[Illustration: PLAN OF VIENNA, WITH THE TURKISH APPROACHES.]
THE
SIEGES OF VIENNA
BY
THE TURKS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF KARL AUGUST SCHIMMER
AND OTHER SOURCES,
BY THE EARL OF ELLESMERE.
Think with what passionate delight
The tale was told in Christian halls,
How Sobieski turned to flight
The Muslim from Vienna’s walls.
How, when his horse triumphant trod
The Burghers’ richest robes upon,
The ancient words rose loud—From God
A man was sent, whose name was John.
_Palm Leaves, by Richard Monckton Miles._
_NEW EDITION._
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1879.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
The narrative specified in the Title from which the following pages
are in general borrowed, and in great part translated, is the work
of a gentleman resident in Vienna, and enjoying as such access to
the numerous and valuable sources of information extant in the
archives of that city. The other sources to which I have adverted in
the title-page, and which I have used for purposes of addition and
verification, are principally the well-known Turkish ‘History of Von
Hammer;’ ‘The Life of Sobieski, by the French Abbé Coyer;’ the ‘History
of Poland, by Monsieur de Salvandy;’ and the invaluable volume of ‘John
Sobieski’s Letters, translated from the Polish by the Count Plater.’ I
may add that, as many of the rarer printed tracts of the time, cited
by Mr. Schimmer, are to be found in the British Museum, I have not
failed to avail myself of the assistance of my friend Mr. Panizzi for
their examination. Towards the close of my labour, and in fact through
the narrative of the second siege, I have been less faithful as a
translator than in the earlier portion. The introduction of such a
character as Sobieski on the scene will be my apology to Mr. Schimmer
for this divergence, and for the insertion of such matter as I have
ventured to embroider on the ground of his narrative. Of the letters
of John Sobieski I have spoken my opinion in the text. The style of the
Abbé Coyer seems to me such as might entitle his biography of Sobieski
to take rank with Voltaire’s Charles XII. and other standard works
as a class book for students of the French language. I am indebted
to Monsieur de Salvandy for some details of the great battle for the
relief of Vienna which have escaped the notice of Ulric and the other
German narrators.
TWO SIEGES OF VIENNA,
BY
THE TURKS.
CHAPTER I.
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was followed by a rapid extension
of the arms and power of the conqueror, Mahomet II. Within a short
period he subjected Persia, the whole of Greece and the Morea, most
of the islands of the Archipelago, and Trebisond on the coast of Asia
Minor, the seat of the Greek empire of the Comnenes. The last of that
dynasty, Daniel Comnenus, he took prisoner, and shortly after caused
him with his family to be executed for the alleged offence, probably a
mere pretext, of an understanding with the Persians. In 1467 Mahomet
took from the Venetians, in addition to several possessions in the
Morea, the island of Eubœa, and, in 1474, Caffa from the Genoese.
The hostilities in which he was soon afterwards involved with Persia
hindered him from further pursuing his conquests against the Christian
powers, who on their side were prevented by their unhappy dissensions
and divisions from attempting to retrieve their losses. In general
their campaigns against the Turks were confined to purely defensive
operations, and it was not till a much later period that common need
and danger produced a more general system of aggressive action. In
1480 Mahomet II. attacked the island of Rhodes, the conquest of which
he had it much at heart to accomplish; he was, however, repulsed with
great loss by its defenders, the Knights of St. John. Upon this repulse
he directed his arms against Italy, took Otranto, and would probably
have pushed his conquests further in that country, if death had not
overtaken him, on an expedition to Persia, in 1481. He had overthrown
two empires and ten other sovereignties, and captured more than 200
cities. He directed as an inscription for his tomb the following
sentence, simple, but significant to his successors:—“I wished to take
Rhodes and subdue Italy.” His two immediate successors, Bajazet II.,
who reigned from 1481 to 1512, and Selim I. (1512 to 1520), prosecuted
schemes of conquest in various directions. The latter was in particular
the founder of an extensive naval power, before which those of Venice
and Genoa, so considerable at that time, were compelled to quail. He
conquered also Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and reduced to
subjection the powerful Sheikh of Mecca. In wisdom, however, in power,
and in glory, this Soliman was surpassed by his son, the second of that
name, the greatest of the Ottoman sovereigns, under whom the Turkish
empire attained a pitch of splendour which has not been equalled before
or since. In acquirements he was far beyond his age and country: in
addition to the Turkish language, he was master of Persian and Arabic;
he also understood Italian; and in that kind of metrical compositions
which are called, in Turkish, Misen, the critics of that country
pronounced him to exceed all others. In military achievements he was
equally distinguished among the sovereigns of his race, and ranks with
Mahomet II. as a conqueror. In the first year of his reign, he acquired
in Belgrade the key of the Danube, and opened the way for his further
advance into Hungary. In the following year, 1522, he carried into
execution the unaccomplished wish and dying injunction of Mahomet II.
in the subjection of Rhodes, and on Christmas-night held his triumphant
entry into the conquered city. Soon afterwards he directed his forces
again upon Hungary, in which country internal dissensions afforded him
a favourable opportunity for the furtherance of his plans of conquest.
King Louis II. of Hungary, the feeble successor of his illustrious
father, Ladislaus II., had ascended the throne in 1516, under the
guardianship of the Emperor Maximilian I., and of Sigismund, King
of Poland, his uncle. At the very commencement of his reign, an
insurrection of his nobles threatened to deprive him of the throne.
He had, moreover, mortally offended the ambitious John Zapolya,
Count of Zips, who held as wayvode the government of Transylvania,
and excited him to the most destructive projects by passing him over
on the occasion of the election to the office of Palatine.[1] This
man, whose name, like that of Tekeli, is so intimately connected with
the misfortunes of his country, was born in 1487, the son of Stephen
Zapolya, one of the best officers of the great king and warrior Mathias
Corvinus. Inheriting the rewards of his father’s valour in the shape
of vast possessions and important governments, he was distinguished
through life by restless ambition, great talents for intrigue, and
on some occasions by acts of inventive cruelty which exceed in
extravagance of horror all that Suetonius has related of the Roman
emperors. By a reckless acceptance of Turkish aid, and by treachery as
reckless to his engagements with that power, he partially succeeded
in the great object of his adventurous life—his establishment on the
throne of Hungary. He died a natural death in 1540, leaving an infant
son, who succeeded him in the government of Transylvania, but who
struggled in vain to establish himself in that of Hungary. With his
death in 1570 this race of able and dangerous men fortunately became
extinct.
Soliman found little resistance to his invasion of Hungary.
Peterwaradin and the Bannat fell quickly into his hands; and on the
20th August, 1526, occurred that disastrous battle which in Hungary
still bears the name of the Destruction of Mohacs. Zapolya remained
with his forces motionless at Szegedin, careless of the fate of
kingdom or king; while the latter, with scarcely 20,000 men and little
artillery, stood opposed to a tenfold superior force of the Turks. The
wiser heads of the army advised the waiting for reinforcements, but
they were overruled by Paul Timoreus, Archbishop of Koloeza, a man who
seems to have united every quality which could unfit him for either
the sacred functions he had abandoned or those which he had assumed of
military command. The arrival, still hoped for, of Zapolya, with the
excellent cavalry of Transylvania, might have saved Hungary, but it
would have deprived the prelate of the chief command; and the latter
preferred to risk his own life, that of the sovereign, and the fortunes
of Hungary, in premature and unequal battle. In less than two hours
Soliman had gained a complete victory; the prelate paid the penalty
of his presumption with his life, and with him perished the flower of
the Hungarian nobility, many of his episcopal brethren, and lastly the
unfortunate King Louis himself, suffocated beneath his floundering
horse, and borne down by the weight of his armour, in a swamp through
which he was urging his flight. The jewels in which the plume of his
helmet was set led ultimately to the discovery and identification of
the body. Scarcely 4000 men, led by the Palatine Bathory, escaped
under the cover of night from this disastrous battle. Soliman pushed
forward his troops, intoxicated with success, as far as the Platten
and Neusiedler lakes, laid waste the country, and burnt Fünfkirchen
and Pesth. On the news, however, of disturbances in Asia, he suddenly
retired, dragging with him 200,000 persons into captivity, but soon to
re-appear in terrible power at the gates of Vienna itself.
The circumstances of the succession to the throne of Hungary were
well calculated to invite and facilitate that return. Upon the death
of Louis without issue, in virtue of his double connexion by marriage
with the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (afterwards Emperor), and of
a treaty concluded between his father Ladislaus and the House of
Austria, the right to the throne devolved upon the latter, of which
the Archduke was the representative. The royal widow, Mary, sister to
Ferdinand, convoked, for the purpose of ratifying this arrangement, a
diet at Presburgh, whither she had been compelled to fly when Pesth
surrendered. Her intention, however, was frustrated by the counter
measures of John Zapolya, who, after solemnizing the obsequies of Louis
at Stuhlweissenburg, had, with the assent of many of the magnates,
proclaimed himself king, and had caused himself to be crowned on the
11th November, 1526. He appealed to an ancient law by which no one
but a born Hungarian could occupy the throne, although it had never
been universally acknowledged, and had been set aside by the recent
arrangements. Ferdinand now sent against him an army under the command
of a brave man, Nicholas, Count of Salm, who defeated him near Tokay.
By the exertions of the faithful Palatine Bathory, a considerable party
was created in favour of Ferdinand, and his coronation was celebrated
at Pesth on the 21st August, 1527. After two successive defeats at
Erlau and Szinye, Zapolya was compelled to abandon Transylvania and to
take refuge in Poland. The magnates of Hungary now came over in great
numbers to the party of Ferdinand, and he rejoiced in the prospect of
an undisturbed possession of his newly acquired sovereignty. Zapolya,
however, though on all sides deserted, and destitute of troops and
money, persevered in his designs, and made every exertion to gain over
to his cause the nobility of Poland and their king, Sigismund, his
brother-in-law by marriage with his sister Barbara. These attempts
were in most instances fruitless; but he succeeded with Jerome Laski,
Wayvode of Siradia, a man of resource and enterprise, who showed
hospitality to the fugitive, and promised him every possible support.
Laski, however, conscious of the inadequacy of his own means to effect
his friend’s restoration in opposition to the House of Austria, gave
him the deplorable advice to betake himself to the Sultan. We are
assured by several contemporary writers that Zapolya long hesitated
to follow this fatal counsel; and it is not incredible that he felt
some compunction in throwing himself into the arms of the arch enemy
of Christianity, and in possibly exposing half Europe to Mahometan
invasion. The condition, however, of his affairs, and his ambition,
urged him to the desperate step, which was somewhat reconciled to his
conscience by the knowledge that Ferdinand himself had despatched an
embassy to Constantinople to conciliate the good will of the Sultan.
Zapolya overlooked the distinction that Ferdinand’s object was to
establish peace, while his own was to kindle a desolating war of race
and religion. So soon as his resolution was adopted, Laski undertook
in person a journey to Constantinople, accompanied by a renegade
Venetian, Ludovico Gritti, who served him as interpreter. He found
ready audience from the Sultan, who asked for nothing better than
pretext and opportunity to lead his hitherto unconquered forces into
the heart of Christendom. The Sultan had also been highly irritated
by the injudicious behaviour of Ferdinand’s envoy, a Hungarian named
Hobordansky, who had chosen this unpropitious juncture to demand not
merely the unconditional recognition of Ferdinand as king of Hungary,
but also to insist with violence on the restoration of Belgrade and
Jaicza. Demands such as these, addressed in peremptory language to a
sovereign flushed with recent conquest, produced their immediate and
natural consequences in facilitating the designs of Zapolya. A treaty
was without delay concluded, by which Soliman undertook to effect his
restoration to the throne of Hungary. Zapolya, by secret articles of
this compact, engaged in return not merely to pay an annual tribute in
money, but to place every ten years at the disposal of the Sultan a
tenth part of the population of Hungary, of both sexes, and to afford
for ever free passage through the kingdom to the Ottoman forces. At the
same time Soliman dismissed the envoys of Ferdinand with the menace
“that he would soon come to drive the latter out of a kingdom which
he had unjustly acquired; that he would look for him on the field of
Mohacs, or even in Pesth; and should Ferdinand shrink from meeting him
at either, he would offer him battle under the walls of Vienna itself.”
It was thus that through treason in one quarter, ill-timed audacity in
another, and the restless spirit of conquest and progression which the
Turks derived from their Tartar origin, the crisis arrived so pregnant
with evil consequences to an important portion of Christian Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is difficult to illustrate the very peculiar institutions of
Hungary by reference to those of any other state, as I know of none
which presents any near analogy to the office of Palatine. He is chosen
by the king out of four magnates presented for election by the states
of the kingdom. He represents the king, and is the constitutional
mediator between him and his subjects in all matters at issue between
them. As President of the highest court of appeal, he resembles our
Lord Chancellor, and, like him, takes precedence of all subjects except
the primate, the Archbishop of Gran. From 1765 to Joseph II.’s death in
1790 the office remained vacant. It has since been usually filled by an
Austrian Archduke.—E.
