed by a Beglerbeg, who was Captain-General of the Militia as well as Civil and Military Governor, and in whose office rolls and registers of all the fiefs were kept. The provinces were Civided into Sanjáks, or military districts, each governed by a Sanják Bey, who had a standard of a single horse-tail.*  The Mussulmans who had no fiefs, and who were too poor to serve on horse-back, were enrolled as Azabs (Irregular Infantry), and served on foot, being employed chiefly as pioneers and escorts for baggage and munitions. They received pay only for such time as they were actually under arms, and at a rate much inferior to that of the Regular troops.

* These so-called Horse-Tails were really the Tails of the Yak or Bos Grumiens of Central Asia, used as emblems of authority also by the Moguls in India. The Sultan had seven Tails on his standard, the Grand Vazir five, and each Beglerbeg three. Many of these horse-tail standards may be seen in the military museums in Germany, where they are kept with other trophies taken in the Turkish wars.

In the islands of the Levant, which were the province of the Capitan Pasha, they were enrolled as Levends or Marines, and this was the only corps in which Christians were allowed to serve.

Mussulmans who had a horse but no fief served as Akinji (foragers); they received no pay and subsisted only by plunder. They were called Sackmen by the Germans, from the sack which they carried to receive their booty.

The Sultan's military household comprised several troops of horse and companies of foot guards, but these were always retained about his person or palace, and were seldom actually employed in the fighting line. The Vazirs and Pashas also employed bodies of troops, paid out of provincial revenues, for their escorts and for the police of their districts, and as a counter-balance to the menacing power of the Regular soldiery, who already displayed a disposition to take the reins of authority into their own hands. These provincial-paid troops of horse were called Delis (Braves), distinguished by a high cap, or Gunalis (Hussars), who wore a dress like the Hungarians. Those of foot were called Sagbans (Dog-keepers), for hunting and warfare were intimately associated in the Turkish national mind, and many of the titles of the officers of the Janissaries were reminiscent of the sports of the field.

In arms and equipment, as well as in discipline and organisation, the Turkish Army was superior to the European Armies of the sixteenth century, except perhaps to the Spanish Standing Army of Charles V. The Turkish horsemen were, as Knolles puts it, “much pestered with arms,” carrying a lance, a sabre, a yataghan, a mace or battle-axe, and a bow and arrows; the latter and the lance were later exchanged for a musket and a pair of pistols. They were not encumbered with defensive armour, like their German antagonists; the steel skull-cap and chain mail hauberk were worn by the Turks more for show than for use.

The Turk's horsemen are all naked men (i.e., unarmoured), writes the historian Knolles, disparagingly. But in this, as in their method of fighting in open order, the Turks were in advance of their time. Already all the Janissaries were armed with the arquebus or caliver, the pike being entirely laid aside, while three-fourths of the German infantry were pikemen to one-fourth arquebusiers. The Turkish artillery was superior in calibre, both in field and siege guns, to anything in the European Armies, and it was served by a corps of Regular soldiers and a military train, the like of which was not seen in any European Army until the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The Turkish order of battle was usually the old Mogul division of the Army into five bodies, viz. : Advanced guard (cavalry), main body (infantry and guns), right and left wings (cavalry), and rear guard (mixed). They commenced the action by cannonading and skirmishing to annoy and confuse the enemy; then the cavalry attacked in swarms, and the Janissaries in dense columns, sword in hand. The guns were linked together by chains to prevent the enemy's cavalry from penetrating the battery, like the guns of the Moguls in India, as we learn from Bernier's description of the battle between Dara and Aurangzib. It was this chain which Shah Ismail Saffavi, the hero who revived the Persian Monarchy, is said to have severed with a blow of his battle-axe at Chaldiran, where his brave Kizilbash horsemen were dismayed and put to flight by “the cruell, cowardly, and murthering artillery of the Turkes” under Sultan Selim the Ferocious.

Above all, the Turkish troops surpassed their German antagonists in rapidity of movement. Being unencumbered with armour and plentifully provided with pack animals, they marched with a celerity which was most astonishing and disconcerting to their enemies. Their strategy being always offensive, they lived on the country they passed through; their campaigns were, indeed, raids on a large scale, and the acquisition of slaves and booty was their object as much as permanent conquest. The spoiling of the infidel was a pious as well as a profitable duty. “Our troops spread themselves over the country," says the Turkish chronicler, Avliya Effendi, “taking booty day and night in the ways of God." Their Army was always, like those of India, attended by a camp bazaar, where a crowd of sutlers supplied the necessities of the soldiers and purchased from them their captives and plunder.

War was the business of the Turk's life, and the favourite proverb: "Al Harakat Barakat” (Restlessness is Blessedness) expressed the national spirit. Each spring the Sultan was expected, and seldom failed, to put himself at the head of the Army for the annual summer campaign. His pavilion was set up at the general rendezvous (usually Adrianople when the campaign was a European one), with the standard of seven horse-tails pitched in front of it, indicating the direction of the march. On the order for mobilisation, each Pasha or Sanják Bey mustered the fighting men of his district at his own headquarters, and marched them to the provincial rendezvous. Here they were mustered and inspected by the Beglerbeg, and were formed into Bulúks (companies) and Alái (regiments), and officers and commanders appointed for the campaign. The Beglerbeg thus led his forces to the general rendezvous, or to some convenient place for joining the Grand Army on its forward march. Little order or discipline was observed until the frontier of the enemy's country was reached, when the different corps and commands were assembled, and a written order of march published. An advanced guard of some five or six thousand horse was told off, and a rear guard of one thousand ; in a retirement these numbers were reversed. All orders were issued in writing and conveyed by the Sultan's chaúshes or sergeants-at-arms, who had also the task of marshalling the troops on the march and for the battle. If the Sultan were not present in person, the Army was commanded by the Grand Vazir, and in his absence by a Pasha nominated as Seraskier, or Commander-in-Chief.

