FERDINAND II., FERDINAND III. AND LEOPOLD I
From 1632 to 1662.
Character of Gustavus Adolphus.--Exultation of the Imperialists.--
Disgrace of Wallenstein.--He Offers to Surrender to the Swedish
General.--His Assassination.--Ferdinand's Son Elected as his
Successor.--Death of Ferdinand.--Close of the War.--Abdication of
Christina.--Charles Gustavus.--Preparations for War.--Death Of Ferdinand
III.--Leopold Elected Emperor.--Hostilities Renewed.--Death of Charles
Gustavus.--Diet Convened.--Invasion of the Turks.
The battle of Lutzen was fought on the 16th of November, 1632. It is
generally estimated that the imperial troops were forty thousand, while
there were but twenty-seven thousand in the Swedish army. Gustavus was
then thirty-eight years of age. A plain stone still marks the spot where
he fell. A few poplars surround it, and it has become a shrine visited
by strangers from all parts of the world. Traces of his blood are still
shown in the town-house of Lutzen, where his body was transported from
the fatal field. The buff waistcoat he wore in the engagement, pierced
by the bullet which took his life, is preserved as a trophy in the
arsenal at Vienna.
Both as a monarch and a man, this illustrious sovereign stands in the
highest ranks. He possessed the peculiar power of winning the ardent
attachment of all who approached him. Every soldier in the army was
devoted to him, for he shared all their toils and perils. "Cities," he
said, "are not taken by keeping in tents; as scholars, in the absence of
the master, shut their books, so my troops, without my presence, would
slacken their blows."
In very many traits of character he resembled Napoleon, combining in his
genius the highest attributes of the statesman and the soldier. Like
Napoleon he was a predestinarian, believing himself the child of
Providence, raised for the accomplishment of great purposes, and that
the decrees of his destiny no foresight could thwart. When urged to
spare his person in the peril of battle, he replied,
"My hour is written in heaven, and can not be reversed."
Frederic, the unhappy Elector of the Palatine, and King of Bohemia, who
had been driven from his realms by Ferdinand, and who, for some years,
had been wandering from court to court in Europe, seeking an asylum, was
waiting at Mentz, trusting that the success of the armies of Gustavus
would soon restore him to his throne. The death of the king shattered
all his hopes. Disappointment and chagrin threw him into a fever of
which he died, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. The death of
Gustavus was considered by the Catholics such a singular interposition
of Providence in their behalf, that, regardless of the disaster of
Lutzen, they surrendered themselves to the most enthusiastic joy. Even
in Spain bells were rung, and the streets of Madrid blazed with bonfires
and illuminations. At Vienna it was regarded as a victory, and _Te
Deums_ were chanted in the cathedral. Ferdinand, however, conducted with
a decorum which should be recorded to his honor. He expressed the
fullest appreciation of the grand qualities of his opponent, and in
graceful words regretted his untimely death. When the bloody waistcoat,
perforated by the bullet, was shown him, he turned from it with
utterances of sadness and regret. Even if this were all feigned, it
shows a sense of external propriety worthy of record.
It was the genius of Gustavus alone which had held together the
Protestant confederacy. No more aid of any efficiency could be
anticipated from Sweden. Christina, the daughter and heiress of
Gustavus, was in her seventh year. The crown was claimed by her cousin
Ladislaus, the King of Poland, and this disputed succession threatened
the kingdom with the calamities of civil war. The Senate of Sweden in
this emergence conducted with great prudence. That they might secure an
honorable peace they presented a bold front of war. A council of regency
was appointed, abundant succors in men and money voted, and the
Chancellor Oxenstiern, a man of commanding civil and military talents,
was intrusted with the sole conduct of the war. The Senate declared the
young queen the legitimate successor to the throne, and forbade all
allusion to the claims of Ladislaus, under the penalty of high treason.
Oxenstiern proved himself worthy to be the successor of Gustavus. He
vigorously renewed alliances with the German princes, and endeavored to
follow out the able plans sketched by the departed monarch. Wallenstein,
humiliated by his defeat, had fallen back into Bohemia, and now, with
moderation strangely inconsistent with his previous career, urged the
emperor to conciliate the Protestants by publishing a decree of general
amnesty, and by proposing peace on favorable terms. But the iron will of
Ferdinand was inflexible. In heart, exulting that his most formidable
foe was removed, he resolved with unrelenting vigor to prosecute the
war. The storm of battle raged anew; and to the surprise of Ferdinand,
Oxenstiern moved forward with strides of victory as signal as those of
his illustrious predecessor. Wallenstein meanly attempted to throw the
blame of the disaster at Lutzen upon the alleged cowardice of his
officers. Seventeen of them he hanged, and consigned fifty others to
infamy by inscribing their names upon the gallows.
