“Carrying back to the Vizier this stern and uncompromising answer, the aga re-entered the fortress of Buda. A scene of hurried preparation and fearful suspense ensued. The storm was gathering fast around the devoted fortress, and the thunder at last bursting with redoubled fury on its walls, a breach was speedily effected--the Turks fought with desperation; and retreating from bastion to bastion, poured their deadly shot into the serried ranks of the besiegers. But imitating the example of their intrepid commanders, the Christian host surmounted every danger. Before sunset they took possession of those castled heights, and hoisted the Austrian banner on the tower of the old Gothic church, which still consecrates the spot, and points to the fearful scene of massacre which followed.” The pasha in command is said to have been killed “fighting in the breach with a Roman bravery.” Thereafter it is recorded the Turks were hunted through the Alföld plain like deer. When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was journeying through Hungary, thirty years later than that recapture of Buda, she said that nothing could be more melancholy than “to reflect on the former flourishing state of that kingdom, and to see such a noble spot of earth almost uninhabited. Such are also the present circumstances of Buda, once the royal seat of the Hungarian kings whose palace there was reckoned one of the most beautiful buildings of the age, now wholly destroyed, no part of the town having been repaired since the last siege but the fortifications and the castle which is the present seat of the governor-general.” Presumably, by the castle, Lady Mary meant the citadel on St. Gellert’s Hill, the key to the possession of the town. From this hill, as has been said, we get one of the most impressive views of Budapest, though the extensive vineyards, which used to clothe the neighbouring slopes and form a notable item in the prospect, have been destroyed by phylloxera. It was from this hill, says the tradition, that Etzel “hurled his offending brother into the Danube.”