hold; and it fell to the lot of the former to announce to
Leopold, that the legions of the crescent were pouring down on Hungary.
The cheek of the Emperor blanched at the tidings; for well did he know
that, till the arrival of the Poles, his disposable force amounted to
scarce 35,000 men, under Duke Charles of Lorraine, who could barely make
head against Abaffi and Tekoeli, while so high were the hopes of the
Magyars raised of a speedy and final deliverance from Austrian tyranny,
that a plot is even said to have been laid between Zriny and his sister,
now the wife of Tekoeli, for seizing the person of Leopold in the palace
of Vienna, and giving him up to the Tartars, who had already commenced
their ravages on the frontiers. The sultan meanwhile--the cumbrous
luxury of whose harem and equipages had retarded the march of the
army--had halted at Belgrade, after holding a grand review of his
forces, and placing the standard of the Prophet in the hands of the
vizier, in token of the full powers entrusted to him for the conduct of
the campaign. On the 10th of June, Tekoeli, who had crossed the Danube
to welcome his potent auxiliaries, was received at Essek with royal
magnificence by Kara-Mustapha, who imitated, in the ceremonial observed
on this occasion, the pomp of the reception of John Zapolya by Soliman,
on his march against Vienna in 1529; but after receiving personal
investiture of the royal dignity conferred on him by the sultan, he
returned rapidly to Cassovia, where he had fixed his headquarters. The
khan of the Tartars had already arrived at Stuhlweissenburg, and was
speedily joined by the vizir and the main Turkish army, which, passing
the Danube to the number of 140,000 men, swept like a torrent over the
rich plains of Lower Hungary: the towns, abandoned by the panic-stricken
German garrisons, every where opening their gates to the partisans of
Zriny and Tekoeli, in the hope of escaping the fate of Veszprim, which
had been sacked by the janissaries for attempting resistance. The march
was pressed with unexampled rapidity, till on the 28th the whole army
was mustered under the walls of Gran; and the vizir, summoning to his
tent the khan and the principal pashas, announced that his orders were
to make himself master of Vienna.

The veneration with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of
the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with
superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in w