So haughty a man could not but have many enemies at court. They
combined, and easily persuaded Ferdinand, who had also been insulted by
his arrogance, again to degrade him. Wallenstein, informed of their
machinations, endeavored to rally the army to a mutiny in his favor.
Ferdinand, alarmed by this intelligence, which even threatened his own
dethronement, immediately dismissed Wallenstein from the command, and
dispatched officers from Vienna to seize his person, dead or alive. This
roused Wallenstein to desperation. Having secured the coöperation of his
leading officers, he dispatched envoys to the Swedish camp, offering to
surrender important fortresses to Oxenstiern, and to join him against
the emperor. It was an atrocious act of treason, and so marvellous in
its aspect, that Oxenstiern regarded it as mere duplicity on the part of
Wallenstein, intended to lead him into a trap. He therefore dismissed
the envoy, rejecting the offer. His officers now abandoned him, and
Gallas, who was appointed as his successor, took command of the army.
With a few devoted adherents, and one regiment of troops, he took refuge
in the strong fortress of Egra, hoping to maintain himself there until
he could enter into some arrangement with the Swedes. The officers
around him, whom he had elevated and enriched by his iniquitous bounty,
entered into a conspiracy to purchase the favor of the emperor by the
assassination of their doomed general. It was a very difficult
enterprise, and one which exposed the conspirators to the most imminent
peril.
On the 25th of February, 1634, the conspirators gave a magnificent
entertainment in the castle. They sat long at the table, wine flowed
freely, and as the darkness of night enveloped the castle, fourteen men,
armed to the teeth, rushed into the banqueting hall from two opposite
doors, and fell upon the friends of Wallenstein. Though thus taken by
surprise, they fought fiercely, and killed several of their assailants
before they were cut down. They all, however, were soon dispatched. The
conspirators, fifty in number, then ascended the stairs of the castle to
the chamber of Wallenstein. They cut down the sentinel at his door, and
broke into the room. Wallenstein had retired to his bed, but alarmed by
the clamor, he arose, and was standing at the window in his shirt,
shouting from it to the soldiers for assistance.
"Are you," exclaimed one of the conspirators, "the traitor who is going
to deliver the imperial troops to the enemy, and tear the crown from the
head of the emperor?"
Wallenstein was perfectly helpless. He looked around, and deigned no
reply. "You must die," continued the conspirator, advancing with his
halberd. Wallenstein, in silence, opened his arms to receive the blow.
The sharp blade pierced his body, and he fell dead upon the floor. The
alarm now spread through the town. The soldiers seized their arms, and
flocked to avenge their general. But the leading friends of Wallenstein
were slain; and the other officers easily satisfied the fickle soldiery
that their general was a traitor, and with rather a languid cry of "Long
live Ferdinand," they returned to duty.
Two of the leading assassins hastened to Vienna to inform the emperor of
the deed they had perpetrated. It was welcome intelligence to Ferdinand,
and he finished the work they had thus commenced by hanging and
beheading the adherents of Wallenstein without mercy. The assassins were
abundantly rewarded. The emperor still prosecuted the war with
perseverance, which no disasters could check. Gradually the imperial
arms gained the ascendency. The Protestant princes became divided and
jealous of each other. The emperor succeeded in detaching from the
alliance, and negotiating a separate peace with the powerful Electors of
Saxony and Brandenburg. He then assembled a diet at Ratisbon on the 15th
of September, 1639, and without much difficulty secured the election of
his son Ferdinand to succeed him on the imperial throne. The emperor
presided at this diet in person. He was overjoyed in the attainment of
this great object of his ambition. He was now fifty-nine years of age,
in very feeble health, and quite worn out by a life of incessant anxiety
and toil. He returned to Vienna, and in four months, on the 15th of
February, 1637, breathed his last.