CHAPTER II.
From 1527 to September 11, 1529.
The Turkish preparations were pushed forward with great vigour, and
in a short time an immense army was assembled in the great plain of
Philippopolis. Although the Sultan had originally formed the intention
of marching with it in person, he nevertheless appointed to its command
his famous Grand Vizier and favourite Ibrahim. This man was by birth a
Greek, of moderate stature, dark complexion, and had been in infancy
sold as a slave to Soliman. He soon by his intelligence, his musical
talents, his aspiring and enterprising spirit, won the favour of his
master, and after Soliman’s accession to the throne participated
with him in the exercise of the highest powers of the state, in the
character of Vizier, brother-in-law, friend, and favourite, and enjoyed
such distinctions as neither Turkish favourite nor minister has ever
before or since attained. He not only often interchanged letters with
his master, but frequently his clothes, slept in the same chamber,
had his own seraglio in the Hippodrome, and his own colour, sky-blue,
for the livery of his pages and for his standard. He insisted in his
communications with Ferdinand on the title of brother and cousin. In a
Latin verse which he addressed to the Venetian ambassador, he signified
that while his master had the attributes of Jupiter, he himself was the
Cæsar of the world. Yet all this exaltation was destined to the usual
termination of the career of an Oriental favourite. He was murdered in
1536 by command of Soliman, on suspicion of a design to place himself
on the throne.
Soliman had intended to put his army in motion in 1528, but his stores
were destroyed, and his arrangements paralysed by rains of such
extraordinary violence, that the troops, and even his own person, were
endangered. A year’s respite was thus afforded to the Austrians,—the
more valuable to them because, as all accounts concur in stating, they
had in the first instance placed little reliance on the accounts of the
Turkish preparations for war, and had entertained a very unreasonable
disbelief in any serious intention on the part of Soliman to carry his
menaces into execution. The threats and vaunting of Oriental despots
may generally be received with much allowance for grandiloquence; but
in this instance Ferdinand should have remembered that the sovereign
who uttered them had already once overrun Hungary to the frontiers
of Austria, and had good reason, from past experience, to anticipate
success in a renewed invasion. On the 10th of April, 1529, the Sultan
left Constantinople at the head of an army of at least 200,000 men.
Zapolya, on his part, was not idle. He applied to nearly all the powers
of Europe, not excepting even the Pope, Clement VII., whom he knew to
be at this period on bad terms with the Emperor, urging them to support
what he termed his just cause. These applications were unavailing;
the Pope replied by excommunicating him, by exhorting the magnates of
Hungary to the support of Ferdinand, and by urging the latter to draw
the sword without delay in defence of Christendom.
Zapolya, supported by the money of some Polish nobles, and by some
bands of Turkish freebooters, pushed forward early in April into
Hungary at the head of about 2000 men, summoning on all sides the
inhabitants to his support. Near Kaschan, however, he was attacked
and completely routed by the Austrian commander Da Rewa. Meanwhile
the Turkish army advanced without other hindrance than heavy rains
and the natural difficulties of the passes of the Balkan, and by the
end of June had effected the passage of the rivers of Servia, and
had crossed the Hungarian frontier. Before the main body marched
a terrible advanced guard of 30,000 men, spreading desolation in
every direction. Their leader was a man worthy of such command of
bloodthirsty barbarians, the terrible Mihal Oglou, whose ancestor, Kose
Mihal, or Michael of the Pointed Beard, derived his origin from the
imperial race of the Palæologi, and on the female side was related to
the royal houses of France and Savoy. His descendants were hereditary
leaders of those wild and terrible bands of horsemen called by the
Turks “Akindschi,” _i. e._ “hither streaming,” or “overflowing;” by
the Italians, “Guastadori,” the spoilers; by the French, “Faucheurs”
and “Ecorcheurs,” mowers and flayers; but by the Germans universally
“Sackman,” possibly because they filled their own sacks with plunder,
or emptied those of other people. Whether this explanation be correct
or not, it is certain that the name long retained its terrors in
Austria, and that down to the beginning of the eighteenth century
mothers used it to frighten their unruly children.
Meanwhile Zapolya, encouraged by the progress of the Turk, had ventured
his own person in an advance upon Hungary; many of his old adherents
joined his standard, and he collected an army of some 6000 men, with
which he came on to join the Sultan. The meeting took place in the
field of Mohacs. Zapolya was received with acclamation by the Turks,
and with presents and other marks of honour by the Sultan, whose hand
he kissed in homage for the sovereignty of Hungary. The Sultan assured
him of his future protection, and awarded him among other royal honours
a body-guard of Janissaries. After the army had refreshed itself it
proceeded slowly, occupying the fortified places to the right and left;
and in thirteen days after its departure from Mohacs the Sultan’s
tents were pitched in the vineyards of Pesth, the inhabitants of which
had for the most part fled either to Vienna or Poland. The garrison
consisted of only about a thousand German and Hungarian soldiers, under
Thomas Nadasky, who in the first instance showed the best disposition
towards a manful defence. The Turks, however, after continuing a
well-sustained fire from the neighbouring heights for four days, were
proceeding—although no breach had been effected—to storm the defences,
when the courage of the garrison failed them. The latter, with the few
remaining inhabitants, retired into the citadel, and the Turks occupied
the town. Nadasky was firmly resolved to hold out to the last, with
the view of delaying as long as possible the advance of the enemy; but
the soldiers had lost all courage, and preferred to obey two of their
German officers, who entered into a capitulation with the Turks, and
answered Nadasky’s remonstrances by putting him into confinement. The
Vizier rejoiced at the prospect of removing an obstacle which might
have materially affected the ulterior plan of his campaign at so
advanced a period of the season, and eagerly accepted the conditions,
promising them life and liberty; and thus by mutiny and treason was
the fortress surrendered on the 7th September. The traitors soon found
reason to repent their crime. The event was one which, in justice to
the Sultan, demands a close investigation, for the naked circumstances
were such as to fix a stigma of bad faith on that sovereign, who,
however open to the charge of cruelty, was usually distinguished by a
rigid and even magnanimous adherence to his word. In many accounts,
contemporary and later, he is accused in this instance of a reckless
violation of his promises. It is certain that the garrison was
massacred, but there is reason to believe that this occurred neither
with the sanction of the Sultan nor without provocation on the part of
the victims. The Janissaries were in a temper bordering on mutiny on
being disappointed of a general plunder of the fortress. Stones were
flying at their officers, and the second in their command had been
wounded. Through the ranks of these men the garrison had to defile
amid expressions of contempt for their cowardice. A German soldier,
irritated at this treatment, exclaimed that if he had been in command
no surrender would have exposed them to it. This information being
received, as might be expected, with redoubled insult, the stout German
lost patience, and with his sword he struck a Janissary to the ground.
The general massacre which naturally ensued was certainly not by the
order, and probably against the will, of the Sultan, as indeed the
writer, Cantemir, a bitter enemy of the Turk, acknowledges. Not more
than sixty men escaped this sweeping execution, part of whom escaped
by flight and part were made prisoners. A proof, however, of Soliman’s
appreciation of honour and courage is to be found in the fact that he
not only eulogized the fidelity and firmness of Nadasky, but dismissed
him on his parole not to serve against the Turks during the war. This
generosity is the more to be praised as it was exercised in the teeth
of the resistance not only of the embittered Janissaries, but of the
Hungarian traitors in the suite of Zapolya. The fortress was placed
in the hands of that leader, who remained behind with a sufficient
garrison in charge of it, while the Turkish army pursued its triumphant
progress over the Austrian frontier. On the 14th September Zapolya
was solemnly installed on the Hungarian throne, the ceremony being
attended, however, on the part of Soliman only by the Segbanbaschi, or
second in command of the Janissaries, and by Soliman’s commissioner in
Hungary, the Venetian Gritti, whose name has been already mentioned. A
Turkish commandant was left in the place, and the Pacha of Semendria,
Mohammed Bey, was sent on in advance towards Vienna to obtain
intelligence and clear the roads.
CHAPTER III.
Before Soliman quitted Pesth he had issued a proclamation to the effect
that “Whosoever in Hungary should withhold obedience and subjection
from the Count John of Zips, Wayvode of Transylvania, whom the Sultan
had named king, had replaced in the sovereignty, and had engaged
himself to uphold, should be punished and extirpated with fire and
sword; but that those who should submit themselves should be stoutly
protected, and maintained in the possession of their property and
privileges.” On the 21st of September, Soliman with his main army
crossed the Raab at Altenburg in Hungary, and on the same day his
advanced corps of plunderers and destroyers under Michael Oglou, after
spreading terror far and wide around them, reached the neighbourhood of
Vienna. It may be questioned whether the main objects of the campaign
were promoted by the employment of this force. As a scourge to the
defenceless portion of an enemy’s country, none could be so effective;
but though terror may paralyze the resistance of the scattered and
the weak, cruelty serves to excite the indignation and organize the
resistance of those beyond its immediate reach; and in the case of
the Sackman cruelty was combined with a reckless treachery, which was
laid to the account and affixed to the reputation of the general body
of the invaders and their great leader, in some instances hardly with
justice. 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,[2] 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 water 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.” The irresistible pressure forward of the main army, the threats
of the Sultan, and the merciless fury of the Sackman, produced their
consequences in the prompt surrender of most of the places which were
unprovided with garrisons and adequate defences. In this manner fell
Fünfkirchen, Stahlweissenburg, and Pesth, without a blow, into the
hands of the enemy. In Gran the inhabitants even refused to admit the
garrison sent by Ferdinand for its occupation, and the Archbishop Paul
Tomori so far forgot his honour and duty as to procure the surrender
both of town and citadel to the Sultan, to whose camp the prelate also
betook himself. Komorn was abandoned by its garrison. Raab also fell,
but not till it had been set on fire by the fugitives. Altenburg in
Hungary was betrayed into the hands of the enemy. Brück on the Leitha,
on the contrary, defended itself stoutly; and the Sultan, pleased with
the constancy and courage of its defenders, willingly accorded them
terms in virtue of which they were pledged to do him homage only after
the fall of Vienna. Content with this compact, he ceased his attack
on the city, marched past under its walls, and strictly forbade all
injury to the district in its dependence. Wiener Neustadt also defended
itself with spirit, and in one day repelled five attempts to storm
its defences in the most heroic manner. Several other places, among
them Closterneuburg, and Perchtoldsdorf, and some castles held out
with success.[3] Such occasional opposition was scarcely distasteful
to Soliman, for whom invariable and cheap success had not its usual
attraction. His far-reaching ambition looked to a sovereignty of the
West corresponding to that which his ancestors had asserted over the
East, and he remarked with complacency the valour of men whom he
destined for his future subjects. For the same reason he detested
cowardice in the ranks of his opponents, and punished it with the same
severity as if it had exhibited itself in his own. In contemplation
also of the immensity of his force, the rapidity of his progress, and
the unprepared condition of Austria, he held success for certain,
and isolated instances of resistance could, as he conceived, only
afford useful practice to his troops without affecting the general
and inevitable result. In fact, the aspect of the time for Austria
was one of gloom and danger. The main force of the enemy was hard
upon the frontier, which had already been crossed at several points
by the terrible bands of Michael Oglou; and from the walls of Vienna
the horizon was seen reddened with the flames of burning villages,
while within the city little or nothing had yet been done for its
fortification and defence. It is true that, on the near approach of
the danger, Ferdinand had called meetings of the States, as well in
Austria as in the other provinces of his hereditary dominions; and had
for this object proceeded in person through Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol,
and Bohemia. The cause was everywhere taken up with much alacrity. In
Austria the tenth man was called out for service; the other provinces
undertook to furnish considerable forces; and Bohemia promised, in
case of the actual invasion of Austria, to send to her aid every man
capable of bearing arms. The King, however, saw but too well that
with all this aid he would be no match in the field for the Sultan’s
force; and he turned his thoughts to the Empire, in which the religious
disputes of the time presented serious difficulties in the way of the
assistance he required. The danger, however, was pressing enough to
allay for the moment even the heats engendered by the Reformation. At
the Diet of Spire, which was attended by most of the Electoral and
other Princes of the Empire, Ferdinand addressed to them an urgent
appeal, in which he made a prominent allusion to the fact that Soliman
had declared his determination never to lay down his arms till he had
erected a monument to his victories on the bank of the Rhine. The
voice of party was indeed silenced by this appeal to a common interest;
but the succour, voted after protracted discussion, was nevertheless
scanty, not exceeding 12,000 foot and 4000 horse, as the contingent
for the Germanic body. Then followed interminable debates as to the
selection of a commander; and the Turks were over the Save and in
possession of Pesth before the Germanic contingent was mustered. There
were not wanting men hard of belief, pedants of the true German stamp,
who maintained that mere apprehension had exaggerated the danger; and
finally it was agreed at Ratisbon, to which city the assembly had
transferred itself, to send a deputation of two persons to Hungary
to investigate the state of affairs on the spot.[4] They went; and,
having the good fortune to escape the hands of the Turks, returned with
evidence sufficient to satisfy the doubts of their sagacious employers.
