"Hostilities had recommenced, in 1660, between the Ottoman empire and Austria, on account of Transylvania. The Turk was suzerain of Transylvania, and directly held Buda and the part of Hungary on the west and south of the Danube, projecting like a wedge between Upper Hungary, Styria, and Vienna. George Rakoczi, Prince of Transylvania, having perished in combat against the Sultan, his suzerain, the Turks had pursued the House of Rakoczi into the domains which it possessed in Upper Hungary. The Rakoczis, and the new prince elected by the Transvlvanians, Kemeni, invoked the aid of the emperor. The Italian, Montecuculi, the greatest military chieftain in the service of the House of Austria, expelled the Turks from a part of Transylvania, but could not maintain himself there; Kemeni was killed in a skirmish. The Turks installed their protégé, Michael Abaffi, in his place, and renewed their attacks against Upper Hungary (1661-1662). The secret of these alternations lay in the state of feeling of the Hungarians and Transylvanians, who, continually divided between two oppressors, the Turk and the Austrian, and too weak to rid themselves of either, always preferred the absent to the present master. … Religious distrust also complicated political distrust; Protestantism, crushed in Bohemia, remained powerful and irritated in Hungary. The emperor demanded the assistance of the Germanic Diet and all the Christian states against the enemy of Christianity. … Louis XIV., at the first request of Leopold, supported by the Pope, replied by offers so magnificent that they appalled the Emperor. Louis proposed not less than 60,000 auxiliaries, half to be furnished by France, half by the Alliance of the Rhine; that is, by the confederates of France in Germany. … The Emperor … would have gladly been able to dispense with the aid of France and his confederates; but the more pressing danger prevailed over the more remote. The Turks had made a great effort during the summer of 1663. The second of the Kiouprouglis, the Vizier Achmet, taking Austrian Hungary in the rear, had crossed the Danube at Buda with 100,000 fighting men, invaded the country between the Danube and the Carpathians, and hurled his Tartars to the doors of Presburg and Olmütz. Montecuculi had with great difficulty been able to maintain himself on the island of Schütt, a species of vast intrenched camp formed by nature in front of Presburg and Vienna. The fortified towns of Upper Hungary fell one after another, and the Germanic Diet, which Leopold had gone to Ratisbon to meet, replied with maddening dilatoriness to the urgent entreaties of the head of the Empire. The Diet voted no effective aid until February, 1664; but the Alliance of the Rhine, in particular, had already accorded 6,500 soldiers, on condition that the Diet should decide, before separating,