For eighteen years Germany had now been distracted by war. The
contending parties were so exasperated against each other, that no human
wisdom could, at once, allay the strife. The new king and emperor,
Ferdinand III., wished for peace, but he could not obtain it on terms
which he thought honorable to the memory of his father. The Swedish army
was still in Germany, aided by the Protestant princes of the empire, and
especially by the armies and the treasury of France. The thunders of
battle were daily heard, and the paths of these hostile bands were ever
marked by smoldering ruins and blood. Vials of woe were emptied,
unsurpassed in apocalyptic vision. In the siege of Brisac, the wretched
inhabitants were reduced to such a condition of starvation, that a guard
was stationed at the burying ground to prevent them from devouring the
putrid carcasses of the dead.
For eleven years history gives us nothing but a dismal record of weary
marches, sieges, battles, bombardments, conflagrations, and all the
unimaginable brutalities and miseries of war. The war had now raged for
thirty years. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been lost. Millions of
property had been destroyed, and other millions squandered in the arts
of destruction. Nearly all Europe had been drawn into this vortex of
fury and misery. All parties were now weary. And yet seven years of
negotiation had been employed before they could consent to meet to
consult upon a general peace. At length congresses of the belligerent
powers were assembled in two important towns of Westphalia, Osnabruck
and Munster. Ridiculous disputes upon etiquette rendered this division
of the congress necessary. The ministers of _electors_ enjoyed the title
of _excellency_. The ministers of _princes_ claimed the same title.
Months were employed in settling that question. Then a difficulty arose
as to the seats at table, who were entitled to the positions of honor.
After long debate, this point was settled by having a large round table
made, to which there could be no head and no foot.
For four years the great questions of European policy were discussed by
this assembly. The all-important treaty, known in history as the peace
of Westphalia, and which established the general condition of Europe for
one hundred and fifty years, was signed on the 24th of October, 1648.
The contracting parties included all the great and nearly all the minor
powers of Europe. The articles of this renowned treaty are vastly too
voluminous to be recorded here. The family of Frederic received back the
Palatinate of which he had been deprived. The Protestants were restored
to nearly all the rights which they had enjoyed under the beneficent
reign of Maximilian II. The princes of the German empire, kings, dukes,
electors, marquises, princes, of whatever name, pledged themselves not
to oppress those of their subjects who differed from them in religious
faith. The pope protested against this toleration, but his protest was
disregarded. The German empire lost its unity, and became a
conglomeration of three hundred independent sovereignties. Each petty
prince or duke, though possessing but a few square miles of territory,
was recognized as a sovereign power, entitled to its court, its army,
and its foreign alliances. The emperor thus lost much of that power
which he had inherited from his ancestors; as those princes, whom he had
previously regarded as vassals, now shared with him sovereign dignity.
Ferdinand III., however, weary of the war which for so many years had
allowed him not an hour of repose, gladly acceded to these terms of
peace, and in good faith employed himself in carrying out the terms of
the treaty. After the exchange of ratifications another congress was
assembled at Nuremburg to settle some of the minute details, which
continued in session two years, when at length, in 1651, the armies were
disbanded, and Germany was released from the presence of a foreign foe.
Internal peace being thus secured, Ferdinand was anxious, before his
death, to secure the succession of the imperial crown to his son who
bore his own name. He accordingly assembled a meeting of the electors at
Prague, and by the free use of bribes and diplomatic intrigue, obtained
their engagement to support his son. He accomplished his purpose, and
Ferdinand, quite to the astonishment of Germany, was chosen unanimously,
King of the Romans--the title assumed by the emperor elect. In June,
1653, the young prince was crowned at Ratisbon. The joy of his father,
however, was of short duration. In one year from that time the
small-pox, in its most loathsome form, seized the prince, and after a
few days of anguish he died. His father was almost inconsolable with
grief. As soon as he had partially recovered from the blow, he brought
forward his second son, Leopold, and with but little difficulty secured
for him the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, but was disappointed in his
attempts to secure the suffrages of the German electors.
With energy, moderation and sagacity, the peacefully disposed Ferdinand
so administered the government as to allay for seven years all the
menaces of war which were continually arising. For so long a period had
Germany been devastated by this most direful of earthly calamities,
which is indeed the accumulation of all conceivable woes, ever leading
in its train pestilence and famine, that peace seemed to the people a
heavenly boon. The fields were again cultivated, the cities and villages
repaired, and comfort began again gradually to make its appearance in
homes long desolate. It is one of the deepest mysteries of the divine
government that the destinies of millions should be so entirely placed
in the hands of a single man. Had Ferdinand II. been an enlightened,
good man, millions would have been saved from life-long ruin and misery.