On the day on which Soliman crossed the Hungarian frontier, a
detachment of Imperial cavalry under Paul Bakics encountered a body of
the Turkish light troops in the immediate neighbourhood of Vienna, and
took a few prisoners. The conquerors showed themselves apt disciples
in cruelty of the Turks, and even exceeded their teachers, who with
the sabre usually made short work with their captives, whereas the
men now taken were racked or tortured before they were bound together
with ropes and flung into the Danube. Meanwhile the near approach
of the Turks and the delay of all succour raised consternation in
Vienna to the highest pitch. The news of the fall of Pesth, which
reached it on the 17th September, suggested flight to all who had the
means of escape. In defiance of an urgent summons on the part of the
authorities, addressed to all capable of bearing arms, many burghers
left the city on pretence of bearing their women and children to places
of safety, and few of these returned. These delinquents were called
afterwards to severe account, though much excuse was to be found for
such conduct on the part of individuals in the shameful neglect of
their rulers, who had postponed measures of defence till resistance
appeared hopeless. The countless hosts of the invader had crossed the
frontier before any force had been collected which could even impede
its advance. The royal troops encamped at Altenburg hardly amounted
to 5000 men, who on the first appearance of the enemy effected a rapid
retreat in order not to be cut off from Vienna. The succours promised
by the Empire were not forthcoming, though messenger after messenger
was sent to hurry their advance. Even the Bohemian troops approached
but by slow marches, under their leader John of Bernstein, and required
every exhortation to greater diligence. At length Duke Frederick
of the Palatinate, the prince elected as leader of the army of the
Empire, arrived on the 24th of September at Lintz with the scanty
levies, amounting to a few thousands, which had as yet been collected.
At Lintz he held conference with Ferdinand as to the measures to be
pursued, and then hastened forward to effect his entrance into Vienna
before the arrival of the Turks. On the 26th, however, he received at
Grein the intelligence that the Turks had appeared in force in the
neighbourhood of the city. He was at first resolutely determined to
cut his way at all hazards, but when he learned that both the bridges
over the Danube were in possession of the enemy, being satisfied that
by the attempt he could only involve his feeble forces in certain and
useless destruction, he determined to halt at Crems for reinforcements.
His cousin, however, the brave Pfalzgraf Philip, succeeded in throwing
himself into the city, with a small number of Spanish and German
troops, three days before it was surrounded by the Turks.
In Vienna the necessary preparations had now been made with almost
superhuman exertion, but in such haste and with so little material,
that they could only be considered as very inadequate to the emergency.
The city itself occupied then the same ground as at present, the
defences were old and in great part ruinous, the walls scarcely six
feet thick, and the outer palisade so frail and insufficient that
the name _Stadtzaun_, or city hedge, which it bears in the municipal
records of the time, was literally as well as figuratively appropriate.
The citadel was merely the old building which now exists under the
name of Schweizer Hof. All the houses which lay too near the wall
were levelled to the ground; where the wall was specially weak or out
of repair, a new entrenched line of earthen defence was constructed
and well palisaded; within the city itself, from the Stuben to the
Kärnthner or Carinthian gate, an entirely new wall twenty feet high
was constructed with a ditch interior to the old. The bank of the
Danube was also entrenched and palisaded, and from the drawbridge to
the Salz gate protected with a rampart capable of resisting artillery.
As a precaution against fire the shingles with which the houses were
generally roofed were throughout the city removed. The pavement of the
streets was taken up to deaden the effect of the enemy’s shot, and
watchposts established to guard against conflagration. Parties were
detached to scour the neighbouring country in search of provisions,
and to bring in cattle and forage. Finally, to provide against the
possibility of a protracted siege, useless consumers, women, children,
old men, and ecclesiastics were, as far as possible, forced to withdraw
from the city. Though this latter measure was successful for its
special purpose, and prevented any failure of subsistence during the
investment of the city, it had the melancholy consequence that many
of the fugitives met with massacre or captivity at the hands of the
Turkish light troops. In the neighbourhood of Traismauer, for instance,
in the very beginning of September, a body of no less than 5000 were
unsparingly massacred by the Sackman. To meet the financial exigency of
the time, an extraordinary contribution was levied throughout Austria.
A bishop was taxed 5 florins, a mitred prelate 4, an unmitred 3, a
count 4, the rest of the noblesse, as also the secular clergy, and all
citizens who were accounted to possess 100 florins, 1 florin each;
peasants, servants, and others of the poorer classes a kreutzer in
the dollar; day labourers 10 pennies, and every communicant 9 pennies
(see “Chronicon Mellicense,” part vii. p. 572). Should these sums
appear small, the value of money must be considered at a period when a
considerable country-house might be purchased for 50 florins, and when
200 florins were reckoned a competence.
In respect of the active defence, the Pfalzgraf Philip had taken the
command in the city. Associated with him was the veteran hero Nicholas,
Count of Salm, who had crossed the March field from Upper Hungary
with a chosen band of light troops, and on whose proved fidelity and
valour Ferdinand principally relied for the defence of the bulwark
of Christendom. These qualities had been tried through fifty-six
years of service in the field, and recently in the victory of Pavia
(1522), in which he had borne a distinguished share, having crossed
swords and exchanged wounds with the French king, Francis I. At the
age of seventy, he now undertook a heavier responsibility than any he
had yet incurred; for though the Pfalzgraf’s rank gave him a nominal
precedence, the confidence both of the soldiery and the citizens rested
chiefly on the veteran leader.
The other commanders were William, Baron of Roggendorf, general of the
cavalry, who had distinguished himself in the Italian wars; Marcus
Beck, of Leopoldsdorf, commissary general; Ulrich Leyser, master of
the ordnance; John Katzianer; Leonhard, Baron of Vels; Hector Eck,
of Reischach; and Maximilian Leyser. Of Austrian states-deputies and
councillors, the following were in the city:—George von Puechhaim,
governor of Lower Austria; Nicholaus Rabenhaupt, chancellor; Rudolph
von Hohenfeld, Felician von Pottschach, privy councillors; John von
Greissenegg, commandant of Vienna, and of the foot militia of the
city; Melchior von Lamberg; Trajan von Auersberg; Bernardin Ritschen;
Helfreich von Meggun; Erasmus von Obritschen; Raimund von Dornberg;
Otto von Achterdingen; John Apfalterer; Siegfried von Kollonitsch;
Reinbrecht von Ebersdorf; and Hans von Eibenswald. The Styrian troops
were commanded by the gallant Abel von Holleneck; the Bohemian, by
Ernst von Brandenstein. The contingent of the Empire consisted of two
regiments, under Kuntz Gotzman and James von Bernan. Luis de Avallos,
Melchior de Villanel, Juan de Salinas, and Juan de Aquilera, commanded
the Spaniards. The magistrates remaining in the city were Wolfgang
Troy, burgomaster; Paul Bernfuss, judge; and the councillors Sebastian
Eiseler, Sebastian Schmutz, and Wolfgang Mangold. The limits of this
work do not admit a list of subordinate officers. It would include
names connected with the first houses of the German and Austrian
nobility. Among these were several who had joined the garrison as
volunteers. In the camp of the Imperialists at Crems were two young
nobles, Rupert, Count of Manderscheid, and Wolf, Count of Oettingen,
so zealous in the cause, that after the city had been invested they
swam the Danube, and were drawn up over the wall near the Werder gate.
The garrison altogether amounted to 20,000 infantry and 2000 horse;
the armed burghers to about 1000. The distribution of the troops was
as follows:—The Pfalzgraf Philip occupied, with 100 cuirassiers and
14 companies of the troops of the Empire, the Stuben quarter from the
Rothenthurm to the middle of the curtain towards the Kärnthner gate.
Thence the line of defence was taken up to the Augustine Convent by
Eck von Reischach, with 3000 infantry. Thence to the Burggarten were
posted the Styrian troops under Abel von Holleneck. The citadel was
held by Leonard von Vels, with 3000 chosen troops. Thence to the
Scottish gate Maximilian Leyser was in command. In the four principal
squares of the city were posted cavalry, under William von Roggendorf,
ready to advance in any direction. From the Scottish gate to the Werder
gate were posted 2000 Austrians and 700 Spaniards, under Rupert von
Ebersdorf. The tower in the spot called Elend, was strengthened with
a rampart, and mounted with heavy guns to annoy the Turkish flotilla,
which covered the Danube as far as Nussdorf. Finally, from the Werder
gate to the Rothenthurm, including the Salz gate, were posted 2000
Bohemians under Ernst von Brandenstein and William von Wartenberg, with
a detachment of cavalry under John, Count of Hardegg. The artillery
mounted on the defences appears to have consisted of between sixty and
seventy pieces, of the very various calibres and denominations in use
at this period. A small armament according to our present ideas, if
the circuit of the defences and the lightness of some of the pieces
be considered, but respectable perhaps for the time, and more than
a match for the light pieces of the Turks. The city would probably
have been still less provided with this arm of defence, but for the
Emperor Maximilian, with whom the fabrication and use of artillery had
been a favourite study and pursuit, of which his heirs and country
now reaped the benefit.[5] The care of this artillery was committed
to seventy-four gunners under the master of the ordnance, Ulrich
Leyser. After all these preparations the defences were very weak,
even according to the engineering science of the time. There were no
bastions on which the guns could be properly disposed. It is mentioned
that several of the pieces which had been adjusted to embrasures or
loopholes opened in the wall were found useless in that position,
and were removed to the roofs of neighbouring buildings; the ditches
were dry, and it was left to the defenders to supply by gallantry and
endurance the deficiencies of art and the precautions of prudence.
The hour of trial was at hand; on the 20th September, Altenburg
surrendered, after a gallant defence, and its garrison, 300 strong,
were made prisoners. These men were interrogated by the Sultan as to
the condition of Vienna, the strength of its garrison, &c., and having,
as would appear, answered in terms which agreed with his ideas of the
truth, were well treated by him, but forced to accompany him on his
march. Soon afterwards Brück on the Leitha and Trautmannsdorf fell into
his hands by capitulation; and, freed from these petty obstacles, he
advanced with his collected might, and with every prospect of achieving
the ruin of the empire in the subjection of its capital.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] “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.”
[3] These instances illustrate the fact that Soliman was ill provided
with siege artillery. The Turks at this period, as will be seen in the
case of Vienna, relied principally on their skill in mining for the
capture of strong places, a method very effective in their hands, but
slow.—E.
[4] These commissioners were civilians. One of them was a lawyer,
answering probably to our barrister of six years’ standing.—E.
[5] See Ränke, “Deutsche Geschichte,” vol. iii. p. 202.
CHAPTER IV.
From September 16 to September 26, 1529.
In Vienna it was resolved by a council of war, as it was not possible
to face the overwhelming numbers of the enemy in the open field,
to neutralize, at least as far as possible, the advantages of any
positions in the neighbourhood by the sacrifice of the suburbs, and
of all buildings within range of fire from the walls. A more timely
adoption of this indispensable measure would have obviated much of
the violence and misery which attended its hurried execution. The
necessity was one which from the end of August, and after the fall
of Pesth, had been obviously inevitable. By the 16th of November the
whole neighbourhood was swarming with the bands of Michael Oglou, who
spared neither age nor sex; children, old people, and pregnant women
were murdered with every circumstance of cruelty, and those who were
spared from the sabre were swept into slavery. A contemporary writer,
Peter Stern von Labach, describes these horrors in the following
terms: “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
peasantry fled either to the depths of the forests, or to the city,
and increased by their narratives the consternation there prevailing.
