y own humanity, thou shouldst suffer a punishment
proportioned to thy crime. As it is, I let thee off this time, but
come no more into my sight or thou shalt pay for it with thy life."

Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who
surrounded the king. On the pretence of treason against the king
Huniades was deprived of all his offices and all his estates. The
document is still to be seen in the Hungarian State Archives, in which
the king, led astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his
councillors, represents every virtue of the hero as a crime, and
condemns him to exile.

Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans
themselves overthrew him; and the king, now better informed, replaced
Huniades in the post of Captain-General of the Kingdom.

Huniades, who had been living meanwhile retired in one of his castles,
now complied with the king's wish without difficulty or hesitation,
and again assumed the highest military command. Instead of seeking how
to revenge himself after the manner of ordinary men, he only thought
of the great enemy of his country, the Turk. And indeed, as it was,
threatening clouds hung over the horizon in the southeast.

A new sultan had come to the throne, Mohammed II., one of the greatest
sovereigns of the house of Othman. He began his reign with the
occupation of Constantinople (1453), and thus destroyed the last
refuge of the Byzantine Empire. At the news of this event all Europe
burst into a chorus of lamentation. The whole importance of the
Eastern Question at once presented itself before the nations of
Christendom. It was at once understood that the new conqueror would
not remain idle within the crumbling walls of Constantinople. And
indeed in no long time was published the proud _mot d'ordre_ "As there
is but one God in heaven, so there shall be but one master upon
earth."

Huniades looked toward Constantinople with heavy heart. He foresaw the
outburst of the storm which would in the first place fall upon his own
country, threatening it with utter ruin. Huniades, so it seemed, was
again left alone in the defence of Christendom.

The approaching danger was delayed for a few years, but in 1456
Mohammed, having finally established himself in Constantinople, set
out with the intention of striking a fatal blow against Hungary. On
the borders of that country, on the bank of the Danube, on what was,
properly speaking Servian territory, stood t