/> into his infidel hands. The gateways of western Europe were his; he had

but to open them and march through; doubtless there had come to him

glorious dreams of extending the empire of the crescent to the western

seas. And yet the proud and powerful sultan was to be checked in his

course by an obstacle seemingly as insignificant as if the sting of a

hornet should stop the career of an elephant. The story is a remarkable

one, and deserves to be better known.



Vast was the army which Solyman raised. He had been years in gathering

men and equipments. Great work lay before him, and he needed great means

for its accomplishment. It is said that three hundred thousand men

marched under his banners. So large was the force, so great the quantity

of its baggage and artillery, that its progress was necessarily a slow

one, and sixty days elapsed during its march from Constantinople to

Belgrade.



Here was time for Ferdinand of Austria to bring together forces for the

defence of his dominions against the leviathan which was slowly moving

upon them. He made efforts, but they were not of the energetic sort

which the crisis demanded, and had the Turkish army been less unwieldly

and more rapid, Vienna might have fallen almost undefended into

Solyman's hands. Fortunately, large bodies move slowly, and the sultan

met with an obstacle that gave the requisite time for preparation.



On to Belgrade swept the grand army, with its multitude of standards and

all the pomp and glory of its vast array. The slowness with which it

came was due solely to its size, not in any sense to lack of energy in

the warlike sultan. An anecdote is extant which shows his manner of

dealing with difficulties. He had sent forward an engineer with orders

to build a bridge over the river Drave, to be constructed at a certain

point, and be ready at a certain time. The engineer went, surveyed the

rapid stream, and sent back answer to the sultan that it was impossible

to construct a bridge at that point.



But Solyman's was one of those magnificent souls that do not recognize

the impossible. He sent the messenger back to the engineer, in his hand

a linen cord, on his lips this message:



"Your master, the sultan, commands you, without consideration of the

difficulties, to complete the bridge over the Drave. If it be not ready

for him on his arrival, he will have you strangled with this cord."



The bridge was built. Solyman had learned the art of overcoming the

impossible. He was soon to have a lesson in the art of overcoming the

difficult.



Belgrade was in due time reached. Here the sultan embarked his artillery

and heavy baggage on the Danube, three thousand vessels being employed

for that purpose. They were sent down the stream, under sufficient

escort, towards the Austrian capital, while the main army, lightened of

much of its load, prepared to march more expeditiously than heretofore

through Hungary towards its goal.



Ferdinand of Austria, alarmed at the threatening approach of the Turks,

had sent rich presents and proposals of peace to Solyman at Belgrade;

but those had the sole effect of increasing his pride and making him

more confidant of victory. He sent an insulting order to the ambassadors

to follow his encampment and await his pleasure, and paid no further

heed to their pacific mission.



The Save, an affluent of the Danube, was crossed, and the army lost

sight of the great stream, and laid its course by a direct route through

Sclavonia towards the borders of Styria, the outlying Austrian province

in that direction. It was the shortest line of march available, the

distance to be covered being about two hundred miles. On reaching the

Styrian frontier, the Illyrian mountain chain needed to be crossed, and

within it lay the obstacle with which Solyman had to contend.



The route of the army led through a mountain pass. In this pass was a

petty and obscure town, Guntz by name, badly fortified, and garrisoned

by a mere handful of men, eight hundred in all. Its principal means of

defence lay in the presence of an indomitable commander, Nicholas

Jurissitz, a man of iron nerve and fine military skill.



Ibrahim Pasha, who led the vanguard of the Turkish force, ordered the

occupation of this mountain fortress, and learned with anger and

mortification that Guntz had closed its gates and frowned defiance on

his men. Word was sent back to Solyman, who probably laughed in his

beard at the news. It was as if a fly had tried to stop an ox.



"Brush it away and push onward," was probably the tenor of his orders.



But Guntz was not to be brushed away. It stood there like an awkward

fact, its guns commanding the pass through which the army must march, a

ridiculous obstacle which had to be dealt with however time might press.



The sultan sent orders to his advance-guard to take the town and march

on. Ibrahim Pasha pushed forward, assailed it, and found that he had not

men enough for the work. The little town with its little garrison had

the temper of a shrew, and held its own against him valiantly. A few

more battalions were sent, but still the town held out. The sultan,

enraged at this opposition, now despatched what he considered an

overwhelming force, with orders to take the town without delay, and to

punish the garrison as they deserved for their foolish obstinacy. But

what was his surprise and fury to receive word that the pigmy still held

out stubbornly against the leviathan, that all their efforts to take it

were in vain, and that its guns commanded and swept the pass so that it

was impossible to advance under its storm of death-dealing balls.



Thundering vengeance, Solyman now ordered his whole army to advance,

sweep that insolent and annoying obstacle from the face of the earth,

and then march on towards the real goal of their enterprise, the still

distant city of Vienna, the capital and stronghold of the Christian

dogs.



Upon Guntz burst the whole storm of the war, against Guntz it thundered,

around Guntz it lightened; yet still Guntz stood, proud, insolent,

defiant, like a rock in the midst of the sea, battered by the waves of

war's tempest, yet rising still in unyielding strength, and dashing back

the bloody spray which lashed its walls in vain.