By the 20th September every road which led from east and south towards
the city was crowded with fugitives endeavouring to save themselves and
their moveables. As however the Eastern horsemen were familiar with
all difficulties of ground, and overcame all impediments of morass,
or forest, or mountain, few of the fugitives escaped. A few fortified
towns and castles only held out. A chronicle of the time asserts that
scarcely a third part of the inhabitants of Upper Austria survived the
invasion. It was only on the 22nd September, when the enemy was at the
gates of Vienna, that the resolution we have mentioned was finally
adopted, to sacrifice to the general security the entire suburbs and
the many sumptuous buildings which they included. The most valuable
of the moveable property was first conveyed into the city, and the
work of destruction commenced. It was soon, however, found that it
had commenced too late for its orderly and deliberate execution. It
was left to the proprietors to save hastily what they could; the rest
was given up for the soldiery to glean, and the torch was applied to
all the buildings. Disorders and excesses such as might be expected
were the result, and the inhabitants were little better treated by
the foreign soldiery than they would have been by the Turk. That many
wine-casks should have been broken in the cellars, the owners of which
at this period cultivated the vine to a great extent, and much store
of provisions and other valuables burnt, and that even the churches
should have been desecrated and plundered, can scarcely be matter
of censure, except so far as it may be conjectured that with better
discipline on the part of the soldiery, the articles destroyed might
in part have been removed; but the wretched people who were conveying
the sole remnants of their property to the city were remorselessly
plundered, misused, and even murdered on any attempt at resistance. The
example of this unrestrained licence spread its effects even to within
the walls. Several houses in the city were broken open and plundered,
and even the citadel itself was entered by a band of marauders. A
proclamation was speedily issued against these disorders, and put in
force by the erection and employment of a gallows at the so-called
Lugeck. Eight hundred houses had within four days been burnt. Among
the most important of these were—the great City Hospital, dedicated
to the Holy Ghost, which stood between the city and the Wien river,
the situation of which, till about twenty years ago, was marked by an
ancient pillar, bearing an inscription, with the date 1332 (from this
building, which also had a fine church, the sick and helpless inmates
were transferred first to the convent at the Himmel’s Pforte, and next
to the desecrated church of the nunnery of St. Clara)—the Franciscan
Convent at St. Theobald’s, the present corn-market—the churches of
St. Anthony and St. Coloman, between the city and the Wien river—the
great nunnery of St. Nicholas, before the Stuben gate, and that of St.
Magdalen, near the Scottish gate—the Closterneuburgerhof, also near the
Scottish gate. Finally, in order to deprive the Turks of the advantage
of a stronghold, on an eminence near the city, it was unfortunately
necessary to destroy the castle on the Kahlenberg (Leopoldsberg),
formerly the residence of the Margrave Leopold, who died in the odour
of sanctity. The last measure adopted was that of walling up and
fortifying all the gates, except the Salz gate, which was left open as
a sally-port.
On the 23rd September, while the suburbs were in full conflagration,
a strong body of Turks pressed forward as far as St. Mark’s, cut to
pieces a number of invalids who had scandalously been left there
to their fate, and ventured still further on the high road. This
occasioned the first sally from the city of five hundred cuirassiers
under Count Hardegg. These having pressed too far forward, the Turks
took advantage of the ruins of some of the burnt houses to attack them
in flank while the front was also engaged with superior numbers. The
cuirassiers fell back in disorder without waiting for a support which
was detached to their assistance. They must have had good horses and
sharp spurs, for only three were killed, but six, with a cornet, Cornet
Christopher von Zedlitz, were taken. The Turks immediately placed
the heads of the three killed on the points of lances, and to make
the number of the dead equal to that of the prisoners, they beheaded
four of the invalids of St. Mark’s, and compelled the prisoners to
bear the seven heads to the presence of the Sultan, then on his march
from Brück on the Leitha, in order to gladden him as soon as possible
with the sight of these grisly trophies of his first success over the
defenders of Vienna. He interrogated the prisoners as to the strength
of the garrison and the present position of Ferdinand, on both which
points they gave him true replies. Upon this Soliman released four of
the prisoners, presented each with three ducats, and sent them back
to Vienna with the following message:—“If the city would surrender on
terms, the conditions should be arranged with its commanders without
the walls, none of his people should be allowed to enter the city, and
the property and persons of the inhabitants should be secured. It was
Soliman’s sole desire to follow the King till he should find him, and
then to retire to his own dominions. Should the city, however, venture
to resist, he would not retreat till he had reduced it, and then he
would spare neither old nor young, not the child in the mother’s womb,
and would so utterly destroy the city that men should not know where
it stood. He would not rest his head till Vienna and the whole of
Christendom were under his subjection, and it was his settled purpose
within three days, namely on the feast of St. Michael, to break his
fast in Vienna.” The other three prisoners with the cornet he retained
about his person. To the latter he showed great favour, caused him to
be sumptuously attired in silk and gold, and kept him constantly in
his suite. At the close of this narrative will be found the curious
and lively account of the prisoner, preserved in the collection of the
Baron von Enenkel in the archives of Vienna.
At length, September 29th, the Grand Vizier with the main army appeared
before the city. On the 25th, nevertheless, two companies of imperial
troops, raised from Nuremberg, effected their entrance through the Salz
gate with drums beating and colours flying. They related that between
Tuln and Traismauer they had fallen in with a body of 5000 fugitives
on foot and 3000 in boats, mostly women, children, and regular clergy,
who on the following day had been overtaken and destroyed by the bands
of Michael Oglou. On the 26th September, Soliman sent into the city a
Bohemian, one of the garrison which had surrendered in Altenburg, with
the contemptuous offer that he would send the other Bohemians there
taken to strengthen the garrison of Vienna. The man was sent back
accompanied by two Turkish prisoners, each of whom was presented with
two ducats, with the reply that they had more garrison than enough in
Vienna, and that Soliman might keep his Bohemian prisoners. Soon after
the arrival of the main army a discharge of arrows, which literally
darkened the air, was followed by a first summons to surrender,
succeeded by a second and a third. These remaining unanswered,
Soliman sent in four prisoners richly dressed, and liberally supplied
with presents, with a repetition both of his offer of a favourable
capitulation, and of his threats in case of resistance. Officers should
be put to death with torture, the site of the city sown with salt and
ashes, &c. The stern commanders, however, merely despatched in return a
like number of Turkish prisoners, as richly provided with presents and
apparel, but without an answer either to his threats or promises.
CHAPTER V.
From September 26 to October 2, 1529.
The Turkish army had scarcely arrived in the neighbourhood of the city,
when a forest of tents rose from the ground, presenting so striking
a spectacle, that even Austrian contemporary writers are excited to
exchange their usual phlegmatic style in describing it for something of
the Oriental.
The country within sight of the walls as far as Schwechat and
Trautmannsdorf was covered with tents, the number of which was
calculated at 30,000, nor could the sharpest vision from St. Stephen’s
tower overlook the limit of the circle so occupied. The flower of the
Turkish force, the Janissaries, took possession of the ruins of the
suburbs, which afforded them an excellent cover from the fire of the
besieged. They also cut loopholes in the walls yet standing, from
which they directed a fire of small ordnance and musketry on the walls
of the city. The tent of Soliman rose in superior splendour over all
others at Simmering, on the spot and to the extent now occupied by
the building called the Neugebäude. Hangings of the richest tissue
separated its numerous compartments from each other. Costly carpets,
and cushions and divans studded with jewels, formed the furniture. Its
numerous pinnacles were terminated by knobs of massive gold. The colour
of the chief compartment was green striped with gold. Five hundred
archers of the Royal guard kept watch there night and day. Around it
rose in great though inferior splendour, the tents of ministers and
favourites; and 12,000 Janissaries, the terror of their enemies, and
not unfrequently of their masters, were encamped in a circle round
this central sanctuary. The Pacha of Roumelia was posted opposite the
Stuben gate, and thence down to the Danube, securing the baggage and
its attendant train of horses, mules, and camels: the latter, some
20,000 in number, were at pasture in the meadows. The camp of the
Vizier Ibrahim extended from Simmering over the Wienerberg as far
as Spinnerin, and thence down the declivities as far as Wieden and
the high road opposite the Stuben and Kärnthner gates. The Pacha of
Bosnia occupied the line of the Wien river, from St. Ulrich and St.
Theobald to Penzing. The Pacha of Roumelia communicated with his right
by a body of the renegades who had joined the Turkish forces. From
St. Veit to near Döbling the second line was formed by the Pachas of
Scutari and Semendria; the camp of the Pacha Nastertsky with many
Christian prisoners was formed at Sporkenbühel. The corps of the
Pacha of Belgrade, which extended itself from Schönbrunn to beyond
Laxenburg, secured the rear of the besieging force. The guard of the
Royal tent was intrusted to the Pacha of Anatolia. The meadows and
islands of the Lobau as far as Nussdorf were occupied by the crews of
the Turkish flotilla, which had arrived on the 25th of September, with
charge to watch the banks and prevent the passage of succours. These
mariners, a well-trained and efficient body, were called Nasser or
Nassadists, and Martolos, a Turkish corruption of the German Matros.
The number of their vessels amounted to 400. Amid the ruins of the
suburbs the Janissaries and the asapes (a species of sappers) dug
trenches, from which they plied their arrows and musketry with such
assiduity, that no one without extreme danger could show himself on
the walls. Their archers’ aim was so accurate that they often sent
their missiles through the embrasures and loopholes of the defences.
It happened, however, fortunately for the weak garrison, that the
greater part of the Turkish heavy artillery had been left behind in
Hungary, its further transport having been rendered impossible by
heavy rains. For this reason the besiegers were reduced to limit
their operations to mining, and to a discharge of arrows so heavy and
incessant, that through the town generally, and especially in the
Kärnthner street, no one could walk abroad in safety. The line of
actual attack extended from the rampart near the Augustine Convent to
the tower situated between the Stuben and Rothenthurm gates, where Eck
von Reischach commanded. In face of this line of defence they excavated
a labyrinth of deep entrenchments, strengthened with earth and timber,
the Kärnthner tower being their principal point of assault. Their
artillery fire, probably from its inefficiency for breaching purposes,
was principally directed against the higher buildings of the city,
especially St. Stephen’s tower; but the arrows flew in all directions.
Some of the latter, probably discharged by persons of distinction, were
of costly fabric, painted, and even set with pearls, and were kept long
afterwards as curiosities. The total force of the besiegers is stated
by Peter von Labach and Meldemann at nearly 300,000, of whom, however,
only 100,000 were fully armed. The remainder was employed with the
baggage, ill equipped, untrained to arms, and rather a burthen than an
assistance to the more regular force. The artillery amounted to about
300 pieces, of which not more than thirty were of respectable calibre.
The investment of the city was completed, and the passage of the Danube
effectually closed by the Nassadists on the 27th September; and soon
afterwards three companies of German and Spanish horse made a sally
from the Burg gate. A skirmish ensued, in which some two hundred Turks
and several of their officers were killed. The Spaniards at the Werder
gate also opposed with success the landing of a cargo of arms, which
had arrived by the Danube from Kahlenberg. From this time forth, to
prevent unauthorized alarms, all the bells in the city were silenced,
and even the striking of the hour was forbidden, the only exception
being in favour of the prime bell of St. Stephen’s, which was allowed
to strike the quarters. On the 29th—that St. Michael’s day on which
Soliman had declared his purpose of breakfasting in Vienna—the Vizier
Ibrahim rode the circuit of the walls with a numerous suite. He had
wisely laid aside the usual costume of his high office, and exchanged
its turban of white and gold and flowing robe for a coloured shawl and
a simpler soldier’s attire. He adopted also the further precaution of
keeping pretty well out of gunshot. This ride was perhaps meant as a
substitute for that celebration of the saint’s day which the Sultan
had announced, but failed to observe. The Viennese, who were possessed
in the sixteenth century by the jocular propensity which they still
retain, did not fail to indulge it at the Sultan’s expense. Prisoners
were released with a message to him that his breakfast had waited for
him till the meat was cold, and he must be fain to content himself
with such poor entertainment as they could send him from the guns on
the wall. To this, however, about midday, they added a vigorous sally,
conducted by the brave Eck von Reischach, from the Kärnthner gate;
through which also the Spaniard Luis d’Avallos led a company of his
people, and killed many of the Turks, who had been attracted by the
grapes of the neighbouring vineyards. The Spaniards only retired at
last before superior numbers, with the loss of their cornet, Antonio
Comargo. On the same day, for the first time, a spy ventured out of
the city, who twice swam the Danube and returned in safety, but on
a third venture was no more heard of. Measures were now adopted for
taking an exact account of all provisions in the city, the duration of
the siege being uncertain. The troops were then divided into messes of
four men; and to each mess a ration was allotted of eight pounds of
bread and fifteen measures of wine. It was found necessary to diminish
this quantity to some of the foreign lanzknechts, who, unaccustomed to
the strong Austrian wines, found it sufficient to incapacitate them
for duty. Five-eighths of their wine and two pounds of their bread
were struck off. From St. Michael’s day, continued rains, and frosts,
unusual for the season, at night, caused much suffering to the Turks
in their light tents, unused as they were to the climate. The cold
continued after the rain abated, and was aggravated by severe storms.
