The flat ground upon the southern side of the Danube, from near Krems to Tuln, the Tullner Feld, offered a convenient space for the mustering of the army after passing the river. Vienna was not further than about sixteen miles as the crow flies, but the intervening country was of a difficult nature, even should the Turks attempt no interruption to the movements of the relieving forces. The Wiener Wald, rising to more than nine hundred feet above the level of the Danube, runs into a north-easterly direction between Tuln and Vienna, and advances up to the very current of the river, which flows north-eastward and then south-eastward round the mountain barrier. The roads were few and difficult, and trees covered the slopes of the hills. Sobieski had decided to advance with his left wing covered by the Danube, and to throw succour into Vienna upon that side; while with the right he threatened the rear of the Turkish camp on the side of Dornbach and Hernals. With this object the march was directed upon the Leopoldsberg and the Kahlenberg, the last heights or ridges of the mountains above the Danube, to the north-west of Vienna. And at length, on the 10th of September, the forward movement upon the Kahlenberg began. Already as early as the morning of the 6th, a reconnaissance had been pushed to the summit, and as evening fell had cheered Vienna with a flight of signal rockets, in answer to the fiery messengers of distress which nightly rose from the spire of St. Stephen's. But to carry an army up the Kahlenberg was a harder task. Sobieski wrote that the country was horribly wasted. There was neither food for man nor forage for horses, beyond what the army could carry with them. Indeed, the leaves of the trees upon the Kahlenberg had to eke out the supplies of the latter. There was all need for despatch. The last despairing message had come from Starhemberg, borne by a swimmer on the Danube to Lorraine, in language as brief as significant, "_No time to be lost; no time indeed to be lost._" FOOTNOTES: [11] Salvandy, p. 96, vol. ii. [12] The grandson of the Duke of Lorraine married Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, and was himself Emperor. The grand-daughter of Sobieski was the mother of Charles Edward, the hero of the Forty-five. [13] Of the family, not an ancestor, of the present Duchess of Albany. [14] Salvandy. [15] Schimmer, "Sieges of Vienna;" Count Thürheim, "Life of Starhemberg;" and Salvandy, "Hist. de Pologne," p. 172, vol. ii. misplace this solemn benediction of the army and the knighting of Prince James on the morning of the 12th. Sobieski's own testimony, in his letters to his queen, is decisive for the 8th. Nor on the 12th was there time for the ceremony. CHAPTER VI.