The last hopes of the nation had centred upon the sea-fortress, and now these hopes, too, seemed to vanish, when suddenly, as by a miracle, the besiegers ceased their hostilities, folded up their tents, and departed for the East. At the command of Batu Khan the whole Mongolian army, with all their followers, left the razed country, the flood of the invaders receding to the banks of the Volga, whence it had come. Oktai, the Great Khan, was dead, and Batu Khan hurried back to be present at the funeral feast, and to make his powerful voice, emphasized by the arms of his entire army, felt in the election of the new ruler. After the Mongols had withdrawn, King Béla returned, in company of a few of his trusty followers, to his desolated land. He tottered under the weight of the misfortunes and woes of his people. To use the words of a contemporary writer and eye-witness describing the scene of desolation which met Béla’s eyes: “Here and there a tower, half burnt and blackened by smoke, and rearing its head towards the sky, like a mourning flag over a funereal monument, indicated the direction in which they were to advance. The highways were overgrown with grass, the fields white with bleaching bones, and not a living soul came out to meet them. And the deeper they penetrated into the land, the more terrible became the sights they saw. When at last those who survived crept forth from their hiding-places, half of them fell victims to wild animals, starvation, and pestilence. The stores laid up by the tillers of the soil, the year before, had been carried away by the Mongols, and the little grain they could sow after the departure of the enemy had hardly sprung up when it was devoured by locusts. The famine assumed such frightful proportions that starving people, in their frenzy, killed each other, and it happened that men would bring to market human flesh for sale. Since the birth of Christ no country has ever been overwhelmed by such misery.”