The history of Bosnia now centres around the fortifications of Jaycze. The city was again and again besieged by Mahomet and Bajazet; but the citizens, amongst whom we learn were a large number of Bogomiles,[129] showed that, when under the inspiration of a sovereign like Mathias, they knew how to fight, and, while the town held out, Hungarian armies inflicted disastrous defeats on the Turks under its walls. In 1520 two generals of Sultan Solyman II., the Bey of Semendria and the Pashà of Turkish Bosnia, inflicted the severest blow on the Banat of Jaycze that it had yet experienced. The great stronghold of Zvornik, the key of the Podrinia, fell into the hands of the Turks, owing to the carelessness of the governor, who had failed to provision it; and two other important fortresses yielded to the panic, one Sokol, the other the rock citadel of Tešanj,[130] the key of the province of Ussora. Jaycze, however, at that time had for governor a stout old soldier, Peter Keglević, who had received wounds at Terentzin, and the successful defence of this city under his guidance is the last and perhaps the most romantic episode in the annals of Christian Bosnia. The Turks, finding all their efforts to take the city by open assault futile, had planned a night surprise, and, to disarm the suspicions of the governor, had retired out of sight of the city, as if to raise the siege. But Keglević, who perhaps obtained his information from renegades in the Pashà’s army, was made aware by means of his spies that the Turks were constructing a large number of ladders. The governor accordingly doubled the watch on the walls, lining them, where they were too low, with foot soldiers; and was shortly made aware, by the same secret sources of information, that the retreating Turks had doubled round, and, making their way by stealth among the mountains and under cover of the forest, were encamped in a retired gorge not far from the town, intending to assault the walls by a sudden escalade in the hours before dawn. Peter showed himself quite equal to the occasion, and told off immediately a picked body of a hundred men to take their stand in the rear of the Turkish ambush, with orders to fall on the infidels at a signal given from a gun-shot. Nor were Keglević’s resources exhausted by this stratagem. It happened to be the eve of a feast-day, when the women and maidens of the town would in times of security go forth, as they still do through the length and breadth of Bosnia, to dance and sing on the forest lawns. Old Peter called the girls and merry wives of Jaycze around him, and bade them at earliest dawn to go forth, as if no foe were nigh, into the King’s Mead,[131] as the meadowland about the town was known long afterwards, and sing and play their shrillest—disarming their fears by telling them that he would be at hand to help them.