The 30th September passed with no other incident than an assault by the
Turks on the guard at the drawbridge, which was driven into the city
with some loss. On this day a Christian boy and a girl escaped from
the Turkish camp into the city. The girl had been appropriated by a
rich pacha, who had lavished upon her adornment ornaments and apparel.
Upon a nocturnal alarm in the camp, which caused a general movement
towards the walls, they had left their tent and succeeded, under cover
of the darkness, in reaching the city. Much information was obtained
from both. On the 1st October, Friday, the principal day of the week
with the Turks, the Vizier with all the Agas paid their respects to the
Sultan, who, in consequence of the inclement weather, had taken up his
quarters in Ebersdorf.
Three hundred lanzknechts made a sally on this day from the Scottish
gate, and a conflict ensued without material advantage to either
side. Towards noon a man made his appearance near the drawbridge
attired as a Turk, who prayed earnestly for admission, saying that
he had been brought up in Turkey, but had come of Christian parents,
and was determined to revert to their faith. This man was questioned
both by ordinary interrogation and by torture, and gave much valuable
information as to the strength of the enemy. Of their artillery, he
said that he had seen ten of the largest guns, called wall-breakers,
each three fathoms long, in a boat on the Danube; that the number of
the Nassad boats was 400, manned with 5000 soldiers. He gave also the
first accurate information of the mines to the right and left of the
Kärnthner gate, a point of intense interest to the defenders of that
post, respecting which nothing had previously been ascertained. The
besieged, having now ascertained that one principal mine was directed
against the Karnther tower, and the other against the convent of St.
Clara, betook themselves with the utmost zeal to the excavation of
counter-mines at these two points, propping, at the same time, the
walls with posts and beams, so that upon any springing of the enemy’s
mines, the ruins might fall outwards and impede the access to the
breach. The General Roggendorf ensured to the informant a subsistence
for life in return for his intelligence; we may suppose, also, with
some consideration of the manner in which it had been extracted. On
the same evening a heavy fire was kept up on both sides, which led to
the expectation of an assault, but none ensued. On the 2nd of October,
the enemy’s mine under the Kärnthner tower was detected and destroyed.
A large body of Turks, however, about the same time, pressed forward
nearly to the Scottish gate, and retired, after a lively skirmish, with
ten prisoners and thirty heads of the slain. To meet the danger of the
enemy’s mines, guards were placed in all the cellars near the walls,
trenches dug near the fort of the rampart, and drums with peas strewed
on their parchment, or tubs filled with water, placed at the suspected
spots, to indicate by their vibration the neighbourhood of the Turkish
labourers, and guide thereby the operations of the counterminers. By
these precautions, many of the enemy’s galleries were discovered, and
either ruined by counter-mines, or penetrated and robbed of their
powder. It is here expedient to contradict the tale, current to our own
time, that the continual efforts of the Turks had pushed a mine as far
as the house on the so-called Freiung, which bears still the name of
Heidenschuss, where it is said that a baker’s apprentice discovered it
and occasioned its destruction.[6]
This incident is in itself highly improbable, I may almost assert
impossible. Not to take into account that it is mentioned in none
of the narratives of the time, of which I have fourteen before me,
the distance alone would make it next to impossible that so long an
operation could have been carried on without detection. It appears
also, from the archives of the Scottish foundation in Vienna, that the
house in question bore the name Heidenschuss long before the Turkish
siege, namely, from the year 1292, when the Tartars overran Austria.
Others aver that it belonged to a family of the name of Hayden, which
bore in its arms a Tartar discharging an arrow. This is, indeed,
disputed; but the antiquity of the name Heidenschuss is certain, and
it is equally so that no Turkish mine ever was carried so far as to
the spot in question. It is just to mention that the fraternity of
bakers, as well as many other corporations, rendered great services
in this season of common danger, and it is likely enough that one of
that body may have performed the particular service in question in some
other locality. The services of the bakers’ guild were acknowledged,
after the raising of the siege, by the present of a silver cup, and
the privilege of carrying the same in procession round the city every
Easter Tuesday. This practice was observed till the year 1811, when
the disorders incident to the concourse of people it collected, and
the loss of some days’ labour which it was apt to occasion, led to its
suppression by the authorities of the bakers’ corporation.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The distance of this spot from the wall would be about one-third
of the extreme breadth of the city.—T.
CHAPTER VI.
From October 3 to October 13, 1529.
On the 3rd October, the enemy’s fire was much increased, and protracted
even far into the night. An assault was therefore confidently expected.
The garrison remained under arms night and day. Nothing, however,
ensued except considerable damage to the Kärnthner tower and the
adjacent bastion, in return for which the kitchen of the Beglerbeg of
Roumelia was almost entirely disorganized by a heavy shot from the
city. On the following day orders were issued in the Turkish camp for
the most active prosecution of the mines. Michael Oglou’s people were
ordered to convey ladders and bundles of straw to the trenches, and
every preparation was made for a general assault. On this day Simon
Athinai, surnamed the Learned, a friend and dependant of Zapolya,
made his appearance in the camp, to pay his respects to Soliman, who
received him with the honours which he was accustomed to show to men
of letters. In the evening a council of war was held in the city, and
a strong sally was resolved upon for the following day, principally
with the object of discovering and destroying the mines last commenced;
and also of driving the Janissaries out of the ruins of the suburbs,
from which their incessant fire greatly annoyed the garrison. Eight
thousand men of all arms and nations were appointed to this service,
and the operation was commenced at six in the morning. Its success
was by no means such as was expected; though at first it promised
the happiest results. The batteries of the enemy were in the first
instance carried and left behind; the soldiers, well led by their
officers, flung themselves on the enemy with the deadly weapons used in
hand-to-hand conflict at this period, such as the morning-star and the
battle-axe, and with murderous effect, but as day broke the alarm ran
through the Turkish camp and brought heavy numbers to the rescue. A
sudden apprehension of being cut off from the city, suggested by a few
voices, degenerated into a panic, and the troops fell into confusion,
which ended in a general flight. The voices of their officers, the
encouragement from the garrison on the walls, and the example of a
brave commander, Wolf Hagen, were unavailing to check the torrent.
Hagen himself, with a few brave men who remained about him, was
surrounded and beheaded. His body was rescued and brought into the
city for honourable burial. There fell also in this disastrous action
a German officer of noble blood, George Steinpeiss, and a Spaniard,
Garcia Gusman: the brave Hector von Reischach was severely wounded.
Five hundred heads and several prisoners remained in the camp of the
Turks, who, however, on their part, suffered considerable loss. The
retreat was conducted with such confusion, that many were forced over
the parapet of the bridge, and, maimed by the fall, remained at the
mercy of the Turks, who pursued so closely up to the walls, that they
were only driven back from them at push of pike. At noon there was a
fresh alarm that camels were conveying fascines of wood, straw, and
vine-sticks to fill up the ditch. The expected assault, however, did
not take place. The fire of the Turks recommenced at 5 P. M. and was
maintained without cessation, which caused the soldiers to remain
at their posts through the night. On the 7th, at 9 A. M., the Turks
assaulted two bastions, and sprung a mine at the Kärnthner gate, by
which the wall opposite the nunnery of St. Clara was destroyed for a
space of thirteen fathoms. The following night the camp was illuminated
with several thousand torches, and a general shouting and alarm took
place without further result. It was probably the celebration of some
festival. The garrison having been assembled at their posts, Count Salm
announced to them that by a trusty messenger, who had swum the Danube
at midnight, he had received consolatory tidings from King Ferdinand
and the Duke Frederick, who promised to come to their relief within a
week. The garrison hailed this intelligence with noisy acclamation,
which probably excited as much notice and surprise in the Turkish camp
as their illuminations and shoutings had excited in Vienna. Though this
cheering assurance raised the hopes of all, yet the difficulties of the
defence became every day more urgent, and a proclamation was issued,
forbidding, on pain of death, all self-indulgence and neglect of duty.
To illustrate and enforce this edict, two lanzknechts, who, over their
cups, remained absent from their posts after the alarm had been given,
were hanged at the Lugeek as traitors. On the 8th the whole artillery
of the Turks played upon the city. The timber bulwark in front of
the Kärnthner gate was set on fire, and the walls, deprived of their
breastwork, threatened to fall inwards. To avoid this, possibly fatal,
catastrophe, trunks of trees and huge beams were brought to their
support, and a new breastwork was thrown up with incredible celerity.
A similar work was thrown up before the Scottish gate, and mounted
with two guns, which did much mischief in the Turkish camp towards
Sporkenbühel. On the 9th October an alarm took place at daybreak,
and preparations for a storm were evident in the Turkish camp. At 3
P. M. mines were sprung to the right and left of the Kärnthner gate.
The one on the left opened a breach in the wall, wide enough for
twenty-four men to advance in order. The assault was nevertheless
gallantly repulsed by Salm and Katzianer in three successive instances.
Several Spaniards and Germans had been buried or blown into the air by
the explosion; others were hurled back into the city without serious
injury. The explosions would have been more effective if the besieged
had not succeeded in reaching some of the chambers of the mines by
countermining, and in carrying off eight tuns of the charge. During the
repeated assaults the heaviest artillery of the city was discharged
incessantly upon the Turkish cavalry, and with such good aim, that,
to use the words of Peter Stern von Labach, man and horse flew into
the air. Upon every retreat of the storming-parties, trumpets from
St. Stephen’s tower, and warlike music on the place of St. Clara,
celebrated the triumph of the besieged. The Sultan, dispirited at these
repeated failures, adopted a precaution which indicated apprehension
on his own part of a sally from the city, for he directed trenches to
be dug round the tents of the Janissaries and other picked troops. In
the city, when quiet was restored, the old wall was rapidly repaired, a
new one constructed, the houses which interfered with it levelled, and
their materials employed to fill up the wooden breastwork.
On the 10th all was quiet, and the work of repair proceeded. Two mines
were discovered and destroyed, and in a small sally of some eighty men
five camels were captured.
On the 11th, towards 9 A. M., a mine was sprung between the Kärnthner
and Stuben gates, which made an enormous breach, equivalent to an open
gateway in the wall. Heavy bodies of men rushed on to the assault:
a second mine was sprung at the Stuben gate, and, according to some
accounts, the city was positively entered at this quarter by some of
the enemy. This, however, is doubtful; but it is certain that a Turkish
standard-bearer had mounted the wall, when he was struck down by a
musquet shot into the ditch. The assault and defence were continued
with equal determination for three hours. Twelve hundred bodies were
heaped up in the breach, and though new assailants seemed to spring
from the earth, their efforts failed before the unshaken courage of the
defenders. The conflict ceased at midday. The loss of the garrison was
far less than that of the Turks; yet, at a general muster of the armed
citizens which took place in the evening, 625 were missing from the
numbers mustered at the beginning of the siege. The wrath of the Sultan
was kindled to the highest pitch. He stormed, entreated, promised,
and threatened; and on the following day the assault was renewed.
Again two mines exploded in the same quarter as before, and again the
ruin of the wall was extensive. The Turks were in the breach sooner
almost than their approach could be detected, as they thought, but the
wall was scarcely down before its ruins were occupied by a company
of Spaniards, with their colours flying and courage undepressed. The
storm was fierce, but short; the repulse was again complete, and
depression and exhaustion prevailed in the Turkish ranks. From the
towers of the city their officers were seen urging them forward with
blows. In several places explosions were observed which did no injury
to the walls. Although the attacks were several times repeated, and to
a late hour in the evening, as the courage of the defenders rose that
of the enemy quailed, and the latter efforts were more and more easily
repelled. The loss of the assailants could not be ascertained, as the
Turks, according to their custom, carried off their dead. Late in the
night, however, a council of war was held in their camp, in which
the former tone of confidence was remarkably lowered. The lateness
of the season and the difficulty of subsistence were the topics of
discussion. The latter difficulty was not indeed a fictitious one, for,
under the expectation of a speedy surrender of the city, supplies had
been collected on a scale quite inadequate to the present exigency.