One pert young king, in the search of glory, kindled again the lurid
flames of war. Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus, influenced by romantic dreams, abdicated the throne and
retired to the seclusion of the cloister. Her cousin, Charles Gustavus,
succeeded her. He thought it a fine thing to play the soldier, and to
win renown by consigning the homes of thousands to blood and misery. He
was a king, and the power was in his hands. Merely to gratify this
fiend-like ambition, he laid claim to the crown of Poland, and raised an
army for the invasion of that kingdom. A portion of Poland was then in a
state of insurrection, the Ukraine Cossacks having risen against John
Cassimar, the king. Charles Gustavus thought that this presented him an
opportunity to obtain celebrity as a warrior, with but little danger of
failure. He marched into the doomed country, leaving behind him a wake
of fire and blood. Cities and villages were burned; the soil was
drenched with the blood of fathers and sons, his bugle blasts were
echoed by the agonizing groans of widows and orphans, until at last, in
an awful battle of three days, under the walls of Warsaw, the Polish
army, struggling in self-defense, was cut to pieces, and Charles
Gustavus was crowned a conqueror. Elated by this infernal deed, the most
infernal which mortal man can commit, he began to look around to decide
in what direction to extend his conquests.
Ferdinand III., anxious as he was to preserve peace, could not but look
with alarm upon the movements which now threatened the States of the
empire. It was necessary to present a barrier to the inroads of such a
ruffian. He accordingly assembled a diet at Frankfort and demanded
succors to oppose the threatened invasion on the north. He raised an
army, entered into an alliance with the defeated and prostrate, yet
still struggling Poles, and was just commencing his march, when he was
seized with sudden illness and died, on the 3d of March, 1657. Ferdinand
was a good man. He was not responsible for the wars which desolated the
empire during the first years of his reign, for he was doing every thing
in his power to bring those wars to a close. His administration was a
blessing to millions. Just before his death he said, and with truth
which no one will controvert, "During my whole reign no one can reproach
me with a single act which I knew to be unjust." Happy is the monarch
who can go into the presence of the King of kings with such a
conscience.
The death of the emperor was caused by a singular accident. He was not
very well, and was lying upon a couch in one of the chambers of his
palace. He had an infant son, but a few weeks old, lying in a cradle in
the nursery. A fire broke out in the apartment of the young prince. The
whole palace was instantly in clamor and confusion. Some attendants
seized the cradle of the young prince, and rushed with it to the chamber
of the emperor. In their haste and terror they struck the cradle with
such violence against the wall that it was broken to pieces and the
child fell, screaming, upon the floor. The cry of fire, the tumult, the
bursting into the room, the dashing of the cradle and the shrieks of the
child, so shocked the debilitated king that he died within an hour.
Leopold was but eighteen years of age when he succeeded to the
sovereignty of all the Austrian dominions, including the crowns of
Hungary and Bohemia. It was the first great object of his ambition to
secure the imperial throne also, which his father had failed to obtain
for him. Louis XIV. was now the youthful sovereign of France. He,
through his ambitious and able minister, Mazarin, did every thing in his
power to thwart the endeavors of Ferdinand, and to obtain the brilliant
prize for himself. The King of Sweden united with the French court in
the endeavor to abase the pride of the house of Austria. But
notwithstanding all their efforts, Leopold carried his point, and was
unanimously elected emperor, and crowned on the 31st of July, 1657. The
princes of the empire, however, greatly strengthened in their
independence by the articles of the peace of Westphalia, increasingly
jealous of their rights, attached forty-five conditions to their
acceptance of Leopold as emperor. Thus, notwithstanding the imperial
title, Leopold had as little power over the States of the empire as the
President of the United States has over the internal concerns of Maine
or Louisiana. In all such cases there is ever a conflict between two
parties, the one seeking the centralization of power, and the other
advocating its dispersion into various distant central points.
The flames of war which Charles Gustavus had kindled were still blazing.
