CHAPTER IV. REIGN OF SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT continued -HUNGARY HUMILIATED-SIEGE OF VIENNA-DOMESTIC TRAGEDIES-" THE JOYOUS ONE"-DEATH OF PRINCE MUSTAPHA-IBRAHIM PASHA'S CAREER. FTER the death of Louis II., the last Hungarian king, who died on the fatal field of Mohacs, leaving no issue, the crown of Hungary was disputed between two rivals, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, who afterwards became Emperor, and who claimed the kingdom as the brother-in-law of Louis; and John Zapolya, Prince of Transylvania, the south-eastern province of what is now the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Zapolya marched to Buda with a considerable army, occupied the defenceless and deserted city, and was there elected king of Hungary, receiving the crown of St. Stephen according to the ancient Magyar usage, and assuming the prerogatives and exercising the rights of sovereignty. Shortly afterwards, the Archduke, assembling the Hungarian nobles, many of whom were enraged at the elevation of Zapolya,—one no better than themselves,-held a diet, at which it was declared that the election of the Prince of Transylvania to the Hungarian throne was null and void, and that the true heir to that throne was Ferdinand himself, who was accordingly proclaimed lawful king as well in right of his wife (sister of Louis of Hungary) as in virtue of a convention concluded in 1491 between the Emperor Frederick and Ladislas, father of the late king, by which the reversion of the Hungarian crown, failing the male issue of Ladislas, was secured to the house of Austria. Resolute in his determination to push his claim and maintain his right by arms, he accordingly marched in force to Buda-from which his rival at once retreated-and was there solemnly crowned king of Hungary (August 20th, 1527), the crown of St. Stephen, the same which for a brief season had gilded the brows of Zapolya, being used on the occasion. There were now two kings of Hungary, each of whom had been elected though by his own partizans only-and each crowned. Between the rival parties civil war raged for some time, ending in the defeat of Zapolya, who found himself obliged, as a last resource, to solicit the intervention of Sultan Suleiman, who, as the conqueror of Mohacs, might claim to exercise the rights of lord-paramount and decide which of the rival princes was actually to ascend the throne of Hungary. It is to be noted here that in thus soliciting the intervention of the Sultan and his favour, Zapolya voluntarily assumed the position of vassal in relation to that potentate. HUNGARY HUMILIATED. 87 The ambassador whom Zapolya selected to send to the Porte was a Polish noble named Lasczki, a man of great accomplishment and diplomatic skill, but whose total misunderstanding of the general situation on his arrival at Constantinople in December 1527 is amusing. Having delivered his message with dignity, comporting himself as he would have done at a European Court in the character of an ambassador from one independent prince to another, Lasczki was not a little astonished to be addressed in the following surprising fashion by the Grand Vizier: "Knowest thou not," exclaimed Ibrahim Pasha, "that the ground whereon the war-steed of the Commander of the Faithful has set his hoof-print becomes henceforth inalienably annexed to his empire ? How, then, has thy master, who is less than the least of the loyal slaves of our Sublime Porte, dared to enter and take up his residence in the royal castle of Buda, where the Padishah himself had reposed after the toils of war? And how comest thou here, not with tribute in thy hand as a suppliant imploring grace and favour, but audaciously claiming the friendship of my auspicious sovereign in the terms of a son requiring aid from his father?" Lasczki, whose breath was for a moment taken away, soon regained his self-possession, and by the use of that adroit flattery of which he was master, succeeded in soothing the haughty favourite of the Sultan, and gradually won his favour. The Vizier having been won over, there was nothing to fear from the Sultan; and soon Lasczki had the happiness of being informed that Suleiman had decided to invest Zapolya in the conquered kingdoms of Hungary and Transylvania, and to ensure his possession of these kingdoms by driving out the Archduke Ferdinand. A treaty of alliance between Hungary and the Porte was signed on February 29th, 1528, in terms of which Zapolya surrendered the independence of his country, and solemnly acknowledged himself the vassal of the Sultan. When Ferdinand heard of the ratification of this treaty, he was struck with consternation, and lost no time in sending an embassy to Constantinople—the first that had ever been sent from Austria to the Porte. Acting on their instructions, the ambassadors assumed the tone of equality which was supposed to be becoming in the representatives of a powerful prince, and concluded by asking the Ottoman government to restore Belgrade and the other frontier fortresses. Ibrahim was speechless for a moment with rage, then throwing at the bewildered ambassadors the sarcasm, "You should also have demanded the cession of Constantinople," he commanded the chop-fallen envoys to be thrown into prison. There they lay for six months, till the spring of 1529, when the Grand Vizier released them and sent them home with the message that "the Sultan would himself speedily come and confer with their master, and if unable to find him in Hungary, he would seek him in Vienna." The message of the proud Vizier was not an empty threat. The Sultan had made vast preparations for an invasion of Austria. On the 9th May, he and Ibrahim reviewed the Ottoman army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, with