It was also remembered that three main assaults had been executed,
and that three times on each occasion the troops had advanced to the
charge. This magic number had fulfilled the law of Islam, by which,
whether in the field or against defences, no more than three attacks
are required of the faithful. Notwithstanding these good reasons and
fair excuses for immediate withdrawal, the temptation of plunder was
so strong, that it was agreed to attempt on the following day, the
14th, one more assault with all their force; but, should this fail, to
raise the siege. The Janissaries, who were loudest in their complaints,
were pacified by a payment of the ordinary assault money, namely,
a thousand aspers, or twenty ducats, to each man. The 13th October
passed therefore without attack, but the preparations for one were in
active progress. Numerous criers perambulated the camp, proclaiming
the great assault for the following day, and announcing the following
rewards:—To the first man who should mount the wall, promotion from
his respective military rank to the next above it, and a sum of 30,000
aspers (600 ducats).[7] The Sultan inspected in person and on horseback
the preparations, and expressed his satisfaction. Nor were they idle
in the city. While the soldiers stood to their arms, the citizens of
both sexes, and of all classes, ages, and professions, spiritual as
well as lay, were at work without cessation, removing rubbish, digging
new intrenchments, throwing up works, strengthening the ramparts, and
filling up the breaches. Many so engaged were wounded by the enemy’s
various missiles. Their attention was also carefully directed to
the enemy’s mines, and they succeeded on this day in detecting and
carrying off six tuns of powder from one intended for the destruction
of the Kärnthner tower. Thus prepared and thus determined, they waited
for the dawn of the day which was to decide the fate of the Christian
stronghold, so long and so gallantly maintained.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The vast pecuniary resources of the Turkish empire at this period,
and the profusion with which they were dispensed abroad, offers a
striking contrast to the poverty and niggardliness of the House of
Austria and the Germanic body. While Soliman was marching upon Pesth
the operations of the Austrian flotilla on the Danube were paralyzed
for want of 40,000 florins to pay the arrears of the crews. With great
difficulty 800 florins were raised for the purpose.—See Ränke, “Fursten
und Volker,” vol. iii. p. 191.—E.
CHAPTER VII.
October 14 to November 20, 1529.
At daybreak of the 14th October the flower of the Turkish army was
arrayed in three powerful bodies for the assault, and towards nine
o’clock they advanced, led on by officers of the highest rank. On this
occasion, however, the desperate courage and cheerful contempt of death
which had usually been conspicuous among the Turkish soldiery were no
longer distinguishable. It was to no purpose that their officers, the
Vizier in person at their head, urged them forward with stick and whip
and sabre-edge, they refused obedience, saying they preferred to die by
the hands of their own officers rather than to face the long muskets
of the Spaniards and the German spits, as they called the long swords
of the lanzknechts. Towards noon two mines were sprung to the right
and left of the Kärnthner gate, but a third, which had been carried
under the Burg, was fortunately detected, and its entire charge of
twenty barrels of powder fell into the hands of the counterminers. A
breach, nevertheless, twenty-four fathoms wide, was the result of the
mines which succeeded, and through this, supported by the fire of all
their batteries, repeated attempts were made to storm, but in every
instance repulsed as before. These attacks were the last expiring
efforts of exhausted men. Two incidents connected with them have
been considered worthy of record. The first is the adventure of two
officers, a Portuguese and a German, who had quarrelled over night,
and were proceeding to settle their difference with the sword in the
morning, having selected the breach or its immediate neighbourhood for
their place of meeting. Being interrupted by the Turkish assault, they
naturally enough, instead of proceeding with their own foolish and
useless purpose, agreed to turn their arms against the Turks. The point
of the story seems to be, that after one had lost his left arm and
the other the use of his right, they stood by one another, making a
perfect soldier between them, till both were killed. The other incident
is one of more historical importance. It is that of the severe and
ultimately fatal wound of the brave Count Salm, who, after escaping all
the previous dangers of the siege, was hit on the hip towards 2 P. M.
by the splintered fragments of a stone, and carried from the breach,
which till then he had never quitted. He survived till the spring of
the following year, when he died of the effects of this injury at his
residence of Salm Hoff, near Marchegg in Lower Austria. King Ferdinand
caused a sumptuous monument to be erected to this deserving soldier in
the church, then existing, of St. Dorothea, in which was the family
vault of the Salms. This church was pulled down in 1783, when the
Salm family took possession of the monument, and removed it to their
residence at Raitz in Moravia.
On the failure of these last attacks, Soliman abandoned all hope of
gaining possession of the city, and the troops received accordingly
a general order of retreat. Its execution was attended by an act of
atrocity which throws a shadow over the character of the sovereign by
whose servants it was perpetrated,—a shadow not the less deep because
contrasted with many recorded indications of a noble and generous
nature. It may, indeed, possibly be considered as another specimen
of unavoidable condescension to the passions of an ill-disciplined
soldiery, such as the massacre of the garrison of Pesth, and rather as
an exhibition of the weakness than the misuse of despotic rule. The
Janissaries broke up from their encampment an hour before midnight,
and set on fire their huts, forage, and every combustible article
which they could not or would not carry with them. Under this latter
head they included the greater portion of the vast swarm of prisoners
of all ages and both sexes collected in their quarters. Of these the
younger portion alone, boys and girls, were dragged along with their
retiring columns, tied together by ropes, and destined to slavery. The
old of both sexes and the children were for the most part flung alive
into the flames of the burning camp, and the remainder cut to pieces
or impaled. The glare of the conflagration and the shrieks of the
sufferers disturbed through the night the rest so dearly earned by the
brave defenders of the city, and though their approaching deliverance
might be read in the one, it was probably easy to conjecture from the
other the horrors by which that deliverance was accompanied. When this
act of cowardly vengeance was accomplished, a parting salvo from all
their fire-arms was discharged at the walls; and after all remaining
buildings in the suburbs and adjacent villages had been set on fire,
the army commenced its retreat.
With the first light of morning came assurance of the city’s safety,
which was hailed by a general discharge of artillery from the walls,
and by warlike music in the public squares, and from St. Stephen’s
tower. The bells, too, were released from the silence to which they
had been condemned since the 29th of September, and a solemn _Te Deum_
and high mass were celebrated in St. Stephen’s in honour of the Holy
Trinity. The Sultan questioned his prisoner the Cornet Zedlitz as to
the cause of the sounds which reached his ear. The cornet avowed at
once his belief that the clamour was that of joy and triumph over the
deliverance of the city. The Sultan evinced his satisfaction at the
frankness of his favourite’s reply by dismissing him in safety to the
city, bearing on his person the marks of Oriental favour in the shape
of silken and gold-embroidered apparel, and accompanied by two of his
fellow-prisoners, who thus shared the advantage of the good-will which
the soldier had earned by his manly bearing. Soon after this creditable
act, the Sultan commenced his march in the direction of Brück on the
Leitha. Early the following day the flotilla began to drop down the
river, not, however, unmolested by the artillery from the city, which
sunk several of the vessels. The Grand Vizier remained for some time
with some 60,000 cavalry in the neighbourhood of the Wienerberg,
partly to cover the retreat, partly to rally the light troops
dispersed on plundering expeditions. It is stated by some writers,
further to account for this delay, that he waited for the issue of the
machinations of certain of his agents in the city, who had undertaken
to set it on fire, and that he hoped even at this late hour by such
means to effect his entrance. This supposition is not very consistent
with the haughty and elevated character of the man. It is however
certain that three suspected individuals were arrested, who gave
themselves out for escaped prisoners. They had been at first admitted
as such without suspicion; but when it was observed that their purses
were well filled with Turkish money, this was thought a sufficient
reason for putting them to the torture, by which a confession was
extorted that they had been hired for the purpose above described. They
were quartered, and their limbs affixed _in terrorem_ on the walls.
At the distance of a mile the Sultan again halted, and held a divan
to receive the felicitations of his great officers on the _fortunate
termination_ of the campaign. After these functionaries had kissed his
hand, he distributed among them rich rewards. The Vizier received a
jewelled sabre, four costly pelisses, and five purses.[8] The Pachas
received each two pelisses and a sum of money. The money distributed
as reward to the storming-parties had amounted to 240,000 ducats, so
that the closing act of the siege cost the Sultan at least 250,000
ducats. The most curious feature of the transaction is the tone of the
bulletins in which the retreat was described. The great Orientalist
and historian Von Hammer has given us translations of several. The
concluding passage of one of them is to this effect:—“An unbeliever
came out from the fortress and brought intelligence of the submission
of the princes and of the people, on whose behalf he prayed for grace
and pardon. The Padischah received his prayer with favour, and granted
them pardon. Inasmuch as the German lands were unconnected with the
Ottoman realm, that hence it was hard to occupy the frontier places and
conduct their affairs, the faithful would not trouble themselves to
clear out the fortress, or purify, improve, and put it into repair; but
a reward of 1000 aspers was dealt out to each of the Janissaries; and
security being established, the horses’ heads were turned towards the
throne of Solomon.”
Before the Vizier joined the column of retreat, a messenger was
despatched to him with proposals for an exchange of prisoners. The
Vizier presented the messenger with a rich caftan of blue silk, and
returned the following answer written in bad Italian:—“Ibrahim Pacha,
by the grace of God, first Vizier, Secretary and chief Councillor of
the most glorious, great, and invincible Emperor, Sultan Soliman; head
and minister of his whole dominions, of his slaves and sandschaks,
Generalissimo of his armies. Well-born, magnanimous officers and
commanders, receiving your writing, sent by your messenger, we have
digested its contents. Know that we are not come to take your city into
our possession, but only to seek out your Archduke Ferdinand, whom
however we have not found, and hence have waited here so many days, he
not appearing. Yesterday moreover we set free three of our prisoners,
for which reason you should be fain to do likewise by those in your
possession, as we have desired your messenger to explain to you by word
of mouth. You may therefore send hither one of your people to seek
out your countrymen, and without fear or anxiety for our good faith,
for what happened to those of Pesth was not our fault but their own.
Given before Vienna in the middle of October.” The above was written
on smooth Italian paper, the signature alone and the signet impression
in Turkish characters. The authorities in Vienna presented the bearer
of this missive with an upper garment of red damask, and sent him
back with the verbal answer that they were the more anxious to deal
strictly according to the usages of war, because they looked forward
to much future matter for intercourse. If rightly reported, it must
be confessed that both reply and rejoinder in this negotiation appear
to have somewhat lost sight of the point at issue. The contemporary
writer, Labach, asserts that Soliman, _after his withdrawal_, sent a
message to the city containing an offer to withdraw on payment to him
of 200,000 florins, to which the authorities made answer that the keys
of their treasury were missing.
On the 17th of October the Vizier really commenced his retreat under
a heavy snow-storm which lasted from early morning till late into the
night. The day’s march extended as far as Brück on the Leitha, and
was one of great difficulty and attended with much loss of baggage.
The garrison exerted itself to take advantage of these circumstances.
A sally took place on the same day, under command of John Katzianer,
Paul Bakics, and Sigismund von Weichselburg, with eight squadrons
of cavalry and four companies of foot, in which many prisoners were
made, many Christians rescued, and a rich booty captured in tents and
camp furniture, together with some camels. On the 19th another sally
was attended with still happier results. Near the village of Laa on
the Wienerberg upwards of 200 Turks were slain, a Pacha captured,
and many children rescued from captivity. The Turkish rear-guard was
thus annoyed, till, on the 20th of October, it crossed the Hungarian
frontier. The invaders, however, left fearful traces of their incursion
over a vast extent of country, and on their line of retreat wreaked
to the last their vengeance for the failure of their main purpose on
every object animate and inanimate within their reach. To their usual
practices of massacre, plunder, and incendiarism, they superadded the
destruction of fruit-trees, vineyards, and gardens; and the wretched
inhabitants who had saved their lives by flight or concealment,
returned to scenes of desolation which required years to repair.
The loss of the invaders during the siege has been very variously
stated, at numbers indeed varying from 80,000 to 30,000. The Hungarian
historian, Utvanffy, reduces this to 20,000, and Ortelius to 14,000.
The truth probably approaches the lower calculation, as, in the absence
of all general encounter in the field, the loss in action fell heavily
only on the storming-parties. The return of 1500 killed on the side of
the city, though adopted in all the narratives, is manifestly below the
truth, for we have seen that as early as the 11th October 636 of the
armed citizens were missing. On the 25th October, the tenth day from
the raising of the siege, Soliman entered Pesth, where he was received
with all honours by Zapolya. On the 28th, in full divan, Zapolya
renewed his homage, and was presented with ten caftans and three
horses, with bits and chains of gold. His minister, Ludovico Gritti,
received 20,000 ducats. On the 30th, Soliman recommenced his march,
and pursued it through Peterwaradin to Belgrade, which he reached
only on the 20th November, having been much delayed by inundations.
Much baggage remained behind in the swamps, and many men and horses
perished of starvation. These incidents did not prevent Soliman from
writing in a victorious strain to the Venetian Doge, Andreas Gritti.