In Europe the art of war was passing through a period of transition; the invention of gunpowder had revolutionised tactics and transferred the principal rôle on the stage of battle from the cavalry to the infantry. The arquebus shot that laid the chivalrous Bayard low had sounded the knell of the feudal system of warfare, and the knights and men-at-arms and their retainers were being replaced by mercenary bands of professional soldiers. Spain was as yet the only country that possessed a Royal Standing Army. France and Austria had only started the nucleus of such an organisation in some companies of Royal Guards. The Army of the German Empire was made up of contingents from the different Electorates and minor States; but the Emperors relied more on the services of mercenary bands, often composed of Italians, Croats, and Walloons. But when Charles V. was Emperor of Germany he was able to rely on the services of his Spanish Standing Army, then the most formidable military force in Europe. The mercenaries were always more solicitous for their own interests than for the cause in which they were engaged, and were often mutinous and ready to turn their arms against their employer when they considered him to be either too exacting or too parsimonious. The company was still the unit of the organisation, but in some instances already companies had been assembled into regiments. Each company comprised pikemen, musketeers, and sometimes also halberdiers, but the three were separated for tactical purposes. The cavalry were heavily armed and slow of movement. The artillery and engineers were considered as civil departments of the military service. The soldiers were attracted more by the prospects of plunder than of pay, for the private property of an enemy was still looked upon as a lawful prize, and knights and nobles made prisoners of war were still held to ransom. Discipline was lax, in spite of a military code of barbarous severity

THE FIRST WAR.

The first war between the Turks and the Germans was waged for the possession of Hungary, and ended in the division of that unhappy kingdom between the two contending foes. It lasted for forty years with short intervals of truce, when the Sultan was too busy with Persian or Mediterranean warfare to bestow much attention upon affairs in Hungary. The Turks considered themselves to be in a state of perpetual war with all Christian nations, and never concluded a permanent peace with any of them, but only a truce for a specified time, at the end of which the war was to be renewed.

Sultan Suliman gave orders for the assembly of the Grand Army in the great plain of Filiba (Philippopolis) in the spring of 1528, but torrential rains swelling the rivers and flooding the country made military operations difficult if not impossible, and he postponed his expedition to the following year. On the 13th April, 1529, he left Constantinople to put himself at the head of an army of 200,000 men, with which he entered' Hungary and marched on Buda. On the field of Mohacz he was joined by Zapolya, who came with 6,000 Hungarians to do homage to the Sultan and to follow in his train. There was no army in the field to oppose them, and the German garrison of Buda consisted only of 1,000 men.

The Turks, without troubling themselves to breach the walls, made preparations for assaulting the town, upon which the garrison retired into the citadel. Despairing of holding out against so mighty a force, and having no hope of succour, the soldiers clamoured for a surrender; but the Governor, Count Nadasky, was resolved to hold out as long as possible, in order to give the Archduke time to make his preparations for defending Austria against the Turks. The soldiers thereupon threw the Governor into prison, and deputed two of their captains to treat with the besiegers. Terms of capitulation were arranged, the garrison being allowed to depart free and uninjured. But as they filed out of the gates of the fortress between the ranks of the Janissaries, who were drawn up ready to occupy it, the latter, disappointed of the plunder which would have been theirs after a successful assault, heaped abuse and insults upon them, and reviled them as cowards who dared not abide the shock of steel. A German soldier, losing patience, felled a Janissary to the ground; his comrades immediately fell upon the Germans, and massacred the whole garrison, only about sixty escaping with their lives. The Sultan deplored this flagrant breach of good faith and military discipline: he treated Nadasky kindly, commended his fidelity, and released him on parole. But he did not venture to punish his Janissaries for their misconduct, of which many examples will recur in the story of these wars. * For why," as the historian Knolles observes, "the auncient character of these martiall men is not now as it formerly was when they were with a more severe discipline governed; but now, being grown proude and lazie, as is the manner of men living in continuall pay, they with armes in their hands doubt not to do whatsoever unto themselves seemeth best, be it never so foule or unreasonable.”

The Sultan installed Zapolya as tributary king of Hungary in Bud'a-Pesth, and set out with his army for Vienna, to make an end, once and for all, of Ferdinand's claims to the Hungarian throne. His march was preceded by 30,000 “Sackmen” (irregular horse), who spread themselves over the country for an enormous distance in front and on both flanks, sacking and burning towns and villages, and devastating and destroying everything that they could reach. "Contemporary writers have exhausted their powers of language in describing the atrocities perpetrated by these marauders. We find, for example, in a rare pamphlet of the time ( The Besieging of the City of Vienna in Austria by the Cruel Tyrant and Destroyer of Christendom, the Turkish Emperor, as it Lately Befell in the Month of September, 1529), the following: -At which time did the Sackman spread himself on every side, going before the Turkish Army, destroying and burning everything, and carrying off into captivity much people, men and women, and even the children, of whom many they grievously maimed, and, as Turkish prisoners have declared, over 30,000 persons were by them carried off, and as has since been told, such as could not march were cruelly put to death. Thus have they wasted, destroyed, burnt, and plundered all in the land of Austria, below Ens, and nearly to the waters of Ens, but on the hither side of the Danube for the most part the land has escaped, for by reason of the river the Turk could do there but little harm; the towns also round about Vienna beyond Brück on the Leitha have remained unconquered and unwasted by the Turk, but the open country wasted and burnt."

