For generations back the Turks had been a thorn in the side of Hungary and had worried the kings by their constant incursions. They persecuted the land much as the Danes harried Britain, and thirty-six years after Matthias’ death the culmination came in a terrific battle fought at Mohács, where the Turks, in prodigious force and fury, almost wiped the Hungarian nation off the face of the map. The reigning King, Louis II., was but a boy, and his army of 25,000 men was practically annihilated by one twelve times as great, under Suleiman the Turk. Seven archbishops and bishops and thousands of nobles laid down their lives on the field that day, and the defeat was to the nation as poignant and humiliating as the battle of Flodden Field was to Scotland. The Turk has always stood out conspicuously as the only Mussulman power in Europe, and in our time we have seen slice after slice cut away from his territory and set up as independent kingdoms. The time is surely not far distant when the Ottoman power will be pushed across into Asia, to which it so much more fitly belongs; in fact, only the jealousies of the great nations adjacent have so long delayed this consummation. The Hungarians, driven frantic by their disasters, appealed to the Kings of the House of Hapsburg for help, and accepted them as rulers, alien though they were in blood and race. The solution was accepted loyally by the majority of the people, but it led to little relief, for even the Hapsburgs could not hold back the savage Turks, who overran the great plain of Hungary, and were accepted as suzerains by the people of Transylvania. For a century and a half before the year 1686 the Hungarian capital was in the hands of the Turks. Such divisions and dissensions tore the nation in pieces, and there was nothing but misery for the people. “But,” writes the distinguished Hungarian, Dr. Julius de Vargha, already quoted, “it was the national disaster that displayed the heroic valour and ardent patriotism of the Hungarian nation. Such splendid instances of intrepid bravery, undaunted self-sacrifice and chivalrous virtues brighten these dark pages of our history, that we may justly call this period the heroic age of the Hungarian nation. But it was not only military prowess that preserved the national character of this country, torn, as it was, to pieces and bleeding from a thousand wounds. It is remarkable that just at this very period a rich and flourishing national literature sprang into being. During the reign of Matthias humanistic literature and culture took deep root in the country; its tongue however was not Hungarian but Latin. The intellectual movement of the Reformation made the soil of Hungary, that had already been cultivated, bring forth a national literature, which the struggle evoked by the anti-Reformation succeeded in fostering to a higher development.”