in Belgrade the key of the Danube, and opened the way for his further advance into Hungary. In the following year, 1522, he carried into execution the unaccomplished wish and dying injunction of Mahomet II. in the subjection of Rhodes, and on Christmas-night held his triumphant entry into the conquered city. Soon afterwards he directed his forces again upon Hungary, in which country internal dissensions afforded him a favourable opportunity for the furtherance of his plans of conquest. King Louis II. of Hungary, the feeble successor of his illustrious father, Ladislaus II., had ascended the throne in 1516, under the guardianship of the Emperor Maximilian I., and of Sigismund, King of Poland, his uncle. At the very commencement of his reign, an insurrection of his nobles threatened to deprive him of the throne. He had, moreover, mortally offended the ambitious John Zapolya, Count of Zips, who held as wayvode the government of Transylvania, and excited him to the most destructive projects by passing him over on the occasion of the election to the office of Palatine.[1] This man, whose name, like that of Tekeli, is so intimately connected with the misfortunes of his country, was born in 1487, the son of Stephen Zapolya, one of the best officers of the great king and warrior Mathias Corvinus. Inheriting the rewards of his father’s valour in the shape of vast possessions and important governments, he was distinguished through life by restless ambition, great talents for intrigue, and on some occasions by acts of inventive cruelty which exceed in extravagance of horror all that Suetonius has related of the Roman emperors. By a reckless acceptance of Turkish aid, and by treachery as reckless to his engagements with that power, he partially succeeded in the great object of his adventurous life—his establishment on the throne of Hungary. He died a natural death in 1540, leaving an infant son, who succeeded him in the government of Transylvania, but who struggled in vain to establish himself in that of Hungary. With his death in 1570 this race of able and dangerous men fortunately became extinct.