Another contemporary writer, Peter Stern von Labach, describes the Turkish atrocities in the following words :-“After the taking of Brück on the Leitha and the castle of Trautmannsdorf, the Sackman, and those who went before him, people who have no regular pay, but live by plunder and spoil, to the number of 40,000, spread themselves far and wide over the country, as far as the Ens and into Styria, burning and slaying. Many thousands of people were murdered, or maltreated and dragged into slavery. Children were cut out of their mothers' wombs and stuck on pikes; young women abused to death and their corpses left on the highway; God rest their souls, and grant vengeance on the bloodhounds who committed this evil.” *

* " The Two Sieges of Vienna by the Turks,” from the German of Karl August Schimmer and other sources. London : John Murray. 1847.

The inhabitants of Vienna were expelled from the city by the military commanders to economise the provisions during the siege; and 5,000 of these unfortunate people were overtaken and massacred by the Sackmen. Some found refuge in castles, which the Turks could not reduce for want of artillery. The German garrisons, which Ferdinand had placed in the fortified towns of Hungary, abandoned their posts at the approach of the Turks and retired upon Vienna. These with other troops, collected for the defence of the city, amounted to 2,000 horse and 20,000 foot; besides whom there were 1,000 armed burghers.

Ferdinand made urgent appeals to the other German Princes for aid, but all they could promise him was a total force of 4,000 horse and 12,000 foot, and these were too late to reach Vienna before it was surrounded by the Turkish host. The city was defended by the Pfalzgraf Philip, who reached the city at the head of a small body of Spanish and German soldiers just before its total investment, and by Nicholas Count Salm, a veteran of seventy years, who had crossed swords with Francis the First at the battle of Pavia. He really exercised the chief command, the Pfalzgraf, though of superior rank, wisely deferring to his skill and experience. The city was put in as good a posture of defence as possible; the pavements were taken up to deaden the effect of the besieger's shot; and all the buildings of the suburbs outside the walls were destroyed. Their ruins, however, furnished a convenient lodgment for the Turks, who appeared before the walls on the 26th September. For three weeks the city was closely invested, and desperately assaulted. Suliman summoned the Governor to surrender, using fearful threats in case his terms should be refused; as he had previously boasted that he would soon take his breakfast in Vienna, the Christian commanders jeeringly answered him that his breakfast was getting cold.

All communications between besiegers and besieged were made in writing in the Italian language, and conveyed by released prisoners. The Turks shot vollies of arrows into the city, which literally darkened the air, and kept up a continual dropping fire of these missiles, so that it was dangerous for anyone to cross the streets.

THOUGH a Turkish flotilla had come up the Danube as far as Vienna, Suliman had brought no battering train with him. His artillery consisted of 300 pieces nearly all of very small calibre. From these, and from all the musketry and archery of the besiegers, an incessant rain of missiles was kept up upon the defences for the three weeks during which the siege lasted. The ramparts were attacked by mining in many places; and the garrison defended themselves by countermines. They placed drums with peas on them, and vessels of water all along the inside of the ramparts, to give notice of the operations of the Turkish miners, and in this way were generally able to detect and baffle their efforts. But several mines were successfully sprung, and the breaches so made were furiously assaulted, but always in vain, by the flower of the Osmanli troops. On one occasion a Turkish Bairakdár planted his standard on the rampart, but he immediately received a musket-shot and fell into the ditch. At length the Janissaries refused to face further the huge two-handed swords, the ponderous halberts, pole-axes, and morning-stars wielded by the German soldiers. The Sultan in vain encouraged them to fresh efforts, and he even paid them the assault-money, which was their due only after a successful assault. But it was impossible to overcome the courage and constancy of the defenders. The brave old Count Salm was mortally wounded in the last unsuccessful general assault, and the monument erected to him by the gratitude of his Emperor may still be seen at the family residence of the Salms at Raitz in Moravia.

The season was now far advanced (there was a heavy snowstorm on the 17th October), and supplies ran short in the Turkish camp. The Sultan reluctantly gave the order to raise the siege; the Turks set fire to their huts and forage, and massacred all their Christian prisoners according to their usual custom. The Grand Army retreated upon Buda-Pesth, its soldiers "wreaking vengeance for the failure of their main purpose on every object, animate and inanimate, within their reach." The German garrisons sallied out and hung upon their flanks, cutting off stragglers, and re-capturing many captive Christian boys and girls. All Turkish prisoners were racked or otherwise tortured before being drowned or burnt alive; the Christians seemed bent on vying with the Mussulmans in cruelty.

Sultan Suliman himself, however, generally behaved with clemency and magnanimity to his foes; he praised the valour of the Germans saying he was glad to find such bravery in men who would soon be his subjects.