This letter, dated from Belgrade, was written in Italian, and began
with a pompous list of titles of sovereignty, comprising Asia and
Europe generally; and descending to particulars, Persia, Arabia, Syria,
Mecca and Jerusalem, the whole territory of Egypt, and the shores of
the Mediterranean. The letter further related how the Sultan had
“taken from Ferdinand the kingdom of Hungary and invested with the
same the Wayvode of Transylvania; how with his Vizier Ibrahim, his
Agas and Pachas, he had marched over Syria to Pesth, and there placed
the crown of Hungary on the head of the Wayvode, and had looked for
King Ferdinand in Vienna: but inasmuch as the latter had fled towards
Prague, and it was impossible even to ascertain whether he were alive
or dead, had again, at the end of twenty days, turned round towards
Pesth and there received the homage of his vassal.” The whole is a
curious specimen of the perfection which this mode of describing
occurrences had attained three centuries before our time. The tone is
the same of most of the Turkish narratives of the day, all of which
extol to the skies the magnanimity and moderation of the Sultan. One
only, that of Ferdi, describes with some fidelity the devastation
effected by the army. The national animosities of this writer are so
violent that he calls Ferdinand by no other name than the “accursed.”
The conclusion of his narrative runs as follows:—“As it came to the
ear of His Majesty that a portion of the Christian army had shut
itself up in the city, and from this it was to be conjectured that the
accursed Ferdinand was among them; the victorious army besieged the
said fortress for fifteen days, and overthrew the walls in five places
by mines, so that the unbelievers prayed for mercy from the faithful.
As some of the garrison were taken prisoners, and from these it was
ascertained that the accursed was not in the fortress, the Imperial
mercy forgave their offence, and listened to their entreaties; but
His Majesty, who governs the world, to gain the merits of this holy
war, and to ruin the aforesaid accursed, had sent out the Akindschis,
the runners and burners, in all directions into Germany, so that the
whole country was trodden down by the hoofs of the horses, and even
the lands north of the Danube wasted with fire by the crews of the
vessels. Cities and hamlets, market-towns and villages, blazed up in
the fire of vengeance and destruction. The beautiful land, the treasury
of spring and abode of joy, was trodden down by the horsemen and filled
with smoke. Houses and palaces were left in ashes. The victorious army
dragged away captive the inhabitants, great and small, high and low,
men and women, strong and weak. In the bazaars were sold many fair ones
with jasmine foreheads, eyebrows arched and thick, and countenances
like Peris; and the booty was incalculable. Property, moveable and
immoveable, men and cattle, the speaking and the dumb, the rational and
the senseless, were destroyed and slaughtered at the edge of the sabre.
Thus on the page of time was written the fulfilment of the prophecy of
the Koran, ‘Thus deal we with the wicked.’”
On the 28th November, the Sultan reached Constantinople, and made his
triumphal entry with the portion of his army which had least suffered
by the march. The greater part of the exhausted troops remained at
Belgrade, Nissa, and Adrianople to recruit their strength and numbers;
for the Sultan was passionately intent upon retrieving his failure, and
prosecuting with new resources his plans for the establishment of an
Empire of the West. Years, however, were required to place his forces
on a footing for another expedition, the results of which will be
hereafter disclosed.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] The purse held 500 piastres, or 60,000 aspers, which, at 50 aspers
to the ducat, makes 6000 ducats.
CHAPTER VIII.
From November 20 to the end of the year 1529.
Although for the moment Vienna was relieved from dread of the Turk,
other causes of distress and apprehension survived the removal of the
main danger, and required equally the application of violent remedies.
Not to mention that the open country was long infested with roving
parties of Turkish marauders who were little interfered with by a
soldiery who had forgotten their own discipline in the excitement of
success, in Vienna itself this spirit displayed itself in a fearful
insurrection of the troops of the Empire, which threatened the citizens
with greater calamities than even those of the siege itself. On
the ground that they had repulsed five main attacks, they demanded
fivefold pay; and as it was impossible at once to concede this demand,
they indicated, not obscurely, an intention to pay themselves by a
general plunder of the city. The authorities attempted in the first
instance to appease them with fair words and moral reflections. These
only led to increased demands, and at length to distinct threats of
a total rejection of military obedience, and of a general assault on
persons and property. The invitation of one of their ensigns, Paul
Gumpenberger, for every man to rally round his colours who would be
content with double pay, had, it is true, the desired effect, so far
that several reasonable men broke off from the mass and rescued for
the moment the superior officers from their turbulent comrades. On
the following day, however, the clamour and the menaces were revived
with increased violence. The Pfalzgraf Frederick, who had meanwhile
arrived in Vienna, promised them now threefold pay, with which the
greater number were satisfied, but it was not till the ringleaders
had been executed that tranquillity was entirely restored. The troops
were finally divided and marched off, some to Pressburg, others to
Altenburg in Hungary, and with their departure confidence revived
and the citizens were enabled to commence the work of restoration and
repair both of their defences and of the houses which had suffered by
the enemy’s fire. The whole of the extensive space occupied by the
fortifications now existing, as well as the glacis, both of which at
this period were covered with buildings, were now cleared of such,
and the repeated and obstinate attempts of the former proprietors to
rebuild their dwellings as obstinately resisted. By the same operation
the booths, so called, of the suburb vanished for ever, and when, some
three years later, the alarm of invasion was revived, the extensive
remains still standing of the Burgher hospital, and of many other
large buildings and churches between the river Wien and the city,
were levelled to the ground. In exchange for the vast and richly
endowed Burgher hospital, the ruins of which had afforded the Turks so
excellent a position in front of the Kärnthner gate, the city obtained
in 1580 the nunnery of St. Clara, the nuns of which, reduced in numbers
by the Reformation, had fled to another establishment of their order at
Villach in Carinthia. Those who returned to Vienna after the siege were
received in the Pilgrim-house near St. Anne, where they gradually died
out, and their former buildings were formally made over to the city,
out of which has since grown the great hospital now existing.
_Original Narrative of the Adventures of the Cornet Christopher von
Zedlitz in the Turkish Camp. From the Collection of the Baron von
Enenkel in the State Archives at Vienna._
Among such praiseworthy Christian Knights, may also justly be
celebrated the honourable and noble Knight and Master, Christopher von
Czetliz, who in his honourable knightly deeds against the hereditary
enemy of Christendom, the Turk, has learned and known the use and
profit of diligent prayer, and how to acquit oneself with the Psalter
or Prayer-Book of the good Knight and King, David, much better than
other careless, idle, godless people, who take no account of psalm or
paternoster; for when in years past the Turkish tyrant, Soliman, with
a terrible power came from Constantinople upon Hungary, and having
marched 280 German miles, without reckoning the bendings of roads and
by-ways, sat down before Vienna, as it were at the door of the old and
famous German people, so that all Germany behoved to be stirring, then
did this noble Knight, Christopher, essay himself often and manfully
against the enemy.
Firstly, before Komorn; secondly, at the coronation at
Stuhlweissenburg, where he distinguished himself among all the other
knights there present, and exhibited himself before the king in
knightly fashion, in tilting-feats, which no one could repeat after
him, and which the chivalry present and his Majesty himself had much
content to witness; and the latter soon after ordered him a cornetcy
under the Count von Hardegg, when Pesth was recovered from the Turk.
When Soliman in 1529 retook Pesth, and marched upon Vienna, Cornet
Christopher was in the latter city, attached to the principal in
command, when and where he gained much honour in skirmishing, and
was moreover made prisoner, as will be related. In 1530, having been
meanwhile knighted by his Majesty, he marched again to Pesth, under
Count Hardegg, for the recovery of that city, where he joined himself
with one Von Reussenstein, agreeing together to mount to the assault,
as they did, and got as far as the breach, where, inasmuch as the
others did not follow like men, but remained in the ditch, Cornet
Christopher was hardly entreated, a Nimptsch (one of the family of
Nimptsch) shot by his side, and he thrown back into the ditch; and
this siege passed without success. In 1532, when the Turk was minded
again to march on Vienna, but who for the good fortune of the Emperor
Charles, who joined King Ferdinand in person at Vienna, had turned
off to Güns, against which he failed in several assaults, Cornet
Christopher was at the head of some knights from the principalities
of Schweidnitz and Jauer; and when some on our side skirmished with
the Turk at Neustadt, he advanced in front of all, and assailed and
dismounted a Turk of consideration;—not to mention that he was somewhat
ailing, and enfeebled by his march, so that so soon as he had found his
way back to Breslau, he departed in God, helped surely by a Turkish
syrup which he had taken, and which worked the stronger with time. For
when, in the year before mentioned (1529), the Turk assailed Vienna,
this noble knight had fallen upon him, and well conducted himself, and
in a skirmish had fallen from and parted company with his horse, which
had not trusted itself to come back to him, and a cry being raised to
save the standard, which was performed by a Fleming, Cornet Christopher
had taken post on a small round hillock, where three Turks perceived
and assaulted him, but he with his sword stood at bay, and stuck one
of their horses in the head, and would have got clear off, but that
twelve other Turks assailed him before and behind, and by numbers
struck him to the ground; and when he had wounded one of these through
the arm, they wrung his sword from him, and endeavoured to loose his
armour, but as he was 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. As it was they made him prisoner, and carried him off
among them, by the side of their horses, a good quarter of a mile,
and then set him in his cuirass on a baggage-mule, and carried him
on through the night as far as Brück on the Leitha, the head quarter
of the Turkish emperor. When they entered the camp there was much
concourse to see a figure in full harness, cuirass, and head-piece, all
screwed up, so that there was nothing but sheer iron to be seen; then
one of the bystanders spoke to him in the Croat tongue, and asked him
what he could do and compass, having such a load of iron on him; and
he answered: “Had I a horse, and were I loose and free, thou wouldst
then quickly see what I could do.” Being further asked whether he, Von
Zedlitz, could touch the ground with his fist, he quickly bent himself
down thereto: meanwhile the girth of the baggage-saddle burst, and he
fell with a crash to the ground; and when the Turks began to laugh,
he (Von Zedlitz) rose nimbly up, and, without a run, jumped in his
heavy armour on the tall mule, so that the Turks admired and forbore
to laugh. In this expedition there was about the Emperor Ibrahim (in
German Emerich) Pacha, an eminent and notable man, the next to Solyman
in that day, ruler and minister of everything in the Turkish realm,
and who in this war counselled and directed everything. Before him
when Von Zedlitz was brought, he gave order that they should take
him out of his armour; but among the Turks was no man familiar with
knightly equipment, who could deal with the manner of fastening of such
a cuirass, then no longer much used and quite unknown to the Turks,
and he remained armed till questioned by Solyman himself. To him Count
Christopher made answer, that if assured of his life he would undo
himself. When Ibrahim Pacha had given him such assurance, 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. When he
had laid aside his harness, the Turks, observing a gold chain about
him, fell upon him violently to tear it off; but he, seizing it with
both hands, tore it in pieces and flung it among them. They also took
from him his seal and ring, and on account of the gold, concluded
him to be of great means and condition; but he held himself out for
a gentleman of small means, who had won these things in war. As the
account of these things spread itself through the camp, much was said
of the feats of this man-at-arms, and of his singular dexterity under
his strange attire, and every one was curious to see him, being,
moreover, among the first who had been taken prisoners out of the city
itself of Vienna. He was, therefore, ordered to exhibit himself in
full cuirass, armed at all points for fight, and to prove whether in
this fashion he could, without vantage, lift himself from the ground.
