We now directed our footsteps to the old castle that crowns the summit of the hill. The ‘Starigrad,’ as it is called here, is one of the most interesting historic relics in the whole of Bosnia. A glance from its mouldering walls makes one realise the importance of its situation. The peak on which the castle of Doboj stands juts out abruptly into the valley of the Bosna just at the point where in one direction the Sprecca opens out an avenue towards the Drina and Serbian frontier, and in the other the pass of Dervent conducts the road to Croatia. The castle, therefore, was the key to the whole valley of the Bosna against a foe coming from the Hungarian plains, and commanded the highway through the province of Ussora to the very heart of the Bosnian kingdom. The maize-covered river-flat that spreads below it seems one of those spots destined by nature to be the battle-field of nations; and the very name of Doboj or Dvoboi, as it was formerly written, means in Bosniac ‘the two fights.’ [Illustration: Old Castle of Doboj.] As Prince of Ussora, this castle belonged to Tvartko I., who first erected Bosnia into a kingdom. He entrusted the stronghold to the safe keeping of the Croatian Ban, John Horvath, with whom he was bound by common jealousy of the Hungarian suzerain. It was within its walls that the Ban, the bishop of Agram, and the King of Bosnia, concocted, in 1387, the plot by which the Hungarian queen and queen-mother were seized, and the Croat and Bosnian magnates revolted against Sigismund, the King of Hungary. But Sigismund was victorious, and in 1391 the Ban and bishop were shut up within the walls of Doboj,[172] and captured; the Ban while attempting to escape, the bishop in the castle itself, which was forced to surrender; while the King of Bosnia, seeing his province of Ussora overrun, was forced to return to his allegiance. In 1408 another revolt, under Tvartko III., against the Hungarian suzerain, was crushed under these same walls, and the King of Bosnia himself captured in the battle. A terrible vengeance now followed, and 180 nobles, Bosnian and Croatian, are said to have been executed within these walls, and their bodies thrown into the river below. This was at a time when both Hungary and Bosnia should have been united against the Turkish invaders. But the sad national tragedy was being played out, and in due course Doboj, the key of the Christian kingdom, became the stronghold of the Turk. It is a place full of dismal associations for the Christians of Bosnia; they seem to shrink instinctively from the ill-omened site, and at this day the population of Doboj is almost exclusively Mahometan. We could not wonder at coming upon a tradition among the rayahs of this neighbourhood that it was within these walls that the old Bosnian nobility forswore their faith and country and renegaded to the Infidel.