an artillery train of three hundred guns; and on the following day this great host was put in motion, and pressed forward to the old fighting ground of the Danube and the Hungarian frontier. On the 19th July, the plain of Mohacs was reached, and here the Ottoman army was met by Prince John Zapolya, who came to pay duty to his suzerain the Sultan. Hulme graphically describes the meeting and the interview between the Mohammedan sovereign and the Christian vassal: "The morrow (the 20th July) saw the humiliation of Hungary in the person of her nominal monarch on the same ominous spot which had witnessed the fall of the last of her independent kings. After traversing the ranks of the Janissaries, who stood mute and motionless, holding white wands (as usual on occasions of public ceremony) in lieu of arms, Zapolya was introduced into the imperial tent, where, in the presence of the dignitaries of the Ottoman Court and the principal officers of the army, he knelt and kissed the hand of Suleiman, who had risen from his throne and advanced three steps to receive his new vassal. On the completion of the act of homage 'the kral Yanush' (King John), as the Ottoman writers name Zapolya, was seated on the right hand of the Padishah, while the Grand Vizier, with Ayaz and Kassim, the second and third 'viziers of the bench,' remained standing on the left. The Sultan, moreover, addressed Yanush with words of benignity and assurances of continued favour, and presented him at his departure, in token of beneficence, with four caftans of cloth of gold, and three Nejd (Arabian) horses, with their caparisons studded with gold and jewels. So Yanush returned from the place of audience with his face whitened (made brave) and his heart expanded, having found favour with the Padishah of the Moslems." The Ottomans captured Buda on the 9th September, and massacred its garrison, and having left instructions for the reinstalment of Zapolya in the palace and throne of the ancient Hungarian soldiers, he announced to the army that their arms would now be used against Vienna. Ferdinand, the nominal king of Hungary, terrified by the approach of the Turks, retired from Vienna to the provinces, and left the defence of the Austrian capital to Count Salm, John of Hardeck, William of Roggendorf, and other German nobles, who were in command of sixteen thousand lanzknechts (German spearmen) and two thousand cavalry. There were besides a number of auxiliaries, as well as many volunteers, chiefly cadets of the noble houses of Spain, who had thrown themselves into the beleagured city to aid in the defence of the bulwark of Christendom against the invading Mohammedans. Heavy rains impeded the advance of the Turks, and this brief delay was turned to the best account by Count Salm and the other leaders, who devoted every hour of the day and night to strengthening the walls of the city, and otherwise improving its very imperfect fortifications. The Turks had to submit also to more losses than the loss of time. Their heaviest guns were sunk in the Danube by the spirited governor of Presburg. The main body of the Sultan's army was preceded as usual by swarms of Akindjis, or irregular horse, raised chiefly among the wild Turkoman tribes of Anatolia; and these terrible harbingers, outstripping the heavy columns of the centre, speedily overran the whole face of Germany, even beyond Linz, and westward as far as the Bavarian frontier, everywhere pillaging, burning, and massacring with their customary ruthless ferocity, and re-enacting in Austria the scenes of horror which had been witnessed three years before in Hungary. "Not even a flight of locusts" (writes a cotemporary historian) "could find subsistence in their track, for nought save ashes and blood were left when they had passed : 'Where the spahi's hoof has trod It is said that as many as sixty thousand were either slaughtered or dragged into bondage FIRST SIEGE OF VIENNA. 89 by those irregulars, who, receiving no actual pay for their military service, stopped at no atrocity in order to make the campaign a paying and profitable undertaking. On the 27th September 1529 the approach of the sultan's army was signalled by the watchers placed high on the lofty steeple of the Cathedral Church of St. Stephen in Vienna, and in a few hours the main army had defiled into the plains on all sides of the city. "Seven encampments were raised by the different divisions of the army, forming nearly a circle round Vienna; and the whole country west of the Danube was white with the Moslem tents." Near the village of Simmering the sultan pitched his own pavilion, which is described as fitted up in the interior with "wondrous magnificence, after the fashion of that nation, having hangings and cushions of cloth of gold; the roof and pillars also glittered with gilded pinnacles, and five hundred officers of the household, armed with bows, kept constant watch at the portals." As far as the eye could reach nothing could be seen, even from the spire of the Cathedral, but the countless throngs of men, horses, and camels overspreading the whole horizon, and the dense ranges of tents and pavilions (amounting altogether, as was afterwards found, to upwards of twenty-five thousand), extended almost without intermission for ten miles round the city. The siege was commenced without delay, but as all the siege cannon of the Turks had been sunk in the Danube, and the available guns were better suited for field practice than for breaching the fortifications which, under the skill of the German strategists, had been much strengthened, the work proceeded but slowly. The siege operations had to be carried on mainly by means of mines, although at the same time a constant fire was kept up against the gates and battlements