Solyman's pride was roused. That town he must and would have. He might

have marched past it and left it in the rear, though not without great

loss and danger, for the pass was narrow and commanded by the guns of

Guntz, and he would have had to run the gantlet of a hailstorm of iron

balls. But he had no thought of passing it; his honor was involved.

Guntz must be his and its insolent garrison punished, or how could

Solyman the Magnificent ever hold up his head among monarchs and

conquerors again?



On every side the town was assailed; cannon surrounded it and poured

their balls upon its walls; they were planted on the hills in its rear;

they were planted on lofty mounds of earth which overtopped its walls

and roofs; from every direction they thundered threat; to every

direction Guntz thundered back defiance.



An attempt was made to undermine the walls, but in vain; the commandant,

Jurissitz, was far too vigilant to be reached by burrowing. Breach after

breach was made in the walls, and as quickly repaired, or new walls

built. Assault after assault was made and hurled back. Every effort was

baffled by the skill, vigor, and alertness of the governor and the

unyielding courage of his men, and still the days went by and still

Guntz stood.



Solyman, indignant and alarmed, tried the effect of promises, bribes,

and threats. Jurissitz and his garrison should be enriched if they

yielded; they should die under torture if they persisted. These efforts

proved as useless as cannon-balls. The indomitable Jurissitz resisted

promises and threats as energetically as he had resisted shot and balls.



The days went on. For twenty-eight days that insignificant fortress and

its handful of men defied the great Turkish army and held it back in

that mountain-pass. In the end the sultan, with all his pride and all

his force, was obliged to accept a feigned submission and leave

Jurissitz and his men still in possession of the fortress they had held

so long and so well.



They had held it long enough to save Austria, as it proved. While the

sultan's cannon were vainly bombarding its walls, Europe was gathering

around Vienna in defence. From every side troops hurried to the

salvation of Austria from the Turks. Italy, the Netherlands, Bohemia.

Poland, Germany, sent their quotas, till an army of one hundred and

thirty thousand men were gathered around Vienna, thirty thousand of them

being cavalry.



Solyman was appalled at the tidings brought him. It had become a

question of arithmetic to his barbarian intellect. If Guntz, with less

than a thousand men, could defy him for a month, what might not Vienna

do with more than a hundred thousand? Winter was not far away. It was

already September. He was separated from his flotilla of artillery. Was

it safe to advance? He answered the question by suddenly striking camp

and retreating with such haste that his marauding horsemen, who were out

in large numbers, were left in ignorance of the movement, and were

nearly all taken or cut to pieces.



Thus ingloriously ended one of the most pretentious invasions of Europe.

For three years Solyman had industriously prepared, gathering the

resources of his wide dominion to the task and fulminating infinite

disaster to the infidels. Yet eight hundred men in a petty mountain town

had brought this great enterprise to naught and sent back the mighty

army of the grand Turk in inglorious retreat.






The story of Guntz has few parallels in history; the courage and ability

of its commander were of the highest type of military worthiness; yet

its story is almost unknown and the name of Jurissitz is not classed

among those of the world's heroes. Such is fame.



There is another interesting story of the doings of Solyman and the

gallant defence of a Christian town, which is worthy of telling as an

appendix to that just given. The assault at Guntz took place in the year

1532. In 1566, when Solyman was much older, though perhaps not much

wiser, we find him at his old work, engaged in besieging the small

Hungarian town of Szigeth, west of Mohacs and north of the river Drave,

a stronghold surrounded by the small stream Almas almost as by the

waters of a lake. It was defended by a Croatian named Zrinyr and a

garrison of twenty-five hundred men.



Around this town the Turkish army raged and thundered in its usual

fashion. Within it the garrison defended themselves with all the spirit

and energy they could muster. Step by step the Turks advanced. The

outskirts of the town were destroyed by fire and the assailants were

within its walls. The town being no longer tenable, Zrinyr took refuge,

with what remained of the garrison, in the fortress, and still bade

defiance to his foes.



Solyman, impatient at the delay caused by the obstinacy of the defender,

tried with him the same tactics he had employed with Jurissitz many

years before,--those of threats and promises. Tempting offers of wealth

proving of no avail, the sultan threatened the bold commander with the

murder of his son George, a prisoner in his hands. This proved equally

unavailing, and the siege went on.



It went on, indeed, until Solyman was himself vanquished, and by an

enemy he had not taken into account in his thirst for glory--the grim

warrior Death. Temper killed him. In a fit of passion he suddenly died.

But the siege went on. The vizier concealed his death and kept the

batteries at work, perhaps deeming it best for his own fortunes to be

able to preface the announcement of the sultan's death with a victory.



The castle walls had been already crumbling under the storm of balls.

Soon they were in ruins. The place was no longer tenable. Yet Zrinyr was

as far as ever from thoughts of surrender. He dressed himself in his

most magnificent garments, filled his pockets with gold, "that they

might find something on his corpse," and dashed on the Turks at the head

of what soldiers were left. He died, but not unrevenged. Only after his

death was the Turkish army told that their great sultan was no more and

that they owed their victory to the shadow of the genius of Solyman the

Magnificent.