in his folly to discharge a pistol in the direction of the fire: he was seized by the populace and torn to pieces. Even an Imperial officer, in whose residence some rocket sticks were discovered, was flung into prison after terrible maltreatment. It required great exertion on the part of the authorities to repress this phrenzy, and to bring back the population to that regular discharge of duties on which rested the sole chance of salvation to the entire community. On this same day, the 15th, the trenches were opened against the Burg and Löbel bastions, and many Christian prisoners were compelled to labour in them. On the part of the town the palisades were completed along the counterscarp, the ditches were furnished with traverses, and with the necessary passages of communication, and on the bastions arrangements effected for placing in battery about 300 pieces of cannon. Countermines were now also commenced, in conducting which the Venetian Bartholomeo Camuccini and a Captain Hafner specially distinguished themselves, being the only persons in the city skilled in this branch of engineering. On the 16th the Commandant Stahremberg, who with unwearied activity visited every quarter of the defences, was wounded in the head by the explosion of a shell. His exertions were scarcely interrupted by this accident, for before he was sufficiently recovered to walk, he caused himself to be carried in a chair to every quarter which required his presence. The stone seat is shown to this day, high up in the spire of St. Stephen’s, from which for many an anxious hour he overlooked the camp of the Turks, and watched the movements of their corps and the progress of their engineers. The fire of the Turks was henceforth sustained with scarcely any interruption, and it has been calculated that during the siege upwards of 100,000 shells were thrown into the city. If this calculation approach the truth, it is difficult to account for the smallness of the amount of damage they are known to have produced. The buildings indeed of Vienna were then, as now, of very solid construction, and all the usual precautions against vertical fire, the placing of beams, earth, &c., on the roofs and upper stories, had been resorted to. The chronicles of the transaction have however recorded several instances of the inefficiency of the Turkish missiles. It is said that one of the first shells which fell in the city, near St. Michael’s, was extinguished by a child of three years old before it could burst; another which fell into a full congregation at St. Stephen’s, did no injury beyond carrying off the foot of an old woman; a third fell upon an open barrel of powder, and did no mischief. The fragments of these missiles were occasionally collected, and after being, according to a custom of the day, blessed by a priest, were redischarged at the enemy. The various contrivances of the besiegers for incendiary purposes,—arrows wrapped with combustible materials,