part of it the House of Austria had all along maintained itself; nor did that power submit to the summary appropriation of the remainder by the enemy of Christendom. For many a year, and through many a reign, Hungary continued the field of a struggle of race and religion, which the temporary exhaustion of either or both parties could but occasionally interrupt, and in which, during the lifetime of Ferdinand, the Turks had generally the advantage. In 1547, an armistice of five years was purchased by humiliating concessions on the part of Austria. _Punctually_ at the expiration of the period hostilities were resumed, and continued without cessation or decisive result to the death of Ferdinand in 1564, and into the reign of his successor Maximilian II. In the prosecution of the struggle, this wise sovereign reaped advantage from the system of toleration which he extended to the powerful Protestant party in Hungary. The Hungarian campaign of 1566 was distinguished by the famous siege of the small fortress of Szigeth, and the self-immolation of its defender, the Hungarian Leonidas, Nicholas, Count of Zriny. In early life he had distinguished himself at the siege of Vienna; and having pursued a successful career in arms, held under the present Emperor the chief command on the right bank of the Danube. Soliman had undertaken the siege of Erlau; and the Pacha of Bosnia was on the march with reinforcements, when he was attacked near Siklos by Zriny, completely defeated, and slain. The Sultan, furious at this disaster, raised the siege of Erlau and marched with 100,000 men upon Zriny, who, with scarcely 2500, flung himself into Szigeth, with the resolution never to surrender it; a resolution to which his followers cheerfully bound themselves by an oath. To the utmost exertion of his vast military means of attack, Soliman added not only the seduction of brilliant promises, but the more cogent threat of putting to death the son of Zriny, who had fallen into his hands. All was in vain. The Sultan’s letter was used by Zriny as wadding for his own musket; and for seventeen days the town held out against repeated assaults. The enfeebled garrison were then driven to the lower castle, and at last to the upper one. No hope remained of repelling another general assault, for which the Turkish preparations were carried forward with the utmost vigour under the eye of the Sultan, who, however, was not destined to witness their issue. On the 6th of September he was found dead in his tent, having thus closed, at the age of seventy-six, by a tranquil and natural death, a reign of forty-five years, which for activity and variety of military enterprise, for expenditure of human life, and for the diffusion of the miseries of warfare, unmitigated by the conventional usages and inventions of later times, could scarcely find its parallel. His decease afforded no respite to the besieged. The event was kept a rigid secret from the soldiery by the Vizier