But neither of these parties nor their royal representatives could save the country from the Turks; on the contrary, the continual rivalries between the two kings not only demoralized public virtue and upset all law and authority within the kingdom, but they assisted not a little the foreign enemy in getting into their possession, by slow degrees, the larger part of Hungary, and enabled the Turks, within a brief period, to float their crescent on the towers of Buda, and there, to the ruin of the nation, and to the perpetual terror of the Christian world, it continued to wave for nearly one hundred and fifty years. The history of the Hungarian nation during this entire period is sad in the extreme—a tragedy, the scenes of which are supplied by an uninterrupted series of trials and sufferings. Owing to the incapacity of the leading statesmen and generals, the ruin of the country became more and more irretrievable. Yet, however dark and forlorn this period may seem, the national sufferings of those days are relieved and brightened by the glorious heroism and patriotism displayed by the people. The Hungarians, although menaced, in their very existence, by many enemies, by party strife, and religious dissensions, exhibited such rare moral courage, heroism, devotion, self-denial, and manliness, that the memory of the generations of that melancholy era will remain forever hallowed. Heroes arose on every side, and the struggle, sustained by the nation for nearly a century and a half against the oppressive power of the Turks, reminds one, in many of its features, of the protracted contest between the Spaniards and the Moors, and, like it, abounds in poetry, romance, and those noble examples of patriotism and loftiness of soul which kindle the human heart, arouse the sympathies of the poet, and are treasured up by the piety of after-ages as glorious relics of the past.