An incident recorded in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu suggests that there is something in the air which leads to such tragic coups. She says that shortly before her arrival at Belgrade the pasha had fallen under the displeasure of his soldiers “for no other reason, but restraining their incursions on the Germans. They took it into their heads from that mildness, that he had intelligence with the enemy, and sent such information to the grand Signior at Adrianople; but, redress not coming quick enough from thence, they assembled themselves in a tumultuous manner, and by force dragged their Bassa before the Cadi and Mufti, and there demanded justice in a mutinous way; one crying out, Why he protected the Infidels? Another, Why he squeezed them of their money? The Bassa, easily guessing their purpose, calmly replied to them, that they asked him too many questions, and that he had but one life which must answer for all. They then immediately fell upon him with their scymitars (without waiting the sentence of the heads of the law) and in a few moments cut him in pieces. The present Bassa has not dared to punish the murder; on the contrary, he affected to applaud the actors of it as brave fellows.” It was but a short stay that I made in Belgrade--possibly with a longer sojourn it might “grow” upon one, and the chief impression retained is that of its wonderful situation at the confluence of the two rivers. To that situation it owed its past importance as a strategic point and therefore its prominent position in the military annals of the neighbouring countries, and to it it will owe no small share of its probable future importance as a commercial city. Those visitors who are not the victims of a holiday time-table would probably find Belgrade a delightful centre for excursions into the very beautiful country which lies within easy reach of it both in Servia and Croatia. From where the Inn joins the Danube at Passau to where the Save comes in between Zimony and Belgrade, we have had on the right bank the frontier of the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia--provinces which, according to Gibbon, embraced the great stretch of country more or less enclosed by the three rivers named, and later became divided up into Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Lower Hungary, and Slavonia. FOOTNOTES: [15] “Hungary and its People,” by Louis Felbermann. CHAPTER XI BELGRADE TO ORSOVA “... Kazán’s stupendous rocks, Where eagles eyry in the heights above And the dark Danube pours it flood below.” _From the Magyar_