This incident is in itself highly improbable, I may almost assert impossible. Not to take into account that it is mentioned in none of the narratives of the time, of which I have fourteen before me, the distance alone would make it next to impossible that so long an operation could have been carried on without detection. It appears also, from the archives of the Scottish foundation in Vienna, that the house in question bore the name Heidenschuss long before the Turkish siege, namely, from the year 1292, when the Tartars overran Austria. Others aver that it belonged to a family of the name of Hayden, which bore in its arms a Tartar discharging an arrow. This is, indeed, disputed; but the antiquity of the name Heidenschuss is certain, and it is equally so that no Turkish mine ever was carried so far as to the spot in question. It is just to mention that the fraternity of bakers, as well as many other corporations, rendered great services in this season of common danger, and it is likely enough that one of that body may have performed the particular service in question in some other locality. The services of the bakers’ guild were acknowledged, after the raising of the siege, by the present of a silver cup, and the privilege of carrying the same in procession round the city every Easter Tuesday. This practice was observed till the year 1811, when the disorders incident to the concourse of people it collected, and the loss of some days’ labour which it was apt to occasion, led to its suppression by the authorities of the bakers’ corporation. FOOTNOTES: [6] The distance of this spot from the wall would be about one-third of the extreme breadth of the city.—T. CHAPTER VI. From October 3 to October 13, 1529.