illa of
the Turks. The wall in many places was broken down, and at other points
in the wall they had obtained a foothold, and the crescent was proudly
unfurled to the breeze. The feeble garrison, worn out with toil and
perishing with famine, were in the last stages of despair. Hunniades
came down upon the Turkish flotilla like an inundation; both parties
fought with almost unprecedented ferocity, but the Christians drove
every thing before them, sinking, dispersing, and capturing the boats,
which were by no means prepared for so sudden and terrible an assault.
The immense reinforcement, with arms and provisions, thus entered the
city, and securing the navigation of the Danube and the Save, opened the
way for continued supplies. The immense hosts of the Mohammedans now
girdled the city in a semicircle on the land side. Their tents,
gorgeously embellished and surmounted with the crescent, glittered in
the rays of the sun as far as the eye could extend. Squadrons of
steel-clad horsemen swept the field, while bands of the besiegers
pressed the city without intermission, night and day.

Mohammed, irritated by this unexpected accession of strength to the
besieged, in his passion ordered an immediate and simultaneous attack
upon the town by his whole force. The battle was long and bloody, both
parties struggling with utter desperation. The Turks were repulsed.
After one of the longest continuous conflicts recorded in history,
lasting all one night, and all the following day until the going down of
the sun, the Turks, leaving thirty thousand of their dead beneath the
ramparts of the city, and taking with them the sultan desperately
wounded, struck their tents in the darkness of the night and retreated.

Great was the exultation in Hungary, in Germany and all over Europe. But
this joy was speedily clouded by the intelligence that Hunniades, the
deliverer of Europe from Moslem invasion, exhausted with toil, had been
seized by a fever and had died. It is said that the young King Ladislaus
rejoiced in his death, for he was greatly annoyed in having a subject
attain such a degree of splendor as to cast his own name into
insignificance. Hunniades left two sons, Ladislaus and Matthias. The
king and Cilli manifested the meanest jealousy in reference to these
young men, and fearful that the renown of their father, which had
inspired pride and gratitude in every Hungarian heart, might give them
power, they did every thing they could to