A cornet of Cuirassiers, named von Zedlitz, had been made prisoner by the Turks in a skirmish ; his captors would have killed him, “but being armed with a whole cuirass, no one could strip him, else without doubt in their fury they would have sabred and cut him to pieces." They carried him before Suliman, and made many vain attempts to unfasten his armour, but when the Sultan had promised him his life,“ he showed the interpreter two little screws at the side, which being loosed, the cuirass came to its pieces, to the great wonder of the Turks,” who could not conceive how a man could fight under such a load of iron. They themselves used chain armour but little, and plate armour not at all. The Sultan treated von Zedlitz kindly, praised' his courage and his skill at arms, and asked him whether, if he should release him, he would still make war upon him; to which the Count replied that if God should grant him deliverance he would while life lasted fight against the Turks more hotly than ever. Thereupon the Sultan said :—“Thou shalt be free, my man, and make war on me as thou wilt for the rest of thy life.” He was as good as his word, and when he raised the siege of Vienna he loaded Count von Zedlitz with rich presents, and released him, along with one of his cavalry soldiers, who had been taken prisoner with him.

While Suliman was encamped before Vienna, a party of Turkish horsemen, under the command of Kasim Bey, who afterwards became the Beglerbeg of Rumelia, left the camp to make a raid into the unknown interior of Germany. The secrecy and celerity of their march baffled opposition and pursuit; they passed through Austria and Bavaria, and making a wide circuit southwards entered Venetian territory, and finally re-entered the Turkish dominions at Essek on the Drave, with sadly diminished numbers and with men and horses exhausted by continuous marching and fighting. Avliya Effendi says he saw many of the graves of these Gházis at the spot where they had fallen, during the course of his travels in Germany.

The Sultan made a triumphal entry into Constantinople at the head of the troops whose quarters lay there, or in Asia, the rest of the army having rejoined their territorial stations en route. He had expelled the Germans from Hungary, but he had failed to subdue them, and he had suffered heavy losses in men and matériel, but above all in prestige, for the successful resistance of Vienna had broken the spell of Turkish victory. Their repulse from before its walls marked the turning point of the tide of Ottoman conquest; the Turkish warriors had no longer Sclaves and Magyars to contend with, but men of the Teutonic race, whose steadfast courage remained unshaken by the number or the fury of their foes.

The Sultan publicly announced that his only object in besieging Vienna was to capture the Archduke Ferdinand, who had the insolence to dispute the kingdom of Hungary with him; and that, therefore, when he found that Ferdinand was not in the city, he had not thought it worth while to prosecute the siege; the Turkish historians also have adopted this very obvious subterfuge to explain away the ill-success of their arms. The Sultan, however, set to work with great energy to make preparations for a renewal of his project of the conquest of Germany. For the space of two years he collected stores, munitions, and men from every corner of his vast empire, and in the spring of 1532 he took the field at the head of an army reckoned at 300,000 men.

But the news of these great preparations had resounded through Christendom, and this time the Germans were fully prepared to meet the threatened attack. The Emperor Charles the Fifth had collected all the available forces from all the lands under his sway, and the troops of Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries were united with the armies of the Electors and Landgraves of Germany.

A mighty host of 30,000 horse and 100,000 foot, of whom 20,000 were Arquebusiers, with a large train of artillery, was mustered at Linz, whence the Emperor led them to take up a position to cover Vienna. The order of battle for receiving the attack of the Turks was carefully rehearsed. The whole of the infantry a l'armé blanche, the German lanzknechts with their long pikes, the Spanish infantry with sword and buckler, the bands of Swiss halberdiers, were drawn up in three battalia, or huge hollow squares. The Arquebusiers, in three divisions, were formed in line in front of the battalia, in five ranks. The front rank was to deliver its fire, turn outwards, and file round the flanks to reform and reload in rear of the fifth rank; each rank was to do the same in succession ; when pressed by the enemy they were to seek shelter inside the battalia. The guns were planted in the intervals of the line. The cavalry were formed in two divisions, in the intervals between the battalia ; the Emperor in person commanded the right division, his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, the left. The Hungarian light horse was stationed on the flanks to cover them, and to delay and confuse the Turks by skirmishing with them, and to act independently as occasion offered. “For in light skirmishes,” says Knolles in his Turkish history, “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 Turkes with their nimble, ready, light horsemen, so well acquainted with that manner of flying 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 (the allusion is to defensive armour), i did easily encounter the Turkes and foil them, although they were in number more." 

The eyes of the whole civilised world were fixed upon the plains before the city of Vienna, where the contest between Christendom and Islam was to be decided in a second battle of Tours, waged between the two greatest monarchs of the age at the head of the mightiest hosts that could be furnished by the nations of the West and the East.

But Suliman disappointed expectations by shunning the contest. Instead of marching on Vienna he moved through southern Hungary into Styria. Here the castle of Güns, strong both by nature and art, and heroically defended by its small garrison, delayed the Turkish Grand Army before its walls for twenty-five days.

