waste with the same ferocity as in the invasion by Soliman, and many
thousands of the country people were dragged as slaves into the Turkish
camp. The regular columns of the janissaries and feudatory troops,
meanwhile, continuing their advance, appeared on the morning of the 14th
under the walls of Vienna; the posts of the different corps were
assigned on the same day, and in the course of the following night,
ground was broken for the trenches on three sides of the city.

The ancient ramparts of Vienna, which had withstood the assault of the
great Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by
fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long
interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens
of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the
glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious
abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected
celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the
fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the
besiegers. Such preparations for defence, however, as the time allowed
of, had been hastily made by the governor, Rudiger Count Stahrenberg, a
descendant of the stout baron who, in the former siege, had repulsed the
Tartars in the defiles near Enns, and an artillery officer of proved
skill and valour. Most of the gates had been walled up, platforms and
covered ways constructed, and the students of the university, with such
of the citizens as were able and willing to bear arms, were organized
into companies in aid of the regular troops, whose number did not exceed
14,000. But the flower of the Austrian nobility, with many gallant
volunteers, not only from Germany, but from other parts of Christendom,
were within the walls, and animated by their example the spirits of the
defenders, whose only hope of relief lay apparently in the distant and
uncertain succours of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine, with his cavalry,
had still hoped to maintain himself in the Prater and the Leopoldstadt,
(which were on an island separated from the city by a narrow arm of the
river,) and thus to keep up the communication with the north bank:--but
an overwhelming body of Turkish horse, (among whom were conspicuous the
Arab chargers and gorgeous equipments of a troop of Egyptian Mamlukes, a
force rarely seen in the Ottoman armies,) was directed against him on