In 1463 Mahomet crossed the Drina and poured into Bosnia an army, the cavalry alone of which was exaggerated by the terror of the natives into 150,000 horsemen. On June 14 a Turkish Pashà appeared at the head of a large force beneath the walls of Bobovac, the ancient seat of Bosnian Bans and Kings. The Sultan himself came up next day, and the governor[111]—a ‘Manichee,’ we are told, ‘who had feigned to be a Christian’—forthwith, with the consent of the garrison, who it is to be supposed were equally disaffected against the Catholic rulers, opened the gates to the Turk. Thus passed into the hands of Mahomet a fortress of the greatest strength, and supplied with provisions for a two-years’ siege. The King of Bosnia, panic-stricken at the loss of his royal city, and seeing himself betrayed by his own subjects, shut himself up with his treasures in Jaycze, another royal city, as strong by its position and fortifications as Bobovac; but feeling himself still insecure, at the approach of the Pashà fled with his treasures to Clissa on the coast of Primorie, where, after forty days’ siege, on condition of his life being spared, he surrendered himself to Mahomet, together with his treasures, the accumulated hoards of five kings, amounting, it is said, to a million of ducats.[112] The crafty Sultan utilized, we are told, the King’s authority to obtain possession of the remaining strongholds of Bosnia. He extorted from him writs to the governors of the different cities, ordering them to give up their keys to the Turks. All obeyed. The Protestant population of Bosnia did not need the royal mandate; they looked on the Turks rather as deliverers than foes, and in the short space of eight days seventy cities, ‘defended by nature and art,’ opened their gates to the Sultan’s officers.[113] Then at last the Christians of Bosnia discovered that they had betrayed one tyranny to make room for a worse. The King, Stephen Tomašević, having served his turn, was barbarously executed by his perfidious captor. Accounts differ as to the exact manner of his death; but it matters little whether he suffered the fate of Marsyas, St. Sebastian, or Charles I.; and poetic justice is satisfied, if we may believe the statement that the parricide king met his doom on the same field of Bielaj where he murdered his father.[114] The most eminent nobles who had not escaped to Dalmatia were transported to Asia, thirty thousand of the picked youth of Bosnia were taken to recruit the Janissaries, and two hundred thousand of the inhabitants were sold as slaves.