The Sultan's rapid advance had left his battering train behind, and a continual series of assaults were repulsed by the courage and constancy of the defenders. To save his face, Suliman induced the indomitable Castellan Jurachich to visit his camp under a safe conduct guaranteed by the exchange of hostages; he loaded him with gifts, praised his courage, and pretended to have concluded terms witá him; after which, unwilling to waste any more time before such an insignificant fortress, he marched on Gratz and took and plundered the town, but the garrison had retired into the citadel and he could not reduce it. Meanwhile, 30,000 Sackmen had entered Austria apparently under the impression that the Grand Army was following them; and they proceeded to repeat their devastation of the previous campaign. As soon as the Emperor learned that the Sultan's army had diverged into Styria, he sent off all the cavalry from Vienna to fall upon the Sackmen; and numbers of those marauders scattered over the country in quest of plunder, were cut off and slain. The rest assembled and tried to rejoin the main army in Styria; but the passes and defiles of the mountains were stopped by abattis, defended by the armed peasantry with the aid of some companies of Arquebusiers, and the Turkish horsemen were unable to get through. They then tried to cut their way through the German cavalry; but were everywhere headed off and driven back. In the neighbourhood of Siebenstein hundreds of them were surrounded and forced over a precipice, which to this day bears the name of “The Turk's Fall.” Their leader, the hereditary Akinji Báshi, or Chief of the Sackmen, was slain, and his jewelled helmet adorned with vulture's wings is still to be seen in the Ambros Museum at Vienna. His lieutenant shared his fate, and the Germans, who gave no quarter, reckoned that they had accounted for 18,000 Sackmen. The remainder escaped by scattering and making their way in small parties by circuitous routes back into Hungary, where they rejoined the Grand Army, which was now retreating from Styria with much plunder and many captives, but with little glory. The Emperor Charles V. was satisfied with the retirement of the Turks, and did not attempt to follow them; he was more concerned with the progress of the Reformation in Germany, for the Protestant Princes of the Empire had taken advantage of the Turkish peril to extort concessions from him which he was now desirous of recalling.

Suliman was anxious to turn his arms against Persia, which promised an easier conquest; and he concluded a truce for two years with Ferdinand, the latter consenting to pay tribute for the part of the kingdom of Hungary, in the possession of the Germans. But even during the truce Turkish raids upon the Christian frontier lands did not cease; and after its expiration they were carried on so frequently and systematically that they became well nigh intolerable. The Turks had a strong garrison and a fortified tête-du-pont at Essek on the Drave, from whence their roving bands issued to plunder all southern Hungary and enslave its inhabitants. Ferdinand, therefore, in the spring of the year 1537, collected an army of 20,000 men for an expedition against Essek, and placed it under the command of John Kazzianer, who had been one of the captains who defended Vienna, and who enjoyed a high reputation. The Horse were Germans, Bohemians, and Hungarians; the Foot were Germans, except some companies of Italian Arquebusiers, commanded by an able officer named Lodrone. There was also a train of artillery. From the first the troops suffered severely from the want of supplies in the country through which they passed, which had been thoroughlv devastated by the Turks.

They arrived before Essek, and laid siege to the tête-du-pont, but Muhammad Pasha of Belgrade arrived to succour it, and continually harassed the Christians with his Light Horse and cut off their communications. The soldiers were starving, and Kazzianer called a council of war, which decided that immediate retreat was necessary to save the army. Accordingly a retreat was commenced, but the Turks followed and pressed the retreating troops closely; they outmarched them and laid ambushes for them along the road, galling the retreating column by a constant fire of musketry and of arrows, and delaying its march' by forcing its troops to form to meet their threatened attacks. On one occasion the Hungarian Horse charging captured the Turkish field pieces, but the Janissaries charging the Horse recovered the guns. Even in those days of matchlocks and wooden ramrods infantry sometimes proved a match for cavalry.  The path of retreat was strewn with abandoned guns and baggage wagons, and it became increasingly difficult to transport the numerous wounded.

At length the harassed and dispirited troops arrived within a day's march of the castle of Walpo, which was held for King Ferdinand, and here they hoped to find provisions and shelter from their implacable pursuers. But a thick forest lay between them and safety, and to escape the attacks of the Turks upon their line of march, Kazzianer determined to move off by night, and as secretly as possible, abandoning all the guns and carriages, and mounting the sick and wounded en croupe behind the cavalry soldiers. A single trumpet note from his tent was to give the signal for the start. But directly darkness fell the soldiers began to steal away, so as to be the first in flight, and Kazzianer suddenly discovered that the whole army was dispersing, and in his hurry he set out himself without sounding the trumpet. Lodrone's Arquebusiers and some other troops, who were under better discipline than the rest, remained in their bivouacs awaiting the sound of the trumpet till they were surprised by the dawn, and found themselves deserted by their General and by their comrades.

Lodrone encouraged them, and told them their only chance of escape was by keeping their ranks and showing a bold front to the enemy; and he hamstrung his horse with his own hand, to show the soldiers that he would stand by them and share their fate. They were immediately followed and continually harassed by the Turkish cavalry, while the Janissaries and archers galled them by an incessant dropping fire of musketry and arrows, which their haste to escape prevented them from returning. The Turkish infantry outmarching them, laid an ambush in some thickets near the road, and from thence poured such a heavy fire into the column that the ranks were broken, and Lodrone was dangerously wounded; all order was lost, and the Turkish cavalry, seizing the opportunity, broke in upon them and put them all to the sword. A few were made prisoners, amongst whom was Lodrone; but as it was doubtful whether he would recover from his wounds, the Turks made sure of him by striking off his head, which they sent to the Sultan along with other trophies of the victory.