from all parts of the Turkish lines. Fifteen mines were driven under the walls by the Turks before the assault was attempted, and two of the largest of these had approached completion, and the sultan hoped in a few days to deliver a crushing blow against Vienna, when all his plans were frustrated by the desertion of one of his Janissaries, who, escaping into the city, gave Count Salm full information of the mines mentioned, which were rapidly rendered useless by countermining. The story of the siege is rich in exciting warlike incident. On the 7th October eight thousand men, about one half of the garrison of the besieged city, had been selected to carry out a sortie on a great scale. The time at which the blow was to be struck was an hour before daybreak; but some slight oversight in matters of detail, in which no great general is ever careless, led to misunderstanding and long delay; and when at length the eight thousand did swarm forth from the gates of Vienna it was to find their enemy prepared. The result was such as might be expected. After a stern conflict, in which the Spanish Christians fought with all the valour which they never failed to display in the great battles of their history, they were obliged to give way, and retreat within the city walls, leaving five hundred of their number slain on the battle-field, and many more prisoners in the hands of the Moslems. Schardius, a contemporary writer, states that, profiting by the confusion which followed the defeated sortie, the Turkish engineers had re-explored and cleared the two mines previously rendered useless, and had fired them on the instant of their completion, thus effecting two practicable breaches, the larger of which would admit twenty-four men abreast, and at the same time choking the ditch by the masses of masonry that were hurled forward into it. A ferocious shout of exultation rose from the Osmanli encampment when they saw the interior of the city laid open by the fall of its great bul M warks; the breaches were further widened during the night by the explosion of two smaller mines; and at daybreak on the 10th the storm commenced. In this instance, however, the shining courage of the Janissaries seemed to be under a temporary eclipse, and one writer accounts for the fact by the coldness and inclemency of the weather, to which their frames had never been inured. However this may be, it is certain that during one continuous assault lasting for three days, and in which troops once repulsed were not brought up to the attack again, but were always replaced by fresh troops, the stubborn German lanzknechts held their own, and the Turk continued to recoil from the spear of the Teuton. But on the morning of the 12th another part of the shaken wall of Vienna fell, and the breach was now three hundred feet wide. Hailing this incident as a promising omen, the Turks rushed once more to the assault, and with shouts of victory pressed onward to the summit of the ruins, on which they succeeded in planting a number of their pennons. pennons. The cry The cry "Vienna is won" resounded along the lines; and many, even of the cavalry, the Spahis, and Akindjis, dismounting, hurried forward to the breach armed with lance and sabre, eager to share in the final triumph, and to partake in the spoil of the infidel city. "But their further progress was barred," says Hulme, "by the steady front of the same impenetrable phalanx before which their onset had already recoiled, and they were enfiladed by a constant fire poured on each of their flanks from the part of the fortifications still remaining entire. Still, stimulated by the prospect of immediate success, and urged by the menaces of their commanders, the Osmanlis precipitated themselves, sabre in hand, on the bristling pikes of the hostile array, striving with bootless valour to open a passage through this impenetrable barrier; and it was not till after a sanguinary conflict of three hours that they finally abandoned the enterprise, and retired in disorder to their trenches, with the loss of two thousand killed and wounded." Once more, induced by promises of rewards in money, honours, promotion, and fiefs in return for success in one last attempt, the soldiers were led on again to the attack. But dispirited with continued failure, the bravest of the Turks fell back before the fire poured out upon them from the battlements, and could not be prevailed upon to push on into close quarters. At last they fled into their trenches, and though they kept up a cannonade till sunset, no sooner had the darkness come than the heavy guns were removed to the flotilla on the river, and the blazing huts and refuse piles of the Janissaries were the joyful signals of their departure. Then all the bells of Vienna rang out a peal of thanksgiving, the music of which, however, was dreadfully marred by the cries of Christian prisoners in the Turkish camp, whom the enraged and disappointed Janissaries massacred to the number of several thousand persons. These unfortunates embraced all the aged or infirm of the Christians whom the Akindjis had driven into camp; but the fair and young, amounting, it is said, to ten thousand, were spared to be sold as slaves in the markets of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman, the progress of whose army was much impeded by heavy snow-storms in the later half of October, arrived in Constantinople in the middle of December. A second Austrian campaign, undertaken by the Turks in 1532, resulted in the conclusion of peace between the combatants, the basis of the treaty being that the kingdom of Hungary should be divided between Ferdinand of Austria and Zapolya, Suleiman's vassal and protégé. This seemingly reasonable arrangement lasted only till 1539, when, Zapolya A |