On the following day, mules and several kicking horses being produced,
Count Christopher laid himself on the ground with his cuirass screwed,
and rising nimbly, without any vantage, sprung on a horse, and this he
repeated several times; and then, with running and vaulting, afforded
those hellhounds a princely spectacle of knightly exercises, to their
great admiration, and specially that of Ibrahim Pacha, who soon after
took him to himself, and kept him safe in his own custody. Meanwhile,
there came to him certain officers to frighten or to prove him, telling
him to hold himself in readiness, for that the Pacha would do him
right that same day. To these he answered, that as a Christian he was
in truth not afraid of death; as one who, in honour of his Redeemer,
in obedience to his sovereign, and in defence of his country, had
prepared himself by prayer for death at any hour or instant, and hoped
and believed most certainly to enjoy eternal joy and happiness through
Christ; but, nevertheless, could not credit that such was the order of
the Pacha, for he knew for certain that what the Pacha had promised he
would perform like an honourable soldier. When this reached the Pacha,
the longer he considered the more he admired, not only the knightly
feats, but the noble spirit of this hero. When, also, Soliman himself
asked him whether, if he (Soliman) should release him, he would still
make war upon him, Count Christopher answered, undismayed, that if God
and his Redeemer should grant him deliverance, he would while life
lasted fight against the Turks more hotly than ever. Thereupon the
Sultan replied, “Thou shalt be free, my man, and make war on me as thou
wilt for the rest of thy life.” Soliman knew perhaps well that he would
not live long, for it has been conjectured that the Turks had given
him a potion, which in a few years attacked his life and carried him
off. The Pacha, however, kept him in good case while the siege lasted,
namely, about a month; and in place of his cuirass, gave him a dress of
red velvet Tyrian stuff, which he wore and lay in night and day, and
sent him from his own table meats and mixed drinks (probably sherbet),
as daily prepared for himself, and even in course of time offered and
gave him wine.[9] The Count, for special reasons, gave himself out
for a Bohemian, being conversant in the Slav language, which is much
in use with the Turks. When it came to the time appointed for the
great assault, the Pacha said to him at table, “This evening will the
great Sultan take possession of Vienna, and it will fare ill with your
people,” and then asked him further, how strong the garrison was; and
the Count answered, “All that he could tell was, that the garrison
within were of that stamp that they would one and all be killed before
they would surrender the city.” When the assault took place, the Count
was left in the Pacha’s tent without any special guard, but loose and
free of his person, and able to look about him in the camp; but when,
by help of God, the Turks being repulsed broke up their camp, the Pacha
took the Count with him the first day’s march, but in the morning after
put another Turkish robe of velvet on him over the former, which is
still preserved by his brothers, Francis and Hans von Zedlitz; and
added a present of a hundred aspers, and also a cavalry prisoner whom
the Count knew and had begged for, and caused them to be honourably
attended and passed safe, so that on the following day they reached
Vienna, where the Count was honourably received by the princes, counts,
gentlemen, and officers there present.
_Notice of the Devastation effected by the Turks, from Original
Sources._
The general character of the operations of the Sackman has been
sufficiently described. From the foot of the Kahlenberg, from
Heiligenstadt and Döbling to the shore of the Leitha, his presence was
proclaimed by the smoke of burning villages, and his march was tracked
by wasted fields and vineyards. In the first days of the investment of
Vienna the vineyards of Heiligenstadt had been destroyed by the Bosnian
light troops; and on the day of the last assault its failure was
avenged by the indiscriminate massacre of the inhabitants. At Döbling
the pastor, Peter Heindl, was flung on a burning pile of the registers
and archives of the district. Hütteldorf, St. Veit, Brunn, and
Enzersdorf were burnt. In Perchtoldsdorf the inhabitants indeed held
out in the castle, but every thing beyond its walls was destroyed. From
the fortress of Lichtenstein the eldest son of its possessor of that
day was dragged into slavery. In Closter-Neuburg the upper town and the
ecclesiastical buildings held out, but the lower was destroyed. Baden
shared its fate. The destroyers penetrated even into Upper Austria,
and thence into Styria, where, however, they on several occasions met
with their match, for the people rose upon their scattered bands, and
burned alive those whom they overpowered. A detachment also crossed
the Danube in thirty vessels, and made an incursion on the left bank.
After having set fire to the village and castle of Schmida, they were
surprised and in great part destroyed by a body of 200 cavalry under
Count Hardegg. A number of fugitives were pursued to the shore, and
perished in an over-crowded vessel, which went to the bottom. Another
body, which, disturbed in its occupation of plunder, had taken refuge
in a tower near Korneuburg, were surrounded and cut to pieces by
the land-bailiff George von Leuchtenberg, and the Bavarian colonel
of cavalry Wolfgang von Weichs. In spite of these isolated acts of
vengeance and resistance, upwards of 20,000 Christians were slaughtered
or dragged into slavery; and but few of the latter, most of them young
persons of either sex and priests, ever returned. It is a remarkable
fact, proved from all the original accounts, that the Turks preferred
making slaves of the clergy to the putting them to death; possibly, for
the pleasure of tormenting them at leisure. According to a contemporary
narrative, upwards of 14,000 of the Akindschis perished in these
desultory conflicts. Taking their whole force at the number, usually
admitted, of 40,000, the proportion is not improbable.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] This specimen of favouritism, won, not by mean arts, but by
soldierlike and simple bearing, does honour to both parties. No one in
these days would, like the Chronicler, give credit to the tale of slow
poison with which his credulity impairs the merit justly due to the
Turk. Even were it more consistent than it is with the character of
Soliman or his minister, it is obviously irreconcilable with the other
facts recorded.—E.
BOOK II.
FROM THE END OF THE FIRST SIEGE OF VIENNA TO THAT OF THE SECOND. 1530
to 1684.
CHAPTER I.
1530 to 1538.
The close of the year 1529 had been made memorable in the annals of
Christendom by the retreat of Soliman. He had retired not without loss
and a degree of exhaustion which promised an interval at least of
repose to the countries he had so cruelly ravaged. He was, however,
neither satiated with blood nor discouraged by that signal failure of
the main object of his expedition which the Turkish historiographers
strove in vain to conceal beneath the flowers of Oriental eloquence.
So early as in the spring of 1532, he poured down upon Hungary and
Styria a force even more numerous than that which had invested Vienna.
Some have computed it at 600,000 men, probably an exaggeration; but
Ortelius, a writer generally to be depended upon, speaks of 500,000,
and of these 300,000 horsemen. The first serious resistance which this
immense accumulation of numerical force had to encounter, was opposed
to it by the inconsiderable and scarcely fortified town, Güns. The
defence of this place ranks high among the instances in which patience
and resolution, arrayed behind very feeble defences, have baffled all
the efforts of numbers stimulated by the hope of plunder and a strong
sense of the disgrace of failure. Nicholas Jurechich, a Croatian
nobleman, was the leader to whom the credit of this defence is due. In
the character of ambassador extraordinary from Ferdinand to the Sultan,
he had very recently displayed firmness, temper, and sagacity; and
now, behind walls which had been mined in thirteen different places,
and which presented a practicable breach eight fathoms wide, with
a body of troops originally of insignificant numbers and reduced by
eleven assaults, he met with unshaken resolution a twelfth desperate
attempt of the enemy. It was all but fatal. The troops were nearly
driven from the walls, upon which eight Turkish standards were already
planted, when a shout of despair raised by the women and unarmed
inhabitants of the place was mistaken by the assailants for the cheer
of a reinforcement. The garrison profited by a moment of hesitation,
and again succeeded in their noble effort. For twenty-five days they
had occupied the whole force of the Turkish Empire in a fruitless
attempt,—a period fully sufficient to exhaust the patience of the brave
and impetuous but ill-disciplined armies of the faithful. The Sultan,
unwilling to waste a further portion of the best season and of his
best troops before a place so unimportant in itself, adopted his usual
expedient in such cases, magnanimity. He invited the commanders under a
safe conduct to his presence, complimented them on their conduct, and
making them a present of the town and citadel, a donation founded on a
right of property on which they had no inclination to raise a verbal
dispute, for the utter exhaustion of their resources of all kinds would
have rendered further resistance impossible, withdrew his forces; not
however, as was expected, in the direction of Neustadt and Vienna. He
marched, on the contrary, up the course of the Mur, by roads of the
most difficult and harassing description; and, establishing himself in
Styria, sat down before Gratz, which, after a tedious siege, he took
and ransacked, but failed to reduce the citadel. Some writers are of
opinion that this diversion of his force, in fact a circuitous retreat,
was the work of the Vizier Ibrahim, who had been bribed by Charles V.
Nothing has been discovered in the Austrian archives which contain
the state secrets of the time, and no passage has been detected by
such inquirers as Von Hammer in the pages of Turkish history to favour
this supposition. The bribe also must have been a large one which
could have influenced the conduct of a man who had the treasure of the
seven towers at his disposal. A far more natural cause may be assigned
for the movements of the Sultan. The relative position of the two
parties was very different from that of 1529. It is true the frontier
provinces were, as then, exposed to the first onset of the invader;
but the preparations of the House of Austria for defence were further
advanced, better organized, and on a more respectable scale than before.
The Emperor Charles in person had put himself at the head of the
troops of the Empire, and had well employed the interval of security
which the delay of the Sultan before the town of Güns had afforded
him. With an army rated at 260,000 men, of which however only 126,000
were combatants, namely, 96,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry, he lay
encamped at no great distance from Vienna. In his former campaign
Soliman had sought in vain for the accursed Ferdinand, and had made
much of his disappointment in the bulletins from his camp and in the
pages of his servile historiographers. He was probably not equally
desirous of falling in with such an antagonist as Charles, at the
head of an untouched force of this magnitude. The sudden direction of
his army upon provinces bare of troops, but which contained plunder
to be gathered, and villages to be burned, and helpless people
to be slaughtered, was a safe and a tempting, though inglorious
proceeding. These were the motives, as far as inquiry can now detect
them, which postponed to a subsequent century the great spectacle
of actual collision in the field between the main armies of Turkey
and the Empire. Austria meanwhile derived from the postponement of
so tremendous an issue no immunity from a repetition of the horrors
of the last invasion. While the main Turkish army occupied Styria,
the bands of Michael Oglou were again let loose upon her plains,
re-enacting, up to the walls of Lintz and Vienna, every former
atrocity. If, however, they were allowed for a period thus to extend
and pursue their ravages, they came at last within reach, not merely
of the partial resistance by which the more adventurous of their
parties had before been occasionally cut off, but of the heavy blows
of a disciplined enemy. Vienna itself was in a state of defence which
fully secured it against any attack from the irregular troops of the
Turks; and it is not probable that Soliman at any time had contemplated
a renewal of his attempt upon that city with his main army, for he
had again left his heavy artillery behind; and all his preparations
tended to a pitched battle in the open field. The Pfalzgraf Frederick
was able, therefore, with a strong detachment, to address himself to
the deliverance of the open country from the marauders, and took
up a position at Enzesfeld, which threatened the communications of
Michael Oglou with Styria. The latter commenced a hasty retreat in the
direction of Neustadt and Pottenstein; but the principal passes of the
mountains beyond were already occupied by the Pfalzgraf; and a strong
force of arquebuziers under a skilful officer, Sebastian Scheitl, moved
upon his rear by Kaumberg. On the 18th of September, his main column,
encumbered with plunder and with 4000 prisoners, was suddenly attacked
by this detachment, and driven through Pottenstein towards the defiles
in front, which were strongly occupied by the Pfalzgraf. The savage
leader, thus caught in the toils, kept up his character for courage
and cruelty to the last. He directed an instant and indiscriminate
massacre of his prisoners, setting the example with his own hand; and,
dividing his forces into two bodies, scattered one into the pathless
forests to the south, and headed the other and main body in a desperate
attempt to cut its way to the front by the valley of Stahremberg. He
fell among the foremost. His jewelled helmet, appropriately adorned
with vultures’ wings, was conveyed to Ferdinand, and may still be seen
in the Ambros Museum at Vienna. On his fall, the command was assumed
by his lieutenant, Osman, who struggled through the defiles only to
fall in opener ground upon the troops of the Empire commanded by the
Count Lodovic and the Margrave Joachim of Brandenburg. Tired horses and
despairing riders fell an easy prey, not only to the troops, but to the
peasantry. Attacked by the latter in the neighbourhood of Siebenstein,
many were forced over a picturesque precipice, which still bears the
name of the “Turkish Fall.” Osman himself fell by the hand of Paul
Bakics, who bore him from the saddle with his lance, and finished
him with his own jewelled dagger, which hung at his saddle-bow. Of
this division of the robber force, nearly 18,000 strong, it is said
that not one escaped. Those who were detached through the forests had
better fortune. Part, at least of them, effected their junction with
Soliman in Styria. In Austria the Sackman was seen no more. In Hungary,
indeed, and Styria, their excesses continued for some years, but the
frontier of Austria proper was henceforth secure. In the battle of
Guirgewo against the Poles in 1596, the last remnant of the Akindschis
was destroyed, and the name appears no more in the Turkish annals. On
the 2nd of October the Emperor Charles V. and his brother Ferdinand
descended the river from Lintz, and were formally received at Vienna
on the 3rd. A great review was held, at which Charles, to conciliate
the Hungarians, appeared in the costume of that country. Soliman,
on receiving intelligence of the fate of Michael Oglou, pursued his
retreat with so much precipitancy and confusion, that if Charles had
followed him with activity, the fate of Hungary must have been decided.
The affairs of religion, however, were nearer to the heart of Charles
than those of Hungary, and the approaching convocation of the Council
of Trent attracting him to Italy, the golden opportunity was lost.
Zapolya retained possession of his throne, under the protection of
60,000 Turks encamped on the bank of the Drave. In 1538 the peace of
Grosswaradin was concluded, in which Ferdinand recognised the usurper
as King of Hungary in the portion of that country occupied by him, and
as Wayvode of Transylvania, in return for the reversion of that kingdom
on Zapolya’s death, whose son, should he leave one, was to enjoy only
the hereditary succession of his house, the Countship of Zips.