This was the most signal success hitherto gained by the Turks over the Germans; for the Christian army was dispersed, and the best part of it destroyed, and all its guns and baggage taken by a Turkish force inferior in numbers; the success was chiefly due to the skill with which the operations were conducted by Muhammad Pasha of Belgrade.

Kazzianer was brought to trial for causing the loss of his army by his misconduct, but fearing the result he escaped and sought refuge with the Turks.

Ferdinand was much depressed by this disaster, and sought an accommodation with Zapolya, who was equally weary of the war, for his unfortunate Hungarians were between the devil and the deep sea, suffering as much, or more, from their Turkish friends than from their German enemies. The two rival Kings of Hungary, therefore, concluded a treaty by which Ferdinand withdrew his claim, and ceded his rights to Zapolya; but a secret article was inserted in the treaty, by which Zapolya bequeathed his kingdom to Ferdinand at his death. Zapolya died in 1540, leaving an infant son by a Polish Princess ; the widow ignored the secret article, and proclaimed her son King of Hungary, and most of the Hungarian magnates supported her. Ferdinand assembled an army for the invasion of Hungary, and entrusted the command of it to Count Roggendorff; the Queen-mother appealed for aid to the Sultan, and he commanded the Pashas of Belgrade and of Bosnia to proceed at once to her assistance, and ordered the assembly of the Grand Army in the spring for the same purpose.

The two Pashas set out with all the forces they could muster, conveying their guns and stores up the Danube in a flotilla. But an early winter set in with extraordinary severity; the river was frozen over, and the boats were frozen in, and the Turkish troops were obliged to encamp on the banks throughout the whole of a very rigorous winter, during which they bore their sufferings from cold and privation with exemplary fortitude. Meanwhile, the German Army had taken Pesth and laid siege to Buda; but the arrival of winter compelled them to go into winter quarters.

In the spring they resumed the siege of Buda; but they had not made much progress with it before the two Pashas arrived with their army and flotilla.  They were not strong enough to attack the Germans but they set themselves to harass them by a war of posts and skirmishes and constant alarms, so that the Germans were as much besieged as besieging.

Experienced officers advised Count Roggendorff to raise the siege and withdraw the troops across the river to Pesth; but he persisted in continuing the siege, until he received intelligence that the Suitan was fast approaching at the head of a great army; he then bethought himself of taking the advice and re-crossing the bridge of boats which connected his camp with Pesth. He selected a dark night for the retreat in order to escape the unwelcome attentions of the Turks, but Muhammad Pasha was kept perfectly informed by means of Hungarian spies of all that went on in the German camp. Accordingly no sooner had the retreat begun than the Turks commenced a vigorous night attack on the camp, on the bridge, and on Pesth at the same time. They set fire to some stacks of forage by the river side, and the blaze made the whole scene as bright as day, and enabled the Turkish gunners to direct their aim upon the bridge, which was soon broken up, and the Turkish flotilla coming up, the stream became choked with craft. The Germans in Pesth, who were looking out to assist the passage of their comrades, saw to their consternation the white caps of the Janissaries in the boats approaching the shore, and, struck with panic, abandoned their defences, and the Turks, landing, took possession of them. The Germans on the other shore seeing their retreat cut off, seized on what boats they could to escape up the river to Gran, and some of them succeeded in doing so, carrying with them their General, Roggendorfi, who had been disabled by a wound in the beginning of the fighting. The rout was complete; some thousands of the Germans were slain or drowned in the river, and one thousand were made prisoners. Their camp, with all their stores and baggage and two hundred pieces of artillery, were taken by the Turks.

Shortly after Sultan Suliman arrived, and found the work of relieving Buda already accomplished. He lavished praise and rewards upon the victors, and appointed Muhammad Pasha of Belgrade to be Beglerbeg of Rumelia. He ordered a grand parade of his whole army, when the captives taken in the late battle were brought out, bound with ropes, that the Ajam Oghlans (recruits for the Janissaries) might flesh their maiden swords on them, in accordance with the Turkish practice of blooding these young dogs of war. And the German prisoners were all by them murdered in cold blood; "butchered to make a Turkish holiday.” Knolles relates the following anecdote of what took place upon 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 slaine, whose head was scarce so high as the knees of the tall captive, with that cruell 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 blowes hardly at laste slaine by that wretch, still heartened on by others to satisfy the eyes of the Princes beholding it for their sport.”

Suliman now put into execution a plan that he had long meditated. The Turkish soldiers were permitted to come and go freely between their camp and the city of Buda; and one day when there was an unusual number of them in the town, on a preconcerted signal thev formed in their ranks and occupied the gates and avenues of the city, disarming the Hungarians at the guard houses and occupying their places. The Christians, taken by surprise and overawed by numbers, could make no resistance, and large bodies of Turkish troops at once marching in through the gates, Buda fell into the Sultan's hands without a blow being struck; hardly was even a word spoken.

The Sultan at once issued a proclamation annexing the whole of Hungary to the Ottoman Empire. The infant son of Zapolya was compensated for the loss of his kingdom by his nomination to be tributary Prince of Transylvania, and he and his mother were de spatched to take possession of his patrimony under the protection of a Turkish army.  A Pasha was appointed as Governor of Buda and Beglerbeg of Hungary. The lands of the newly annexed country were parcelled out in military fiefs for the support of the Turkish Toprakli (Territorial) Cavalry, as in the other provinces of the Empire. Garrisonş of Janissaries were placed in all the fortresses.

