prevalent report, that two townsmen escaped by concealment in the roof of the church, is less probable, because the Turks immediately set fire to that building. It is certain, however, that three persons did escape, but in a different manner. One of them, Hans Schimmer by name, a tailor’s apprentice and an ancestor of the writer of this narrative, wisely fled before the catastrophe to Maria Zell; another, Jacob Holzer, is supposed to have escaped in the first confusion; the third, Balthasar Frank, it is said, hid himself till nightfall in the well of the tower, and then found means to abscond. This last story, however, is less well authenticated than the two former. From the number of the slaughtered, it is evident that many of the inhabitants of the places adjacent had taken refuge in this devoted town, for the ordinary male population never reached that number, and those who were carried off as slaves are also to be counted. It is probable that among the victims were people of condition, for in the course of some excavations which lately took place in the mound of their sepulture, some rings of value, enamelled, and even set with precious stones, were discovered. CHAPTER X. From July 15 to July 30. The 15th July, the day from which may be dated the commencement of the active siege of Vienna, was distinguished by an accident which might well have brought that operation to a close by the destruction of the city. At two o’clock P. M., some time after the Turkish batteries had opened, a fire broke out in the Scottish Convent, which, after destroying that establishment, rapidly spread to the Renngasse and the neighbourhood of the Imperial arsenal, which contained some 1800 barrels of powder. Two windows of this building were actually at one moment on fire. The exertions, however, of the Commandant and the citizens were proportionate to the emergency, the windows were built up with great haste, and under a heat which made the operation very difficult. This immediate danger averted, a propitious change of wind assisted the final extinction, but several palaces and other extensive buildings had been destroyed, and for three days the smouldering ruins threatened danger and demanded attention. Nothing certain was ever known of the origin of the fire. At a period of so much alarm and excitement, it was scarcely possible that under this uncertainty the public would be satisfied to ascribe it to any of the many accidents which may give rise to a conflagration in a besieged town. Popular suspicion fell upon the Hungarian malecontents, and many acts of cruelty were the result of this surmise. Men wearing the Hungarian dress were massacred in the streets, but others also fell victims to the spirit of frantic and undiscriminating cruelty which panic generally engenders. A poor half-witted man, whose eccentricities had often afforded amusement at the tables of the wealthy Viennese, chose