Leopold continued the alliance which his father had formed with the
Poles, and sent an army of sixteen thousand men into Poland, hoping to
cut off the retreat of Charles Gustavus, and take him and all his army
prisoners. But the Swedish monarch was as sagacious and energetic as he
was unscrupulous and ambitious. Both parties formed alliances. State
after State was drawn into the conflict. The flame spread like a
conflagration. Fleets met in deadly conflict on the Baltic, and
crimsoned its waves with blood. The thunders of war were soon again
echoing over all the plains of northern and western Germany--and all
this because a proud, unprincipled young man, who chanced to be a king,
wished to be called a _hero_.
He accomplished his object. Through burning homes and bleeding hearts
and crushed hopes he marched to his renown. The forces of the empire
were allied with Denmark and Poland against him. With skill and energy
which can hardly find a parallel in the tales of romance, he baffled all
the combinations of his foes. Energy is a noble quality, and we may
admire its exhibition even though we detest the cause which has called
it forth. The Swedish fleet had been sunk by the Danes, and Charles
Gustavus was driven from the waters of the Baltic. With a few transports
he secretly conveyed an army across the Cattegat to the northern coast
of Jutland, marched rapidly down those inhospitable shores until he came
to the narrow strait, called the Little Belt, which separates Jutland
from the large island of Fyen. He crossed this strait on the ice,
dispersed a corps of Danes posted to arrest him, traversed the island,
exposed to all the storms of mid-winter, some sixty miles to its eastern
shore. A series of islands, with intervening straits clogged with ice,
bridged by a long and circuitous way his passage across the Great Belt.
A march of ten miles across the hummocks, rising and falling with the
tides, landed him upon the almost pathless snows of Langeland. Crossing
that dreary waste diagonally some dozen miles to another arm of the sea
ten miles wide, which the ices of a winter of almost unprecedented
severity had also bridged, pushing boldly on, with a recklessness which
nothing but success redeems from stupendous infatuation, he crossed this
fragile surface, which any storm might crumble beneath his feet, and
landed upon the western coast of Laaland. A march of thirty-five miles
over a treeless, shelterless and almost uninhabited expanse, brought him
to the eastern shore. Easily crossing a narrow strait about a mile in
width, he plunged into the forests of the island of Falster. A dreary
march of twenty-seven miles conducted him to the last remaining arm of
the sea which separated him from Zealand. This strait, from twelve to
fifteen miles in breadth, was also closed by ice. Charles Gustavus led
his hardy soldiers across it, and then, with accelerated steps, pressed
on some sixty miles to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. In sixteen
days after landing in Jutland, his troops were encamped in Zealand
before the gates of the capital.
The King of Denmark was appalled at such a sudden apparition. His allies
were too remote to render him any assistance. Never dreaming of such an
attack, his capital was quite defenseless in that quarter. Overwhelmed
with terror and despondency, he was compelled to submit to such terms as
the conqueror might dictate. The conqueror was inexorable in his
demands. Sweden was aggrandized, and Denmark humiliated.
Leopold was greatly chagrined by this sudden prostration of his faithful
ally. In the midst of these scenes of ambition and of conquest, the
"king of terrors" came with his summons to Charles Gustavus. The passage
of this blood-stained warrior to the world of spirits reminds us of the
sublime vision of Isaiah when the King of Babylon sank into the grave:
"Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it
stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee,
"'Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy
pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm
is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the
ground which didst weaken the nations!'
"They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee,
saying, 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, and didst shake
kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities
thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners?'"
The death of Charles Gustavus was the signal for the strife of war to
cease, and the belligerent nations soon came to terms of accommodation.
But scarcely was peace proclaimed ere new troubles arose in Hungary. The
barbarian Turks, with their head-quarters at Constantinople, lived in a
state of continual anarchy. The cimeter was their only law. The palace
of the sultan was the scene of incessant assassinations. Nothing ever
prevented them from assailing their neighbors but incessant quarrels
among themselves. The life of the Turkish empire was composed of bloody
insurrections at home, and still more bloody wars abroad. Mahomet IV.
was now sultan. He was but twenty years of age. A quarrel for ascendency
among the beauties of his harem had involved the empire in a civil war.
The sultan, after a long conflict, crushed the insurrection with a
blood-red hand. Having restored internal tranquillity, he prepared as
usual for foreign war. By intrigue and the force of arms they took
possession of most of the fortresses of Transylvania, and crossing the
frontier, entered Hungary, and laid siege to Great Wardein.