Suliman spent the remainder of the summer in regulating the affairs of Hungary, and at the approach of winter returned to Constantinople. Ferdinand had sent an embassy to him praying that he might be allowed to enjoy the kingdom of Hungary on the same terms as Zapolya, as a tributary of the Sultan; but the Austrian envoy, hap pening in the course of an audience to speak of Charles V. by the title of Emperor of Germany, Suliman flew into a violent passion, and threw the envoy into prison. According to the Turkish theory, the Sultan, in virtue of the conquest of Constantinople, was the only legitimate successor of the Roman Emperors, and all the rulers of Europe, “the seven infidel Kings of Farangistan,” were vassals in rebellion against his authority. The maintenance of Embassies at the Porte was looked upon as a confession of inferiority; for in Asia it was only tributary or protected States that kept a permanent agent at the Court of their Suzerain. The representatives of the great European Powers were treated by the Porte with an insolence which it is difficult to realise in these days; and up to the beginning of the nineteenth century their Ambassadors at Constantinople were thrown into prison on any difference arising between their Courts and the Porte. Ferdinand, however, was resolved to make good his claim. In the spring of the next year he despatched a fresh army, which he had collected during the winter, under the command of the Marquis of Brandenburg, to expel the Turks from Hungary. The famous Maurice of Saxony served as a volunteer on this expedition. The Germans laid siege to Pesth, and by battery made“ a saultable breach " in the walls; but the Turks, with great diligence, cut away the rampart inside, so that when the German forlorn hope topped the breach, its soldiers found themselves confronted by a yawning chasm, into which they feared to leap down, while the Turks fired on them from behind traverses and from the ramparts on each side of the breach. The assault failed, and before it could be renewed news arrived that the Sultan was approaching with his army.  The Germans raised the siege and retreated with precipitation, the besieged Turks assuming the offensive and following closely at their heels. The disaster which overtook Kazzianer and Roggendorff was only averted by the courage and steadiness of three companies of Italian arquebusiers, which had been lent to Ferdinand by the Pope.

Some of the Turks who knew Italian rode up to them, calling out to them to come over to them, when they would be well rewarded and honourably treated, and adjuring them not to sacrifice their gallant lives for the sake of the lazy and cowardly Germans; but their blandishments had no better success than their arms, and all their attacks were successfully beaten off by the Italians, till the retreating army found a refuge under the walls of Gran.

Suliman now determined to reduce the fortresses of Gran and Stuhlweissenburg to prevent the renewal of the German attempts on Buda-Pesth. He first marched on Gran and opened trenches and manned batteries against its walls.  One of the Turkish gunners knocked off the bronze cross on the top of the Cathedral, and this was accepted as an omen of the approaching fall of the place by both besiegers and besieged.  The garrison offered to capitulate, and were permitted to depart with their lives and personal baggage after laying down their arms. As they filed out of the citadel gates between the ranks of the Janissaries, they grounded their arms and accoutrements, and a soldier carelessly throwing down his bandolier with the match lighted, some powder that had been spilled from a powder flask ignited and caused an explosion, whereby some of the Janissaries were hurt. They attacked the Germans with drawn swords; but their officers, seeing that it was an accident, pacified them before much harm had been done, and the capitulation was carried out without further trouble.

Suliman next marched on Stuhlweissenburg, or Alba Regalis, the royal city of Hungary. It was situated in a marshy plain, and the roads leading to it were carried through the marshes over long causeways, the heads of which were protected by fortified works and strong garrisons. The Turks commenced operations against one of these posts. They cut and made an enormous number of fascines in the neighbouring woods, with which they filled up the marshes around the work, so that they could reach the causeway in its rear, and assault it on all sides at once. Its defenders, seeing this, evacuated the work and fled towards the city, hotly pursued by the Turks. The guards at the city gate, fearing lest the Turks should enter at the heels of the fugitives, shut the gates, leaving only the wicket open. The foremost of the crowd of flying men got jammed in the wicket, and blocked the way of the remainder, who were overtaken by the Turks and put to the sword. Many of them leapt from the causeway into the marsh, where they served as targets for the Turkish archers and arquebusiers. This slaughter of their comrades so intimidated the garrison that they sent a trumpet to the Sultan to propose terms of surrender, and it was arranged that the garrison should march out with their arms and the honours of war, and depart free and uninjured. But a company of German reiters in the garrison had wheel-lock pistols, which greatly excited the curiosity of the Turks, who had never seen such weapons before, and they despoiled the horsemen of their pistols; otherwise the teru.s of the capitulation were faithfully observed.

Suliman placed strong garrisons in the two captured cities, making them the frontier fortresses of his Empire on the west, and trusting to them to bar any future invasion of Turkish Hungary by a German army. The Turks called Gran by the name of Usturghún, from its Latin name of Strigonium, and Stuhlweissenburg they called Istuli or Istilini. While Suliman was engaged in these sieges a Turkish force from Essek captured Fünfkirchen, and occupied all Southern Hungary. Suliman returned to Constantinople, and did not re-visit Hungary for more than twenty years.

