BOOK II. FROM THE END OF THE FIRST SIEGE OF VIENNA TO THAT OF THE SECOND. 1530 to 1684. CHAPTER I. 1530 to 1538. The close of the year 1529 had been made memorable in the annals of Christendom by the retreat of Soliman. He had retired not without loss and a degree of exhaustion which promised an interval at least of repose to the countries he had so cruelly ravaged. He was, however, neither satiated with blood nor discouraged by that signal failure of the main object of his expedition which the Turkish historiographers strove in vain to conceal beneath the flowers of Oriental eloquence. So early as in the spring of 1532, he poured down upon Hungary and Styria a force even more numerous than that which had invested Vienna. Some have computed it at 600,000 men, probably an exaggeration; but Ortelius, a writer generally to be depended upon, speaks of 500,000, and of these 300,000 horsemen. The first serious resistance which this immense accumulation of numerical force had to encounter, was opposed to it by the inconsiderable and scarcely fortified town, Güns. The defence of this place ranks high among the instances in which patience and resolution, arrayed behind very feeble defences, have baffled all the efforts of numbers stimulated by the hope of plunder and a strong sense of the disgrace of failure. Nicholas Jurechich, a Croatian nobleman, was the leader to whom the credit of this defence is due. In the character of ambassador extraordinary from Ferdinand to the Sultan, he had very recently displayed firmness, temper, and sagacity; and now, behind walls which had been mined in thirteen different places, and which presented a practicable breach eight fathoms wide, with a body of troops originally of insignificant numbers and reduced by eleven assaults, he met with unshaken resolution a twelfth desperate attempt of the enemy. It was all but fatal. The troops were nearly driven from the walls, upon which eight Turkish standards were already planted, when a shout of despair raised by the women and unarmed inhabitants of the place was mistaken by the assailants for the cheer of a reinforcement. The garrison profited by a moment of hesitation, and again succeeded in their noble effort. For twenty-five days they had occupied the whole force of the Turkish Empire in a fruitless attempt,—a period fully sufficient to exhaust the patience of the brave and impetuous but ill-disciplined armies of the faithful. The Sultan, unwilling to waste a further portion of the best season and of his best troops before a place so unimportant in itself, adopted his usual expedient in such cases, magnanimity. He invited the commanders under a safe conduct to his presence, complimented them on their conduct, and making them a present of the town and citadel, a donation founded on a right of property on which they had no inclination to raise a verbal dispute, for the utter exhaustion of their resources of all kinds would