in the field, the gathering strength of the Imperialists and their preparations for a forward movement could be no secret even to one so negligent in procuring intelligence from that important quarter, and he determined upon a conclusive effort. On the 4th September an explosion took place towards the eastern end of the Burg bastion, the more violent because of the solidity of that work’s construction: 4000 Turks, directed by the Vizier in person, rushed forward to the assault. From every alarm-post the besieged hastened to the point of attack, and among the foremost was Stahremberg, accompanied by his whole staff, prepared and probably expecting to die in the breach, which to a breadth of more than five fathoms had been opened by the explosion. The rubbish had fallen outwards, filling the ditch and facilitating the advance of the Turks, who, armed with sabre and target, and bearing baskets of earth on their backs, were thronging up the ascent. The shout of Allah was heard nearer and nearer, and some bold hands had already planted the horse-tails on the crest of the rampart, when the fire of the besieged filled the ditch with the bodies of the bravest. The fight raged for two hours, and the Turks once more retired with a loss of 500 men. The garrison, however, could ill spare a loss of 117 men and two captains. The fighting had no sooner ceased than every available material was used to repair the breach. Besides the usual appliances of timber, sand-bags, and ox-hides, mattresses and reed mats were pressed into this service. The heavy wooden wine-presses were broken up and the rafters taken from the roofs for the same purpose, and ramparts of planks, in engineering phraseology mantelets, fitted with wheels, were prepared and brought down to the scene of danger. The other portions of the defences were intersected with fresh traverses, and armed with additional guns. A corps 400 strong was raised from parties who had been hitherto exempted from military duty, clerks and artisans in the most indispensable departments of industry. The nightly discharges of rockets from St. Stephen’s were thicker and more frequent than before. The city was in its last agonies. On the 6th, an explosion brought down a length of five fathoms of the wall, 24 feet thick, of the Löbel bastion, making a breach less defensible than that in the Burg bastion, because the parapets of the wall which remained had been previously destroyed. The fury of the assault which followed, and the tenacity of the resistance, may be measured by the Turkish loss of 1500 men. Two standards were at one moment planted on the rampart. A house in the Löbelstrasse opposite the spot where this took place is still called the Turks’ house, and bears a date and a painting of a Turk’s head commemorative of the occurrence. On the evening of this day, five rockets were observed to rise from the Kahlenberg.[13] That short-lived apparition was sufficient to scatter the clouds