The war was conducted by the Pashas of Buda, and a continual series of raids and forays went on along the ill-defined frontiers. In the articles of truce concluded from time to time it was always stipulated that the inhabitants who had paid taxes to one Government should not be called on to pay them over again to the other. The Sultan was occupied with wars in the Mediterranean against the Spaniards and Venetians, and in the Indian Ocean against the Portuguese; and Ferdinand, who had now become Emperor after the abdication of his brother Charles, was too busy at home to make further attempts upon Turkish Hungary. In 1552 Muhammad Pasha captured Temesvar, but during the long war the Turks gained little ground, and the German garrisons in Comorn and Raab still faced the brigades of Janissaries quartered at Gran and Stuhlweissenburg. In 1564 Ferdinand died, and his son Maximilian, who succeeded him in the Archduchy of Austria, was elected Emperor of Germany in his stead, and he prose cuted the war against the Turks with such vigour that it recalled the aged Sultan again into the field.

In 1565 a German army invaded Transylvania, and Suliman despatched an army of Crim Tartars to aid the Prince of Transylvania against the invaders. Tartars had not been seen in Hungary since the days of the great invasion of Batu Khan and his Mongols three centuries before, and they were no more welcome now than they were then. The Prince found them ruinous allies, and drove them from his county by force of arms, while the Germans reduced his towns and castles. Next year (1566) Sultan Suliman, now seventy-five years old, took the field with his grand army, and entered Hungary for the sixth time.

The Germans retired before him, and he marched northwards, and laid siege to Erlau. Count Nicholas Zriny, a Hungarian nobleman, with a small force, was deputed by Maximilian to watch the movements of the Turks, and he, learning that the Pasha of Bosnia was bringing up a convoy of supplies for the Sultan's army, surprised and routed him and captured the convoy. Suliman was so enraged at this insult that he raised the siege of Erlau and marched in pursuit of Zriny, who, with 3,500 men, threw himself into the small fortified town of Sigeth. Here Count Zriny, who has been called the Leonidas of Hungary, held out against repeated assaults of the besieging hosts for seventeen days, till his garrison was reduced to 600 men, and his last refuge in the upper castle was reduced to ruins. He then laid a train with a slow match to his powder magazine and sallied out at the head of his six hundred to sell their lives as dearly as possible. He soon fell covered with wounds, and all his followers shared his fate except a few who were saved by the Janissaries putting their own caps upon their heads—an instance of chivalry unfortunately rare in Turkish military annals. Many Turks who had entered the castle in search of booty perished in the explosion of the magazine, and it has been stated by Christian writers that 35,000 Turks perished at the siege of Sigeth. But writers in those days had little idea of the value of accuracy in matters historical or arithmetical.

The old Sultan died in his bed during the progress of the siege, worn out by a long life of ceaseless exertion. His death was concealed from the troops by the Oriental expedient of putting to death the physician who had attended him, until the conclusion of the siege. So the Turks say that Sultan Suliman conquered the towns of Sigeth, Gyula, and Kumar after his death.

The war was continued in a desultory fashion for two years more without advantage to either side, and in 1568 Sultan Selim II., nicknamed the Drunken, the son and successor of Suliman, being anxious to wrest the Island of Cyprus from the Venetians for the sake of its excellent wine, concluded a truce for eight years with the Emperor Maximilian on the basis of uti possidetis. The latter agreed to pay tribute for his half of Hungary, and moreover to pay up all arrears of tribute left unpaid by his father. The truce lasted for a quarter of a century, being renewed in 1575 and again in 1583. Yet a petty war of raids and forays, surprises and skirmishes went on continually along the ill-defined frontiers between German and Turkish Hungary, just as in the case of the borders between England and Scotland. Turkish Aghas and German captains sometimes took part in these excursions and alarms, but as long as no great force and no artillery were employed, the respective Governments did not think it worth while to interfere. The advantage in this petty warfare was mostly on the side of the Turks, to whom war was both the pleasure and the business of their lives.

The peace left the kingdom of Hungary pretty equally divided between the Emperor and the Sultan, the latter having the largest share. The central, eastern, and southern regions of the country belonged to the Turks; the western and northern districts to the Germans. Turkish Hungary, or Majáristán (Magyar-land), was divided, like ancient Gaul, into three parts, the chief towns of which were: Buda in the centre, Temesvar in the east, and Fünfkirchen, or Kanisa, in the south. Buda had eight sanjaks or military districts, Temesvar had seven, Kanisa had only four. The Pasha of Buda was Beglerbeg of all Hungary, chief of its Territorial Militia. He had a standard of three horse-tails, and the title of Vazir, and ranked with the Pashas of Baghdad in Asia, and of Cairo in Africa, as one of the three premier Pashas of the Empire, each of the three taking precedence of the other two in his own continent. He wore an aigrette like the Sultan, but upon the left side of his turban, and he held a divan or council, attended by the chief officials of the province, the doctors of law, and the Sarhad Agha (brigadier-general) of the Janissaries. It was fitting in a warlike nation like the Osmanlis that the land of Majáristán, thrust forward like a wedge into the heart of hostile Europe, should enjoy the highest rank among the provinces of the Empire.

Also see

The Second War + Third War

https://books.google.ca/books?id=vyowAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1239

The Fourth War

https://books.google.ca/books?id=vyowAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1389

(1684)

https://books.google.ca/books?id=vyowAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1500

https://books.google.ca/books?id=riEwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA53

The Fifth War

https://books.google.ca/books?id=riEwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA208

Also

A compendious history of the Turks: containing an exact account of the originall of that people; the rise of the Othoman family; and the valiant undertakings of the Christians against them: with their various events.

by Andrew Moore Gent, 1660.