Leopold immediately dispatched ten thousand men to succor the besieged
town and to garrison other important fortresses. His succors arrived too
late. Great Wardein fell into the hands of the Turks, and they commenced
their merciless ravages. Hungary was in a wretched condition. The king,
residing in Vienna, was merely a nominal sovereign. Chosen by nobles
proud of their independence, and jealous of each other and of their
feudal rights, they were unwilling to delegate to the sovereign any
efficient power. They would crown him with great splendor of gold and
jewelry, and crowd his court in their magnificent display, but they
would not grant him the prerogative to make war or peace, to levy taxes,
or to exercise any other of the peculiar attributes of sovereignty. The
king, with all his sounding titles and gorgeous parade, was in reality
but the chairman of a committee of nobles. The real power was with the
Hungarian diet.
This diet, or congress, was a peculiar body. Originally it consisted of
the whole body of nobles, who assembled annually on horseback on the
vast plain of Rakoz, near Buda. Eighty thousand nobles, many of them
with powerful revenues, were frequently convened at these tumultuous
gatherings. The people were thought to have no rights which a noble was
bound to respect. They lived in hovels, hardly superior to those which a
humane farmer now prepares for his swine. The only function they
fulfilled was, by a life of exhausting toil and suffering, to raise the
funds which the nobles expended in their wars and their pleasure; and to
march to the field of blood when summoned by the bugle. In fact history
has hardly condescended to allude to the people. We have minutely
detailed the intrigues and the conflicts of kings and nobles, when
generation after generation of the masses of the people have passed
away, as little thought of as billows upon the beach.
These immense gatherings of the nobles were found to be so unwieldy, and
so inconvenient for the transaction of any efficient business, that
Sigismond, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, introduced a
limited kind of representation. The bishops, who stood first in wealth,
power and rank, and the highest dukes, attended in person. The nobles of
less exalted rank sent their delegates, and the assembly, much
diminished in number, was transferred from the open plain to the city of
Presburg. The diet, at the time of which we write, was assembled once in
three years, and at such other times as the sovereign thought it
necessary to convene it. The diet controlled the king, unless he chanced
to be a man of such commanding character, that by moral power he could
bring the diet to his feet. A clause had been inserted in the coronation
oath, that the nobles, without guilt, could oppose the authority of the
king, whenever he transgressed their privileges; it was also declared
that no foreign troops could be introduced into the kingdom without the
consent of the diet.
Under such a government, it was inevitable that the king should be
involved in a continued conflict with the nobles. The nobles wished for
aid to repel the Turks; and yet they were unwilling that an Austrian
army should be introduced into Hungary, lest it should enable the king
to enlarge those prerogatives which he was ever seeking to extend, and
which they were ever endeavoring to curtail.
Leopold convened the diet at Presburg. They had a stormy session.
Leopold had commenced some persecution of the Protestants in the States
of Austria. This excited the alarm of the Protestant nobles of Hungary;
and they had reason to dread the intolerance of the Roman Catholics,
more than the cimeter of the Turk. They openly accused Leopold of
commencing persecution, and declared that it was his intention to reduce
Hungary to the state to which Ferdinand II. had reduced Bohemia. They
met all the suggestions of Leopold, for decisive action, with so many
provisos and precautions, that nothing could be done. It is dangerous to
surrender one's arms to a highway robber, or one whom we fear may prove
such, even if he does promise with them to aid in repelling a foe. The
Catholics and the Protestants became involved in altercation, and the
diet was abruptly dissolved.
The Turks eagerly watched their movements, and, encouraged by these
dissensions, soon burst into Hungary with an army of one hundred
thousand men. They crossed the Drave at Esseg, and, ascending the valley
of the Danube, directly north one hundred and fifty miles, crossed that
stream unopposed at Buda. Still ascending the stream, which here flows
from the west, they spread devastation everywhere around them, until
they arrived nearly within sight of the steeples of Vienna. The capital
was in consternation. To add to their terror and their peril, the
emperor was dangerously sick of the small-pox, a disease which had so
often proved fatal to members of the royal family. One of the imperial
generals, near Presburg, in a strong position, held the invading army in
check a few days. The ministry, in their consternation, appealed to all
the powers of Christendom to hasten to the rescue of the cross, now so
seriously imperiled by the crescent. Forces flowed in, which for a time
arrested the further advance of the Moslem banners, and afforded time to
prepare for more efficient action.