The most important place on the right side of the Danube was the cathedral city of Gran, which had been strongly fortified with trenches, walls, and wooden towers by its wealthy inhabitants, many of whom were foreigners, money changers, and merchants. As the city was thought to be impregnable, a large number of persons of all ranks had flocked into it. Batu made his prisoners dig trenches all round, and behind these he set up thirty war-machines, which speedily battered down the fortifications. Next the town-trenches were filled up, while stones, spears, and arrows fell continuously upon the inhabitants, who, seeing it impossible to save the wooden suburbs, set fire to them, burnt their costly wares, buried their gold, silver, and precious stones, and withdrew into the inner town. Infuriated by the destruction of so much valuable property, the Mongols stormed the city and cruelly tortured to death those who did not fall in battle. Not above fifteen persons, it is said, escaped. Three hundred noble ladies entreated in their anguish that they might be taken before Batu, for whose slaves they offered themselves, if he would spare their lives. They were merely stripped of the valuables they wore, and then all beheaded without mercy. For weeks Dora and Talabor had journeyed on, avoiding all the main roads, travelling by the roughest, most secluded ways, and seldom falling in with any human beings, or even seeing a living creature save the wild animals, which had increased and become daring to an extraordinary degree. Wolves scampered about in packs of a hundred or more, and over and over again Talabor had been obliged to light a fire to keep them off. He had done it with trembling, except when they were in the depths of the woods, lest what scared the wolves should attract the Mongols. Bears, too, had come down from the mountains, and had taken up their quarters in the deserted castles and homesteads, and many a wanderer turning into them for a night's shelter found himself confronted by one of these shaggy monsters. Traces of the Mongols were to be seen on all sides: dead bodies of human beings and animals, smouldering towns, villages, and forests; here and there, perched upon some rocky height, would be a defiant castle, whose garrison, if they had not deserted it, were dead or dying of hunger; in some parts, look which way they might, there was a dead body dangling from every tree; poisonous exhalations defiled the air; and over woods, meadows, fields, ruined villages, lay a heavy pall of smoke. Such was the condition to which the Mongols had reduced the once smiling land. Truly it might be said, in the words of the prophet: "A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness."