Summons given promising to yield the City after they had once won the City of Ierusalem From thence they came to Cesarea in Palestine where they solemnly kept the Feast of Whitsontide and so to Rama which they found for fear forsaken of the Infidels Marching from Rama and drawing near to Ierusalem they in the Vantgard of the Army upon the first descrying of the Holy City gave for joy divers great Shouts and Outcries which with the like applause of the whole Army was so doubled and redoubled as if therewith they would have rent the very Mountains and pierced the highest Heavens There might a man have seen the devout passions of these most worthy and zealous Christians uttered in right divers manners some with theâ—r Eyes and Hands cast up towards Heaven called aloud upon the name and help of Christ Jesus some prostrate upon their faces kissed the ground as that whereon the Redeemer of the World sometime walked others joyfully saluted those holy places which they had heard so much of and then first beheld in brief every man in some sort expressed the joy he had conceived of the sight of the Holy City as the end of their long travel This most ancient and famous City so much renowned in holy Writ is situate in an hilly Country not watred with any River or fresh Springs as other famous Cities for most part be neither yet was it well seated for Wood or Pasture ground but what wanted in these and such other benefits of Nature was by the extraordinary blessings of the most High so supplied as that the Jews there dwelling so long as they kept the Ordinances of the Lord were of all other people in the World justly accounted the most happy and fortunate Yet in those so blessed times was this City for the sin of the people oftentimes delivered into the Enemies hand and the glory thereof defaced as well appeareth by the whole course of the History of holy Scripture as also by the ancient and approved Histories as well of the Jews themselves as others Nevertheless it still rose again though not in like glory as before in the time of King David Solomon and the other next succeeding Kings and so was still repeopled by the Jews until that at last according to the foretelling of our Saviour Christ it was with a great and of all others most lamentable destruction utterly rased and destroyed by the Romans under the leading of Vespasian the Emperor and his noble Son Titus forty years after our Saviour his precious Death and Passion Since which time it was never until this day again repaired or yet well inhabited by the Jews but lying buried in the ruines of it self all the Reign of Domitian Nerva and Trajan until the time of the great Emperor Aelius Adrianus it was again by him re-edified about the year 136 and after the name of him called Aelia who together with the name changed also in some part the ancient situation of the City For whereas before it was seated upon the steep rising of an hill in such sort that towards the East and the South it overlooked the whole ground having only the Temple and the Castle called Antonia in the highest part of the City Adrian translated the whole City unto the very top of the hill so that the place where our blessed Saviour suffered his most bitter Passion with the Sepulchre wherein he was also laid and from whence he in Glory rose again before without the City were then inclosed within the Walls thereof as they are at this day to be seen Yet for all that the Emperor being dead in process of time this new built City recovered again the ancient name of Ierusalem whereby it hath ever since and is at this day yet known This City so re-edified the Emperor first gave unto the Jews whom he afterwards thrust out again for their Rebellion and gave it to the Christians to inhabit over whom one Mark first Bishop of the Gentiles there had the charge But forasmuch as the Roman Emperors were at that time altogether Idolaters and Persecutors of the poor Christians the Church also at Ierusalem with others endured sundry and many grievous Persecutions under the Emperors Antonius Commodus Severus Maximinus Valerianus Aurelianus Dioclesianus and Maxentius until that at length Constantine the Great converted unto the Faith of Christ about the year of Grace 320 suppressing the Pagan Idolatry gave general Peace to the afflicted Church whereby the Christian Church at Ierusalem for the space of three hundred years after happily flourished under the Greek Emperors until the time of the Emperor Phocas who having most cruelly slain the good Emperor Maurice with his Children and so possessed himself of the Empire gave occasion thereby unto Chosroe the Persian King in revenge of the death of Maurice his Father in law with all his Power to invade Syria who as a tempest bearing down all before him took also by force the City of Ierusalem having that year which was about the year Six hundred and ten slain almost an hundred thousand Christians But Phocas the Usurper being by them of his Guard most cruelly slain and Heraclius succeeding in his stead Chosroe was by him again driven out of Syria and the Holy City again recovered about the year 624. In these great Wars against the Persians Heraclius had used the help of the Arabians called Scenite a warlike people of Arabia Deserta altogether given to the Spoil who the Wars now ended expecting to have received their pay were contrary to their expectation and without all reason rejected by them that should have paid them with very foul and contumelious words as that there was not mony enough to pay the Christian Souldiers of the Latines and the Greeks much less those vile dogs whom they so called for that they had but a little before received the damnable Doctrin of the false Prophet Mahomet the great Seducer of the World who even in that time flourished Upon which discontentment they at their return revolted from the Empire and joyned themselves unto their great Prophet and so afterwards unto the Caliphs his Successors extending his Doctrin together with his Soveraignty to the utmost of their power and that with so good success that in short time they had overrun all Aegypâ— Syria the Land of Promise and taken the Holy City With these the Disciples of Mahomet and his Successors the Sarasins for so now they would be called the Greek Emperors ensuing had for certain years divers conflicts with diverse fortune for the possession of Syria But at length wearied out and by them overcome they left the aforesaid Countries wholly to their Devotion Hereby it came to pass that the Sarasins for the space of 370 years following held these Countries with many others in great subjection oppressing still the poor Christians in Ierusalem with most grievous Tributes and exactions unto whom they yet left a third part of the City
had before poysoned Mary the Emperors Daughter with Caesar her Husband as is before declared Thus perished this great Empress cruelly strangled in prison by these two wicked men the merciless Executioners of Andronicus his wrath Her dead Body lately adorned with all the Graces of Nature even to the admiration of the Beholders was without more ado secretly raked up in the Sand fast by the Sea-side a poor Sepulchre for so great a Person What might not Andronicus now do to others that durst thus cruelly deal with the young Emperors own Mother and nearest Friends yet was all covered under the pretence of the common good and safety of the State and Empire And the more to shadow Andronicus his secret purposes as not proceeding of any private or hidden malice or aspiring humor from which he of all men would seem most free and the more to manifest his Devotion and Loyalty to the young Emperor his Cousin he was the only Perswader unto the rest of the Nobility to have him solemnly Crowned which as yet by reason of his tender Age he was not and at the time of his Coronation with his own shoulders supported him up as he was after the manner of that Solemnity carried unto the great Church and so back again the Crocodiles tears still plenteously running down his aged face as if it had been for exceeding joy which many of the meaner sort beholding and deeming thereof the best highly commended his kindness accounting the young Emperor thrice happy in so grave a Governor and faithful Counsellor who in love and kind affection towards him seemed not inferior to his natural Father so cunningly had he under the Vail of Piety shadowed his most execrable Treachery as that in the very plotting thereof he was accounted most loving and kind But hidden Treason be it never so well dissembled must at length shew it self So Andronicus having got into his Power both the Emperor and the Empire and the chief Friends of the late Emperor Emanuel being taken out of the way or else driven into exile thought it now high time for himself to aspire unto that high Soveraignty after which he had so many years longed Wherefore calling together a Council of his Flaterers and Favorites whom he had for such purpose promoted unto the highest Places of State all or the most part of the grave Counsellors and friends of the late Emperor Emanuel being now displaced or otherwise taken out of the way he as a man only careful of the common good declared unto them the dangerous State of the Empire by reason of a Rebellion raised in Bythinia at Nice by Isaac Angelus and Theodorus Catacuzenus and another at Prusa by Theodorus Angelus requiring their grave advice for the suppressing thereof who not ignorant of their Lords purpose as thereof before sufficiently instructed answered with one consent That of such great Mischiefs there would be no end except he were joyned in Fellowship of the Empire together with Alexius by his Gravity and deep Wisdom to supply what wanted for the good Government of the State in the young Emperor is Cousin At which Speech the standers-by being in number many and for the most part the Followers of Andronicus his Flatterers gave a great shout and as if it had been already granted with one Applause cried out Long live Alexius and Andronicus the Greek Emperors and that with such a vehemency as if they would therwith have rent the very Heavens The bruit thereof flying abroad into the City forthwith you might have seen every street and corner of the City full of the vulgar people with some also of better sort swarming together like Bees and sounding the Praises of Andronicus who now was come out of his House into the Court with a world of people following him and crying out Long live the Emperors Alexius and Andronicus With which loud acclamation mixt with the heavy sighings of many good men for all were not mad of that Frenzy the young Emperor awaked and seeing the Court full of people and Andronicus by them saluted his Fellow in the Empire knowing now no other remedy thought it best to yield unto the time and so with the rest flattering the old Tyrant welcomed him full sore against his will by the name of his Friend and Companion in the Empire which he now in dissembling manner seeming unwilling to take upon him and refusing the place offered was by the rout of his flattering Favorites enforced to his own great contentment to yield to their request some of them with both their hands carrying him up until they had as it were against his will placed him in the Imperial Seat prepared for him fast by the young Emperor others in the mean time no less busied in pulling off his private Attire and putting upon him the Imperial Robes The next day when this Participation of the Empire should be published and they both proclaimed Emperors the name of Andronicus was set before the name of Alexius whereof his Favorites though some others interpreted it otherwise gave this reason That it fitted not with the Majesty of the Empire that the name of a Boy should be set before the name of so reverend grave wise and excellent a man as was Andronicus his Companion in the Empire Shortly after Andronicus being brought into the great Temple to be Crowned then first began to shew to the people a chearful Countenance and setting aside his stern Look after his long devotion done filled the vain peoples heads with many large Promises of a more happy form of Government than before All which proved nothing but meer dissimulation and deep deceit that chearfulness of Countenance and Speech serving but for a while to cover his inward secret and most inhumane Cruelty And the more to deceive the World the Ceremonies of his Coronation past at such time as he should for Consummation and Confirmation of all receive the sacred and dreadful Mystery the pledge of our Redemption not without due reverence to be named much less with impure hands touched after he had received the Bread and taken the Cup in his hand he with a most devout Countenance framed of purpose to deceive and his eyes cast up to Heaven as if his Soul had there already been the fairest Mask of Hypocrisie swore by those dreadful Mysteries and most deeply protested in the hearing of the people standing by that he had taken upon him the Fellowship of the Empire for no other end or purpose but to assist Alexius his Cousin in the Government and to strengthen his Power whereas his secret meaning was nothing less as shortly after appeared For after a few days spent in feigned Devotions for the prosperous beginning of his Empire he forthwith turned his mind unto other his more secret but most wicked and execrable Designs And having above all things purposed the death of the young Emperor he called together them of the Council his own Creatures and corrupt
in hand for the defence of the Christian Religion who for all that excused himself from so doing one while by his own particular Affairs another while by his own indisposition yet in fine pressed and overcome with the prayers and requests of the other Latine Princes he returned to Damiata at the self same time that the Duke of Bavaria arrived there with a goodly company of brave men brought thither out of his own Country after he had been now from thence ten months absent The Legate desirous of the prosecution of this War requested and urged the King with the rest of the Princes and great Commanders without delay to take the Field telling them that the Enterprise of the holy War was grown old and cold by those long delaies and protracting of the time and that they which kept Wars so far from home ought to make hast to force the Enemy to take all occasions to lose no time but ever to be doing and to prove all things for the annoying of the Enemy and that that was the way whereby the Worthies of ancient times both Kings and Emperors had gained unto themselves Empires Glory Greatness and Wealth That it was for them that were invaded and assailed upon whose lives depended the safety of their Country their Wives their Children and Goods to delay and prolong the time as they might to delude the Enemy to frustrate his designs to defeat his Attempts and with delaies to dally him off until that having thereby weakned his Forces he should together with his courage lose also his hope Caire he said to be indeed a great City but yet that the greatest Cities that ever were had by the Wars become great Desarts forced by the power of their puissant and speedy Enemies and that great Empires as were those of the Sultans ought not to be invaded or assailed by any forreign force if they were not at the first onset overthrown or at least so weakned as that they could not afterwards lift up their Heads or recover themselves for otherwise that they which had prepared a destruction for others should fall into the same themselves That it behooved either not to have attempted or assailed Egypt at all or else now after it had been once assailed not so to give it over before it were conquered The King of Ierusalem whether it were that he were pricked with the griâ—f that being called the King of the Holy Land he could not have the City of Damiata under the leading and conduct won by the Christians come to the sacred War given unto him by the Legate or that he had before proved that the higher Country of Egypt was not without great and manifest danger to be attempted said that he would not in any case go alleadging that honourable and sacred War to have been taken in hand only for the recovery of the Holy Land and not for the winning of Memphis Babylon or Thebes in Egypt which after they were taken would not for any long time continue in their Fidelity or Allegeance and could not possibly be kept by force whereas Syria by Godfrey Duke of Bulloin and the other great Princes his Associates entred into conquered and possessed and since his time by divers other Christian Kings and Princes holden was in right their own and that therefore he greatly commended the forwardness the diligence the courage the desire and whatsoever thing else Pelagius commended but that he ought to employ the same in Syria and not there where no need was or from whence no profit was to be drawn or expected Nevertheless the Legate wedded to his own opinion by the power of his Authority commanded the King of Ierusalem the Duke of Bavaria with the rest of the great Commanders and Captains to take up their Arms to get them into the Field upon the Expedition by him appointed against the Sultan threatning the pain of the high sentence of Excommunication against him or them that would shew themselves backward or unwilling to do what he had commanded So as it were enforced by the Legate they began with evil Will and worse Speed to set forward in August in the very hottest time of the year At which time the Sultan beholding the great Army of the Christians in number about seventy thousand retired as a man afraid into such places as he thought best farther off which the Legate seeing as one not acquainted with the feats of War rejoyced greatly as if the Victory had been already more than half gained commending to the Heavens them that he saw couragiously marching forward saying That fortune always favoured the Valiant and that unto Cowards all things fell still out to the worst By the way the Christians seized upon a Bridge which the Enemy had made over the Nile and cut in pieces such Companies as were left for the keeping thereof so marching on they drew neer unto Caire and there in the sight of that great and rich City encamped where running up and down the more to terrifie them of the City provoked them to Battel upbraiding unto them their Laziness their Cowardise and Sloth braving them if they were men to come out Yet for all that they would not so do but keeping themselves close and covert within the City let them alone to brag and boast at their own pleasure This Siege continued long of purpose protracted still from day to day by them of the City and the great opinion the Christians had of their own valour with the small regard they had of their Enemies made them so proud and careless that they remembred no more to take good care of the War of their Duty their Watch or their Sentinels their confidence was in their own Valour and good Fortune not considering or remembring that they were come into Egypt and that they had put themselves within the Trenches Sallies Channels and Cuts of a deceitful River which not only brought Victuals unto their Enemies but also fortified them who by how much they were the less valiant and less understood of the Art of War the more they used of Craft and Subtilty for the preserving of themselves so the crafty Enemies drew the Christians out at length abusing them with many delaies and deceits making semblance of great Fear to make themselves the less to be feared and more contemptible in their doings to the end that they knowing the Passages and Straights of the Country and reserving themselves unto the occasions and advantages both of the time and of their Enemies might circumvent them and entrap them at such time as they least feared any such matter The Christians at all adventure had encamped themselves in a low ground within the Banks and Causies of that Fenny Country under the covert thereof thinking themselves safe as in their Trenches against all sudden Sallies or Attempts of their Enemies but these places wherein they lay were soft and dirty for so much as the Country People used at their
out of which City the Turks oftentimes fallied and gave him many an hot skirmish It is reported That the young King Sigismund beholding the greatness of his Army in his great jollity hearing of the coming of the Turks Army should proudly say What need we to fear the Turk who need not at all to fear the falling of the Heavens which if they should fall yet were we able with our Spears and Haldberts to hold them up from falling upon us But Bajazet understanding what Spoil the Hungarian King had made in his late gained Countries and of the Siege of Nicopolis commanded the Ladders and other great provision now in readiness for the scaling and assaulting of the City of Constantinople to be burnt because they should not come into the hands of the Christians and so raising his Siege marched with a right puissant Army to Nicopolis sending Eurenoses before of purpose to intercept some of the Christians thereby to learn the State of their Camp and Army But they hearing of his coming so well looked to themselves that he with shame returned to his Master as he came without any one Prisoner taken Which thing much troubled Bajazet as fearing he should have to do with a wary Enemy Sigismund understanding of the approach of Bajazet leaving a sufficient Power for the continuing of the Siege rose himself and with the rest of his Army went to meet his proud Enemy Of whose coming and approach Bajazet understanding divided his Army into two parts and being now come within the sight of the Christian Army made shew but of the one half keeping himself close in secret ambush not far off with the other The Christians deeming themselves as they were far more in number than the Turks which they saw divided their Army also into two parts purposing betwixt them to have inclosed the Turks Of all the Christians that were there present the French desired to have the honour of the first charge to be given upon the Turks and in their heat upon good hope set forward the Hungarians with a great part of the Army not yet set in order and so began the Battel where betwixt them and the Turks was fought a right cruel Fight and in a little time many thousands slain But this Fight had not long endured when Bajazet with the other half of his Army suddenly arising came on with such violence as well became his sirname of Gilderun or Lightning and so hardly charged the French that they amazed at the suddainess of the danger and oppressed with the fury and multitude of the unexpected Enemy stood at the first as men dismaid but seeing no remedy encouraging one another valiantly fought it out until they were almost all either slain or taken Prisoners still in hope to have been relieved by the Hungarians and the rest In this hard conflict divers of the French Horsemen having forsaken their Horses fought on Foot as their manner was which Horses running back without their Riders upon the Hungarians caused them to doubt that the French were quite overthrown wherewith dismaied they without further coming on all turned their backs and fled in so great hast as that it booted not the King or any other great Commander to go about to stay their Flight The French thus by their too much hast overthrown the Turks pursuing the Hungarians and the rest of the Christians made of them a great slaughter of whom also many were drowned in the great River Danubius At which time also the Turks took so many Prisoners that it was thought every several Turk had his Prisoner King Sigismund himself who but a little before had despised even the falling of the Heavens had then also undoubtedly fallen into his Enemies hands had he not in a little Boat by good hap got over Danubius not unlike another Xerxes who having covered the Seas with his Ships and with a world of men passed over into Grecia was afterwards by the strange change of Fortune himself alone in a small Fisher-Boat glad to get back again into Asia Sigismund being thus got over Danubius and fearing the violence of the Hungarians for the loss of the Battel fled by Sea into Thracia unto Constantinople from whence he failed unto the Island of the Rhodes and from thence sailing through the Aegean and Ionian Sea landed at length at Dalmatia and so having wandred from place to place tossed with many Fortunes after eighteen Months long and painful travel returned again into Hungary Where he found the State of his Kingdom in his absence much troubled the contrary Faction in the mean time having made choice of Ladislaus King of Naples for their King who was even then with a great Army going to have taken possession of the Kingdom had not Sigismund in good time by the help of certain of the chief of the Hungarian Nobility prevented him In this Battel called the Battel of Nicopolis were of the Christians twenty thousand slain and of the Turks threescore thousand The Count of Nivers the French Kings near Kinsman was there taken Prisoner with three hundred great Commanders more where after he had endured great contumely and reproach in the presence of Bajazet he was commanded to make choice of five other of the Captains such as he liked best all the rest being cut in pieces before his Face and he with the other five left alive sent Prisoners to Prusa from whence they were afterwards ransomed for two hundred thousand Ducats This bloody Battel of Nicopolis was fought in the year of our Lord 1396. Bajazet after this great Victory having worthily relieved his besieged City returned again to the Siege of Constantinople laying more hardly unto it than before building Forts and Bulwarks against it on the one side towards the Land and passing over the Strait of Bosphorus built a strong Castle upon that Strait over against Constantinople to impeach so much as was possible all passage thereunto by Sea. This strait Siege as most write continued also two years which I suppose by the circumstance of the History to have been part of the aforesaid eight years Emanuel the besieged Emperor wearied with these long Wars sent an Embassador to Bajazet to intreat with him a Peace which Bajazet was the more willing to hearken unto for that he heard news that Tamerlane the great Tartarian Prince intended shortly to war upon him Yet could this Peace not be obtained but upon condition that the Emperor should grant free Liberty for the Turks to dwell together in one Street of Constantinople with free exercise of their own Religion and Laws under a Judge of their own Nation and further to pay unto the Turkish King a yearly Tribute of ten thousand Ducats Which dishonourable Conditions the distressed Emperor was glad to accept of So was this long Siege broken up and presently a great sort of Turks with their Families were sent out of Bithynia to dwell in Constantinople and a Church there built for
the Turk by the Embassador reported unto Tamerlane and aggravated by Axalla a Christian of the Race of the Genowaies born at Capha and then one of the greatest Counsellors about him and the Greek Emperors great Friend was so evil taken by him that all other things set apart he resolved to go against the Turk and to take in hand that War as of all other the fittest for the increase of his Honour and Glory Besides that he thought it not in reason fit for the Greatness of the Tartarian Empire to suffer such an unquiet Neighbour to grow great as still encroaching upon other the weak Princes confining to him and adding Conquests unto Conquests and yet never the more contented might in the end prove dangerous unto his own Estate and Soveraignty a common care to such as be themselves great and mounted up unto the highest degrees of Worldly Honor to have in Jealousie and Distrust the suddain rising of others near or farther off as perilous or disgraceful to themselves or their Estate whose growing Greatness they therefore seek by all means to hinder as did now the mighty Tamerlane the proceedings and increasing of the great Othoman King Bajazet and the rather being continually prickt forward so to do by the sollicitation of the Greek Emperor Emanuel the other oppressed Mahometan Princes and by the great Captain Axalla as is aforesaid a Christian of whom for all that Tamerlane himself a Mahometan for the great Fidelity Valor and Vertue he found in him made no small reckoning but was contented even in his greatest and most weighty Affairs to be by him advised disliking of no man for his Religion whatsoever so as he did worship but one only God Creator of Heaven and Earth and of all that therein is being himself of opinion That God in Essence one and in himself immutable without change or diversity yet for the manifesting of his Omnipotency and Power as he had created in the World sundry kinds of People much differing both in Nature Manners and Condidition and yet all framed to the Image of himself so was he also contented to be of them diversly served according to the diversity of their Natures and Manners so that they worshipt none other strange Gods but him alone the Maker and Creator of all things which was the cause that he suffered the use of all Religions within the Countries subject to his Obedience were they not meer Atheists Idolaters or Worshippers of strange and vain gods Neither was proud Bajazet as one ignorant of the Power or Purpose of Tamerlane in the mean time idle but still prosecuted his good Fortune for the inlarging of his Empire and increasing of his Strength wisely deeming as the truth was whatsoever Messages were sent to him from Tamerlane to be no other than meer Threatnings and Forewarnings of his more dangerous Purposes and Designs against him and his State which he was so far from fearing as that to provoke him the more he spared no intemperate Speech which might move him to Wrath wishing as it should seem for nothing more than to meet him in the Field there to try the fortune of a Battel with him So weak is our foresight of our Fortunes to come and the reach of our Understanding for the apprehension or declining of the fatal doom even presently hanging over our Heads as that we oftentimes through ignorance most desirously wish for those things which are unto us the chief occasions of our utter ruin and overthrow But here before we enter into farther Discourse of the mortal War betwixt these two so puissant Princes it shall not be much from our purpose to step a little out of the way to see what this mighty Tamerlane of whom so many Princes craved Aid was who living held the East in such awe as that he was commonly called The Wrath of God and Terror of the World which he then filled with the glory of his Name Most Historiographers report him to have been poorly born of base and obscure Parents and so himself also in his Youth to have lived as a poor Shepherd or Herdsman in the Mountains where consorting himself with other sturdy Companions of like quality and disposition such as there lived by robbing of Merchants and other Passengers he became a masterful Thief amongst them unto whom other such leud Mates dayly still more and more resorting he in short time grew as they say to that greatness that he is reported to have been of such power as never man but he ever yet came unto A matter almost incredible for albeit that the Roman Empire yea and this great Empire of the Turks also with some others had their beginnings not much better or greater the one under Romulus and the other under Othoman yet grew they not as on the suddain in their times to any great lustre neither was it possible for them of so small beginnings so to do but by many degrees and that in long time every of the succeeding Princes according to their Fortunes adding something to their State before it could be made great whereas he by their report contrary to the course of things both natural and civil which from their small beginnings grow to no notable perfection or greatness but by degrees and that in the long revolution of time taking his beginning of nothing grew upon the suddain to be a burthen and terror unto the World. Wherein our late Historiographers seem too much to have followed the report of the Turks who by him brought low and their Kingdom almost in one Battel subverted report nothing simply of him but in what they may detracting from his worthy praises wrongfully charge him with many untruths not concerning his Parentage only but even in the course of his whole life also making him as they would have the World to believe first to have been a very abject among men and then for his inhumane Cruelty a very Monster in Nature or as it was long before but more truly said of another great one much like himself a Lump of Earth tempered with Blood. Which incredible Reports concerning so great a Monarch I list not to follow as too full of dishonour especially whereas others of no less credit than they with far more modesty and greater probability report of him the greatest honour that may be He was as they and the others also say born at Samarchand the chief City of the Zagataian Tartars pleasantly situated upon the River Iaxartes his Father was called Zain Cham or as some others will Og Prince of the Zagataian Tartars and of the Country of Sachetay sometime part of the famous Kingdom of Parthia third in descent from Zingis the great and fortunate Leader of the Tartars before in the former part of this History remembred Which Og as a Prince of a peaceable Nature accounting it no less honour quietly to keep the Countries left him by his Father than with much trouble and no less
over-ran them with his Horsemen excepting some few which were reserved for Prisoners As also that Bajazet there lost his eldest Son Erthogrul of some called Orthobules whose death with the loss of the City so much grieved him as it is reported that marching with his great Army against Tamerlane and by the way hearing a Country Shepherd merrily reposing himself with his homely Pipe as he sate upon the side of a Mountain feeding his poor Flock standing still a great while listening unto him to the great admiration of many at last fetching a deep sigh brake forth into these words O happy Shepherd which haddest neither Orthobules nor Sebastia to lose bewraying therein his own discontentment and yet withal shewing That worldly Bliss consisteth not so much in possessing of much subject unto danger as joyning in a little contentment devoid of fear Howbeit the Turks themselves reporting the taking of Sebastia speak not of Orthobules at all but give him lost six years before in the Wars against Casi Burchaniden and lieth buried by his Father at Prusa In this City of Sebastia was lost twelve thousand Turks Men Women and Children as their Histories report The rest of the Cities all the way as Tamerlane marched warned by the destruction of Sebastia yielded themselves for fear of like danger the Citizens whereof he courteously used especially the Christians whom he set at liberty in respect of Emanuel the Greek Emperor whom he seemed wholly therein to gratifie But he had not gon far into the Turks Dominion but that he was certainly advertised how that Bajazet with a great Army was coming against him and now within thirty Leagues of him which caused him after that time to march with his Army more closely Axalla leading the Vantguard sent forth Chianson Prince of Ciarcan with four thousand Parthian Horsemen to get knowledge of the Turks Army and where Bajazet lay as also what Country that was beyond Sennas and if he could learn any thing thereof to make relation of it unto him This Prince of Ciarcan was Tamerlanes near Kinsman a man of great reputation and next unto Axalla in whose absence he had the commanding of the Avantguard his charge who also sent before him another Parthian Captain with five hundred Horsemen So he had not ridden â—en Leagues but that he heard news of Bajazets coming and having surprised Sennas understood there the certain estate of the Turks Army which was then at Tataia and so marching forward Whereof Tamerlane certified commanded him not to retire from that place until he did see the arrival of the Enemy and thereof to give him advertisement every hour being himself resolved to pass on no further as come to a fair large Plain and a Country of advantage for the order of his Battel for he knew that his Army was far greater than Bajazets and therefore he made choice of those great Plains Yet for that his Army consisted of divers Nations and withal considering that he was not to fight against the Chinois a soft effeminate People as of late but against the Turks a most warlike Nation and well acquainted with all manner of Fights and Martial Stratagems he thought it good to be well advised how he proceeded against them Wherefore he presently sent for Axalla with him to view the said place and to have his opinion Whether it would be for his advantage or not there to stay who not misliking of the choice of the place yet advised him also to keep Sennas so long as he possibly could and so sent word unto them that were therein upon the approach of the Enemy to set fire upon the same and so to withdraw themselves from thence to the end that the Enemy should not have any desire to incamp there but come still forward near to those Plains where Tamerlane desired to fight especially for that he was stronger in Horse than Bajazet Thus the Turks still marching on thought to have surprised some of their Enemies in Sennas who as soon as they drew near retired all excepting some hundred left of purpose to fire the Town who having performed the same retired of purpose in great disorder Now the Prince of Ciarcan had divided his Forces into two parts and given commandment to the first that as soon as they perceived the Enemies to pursue the hundred Horse that so disorderly of purpose fled they should receive them and so retire all together He in the mean time with the rest of his Power stood close in a Valley near to a Wood side unseen at all Where having suffered two thousand of the Enemies Horse the Vantcurriers of the Turks Army to pass by him he following them in the tail charged them home the other which before retired now turning upon them also so that the Turks seeing themselves thus beset and hardly laid unto both before and behind as men discouraged fled in which Flight most of them were slain and the rest taken Prisoners This was the first incounter betwixt the Turks and the Parthians all the Prisoners there taken were by the Prince as a Present sent to Tamerlane and among the rest the Bassa of Natolia who led these Troops of whom Tamerlane earnestly demanded what caused Bajazet so little to esteem of him as to shew so great contempt of his Army which he should find strong enough to abate his Pride Whereunto the Bassa answered That his Lord was the Sun upon Earth which could not endure any equal and that he rather was astonished to see how he from so far had enterprised so dangerous a journy to hinder the fortune of his Lord in whose favour the Heavens as he said did bend themselves to further his greatness and unto whom all the world subjected it self and that he committed great folly in going about to resist the same Unto which so proud a Speech Tamerlane replied That he was sent from Heaven to punish his rashness and to teach him That the Proud are hated of God whose promise is to pluck down the mighty and raise up the lowly As for thy self said he thou hast already felt although I pity thy mishap what the Valor of my Parthian Horse is against thy Turkish and thy Master I have already caused to raise his Siege of Constantinople and to look to his own things here in Asia Furthermore Tamerlane changing his Speech demanded If his Master did come resolved to bid him Battel Assure your self said he there is nothing he more desireth and would to God I might acknowledge your greatness in giving me leave to assist my Lord at that Battel Good leave have thou said Tamerlane go thy ways and tell thy Lord that thou hast seen me and that he shall in the Battel find me on horseback where he shall see a green Ensign displayed The Bassa thanking him swore that next unto his Lord he vowed unto him his Service And so returning declared unto Bajazet how that he had seen Tamerlane and truly reported
but the King laid Siege to both the said places and took them by assault where he put to the Sword five thousand of the Turks The Turks Bassa's terrified with those unexpected troubles advertised Amurath thereof requesting him to leave his obscure Life and to levy the greatest Power he could in Asia for the defence of the Turkish Kingdom in Europe which otherwise was in short time like to be lost blaming also his discretion for committing the Government of so great a Kingdom to so young a Prince as was Mahomet his Son unto whom many of the great Captains did half scorn to yield their due obedience Amurath herewith awaked as it had been out of a dead sleep left his Cloister and with great speed gathered a strong Army in Asia and came to the Straits of Hellespontus where he found the passage stopped by the Venetian and Popes Gallies and was therefore at his Wits end But marching alongst the Sea side unto the Straits of Bosphorus he there found means to convey over his whole Army using therein as some write the help of the Genoway Merchants Ships paying unto the Genowayes for the passage of every Turk a Ducat which amounted to the sum of an hundred thousand Ducats or as some others affirm corrupting with great Bribes them that were left for the defence of this passage And being now got over joyned his Asian Army with such other Forces as his Bassaes had in readiness in Europe and so marching on seven days encamped within four miles of Varna a City pleasantly standing upon the Euxine Sea side in Bulgaria where the Christian Army lay for Uladislaus hearing of Amurath his coming with so great an Army had retired thither having but a little before taken the same City of Varna from the Turks with Calachrium Galata Macropolis and others upon the Sea Coast. Upon the first report that Amurath was with such a mighty Army come over the Strait of Bosphorus Uladislaus who before was in good hope that he could not possibly have found any passage entred into Counsel with the Commanders of his Army what course he was now best to take where many which before had been most forward in that action presuming that Amurath could by no means have transported his Army were now so discouraged with the fame of his coming that they advised the King in time to retire home and not to oppose so small an Army against such a world of People as was reported to follow the Turk But other Captains of greater Courage and especially Huniades said It was not for the Kings honour first to invade his Enemies Dominions and presently to turn his Back upon the first report of their coming wishing him rather to remember the good Fortune of his former Wars and that he was to fight against the same Enemy whom he had victoriously overthrown the year before as for the multitude of his Enemies he had learned by experience as he said not to be moved therewith for that it was the manner of the Turkish Kings more to terrifie their Enemies with the shew of a huge Army than with the Valour of their Souldiers which were nothing to be accounted of but as effeminate in comparison of the Hungarians Whereupon the King resolved to trie the fortune of the Field Uladislaus understanding by his Espials that Amurath the night before encamped within four miles was now putting his Army in order of Battel committed the ordering of all his Forces unto the valiant Captain Huniades who with great care and industry disposed the same garding the one side of the Battel with a Fen or Marish and the other side with Carriages and the Rereward of his Army with a steep Hill. Therein politickly providing that the Christian Army being far less than the Turks in number could not be compassed about with the multitude of their Enemies neither any way charged but afront The Turks Army approaching began to skirmish with the Christians which manner of Fight was long time with great courage maintained and that with diverse Fortune sometime one party prevailing and sometime the other but with such Slaughter on both sides that the ground was covered and stained with the dead Bodies and Blood of the slain At length the Battel being more closely joyned the Victory began to incline to the Christians for Huniades had most valiantly with his Transilvanian and Valachian Horsemen put to Flight both the Wings of the Turkish Army and made great Slaughter wheresoever he came Insomuch that Amurath dismaied with the Flight of his Souldiers was about to have fled himself out of the main Battel had he not been staied by a common Souldier who laying Hands upon the Rains of his Bridle staid him by force and sharply reproved him of Cowardise The Captains and Prelates about the King whom it had better beseemed to have been at devout Prayers in their Oratories than in Arms at that bloody Battel encouraged by the prosperous success of Huniades and desirous to be Partakers of that Victory foolishly left their safe Stations where they were appointed by him to stand fast and disorderly pursued the chase leaving that side of the Battel where they stood open unto the Turks but they were not gon far before they were hardly encountred by a great part of the Turks Army for such purpose placed in a Vally fast by In which Fight Lesco one of the most valiant Captains of the Hungarians was slain and the Bishop of Veradium a better Church-man than Souldier and the first man that disordered the Battel seeking to save himself by Flight through the Fen was there strangled in the deep Mud after he had with his Horse therein strugled a great while The Bishop of Agria a man of greatest Authority with the King was at the same time also lost with many other Church-men more The Cardinal with some other of the expert Captains retiring toward their former standings were hardly assailed by the Turks who by the coming in of the King and Huniades were with great slaughter forced to retire and even ready to flie Amurath seeing the great slaughter of his men and all brought into extream danger beholding the picture of the Crucifix in the displaied Ensigns of the voluntary Christians pluckt the Writing out of his Bosome wherein the late League was comprised and holding it up in his Hand with his Eyes cast up to Heaven said Behold thou crucified Christ this is the League thy Christians in thy name made with me which they have without cause violated Now if thou be a God as they say thou art and as we dream revenge the wrong nâ—w done unto thy Name and me and shew thy Power upon thy perjured People who in their deeds deny thee their God. The King with Huniades furiously pursued the chased Turks with bloody execution a great space when as the King in his heat hardly perswaded by Huniades to return again unto his Camp at his coming thither
Assault The Turks knowing that they were now in the Eye of their King and in the presence of their greatest Commanders strive with might and main to win the Rampiers for in that place the Walls of the City were beaten down to the ground shaken before this Assault with two thousand five hundred thirty nine-Shot of the Canon or other Pieces of no less force The Christians likewise in defence of themselves and their City with invincible Courage opposed themselves against the Turks so that a more desperate Fight than there was hardly ever to be seen desperate men with desperate hand assailing one another and the more to increase the terror of the day the thundering Shot with the clamour of Men and noise of the instruments of War was so great as if Heaven and Earth should have presently fallen together and Arrows falling into the City as if it had been showers of Rain oftentimes darkned the light of the day In this dreadful Fight many of the Defendants were slain but of the Turks twenty to one Near unto that Gate where this terrible Assault was given were certain Loops hewn out of the main Rock which flanked the Ditch all alongst that side of the City out of which the Christians with their murdering Shot made Lanes amongst their Enemies and slew them without number For all that the mighty Bassaes and great Captains one while by perswasion another while by threatning forced them still forward and if any turned back presently slew him so that the Turks seeing no less danger in retiring than in fighting against the Enemy like desperate men thrust forward by heaps and were slain without number Yet still pressing on so long as life lasted and others stepping forward instead of them that were slain they began again to prevail upon the Defendants who in that place were for most part either slain or hurt and again recovered the top of the Rampiers and there advanced the Turks Ensigns Then began the Tyrant to lift up his Head making sure account that the City was now his own But as the common saying is He that reckoneth without his Host must reckon twice so chanched it to Mahomet For the Companies from the beginning of the Siege left in the Market place ready for all events and oftentimes wishing for some occasion wherein to shew themselves being now in good time advertised of the imminent danger came with speed to the place of the Assault before the Turks had taken good footing and there valiantly encountring them slew a great number of them and forced the rest from the Rampiers and plucking down their Ensigns before set up instead of them placed their own With which repulse the Turks were so dismaied that they quite forsook the Assault and in despight of their imperious Commanders not expecting any sign of Retreat in hast retired to their Camp. Mahomet falling from so great an hope and grieved above measure with this shameful repulse returned into his Pavillion fretting and fuming as a man half mad where two days he tormented himself with his own passions not admitting any man to his presence The Christians afterwards took the spoil of the dead Turks and cutting off divers of their Heads set them up upon Poles round about the City to the terror of their Fellows In this Assault were twelve thousand of the Turks slain and many more wounded Of the Christians were lost four hundred and of them that came to the Breach escaped none but he was wounded more or less After that Mahomet had two days digested the last repulse the shame whereof grieved him more than the loss it sâ—lf he sent for both the great Bassaes of Constantinople and Asia and other two of his chief Counsellors with whom he resolved to give another Assault and thereon to gage his whole Forces for they were all of opinion with him That the Defendants were so weakned and wasted with the former Assault that they could not possibly hold out another Whereupon strait Commandment was given through the Camp that every man without exception should be ready to go to the Assault whensoever they were called upon and the more to incourage the Souldiers great rewards and preferments were promised to them which in time of the Assault should perform any especial piece of service The first appearance of the new Moon which the Turks worship with great Devotion was the time that Mahomet had appointed for this general Assault in the mean time he spared not to pour out his fury against the Walls and Rampiers of the Town by the mouth of the Canon The Christian Defendants on the other side first by hearty Prayer commended themselves and their City to the Protection of the Almighty and afterwards with restless labour and no small peril speedily repaired and new fortified whatsoever the fury of the Artillery had overthrown or shaken omitting nothing that could be done or devised for the defence of themselves and their City Now as soon as the new Moon began to shew her self the Mahometan Priests going about the Army gave the Souldiers knowledg thereof as their manner is by singing of a Song in manner of a Procession whereunto the whole Army answered with a short Respond but with such a terrible noise as was wonderful to hear and at the same time bowing themselves to the ground saluted the Moon with great Superstition All their fond Ceremonies performed they began to draw nigh the City so thick and in number so many that all the ground for the space of a mile round about Scodra was thick covered with men The Christians expecting every hour to be assailed were ready upon the Walls and Rampiers of the City to repulse the Enemy but especially at the great Gate where most danger was feared for that the Turks with their great Ordnance had made that place of all others most assaultable Here Iacobus Moneta a Noble Captain with his Brother Moncinus a valiant Gentleman took upon them to receive the first Assault which is commonly of all others most terrible for the Turks use in their Assaults to give three attempts whereof the first is most furious and dangerous as performed by their best Souldiers the other two are of lâ—ss force but if they fail in all three they forsake the enterprise as men discouraged Whilst both the assailants and the Defendants stood thus in readiness the one as it were facing the other a great part of the night Mahomet before day went up to the top of the Bassaes Mount from whence he had before beholden the former Assault at whose coming there were presently eleven Canons discharged and twelve smaller Pieces the signal appointed for the Assault The Turks upon this sign given with exceeding tumult and most hideous out-cry as their manner is began to assail the City round and with such wonderful agility of Body and Courage mounted the Rampiers at the great Gate that they had there as it were in
out but was presently taken with a Bullet and slain which mischance when it might seem of right to have terrified the rest from attempting the like did indeed the more incense them so that when they saw the Enemy exceeding busie in filling the Ditch they resolutely set down to offer themselves to most assured death rather than to fall into the hands of the merciless Enemy agreed to sally out by night and to meet with his designs Whereupon an hundred part Knights part other Souldiers sallying forth caused the Enemy to forsake the Ditch and betake himself to flight of whom they slew about fourscore and lost of their own ten men amongst whom were Ioannes and Manicrinus two Knights whose heads the Turks the next day set up upon two Spears upon their Trenches that they might be seen by the Christians The same day they of the City of Melita at night made at one instant a number of fires and as if it were in triumph discharged great Vollies of small Shot with many other tokens of joy which as well the besieged as the Turks thought verily to have been done upon discovery of the Christian Fleet or else the landing of such Forces as were come to remove the Siege whereas indeed it was neither but done only to shew their chearfulness and to keep the Turks in suspence with the novelty of the matter who for all that were not slack in their business but with Earth filled up the Ditch at the Castle Bulwark whereby it came to pass that they could not be hurt by the Flankers made in that place to scour the Ditch but might thereby as upon plain ground without stay pass unto the Wall now opened and overthrown with their continual battery and with two great Pieces which they had planted upon a high Mount which they had newly cast up on the right hand the Bulwark Savoire they began to play upon the Castle and at the first shot shot into the Loupe where Franciscus Castilia commanded Ioannes Bernardus Godinetius a Spanish Knight was there slain with a small shot The same day Franciscus Aquilates a Spaniard one of the Garrison-Souldiers perswaded by fear and hope in dangers two evil Counsellors fled out of the Town St. Michael to the Enemy perswading the Turks Colonels to give a fresh Assault assuring them that they should without doubt win the Town because there was but 400 Souldiers left alive in it and they as he said almost spent with labour and wounds all the rest being dead Which the Turks hearing and seeing fair breaches both in the Walls of the new City and of the Castle of St. Michael wide enough for Carts to go through they determined with all their Forces to assault both places at once and to prove if there were yet so much strength left in those Holds as again to repulse them so the 7 th day of August at one instant they assaulted the new City at the Castle Bulwark and the Castle St. Michael at the breach with such a multitude that all the Earth seemed to be covered with men round about The thundring of the great Ordnance the noise of the small shot with the clattering of Armor and noise of Trumpets Drums and other War-like Instruments with the cry of men on both sides was so confused and great as if Heaven and Earth should have been confounded together Which when the Knights in the City Melita heard and saw the Heavens obscured with smoke fearing that the Turks as at the Castle St. Elmo would never give over the Assault until they had won both the Town and the Castle presently all the Garrison-Horsemen issued out of the City and to avert the Turks from the Assault set upon those Turks which lay at Aqua Martia who all surprised with sudden fear fled the Christian Horsemen hardly pursuing them with bloody Execution and they in their flight pitiously crying out upon their Fellows for help Whereby it came to pass that they which were assailing the City and Castle to rescue their discomfited Fellows were glad to give over the Assault so with great slaughter foiled on both sides by the Christians they returned to their Trenches when they had lost about fifteen hundred at the Assault beside them which were slain in the chase by the Horsemen of Melita Of the Defendants of both places were slain above an hundred and almost as many wounded This fight endured about five hours Valetta delivered of so great a danger that day and certain others caused publique Prayers to be made and went himself with the multitude of the Citizens to the Church to give Thanks to Almighty God for that Victory Whilst these things were in doing Garzias the Vice-Roy was advertised from Calabria that certain Ships laded with Men Victual and other provision necessary for the Wars were coming from Constantinople to Malta wherefore he forthwith sent Alâ—amira and Gildandrada two Noblemen with five Gallies to meet them who being come within thirty miles of Malta met with no such Ships but only one Frigot and a Galliot the Frigot they took but the Galliot escaped to the Enemies Fleet at Malta Mustapha the Turks General now thinking no man so strong which might not with continual labour and watching be wearied and overcome resolved not to give unto the besieged any time of rest but commanded his Souldiers again to assault the breach at the Castle of St. Michael where they were by the valour of the Defendants with no small slaughter quickly repulsed neither did the Bassa give so many assaults for the hope he had to win those places but rather to perform the duty of a valiant General and to satisfie Solymans pleasure who had expresly commanded either to win that Island or there all to lose their lives He also sent a Galliot in hast with Letters to Solyman wherein he shewed him the state of the Fleet with what difficulties the Army was distressed what small hope there was of winning the places besieged how well the Christians were provided with many other such things In the mean time those two Gallies of Malta which we have before spoken of departing from Messana came to Syracusa where they stayed a day The next day after in going out of the Haven they met with one of Malta in a small Boat coming from Pozalo sore wounded he being demanded how he was so hurt told them That landing by night with his Boat and one Companion he was requested by two Sicilians which dwelt there to rest there that night which they doing about midnight five Turks brake into the house upon them killed his Companion carried away the Sicilians and he wounded as he was hardly escaped by the benefit of the night moreover he said That the Sicilians had told the Turks that two Gallies were come into that Port with Souldiers and other War-like Provision bound for Malta Whereby the Knights perceived that their coming would be discovered unto the Enemy
thanksgiving to Almighty God to be made in all Churches and sent a Messenger with Letters to Amurath to know of him how he understood these insolent Proceedings of his Souldiers and especially this late Expedition of the Bassa of Bosna and his Complices contrary to the League yet in force betwixt them After which Messenger he sent also the Lord Popelius with the yearly Present or rather Tribute he used to send unto the Turkish Emperour at Constantinople yet with this charge that when he was come as far as Comara in the Borders of Hungary he should there stay until the return of the aforesaid Messenger who if he brought Tidings of Peace from Amurath then to proceed on his Journey to the Turks Court otherwise to return again with his Present as he afterwards did For Amurath enraged with the notable loss received at Siseg and prick'd forward with the Tears and Prayers of his Sister desirous of nothing more than to be revenged for the death of her Son the seventh of August caused open War to be proclaimed against the Christian Emperour both at Constantinople and Buda The managing whereof he committed to Sinan Bassa the old Enemy of the Christians his Lieutenant-General and perswader of this War who departing from Constantinople with an Army of forty thousand wherein were 5600 Ianizaries was by Amurath himself and the great Men of the Court brought a mile on his way having in charge from the great Sultan by the assistance of the Beglerbeg of Graece the Bassaes of Buda and Temesware and other his Sanzacks and Commanders in that part of his Empire to revenge the Death of his Nephew and the Dishonour received at Siseg This War Amurath with great Pride denounced unto the Christian Emperour and the rest of the Princes his Confederates in this sort Amurath the Third by the Grace of the great God in Heaven the only Monarch of the World a great and mighty God on Earth an invincible Caesar King of all Kings from the East unto the West Sultan of Babylon Sovereign of the most noble Families of Persia and Armenia triumphant Victor of Hierusalem Lord possessor of the Sepulchre of the crucified God Subverter and sworn Enemy of the Christians and of all them that call upon the Name of Christ. WE denounce unto thee Rodolph the Emperour and to all the German Nation taking part with thee unto the great Bishop also all the Cardinals and Bishops to all your Sons and Subjects we earnestlâ— I say by our Crown and Empire denounce unto you open War. And give you to understand that our purpose is with the Power of thirteen Kingdoms and certain hundred thousands of men Horse and Foot with our Turks and Turkish Armes yea with all our Strength and Power such as neither thou nor any of thine hath ever yet seen or heard of much less had any proof of to besiege you in your chief and Metropolitical Cities and with Fire and Sword to persecute you and all yours and whosoever shall give you help to burn destroy and kill and with the most exquisite Torments we can devise to torture unto Death and slay such Christian Captives as shall fall into our hands or else to keep them as Dogs Captives in perpetual Misery to empale upon Stakes your fairest Sons and Daughters and to the further shame and reproach of you and yours to kill like Dogs your Women great with Child and the Children in their Bellies for now we are fully resolved to bring into our Subjection you which rule but in a small Country and by strong hand and force of Arms to keep from you your Kingdom as also to oppress root up and destroy the Keys and See of Rome together with the golden Scepter thereof and we will prove whether your crucified Iesus will help you and do for you as yours perswade you Believe him still and trust in him and see how he hath holpen his Messengers which have put their Confidence in him for we neither believe neither can we endure to hear such incomprehensible things that he can help which is dead so many Worlds of years ago which could not help himself nor deliver his own Country and Inheritance from our Power over which we have so long time reigned These things O ye poor and miserable of the World we thought good to signifie unto you that you with your Princes and Confederates may know what you have to do and to look for Given in our most Mighty and Imperial City of Constantinople which our Ancestors by force of Arms took from yours and having slain or taken Prisoners all their Citizens reserved such of their Wives and Children as they pleased unto their Lust to your perpetual Infamy and Shame Sinan with his Army thus setting forward kept still on his way towards Buda but the Beglerbeg of Graecia with a far greater Power marched towards Croatia as well to relieve the Forts distressed by the Christians as again to besiege the strong Castle or Monastery of Siseg which he with his huge Army at his first arrival compassed about without resistance and with continual Battery overthrew the Walls thereof giving no time of rest unto the Defendants Which breaches they for all that valiantly defended and with restless Labour notably repaired the very fearful Women bringing Tables Stools and whatsoever else came to hand that might any wise help to keep the Enemy out of whom a great number was in the breaches slain but what was that handful against such a Multitude At length the third day of September the Turks by main force entred the Monastery and put to the Sword all the Souldiers therein among whom were 200 Germans of whom the Turks cut some in pieces and the rest they threw into the River Kulp One religious man there found among the rest they did flea quick in Detestation of his Profession and afterward cutting him in small pieces burnt them to Ashes So taking the spoil of all that was there to be had and leaving a strong Garrison for the keeping of the Place they passed over Sauus burning the Country before them and carrying away with them about a thousand poor Christians into perpetual Captivity These Invasions of the Turks caused the Emperour to crave Aid both of the States of the Empire and other foreign Princes farther off which was by some easily granted but not so speedily performed About this time Peter sirnamed le Hussar for that he commanded over those Horsemen whom the Hungarians call Hussars Captain of Pappa by the appointment of Ferdinand County Hardeck Governour of Rab lay in wait for the Turks Treasurer in Hungary who had the command of 5000 Turks him this Hungarian took at Advantage as he was mustering and paying certain Companies of his Souldiers mistrusting no such danger and desperately charging him â—lew him with divers of his men and put the rest to flight and so with the spoil and some few Prisoners he returned again to his
unto the Emperours Territories by reason of the scituaâ—ion thereof wherein a great and strong Garrison of the Turks always lying forraged all the Christian Territories as far as the River Vague yea and oftentimes took Booties as far as Strigonium and by spoiling of all that side of Hungary caused the Country to pay Contribution as far as Ternavie standing within four Leagues of the Mountains which seperate Hungary and Moravia all irreparable Losses to the Christians and hardly to be avoided for which Reasons he caused it then to be dismantled and to be made unserviceable for the Wars After which time for all that the Turks for the commodiousness of the Place had with great Labour again new fortified the same with Walls made with great Piles of Wood and Faggots with Earth rammed in betwixt them a stronger kind of Fortification and better able to withstand the Fury of the Cannon than are Walls of Stone in which sort the Turks use most commonly to fortifie such Places as they mean to defend and which oftentimes cost much for the Christians to gain the same from them This Place thus fortified and both with Men and Munition well furnished and with all things needful stored was able to indure a great and long Siege whereunto the Garrison therein was as resolutely set down as were the Christians to attempt it where now at their first coming unto it a part of the Italian Regiment assisted with three hundred Lansquenets under the leading of County Sultze and Grasold General of the Italians were appointed to go before the rest of the Army and to begin to make the Approaches which they did by forcing of a Water-mill driven by the Water of the Maâ—ish not past a Musquet shot from the Town Wherein while they were busied the Turks sallying out of the Town came to fight hand to hand with the Christians and had with them a sharp Combat the Turks fighting for the defending of the Place and of their Lives and the Christians for the gaining of the same and for their Honour Which so contrary a Resolution in that Conflict cost the Lives of many and amongst others the Life of Grasold General of the Italians there slain with a Harquebuse shot unto the great hurt of the whole Army but especially of the Italians now deprived of so great and expert a Commander At last for all that the Turks were inforced confusedly to retire again into the Town having in this sally lost a number of their men also The Christians nevertheless having driven the Turks back into the Town went forward with their Business in making their Approaches and placing their Gabions to cover their Cannon wherein the Turks with their great and small shot did them great harm but especially with their murthering pieces charged with Nails and other small pieces of Iron Howbeit by the coming of the Lord Russworm with the rest of the Army the Approaches were the next day brought on and the Battery planted so near unto the Town as that the Turks could not without most manifest danger and loss any more sally out to trouble the Christians in their Works The first Inconveniency the besieged felt was the want of Water which through the diligence of our men was soon taken from them the Cannon right furiously battering the Walls in the mean space Wherewith the Turks discouraged and now out of hope to be relieved thought it not best for them to expect either whilst a Breach were made or an Assault given but by Parly to prevent these Dangers in hope so to come to some easier Composition while yet they stood in their whole strength And so Parly by the Turks demanded and by the Christians granted and Hostageâ— for the surety thereof on both sides given they sent two of the chief men amongst them to intreat of the same who at the first demanded That their Lives and Liberty saved they might with Bag and Baggage depart Whereunto answer was given them That they should only with their Lives and Liberty be gone with some few hundreds of their worst Horses of Courtesie given them to carry them to such place as they meant to retire themselves unto and to deliver into the hands of the Christians all such Renegades as were in Town Now the besieged Turks carrying yet the marks of the Cruelty by the Wallons exercised upon them in the former Siege when as the same Town was by force taken and filled with dead Bodies of all Ages and Sexes and doubting now this second Shipwrack with like misery threatned unto them by the Christian General if they should expect the dreadful event of a general assault accepted of these hard Conditions seeing no better could be obtained and so covenanting that they with their Familes their Lives and Liberties saved might with a safe Convoy be conducted unto some place of surety within their own Territory they promised to give up the Town Which Agreement on both parties resolved upon they full of Sorrow and Heaviness with their Families departing out of the Town the 29 th of November were by Collonel Andast with certain Hussars safely conducted to Solnoc The Christians entring the Town found therein great store of Victuals and Munition the Houses full of Corn and other Necessaries and the Shops stored with Weapons Shot and Powder with 24 pieces of great Ordnance ready mounted which might have well sufficed for the defence of the place But all these things are but Accessories unto one principal that is to say to Resolution without which they are but of small force and with which they are able to do much Beside that the place it self thus furnished well considered seemed almost impossible to have been forced but especially now that Winter was come on which might have brought a thousand Storms and Difficulties by the Christians not to have been indured so that every man beholding the same with his Eyes cast up towards heaven gave God the Praise for taking away the Turks Courages in their so great Advantages and increasing of the Christians in their no less Difficulties unto whom the glory of this Victory was wholly attributed seeing that contrary to all appearance and mans forces he had given to the Christians the Victory no way able by their own forces to have been gained But God which in his Providence from Heaven beholdeth all things upon Earth disposeth of the same as he seeth best for his Glory and the welfare of his so that in this Action he was the only Pilot which brought this our Ship into the Haven of Health for the Hairs of our Head are of him numbred and even the least Creatures upon Earth are by him regarded Into this new gained Town the Christian General put a good and strong Garrison of a thousand Lansquenets and 500 Hungarians part Horse-men and part Foot-men for the keeping of the Place and of the Country thereabout which done he retired with his Army toward
these Rebels of Asia whereof we have made mention the Governour of Sarepta or Sidon in Syria called Armil or Emir Facardin he who gave entrance into his Port to the Florentines and received them in their Courses to the Levant hearing that the Bassa of Damas and the Bassa of the Sea with the Gallies which he brought from Constantinople and the threescore which he took at Negropont whereof we have made mention came to fall upon him with a mighty and fearful Army he left his eldest Son within Sidon with Forces to command there and in other Forts about it and flying from a furious tempest of Enemies he went to Sea with three Ships to retire himself into Eâ—rope with his four Wives ten Children seventy Turks and fourteen thousand pound weight in Gold. He arrived at Legorn and went from thence to Florence under the Protection of Cosmo de Medicis Great Duke of Tuscany whose hands he kissed presenting unto him a Cuttelas very curiously wrought and inriched with Stone and two Jewels to the Great Dutchess to the value of six thousand Crowns This Turk though he had no Faith yet he found Faith with this Prince of Tuscany Cosmo received him desraied him and all his Train furnished him with Money whether it were by way of Gratification or that Emir had consumed his own and by all kind of Courtesies made this Infidel see what difference there is to fly unto the Protection of a Christian Prince or to have recourse unto a Mahometan They say that Emir roade many goodly overtures for the settling of the Christians in Asia but to attempt it with a good and happy Success it should be necessary that most of the Christian Princes would joyn their Wills and Arms together for the general good of Christendom It is true that the Great Duke Ferdinand deceased and Cosmo his Successor had made proof of their good Intentions by many generous Enterprises against the Turk But one Prince alone cannot do all These things past in the Year 1613 the end whereof concludes with the Fury of terrible Tempests in the Mediterranean Sea. The Tenth of November a fearful Tempest full of Lightning Thunder and furious Winds was the cause of the loss of many Gallies and Ships in the Port of Genoa with a great number of Persons which were miserably drowned which loss was valued at above 800000 Crowns The Port of Naples was not free from this Storm and the Gallies of Malta with a great number of other Vessels received great loss The Grand Seignior having this Year and the Year before sustained great loss of his Gallies and Frigots in the Mediterranean Sea by the Gallies of Naples Malta and Florence and in the black Sea by the Cossacks who had taken two Gallies well manned and richly laden he now imposed a great Tax upon all his Christian Subjects towards the reparation of that loss so as he charged the Armenians to build him nine Gallies at their own costs and the Grecians twenty such is the Tyranny of the Turk as he suffers not the poor Christians to injoy any thing but he finds means to pull it from them The Grand Visier Nassuff held his credit with the Prince at whose return from Adrianople many Janizaries to whom the Visier was very odious conspired to kill him as he should enter in at the North Gate coming from Adrianople and had placed themselves there for the effecting of what they had intended but coming near unto the Gate the Sultan being ignorant of what was intended against the Visier called for him to speak with him keeping him by him until he was entred into the City by which means he escaped the pretended practice Soon after Nassuff invited the Sultan to a sumptuous Feast and within few days after theEmperour feasted the Visier who presuming upon his great credit caused all the Crosses in the Church of St. Sophia which is one of the goodliest Monuments in Constantinople to be thrown down and all the Images to be defaced the which had stood intire ever since the Christians Government The Year before the King of Persia had put to death 1200 Armenians upon a false Sugestion as if they had intended to reconcile themselves to the Pope that King hating the Papists and yet suffers divers Jesuits to live in his Dominions The English Ambassador's Chaplain desirous to know the reason of the Persians Cruelty conferred with the Patriarch of the Armenians which resided at Constantinople for there are two Patriarchs whereof the one is under the Persian and the other at Constantinople under the Turk who told him that it was true he had miserably slain many of their Nation by the cunning practises of an Armenian who had counterfeited Letters from the Patriarch of Armenia to the Pope by which the Patriarch with his whole Church of Armenians made offer to reconcile themselves to the Church of Rome and to acknowledge the Pope as their head intreating the Pope to write to the King of Persia to give them leave to do it freely which Letters the Pope receiving he rewarded the Messenger bountifully and returned Letters by him to the King of Persia whereby he intreated him to suffer the Armenians in his Country to use their Consciences freely The King of Persia having received these Letters grew into a great rage causing many of them to be put to death saying That if they would be obedient to the Pope he could expect no service nor obedience from them notwithstanding the Papists said that this was done directly by the Patriarch but the Armenians affirm that it was the practice of a counterfeit Rogue Soon after there arrived three Ambassadors at Constantinople the one was a Circassian the second a Georgian and this was a Bishop and the third a Mingrelian all of them to complain of the Persians Oppression and Cruelty imploring Succours from the Grand Seignior for their support Presently after them arrived a Persian Ambassador whom the Sultan would not admit to Audience until all Controversies were concluded betwixt himself and the Emperour which was then in question the Sultan having sent one Gasparo sometime a Servant in the English Ambassador's House to treat with the Emperour by whose means at length all matters were reconciled betwixt them The Year 1614 began by the horror of great Prodigies year 1614 which were seen in divers parts of Hungary and Silesia Over the Town of Vienna in Austria the Heavens grew so red and fearfully darkned as they feared that either the last day was come or else there would follow some horrible Effusion of Blood. But all these signs had no other effect this year than the ruine of the great Fortune and prodigious Authority of Nassuf Bassa Grand Visier of the Turkish Empire formerly one of the greatest and most fearful Rebels which had carried Arms in Asia against the sovereign Power of their Sultan but to comprehend more plainly the fall and
THE TURKISH HISTORY WITH Sir PAUL RYCAUT's CONTINUATION Mahomethes Quartus Magnus Turcarum Imperator Qui nunc Regnat Anno 1687. Sold by T Basset at the George neat S t Dunstans Church in Fleet street THE TURKISH HISTORY FROM THE ORIGINAL of that NATION To the GROWTH of the Ottoman Empire WITH THE LIVES and CONQUESTS OF THEIR Princes and Emperors By RICHARD KNOLLES sometime Fellow of Lincoln-College in Oxford WITH A CONTINUATION To this Present Year MDCLXXXVII Whereunto is added The Present State of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE By Sir PAUL RYCAUT late Consul of Smyrna The Sixth EDITION with the Effigies of all the Kings and Emperors Newly Engraven at large upon Copper The First Uolume LONDON Printed for Tho. Basset at the George near St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCLXXXVII The AUTHOR to the READER THE long and still declining state of the Christian Commonweal with the utter ruin and subversion of the Empire of the East and many other most glorious Kingdoms and Provinces of the Christians never to be sufficiently lamented might with the due consideration thereof worthily move even a right stony heart to ruth but therewith also to call to remembrance the dishonour done unto the blessed Name of our Saviour Christ Iesus the desolation of his Church here militant upon Earth the dreadful danger daily threatned unto the poor remainder thereof the millions of Souls cast headlong into eternal Destruction the infininit number of woful Christians whose grievous groanings under the heavy yoke of Infidelity no tongue is able to express with the carelesness of the Great for the redress thereof might give just cause unto any good Christian to fit down and with the heavy Prophet to say as he did of Jerusalem O how hath the Lord darkned the Daughter of Sion in his wrath and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel and remembred not his footstool in the day of his wrath All which miseries with many others so great as greater there can none be the Prince of darkness and Author of all mischief hath by the persecuting Princes of all Ages and antient Hereticks his Ministers labored from time to time to bring upon the Church of God to the obscuring of his blessed Name and utter subversion of his most sacred Word but yet by none no not by them all together so much prevailed as by the false Prophet Mahomet born in an unhappy hour to the great destruction of Mankind whose most gross and blasphemous Doctrine first fantasied by himself in Arabia and so by him obtruded upon the World and afterwards by the Sarasin Caliphes his seduced Successors with greater Forces maintained was by them together with their Empire dispersed over a great part of the face of the Earth to the unspeakable ruin and destruction of the Christian Religion and State especially in Asia and Africk with some good part of Europe also But the unity of this great Mahometan Monarchy being once dissolved and it divided into many Kingdoms and so after the manner of worldly things drawing unto the fatal period of it self in process of time became of far less force than before and so less dreadful unto the Christian Princes of the West by whom these Sarasins were again expulsed out of all the parts of Europe excepting one corner of Spain which they yet held within the remembrance of our Fathers until that by their Victorious Forces they were thence at length happily removed also after that they had possessed the same above the space of 700 Years In this declination of the Sarasins the first Champions of the Mahometan Superstition who though they had lost much yet held they many Kingdoms both in Asia and Africk taken for the most part from the Christians arise the Turks an obscure and base People before scarce known unto the World yet fierce and couragious who by their Valour first aspired unto the Kingdom of Persia with divers other large Provinces from whence they were about 170 Years after again expulsed by the Tartars and enforced to retire themselves into the lesser Asia where taking the benefit of the discord of the Christian Princes of the East and the carelesness of the Christians in general they in some good measure repaired their former losses again and maintained the state of a Kingdom at Iconium in Cilicia now of them called Caramania holding in their subjection the greatest part of that fruitful Country still seeking to gain from the Christians what they had before lost unto the Tartars But this Kingdom of the Turks declining also by the dismembring of the same there slept up among the Turks in Bythinia one Osman or Othoman of the Oguzian Tribe or Family a Man of great spirit and valour who by little and little growing up amongst the rest of his Countrymen and other the effeminate Christians on that side of Asia at last like another Romulus took upon him the Name of a Sultan or King and is right worthily accounted the first Founder of the mighty Empire of the Turks which continued by many descents directly in the Line of himself even unto Achmat who now reigneth is from a small beginning become the greatest terrour of the World and holding in subjection many great and mighty Kingdoms in Asia Europe and Africk is grown to that height of pride as that it threatneth destruction unto the rest of the Kingdoms of the Earth labouring with nothing more than with the weight of it self In the greatness whereof is swallowed up both the Name and Empire of the Sarasins the glorious Empire of the Greeks the renowned Kingdoms of Macedonia Peloponesus Epirus Bulgaria Servia Bosna Armenia Cyprus Syria Egypt Judea Tunes Algiers Media Mesopotamia with a great part of Hungary as also of the Persian Kingdom and all those Churches and Places so much spoken of in holy Scripture the Romans only excepted and in brief so much of Christendom as far exceedeth that which is thereof at this day left So that at this present if you consider the beginning progress and perpetual felicity of this the Othoman Empire there is in this World nothing more admirable and strange if the greatness and lustre thereof nothing more magnificent and glorious if the Power and Strength thereof nothing more Dreadful or Dangerous Which wondering at nothing but at the Beauty of it self and drunk with the pleasant Wine of perpetual felicity holdeth all the rest of the World in Scorn thundering out nothing still but Bloud and War with a full persuasion in timeâ— to Rule over all prefixing unto it self no other limits than the uttermost bounds of the Earth from the rising of the Sun unto the going down of the same The causes whereof are many and right lamentable but for the most part are shut up in the Counsels of the Great as that for me to seek after them were great Folly Yet amongst the rest some others there be so pregnant and manifest as that the blind
there with great magnificence and the general lamentation of all his Subjects buried with the other Kings his Predecessors Now had the late King left behind him two Sons Baldwin about the age of thirteen years and Almerick about the age of seven Of the Elder of these two the Christian Princes made choice who by the name of Baldwin the Third was together with Melesinda his Mother Partner with him in the Kingdom upon Christmas day with great Solemnity crowned King of Ierusalem in the year 1142. About which time Sanguin the Turk taking hold of the discord betwixt Raymund Prince of Antioch and Ioscelin Count of Edessa came and with a great power besieged Edessa the Count being at the same time absent and did so much that at length he took the City by undermining of it where the bloody Turk exercised all manner of cruelty upon the poor Christians in the City By the loss of this famous City so large a Territory fell again into the hands of the Turks as that three Archbishopricks were thereby drawn from the Church of Antioch The Turk encouraged with this Victory straightwaies after besieged Cologenbar another strong Town of the Christians One night drinking liberally with his Friends he was by one of them in his drunkenness stabbed and so slain and the Siege raised In whose stead Noradin his Son succeeded Baldwin in the first year of his Reign recovered from the Turks the Castle of Sobal a strong hold beyond Iordan which he notably fortified for the defence of that side of his Kingdom against the incursions of the Turks But the next year undertaking an expedition against the King of Damasco he was by Noradin the Turk the Kings Son-in-Law so hardly beset in his return as that it was accounted a thing miraculous how he with his Army escaped his hands The Report of the loss of Edessa with the miseries there endured by the Christians being bruited through all parts of Christendom greatly moved the Christian Princes of the West Whom Eugenius the Third then Bishop of Rome ceased not both by himself and by his Legates to stir up to take that sacred War in hand And therein wrought so effectually that almost in every Province of Christendom preparation was made for the relief of the distressed Christians in Syria Of all others Conrade the Third then Emperor of Germany was most forward who aided by the German Princes and others with an incredible number of Voluntary Men out of all parts of Christendom had raised a most puissant Army and therewith set forward on this sacred Expedition Of this his devout purpose he had before certified Emanuel the Greek Emperor through whose Countries he was to pass craving that he might by his good Favour so do and for his Mony to be relieved with Victuals and other such things as he should have need of for himself or his people promising in most quiet and peaceable manner to pass without any harm doing unto his Territories or Subjects All which the Greek Emperor commending his zeal seemed in most large terms willingly to condescend unto Nevertheless he inwardly repined thereat wishing indeed no better success to the Christians in this so honourable an Expedition than did the Infidels themselves as by the sequel of his doings well appeared For Conrade with his populous Army indeed a terror unto the Greeks entring into the Frontiers of the Constantinopolitan Empire found all things in shew friendly for why Emanuel had before given out strait command that good store of Victuals and all other necessaries should be ready at all places to be sold as the Army was to pass but they were not far come into the Country but that in the tail of the Army still followed certain strong Companies of the Greeks to keep the Souldiers from stragling from their Ensigns roaming about in the Country now and then cutting them short as they took them at advantage And still the further that they travelled the more it was to be seen in the countenances of the discontented Greeks how unwelcome Guests they were Yet still on they went through the Countries of their dissembling Friends little differing from open Enemies until they came to Philipolis in departing from whence such discord rose between them that were in the Rereward of the Army and the Greeks that followed them that it was like to have come to plain battel had not those broyls by the discretion of some of the wiser sort been in good time appeased So marching on they came to Adrianople and in few days after to the Plain called Cherobachi through which the River Melas hath his course which in Summer being almost dry in Winter or any other great downfall of Water right suddenly overfloweth his banks and so drowneth the whole Country that then it seemeth no more a River but a Sea and swelling with the Wind is not to be passed over but by great Boats. This River then suddenly rising by night by reason of the great rain that then fell in such abundance as if the Flood-Gates of Heaven had been opened so overflowed the place wherein the Army lay encamped on the side thereof that with the violence of the Water were carried away not only many Weapons Saddels Garments and such other the Souldiers necessaries but even the Horses and Mules with their burthens yea and great numbers of armed Men themselves also a most miserable and lamentable thing to behold Many valiant Men there fell without Fight and died no men killing them to be tall helped not neither did valour stand them in any stead they perished like hay and were carried away like chaff with such outcries and lamentation that they which saw it verily said That the wrath of God was broke into the Camp such a suddain inundation had overwhelmed all that happy was he who could make shift for himself without regarding one another This misfortune sore troubled the Emperor with his whole Army Nevertheless the Water being again fallen and all put in so good order as in such a confusion was possible he marched on to the Imperial City which the suspitious and malitious Greek had before notably fortified and so strongly manned with armed Men glistering upon the Walls in such sort as if it should have presently been assaulted Conrade approaching the City was not suffered to enter but perswaded by the Greek Emperor forthwith to transport his Army over the Strait with promise to supplie his wants with whatsoever he should require Which was done with such haste as if nothing had been farther to have been regarded but only to have them shipped over in which service the Greeks spared no labour or kind of Vessel that might serve to transport them The Greek Emperor in the mean time by men secretly appointed for that purpose keeping account of the number that passed until that they wearied with the multitude ceased further to number them But when they were once shipt over then began the
the Country after the manner of their Ancestors Solyman thus lost left four Sons Sencur-Teken Iundogdis Ertogrul of some called Orthobules the Father of this Othoman Founder of the Turks Empire that now is and Dunder With these four Brethren most part of these Oguzian Turks that were left returning into Romania as is aforesaid after they had there rested themselves a while marching up along the River Euphrates came to a place called Pasin-Ovasi about ten miles above Arterum where Ertogrul and his Brother Dunder with four hundred Families not willing to go any farther stayed with their Tents and Carts their best Dwellings Sencur and Iungdogdis their other two Brethren in the mean time passing the River returned with the rest into Persia whom we there leave unto their unknown fortunes In this place Ertogrul with his Brother and his three Sons staid a while and had divers conflicts with the Country People thereabout until that at length he thought it best to return again into Romania So setting forward he came to Ancyra and from thence unto the black Mountains and so to a plain called of the Turks Sultan Ungi about 75 miles Eastward from the City of Nice in Bithynia where he had many skirmishes with the Christians Now a great while before this Aladin the Elder of whom we have before spoken in the former part of this History fled out of Persia had subdued divers great Provinces and Countries in Romania Asiatica or the lesser Asia for so it is more truly called so that he was of all the People thereabouts accounted for a great Prince and of the Turks themselves honoured with the name of their Ulu Padischach that is to say their great King or Emperor Having placed his Regal Seat first at Sebastia and afterward at Iconium which two Cities before ruinous he repaired and therein reigned as did some few of his Posterity after him as is before declared Neither was Ertogrul ignorant of the Honour Glory and Power of this great Sultan but having three Sons namely Iundus Serugatin and Othoman sent Serugatin his second Son a bold well spoken man unto him to request him in that his so large a Kingdom as yet not well peopled by the Turks to grant unto them his poor exiled Countrymen of long time oppressed with divers fortunes some small corner for them with their Families and Cattle to rest in Which his request the Sultan not forgetful of his own distress sometime in like case graciously heard and with great curtesie used the Messenger Now for the furtherance of his suit it fortuned that this Sultan before driven out of Persia by the Tartars and by them also much troubled in these his new gotten Countries in the lesser Asia had with them divers hot skirmishes and sharp conflicts in one of which it fortuned the Sultan himself with all the power he then had to be hardly beset by his Enemies and in danger to have lost the day when as Ertogrul but newly come into the Country and willing to do the Sultan service and awaiting all opportunities for the commending of himself and his followers upon the sudden unlooked for with four hundred men came upon the backs of the Tartars then almost in possession of a great Victory and so forcibly charged them that unable to endure the charge and to maintain the fight against the Sultan whose men encouraged by this unexpected aid as by succor sent from Heaven began now to fight with greater courage being both before and behind hardly beset they as men in despair of the Victory they had before assured themselves of turned their backs and fled After which good service the Sultan honourably welcomed this new come Turk giving him his Hand to kiss as the manner of the Nation is and highly commending his Valour commanded a rich Cloak to be cast upon him amongst those Eastern Nations a great honour and all his Souldiers to be bountifully rewarded and presently after gave unto Ertogrul and his Turks a Country Village called Suguta betwixt the Castle Bilezuga and the Mountain Tmolus in the greater Phrygia in which Village they might live in Winter and upon the aforesaid Mountain and the Mountain Ormenius betwixt the Rivers Sangarius and Licus feed their Cattel in Summer And yet not so contented thus to have honoured him in whom he saw such approved Valour committed to his protection that side of the Country wherein he dwelt being in the very frontiers of his Kingdom which his charge he so well looked unto that all the Country thereabout before much infested with the often incursions of the Enemy was by his vigilant care and prowess well secured Thus is Ertogrul the Oguzian Turk with his homely Herdsmen become a petty Lord of a Country Village and in good favour with the Sultan whose followers as sturdy Herdsmen with their Families lived in Winter with him in Suguta but in Summer in Tents with their Cattle upon the Mountains Having thus lived certain years and brought great Peace unto his Neighbours as well the Christians as the Turks before much troubled with the invasion of the Tartars it fortuned that the Christians of Cara-Chisar a Castle thereby called by the ancient Greeks Melanopyrgon and of later time Maurocastron that is to say the black Tower or Castle weary of their own ease and of the Peace they had by his care enjoyed fell out with him and evil entreated both him and his People Which their ingratitude he taking in evil part thereof and of the wrongs by them done unto the Turks so grievously complained unto the Sultan that he therewith moved raised a great Army and so himself in person came and besieged the Castle But lying there at the Siege news was brought him that the Tartars with a great Army under the leading of one Baintzar were entred into Caria and there spoiling the Country had taken Heraclea For the repressing of whom the Sultan was glad to rise with his Army yet leaving a sufficient strength behind him for the continuing of the Siege under the charge of Ertogrul Beg for so the Turks now called him The Sultan afterwards encountring with the Tartars at Baga overthrew them in a great Battel Whilst Ertogrul in the mean space hardly besieged Cara-Chisar wherein fortune so much favoured him that at length he took the Castle the Spoil whereof he gave unto the Souldiers reserving only the fifth part thereof as due unto the Sultan which he sent him for a Present together with the Captain of the Castle who he had taken alive which Captain the Sultan afterward inlarged and restored again to him his Castle for the payment of a yearly Tribute which he truly paid during the life of the Sultan but he dying about two years after he refused any more to pay it and so revolted from the Turks Sultan Aladin Founder of the Aladinian Kingdom for so the Turks call it being dead at Iconium after him succeeded Azatines his
not for any fear but to save the effusion of innocent blood which consideration set apart he should find him not inferior to himself either in number of most expert Souldiers or other War-like Provision and that therefore if he rejected this Offer of Peace he needed not to doubt but to meet with men of courage which would bear themselves so valiantly in the field against his Turks as that he should have no great cause to rejoyce of his coming thither Which words of the Embassador so netled Amurath that in great rage he commanded him to depart and to will his Master if he were a man of such courage and valour as he said to shew himself in the field with all his Forces there to make an end of all quarrels where he doubted not but in short time to chastise him according to his due deserts So after the Embassador was departed marching forward three days Alis Beg came unto him of whose coming he not a little rejoyced for why he loved him dearly and although he was yet of years but young relied much upon his Council The Embassador returning recounted unto Aladin all that Amurath had said not omitting his hard Speeches and proud Threats and how that he hoped shortly to take from him Iconium and Larenda the principal Cities of Caramania with many things more leaving nothing untold Which Aladin hearing said unto the Confederate Princes that were with him Verily Amurath threatneth to take from us the Cities of Iconium and Larenda but let him take heed that we take not from him his fair City of Prusa Then demanding of the Embassador of what strength Amurath might be it was answered by him that he deemed him to be about seventy thousand strong Whereat Aladin not a little rejoycing said Assuredly when he shall see our Army he will not dare to give us battel or if he do he shall fight upon great disadvantage his men being both fewer in number than we and sore wearied with long and painful travel In the mean time Amurath held on his way towards Caramania daily encouraging his Souldiers with Perswasions and Gifts bountifully bestowed upon them filling their heads with promises of greater the War once happily ended At length he came to the great Plains in Caramania called the French Plains because in former time the Christians whom the Turks for most part call Franks in those places incamped their great Armies as they went to the winning of Ierusalem as in the former part of this History is declared Into these Plains also came Aladin with his Army and was now incamped within one days march of Amurath and so rested that night The next morning Amurath put his Army in order of battel appointing the leading of the right Wing to his youngest Son Iacup with whom he joyned Cuâ—luzes Beg Ein Beg Subbassa Egridum Suâ—bassa Seraze and Custendil two Christian Princes all Captains of great experience The left Wing was led by Bajazet his eldest Son with Ferize and Hozze both valiant Captains in which Wings were also placed the Christian Souldiers sent by Lazarus out of Servia according to the late convention of peace in the main battel he stood himself the Vauntguard was conducted by Temurtases and the rereward by the Subbassa of Oxyllithus called also Temurtases and Achmetes Aladin on the other side with no less care and diligence set his men likewise in order of battel placing himself in the main battel as did Amurath and the Princes his Allies with his other expert Captains some in the right Wing and some in the left as he thought most convenient in such sort as that in all mens judgment he was in Force nothing inferior to his Father in Law. These great Enemies thus ranged with Ensigns displaid came on couragiously one directly upon the other where approaching together the confused noise of Trumpets Drums Fifes with other Instruments of War the neighing of Horses and clattering of Armor was so great that whilst Warlike minds thereat rejoyced Cowards thought Heaven fell But the sign of battel on both sides given Samagazes one of the Confederate Princes with exceeding courage first charged Temurtases in the Vantguard and broke his Ranks at which time Teberruses a Tartar Prince and Varsacides another of the Confederates delivered their Arrows also upon the Vantguard as if it had been a shower of Hail Which Bajazet seeing and how hardly Temurtases was charged having before obtained leave of his Father brake in upon the Enemy with such violence as if it had been the lightning whereof he was ever after sirnamed Gilderuâ— which is to say The lightning Ferizes and Hozze with the other valiant Captains in that Wing following Bajazet with invincible courage entred the battel where for a great space was made a most dreadful and doubtful fight A man would have thought two rough Seas had met together swaying one against the other doubtful which way the current would at length fall In this conflict many thousands were on both sides slain so that the field lay covered with the dead bodies of worthy Men and valiant Souldiers yet at length these Confederate Princes finding themselves overmatched by Bajazet and his Souldiers reserving themselves to their better Fortunes turned their backs and fled when Aladin seeing a great part of his Army thus overthrown and himself now ready to be charged with Amurath his whole Power despairing of Victory sped himself in all hast to Iconium his strong City The spoil which Amurath got in this battel was great most part whereof he gave in reward to Temurtases and his Souldiers which had indured the greatest fury of the battel Amurath after this Victory with all speed marched to Iconium and there besieged Aladin the Caramanian King in his strongest City giving out Proclamation in the mean time That none of his Souldiers upon pain of death should use any violence to any of the Country-people or take any thing from them to the intent it might appear unto the World that he made that War against that Mahometan King rather to propulse Injury and Wrong than for desire of Soveraignty or Spoil Which his so strait a Proclamation the Christians sent by Lazarus amongst others transgressed and therefore by his commandment suffered many of them exemplary punishment which was the cause of the Servian War which not long after ensued fatal both unto Amurath and Lazarus the Despot as hereafter shall appear Aladin now on every side besieged in Iconium and without all hope of escape sent to the Queen his Wife Amuraths Daughter bewailing unto her his desperate estate and requesting her by all the love that so honourable a minded Lady might bear unto her miserable Husband to adventure her self to go to her angry Father and to crave pardon for his great Trespass and Offence The Queen forthwith attiring her self as was fittest for her Husbands present estate came to her Father where falling down at his Feet upon her knees with words
great Preparation made by Amurath had drawn into the society of this War the King of Bosna as is aforesaid with Vulcus Prince of Macedonia his Son in law who both brought unto him great Aid he had also by his Embassadors procured great Supplies from other Christian Kings and Princes out of Valachia Hungaria Croatia Sâ—lavonia Albania Bulgaria and Italy besides great numbers of other voluntary devout Christians which all assembled and met together did in number far exceed the great Army of the Turks With this Army Lazarus the Despot encamped upon the side of the River Morova the greater not far from whence stood the strong Castle of Sarkive which Alis Bassa had of late taken from Sasmenos the Bulgarian Prince standing as it were betwixt Bulgaria and Servia this Castle being now possessed of the Turks was thought by Lazarus dangerous to his Country who therefore sent one Demetrius a right valiant Captain with certain Companies of select Men to take in the same The name of this Captain Demetrius was a general terror unto the Turks for the harm he had done them so that they in the Castle hearing that he was come without further resistance yielded the same unto him Whereof Amurath understanding sent Eine and Sarutze Bassa to recover the same but Lazarus doubting that the Castle would hardly be kept in that dangerous War sent Vulcus his Son in law with twenty thousand Men to bring away all that was therein and in the City near unto it lest it should become a prey unto the greedy Turks which he accordingly did and at the same time rased both the Castle and the City before the coming of Iaxis Beg sent from Amurath to have done the same exploit which he coming thither found already done to his hand by Vulcus As Amurath was marching towards Servia Seratze and Custendil two Christian Princes his Tributaries met him with their Forces whom he caused to march before him as his Guids and passing through Custendil his Country was there refreshed with plenty of all things necessary until at length passing the River of Morova the less he drew so near to the Plains of Cossova where the Christian Army lay that he with his Son Bajazet from a little Hill took full view of the Christian Camp which was so great that it covered all those large Plains from side to side and so daunted Amurath as that returning to his Army he presently entred into a great consultation with his greatest Captains and Commanders what course to take against such a puissant Enemy These great Armies being now come so nigh together as that they might the one well descry the other Amurath had purposed the same day to have given the Christians battel but being disswaded by Eurenoses both for that it was extream hot and his Souldiers wearied with travel he rested that night The next morning as soon as it was day he put his Army in order of battel placing his Son Bajazet with Eurenoses and Eine Beg Subbassa in the right Wing his youngest Son Iacup with Sarutzâ— Bassa in the left Wing the main battel he led himself Lazarus in the mean time had also set his Army in good order giving the charge of the right Wing to Vulcus his Son in law the left Wing was led by the King of Bosna and his Sons in the main battel stood Lazarus himself the Italians Valachians Hungarians Bohemians and Bulgarians he placed in both Wings It is thought greater Armies than those two had seldem before met in Europe Lazarus as the Turkish Histories report but how truly I know not having in his Army five hundred thousand men and Amurath scarce half so many To begin the battel Amurath had drawn a thousand of his best Archers under the leading of Malcozzeus out of the right Wing of his Army and the like number of Archers out of the left under the conduct of one Mustapha which so placed on both sides of the Army as he thought best Eurenoses a man of great experience told Amurath That the Christians were for the most part well and strongly armed and shouldring close together in their charge would be like a Rock of Iron unable to be pierced but if in joyning the battel he would a little retire the Christians following upon good hope would so loose their close standing the chief part of their strength and leave an entrance for his Men. Upon which resolution Amurath commanded the Archers to give the first charge which they couragiously performed At which time the Turks Army gave ground a little which the Christians perceiving with great force assailed the left Wing of their Army and after a hard and cruel fight put the same to flight which Bajazet seeing with such fury renewed the battel that the Turks which before as men discouraged fled in the left Wing began now to turn again upon their Enemies and the Christians having as they thought already got the Victory were to begin a great battel In which bloody fight many thousands fell on both sides the brightness of the Armor and Weapons was as it had been the Lightning the multitude of Launces and other Horsemens Staves shadowed the light of the Sun Arrows and Darts fell so fast that a man would have thought they had poured down from Heaven the noise of the Instruments of War with the neighing of Horses and out-cries of Men was so terrible and great that the wild Beasts of the Mountains stood astonied therewith and the Turkish Histories to express the terror of the day vainly say that the Angels in Heaven amazed with that hideous noise for that time forgot the heavenly Hymns wherewith they always glorifie God. About noon time of the day the fortune of the Turks prevailing the Christians began to give ground and at length betook themselves to plain flight whom the Turks with all their force pursued and slew them down right without number or mercy In which battel Lazarus the Despot himself was also slain Howbeit some Histories report otherwise as that he with his Son were taken Prisoners and by and by afterwards in revenge of Amurath his death cruelly slain othersome also reporting that he died in Prison Amurath after this great Victory with some few of his chief Captains taking view of the dead bodies which without number lay on heaps in the field like Mountains a Christian Souldier sore wounded and all bloody seeing him in staggering manner arose as if it had been from death out of a heap of slain men and making towards him for want of strength fell down divers times by the way as he came as if he had been a drunken man at length drawing nigh unto him when they which guarded the Kings Person would have stayed him he was by Amurath himself commanded to come nearer supposing that he would have craved his life of him Thus the half dead Christian pressing near unto him as if he would for honour sake have kissed his
thousand of his men and Tamerlane not many fewer and some other speaking of a far less number as that there should be slain of the Turks about threescore thousand and of Tamerlane his Army not past twenty thousand But leaving the certainty of the number unto the credit of the Reporters like enough it is that the Slaughter was exceeding great in so long a Fight betwixt two such Armies as never before as I suppose met in Field together By this one days event is plainly to be seen the uncertainty of worldly things and what small assurance even the greatest have in them Behold Bajazet the terror of the World and as he thought superior to Fortune in an instant with his state in one Battel overthrown into the bottom of misery and despair and that at such time as he thought least even in the midst of his greatest Strength It was three days as they report before he could be pacified but as a desperate man still seeking after death and calling for it neither did Tamerlane after he had once spoken with him at all afterwards courteously use him but as of a proud man caused small account to be made of him And to manifest that he knew how to punish the haughty made him to be shackled in Fetters and Chains of Gold and so to be shut up in an Iron Cage made like a Grate in such sort as that he might on every side be seen and so carried him up and down as he passed through Asia to be of his own People scorned and derided And to his further disgrace upon Festival days used him for a Footstool to tread upon when he mounted to Horse and at other times scornfully fed him like a Dog with crums fallen from his Table A rare Example of the uncertainty of worldly Honour that he unto whose ambitious mind Asia and Europe two great parts of the World were too little should be now carried up and down cooped up in a little Iron Cage like some perilous wild Beast All which Tamerlane did not so much for hatred to the man as to manifest the just judgment of God against the arrogant Folly of the Proud. It is reported That Tamerlane being requested by one of his Noblemen that might be bold to speak unto him to remit some part of his Severity against the person of so great a Prince answered That he did not use that Rigor against him as a King but rather did punish him as a proud ambitious Tyrant polluted with the blood of his own Brother Now this so great an overthrow brought such a fear upon all the Countries possessed by Bajazet in Asia that Axalâ—a sent before by Tamerlane with forty thousand Horse and an hundred thousand Foot without Carriages to prosecute the Victory came without resistance to Prusa whither all the remainder of Bajazet his Army retired with the Bassa Mustapha the Country as he went still yielding unto him Yea the great Bassa with the rest hearing of his coming and thinking themselves not now in any safety in Asia fled over the Strait of Hellespontâ—s to Callipoliâ— and so to Hadrianople carrying with them out of the Battel Solyman Bajazet his eldest Son whom they set up in his Fathers place Mahomet his younger Brother presently upon the overthrow being fled to Amasia of whom and the rest of Bajazet his Children more shall be said hereafter Axalla coming to Prâ—sa had the City without resistance yielded unto him which he rifled and there with other of Bajazet his Wiâ—es and Concubines took Prisoner the fair Despina Bajazet his best beloved Wife to the doubling of his grief Emaâ—â—â—l the Greek Emperor now hearing of Tamerlane his coming to Prusa sent his Embassadors the most honorable of his Court thither before â—o Axalla by whom they woâ—e there steid until the coming of Tamerlane who received them with all the Honour that might be shewing unto them all his magnificence and the order of his Camp to their great admiration For it resembled a most populous and well governed City for the order that was therein which brought unto it plenty of all kind of Victuals and other Merchandise as well for pleasure as for use By these Embassadors the Greek Emperor submitted all his Empire together with his Person unto Tamerlane the great Conqueror as his most faithful Subject and Vassal which he was bound as he said to do for that he was by him delivered from the most cruel Tyrant of the World as also for that the long journy he had passed and the discommodities he had indured with the loss of his People and the danger of his Person could not be recompenced but by the offer of his own Life and his Subjects which he did for ever dedicate unto his Service with all the Fidelity and Loyalty that so great a benefit might deserves besides that his so many Vertues and rare Accomplishments which made him famous through the World did bind him so to do And that therefore he would attend him in his chief City to deliver it into his Hands as his own with all the Empire of Greece Now the Greek Embassadors looked for no less than to fall into bondage to Tamerlane thinking that which they offered to be so great and delicate a Morsel as that it would not be refused especially of such a conquering Prince as was Tamerlane and that the acceptance thereof in kindness and friendship was the best bargain they could make therein But they received answer from this worthy Prince far beyond their expectation for he with a mild countenance beholding them answered them That he was not come from so far a Country or undertaken so much pains for the inlargement of his Dominions already large enough too base a thing for him to put himself into so great danger and travel for but rather to win Honour and thereby to make his name famous unto all Posterity for ever And that therefore it should well appear unto the World that he was come to aid him being requested as his Friend and Allie and that his upright meaning therein was the greatest cause that God from above had beheld his power and thereby bruised the Head of the greatest and fiercest Enemy of mankind that was under Heaven and now to get him an immortal name would make free so great and flourishing a City as was Constantinople governed by so noble and ancient an House as the Emperors That unto his Courage he had always Faith joyned such as should never suffer him to make so great a breach in his reputation as that it should be reported of him That in the colour of a Friend he came to invade the Dominions of his Allies That he desired no more but that the service he had done for the Greek Emperor might for ever be ingraven in the Memory of his Posterity to the end they might for ever wish well unto him and his Successors by remembring the good he had done them That
again to Constantinople requesting the Bassa to come over unto him into Asia and in token of his great Favour sent him divers rich Garments with many great and princely Promises wherewith the Bassa moved and detesting the cruel Government of Musa went over unto him to Prusa and there was of him honourably entertained and sworn one of his Privy-Council in which Place of Honour he long time afterwards served him faithfully and after him his Son Amurath also Mahomet thinking upon the advantage of his Brothers evil Government to find means to thrust him out of his Kingdom and so to draw the whole Government of the Turkish Empire unto himself as well in Europe as in Asia assembled an Army of fifteen thousand choice Souldiers to invade his Brother in Europe before he were there well established in his Kingdom And so shocking down towards the Straits of Bosphorus by his Embassador concluded a League with Emanuel the Greek Emperor That one of them should never wrong or damnifie the other and that if Mahomet should hap to obtain the Turkish Kingdom in Europe he should always Honour and Reverence the Emperor as his special good Friend but if it should chance him to be distressed or overthrown by his Brother Musa that then the Emperor should presently transport him and his Army back again into Asia This League was with great Solemnity of words on both parts confirmed And shortly after Mahomet with all his Army was by the Emperors shipping at the Strait of Bosphorus near unto Constaâ—tinople transported over into Europe for Musa possessed of Callipolis had stopped all the other passages Musa having before knowledge of his Brothers coming was forthwith in readiness to meet him with a strong Army So that Mahomet had not marched far from the Sea-side but that the Vantcourriers of his Army met with his Brothers at a place called Imzuge and there began a light Skirmish wherein Musa his Forerunners were by Mahomets put to flight and chased unto Musa his Camp. Whereof such a sudden fear arose in the Army that they were almost ready to fly thinking Mahomet had been upon them with all his Power but understanding the truth of the matter both Armies rested that night which as then drew fast on The next day these two Brethren armed with equal hope brought their Armies into the Field and gave the signal of the battel whereupon began a mortal and bloody Fight in the Fury whereof Michael Ogli Bassa of Romania and certain other of Musa's great Captains upon secret discontentment revolted to Mahomet wherewith many of Musa his Souldiers discouraged fled Which Mahomet his Souldiers seeing pursued the chase with such earnestness and fury that few were left with himself yet with such as were left in hope of good hap he set upon his Brother who although he was half discomfited with the â—â—ight of the greater part of his Army whom the Enemies had yet in chace yet stood he fast himself with 7000 Janizaries his best Souldiers so taking the unexpected good hap presented unto him by his Brothers forwardness valiantly received his Charge But Mahomet finding there a greater strength than he had before supposed and himself too weak to withstand the fury of the Janizaries because most of his men also were following the Chace was now for safeguard of his life glad to fly himself to Constantinople whither he came accompanied scarcely with two hundred men and was from thence according to the agreement before made betwixt him and the Emperor speedily shipped over into â—sia Musa having thus put his Brother to flight with great slaughter of his men presently took his Tents with all that was therein and there encamped himself They of Mahomets Army which followed the Chace of such as had fled in the beginning of the battel not knowing what had happened to Mahomet returning to the Camp doubting no peril and finding it at their return possessed by their Enemies stood as men amazed and utterly discouraged at which time Musa would not suffer his Souldiers to put them to the Sword as they would fain have done but commanded them to be dispoiled of their Arms and such other things as they had and so with life suffered them to depart After this Overthrow whilst Mahomet lay still at Prusa the Prince of Smyrna forcibly entred into Aidinia purposing to pass through into Sarucania which thing Mahomet hearing gathered a great Army and entring into the Princes Country made such spoil as he went and so distressed the Prince himself that he was glad to submit himself unto him and from thenceforth to hold his Dominion of him as of his Lord and Soveraign and so returned unto Amasia Mahomet could not well digest the loss he had so lately received in Europe and therefore levied an Army of choice Souldiers out of all parts of his Kingdom once again to try his fortune against his elder Brother Musa For the better Success wherein he by his Letters craved Aid of the Prince Dulgader Ogli written to this effect Sultan Mahomet unto the Prince Dulgader Ogli his Father in Law. MY purpose is to lead mine Army into Romania in Europe and there again to try my quarrel with my Brother Musa My hope is that you will not with your Aid be wanting unto me your Son in law in my so great Affairs neither for want of good will to hinder this my purpose Fare you well In the year of our great Prophet Mahomet 814. From Amasia Whereunto the Prince returned this kind Answer Prince Dulgader Ogli unto the great Sultan Mahomet I Doubt not most mighty Monarch but that whithersoever your desires shall draw you for the undertaking of any great Exploit he that ruleth above in Heaven will be always your Aid prosper your Attempts minister unto you fit Occasions and bring all your Actions unto a most happy end with most assured Victory Wherefore seeing God so diposing our Affairs I cannot my self in Person come unto you with my Power and give you my trusty help in this your intended War yet will I in no case fail with all speed to send my Son your Servant to Aid you with our Forces in this War. Fare you well This same Year of our Prophet 814. And so shortly after the Prince sent unto him his Son according to his Promise with a Company of brave Souldiers excellently furnished for the welcoming of whom Mahomet his Brother in law made a great and royal Feast and there in his mirth gave unto the young Prince the rich Apparel he wore himself with the Horse he rode upon and all the rich Plate of Gold and Silver wherein they were served at that Feast a matter of great value And to every one of his Noblemen he gave a rich Garment made for that purpose with some other Gift as a Favour and afterwards gave them all to understand That he intended forthwith to pass over into Europe and there to recover all his Fathers
Christians besides the noise of Trumpets Drums and other instruments oâ— War with the horrible cry of the hellish Turks was so great and hideous that it seemed as if Heaven and Earth should have gon together nothing was to be heard but the very terror of the Ear nothing to be seen but death and the very instruments of death And now in this extremity a fearful cry ran through the City That without present help all would be lost at the great Gate whereupon not only they which were whole which were the fewest in number but they also which lay wounded or sick in their beds chearing up themselves with Weapons in their Hand ran with speed to the place where the danger was chusing rather there to die than to be slain in their beds Thus whilst the Christians of all sorts and from all parts of the City ran desperately to the Gate the Turks were on every side hardly pressed and in great number slain yet fresh men still coming up as if they had sprung out of the Earth the deadly â—â—ght was by them still maintained for the Turks on the one side for fear of the Tyrant laboured with might and main to win the City and the Christians on the other knowing no hope left for them if they should be overcome with no less resolution defended the same In this obstinacy of mind many fell on both sides sometimes the Turks seemed to have the better and were straitway by the Christians put to the worse Which manner of mortal Fight with doubtful event was continued most part of that day until that at length many being on both parts slain and the rest for the most part sore wounded and hurt the fury of the Assault began to asswage for the Turks now weary of that long and deadly Fight and fainting with their wounds had no great stomach to mount up the Rampiers where they saw no hope to prevail but all things threatning present death Mahomet beholding the wonderful slaughter of his men and that having done what was possible for men to do they now fought as men discouraged and in despair of Victory himself caused a Retreat to be sounded which the Turks no sooner heard but that they left the Assault and without order ran to their Tents as men half scared out of their Wits Of this Victory the Christians as they had good cause rejoyced greatly yet was this joy mingled with much sorrow and heaviness for the loss of such worthy men as were slain in that Assault many of whose bodies they were glad to gather up by piecemeal some here some there some cleaving on this Wall and some on that which they as the time would give leave honourably buried with the rest of the slain At which time also they with all diligence and expedition repaired their breaches and put all things in such readiness as if they should have presently received a fresh Assault Mahomet wonderfully grieved with the shameful dishonour and great loss he had received at the last Assault repented himself that ever he had taken the matter in hand wishing that he had never heard of the name of Scodra and in his choler and frantick rage most horribly blasphemed against God most wickedly saying That it were enough for him to have care of Heavenly things and not to cross him in his Worldly Actions in which fury he descended from the Mount and got into his Tent where he again tormented himself with his melancholy Passions by the space of two days wherein he would neither be spoke withal or admit any man to his presence Upon the third day he called a general Counsel of his Commanders and best Souldiers and thereupon openly before them all said That he was determined to give the Enemy a fresh Assault for that being weakned with so many Assaults he could not possibly be able to hold out another and therefore hoped for an easie Victory But he had no sooner so said but that all they that heard him cried out with one voice to the contrary saying That it was not by any means to be attempted for as much as his best Souldiers were already slain and the greater part of them that were left either sore wounded or brought to that weakness that they were not able to do any more service and that therefore it were better for them to kill one another or else himself to kill them one by one than to expose them to be so shamefully butchered by the Christians In this diversity of opinions Achmetes Bassa the great Champion of the Turks a man reverend and of great authority for his birth years and rare experience in Martial Affairs and one by whom Mahomet had done great matters standing up with pleasing speech calmed his furious mind and with substantial reasons perswaded him to desist from that his intended purpose and to take another surer course as followeth A notable Speech of the great Bassa Achmetes YOUR great Valour and worthy Praises invincible Emperor said he who is able to express the greatness whereof the mind of man cannot conceive and my dull Spirit but wonder at my Tongue faltereth to speak of them neither would this time serve so much as to recount them It is of all men deemed a thing of great honour most dread Soveraign when a Prince hath received a Kingdom from his Ancestors to be able in safety to keep and defend the same greater than this is it honourably to increase and augment it so left but of a small thing by worthy prowess to bring it to the highest type of worldly honour is of all other things the greatest Which most rare excellency all men worthily ascribe unto your perfection and felicity and I of all others can thereof bring the most assured testimony who have oftentimes heard it of mine Ancestors which following the Othoâ—an Princes out of Asia into Europe that your worthy Predecessors at their first coming into Europe without offence be it said possessed but a corner thereof to whom you afterward by divine appointment succeeding have adjoined so many Provinces Kingdoms and Empires as were tedious to rehearse them For who can worthily express how you have in Europe subdued Constantinople the Imperial City of the East Empire with all Thracia Achaia Grecia Peloponnesus Boeotia Thebes and the noble City of Athens the Mother and Nurse of all good Learning The Empire of Trapezond with the Emperor thereof is by you overthrown The Kingdoms of Servia and Bosna with the Princes of Peloponnesus are by you gloriously vanquished You have at your command twelve Kingdoms in Asia the lesser Pontus Bithynia Cappadocia Paphlagonia Cilicia Pamphilia Lycia Caria Lydia Phrygia Nicomedia and Nicea with the famous City of Prusa Besides these Ionia Doris Smyrna Colophon Ephesus Miletum Halicarnassus Pergamus with the Country of Taurica are under your Subjection The great Country of Armenia hath felt your force The Islands of Lesbos Chios and Euboea are parts of your
defence of the Christian Faith whereunto we are by special profession bound will animate and encourage us against them which seek for nothing more than to extend their wicked and gross superstition to the great dishonour of God and of his Son Christ Iesus Besides that we are warlike Frenchmen Italians Germans and other worthy Christians they are of Caria Lydia Capadocia and the other delicate Countries of Asia effeminate persons brought up to pleasure I say it not to draw you into any manifest or inevitable danger neither to feed you with vain hope or to fill your ears with windy words but this I promise and assure you of that if this Siege shall continue long hither will come such strong Aid out of France Italy and Spain as will serve not only to raise thâ— Siege but to recover again the Empires of Constantinople and Trapezond Then shall our Enemy see no good end of their Counsels but all their devices so confounded as that they shall hardly be able by speedy Flight to save themselves But suppose the hardest should happen which I fear not would not any man account his life most happily and honourably spent in defence of a good conscience and the quarrel of Christ Iesus Truly my great years and course of life now almost spent in defence of the Christian Religion as I ever desired doth call mâ— forth as one so assured of that good laid up for me in Heaven by Christ Iesus whose Battel we are to fight that I no whit fear any Enemies force or future chance which for all that I have as far as I could and to the uttermost of my power so provided for as that we will not I hope be therewith overwhelmed Be you therefore of good chear and comfort as I know you are and shew your selves valiant and couragious which resteth wholly in your selves and as for all the rest time and our discretion shall right well provide I doubt not The valiant Men and worthy Souldiers resting upon the assurance of their aged Governor departed every man to his charge full of hope and courage Now had the Bassa landed his great Army and sent Demetrius the traiterous Knight Meligalus his Companion with certain Troops of Horsemen and some Foot to view the ground where he might best encamp with his Army Demetrius in great pride riding about the City was known by Anthony Damboyse the Great Masters Brother by whose leave he sallied out with a Troop of gallant Horsemen and skirmished with them but the Turks being more in number cast about to have inclosed them which Anthony perceiving turned upon them that were coming behind him and that with such force that he slew or wounded most part of them In this hot skirmish Demetrius having his Horse slain under him and himself overthrown was there trodden to death under the Horses Feet an end too good for so false a Traitor Mâ—ratius a French Knight unadvisedly dispoiling his dead Body was by the Turks slain and his Head presented to the Bassa in stead of Demetrius The Bassa approaching the City at the first coming took a great Orchard which the Great Master had strongly intrenched and therein placed certain Companies of Souldiers with some small Pieces of Ordnance which place if it could have been kept might fitly have served the Defendants to have at their pleasure sallied out upon the Enemy But they which were appointed to the keeping thereof either terrified with the sight of so great an Army or else doubting to be able to hold it against so great a power abandoned it by night and retired into the City leaving the great Ordnance behind them for hast In this place the Bassa by the counsel of George Frapaine a Christian Fâ—gitive of the Rhodes and now Master of his Ordnance began to plant his Battery and from thence to batter the Tower called Nicholea or S. Nicholas his Tower distant from the City three hundred paces But against this place Damboyse had so aptly mounted two great Basilisks that he made him glad quickly to forsake the same yet finding no other place more convenient for his purpose shortly after he near unto the same place planted again his battery of far greater force than before Wherein beside the Ordnance of greatest charge he had three hundred smaller Pieces for Battery wherewith at the first he did small harm for that this George Frapaine repenting himself as was thought of his foul Treason bestowed the Shot to small purpose for which cause the Bassa began to have him in distrust which Frapaine perceiving fled by night again unto the Rhodes and discovered unto the Great Master all the secrets of the Turks Camp. The Turks continuing the battery had â—ore shaken the aforesaid Tower called S. Nicholas and beaten down some part thereof which the Christians with great industry speedily repaired in best sort they could for all that the Turks gave thereunto a fierce Assault by the space of six hours forcing themselves to the uttermost to have taken it but perceiving that it prevailed them nothing they retired having lost eight hundred of their men with many others drowned in the Sea of whom the number was not known and a thousand others sore wounded Mesithes disappointed of his former purpose bent his Artillery against the Walls of the City and with continual battery had made a fare breach But Damboyse foreseeing the danger had with great labour cast up such Rampiers with a Countermure before the breach that the Bassa durst not in any case adventure to enter the breach he had made For performance of this so necessary a work the Captains themselves refused not to put too their helping hands by whose example all the rest of the People which were able to do any thing being moved willingly imployed their labour until the work was fully finished Whilst these things were in doing Caly-Bassa the younger a great Courtier was sent from Mahomet to see with what success the Siege went forward Upon whose arrival it was given out through all the Turks Camp That Mahomet was in person himself coming to the Siege with an hundred thousand Men and an hundred and fifty Pieces of great Ordnance These News of purpose devised to the terror of the Defendants being blown out of the Camp into the City struck an exceeding great fear into the minds of some of the Defendants and so discouraged the Spaniards with their nigh Neighbours that came from Navar that they began openly to reason in their Conventicles That it was not possible for the City to be defended against such a power and therefore after an insolent manner desired leave to be gone to the great discouragement of the rest The Great Master understanding of their doings sent for these mutinoâ—s Spaniards and after he had sharply reproved them of disorder and cowardise promised to ship them away forthwith out of the Isle saying That he doubted not right well to defend the City against the greatest
had before sent a Fleet of Gallies to stop the passages of that Country alongst the Sea Coast. But the Country People understanding of his coming fled into the high and rough Rocks and Mountains from whence they did the Turks great harm who nevertheless with incredible labour and adventure mounted those difficult places and killing an exceeding number of those mountain and savage People carried all the Women and Children they could light upon away with them Prisoners and with Fire and Sword made all the Country desolate After which Spoil done Bajazet returned with his Army to Manastirum and departing thence upon the way met with a Dervislar which is a phantastical and beggarly kind of Turkish Monks using no other Apparel but two Sheep-Skins the one hanging before and the other behind a lusty strong fat Fellow attired after the manner of his order with a great Ring in each Ear who drawing near unto Bajazet as if he would of him have received an Alms desperately assailed him with a short Scimitar which he had closely conveied under his hypocrital habit But Bajazet by the starting of the Horse whereon he rid being afraid at the suddain approach of the Hobgoblin partly avoided the deadly blow by the Traitor entended yet not altogether unwounded neither had he so escaped the danger had not Ishender Bassa with his Horsemans Mace presently struck down the desperate Villain as he was about to have doubled his stroak but being now struck down he was forthwith rent in pieces by the Souldiers This treacherous and desperate fact so much moved Bajazet that he proscribed all them of that superstitious Order and banished them out of his Empire After so many troubles Bajazet gave himself unto a quiet course of life spending most part of his time in study of Philosophy and conference with learned men unto which peaceable kind of life he was of his own natural disposition more enclined than to Wars albeit that the regard of his State and the earnest desire of his Men of War drew him oftentimes even against his Will into the Field As for the Civil Government of his Kingdom he referred it wholly unto his three principal Bassaâ—s Alis Achmetes and Iachia who at their pleasure disposed of all things After he had in this quiet and pleasing kind of life to his great contentment passed over five years of a little neglected Spark suddainly arose such a Fire in Asia as was hardly after with much blood of his People and danger of that part of his Empire quenched the reliques whereof yet trouble those superstitious People at this day Which thing was brought to pass by the crafty device of Chasan Chelife and Schach Culi his Boy whom some call Teckel Scachoculis and others Techellis two Hypocritical Persians who flying into those Countries and with the counterfeit shew of feigned Holiness having procured to themselves a great name amongst those rude People with a number of windy headed Followers filled with the novelty of their new Doctrine raised first such a diversity of opinions about the true successors of their untrue Prophet and afterwards such a Rebellion amongst the People as that the one yet remaineth and the other was not in a good while after without great bloudshed appeased But for the better understanding of the ground of these troubles which hapned at this time in the Reign of Bajazet by occasion of these two fugitive Persians as also for the mortal Wars which afterwards ensued betwixt Hysmael commonly called the great Sophi of Persia and Selymus Bajazet his Successor it shall not be much from our purpose briefly to declare the great mutation which at this time happened to the Persian Kingdom as well in the State it self as in Matters of their Superstition At such time as Asymbeius Usun-Cassanes reigned in Persia there was one Haider Erdebil whom Iovius calleth by the name of Harduelles a man honourably descended amongst the Persians who contemning worldly Honour Riches Pleasure and whatsoever else belonged unto delicacy of life commonly accounted the greatest part of Human Felicity as meer Vanities and Trifles led such a straight and austere kind of life with such continency and contempt of the World as that the Vulgar People for most part given to pleasure wondering at that in him which they could not or would not imitate began to have the man in singular admiration for the opinion they had conceived of his upright Life and Vertues The fame of this new Prophet for so he was accounted was grown so great in the Persian Kingdom that People without number resorted out of all parts of Persia and Armenia unto the great City of Tauris to see the man. And he the more to seduce the Multitude delighted with Novelties began to inveigh against the common received opinion of the Mahometans concerning the true Successors of their great Prophet and to revive the opinion of Giuni sirnamed Sosi perswading the People as if he had been inspired with some divine Inspiration That none of the Professors of the Mahometan Religion should inherit the Kingdom of Heaven after they were dead but such as were the Followers of Haly the true Successor of the great Prophet Mahomet and his Fellow in writing Whom he taught them only to honour as privy to the mind of the great Prophet and so to receive his Writings as of all others most authentical rejecting Ebubekir Omer and Osman with their Writings as most wicked and accursed men whom the Turks had ever and yet do with the other Mahometans honour and worship as the true successors of their great Prophet Mahomet and his sincere Interpreters together with the aforesaid Haly whom the Persians do only acknowledge and therefore in their Prayers do commonly say Cursed be Ebubekir Omer and Osman and God be favourable to Haly and well pleased with him Which their difference about the true Successor of their Prophet in whom was no truth hath been and yet is one of the greatest causes of the mortal Wars between the Turks and Persians and not the divers interpretation of their Law as many have written which amongst the Turks and Persians is all â—ne Usun-Cassanes moved with the Fame and Vertues of this new Prophet or rather as some thought desirous to win the Hearts of the Multitude of them that had received this new phantasie gave him in marriage his Daughter Martha begotten of the Christian Lady Despina the Daughter of Calo Ioannes Emperor of Trapezond Which marriage the Christian Emperor made with the Mahometan Prince and he also accepted thereof thereby to strengthen themselves against the Turkish Emperor Mahomet the Great whose power was then become a terror unto all his neighbour Princes but to how small purpose this policy served them both is before declared in the life of the same Mahomet At the conclusion of this marriage the Emperor had especially covenanted with Usun-Cassanes that his Daughter Despina might have the free exercise
Wings on each side the great squadron of the Janizaries in the midst whereof was old Bajazet himself Other forty thousand Horsemen Servants to the great men of the Court were left in the Rearward and to guard the Baggage These Slaves for so indeed they are for their Apparel and Furniture yea and Valor also are little inferior to their Masters by whom they are so sumptuously maintained both for strength and ostentation The Battel thus ordered Bajazet commanded the Trumpets to sound and a red Ensign in token of battel to be displaied On the other side Selymus placing his Tartarian Horsemen in both Wings and his Turks in the midst in manner of a half Moon for that he in number of Horsemen far exceeded his Father did almost on every side inclose him and so charge him The Tartars when they were come within an hundred paces of their Enemies casting themselves after the manner of their fight into great Rings empty within in manner of a Crown and so running round that they might both backward and forward deliver their Arrows cast upon their Enemies whole showers of Shot as if it had been Hail to the great annoyance of the Turks when as in the mean time the other Tartarian Archers further off shooting their Arrows not right forth but more upright towards Heaven which falling directly down sore gauled the Turks Horses also But the old Souldiers taught by the example of their Captains â—erred close together and casting their Targets over their Heads as if it had been one whole Roof or Penthouse received their Arrows with less harm and hasted with as much speed as they could to come to handy blows The Pensioners also at the same instant bravely charged the middle of Selymus his Battel where his Turkish Horsemen stood and Ajax Captain of the Janizaries drawing out seven hundred ready Harquebusiers out of the Squadron of the Janizaries with them assailed the hindmost of one of the Wings of the Tartars and the four thousand Servants left in the Rearward as desirous as the rest to shew their forwardness with great Slaughter repulsed the other Wing of the Tartars which came to have spoiled the Turks Carriages This fierce battel betwixt the Father and the Son with doubtful event endured from Noon until the going down of the Sun Selymus in many places still restoring his declining Battel and fighting himself as for an Empire But after that the Tartars hardly charged by the Harquebusiers were not able to abide the Shot especially their Horses being with the unwonted noise thereof wonderfully terrified and so carrying back their Riders whether they would or no began to fly the rest of the Horsemen could neither by commandment threatning or wounds be inforced to stay but turned their Backs and fled The Footmen also whom Selymus had attired and armed after the manner of the Janizaries being forsaken of their own Horsemen were now by Bajazet his Horsemen compassed about and almost all slain Selymus his Army thus overthrown and himself hardly beset was by certain Troops of his Turkish Horsemen which yet staied with him delivered from the present danger and being wounded was mounted upon a fresh Horse and so with all the speed he could fled after the Tartars But doubting to be pursued and overtaken by his Fathers speedy Horsemen he changed his Horse and took another of a wonderful swiftness and so reserving himself to his future fortune with a few of his Followers fled to Varna and from thence by Sea to Capha The Horse whereon Selymus fled was all cold black called Carabulo that is to say a black Clâ—ud whom Selymus as a good Servitor ever after exempted from all service and had him in such estimation that covered with Cloth of Gold he was as a spare Horse without a Rider led after him in all his great Expeditions first into Persia and afterwards into Egypt where he died at Caire and there to the imitation of Bucephalus Great Alexanders Horse had a Monument erected for him wherein Selymus shewed himself more kind than to his own Brethren whom he cruelly Murthered and hardly afforded to some of them so honourable a Sepulture In this Battel of forty thousand which Selymus brought into the Field escaped not above eight thousand but they were either slain or taken prisoners Of Bajazet his Army were lost about seven hundred and three thousand hurt with Tartarian Arrows which loss he presently revenged with extream cruelty causing all such as were taken Prisoners to be without mercy put to the Sword in his sight whose heads were laid together by heaps and their dead bodies as if they had been Towers Of this notable Battel betwixt the Father and the Son in the year 1511 Chiurlus called in ancient time Tzurulum before an obscure old ruinous City or as Iovius calleth it a Village became famous but much more afterwards by the fatal destiny of Selymus who not many years after strucken with a most loathsome and incurable disease ended his days in the same place with an untimely and tormenting death God as it is to be thought with revenging hand in the same place taking just punishment for his former disloyalty towards his Father as shall hereafter in due time and place be declared Three days Bajazet lay still in the same place where he had obtained the Victory till such time as all his Souldiers were again returned from the chase of the Enemy after that he held on his way to Constantinople and there bountifully rewarded his Souldiers In the mean time Achomates hearing of all the trouble which had happened betwixt his Father and his Brother Selymus with the event thereof came with an Army of twenty thousand from Amasia through the Countries of Galatia and Bithynia unto the City of Scutari called in ancient time Chrisopolis though some suppose it to have been the famous City of Chalcedon which City is situated upon the Strait of Bosphorus directly against the City of Constantinople In this place Achomates encamped his Army near unto the Sea side expecting what course his Father would take after so great a Victory For beside the Prerogative of his Age and the especial love of his Father towards him the general affection of the Vulgar People with the good opinion he had of himself had already filled his mind with the hope of the Empire Wherefore he ceased not night and day to send Messengers over that narrow Strait to Constantinople and most earnestly to solicite Bajazet his Father in so fit an occasion to make hast to dispatch what he had so long before determined concerning the resignation of the Empire He also importuned his Friends and Familiars in best manner he could to commend him to his Father and in most ample sort to extol his grave purpose for translation of the Empire and to do the uttermost of their devoir that seeing God and good Fortune had justly overthrown the rash attempt and force of his Brother
Government whereof the greatest strength of the Othoman Empire consisteth to use all rigor and severity otherwise it stood with the State of Hysmael who leavied always his Armies of his Nobility and Men free Born with whom temperate Justice civil Courtesie and popular Clemency are of greatest force to win their Fidelity Faith and Loyalty for that there is no Man well Born which feareth not more the blemish of infamy than the heaviness of punishment so that it was not to be marvelled if Hysmael by such honorable Vertues did mightily defend the glory of his Majesty and Renown Unto these his rare Vertues was also joyned a comliness of Face the fairest gift of Nature well beseeming so great a Monarch for he was well Colored quick Eyed yellow Bearded and that which amongst the Persians is accounted the sign of ancient Nobility hookt Nosed and was withal exceeding Eloquent by which good Gifts he wonderfully won to himself both the Eies and Hearts of such as beheld him But in Selymus his stern Countenance his fierce and piercing Eies his Tartar-like pale Color his long Mustacho 's on his upperlip like Bristles frild back to his Neck with his Beard cut close to his Chin did so express his martial disposition and inexorable nature that he seemed to the beholders to have nothing in him but Mischief and Cruelty Which diversity of countenances was also accompanied with no less diversity of affections and so consequently with far unlike manner of Government For Hysmael was of nature courteous and affable easie to be seen and spoken withal doing nothing that beseemed his Regal Function but in the sight of all men his manner was to dine openly in the company of his Nobility delighting much in Hawking and Hunting accompanied with his Noblemen and the Embassadors of foreign Princes He would oftentimes run leap and prove Masteries with his chief Courtiers being himself a most excellent Horseman and cunning Archer in his exercises he was so popular that he would not stick openly to bath himself and swim in his Princely Baths his Wives the beautiful Daughters of his Nobility or Neighbour Princes Ladies of great Chastity he neither loathed nor divorced after the ancient manner of the Persian Kings who always used most tenderly to love and cherish their Wives doing them all the honour possible in Court as Partakers of all their Fortune and carried them their Children Nurses and richest Furniture into their farthest Wars to their great trouble and charge by the presence of so dear Pledges the more to encourage their minds in time of Battel Whereas Selymus contrariwise did all things in secret eating his meat alone without any company attended upon with his Pages and Eunuchs only and satisfying Natures want with some one simple dish of meat He seldom went abroad but to the Church upon the Friday the Turks chief Sabbath and then so beset with his Pensioners and other Souldiers of the Court that although he used to ride alone mounted upon some couragious Horse yet was it a hard matter by face to know him among so many armed men who with great Pride and Insolency kept back the beholders He was seldom seen abroad in the City chusing rather for his recreation to pass over in his Gally into Asia and there alongst the Sea coast to take the air his Wives he would not suffer to come to Court neither used their company but for procreation sake and that as was thought without any great good countenance or familiarity for that he being not greatly given to Women but more delighted with unnatural pleasure thought a mans body and mind to be not a little weakned with the allurements of Women wherefore he seldom resorted to the cloister of choice Paragons in the midst of Constantinople shut in on every side with high and blind Walls Those dainty pieces either taken from their Christian Parents or by chance surprised by Pirats are there most curiously kept by ancient Matrons and old Eunuchs by whom they are with all diligence instructed in the Principals of the Mahometan Law and to read the Arabian Tongue and withal cunningly and comely to sing play daunce and sow but Selymus of all others used seldomest to see their allurements as a man not greatly delighted with Women or desirous of many and oftentimes unfortunate Children having but one Son Solyman by the Daughter of Mâ—hâ—met a Tartar King who afterwards by the sufferance of God proved a great Plague to the Christian Common-Weal Such spare time as he had from his serious and weighty Affairs he used to spend in walking in his Gardens with some of his Bassaes or other great Courtiers and in beholding and noting the Noblemens Children there sporting themselves would discourse and consult of many things of great importance Some hours he would spend in the Baths and reading the Histories of his Ancestors and other foreign Princes imitating therein his Grandfather Mahomet the Great who caused almost all the Histories of the famous Princes of the World to be translated into the Turkish Language and their lively counterfeits to be with cunning hand drawn that by their worthy examples he might be the more enflamed to extend his fame and glory He would many times scoff at the great business of his Father Bajazet who as he said was so drowned in the Study of Averrois determining nothing certainly of the Nature of the Soul and the Motions of the Heavens that he desired rather the name of a sharp Disputer amongst the idle Professors of Philosophy than of a renowned Chieftain amongst his valiant Souldiers and Men of War. One of the Persian Embassadors finding him pleasantly disposed demanded of him why he did not wear his beard long as his Father Bejazet and other great Princes of that Age had done thereby to seem unto their Subjects of greater Majesty to whom he answered That he liked not to carry about with him such an unnecessary handful whereby his Bassaes might at their pleasure lead him up and down the Court as they had done his Father noting thereby that Bajazet whilst he yet lived had been too much overruled by the Bassaes which he could by no means indure following no mans advice but his own in whatsoever he took in hand But to come unto the Persians themselves they in their Wars had great disadvantage of the Turks for as they were strong in Horsemen so were they destitute of expert trained Footmen by whose only means the Turks have atchieved their greatest Victories and performed their greatest Wars Beside this it was a great want in the Persians that they had not the use of Guns against whose fury no sufficient resistance can be made or force of man opposed as appeared by the lamentable example of Usun-Cassanes at Artenga and now of Hysmael in the Calderan Fields whose victorious Armies of Horsemen were in both places put to the worst by the terror and violence of the Turks Artillery For the
and Valor moved with a chosen Company of Footmen and certain Troops of Horsemen suddainly set upon the Turks in divers places dispersed abroad far into the Country with such a terrible cry of the Country People and Instruments of War that the Turks being therewith amazed ran away as if they had been mad and were many of them slain without resistance and had not the Gallies lien near the Shore to receive them that were able to flie thither there had not one of them which landed escaped the hands of the Island People The Turks having received this loss left the Island and put to Sea again The Rhodians for the most part now assured and out of doubt of the coming of the Turks by the perswasion of Gabriel Pomerolus Vicemaster and other men of great experience pluckt down the Suburbs of the City and laid them even with the ground their pleasant Orchards also and Gardens near to the City they utterly destroyed the Great Master for example sake beginning first with his own being a place of great delicacy lying under the Walls near to the French Bulwark and taking into the City all such things as they thought needful for the induring of the Siege they utterly destroyed all the rest were it never so pleasant or commodious within a mile of the Town leaving all that space as even and as bare as they could possibly make it to the intent thaâ—â—â—e Enemy at his coming should find nothing neaâ— the City whereof to make use But whilst the pleasures and delights of the Suburbs are thus in defacing another more heavy and woful sight presented unto the Eyes of the Citizens filled the City with greater mourning and pensiveness than did the coming of the Enemy The miserable multitude of the poor Country People some bringing Wood some Corn some Cattel some Fouls and other such necessaries as they had out of the Country into the City for so the Great Master had commanded after whom followed great numbers of Women and Children weeping with dischiveled hair scratching their faces and tearing themselves after the manner of the Country wringing their Hands and casting up their Eyes to Heaven beseeching God with heavy countenance and floods of Tears to defend the noble City of the Rhodes and themselves from the fury of their Enemies Which multitude of Country People with their Provision being packt up into narrow rooms in the Houses of the Citizens and their Cattel starving for want of Fodder afterwards corrupted the Air whereof insued rotten Agues and the Flux during the time of the Siege But after the City was given up such a Plague and Mortality followed as destroyed great numbers of the Turks and poor Christians which knowing not whether to go chose rather there to die than to forsake their native Country The General of the Turkish Fleet which landed in the Island of Chos and was of purpose sent by Solyman to provoke the Rhodians to Battel at Sea before he with his whole power came to besiege the Island came dayly with twenty Gallies half those narrow Seas over betwixt Lycia and the Rhodes leaving the rest of his Fleet riding at Anchor at the Promontary called Gnidum not far from the City of Rhodes ready to aid him as need should require this manner of bravery he used many days together hoping thereby to allure the Rhodians out of their Haven to give him Battel knowing that if he should therein obtain the Victory it were at that time little less than the taking of the City or if he could by cruel fight but weaken the Forces of the Rhodians he should therein do his Master good service and greatly further his Victory by diminishing the number of the Defendants When he had many days without intermission in this proud manner come half Seas over and sometimes passing further came and lay at the mouth of the Haven as it were daring them to fight the Rhodians not wont to be so braved at their own doors moved with the intollerable insolency of this proud Turk by their continual importunity caused the Great Master to call a Counsel to consider whether they should fight with this Fleet of the Turks or not The Counsellors by the appointment of the Great Master assembled the Chancellor a man of great Authority and Spirit famous for his noble Acts both at home and abroad and chief of them which were of opinion this Fleet of the Turks was to be fought withal said So great disgrace was not longer to be suffered but presently revenged For said he the huge Fleet of the Turks I do not say at whose force and fight but at whose very name many men do tremble and quake which for all that is unto us no great novelty for every year we hear of the like is as a head to be joyned unto these pyratical Gallies as Members and then will it be most expedient which will be a most easie thing for us to do having the better both for strength of shipping and number and valor of men to give that great head such a blow and wound by cutting off these limbs that it shall ever after stagger and faint for want of strength or else there is no other Fleet at all prepared against us to follow this and then this discomfited we shall be at quiet Which thing in my judgment though others which fear their own shadows and the falling of Heaven say otherwise is most like to be true for the great Turk is not so sottish to come hither the fittest time of the year being so far spent in the latter end of June to besiege this City and such a City as he knoweth to be most strâ—ng wanting nothing that is needful and throughly manned with valiant Souldiers from whencâ— his Ancestors have been with loss and shame repulsed when as the remainder of the Summer will be spent before he can encamp himself and place his batteries and Winter time as you know is unfit for every Siege especially in this Island wherein they can find no Haven or Harbor to rest in Wherefore on God his name let us set upon our proud Enemies and let us not for a few threatning words sent unto us from a fearful youth upon a fineness and policy lest we shâ—uld follow the tail of his Fleet bound for some other place sit still like Cowards within our Walls with our hands in our bosoms as men which for fear and dred durst not shew their heads Which our Cowardise and want of Courage we forsooth call Fabius his policy But I would to God we were like Fabius but I fear we shall prove more like Antiochus the Etolians the Vitellians all whose courage consisted in words vainly hoping to gain the Victory by sitting still and wishing well But the help of God is not to be gotten with Womens Prayers and Supplications or these faint-hearted Policies which Cowards call advised counsel but Victory is gained by adventuring and exposing
our selves to danger and peril With these and such like Speeches he so moved the mulâ—itude which commonly conceiveth most Courage upon the greatest uncertainties that they desired that they might fight saying That they would wash away that foul disgrace with the Blood and Slaughter of their Enemies For why they wanted not Weapons Courage or Hands as they said to do it withal For all this the graver sort of the Counsel without whose consent the Master might in such cases do nothing thought it not good in so dangerous a time to adventure any great part of their Forces which they should afterwards want for the defence of their City The Turkish General deceived of his expectation and perceiving that the Rhodians would not be drawn forth to Battel at Sea withdrew his Fleet twelve miles off unto a place called Villanova where casting Anchor and landing his men he burnt the Corn all thereabouts which was now almost ripe but forsaken of the People as a thing desperate as for the People themselves they were all fled and had retired themselves either into the City of the Rhodes or else into strong Castles in other places of the Island At the same time certain Troops of Horsemen sent forth to have skirmished with the Turks that were burning of the Corn were by a Messenger sent from the Great Master commanded to retire for the provident General sought by all means to reserve his Souldiers for greater dangers which he justly feared in the expected Siege during which time he shewed himself a most politick Captain and brave Souldier he would many times by day eat his Meat with his Souldiers as one of them and most part of the night keep Watch himself walking up and down resting himself when he was weary upon some Stone or piece of Timber or other homely seat as it chanced In time of Assault he was always more forward and adventurous than the grave Counsellors wished fearing neither Shot nor Enemy yet did he always more commend discreet Counsel grounded upon Reason than prosperous Actions commended but by their events And that which a man would wonder at amongst so many cares in midst of such divers and dangerous chances he carried always such a Grace and Majesty in his chearful countenance as made him to be of the Beholders both reverenced and loved All the time he could spare from the necessary Cares of his weighty charge from Assaults and the natural refreshing of his Body he bestowed in Prayer and serving of God he oftentimes spent the greatest part of the night in the Church alone praying his Head-piece Gorget and Gantlets lying by him so that it was often said That his devout Prayers and Carefulness would make the City invincible The six and twentieth day of Iune early in the morning news was brought into the City from the Watch Tower standing upon St. Stephens Hill about a mile from the City That a most huge Fleet was descried at Sea making thitherwards all alongst the Western Coast of Lycia This bad news much troubled the City although it was not of most men unexpected all places was filled with tumult and hurly burly every man measured the greatness of the danger by the measure of his own fear and such a pitiful cry was in every place as in usual in Cities presâ—ntly to be besieged Hereupon publick Prayers were made through all the City and every man with great Devotion besought the God of Heaven That as it was his pleasure that the Rhodians should at that time be the Champions of the Christian Religion so he would give them Strength and Victory against their Enemies and to turn the calamities of War upon the Enemies of his Name Their Devotion ended the Gates of the City were shut up and People from all places ran unto the Walls great Flocks of Women Children and aged men not able to stand without a Staff going forth of their Houses to gaze upon the dreadful Fleet wherein was above two hundred Sails as is reported filled the Streets the tops of the high Towers and Houses The foremost of the Fleet was the Admiral of Calipolis to whom Solyman had committed the charge of all his Navy and to assail the City by Sea the Rear-Admiral was Cara Mahometes an arch Pyrat who was afterwards slain with a great Shot out of the City The Vice-Admiral in the middle of the Fleet with a great Squadron of Gallies having a fair Westernly wind struck sail directly before the mouth of the Haven which was on both sides defended with two strong Towers well furnished with great Artillery and began to row toward the City whereupon an Alarm was raised the Trumpets sounded and many hasted unto the Bulwark which defended the left side of the Haven which the Enemy seemed to direct his course unto and was indeed more subject to danger than the other But the Turk seeing himself in danger to be sunk with shot from the Bulwark was glad to get himself farther off unto the rest of the Fleet the Rhodians from the Walls with loud outcries scornfully deriding him for his foolish attempt This great Fleet in exceeding bravery and triumph passing by the City in sight of the Rhodians standing upon the Walls with Ensigns displaied did not more terrifie them than they were themselves terrified to behold the strength of the City and the chearfulness of the Defendants But passing on they came to the Promontory which the Inhabitants call Bo about three miles distant from the City Eastward Which small Harâ—â—â— being not able to receive so great a Fleet many of the Gallies were inforced to ride it out at Sea where they were by Shot out of the City oftentimes indangered and inforced to get them further off Whilst the Enemy was there landing his great Ordnance and other Instruments of War prepared for the Siege chusing a place for his Camp transporting his Land Souldiers from the Main into the Island viewing the strength and situation of the City and in what place he might with most ease assault the same the Rhodians in the mean time were not idle but sunk divers deep sounds in many places of the City near unto the Walls to discover the Enemies Mines and fortified their Bulwarks with great Rampiers in which work every man put too his helping hand without respect of Age or Calling The Grand Master about that time sent Lodovicus Andugus one of the Knights of the Order into Spain to Charles the Emperor and Claudius Ducenvillus another of the Order also to Rome to the Cardinals and Italian Knights of the Order and from thence into France unto the French King with Letters craving the aid of these Christian Princes for relief of the City by Sea and Land besieged But all in vain for they carried away with the endless grudge one against another or respecting only their own States returned the Embassadors with good words but no relief At this time Prejanes Governor
meaning any harm unto the Greeks It was now the beginning of October and Winter began to grow fast on great rain with terrible thundering and lightning and mighty Tempests Heavens threats then fell so abundantly that the Turks before wearied in body with labor and wounds were now also in mind discouraged And that more increased their fear the Sea was grown so rough that the Admiral was not able in that open and dangerous Sea longer to ride it out with his Gallies but was inforced to slip his Anchors and as he might to run his Gallies on ground In these troubles wherewith both Solyman himfelf and all his Army were at furthest of their Wits and almost quite discouraged Achimetes one of his most valiant and expert Captains came to comfort him and promised if he would continue the Siege in short time to make him an open way into the City upon confidence whereof Solyman to encourage his fainting Souldiers now scarce able for cold and lack of courage to hold their Weapons in their hands caused them to be assembled before his Pavilion where from an high place he comforted them in this sort I am not ignorant most valiant Souldiers what great things you endure for mine Honour and the Glory of mine Empire This continual threatnings of the Heavens this immoderate Rain this terrible Thunder and Lightning the coldness of the Weather the want of Necessaries with the manifold miseries of this long Siege do much perswade me to give you leave to lay down your Arms and to take your rest But first let us consider if unto Men of Courage it be not a dishonour for the teediousness of Rain and Tempest to leave unto our Enemies the Victory already in our hands and shamefully to forsake our Trenches Forts Mounts overtopping not only the Walls of the City but mating the Heavens with such other like Works made with my infinite Charge and your great Travel all for the taking of this City Truly this War either should not have been taken in hand at all or being once begun is to be ended for the honour of the Othoman Empire Which for so much as it could not be accomplished in Summer the reputation of mine Empire in Common and the regard of the Commodity of every one of you in private enforceth me to perform it in Winter For if we shall from hence depart with our Army who doubts but the Enemy not only for desire of revenge but also strained by necessity having lost all he had of his own will pray upon your Countries Houses and Goods and will bring you your Wives and Children into a far more miserable Slavery and Bondage than that wherein he himself now is Wherefore I advise you to continue the Siege and never to depart before you have attained unto the end of your desires And admit there were no necessity in the matter yet the Honour and Fame of the Action ought to impose upon you a resolution both of Body and Mind to endure the Siege For the Eies and Countenances of all Nations especially the Christians are fixed upon you whom when they shall understand not to be able to endure the Field one Winter they will of right call you Summer Birds which so soon as any Storm ariseth look after your Houses and places of Repose It is reported that the Grecians for a Strumpet besieged Troy ten years and shall not the Turks vexed and oppressed with Slaughters Robberies Invasions both by Sea and Land and that more is with the servitude of two hundred and fourteen years endure one Winters Siege They will say that the terror of your Name is but vain and that Fame hath encreased the same as many other things more which not seen are more feared in far Countries amongst Men of small experience And that now every Man may safely enough abide your force which make your Invasions rather upon a fury and bravery than upon any good resolution which in all kind of War but especially in besiâ—ging of Cities is most necessary whereof many being by natural situation and fortification impregnable time hath with her Handmaids Famine and Thirst overcome and vanquished as it shall do this City of the Rhodes against which beloved in Arms there is a secret mischief prepared which may not in this open Audience be published for it is as necessary that the vulgar sort should be ignorant of some things as to know the same Many thought that this was spoken rather of policy than upon any good ground and although his hot perswasion had little moved the could courage of his despairing Souldiers yet the regard of duty in that most Loyal Nation with the greedy expectation of so great a secret overcame all other difficulties so that they departed at leastwise in shew contented to endure whatsoever should befal Achimetes author of this great expectation and the only hope of Solymans success came oftentimes and assailed the Vaumures of the Avergne Station which although they were not very high yet were they always valiantly defended by the Rhodians It fortuned that this warlike Captain daily attempting the Vaumures in the end by force obtained the same and so possessed of the place he so much desired desperately kept it until greater help came running in who with wonderful expedition with matter for that purpose before prepared clapt up a strong and defensible covering in manner of a Penthouse against the Town-Wall betwixt the Wall and the Vaumure under which they shrowded themselves from the Defendants which was an easie matter for such a multitude to do the Ditches of the Town in that place being now filled up so high that the Defendants could not out of the Flankers scour the Ditch nor yet without manifest danger come to cast any thing down upon them from the top of the Walls for the Turks Harquebusiers which lying upon their Mounts higher than the battered Walls of the City suffered none to appear upon them without danger So that the Rhodians who erst thought themselves at great quiet were now oveâ—taken with a suddain and an unexpected Mischief which at the first filled the City with fear and heavy silence which straightways after brake out into pitiful Outcries and Lamentations The Turks lurking under their Penthouse labouring with Mattocks and Pickaxes to dig up the Foundation of the Wall and Prejanes forward and couragious to do what might be done threw down upon the Turks Fire Scalding Oyl Burning Pitch Wild Fire and such things But when the miserable Men which shrunk from the Work for fear of the Fire were again beaten forward by their imperious Commanders and presently slain if they made any delay and fresh Men still thrust on in stead of such as were hurt or slain the fatal Work begun the seventh day of October went apace forward with the great and continual labour of these wretched Slaves A great number of the Common Souldiers whom the Turks call Asapi was imployed in this
so was it unto Barbarussa and his Pyrats the greatest grief and loss possible having at once lost all their power at Sea which but a little before was no small terror to all the Frontiers of the Christian Countries and Islands in the Mediterranean Barbarussa troubled and terrified with so great a loss with a stern and scornful Countenance received the Jew and the rest of the Captains fled from Guletta reviling them bitterly in his rage and calling them faint-hearted Cowards which had in so short a time given over so strong a place Whereunto Sinan answered for them all in this sort Hairadin said he so long as we were to fight with armed men we did as thou well knowest and our Enemies cannot deny what well beseemed us and thy magnificent Fortune But when we are to withstand the Divel and his infernal Furies which came against us with Flames of Fire and Earthquakes things of extream terror and danger it ought not to seem strange unto thee if we sought to escape the uncouth Fury of the immortal Enemies of mankind to do thee service in thy better Fortune in defence of this thy City and Kingdom Neither do we account it any disgrace to have escaped that danger as men that mind again to fight out of which thou a most ancient and expert Commander if I may frankly speak unto thee the truth if thou hadst been there present wouldst have accounted it no dishonour but very good discretion to have escaped in safety Barbarussa repressing his fury began in a more temperate manner to request them every one particularly as valiant and couragious men to stand fast unto him in that War against their Enemies the Christians telling them that he well hoped that after the great supply of the Moorish Footmen and Numidian Horsemen were once come which were now at hand the Enemy should not long rejoyce of the taking of Guletta After that he forthwith converted all his study and endeavour to prepare such things as were needful for the War bringing forth his Treasures and bountifully bestowing the same amongst the Moors and Numidians thereby to confirm the Friendship of such as well affected him and with his new bounty to win the hearts of such as yet stood doubtful In the mean time Muleasses the exiled King with a small retinue of his Friends and Followers came from the farthest part of Numidia into the Emperors Camp the Emperor sitting in a Royal Seat in the midst of his Pavilion whereunto Muleasses was admitted with a Mitre upon his head in a Garment of green and blew changeable Silk he was of a tall and manly Stature of Colour tawny but so Squint-eyed that he seemed spitefully to look upon them whom he beheld whom after he had kissed the Emperors right hand and had set himself down with his Legs gathered close under him upon a Carpet spred upon the bare ground after the manner of his Country he by an Interpreter spake unto the Emperor as followeth Thou art come in Arms into this Country and art now almost Conqueror of the same thrice mighty Emperor provoked thereunto not by any desert of mine for that our different Religion so required yet as I verily think not without the appointment of the most high God whom both thou and I do with like Devotion worship to take revenge of the most perfidious and cruel Tyrant and Pyrat the mortal Enemy of mankind whom I foresee as good as already vanquished now that Guletta is taken and his Navy surprised So that I hope he shall in short time by thy revenging hand at once receive the just Guerdon of all his former Villanies which shall be so much the more to my comfort for that I hope the Fruit of thy rare Felicity and glorious Victory will redound in great part to me being restored by thee into my Fathers Kingdom which I as a poor exiled Prince most humbly request of thy Iustice and Bounty For it shall be unto thee a thing most honourable and profitable if thou shalt receive into thy protection me a King Royally descended of a most ancient Progeny strengthned with the great Allyance of the Numidians and Moors Neither do I refuse either to pay thee Tribute therefore or to acknowledge my self Vassal unto thee the Christian Emperor Of which my Fidelity there can be no greater assurance than the thankful remembrance of so great a benefit received which shall never remain unforgotten of me and my Posterity even for that especially that I detest and abhor the name of an unthankful man and do well by experience find how much my state may be confirmed and the minds of my People to me assured by thy Garrisons so near at hand in Sicilia and Sardinia Whereunto the Emperor answered That he was come over into Africk to be revenged of the injuries which Barbarussa had many times done upon the Frontiers of his Dominions and to root out the Pyrats of all others most mischievous which his good purpose had by the goodness of Christ his Saviour taken so good effect that he doubted not in short time by the taking of Tunes to obtain a perfect Victory which once gained he would then kindly grant him all things which should stand with the convenience of his Affairs and the use of his Victory so that he would not falsifie his Faith which he might justly suspect if he reposed not a special trust that the remembrance of such a benefit would for ever remain in his heroical mind and was further assured that the same power which should restore him his Kingdom of courtesie could also take it from him again if his unthankfulness should so deserve Muleasses in the presence of the Emperor used such a gravity and grace in his speech and gesture as well declared that he had nothing forgotten his former estate but towards the General and the other great Captains he used all manner of Courtesie so that he rid up and down with them gallantly mounted mannaging his Horse and charging and discharging his Launce with such agility and skill as shewed him to be a very good Horseman and of great activity At other vacant times he would subtilly reason with learned men after the manner of Averois of the nature of things of the Motion of Heaven and Power of the Stars By the Emperors commandment he had a Tent appointed for him and honourable allowance for his Diet. Vastius and the rest of the chief Commanders of the Army used him with all honour and at such time as he was desirous to see the Camp courteously brought him into all places of it that he might himself see what Mounts they had in short time cast what abundance there was of great Artillery what strong Watch and Ward was kept what a number there was of brave and warlike Souldiers of divers Nations differing much one from another in Language Countenance and manner of Furniture and further demanded Whether
they might come nearer unto them Wherefore as soon as the Sun was up the Spaniards by the perswasion of Alvaâ—es Sandes Master of the Camp valiantly climbing up the high Mountains repulsed and put to flight the Numidians and took the top of the Hills and there lay as it were encamped in the poor Shepherds Cottages But the same day such a multitude of the wild People was flockt about them that they were compassed in round and glad to fight on every side in a Ring Yet this fierceness of this barbarous People was by the Valour of the Sicilian Companies quickly repressed whose Pikemen glistering in their bright Armor made small account of the Numidians Arrows and Darts but orderly stepping forwards with their Pikes and the Harquebusiers close by their sides easily repulsed their naked Enemies The Numidian Footmen are for most part Youths half naked with long hair not unlike the Irish using no other Weapons but Darts they fight mingled with their Horsemen trusting the one to the other and are of a wonderful swiftness and agility of Body Their Horsemen use long Spears armed at both ends which they with a marvellous dexterity use to the endangering of their Enemy pursuing them they use also long and light Targets made of Leather wherewith they so cunningly defend themselves and their Horses both in their Charge and Retreat that for a small trifle in respect of the danger they will give a man leave to cast seven Darts at one of them which they will all most surely avoid either with the Spear or receive them without harm into their Target In the mean time whilst this wild People thus skirmished all the day at night a suddain mischance overthrew all the Emperors hope for as he stood beholding the unshipping of his great Ordnance his Horses Victual and other necessaries of the Army a storm of Wind and Rain began about six a clock in the Afternoon holding on all the night without intermission with such rage as if Heaven and Earth should have gone together wherewith the whole Army at Land was wonderfully troubled and a great part of the Fleet at Sea by force of Tempest driven aground perished That night three Companies of the Italians by the appointment of their General lay without the Trenches against the suddain Assault of so uncertain an Enemy who when they had all the night endured the vehement Rain and extream cold were so overcome with the extremity of the Weather that neither were their minds able to relieve their weak bodies neither their feeble bodies their daunted minds for they could neither conveniently stand nor lie down all the ground being so miry that at every step they sunk up to the calf of the Leg. Upon these starved Companies the Turkish Horsemen and Moors Footmen who diligently observed the Watch of the Christians perceiving their distresses suddainly sallied out in the dawning of the day and so fiercely charged them their Match and Powder being now so wet that they could not use their Pieces that they all fled except a few Pikemen who made a stand and were all quickly slain by the Turks who so desperatly pursued the rest in chase that they followed them over the Trench into the Camp. This Alarm being heard Camillus Columna the Italian General came presently thither being sent by the Emperor who with certain Companies issued out over the Bridge against the Enemy who now in shew discouraged with the coming out of this new Supply did indeed or at leastwise made as if they did disorderly retire for fear At which time Ferdinand Gonzaga Viceroy of Sicilia a man of greatest account in the Army next unto the Emperor coming in also and angry with them which had before fled perswading them as valiant men to recompence their shamful flight with a fresh Charge by driving the Enemy home to his own door which thing Columna said could not be done without great peril but Gonzaga being a man of a noble Courage desired to have the disgrace which the Italians had received salved some way although it were with never so great danger thinking also that it might happily fall out that the Enemy being put to flight and hastily pursued they might together with them enter the City without danger of the Artillery So without farther delay the rest of the Italian Companies were led forth of their Trenches with great chearfulness by Augustine Spinola who so valiantly charged the Enemies that they put them to flight and pursued them so hard that they came with them to the very Gates of the City where many shut out for fear of letting in the Italians together with them escaped by known ways some to another Gate and some into the Mountains But then these barbarous People with Darts and Shot from the Walls began to overwhelm the Italians which were unadvisedly come within their danger and with terrible outcries to terrifie them and they which before were fled without the Walls returned again to fight They also which had shut the Gate sallied out again and hardly charged the Italians who already gauled with shot from the Walls and rent in sunder with the great Ordnance fled most disorderly for why they were but raw Souldiers taken up in hast little or nothing acquainted with the Wars At which time Assan also sallying out who was easily known by his Countenance and rich Attire pursued the chase with his Troops of Turks and Moors Footmen Only certain Knights of the Rhodes fought valiantly and retired orderly and Spinola with some other Gentlemen making a stand at a little wooden Bridge somewhat staid the Enemy and saved the lives of many So the Italians which first charged most valiantly being in the flight become hindermost the Enemy striking them down as they fled covered the Fields with their dead Bodies by the space of half a mile especially they which fled towards the Sea for there they were circumvented and slain by the merciless Numidians who beholding the Shipwrack were come down to the Sea side for prey But the formost Companies of the Italians which first fled into the Camp fled in so much hast and so great fear that none of the Leaders in so great and suddain a perplexity remembred either the common safety or performed the duty of an advised Captain so that all seemed at once lost both by Sea and Land. Only the Emperor armed with an invincible courage against all the chances of fortune and notto be dismaid with any mishap was both unto himself and others that day the greatest Captain for when all was almost lost he in good time staied the matter by coming on with the Squadron of Germans whereof he sent before three Ensigns to stay the flight and with them as a sure and fresh supply to guard his Camp beyond the Bridge which was over the Ditch serving his Army for a Trench as we have before said But such a fear had possessed the minds of
to think upon that horrid Wreck when as having lost so many Ships and they poor Men landed in Africk were in doubt however to return again into their native Countries Yet the notable courage of the Emperor still kept the distressed Men in hope which never altogether forsaketh wretched Men in the midst of their calamities for he with a couragious heart and chearful countenance performed all the parts of a provident and courteous General For when he had again made sure his Camp against the assaults of the Barbarians he commanded the wearied Captains especially the Duke of Alva wonderfully wearied in the late skirmish and dung wet to spare themselves and take their lest he comforted the wounded Men and caused them to be carried and cherished in the Tents which by chance yet stood for the tempestuous Wind had almost overthrown them all and so not sparing himself for any pains being in his Armor and through wet won the hearts of all his Souldiers the more In this conflict he lost about three thousand Men amongst whom was five of his forward Captains and three Knights of the Rhodes but many more were hurt The greatest loss was thought to be in loss of the Ships and of the Mariners which was also encreased by the loss of a wonderful deal of great Ordnance reckoned so much the greater for that it would come into the hands of the Moors to the common harm of the Christians so soon as the Sea would give them leave to dive for it Shortly after Auria as he was to foresee a Tempest a wonderful observer of the Sea of the Heavens and of the Clouds mistrusting that place departed with the remainder of the Fleet to the Cape called Metafusium because it was a place of safer riding for his Gallies and better for the taking in of the Souldiers advising the Emperor to march thither by Land. Which his Counsel the Emperor liking well of to relieve the hunger of his Souldiers commanded first all the draught-Horses which were first unshipped for the drawing of the great Ordnance and after them the Horses for service to be killed and divided for Meat among the Souldiers As for Wood to make Fire of they had plenty of the Planks and Ribs of the broken Ships Fortune as it were with that one poor benefit recompensing so many calamities The next day the Emperor departed from Algiers with his Army divided into three Battels the sick and wounded Men being received into the middle and when he had marched seven miles the Enemies Horsemen still hovering about him he came to a heady Brook which the Moors call Alcaraz which was grown so high with the abundant Rain and the check of the Wind and of the Sea that being but a shallow thing before it was not now to be passed over by a good Horseman Wherefore the Emperor of necessity there encamped in such sort that lying with his Army in form of a Triangle two sides of his Army was defended with the Sea and the Brook and the other with a strong Guard of armed Men for he thought it not good to depart from the Sea a sure defence for his Army on the left hand to seek a Foord farther off Many adventuring to swim over were by the violence of the Stream carried away and drowned Wherefore the Emperor caused a Bridge to be made over it of the Masts and Sail-yards of the broken Ships which were by chance there taken up and so passed over the Italians and Germans The Spaniards marching higher up the Brook found a Foord whereby they passed over After which time the Turks pursued them no further being called back again by Assan their Governour as for the Moors and Numidians which still followed at hand always ready to skirmish they were easily repulsed by the Harquebusiers and Field-pieces appointed to every Nation but upon such sick and wounded Men as were not able to keep way with the Army they exercised all manner of cruelty for there was none which in that small hope possessed with fear of their own safety was greatly moved with the compassion of their Fellows misery The next day passing over another little River which the Souldiers waded over up to their Brests they came in three days march to the Rode where the Fleet lay and encamped in the Ruins of the old City Tipasa near unto the Sea side which served them in stead of a Fortress against the Barbarians The Sea was now calm the Wind laid and the Weather so faiâ— that all Men thought the Souldiers might now well be embarked and transported into Europe wherefore the Emperor to the great joy of the whole Army commanded every Man to make himself ready to go aboord in such sort that first the Italians next the Germans and last of all the Spaniards should be embarked but so many Ships and Gallies as is before said being lost by Shipwreck it was thought that those which were leâ—t were not able to receive the whole Army although it was crowded together as close as were possible Wherefore the Emperor commanded the Masters and owners of the Ships to cast all the Horses overboord into the Sea reputing it an unmerciful part to prefer the safegard of those Horses although they were of great worth before the life of the basest common Souldier or Horse-boy in his Camp. Which thing much grieved the minds of the Noblemen and Owners of those goodly Beasts not only for that they were not without extream necessity for the present deprived of such an inestimable Treasure but should for ever as they said lose the most notable race of Horses in Spain there with grief and vain compassion was to be seen goodly Horses of service bearing up their proud Heads swimming all about the Sea unto the Ships nearest unto them for safegard as if it had been to the Shore and in the end wearied with long swimming to be there drowned But scarce half the Souldiers were yet embarked when the East and North-East Wind and straitways after divers contrary Winds almost as great as the first rose whereupon the Ships which had already taken in the Souldiers not expecting any command for fear of being driven upon the Rocks directed their Course according as the Wind carried them with full Sails alongst the Coast They were quickly out of sight and dispersed with the Tempest some into one Country some into another carrying the Fame of that Shipwreck and the report that all was lost into the Islands of the Mediterranean and Ports of Italy The force of this Tempest was so great and the Billows went so high that some of the Ships were in the sight of their Fellows swallowed up of the Sea. But amongst the rest two Spanish Ships full of Souldiers were by wonderful mishap by contrary Winds driven again to Algiers and there set fast upon that fatal Shore where the Numidian Horsemen with a multitude of Moors following them came running
both in years and favour it fortuned with Solyman as it doth with Men delighted in change that he became amorous of Roxolana of some called Rosa but more truly Hazathya by condition a Captive but so graced with beauty and courtly behaviour that in short time she became Mistress of his thoughts and Commandress of him that all commanded and that which more established her in possession of his love she had in time made him Father of four fair Sons Mahomet Selymus Bajazet and Tzihanger and one Daughter called Chameria Married to Rustan or Rustemes the great Bassa In this height of worldly Bliss nothing troubled her more than the exceeding credit of Mustapha Solymans eldest Son by the Circassian Woman who honoured of the greatest and beloved of the rest stood only in her light imbarring her and hers as she thought of the hope of the Empire which he now above all things sought to bring to one of her own Sons which the better to compass she under the colour of great good will and love procured that Mustapha the young Prince and his Mother should as it were for their greater honour and state with a Princely allowance be sent into Caramania to govern that great Country far from the Court. Which was no great matter for her to bring to pass for that the Turkish Emperors usually send their Sons after they come to any years of discretion unto such Provinces as are far from the Court attended upon with one great Bassa and some grave Doctor of their Law so to acquaint them with the manner of Government the Bassa instructing them in matters of civil Policy and the Doctor in matters concerning their superstition and yet by sending them afar off to keep them from aspiring to the Empire by the favour of the Court a thing of the Turkish Emperors not unworthily feared even in their own and beloved Children Roxolana having at once thus cunningly rid the Court of the great Competitors both of her Love and of the Empire things of all others enduring no Partners rested not so but began straitway to plot in her malicious Head the utter destruction of him to whom all others wished all happiness This she saw was not to be brought to pass without some Complices wherefore after she had in her secret conceit discarded many of whom at first she had reasonable good liking at last she made choice of Rustan Bassa her Son in Law upon whom she would set up her rest This Rustan was a Man basely Born in Epirus altogether composed of dissimulation and flattery ever serving his own turn were it never so much to the hurt or grievance of others by which means he although none of the best Souldiers was yet by many degrees grown up to be the greatest Man in the Court and Solymans Son in Law him she probably thought to wish the succession of the Empire to one of her own Sons his Wives full Brethren rather than to Mustapha her half Brother Beside that she was not ignorant how that Rustan as one careful of the Emperors profit the readiest way to preferment had abridged the Pensions and Fees of the Officers and Servitors in Court which he perceiving to please the Emperor proceeded so far therein that he attempted to have cut off if it had been possible some part of Mustapha his princely allowance for which doing she knew how odious he was to all the Courtiers whereof he made small reckoning but especially to Mustapha insomuch that it was though he would not forget so notorious an injury if ever he should obtain the Empire Hereupon she brake with Rustan upon the matter whom she found ready enough of himself to do what in him lay to further her mischievous desire To begin this intended Tragedy she upon the suddain became very devout and being by the favour of Solyman grown exceeding rich pretended as if it had been upon a devout Zeal for the health of her Soul after the manner of their Turkish Superstition to build an Abbey with an Hospital and a Church which so godly a purpose she imparted to the Mufti or chief Mahometan Priest demanding of him if such works of Charity were not acceptable unto God and available for her Souls Health Whereunto the Mufti answered That those works were no doubt gracious in the sight of God but nothing at all meritorious for her Souls Health being a Bondwoman yet very profitable for the Soul of the great Emperor Solyman unto whom as unto her Lord both she and all she had appertained With which answer of the great Priest she seemed to be exceedingly troubled and thereupon became wonderful pensive and Melancholy her chearful countenance was replete with Sadness and her fair Eies flowed with Tears her mirth was mourning and her joy heaviness Which thing Solyman perceiving and sorry to see his love upon conceit so to languish sent her word to be of good chear and to comfort her self promising in short time to take such a course as should ease her of all her griefs which he forthwith did solemnly manumising her from her bond Estate So great a favour obtained Roxolana with great chearfulness began those meritorious works by her before intended as if she had thought of nothing but Heaven whereas indeed her thoughts were in the depth of Hell. When she had thus a good while busied her self in paving the way to Heaven as was supposed Solyman not able longer to forbear the company of her in whom his Soul lived after his wonted manner sent for her by one of his Eunuchs who should have brought her to his Bed-Chamber To whom she with her Eies cast up to Heaven demurely answered That her life and whatsoever else she had was at her dread Sovereigns command but again to yield her Body unto his Appetite she might not in any case do without the great offence of the High God and maniest Breach of his sacâ—ed Laws which permitted her not now voluntarily to yield him that being free which he before without offence might command of his Bondwoman and because she would not seem to use this as an excuse she referred her self all in things to the grave judgment of the learned and reverend Mufti with whom she had before at full conferred This she did presuming of the Sovereignty she had over that great Monarch whom she right well knew she had so fast bound in the pleasing Fetters of his affection towards her as that she was sure enough of him without a Keeper Solyman ravished with her love and well the more for her denial sent for the Mufti requiring his judgment in the matter who before instructed in all points agreed with that Roxolana had said aggravating the heinousness of the Fact if he should proceed to enforce her as a Slave who being now free he might not without great offence touch unmarried Whereupon Solyman more and more burning in his desires became a
they considered the straitness of the place the small number of the Defendants and multitude of the Enemy they should well perceive in what danger they were if the Turks should often with such obstinacy renew the Assault yet forasmuch as they had ever hitherto felt the help of God so present who had still mercifully defended them against the rage of the Enemy and wanted nothing needful for the defence of the place the keeping whereof they had requested of the Grand Master as an honour although they knew right well it could not without most manifest danger of their Lives be holden yet they would for all that keep it to the last Man for that perhaps the like honourable occasion for them to shew themselves in should never again be offered wherefore they had as they said resolved in that place to spend their lives for the Glory of God and the Christian Religion The Course of this Life they said was but short but that Honour and Fame was for ever and whereas death is to all Men prefixed it were to be wished that the Life which is to Nature due should rather seem to be by us frankly given to God and our Country than reserved as Natures Debt which if it should so happen they would so use the matter as that the barbarous Enemy should have neither pleasure nor joy which should not cost him much Blood even of his best Souldiers This they willed the Knights to tell the Great Master and to request him not to be too careful of them but to promise to himself those things of them which best beseemed resolute Men especially of them who had vowed themselves to that sacred War. This answer of greater resoultion than fortune received the three Knights when they had diligently viewed the Castle returned to the Grand Master who calling to Counsel his Knights and having heard the answer of the besieged would needs hear also what opinion the three Knights themselves were of concerning the keeping of the Castle of whom Castriot was of opinion That the place was still to be defended and that if he were there to command he would undertake to perform it and there rather to lose his Life than to forsake it after he had once taken upon him the charge thereof But Rocca the French Knight was far of another mind and said plainly that the place could not possibly be holden against so strong an Enemy and that if Iulius Caesar himself were alive and saw to what strait the place was brought especially all the Rampiers being either beat down or sore shaken and such a power of obstinate Enemies lying round about it he would never suffer so many valiant Souldiers to be lost but quit the place and reserve his Men to a further service for why it was the part of valiant Men to perform so much as was of Men to be performed but to strive to do more was no Manhood at all wherefore he thought it best to do that which Men use with Members mortified whose recovery is desperate in which case we doubt not to make a separation so to save the rest of the Body with Life The Spanish Knight in most part agreeing with Castriot said That he thought it not good that the place should so easily be forsaken first for that the Ditches and Bulwarks were yet defensible and then because he saw so great a consent among the Defendants and such a chearfulness to withstand the Enemy which thing as he said presaged Victory These opinions of the Knights thorowly in Counsel debated and every particular well weighed it seemed good to the greater part that they which were in the Castle should for certain days yet hold it out especially because it was not the manner of the Knights of the Order easily to abandon their strong Holds but rather to keep them to the last that even therein the barbarous Enemy might perceive with whom he had to do and so see his Pride abated For if they should have forsaken the place they might have been thought to have done it for fear whereby the Enemies insolency might have been increased and the honourable Order of those sacred Knights disgraced But the Turks intentive to that they had before determined the three and twentieth day of Iune assembling all their Forces both by Sea and Land round about the Castle in the dead time of the night on every side set up scaling Ladders made Bridges wrought Mines and with two and thirty great Pieces of Artillery battered the rest of the Walls yet standing and presently gave a most terrible Assault The Defendants on the other side beat down some repulsed other slew many ever more careful how to wound the Enemy than to save themselves and where he pressed fastest on there to shew their greatest Valour Great were the Outcries made on both sides mixt with Exhortation Mirth and Mourning the face of the whole Fight was divers uncertain cruel and dreadful and now it was the third hour of the day when still the Victory stood doubtful and had not the fury of the great Ordnance been so terrible that it now had beaten down all the Walls unto the very Rock whereon the Castle stood the Defendants might for some longer time have endured the Enemies Force But the very Rock bared both of Walls and Defendants and more than four hundred slain a Man could now scarcely shew himself but he was presently struck in Pieces Monserratus Governor of the Castle and Garas of Euboea Men of equal Valour Integrity and Honour were both slain with one shot for a short and transitory Life made Partakers of Immortality together Yet the rest which stood in defence of the Castle nothing terrified with so great a loss and slaughter of their Fellows but augmented rather as it were with new Courage from above fought with greater Force than before overthrew the Turks Ensigns now set up in the Castle slew the Ensign-bearers Captains and Colonels now respecting nothing more but honourably to lay down their Lives for their Religion and the obtaining of immortal Fame By this time the Sun was mounted to the middle of Heaven great was the Heat and Men exceeding weary the murdring shot never ceased and such was the multitude of the Enemy that he sent in fresh Men instead of them that were wearied or wounded On the other side the small number of the Christians and those weakned with Labour Watching Thirst and Wounds did what Men might yet at length were overcome by a greater Force and so the Castle by the Turks won but with such slaughter of their Men that it was a wonder that so many should be slain of so few The Defendants were all slain every Man in valiant Fight Here may I not in silence pass over the inhuman and more than barbarous Cruelty of the Turks against the dead Bodies of the slain Knights that thereby may appear that Cruelty never wanteth whereon to shew
Grand Master with this answer doth both ashame them and also encourage their quailing minds the Turks that this day as the other three before should not pass without assault with the dawning of the day assailed the very same places with the greatest fury possible especially at the ruines of the Castle where San Romanus an Avergnois which had the charge of that place lost this short and transitory life winning thereby immortal Fame and at St. Michaels Adurnius one of the Knights and Fagio with certain others were grievously wounded for the Enemy suddenly retiring from the Assault presently so thundred into the Breaches with their great and small shot that all the Island seemed to tremble the Heavens to burn and the Air to be darkned with smoke In the mean time Valetta throughly wearied with the mornings fight had withdrawn himself a little to breath himself when suddenly a Spanish Priest with his hands cast up to Heaven came running to him roaring and crying out That all was lost and forlorn and that three or four Ensigns of the Enemies were by the Castle breach broken into the Town Which the great Master hearing suddenly clapt his Helmet upon his head and with a Pike in his hand said unto them that were about him Lo Fellow-Souldiers the hour is come wherein you may shew your selves the most valiant Champions of the Christian Religion if it be so that you now also retain the same valour which you have in other battel 's shewed There is no cause wherefore you should doubt of this last for the Enemy is the same and the same God which hath hitherto preserved us will not now forsake us wherefore follow me valiant hearts This said he hasted to the place where most danger was and with him all the Souldiers all the Citizens Men and Women old and young yea the very Children all against the Common Enemy There was fought a most dreadful and dangerous battel some kept the Enemy from entring some set upon them that were already entred whom they wounded chased and slew although they notably resisted Within without all was covered with Weapons Darts dead Bodies and Blood. The Great Master was careful of all and in every place present commending exhorting directing as occasion required performing at once all the duties of a most valiant Souldier and worthy General At length the Turks with the setting of the Sun retired and so the Assault ceased Thus was the Great Master the undoubted Victor but not without much blood of his people considering his small number for in this fight he lost above 200 Men whereas of the Enemies beside them which were entred whereof not one escaped were slain above 2000. These are those four terrible Assaults presently given one after another unto the besieged Garzias the Vice-Roy in the mean time tarried for nothing else to transport his Army to Malta but for the coming of Io. Cardona who with twelve Gallies was gone to Panormo to conduct thence four Ships laded with provision but when he saw him stay long he sent to him in post That if he could not with such speed as was required tow forth those Ships he should spend no longer time but take out the provision into his Gallies and with speed to come away So the Vice-Roy with a Fleet of 72 Gallies the twentieth day of August set forward from Messana to Syracusa wherein he carried ten thousand select Souldiers amongst whom were above two hundred Knights of the Order of St. Iohn and above forty of the Order of St. Stephen which is an Order of Knights instituted by Cosmos Medices Duke of Florence to the imitation of the Knights of Malta in the year 1561. and have their residence at Cosmopolis a new built City in the Island of Elba in the Tuscan-Sea over against Piombino Besides these Knights in this Fleet were divers noble and valiant Gentlemen of Italy Sicily and other Countries The Fleet being arrived at Syracusa the Vice-Roy sent Auria with one Gally and a Boat to Malta to land a man to know of Paccius left as we have before said for a Watch in the Island at Maleca what News or what he had seen By whom it was understood That no Ship was seen at Sea but one Galliot which the one and twentieth day of August in the morning made towards Gaulos and the same day towards night as he was informed by the Watchmen of Maleca sixteen Gallies came to water at Saline but what became of them afterwards by reason of the coming on of the night could not be descried In this while the besieged had notably repaired the Breach at the Castle Bulwark and had in sundry places aptly placed certain great Pieces to Flanker the Ditches and to beat the Mount cast up by the Enemy at the Bulwark of Boâ—insegna that they might from thence annoy all the plain of the Castle with their small shot But the Turks having determined with all their Forces at once to assault both the Towns as before brought an Engine made of Spars and Boards able to cover thirty Men under the Breach at St. Michaels whereby it came to pass that none of the Defendants could without danger shew themselves in the Breach which when they could by no means endure they suddenly sallied out and putting them to flight which were there covered set fire on the Engine and burnt it In like manner they which besieged the new City were repulsed at the Castle breach and another like Engin burnt The next night certain of the Watch of the Castle issued oâ—t and having destroyed the Turks Engins prepared for the assailing of that place and slain them that were set for the keeping thereof returned in safety into the Castle But when the Enemies both that day and others following rested not but repairing their Mines Mounts and Engins laboured in both places to have beaten the Christians from the Walls all their endeavour and labour was by the industry and valour of the Defendants made frustrate The besieged had at the Castle breach made a Mine and laid in it eight Barrels of Powder that if the Enemy should again assault that place he might there be blown up but whilst the Turks were for like purpose working a Mine in the same place they chanced upon the Mine before made which they spoiled and carried away all the Powder Thus whilst they labour both on the one side and the other Mustapha the General a most expert and famous Commander considering that Summer now so far spent he was not to use longer delay and withall that resolute perseverance oftentimes in War findeth out a way to Victory determined with all his Power once again to assault the Castle St. Michael Wherefore displaying the stately Standard of the Turkish Emperor upon the point whereof was fastned a Globe of Gold he commanded his Souldiers to enter the Breach who now like desperate men attempted to have performed his Command
carried Prisoners to Sigeth The Spoil the Hungarians there took was exceeding great for besides Plate and Coin whereof they found good store they took eight Camels five Mules threescore Horses and six Carts laden with all manner of Spoil and many Garments of great price wherein the Gentlemen attired returned to Sigeth in great Bravery with two fair red Ensigns of the Enemies Maximilian the Emperor long before advertised of Solymans purpose for the Conquest of the remainder of Hungary to withstand so mighty an Enemy had beside the Forces raised in his own Dominions procured great Aid both of the States of the Empire and other Christian Princes which about this time met together at Rab. First there repaired thither four Legions of German Footmen and upwards of twenty thousand Horsemen with four thousand Hungarians the Duke of Savoy sent thither four hundred Argoletiers and many noble Gentlemen out of divers parts of Europe resorted thither to serve the Emperor in those Wars of their own Charge especially the Knights of Malta and out of Italy Prosper Columna and Angelus Caesius out of France Guise the Grand Prior Brissack and Lansack who but a little before were going to Malta of purpose to have served there if the Turks Fleet had come thither again as it was reported it would but understanding that it came not returned directly into Hungary with certain other Knights of the Order Many also of the Princes and free Cities of Italy declared their good Will toward the Emperor in this War some sending him Men as did Cosmus Medices Duke of Florence who sent thither of his own Charge three thousand Footmen some Mony as Mantua Genoa and Luca. Thither came also Alphonsus Duke of Fâ—rrara with a gallant Company of noble Gentlemen and other his Followers Besides which Land Forces the Emperor had also provided upon the River of Danubius twelve Gallies and thirty other Ships for Burthen so made as that the Men could not be hurt with the Turks Arrows wherein were embarqued three thousand Souldiers most part Italians under the Conduct of Philippus Flachius a German and one of the Knights of Malta who was afterward received into the number of the Princes of the Empire Solyman coming to the River Dravus commanded a Bridge to be made over that great River and the deep Fens on the farther side of the River towards Sigeth for the transporting of his great Army a Work of such difficulty that being thrice unfortunately begun it was again given over as a thing almost impossible Wherewith Solyman was so moved that in his rage he swore to hang up the Bassa that had the charge of that work if he did not with as much speed as was possible bring it to perfection Whereupon the Work was again begun all the Boats that were to be found in the River taken up and Timber for the purpose brought from far for the making of that Bridge In this Work were imployed not the Vulgar People only of the Country which was Tributary to the Turks but the Gentlemen themselves also were by the imperious Turk now commanding for his Life enforced to lay their Fingers to work day and night without ceasing until the Bridge which before was thought scarce possible to have been made was by the restless industry and labour of such a multitude of Men in the space of ten days brought to perfection Wherein the severity the barbarous Tyrant useth towards his Subjects is worth noting whereby he extorteth from them more than is almost possible for Men to perform so that it is not to be marvelled that he hath so good success in whatsoever he taketh in hand Over this Bridge a mile in length passed Solyman and encamped at a place called Muhatchz where he stayed certain days until his Army was all come over The last of Iuly ninety thousand Turks the Vantguard of Solymans Army came before Sigeth and encamped within a mile of the Town after whom shortly after followed a hundred thousand more out of Solymans Camp of whom many in approaching the Town were slain with great Shot out of the Castle the rest for all that encamped themselves as near unto the Town as they could and began the Siege The Town of Sigeth is strongly situate in a Marish on the North side of Dravus upon the Frontiers of Dalmatia commanding all the Country round about it which of it taketh name and was at that time a strong Bulwark against the Turks for entring farther into the Country that way toward Stiria In this Town was Governor Nicholaus Serinus commonly called the Count a valiant Man and a mortal Enemy of the Turks with a Garrison of two thousand three hundred good Souldiers who seeing the huge Army of the Turks called together into the Castle the Captains of the Garrison and the chief of the Citizens where standing in the midst of them he spake unto them as followeth You see said he how we are on every side beset with the Multitude of our Enemies wherein resteth their chief hope but let not us be thereof afraid or discouraged for that Victory dependeth not on a confused Multitude of heartless Men but on the Power of our God who hath by a few at his pleasure many times overthrown the mighty Armies of the Proud and will not in the midst of these dangers now forsake us if we putting our Trust and Confidence in him do what beseemeth valiant and couragious Men. Besides that our just Cause with the strength of the place we hold our own Valour and the help of our Friends who I assure my self will not fail us at our need countervaileth their confused Multitude forced together by their imperious Commanders oâ—t of far Countries and whatsoever else the proud Tyrant hath brought with him into the Field Wherefore let us all as becometh valiant Men for the truth of our Religion and for the honour of our Prince and Country live and die together knowing whatsoever befals that to a Life so lost beside never dying Fame belongeth a most assured hope of Ioy and Felicity As for my self I am resolved and so I hope are you also that as I am a Christian and free born so will I by the Grace of God in the same Faith and Freedom end my days Neither shall the proud Turk so long as I am able to hold up this hand have ever power to command over me or the ground whereon I stand This said he first took himself a solemn Oath to perform what he had promised and perswaded the rest to take the like which done every Man returned to the place of his charge The fifth of August Solyman encamped within a mile of the Town and the next day after came himself into the Camp at whose coming the great Ordnance and small Shot so thundred out of the Turks Camp as if Heaven and Earth should have gon together the Turks after their wonted manner crying aloud their Alla Alla
where things are done upon choler rather than upon discretion without compassion slain in which doing the Christians thought they did rather revenge former injuries to them done than to do them any wrong with some Mercy more prevailed than Wrath who remembring the common chance of War chose rather to take the Turks Prisoners wofully craving nothing but their Lives than without mercy to kill them The number of the Turks lost in this most famous Battel could hardly be known by reason that many of them were drowned Antonius Guarnerius writing the History of this War reporteth two and thirty thousand to have perished but they which writ more sparingly thereof reported not past half so many to have been slain of whom these were of greatest name Haly Bassa the General Mahomet Bey otherwise called Chiroche or Sirochus Governour of Alexandria Cassanes the Son of Barbarussa with his Son Malamur Governour of Mitilene Gider Governour of Chios Cassambeius Governour of the Rhodes Provi Aga Captain of Naupulium Mustapha Zelibi the great Treasurer Caracoza the famous Pyrat with many others whom but to name were tedious The chief Prisoners there taken were Achmat and Mahomet the Sons of Haly Bassa both afterwards sent as Presents to the Pope of whom the eldest died by the way at Naples the younger presented unto the Pope by Columnius at Rome was there honourably kept Prisoner and Mechmet Bey Governour of Euboea and about three thousand five hundred others were in that Battel taken also The chief of them that escaped by flight were Partau Bassa who seeing all go to wrack fled in time in a long Boat to land and Uluzales who as it was afterwards certainly known but with five and twenty Gallies and ten Galliots fled to Lepanto Of the Enemies Gallies were taken an hundred threescore and one forty sunk or burnt and of Galliots and other small Vessels were taken about sixty The Admiral Gally then taken amongst the rest was so goodly and beautiful a Vessel that for beauty and richness scarce any in the whole Ocean was comparable unto her The Deck of this Gally was on both sides thrice as great as any of the others and made all of black Walnut-Tree like unto Ebony checkered and wrought marveilous fair with divers lively Colours and variety of Histories There was also in her divers lively Counterfeits engraven and wrought with Gold with so cunning hand that for the magnificence thereof it might well have been compared unto some Princes Palace The Cabbin glistered in every place with rich Hangings wrought witâ— Gold Twist and set with divers sort of preciouâ— Stones with certain small Counterfeits most cunningly wrought Besides this there was also found in her great store of the Bassaes rich Apparel wrought with the Needle so couriously and richly embossed with Silver and Gold that his great Lord and Master Selymus himself could hardly put on more royal or rich Attire His Casket there also found with six thousand Ducats in it with a yearly Pension of three hundred Ducats was given in reward to a Greek born in Macedonia which slew the Bassa and was therefore also Knighted by Dâ—n Iohn who had also given unto him the Burrel of the Turks Standard which at his return to Venice where he had of long time before dwelt and served in the Arsenal he sold unto a Goldsmith whereof the Senate having intelligence redeemed it of the Goldsmith paying for every Ounce a Ducat and layed it up amongst the Trophies of that most famous Victory It was all of massive Silver Guilt and Engraven round about with Turshik Letters On the one side was written God doth conduct and adorn the faithful in worthy enterprises God doth favour Mahomet On the other side God hath no other God and Mahomet is his Prophet This notable Victory thus happily obtained Don Iohn the General with Venerius and Columna the other two Admirals came together whom the General friendly embraced but especially Venerius calling him Father and attributing unto him the greatest part of the Victory Afterwards all together with their hands and eies cast up towards Heaven they upon their knees gave immortal thanks to Almighty God. So did also the rest of the Captains and Masters commending one anothers valour and good service but especially theirs who for their Religion and Country had there most honourably spent their lives which were in number about seven thousand five hundred sixty six Amongst whom the chief Men that were slain were Ioh. and Bernardinus of the honourable Family of Cordona in Spain Horatio Caraffa and Ferantes Bisballus Virginius and Horatius noble Romans of the honourable Family of the Ursini Of the Venetian Nobility Augustinus Barbadicus Benedictus Superantius Vincentius Quirinus Ioannes Lauretanus Marinus Contarenus Catherinus Malipetra Georgius and Andreas Barbadicâ—s Marcus Antonius Landus Franciscus Bonus Hieronimus Contarenus Antonius Paschaligus Hieronimus Venerius all of the Order of the Senators Besides divers other honourable Gentlemen who well deserved to be enrolled in the eternal Monuments of Fame Of the Knights of Malta were also many slain amongst whom of the German Nation these were chief Ioachim Spart Commander of Moguntia and Frankfort Ro. of Hambergh Commander of Hemmendorf and Fra. Drost Of them that were wounded these were of greatest name Don Iohn the General Venerius the Venetian Admiral shot through the Foot Paulus Iordanus Troilus Savel and Mar. Molinus with divers others of less fame to the number of almost seven thousand Great was the joy conceived of this Victory but to none more welcome than to the poor Christians fast chained to the Turks Gallies of whom twelve thousand were thereby delivered from most miserable Thraldom and contrary to all hope restored to their ancient Liberty Two days after this Victory Venerius sent Humfredus Iustinianus with news thereof unto the Senate at Venice who coming in at the Adriaâ—ick Port about noon the nineteenth of October by shooting off of certain great Pieces gave warning unto the City of his coming which at that time hung in a great suspence betwixt hope and fear The Citisens generally awaked with the report of the great Ordnance came flocking by heaps to the Port every Man longing to hear the first news There they might see Iustinian coming a far off with his Gally but when he was come nearer they might perceive all the Mariners attired like Turks and four of the Turks Ensigns hanging behind at the Poup of the Gally which filled their minds with the hope of good news deeming it to be as indeed it was part of the spoil of the Enemy But after that Iustinian was landed which he had much to do for the press and was gon to the Court with a world of people following after him crying out for news and had there delivered his Letters and at large discoursed of all the success of the Battel which was forthwith blown into the City and that the Mariners also after his
had committed to the Prejudice of the Crown of Persia or his Fathers Honour he was most ready to submit himself to any amends and with all reason to yield unto them the Kingdom yea the whole World and even his own Life the rather to satisfie their Minds with a more full Contentation With twice and thrice reading over were these affectionate Letters considered and digested and at last both the Father and the Brother perceiving in them such liberality of Words and overcome with Pity or if not with Pity yet with great admiration and contentment they determined to put the matter in practise and moderating their desire of revenge to attempt the reducing of the young mans Mind to some good pass Whereupon they wrote back unto him That no greedy deâ—ire to usurp his Government had induced them to make so great a Voyage to trouble so much People and to shed such abundance of Blood but only his disobedience and presumption in that he had caused himself to be called the King of Persia and had not sent so much as one Captain to aid them in the late Wars against the Turks Glad was Abas the young Prinâ—â— whâ—n he understood the Accusations that were laid against him hoping to make it manifest before all men how the King and his Brother were misinformed in these particularities and therefore incontinently did write back unto them That if they would faithfully promise him honourably and without any outrage to receive his Ambassadors he would send unto them such evident matter and so clear Information touching those his Accusations as that they should not only clearly perceive that there was never any such kind of thought in him but also that he had always desired and laboured the contrary and would moreover open unto them such matter as in respect of other men and not of himself might cause their coming to prove profitable and commodious to all the Kingdom of Persia. Which his request they both solemnly promised faithfully to perform being very desirous to understand what those strange Novelties should be Whereupon Abas Mirize sent unto them two of his chief Counsellors men of great account and reverence both for Years and Wisdom with full Instructions who after many Speeches in the end swearing according to their custom by the Creator that spread out the Air that founded the Earth upon the Deeps that adorned the Heaven with Stars that poured abroad the Water that made the Water and briefly of nothing brought forth all things swearing by the head of Ali and by the Religion of their Prophet Mahomet that such perverse thoughts never entred into the head of Abas Mirize they alleged many Testimonies and manifest Proofs that most loyally in all due time as well when he was advanced to the Kingdom of Persia as also in his Battels against the Turks his Son had always caused devout Prayers and Supplications to be made to God for his Prosperity neither ever desired to hear any other but happy and fortunate success of him They brought with them a thousand and a thousand Precepts and loyal Letters which the young man had caused to be written as occasions required to the Governours that were his Subjects for the Government of the State wherein he never named himself King of Persia but only Your King and Governour of Heri They prayed the King also to cause a diligent Process to be framed against his Son and if there should be found in him any sign or shadow of so wicked a suspition then to take from him his Estate and Liberty offering themselves to remain as Hostages for him But when all this should be done and Abas found altogether free from these unjust Accusations then falling even to the Earth and kissing it they besought him and as it were conjured him not to leave the matter thus imperfect to the Prejudice of his Blood but returning to his Counsellor to take information likewise upon what mind and consideration he had advised the King to take upon him this unorderly and dangerous Voyage where no doubt he should find nothing in him but malignant ambitious and wicked Affections and such an even deserved that with his Blood there should be revenged all the Blood of those which till that hour had been brought to their unworthy and undeserved Deaths And for as much as nothing remained whereof the Visier had informed the King against his Son but the commandment that was given by Abas Mirize to the Governours under him That they should not go to the Wars against the Turks they confessed in Truth that such an order was taken but not to that wicked and traiterous end and purpose as was reported to the King by his great Counsellor but only in respect of an Invasion justly feared in those quarters by the Tartarian Iesselbas who by divers inrodes had already done great harm in the Country about Heri and put young Abas and his Counsellors in such a fear that they durst not disfurnish their Cities of their Guards and Forces and therefore had commanded the said Governours not to go to war against the Turks but to stay and expect further direction And that all this was by writing signified unto the Visier himself which he of a malicious mind had concealed only to try if in these common troubles he could bring to pass that Abas Mirize and the King might be taken away and Emir Hamze succeed in his place and so he himself remain the Superintendent of his Son-in-Law and Moderator of that most famous Kingdom Of which so treacherous a purpose they for all that thought Emir Hamze the young Prince altogether ignorant knowing his honourable Disposition and Love towards his own kindred but imputed it only to the immoderate and ambitious desire of the wicked Traitor Mirize Salmas Of these grave Speeches of the Ambassadors Mahamet the Father by nature credulous began to make great Construction and deeply to consider of their so earnest and important requests which seemed unto him so upright and equal as that he could not chuse but hearken unto the same And therefore calling unto him the Governours the Captains the Judges and Treasurers of all the Cities that were subject to Heri he demanded of them how and in what sort they esteemed of Abas Mirize and in what degree of Honour he desired to be esteemed of them and of them all received one answer That they held him for their Lord and Lieutenant to the King of Casbin and that he himself had always desired to be so taken and thought of for proof whereof every one of them brought in divers Letters Precepts and Orders wherein he never caused himself to be honoured with any other Title but only Your King of Heri He demanded further Whether any such Wars were attempted by the Tartarian Iesselbas or not whereof he received a large and solmen Information that so it was to the great detriment of all those Territories And thus the King
his Army and departed thence the fifth of November and returned to Rab. Not long after Christopher Lord Teuffenbach the Emperours Lieutenant in the upper part of Hungary who lay encamped at Cassovia with his Army of fourteen thousand Souldiers removed thence and marching along the Country two days came and laid siege to Sabatzka one of the Turks strongest Castles in those quarters out of which they usually did much harm among the Christians This Castle of Teuffenbach battered in three places and having at length made it assaultable took it by force the nineteenth of November and put to the Sword all the Turks there in Garrison in number about two hundred and fifty and instead of them left a strong Garrison of his own whereby all the Country thereabouts was restored to great quietness Sabatzka thus taken the Christian General removed with all speed to Filek a strong City of the higher Hungary which Solyman the Turkish Emperour took from the Christians in the year 1560 and placed therein a Sanzack under the command of the Bassa of Buda The General encamping before this City the next day after planted his Battery and in most terrible manner without intermission thundered against the Walls and Gates of the City The Sanzack Governour thereof considering the Power of the Christians got out secretly by Night with a few Souldiers to acquaint the other Turkish Sanzacks his Neighbours with the coming of the Christians and the number of their Army and further to consult with them how the City might be relieved The Bassa of Temesware with the Sanzacks of Giula Hadwan Scantzag and Scirme undertook the matter and thereupon the Bassa sent for eight hundred Ianizaries of late left by Sinan Bassa in Garrison at Buda and Alba Regalis who all flatly refused to go to this Service saying That they would not be led as Beasts to the slaughter as were their Fellows but a little before at Alba Regalis nevertheless they enforced the Armenians whom Sinan and his Son had brought thither to go but of Buda Alba Regalis and Scamboth were sent only fifteen hundred common Souldiers For all that the Bassa with the Sanzacks his Followers firm in their former Resolution for the Relief of the distressed City having made great Preparation and raised an Army of 18000 strong with many Field-pieces by Night drew near unto Filek and staied within two miles of the City But the General of the Christians with Stephen Bathor and the other Captains understanding of their coming with 7000 good Souldiers chosen out of the whole Army went out presently against them and the one and twentieth of November suddenly assailing them in their Tents overthrew them and put them all to flight whom the Christians fiercely pursued with a most terrible Execution In this fight and flighâ— there was slain 6000 Turks and but few or none taken The Bassa himself with the Sanzack of Filek and many others of great Name were â—ound amongst the Bodies of the slain Turks This Victory gained with little or no loss yielded unto the Christians a rich Prey many gorgeous Tents and fair Ensigns much Cattel and 29 Field-pieces with 200 Waggons laden with Victual and other Provision all which they carried into the Camp at Filek and so more straightly besieged the City than before The same day the Lord Palfi and Martin Lasla came to the Camp with six thousand Souldiers and forthwith three Trumpeters were sent to them of the City That if without further resistance they would forthwith yield the City they should have leave in safety to depart with Life and Goods although the Turks had of late in like case broken their Faith with the Christians at Palotta but if they refused his Grace and would needs hold it out to the uttermost then to denounce unto them all Extremities For all this the Turks nothing dismaied refused to yield whereupon the battery began afresh and in more terrible manner than before so that though the City was most strongly fortified both with Walls and Rampiers yet had the Christians in three days space with continual battery made a fair breach into it whereby they in despight of the Enemy entred without any notable loss the four and twentieth of November ransacked the City and burnt a great part thereof The same day they also took the uttermost Castle wherein the Sanzacks Palace stood This Castle standeth upon a very high hill strengthned both by Art and Nature and had in it a strong Garrison of valiant Souldiers who spared not lustily to bestow their shot amongst their Enemies of whom they slew a great number Nevertheless the Christians after they had for the space of two Days and two Nights with a most furious battery shaken the Walls by plain force entred the Castle the six and twentieth of November and put to the Sword all the Garrison Souldiers except such as had in good time forsaken this Castle and retired themselves into another more inward Who being in number eight hundred with their Wives and Children without hope of Relief and seeing the Cannon now bent upon them set out a white Ensign in token of Parley which granted it was agreed that they should depart with Life and so much of their Goods as every one of them could carry Upon which Agreement the Castle was yielded the eight and twentieth day of November and the Turks with a safe Convoy brought unto the Place they desired In this Castle was found a great booty many pieces of Artillery and much other warlike Provision but of Victuals small store The General with the rest of the Captains entring the Castle fell down upon their Knees and with their Hearts and Hands cast up to Heaven thanked God for their Victory and for the recovery of that strong City but especially for the delivery of so many Christians out of the Turkish Thraldom for it is reported that there were above eight hundred Country Villages subject to the Jurisdiction of Filek the poor Inhabitants whereof were now all freed from the Turkish Servitude by the taking of this only City The Christians forthwith repaired the Walls Bulwarks and Trenches and strongly fortified every place against the Enemy and so leaving a sufficient Garrison in the City and Castles departed with their Army now in number about twenty thousand towards Sodoch six miles from Filek But as they were upon the way News was brought unto the General how that the Turks had for fear abandoned the Castles of Dijwin and Somoske whereupon he sent out certain Companies of Souldiers to take in both those places who coming thither found them indeed forsaken by the Enemy but yet many pieces of Artillery and other warlike Provision there still left In the latter end of November the General marched with his Army towards Setschine a strong Town in the Diocess of Agria but the Turks in that place had two or three days before prepared themselves to flie and sent their Wives their
leaving fourscore of their men behind them having slain but five of the Christians Now had the Turks in great wants by the space of a Month right worthily defended Strigonium expecting still for relief At length News was brought into the Camp That the Bassa of Buda with 20000 men was coming to raise the Siege who the second of August came accordingly and with his Army encamped within four miles of the Christians lying so nigh that certain of the Turks Horse-men seeking after Booty came very near unto the Camp of the Christiâ—ns and out of the Pastures even under their Noses carried away some few Horses Against these desperate Adventurers certain Troops of the Hungarian and German Horse-men issuing out had with them an hot Skirmish but the Turks of purpose retiring as men over-charged and the Christians still following on had at length drawn them unto the place where divers other Troops of the Turks lay in Ambush for them who now starting forth on every side hardly charged them The Hungarian light Horse-men well acquainted with such Skirmishes seeing the danger presently fled and left the Germans to themselves who for a while valiantly encountred their Enemies but oppressed with multitude were glad at last to fly also In this Skirmish of the Christians were lost and grievously wounded about an hundred The Turks encouraged with this so prosperous a beginning came on the next day with all their Army being before resolved by plain force to open themselves a way into the City and so to relieve the besieged Of all these things the County was not ignorant as thereof forewarned by the Bassa's Letters before delivered unto him and had therefore with his Army strongly belayed all the ways unto the City Nevertheless the Enemy came still on between the Hills S. Thomas and S. George and near unto the Suburbs called the Rascian City put themselves in order of Battel as did also the Christians giving the Enemy leave to come even to their Trenches In the mean time the Lord Palfi with his Hungarian Horse-men fetching a compass about the Hill on the one side and the Lord Swartzenburg with his Horse-men on the other had so inclosed the Turks behind as that they could not without great danger retire Both Armies orderly ranged and the signal of Battel given the Turks having before without any great harm done discharged seventeen Field-pieces came on after their wonted manner with a most hideous cry and at the first Onset with their Turkish Arrows as with a thick shower darkned the Sky when on the other side the German and Wallon Horse-men with their Petronels sent their deadly shot as thick as Hail amongst them again and the Men at Arms after them taught the Turks to their cost how unfit their light and half-naked Horse-men were in a set Battel to meet with them so well appointed in a trice but not without great slaughter the Battel was brought to the Sword and to be tried by true Valour There was to be heard a cry Heavens high the thundering of Artillery both great and small the clattering Armor the glistering Weapons the neighing of the Horses the crying of the Wounded the heavy groanings of the Dying with the noise of the Trumpets Drums and other warlike Instruments made deaf the ears of the Hearers presenting unto them nothing but horror and even present death It was a most miserable sight to see so many men in so short time slain for the Battel had scarce endured half an hour when many thousands of the Turks lay dead upon the ground and the rest seeing the Victory incline to the Christians betook themselves to flight leaving behind them their great Ordnance and whatsoever else they brought for the relief of the besieged whom so flying the Lords Palfi and Swartzenburg who had before taken the straights whereby they were to pass between the Mountains so received with their fresh Horse-men that of them that came that way few escaped The Bassa himself who stood upon the Hill seeing the discomfiture of his Men fled also himself The Bassa of Natolia with about 100 of the Turks more by good fortune got into Strigonium The number of the Turks slain in this Battel was great and is of divers diversly reported some saying that there were slain 14000 and some fewer Besides them that were slain many were also taken and some of them men of great Name and Place There was also taken 27 Ensigns with a multitude of Camels Asses and Mules laden with Mony Shot Powder and other necessary Provision all which brought thither for the relief of the besieged became a prey unto the Christians In the heat of this Battel they of the City sallying out had entred a Fort of the Christians upon the River-side but were again presently driven out and with loss enforced to retire After this Victory the County sent certain Companies of the Hungarian and German Horse-men with 500 Waggons to the Enemies Camp not far off in the Mountains who coming thither found it utterly forsaken by the Enemy but well stored with all manner of necessary Provision which they carried all away together with 600 Tents many whereof were lined with Damask Satin and other Silk richly embroidered or layed with gold-lace or gold-twist The Bassa's rich Tent taken by the Collonel of the Horse-men was afterwards by him given unto the County as was also the Plate and Money there found all which he divided among the Souldiers according to their Deserts In the Turks Camp were also found certain Heads of the Christians with the dead Body of the Lord Brandensteine slain in the conflict but the day before which the Christians carried away with them into the Camp and there honourably buried them Those that remained of the Turks Army hid themselves in the Mountains and Woods and so holpen by the darkness of the night made best shift for themselves that they could The Bassa himself accompanied but with twenty Horse came to Buda about midnight and by his coming filled the City with great heaviness every man lamenting his lost friends The Hungarian Heidons best acquainted with the Country pricking up and down the Mountains and by-ways for certain days after the Battel brought in daily into the Camp such Prisoners as they took or else the Heads of such Turks as they slew Of this so notable a Victory the County by a speedy Messenger certified the Arch-duke at Vienna who rewarded him for his good News with a chain worth five hundred Duckats and presently caused the Song or Thanksgiving to be sung in the Church of the Augustine Friers and afterward in all the Churches of the City The County also to gratifie the Emperour sent him by the Lord Chalon his Nephew unto Prague two of the chief Prisoners taken in the late Battel with four Horse-men's Guidons cunningly made of Horse-hairs such as are commonly carried before the greatest Commanders of the Turks Armies and fourteen other
from him by the Polonian Cossacks and certain of his Retinue slain was there taken for a Spy and so sent to Vienna where at his first Arrival he was well used in a common Inn but the night following being taken in his Chamber by the Martial was so clap'd fast in Prison with as many Irons upon him as he could bear and all his Followers with Gyves upon their Legs compelled as Slaves daily to work in the Town-ditch About this time also Sigismund the Transilvanian Prince whom hitherto all men admired as a man even sent from Heaven for the benefit of his Country and of the Christian Commonweal by a wonderful change gave a most manifest token of a divers and unconstant Nature to the great wonder of the World for having broken the Agreement made with the Emperour the last Year and being secretly in Post returned out of Silesia into Transilvania and again taken upon him the Government as is before declared and having withal requested himself and the Transilvanians his Country-men to be discharged of the Oath of Obedience and Loyalty by them before given unto the Emperour and the City of Veradinum with the Country thereabout to be again restored unto him and the Emperour pausing thereupon did now doubting of his own Ability for the keeping of that Country in the beginning of this year 1599 by his Ambassadors the Bishop of Alba-Iulia and Stephen Paschai his Chancellor sent of purpose unto the Emperour request him to have the first Agreements again renewed and the Principality of Trebnits in Moravia to be added unto the two Dukedoms of Oppel and Ratibor in Silesia with fifty thousand Duckats to be yearly paid unto him out of the Chamber of the Empire and a general Pardon to be given unto all the Transilvanians that following him had of late revolted from the Emperour and their antient Liberties to be again unto every one of them confirmed With all which Conditions obtained at the Emperour's hands as of him that saw how needful it was for him by any means to keep that strong Country in his power the same Ambassadors with their dispatch returned from Prague the nineteenth of April But Sigismund in the mean time at home was entred into new Conceits with certain of the Polonian Nobility far differing from the former agreement with the Emperour and having sent for one of the Turks Chiaus from Constantinople and for his Cousin Andrew Bathor the proud Cardinal out of Borusia and so meeting with them in an obscure Village in the Confines of Transilvania towards Polonia accompanied with certain of the chiefest of the States of his Country there in the Presence of the Polonians and of the Turkish Ambassador resigned all the Right and Title he had in the Country of Transilvania unto the Cardinal his Cousin commanding all the States there present to swear unto him their Obedience and Fidelity who shortly after together with the Polonian Ambassador sent one of his especial Favourites to Constantinople to desire safe conduct for his Ambassadours to be sent thither to conclude of all matters with the Turk Which Messengers so sent together with the Polonian Ambassador were both courteously received in the Turks Court and as with an especial favour rewarded with right sumptuous Garments and charge given them That the Cardinal within three Months next should send thither a solemn Ambassador with the old accustomed Tribute by the Turk demanded Thus through the Inconstancy of the Prince the Ambition of the proud Cardinal and the foul Collusion of the Polonian the Country of Transilvania one of the strongest Fortresses of that side of Christendom falling from the Obedience of the Emperour and so in sort bereft from the Christian Common-weal became again tributary unto the Turk most good men detesting the Lightness of the one the Ambition of the other and the Sliness of the third Now the Turks of Buda not able longer to endure the great Famine therein had most earnestly requested relief from the other Turks their Friends in Hungary who on all hands ran to have relieved them but coming near thereunto could not put therein such Provision as they had brought for the relief of the same being letted so to do by the Imperials who about a League off diligently attended every motion of the Enemy from whence the Lord Swartzenburg in the night secretly approaching one of the Gates with his Followers thought with a Petard to have broken it open and so to have entered Which his Device taking not effect as did that at Rab the Gate being within strongly fortified by the Enemy he was inforced to depart being also discovered by the Turks from the Wall. Now shortly after the Bassa of Buda with six hundred Horse issuing out of the City to have met with Victuals that were coming thither fell into an Ambush of the Haiduckes who after their manner fiercely encountered him and putting him to flight took him Prisoner his Horse in his Chase falling under him whom his Souldiers seeking to rescue there began a new Skirmish encreasing their former Overthrow with the loss of the greatest part of them that were left amongst whom the Bassa's Son with the Aga of the Janizaries there lost their Lives also Which Conflict thus ended the Bassa was with safe Conduct brought to the Camp and there with great Threats inforced to reveal the state of his City with other the secret designs of the Turks Whereupon the Haiducks returned again towards Buda seeking by all means to stop the coming of Victuals thither so in hope at length to have gained the distressed City But whilst they thus lay upon the Passages behold News was brought unto them how that the Bassa of Bosna with the Sanzacks of Sigeth Quinque Ecclesiae and Coppan with 10000 Turks were coming to oppress them and to open the Passages by them holden But they knowing their own Strength and nothing-fearing so small a Force staid not for their coming but went to meet them and in a place of good advantage waiting for them upon their first appearance with great Assurance and Courage charged them brake their Array and slew the greatest part of them together with the Bassa himself yet with so much ado as that had not the Lord Palfi in good time sent unto their Aid certain Companies of fresh men it was not-without cause doubted but that the Haiducks had been put to the worse about three hundred of them having there already lost their Lives The Tartars yet nevertheless in good number held on their way towards Buda with purpose to have over-run the Country and so have withdrawn the Imperials from the City but forasmuch as that base Nation was known to be good for nothing but to rob and spoil the Lord Swartzenburg's Regiment only going against them and encountering them overthrew them in such sort that part of them being there slain in fight and part for fear driven into Danuby the greater number
French-men and Wallons up in mutiny for their Pay so that by him perswaded they had again given their Oath of Fidelity unto the Emperour and to follow his Army But now when occasion served and held out as it were both her Arms unto the Christians for the regaining and conquest of Canisia these French-men and Wallons the greatest part of Collonitz's strength injuriously refused her so fair an offer and at such time as they should rather have fought naked then have failed in their Duty it being to have gained a most great and rich Conquest for want of Pay as they pretended turned their backs and being by no great intreaty or persuasions to be moved to the Discouragement of the rest who were better minded and their own eternal Infamy withdrew themselves from the Army So that Collonitz rather by the wicked unfaithfulness of his own disloyal Souldiers than by the Valour of his Enemies disappointed of his purpose was to his great Discontentment contrary to that he hoped inforced to retire without any thing more doing While this Exploit so well begun but evil performed was in hand the Turks and Tartars assembled together made a cruel spoil in the Country about Rab even almost unto the Gates of the Town carrying away with them a great number both of Men and Beasts In fine it chanced that the Hussars of the Lord Nadasti came that way who understanding what had happened with all speed made after these Robbers overtook them in their retreat near unto Alba-Regalis slew a great number of them and inforced the rest to leave a great part of their Prey behind them With which Booty recovered even out of the Lyons Mouth they returned to Rab of whom the poor Inhabitants and Country People with Tears standing in their Eyes requested to have again their own Goods But War the enemy of Charity and nurse of barbarous Cruelty had so hardned the Hearts of these men of War as that they were not to be moved to restore them their Cattel again but that they must redeem them for present Money which they did and so received them Now the Noble Collonitz seeing himself so shamefully forsaken of his own Souldiers and disappointed of his purpose and the Turks and Tartars in great numbers coming to the relief and repairing of this so sore shaken a Town and out of hope to do any good thereon full of Grief and Indignation returned towards Comora And howbeit that evil hap had cruelly frustrated the glory of his Enterprise yet the Heavens in despight of Fortunes frown left not this noble and valiant Captain altogether without Honour but as amorous of his Vertues and Valour presented unto him in this Winter of Fortunes displeasure some Trophies of Glory For upon the way as he was returning home he met with 2000 Turks whom after some small resistance he cut all in pieces miserable Sacrifices appointed unto the fury of his wrath In this fight their Ensigns were all taken and a number of Prisoners the chief of whom together with their Ensigns he sent to Prague as a Present for the Emperour and a token of his good Service The report then was That the Turks and Tartars with their united Forces had forraged Sclavonia taken divers strong Holds burnt a number of Villages and carried away eight thousand Christians Prisoners beside a great number more slain with the Sword or consumed with Fire and all the Cattel of the Country driven away and that being with this booty come to Quinque Ecclesiae they had there received Command with Mahomet Bassa to besiege Comora and that all the Commanders of the Turks Army were thereupon resolved All which reports no whit dismayed the Valiant Collonitz or any thing altered his Designs but having fortified Comora against the intended Siege of the Turks and taken from thence four Culverins according to a former purpose by himself intended resolved now to take from the Turks the Castle of Loqua and Boulouvenar the Garrisons whereof greatly annoyed the Territories of the Christians and hindred the Designs of this great Captain These two Castles are scituate upon a great Marish which separateth Hungary from Rascia and are therefore as Bounders of Hungary and strong enough to be defended against a small Army Upon which Resolution he set forward with his small and valiant Power and the fourth day arrived within the sight of Loqua a Castle well manned and furnished with all things necessary for the defence thereof The Army lodged Collonitz with a Drum summoned the besieged to yield up the Place with Promises of Courtesie if they should now accept of the same whilst it was offered them which they stoutly refused to do swearing to the contrary That they would die and live within those their Walls Collonitz seeing them so resolved first caused a Mill to be assaulted which placed over against the Castle and well fortified served it instead of a Bulwark and seemed hard to be taken howbeit his men loth to have their good Fortune even in the beginning checked gave thereunto so brave an assault that after the Enemy had done what he could for the defence thereof they became Masters of the Place carried it and therein lodged but finding it dangerous to be kept and to stand them in small stead they set it on fire and afterward planted four Culverins in battery before the Castle But as they were thus busied the Turks couragiously sallied out upon them not doubting to adventure themselves for the hope they had to be in short time by their great Army relieved In this sally they met afront with the Haiducks whom they fiercely charged and so gauled them that having slain thirty of them they retired without any loss forthwith discharging so many thundering Shot and Arrows upon our meâ— as that they well knew not how to save themselves from the danger of them in such sort that all the ways to approach the place being stopped they began to devise how to set the Castle on fire which they by certain Fire-works attempted but to small purpose the fire being no sooner kindled but that it was forthwith by the Turks quenched This done and our men disappointed of their hope they devised to set fire upon the timber which joyned the Palisado to the Castle stretching toward the Port. Which their attempt sorted but to small effect also the fire burning but slowly to do the Enemies any great harm All which Devices failing they resolved by plain force to assault the Castle and to scale the same which Enterprise resolved upon the Haiducks carrving before them certain stâ—ong and thick Planks of Wood instead of Targuets to defend them from the small Shot and Arrows of their Enemies by this Device gained the Palisado placed upon the Ditch and being there in some safety with their Musquets and Harquebuzes so applyed the besieged that they drave them from their Curtains and made that they durst no more shew themselves upon
that he was glad to rise with his Army and be gone Whilst this was in doing the County Solmes lying in Garrison at Carolstad took upon him to surprise Wiscenbourg and setting forth but with four hundred Souldiers of his Garrison with wonderful Diligence surprised the Place and without any great Resistance became Masters thereof But the Citizens over-grieved with the insolent Outrages of these men of War opened the Gates of their Town unto the Rebels of Transilvania even then fled from the late Overthrow who full of Revenge took the Place and being too strong for the County and his Souldiers made such slaughter of them in the Streets they of the Town out of their Windows and from the tops of their Houses helping them that of all those which the County brought with him there were but sixty left alive who all taken were together with the County thrust into a strong and loathsome Prison Now the bruit of the coming of the Turks great Army into Hungary had awaked the Christian Forces to assemble themselves together and to do their endeavour to withstand the same so that a number of Companies were raised in Germany who came into Hungary marching towards Strigonium where the Army was to be assembled The good success of things past the Opinion men had of the Turks Troubles with his Rebels and the great Promises of the Emperour drew many into these Lists of Honour in such sort that there were come together an Army of five and twenty thousand Foot and ten thousand Horse all good and brave Companies well appointed and well conducted Of this brave and gallant Army the Lord Russworm was for this Year appointed General who therewith marched within the sight of Strigonium to assure the Inhabitants of Relief if the Enemy should chance to besiege them as the News then went About three Weeks this Army lay thereby incamped attending the coming of the rest of the Forces which were to strengthen and make up the same during which time the General disposed of all things necessary for the keeping of Strigonium and put into the Fort of Saint Andrew near unto it three thousand Lansquenets for relief of the City which done he removed with his Army toward Pesth and incamped within a League thereof toward the West resolved so to cross the Designs of the Enemy if he should attempt to besiege this Place as it was doubted he would and in hope that the Preservation thereof might in time be a cause for the winning of Buda and a means to impeach the Enemies Forces The Turks Army within a few days after upon a contrary Design conducted for the winning of Pesth and resolved to raise the Christians Camp in number an hundred thousand men came and face to face incamped within the sight of the Christian Army on the other side of the River Danubius In the mean time whilst they so lay certain cowardly Souldiers of Pesth more in love with their Bellies than with their Honour by stealth fled out of their Garrison in Pesth to the Turks over against them in Buda shamefully craving of them Victuals whom the Turks themselves being almost in as great want yet bounteously relieved Besides that the Bassa of Buda to corrupt the rest of their Fellows caused these renegade Fugitives to be entertained with double pay who therefore gave the Bassa a thousand thanks extolling his Bounty unto the Heavens and from the Walls invited their Companions to do as they had done and so to become Partakers of such Bounty and Pleasure as they were Howbeit these Fugitives nothing profited the Bassa either by their Perswasion or Example for albeit that they from the Mouth of the Bassa promised unto their Companions plenty of Victuals good Entertainment and four Months pay more yet was there not any of them which hearkened or gave Ear unto their Allurements but rather the more to assure their Commanders of their Fidelity of themselves offered to be sworn again unto their Allegiance unto the Emperour and to dye in the place rather than to forsake it Yet was the want of Victuals then in Pesth great and the Garrison therewith extreamly pinched fed almost as much with hope as with that little which was left them Neither was it long after but that according to their desires the fifteenth of May a great Ship arrived there laden with Wine and Victuals sufficient for the relief of their present Necessities Of the coming of which Ship the Turk having heard attended the Passage thereof in the Isle to have intercepted it Of which their purpose the Garrison Souldiers of Pesth having knowledge and armed with Necessity sallied out upon them and killing a number of them inforced the rest to quit the Place This Ship was but the fore-runner of greater Succours for shortly after followed a number of other Ships which arriving at Pesth laden with Victuals and other Necessaries filled the Place with as great plenty as there had been want before Which supply was conducted unto Pesth by 500 Harquebusiers of Strigonium the Turks from Buda looking on but not daring or not able to stay the same It fortuned at the self same time that a Captain of the Turks fled from Alba-Regalis to Rab shewed unto the Christians there the way and the means how they might come to the Suburbs of Alba-Regalis and take the spoil of the same yea and happily as things might fall out find occasion to surprise the Town it self also offering himself to be the Guide in the same Action And albeit that this Turk was an Enemy to be feared and distrusted yet the Christian Souldiers as men desirous both of Honour and Prey and induced also with the Probability of the attempt gave credit unto him and imbraced the same Neither failed he of his Promise neither the Christians of their Devoir in performance of the Exploit For the two Garrisons of Rab and Strigonium assembled together by the leading of this Turk surprised the Suburbs of Alba-Regalis slew all them that made resistance rifled them on all hands set them on fire and so laden with Riches and Spoil returned home again in safety At the same time also the Christians on the other side Danubius gathered an head together to conduct another Convoy of Victuals into Pesth with a Resolution to march with the same through the plain field at noon time of the day even in the Eye of the Enemy so to brave him And to this purpose the Lord Nadasti was there present with a good number of Hungarians Collonel Mesbourg with a Regiment of Almaines and the County Thurn with a number of Hussars all good Souldiers and Men of Courage desirous to have made proof thereof upon their Enemies This Convoy with the Trumpets gallantly sounding bravely maâ—ched over the Plain at mid Day the Turks from the Walls of Buda beholding the same but not daring to adventure upon it And so Pesth for want of Victuals before
an occasion to make his Profit of their Combustions But the Confirmation of the Truce and the Affairs of his House kept him in Thrace Let us see how the Turk speedâ— at Sea where he hath the Knights of Malta the Sicilians and Neapolitans and the Florentines vigilant and valiant Enemies to annoy him and cross his Designs The last year which was 1609 the Christians had no good Success loss fell particularly upon the Knights of Malta for he that fights often can hardly vanquish always The Gallion of the Order commanded by Chivalier Guidoti an Italian had made two Voyages to Sea very fortunately and brought to Malta three hundred Turkish slaves The incouragement of this good Success engaged many Knights to divers Enterprises They armed certain Gallions and made a Fleet of ten good Ships of War as unfortunate in their Courses as the Gallion of the Order had been before successful for meeting with the Turks Fleet in the Seas of Cyprus they were set upon and most of them slain or made slaves The Knight Fressinet was slain and the Red Gallion wherein he commanded taken by the Turks but it was after a whole day Fight Ambuson otherwise called Fueillade another Knight was made a Slave and his Gallion taken the Knight Ouges ran the same fortune with the loss of a Gallion Fressinet having brought a Pinnace with him to attend his Ship after some fight near unto the Gallion it escaped by night In this Voyage unfortuâ—ate for them of Malta the Gallion of the Order would needs seek some better adventure the Knights of Bailou and Rhodes did accompany him either of them with a small Gallion He set upon the Caravan of the Turks Fleet near the Island of Rhodes his successful beginning of this Combat made him hope for Victory and the number of the Enemies Vessels for a rich Booty for there were among the rest two great Gallions of the Sultans these are Ships which belong to the great Seignior's Women loaden commonly with great Riches but twenty Gallies of Rhodes seeing this fight came out of their Port to succour them and by the favour of a fair Wind drew them into safety At Malta the bruit was That the Turks Army consisting of fourscore Gallies should go and besiege the Isle of Goza whereas a Knight called Saint-Liger commanded Whereupon the Great Master had resolved to fortifie the Castle of the Island with a good Counterscarfe which he caused to be made sending thither two hundred Souldiers and thirty Knights for supply all brave Souldiers who might have made a great resistance if the Turks had attempted it but the Enemies Fleet passed on and gave them time to rest But this Year 1610 Vignancourt the Great Master of Malta sent the five Gallies of the Order into Barbary towards the Port Farino memorable for that it was the Haven where Saint Lewis the French King ended the Navigation of his days and at his return from Hierusalem and Palestina went to receive in Heaven the glorious palms of his holy Actions The Gallies of Biserta had been accustomed to fetch Palms there in that season which was in the Spring time whom the Gallies of Malta had a design to surprise But the contrary Winds and the tempestuous Seas overthrew that Enterprise yet their Voyage was not altogether unprofitable for returning toward Malta being within the Channel which divides the Island from that of Sicily they encountered with a great Gallion of Tunes armed by a Turk called Carousinan being in view of the Gallies of Malta The Raise who commanded assured his Company and smiling promised to free them from their Enemies Being so transported with Vanity as he spake confidently that he would not fear twenty of the Gallies of Malta but this his pride was soon abated with his ruine for the five Gallies came close under him and plied him so furiously with their Cannon as they sunk him The Gally wherein Verdelli an Italian Knight commanded had like to have been lost for being grapled with the Gallion if the diligence of Verdelli had not speedily retired it The Turks after the loss of their Vessel began to swim away but they were all made Slaves to serve in the Gallies of Malta who this year had no other Fruits of their generous Enterprises The Gallies of Cosmo de Medicis Great Duke of Tuskany parted from Ligorn under the Conduct of the Commander and Admiral Inghirami and running along the Coast of Barbary they took a Turkish Ship in the sight of Algier laden with Merchandise Arms and Munition of War freeing many Christian Slaves which were in it This happy beginning promised them better fortune They pass on and some twenty five Leagues beyond Algiers they go to surprise the Town of Bisquerre a small Town in Circuit but strong and well walled Inghirami drawing near unto the Coast took down his Masts lest they should discover his coming In the mean time he sent two long Boats to find some place fit for their landing the which being carefully observed Collonel Bindii landed his Men and about eleven a Clock at Night marched in good order towards the Town and forced it The Darkness of the Night kept them from spoiling it being content only to set their Guards and Sentinels in the most important Places of the Wall but day being come the Souldiers made themselves Masters of the Town which they sacked and spoiled Certain Moors and Turks during the Obscurity of the Night had retired themselves into a Mosque which they fortified They were summoned to yield but the fear of being Slaves which they could not avoid made them resolve to die in their own defence so as the Florentines having forced the Place put them all to the Sword and then embarqued their Troops having filled Bisquerre with Fire and Blood. The Night following being in the Gulph called the Bad Woman they met with a Pinnace loaden with Corn the which they took and sent to Ligorne and then they past on to encrease their Conquest Being upon the Coast of Sardinia two Galliots of Biserta did furnish them with a fair Occasion Inghirami sendeth his Gallies to pursue them who having had them in chase threescore Leagues took the one wherein they had one hundred and twenty Slaves and freed many poor Christians from the Chain who suffered the Tyranny of the Turkish Servitude They also took a Turkish Gally within half a League of Algier and spoiled it And thus triumphing over their Enemies they took their Course towards Ligorn having taken four Turkish Vessels spoiled the Town of Bisquerre and twice braved that of Algier This year was fatal for the Morisques or new Christians in Spain who being in number nine hundred thousand Persons as the original writes and had continued there from Father to Son for the space of almost nine hundred years were now in an instant banished and made Vagabonds with the blast of the Kings Mouth Men
willed them to sit down by him telling them that he was sent from Heaven to purge the World from evil and to prepare the Law of God to expel Cydan out of his Kingdom and to restore Peace unto the World wherefore he advised them not to have any commerce with Cydan nor to assist him in any sort They observed many marks upon his body he had one blue Tooth all the rest being white Hair upon either Shoulder a red Circle in the Palm of his right-hand and the proportion of a Spur upon his right foot Having gotten some Victories against Cydan and taken the Town of Morocco in the end his devillish Art failing him he was slain as you have heard Such were the Affairs of Africk in the Realms of Fez and Morocco But in Algier a wonderful drought had caused cruel Combustions it had so devoured the fruits of the Earth before their Maturity as there followed a wonderful Famine throughout the whole Land. The Turks attributed the cause of their Misery sometimes to their Sins then to the coming of the Moors who had been expelled out of Spain as a pernicious Vermin and sometimes to the licentiousness of Christians which lived in those Places Wherefore in the beginning of May this Year the Judge of the Town ordained That all the Turks should make their devout Prayers to Mahomet their Prophet to obtain Rain so necessary in that Country that the Moors should depart the Town within three days upon pain of death and that all the Christians as well free as bond-slaves should cause their Heads and their Beards to be shaven this was speedily executed for the Turks Decrees require a prompt Obedience But the miserable Moors which could not get out of Algier within their three days prefixed detained either by Sickness or some other Impediment were all cut in pieces For thirteen days there was nothing seen within the Town but Processions of Turks without Turbants crying and howling after their manner to obtain Rain from their false Prophet but he which commands Sovereignty over times from whose hand proceeds fair Weather and Rain and which makes the Earth fruitful held the Pipes of Heaven yet stopped to open them at more religious and holy Vows than the superstitious Clamours of these Infidels For Bernard Murroy of the Order of the Redemption of Captives hearing that the Turks meant to revenge their Miseries upon them and to ruine a little Chappel which the Christian Slaves had in the Prison for the pious Exercises of their Religion obtained by the means of Bius Consul of the French in Algier permission from the Dovan or Turkish Judge to make Processions and to pray unto God to send them the dew of Heaven which was so necessary for them All the Christian Slaves which were Prisoners continued their Devotions for the space of five days but on the fourth day being the Eighth of May there fell such abundance of Rain upon Algier as these poor Christians seeing their Prayers heard in the midst of the Enemies of their Faith gave infinite Thanks unto God for his great Mercy and Grace These miserable Christian Slaves were still detained in Irons and cruel Servitude by this Accident This Murroy of the Order of the Redemption of Captives accompanied with two others of the same Order had redeemed to the number of one hundred thirty and six but when he was ready to embarque them their evil Fortune would have it that the Gallies of Genoa running along that Coast landed some men near unto Algier where they took the Bassa's Son of that Town with many other Turks and amongst this number a Virgin of Algier of a very noble Family and of as rare a Beauty for the misery of these Slaves for that when as the Bassa's Son and the others were redeemed by a Frigot which the Father had sent the fair Algerian Virgin was still detained by a Captain of the Genowayes who had retired to Calvy an Island adjoyning there to satisfie his Desires with more ease upon the frail and fading perfection of this fair Slave which had deprived him of his Liberty In the mean time the Bassa of Algier seeing his Son returned with the other Turks and not the Algerian Virgin commanded that the hundred thirty and six Slaves should be put again into Irons with the three religious men which had redeemed them Thus this feminine Beauty or rather the Passion of this Genoways who holds the Possession so dear makes a great number of Christian Souls to suffer by insupportable Servitude howsoever they of his Nation flattering his disordered lust say that his Desire to win her to God and to make her a Christian caused him to keep her so carefully These suffered in Algier the loss of their Liberty but a Capuchen Friar a Florentine by Nation endured at Tunes the loss of his Life by the Cruelty of the Moors chased out of Spain and retired into those Countries This religious Man being a Slave among the Turks attended daily from Florence or from some other place money to redeem his Liberty but it happened one day disputing in a Barbers House with a Morisque concerning Christian Religion the Zeal of his Faith transported him so far as to say among divers Turks That his Religion was better than that of Mahomet's These Words took criminously in that place were reported by the Morisques to the Cadi or Judge of the Town whom they prest with such horrible Clamours and Cries as he pronounced Sentence of Death against this Capuchen He was delivered unto them and they stripped him naked leading him with Infamy through Tunes some spitting in his Face others casting Dirt at him and so they led him out of the Town where they tied him unto a Post and they being cruelly incensed by a Speech which a Morrabour or religious Turk said unto them That he among them that gave him not one Blow with a Stone should be no good Turk stoned him to death where afterwards they burnt his Body and threw the Ashes into the Wind. The Martyrdom of this Capuchen was followed by the constant Confession amidst the violence of Torments of a penitent Renegado a Florentine by Nation and Captain of the chief Gally of Chio Four French-men being Slaves in the Island of Chio in the Patron or chief Gally belonging to the Bey or Governour of the Island they resolved to recover their Liberty with the hazard of their Lives to return into France and carry into some Port of Christendome that Gally being the best appointed in the whole Haven They drew unto their Party the Captain which commanded being a Florentine Renegado Their Enterprise should have been executed when as they should go to Land to cut Wood. But whether that the Scribe were treacherous to his Companions or transported with some rash Indiscretion being on Land he spake these Words aloud the which overthrew both the design and them that projected it Ho
divided the Spoil betwixt them finally That in what sort soever the matter past they held them insupportable to all men but especially to themselves The Turks threatned to take their just Revenge the which being impossible to effect in the Country of the Vscoques for that by the Letters of the Commonwealth of Venice their Passage was stopped they resolved to be revenged upon their Subjects and recover a part of their Goods which they had lost Finally they prepared to come into the Gulph of Venice with a mighty Army the which without doubt had brought that State into great Extremities and been very prejudicial to many Provinces of Christendome But for that the Insolencies and Thefts of the Vscoques had like to have ingaged the Venetians in a dangerous War against the Turk with whom they were in League it shall neither be unpleasant not unprofitable to make a little Digression and shew what these Vscoques were About the Year 1550 there assembled together in certain places near the Sea belonging to the Princes of the House of Austria People who were cruel violent and infamous from divers parts of the Country of Chimâ—ra Dalmatia and the other Confines of Hungary and such as had been banished from the State of Venice whose delight was only to live upon Spoil and Blood. All these Thieves being thus gathered together whom they called by a general Name Vscoques as enemies to all Art and Industry to live honestly by their Labours retired themselves into a desaâ—t Country receiving no Pay from the Princes of Austria who command there Being thus by their natural Inclination given to Spoil adding thereunto the spur of Poverty nothing moved them to stay in those places but all liberty was left them to rob and spoil whereupon they applied all their Minds and Forces so as having made certain light Foists they began to make Courses at Sea with the most barbarous and impious Cruelty that ever was practised amongst the Scythians Tartarians or any other inhumane Nation whatsoever And for that it is an ordinary course for any one that will commit a great Villany to seek out some goodly Pretext to cover it so they concluded among themselves to shadow their Insolencies and Thefts with a colour to go against the Infidels wherefore in the beginning there were no Merchants were they Turks Jews or Subjects to the Turk although they were Christians but if they entred into the Gulf either to traffick or to furnish Venice with Provision and Merchandise they were taken by them their Goods divided amongst them and they forced to pay a great Ransome or to dye miserably All the Ports of the State of Venice both of Istria Dalmatia and the Islands from whence they received their Victuals and Provision were soon after shut up by these Pyrates who not content to spoil the Turks which trafficked no more by reason of their great Dangers and Loss allured by the rich Spoils which they took and the desire they had to encounter them they began to set upon the Venetian Ships forcing the Merchants whom they took to confess by Torments that the Goods belonged to Turks although in effect their chief Booty came from Christians Having drawn many unto them of their own Humours and thinking their Spoils at Sea not sufficient to satisfie their covetous Desires nor the Presents which they were to give to others to be favoured and supported in the Courts of Princes they stayed not long before they entered with all violence into the Turks Country through the Venetian Territory to whom they were as hurtful as to the Turks from whence they carried away rich Spoils and many Prisoners There was nothing that was precious rich or good but was subject to the insatiable greediness of those pittiless Thieves and Pirates if passing by Sea they came near unto the Maritine Coasts Whereupon grew the great Complaint you have heard made by the Turks threatning to be revenged upon the Estate of Venice for the insolency of the Vscoques which afterward bred a cruel War betwixt that State and the Arch-duke Ferdinand of Grets now Emperour who seemed to support them thereby to ingage the State in a War with the Turk But for that the Success thereof doth not belong to our History we will leave it to them that have written it at large On the fifteenth of November this year Sultan Achmat Chan having lived thirty years and governed that great Empire of Turkey fifteen died When he came to the Empire he was but fifteen years old He was of a good Constitution well complexioned and somewhat inclined to be fat strong and active which appeared by his Exercise in casting of a Horse-mans Mace of nine or ten pounds weight wherein he exceeded any one of his Court in memory whereof there are two Pillars set up in one of the Courts of the Seraglio at Constantinople with an Inscription as marks of his Dexterity He was by nature ambitious and proud which some hold qualities befitting his great Estate He was not so cruel as many of his Predecessors but he was much given to Sensuality and Pleasure for the which he entertained three thousand Concubines and Virgins in a Seraglio being the fairest Daughters of the Christians His Mother was a Christian of Bosna or of Cyprus and therefore it is thought he was somewhat favourable to Christians He was much delighted in Hawking and Hunting and namely for Hawking he kept in Grecia and Natolia 40000 Faulkoners who attended his coming and kept his Hawks in their several places of Charge and had good yearly Pensions Neither were his Huntsmen much fewer in number or of less Charge As the Turkish Emperours are bound by the Law of their Religion once every day to practise some manual Trade so Mahomet his Father gave himself to the making of Arrows and Achmat to the fashioning horn Rings such as the Turks wear when they draw their Bows This they do in the morning after they are ready and have said their Prayers then they call for their Exercise but it is only for form for they scarce make an Arrow or a Ring in a whole year Christian Princes at the same time with Achmat. Emperours of Germany Rodolph the Second 1577. 35. Matthias 1612. Kings Of Great Britain King James Of England 1602. Of Scotland 1567. Of France Henry the Fourth 1589. Lewis the Thirteenth 1610. Bishop of Rome Paul the V. 1605. Nought but affliction thundring out of Heaven Makes men on earth to any goodness given Nor longer than she thunders any fear That any heav'n holds any Thunderer So Mustapha while heaven restrain'd his state And held him fetter'd in his brothers hate To vertuous actions did his studies drive Was curteous pious and contemplative But when his brother could no longer live And liberty did to him power give Then pride and tyrannie his horses were And drive him alwaies past heav'ns love or fear Greatness on Goodness
we returning the same way again always spoiling we came to Erzirum And this our present Letter is written unto you for the Respect and Preservation of our Friendship and even as our Amity hath ever been hitherto sincere and firm so likewise by the Grace of God at our arrival in the happy Port it shall be in like manner maintained and continued that more cannot possibly be And so God keep you in Health The Wars growing hot in Bohemia against the Protestants year 1619 and the Emperour raising what Forces he could to suppress them the Directors or Governours of the Country wrote their Letters to Bethlem Gabor Prince of Transilvania to acquaint him with the estate of their Affairs To whom he made answer That his Country standing even in the very Jaws of the Turks whose Councils were never quiet but ever working like to the Waves of the vast Ocean and always watchful to embrace all occasions upon any discord of the Christians especially now when they had pacified all Quarrels with the Persian and had no Rebels in Asia against whom they might imploy their Forces he had propounded to himself to attend the Consent and Favour of the Othoman Emperour whereby he might take from him all occasion to make any irruption into the neighbour Countries and have the better means to imploy his best means to reconcile the Discords among the Christians wherefore having sent unto Constantinople to acquaint the Grand Seignior with his Intent and to crave his Favour he received Letters from thence the 17 th of August whereby he was assured of the Grand Seignior's Consent and Favour Whereupon he resolved notwithstanding the opposition of the House of Austria the Pope of Rome and others of that Faction to take Arms in defence of the Bohemians promising to be in September following upon the Confines of Moravia unless he found some stay in Hungary Being advertised of the State of Bohemia and Moravia he levied an Army at Clausenburg and entered into the Upper Hungary whereas most of the Barons submitted themselves unto him only Humanoie a great man in that Country opposed himself but not able to make his party good he fled into Polonia After which he sent his Army being eighteen thousand strong and took Filek Ternau Vacci Novigrade and others after which he seised upon Neuheusal the Governour being delivered bound unto him The Palatine of Hungary wrote Letters to Redei General of the Prince of Transilvania's Army wishing him to consider what the Forces of the Kings of Spain and France were with the House of Austria and their Allies and that the Electors of the Empire some excepted would send Aid unto the Emperour who answered That he doubted not of the Power of those Kings and that the Electors would send Supplies unto the Emperour yet he hoped that before they came all should be ended and their Dinners should be provided Soon after the Prince of Transilvania came to Presburg with his Army a Town of note in Hungary whereas their Kings are usually crowned The News thereof coming to Vienna they sent 3000 Souldiers with three pieces of Ordnance down the River of Danow who entred the Suburbs on the 13 th of October the Night was very stormy and rainy and the Transilvanians taking this Opportunity charged them and slew the greatest part their Commander flying away with some few The Suburbs being taken Bethlem Gabor sent to the Palatine to know whether he would yield the Town and Castle without force giving him some time to resolve who after Consultation with some Noble-men they resolved to yield and so the Town was delivered into his hands After which he sent part of his Army under good Commanders into Austria to the Gates of Vienna where they committed great spoil the particular relation whereof I leave to the History of the Emperour's Lives to which it doth properly belong In November Bethlem Gabor Prince of Transilvania and the Estates of Hungary sent Ambassadors to Prague where they propounded divers Articles unto the Council and amongst others That they should joyntly send Ambassadors to the Grand Seignior and that the Prince of Transilvania should negotiate the Business And for that the Kingdom of Hungary was much exhausted whatsoever should be taken in Stiria Carinthia and Carniola should be united unto it to the end it might be the better able to resist the Turk all which tended to the prejudice and ruine of the House of Austria The Prince of Transilvania having taken divers Towns in Hungary belonging to the Emperour as King of Hungary and entred Austria in hostile manner in favour of the Bohemians knowing that he had thereby much incensed the Emperour and the whole House of Austria and that if he should prevail over the Bohemians the whole burthen of the War would lye upon him he therefore in the end of this year sent an Ambassador with Presents to Constantinople to crave assurance of the Grand Seignior's Aid and Support upon whose Favour he had always depended in case the Emperour should invade Transilvania where being countenanced by many of the chief Bassaes he had assurance of Sultan Osman's Support and Protection the which he confirmed by a solemn Oath under his hand as followeth The Great Turk's Oath to Bethlem Gabor Prince of Transilvania Sultan Osman BY the Grace of God unconquerable Turkish Emperour swears by the Highest Almightiest and Almighty Gods Holiness by his Kingdom by the substance of the Heavens the Sun the Moon and the Stars by the Earth and by all under the Earth by the Brains and all the hairy Scalp of my Mother by my Head and all the strength of my Soul and Body by the holy great Mahomet and by my Crcumcisiâ—n That I thee my Brother and Son Bethlem Gabor succeeding King of Hungary in no manner of way in thy great and weighty Affairs will leave though it be to the Overthrow of my Kingdom to be brought to nothing untill there shall be no more left but my self or four or five Turks at the most yet will I be still obliged to defend thee and all those that do any ways appertain unto thee And if thou shalt have need of me I will be always ready to go with thee And in case this my promise shall in any wise be frustrated then let Gods Iustice fall upon my Head and destroy me and my Posterity and wipe away whatsoever belongeth unto me and gather it together into a Rock of Stone or subsâ—ance of Earth and that the Earth may cleave in sunder and swallow me up Body and Soul. Dated at Constantinople the fifth of Ianuary 1619. Bethlem Gabor being assured by this Oath of Protection made by the Grand Seignior year 1620 in the beginuing of the year 1620 he called an Assembly of the Estates of Hungary at Presburg whither Ambassadors wâ—re sent from the King of Bohemia and the States of that Country with the incorporated Provinces where a perpetual League was
concluded betwixt them and afterwards concluded at Prague where among other Articles it was concluded that forasmuch as Necessity did chiefly require that a Peace should be concluded and inviolably kept with the Turk therefore a new Ambassie should be sent to the Grand Seignior from all the confederate Kingdoms and Provinces and that Bethlem Gabor should take upon him the chief care of that business but yet in such sort as the Bohemians and incorporated Provinces should send their Ambassadors with the Hungarians and bear their shares of all that should be disbursed as well for the Presents as for the Ambassadors Charges In Iune following Bethlem Gabor went to an Assembly of the Estates of Hungary at Neuhusal where he propounded divers heads unto the States That he desired nothing more than to restore the Kingdom of Hungary so miserably afflicted to Liberty and that they might enjoy their Religion and Priviledges That he had spared no cost for the lawful defence of the Country and for a Testimony that he desired Peace he had refused the Crown which the Estates offered him at Presburg That the ground of Peace was to maintain the League which they had begun with the Bohemians That he had always desired Peace with the help of other Princes so as it were sincere and without Fraud or Deceit for the obtaining whereof he had assisted his Confederates miserably afflicted That he knew for certain the Emperour desired not Peace but War having suffered the Cossacks to enter into Hungary and to spoil many Places with Fire and Sword and denied passage for the Ambassadors of Bohemia and Austria for this cause they were not now to treat of Peace but of War and to consult how it might be begun and maintained for the levying of Money which is the sinews of War for the furnishing of their Forts upon the Frontiers and for the speedy sending of Ambassadors to the Turkish Emperour lest being engaged in an intestine War there might be some attempts made upon those bordering Forts Having delivered his Mind unto the Estates there came divers Ambassadors thither from Bohemia Austria Silesia and Lusatia Venice Poland and Turky The Venetian Ambassador was content their Common-wealth should enter into the League and the Turk made offer to conclude a perpetual League with them On the five and twentieth day of August Bethlem Gabor Prince of Transilvania was proclaimed King of Hungary by the Palatine at the instance of the Turkish Ambassador and with the consent and applause of most part of the Estates of the Country After which he levied a great Army of thirty some say fifty thousand Horse and Foot and made many Ensigns with divers Emblems and Devices which being known the Protestants of Vienna with the Consent of the Emperour wrote unto him humbly entreating him to spare the City and Country for their innocent Wives and Childrens sakes but in the mean time all the Citizens were commanded to make Provision of Victuals for six Months There came News to Constantinople of a strange Apparition or Vision which was seen at Medina Talnabi in Arabia whereas Mahomet their great Prophet was buried to visit whose Tomb the Turks use to go in Pilgrimage but they must first go to Mecha which is some few days Journey off and there they take a Ticket from the Grand Seigniors Beglerbeg else they are not allowed to go to Medina This Vision continued three Weeks together which terrified the whole Country for that no Man could discover the truth thereof About the twentieth of September there fell so great a Tempest and so fearful a Thunder about Midnight as the Heavens were darkned and those that were awake almost distracted but the Vapours being dispersed and the Element clear the People might read in Arabian Characters these words in the Firmament O why will you believe in Lies Between two and three in the Morning there was seen a Woman in white compassed about with the Sun having a cheerful Countenance and holding in her Hand a Book coming from the North-west opposite against her were Armies of Turks Persians Arabians and other Mahometans ranged in order of Battel and ready to charge her but she kept her standing and only opened the Book at the sight whereof these Armies fled and presently all the Lamps about Mahomets Tomb went out for as soon as ever the Vision vanished which was commonly an hour before Sun rising a murmuring Wind was heard whereunto they imputed the extinguishing of the Lamps The antient Pilgrims of Mahomets Race who after they have visited this Place never use to cut their Hair were much amazed for that they could not conceive the meaning of this Vision only one of the Deruices which is a strict religious order amongst the Turks like unto the Capuchins among the Papists and live in contemplation stepped up very boldly and made a Speech unto the Company which incensed them much against him so as this poor Priest for his plain dealing lost his Life as you shall hear The sum of his Speech was this That the World had never but three true Religions every one of which had a Prophet first God chose the Jews and did Wonders for them in Aegypt and brought them forth by their Prophet Moses who prescribed them a Law wherein he would have maintained them if they had not been obstinate and rebellious and fallen to Idolatry whereupon he gave them over and scattered them upon the face of the Earth Then presently after he raised a new Prophet who taught the Christian Religion This good man the Jews condemned and crucified for a seducer of the People not moved with the Piety of his Life his great Miracles not his Doctrine Yet after his Death the preaching of a few Fishermen did so move the Hearts of Men as the greatest Monarchs of the World bowed to his very Title and yielded to the command of his Ministers But it seems they grew as corrupt as the Iews their Church being dismembred with the distinction of the East and West committing Idolatry again by setting up of Images with many other idle Ceremonies beside the corruption of their Lives so as God was weary of them too and not only sent divisions among them but forsook them dispossessing them of their chiefest Cities Hierusalem and Constantinople yet God is still the Governour of the World and provides himself of another Prophet and People raising our great Mahomet and giving way to our Nation so as no doubt we shall be happy for ever if we can serve this God aright and take Example by the fall of others But alas I tremble to speak it we have erred in every point and wilfully broken our first Institutions so as God hath manifested his Wrath by many evident signs and tokens keeping our Prophet from us who prefixed a time to return with all happiness to his People so as there are now forty years past by our account Wherefore this strange and fearful Vision
departs 203 a b. his Speech to the Senate at his return ib. b. W. WAldeck General of the Lunenburg and Brunswick Forces in Candia slain there 206 a. Earl of Winchelsea sent Ambassadour to the Port 97 a. his Answer to the Captain-Pasha proposing to him to hire some English Ships to serve in the Wars against Candia 166. a. Wirtemberg slain at the Siege of Newheusel 315 b. Wisozki Ambassadour from Poland to the Port his insolent behaviour there 232 â— Y. YAmboli a famous Hunting of the Grand Signior there 159 a. Z. ZAtmar besieged by Abaffi 281 b. Forced the City but could not take the Cittadel ib. b. Taken by Tekely 283 a. Zechelhyd revolts from the Emperour to Apafi Prince of Transylvania 146 a. The End of the TABLE S. Paul Rycaut many years Consul of Smyrna now his Brittanique Maj ties Resident at Hamburgh and Fellow of the Royall Societie THE HISTORY OF THE TURKS BEGINNING With the Year 1679. Being a full Relation Of the Last Troubles in Hungary with the Sieges of Vienna and Buda and all the several Battles both by SEA and LAND between the CHRISTIANS and the TVRKS until the End of the Year 1698 and 1699. IN WHICH The Peace between the Turks AND THE Confederate Christian Princes and States was happily Concluded at Carlowitz in Hungary By the Mediation of His Majesty of Great Britain and the States General of the Vnited Provinces With the Effigies of the Emperors and others of Note Engraven at Large upon Copper which Compleats the Sixth and Last Edition of the History of the Turks In Two Vol. in Folio By Sir PAVL RYCAVT Kt. Eighteen Years Consul at Smyrna now his Majesty's Resident at Hamburg and Fellow of the Royal Society LONDON Printed for Robert Clavell in St. Paul's Church-Yard and Abel Roper against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet M DCC TO THE King's Most Excellent MAJESTY WILLIAM III. King of Great Britain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. Great SIR THE Dedication of this following History of the Turks may most justly be Addressed to the Clemency and Patronage of Your Majesty for Two Reasons First Because the greatest Part of this Treatise was Writteâ— at Hamburg whilst I was actually employed for the space almost of Eleven Years in the Service of Your Majesty the which I hope will not be looked upon as a Point of my Demerit or Neglect in my Duty to have taken out so many Hours as this Work might Require from the Service of Your Majesty For I can safely say and that Your Majesty's Secretaries also in England and Abroad can Attest for me that I have been diligent in my Office and have neglected nothing therein which my Duty and Services to Your Majesty might require and expect from me for it was Written at my Vacant Hours when nothing of my other Services could give me the least Avocation But what may chiefly oblige me farther to this Dedication is the Healing Powerful and Successful Hand which Your Majesty hath Applied by Your Ambassadors in making that Peace at Carlowitz between the Christians and the Turks which will ever be remembred in Future Ages and which as Your former Actions shewed the World You were a great Captain in the Arts of War so this will give good Proof You were a Wise and Prudent Governor in the Exercises of Peace And may deserve to have that Motto inserted in Your Escocheon Beati sunt Pacifici And so may Your Majesty be always Blessed and Prosperous in this Life and Your Great Good Works Rewarded in Heaven Which are the most Devout Prayers of Your MAIESTY's Most Obedient Subject and most Humble Devoted and Dutiful Servant Paul Rycaut Hamburg Jan 15. 1700. THE PREFACE TO THE READER Courteous Reader I Would not have Thee entertain a worse Opinion of this History by Reason of the Place where it was Wrote and Finished being at a far distance both from Constantinople and Vienna Though perhaps it might have been more lively had its Colours been laid on in the Places themselves where the Actions were performed and at a time when the Humour of the Turks and the Idea I conceived of their Actings had taken so strong an Impression in my Mind that whilst I was upon the Place I could suffer nothing to pass my Pen without its due Observation Being thus accustomed to such Contemplations as these in my more Youthful Days I could not let pass the continual News and the constant Intelligences I received from Hungary and other Parts which were the Seats of War between the Christians and the Turks without making some Reflections thereupon After which I might justly challenge the Privilege of an Exauctorate or of a Miles Emericus And I think I need not Blot any more Paper for the future on any Subject relating to the Turks for having arrived at that great Period of the last Wars concluded between the Emperor of Germany and all his Allies against the Turks It may appear how much the Ottoman Force is able to avail when it is put into the Scale and Ballance against all Christendom It hath been an ancient Custom and Policy amongst the Turks in the time of their prosperous Successes by which their Empire was enlarged never to continue a War longer than for three Years in which time they always advanced considerably and would make no Peace with their Neighbours until their Triumphs and Acquisitions would answer the expences and effusions of their Blood and Treasures After which they commonly fixed Twenty Years for the Settlement and Security of those new Conquests and Plantations in which time many young Soldiers being Born and Bred up in Arms they not only took those Habitations for their Native Soil but esteemed them also to be by the Mahometan Religion obliged ever to defend and maintain them But these last Wars have quite put the Turks out of their Ancient Methods for instead of maintaining a War no longer than Three Years they have been forced to continue it for more than Twenty to the great Ruin and Destruction of their Empire I have always been of Opinion That the Turks could never maintain a VVar for longer than Three Years I mean with benefit and profit to the advancement of the Ottoman Empire of which I once made very perspicuous Observations Whilst I was in the Camp with them I found the Timariots very poor and wanting at the end of that Term so that they stoal from each other their Bridles and Saddles Lances and all other necessaries of War and would excuse themselves by saying that they could not do otherwise in so long a War of more than their Three Years And in like manner the Janisaries by their ancient Constitution might challenge a Privilege to quit the Service at the end of the Month of October and in case they were not called they might then Disband themselves on St. Demetriu's Day which is the 28th Day of October at which time the Janisar Aga could not without
but only to maintain those Liberties which were established by Law and confirm'd by several Diets In fine He beseeched his Holiness to Iudge of his Intentions by this Declaration rather than by the Sinister Reports of his Enemies to whom he wished a long Life and a happy Pontificate The Pope having received this Letter assembled a Congregation of the Cardinals at which the Ministers of the Emperor and the King of Poland were present to deliberate and consider what Answer was fitting to be returned thereunto The Season of the year being now far advanced both sides prepar'd for War. The Seraskier called KaraI brahim having taken his Farewel of the Grand Seignior and Great Vizier departed from Adrianople in the Month of May and arrived at Belgrade where he found a Body of 60.000 Men of which he sent one half to the Army designed for Poland with which Recruit they became a Hundred thousand strong and lay Encamped near the City of Nicopolis With the remainder the Seraskier marched to Buda where he joyned with 20.000 more and expected the Auxiliary Troops of Asia which amounted unto 30.000 effective Men so that the whole Force this year of the Ottaman Army in Hungary only amounted unto 80.000 Men besides 15.000 which were appointed for the Guard of the Bridge of Eseck Nor were the Preparations less considerable at Vienna thô a diversion was much fear'd of the Imperial Forces by the Jealousies which the Arms of France gave in Flanders and upon the Rhine and the Pretentions which the French Ministers were daily making at Ratisbon and in other Courts of the Empire by which there was some appearance as if a Check would be given to the smooth and prosperous proceedings of the Imperial Forces in Hungary This surmise was cherished by those who were desirous to clap up a Peace with the Turk alledging that it was impossible to carry on a War in Hungary and at the same time resist the formidable Force of France in Alsatia and on the Confines and perhaps in the very Heart of the Empire But God who by his Divine Providence Governs all things was pleased out of his Compassion to Christendom to incline the Heart of that King to be Christian and to Accord a Truce with the Empire for some years that so he might take off the Scandal of being a Friend to the Turks and of interrupting the Progress of the Christian Arms against the Common Enemy to the Faith of Christ. In fine The dread of a French War being vanished the whole Gross of the Imperial Army came to refund it self upon the Turks and was in number and quality as follows The Infantry were in all Twenty seven Regiments 55080 The Cavalry all armed with Back and Breast 12800 Dragoons 5600 Polanders hired and paid by the Emperor 4000 Croats who were Horse 3200 One Regiment in Vienna 1200 Twenty Independent Companies in Rab Gran and Comorra 3000 In all 84880 Besides the Confederate Army under the Duke of Bavaria which made about 20.000 Men so that the whole Christian Army this year composed a Body In all 104880 Men But how numerous soever this Army seemed to be yet after the Garrisons were out of it supply'd and Forces sent into Alsatia and to the Rhine and considerable Detachments into Croatia and Stiria and Parts of the Upper Hungary the main Body remaining with the Duke of Loraine did not amount to above Forty thousand Men with which he designed the Siege of Buda This was an Enterprise becoming the Valour of so great a Captain for the Town was Defended by a Garrison of Forty six Chambers of Ianisaries each consisting of One hundred and fifty Men besides Spahees and the Militia of Rascia which in all composed a Body of Twelve thousand effective Men. The City of Buda it self is raised on a Hill and is naturally very strong under it there is another Town Built by the Turks which is called the Lower Buda But before Approaches could be made hereunto it was judged necessary to secure the Navigation down the Danube for carrying the heavy Cannon and Provisions necessary for maintenance of the Siege which could not be done but by taking the strong City of Vicegrade with the Castle which so far commanded the River that no Boats or Vessels could pass down the Current without being infested by the Cannon of the Place For Vicegrade is Situated on a Rock on the side of the Danube between Gran and Buda but much nearer to the latter and is fortified by a Castle erected upon a small Hill. This place hath been so considerable in former times that it was the Residence of the Hungarian Kings of which there remain great Ruins to this day of sumptuous and magnificent Palaces The Crown of the Kings of Hungary was anciently conserved in this place but as the Turks advanced in their Conquests for better security it was removed to Presburg This Crown is of a different Figure from that which other Princes use for it is very low with a Cross on the Top encompassed with four Leaves of which one is larger than the other three This Crown is held in great estimation by the Hungarians being as they say brought down from Heaven by an Angel and planted on the Head of their King St. Stephen It being necessary as we have said to take this place to make the way clear and open unto Buda the Duke of Loraine caused a Body of Horse to pass the Bridge of Gran and because the Country was full of Woods and Inclosures all the Baggage and Incumbrances of the Camp were left under the Cannon of Gran with a Guard of four Regiments of Foot and a Detachment of Six hundred Horse besides four Battalions of Count Kaiserstein Commanded by General Hailewell with the rest of the Army the Duke of Loraine marched away and having pitched his Camp about an hour's distance or three English Miles from Vicegrade he with some other Officers took a view of the place And on the 16 th day of Iune by break of day in the Morning he raised his Camp and by nine a Clock the same Morning the Foot and Dragoons had taken their Post upon a Hill where they brought up some Mortar-pieces and Cannon and began to Batter the Town But it being consider'd that this would be a long work an Assault was resolved as the shortest and most expedite course to put an end to this Action Count Ernest of Staremberg disposed and directed in what manner the Attack should be made and the Duke of Newburg commanded during the time of it's Execution The Cavalier Rosne in despight of the Enemies Fire broak in at the first Gate and being come to the second the Baron of Asti with his Granadiers threw himself over the Walls into the City by which time Rosne having broak in at the second Gate the Defendants began to give ground and retreat into the Castle
VIII 1592. 13. Leo the XI 1605. 26. days Paul the V. 1605. THE LIFE OF ACHMAT The First of that Name Eighth Emperour of the Turks year 1604 MAhomet the late Sultan in the midst of his excessive Pleasures by untimely Death taken away Achmat the elder of his two Sons yet living who was to succeed him in the Empire to prevent the usual and insolent Tumults of the Janizaries and other Souldiers of the Court at the change of the Emperours and to take from them all Occasions of discontentment by the Counsel of the great Bassaes before he took upon him the Government caused an exceeding great sum of Money viz. two millions and an half as a token of his Bounty to be distributed amongst them the Spahi and Silictars his chief Horse-men receiving thereof ten Crowns a man with five Aspers a day more to increase their Pay and the Janizaries thirty Crowns a man and one Asper a day more of ordinary pay they of his Court but especially the chief Officers tasting of this his bounteous Liberality also With which so great a largess all men well contented he in a most rich and stately Chariot so placed as that all men might well see him was in great Majesty carried through all the chief Streets of Constantinople the People on every side gazing upon him and still as he passed by them prosecuting him with their most joyful and happy Acclamations Some wishing that he being but young might as another Solyman begin his Reign with the Conquest of Malta as had the other with the Conquest of the Rhodes and other some as heartily praying that with glorious and victorious Conquests he might be like unto Mahomet â—he Great whom he was then reported much to resemble In which so great and publick Magnificence he being about fifteen years old was with all the accustomed Solemnities openly crowned every man wishing unto him a most long and happy Reign And albeit that no great fruit was for the present from so young and tender a Plant to be expected yet nevertheless by his Authority and in his Name many good Orders were taken for the relief of his Subjects with most heavy Grievances generally oppressed during the loose and careless Reign of his Father His Grandmother also a most proud ambitious and imperious Woman and withal exceeding rich who with great Authority at her Pleasure over-ruled all in the time of the Reign of her Son Mahomet he now removed from the State as not fit for her to have to do therein and so deprived her of all her former Power and Command The Persian Ambassadour whom his Father in his displeasure had close shut up he set at liberty and with him sent the Bassa of Aleppo to intreat of Peace with the great Shaugh of Persia who not long before as was reported had recovered the great City of Tauris and was then preparing himself for new Conquests Which Report for the motion of Peace with the Persian discovered in his Subjects their divers opinions concerning himself some condemning his Patience as not beseeming the Othoman Emperours unto whom Fury and Rage had always made them a way unto their great and dreadful Conquests even against the most puissant Armies and strongest Towns and Fortresses of their Enemies and some others to the contrary praising therein his Wisdom in seeking by fair means now in the beginning of his Reign to disarm his Enemies when they might most hurt him at his better opportunity in his settled estate to oppress them for ever So the Actions of Princes are like unto strange Lights appearing by Night in the Air which hold mens Eyes busied with the intentive beholding of them some thereof divining well and some others evil according to the diversity of the beholders conceits and humours The Treaty for Peace also in Hungary was notwithstanding the death of Mahomet by the Bassa of Buda still continued who as he said by the new Sultan authorised by Letters incited the Governour of Strigonium to repair unto some such convenient Place as wherein the matter might be safely concluded Upon which motion the Governour with the rest of the Commissioners departing from Strigonium the fourth of February came to Collonitz's Camp from whence they were by the Souldiers most bravely conducted along the Banks of Danubius unto the Ships which lay ready for them to carry them down the River to Pesth during which time of their Passage nothing was to be seen or heard but Fire and Smoak and the thundering of the great Artillery both from Pesth and Buda the Christians and the Turks both striving to excell each other in these their shews of Joy and Tryumph The Governour with the rest of his Company being happily arrived at Pesth met there with a number of the better sort of the Turks sent thither by the Bassa to meet him and in his Name â—o greet him who with a thousand Honours again received and saluted them All shews of Kindness and signs of the happy success of the Negotiation begun And now the Christians desirous to excell the Turks as well in Courtesie as in Valour appointed a number of them the next day to go to Buda to invite certain of the chiefest and most honourable men amongst the Turks unto a Banquet at Pesth who willingly accepted of the offer and so came six hundred of the better sort of them over the Danuby to Pesth where the feast was most sumptuously and magnificently prepared for them There were ten fair and rich Pavillions set up for the Entertainment of them a little distant from Pesth in a fair place and fit for this purpose In the first whereof were placed three very proud and stately Tables At the first of which Tables on the right hand were set the Commissioners for the Emperour with the two Bassaes and one Mufti or Arch-Priest with a Mitre upon his Head a long furred Gown upon his Back and under that a Robe of most fine and exceeding rich Silk Upon the left hand at the same Table were placed certain of the Turks Lords and other great men At the other two Tables were set other of the best sort of the Turks mingled with the Christians and so at all the other Tables in like order were set a Christian and a Turk until that the six hundred Turks were placed with as many Christians among them who by their good Countenance and Behaviour one of them to another might have seemed to have been all of one and the same Belief Nation and Country The Turks after the manner of their Superstition would not sit down before the setting of the Sun which being set they with a thousand Ceremonies to the imitation of their Arch-priest set themselves down at the Tables in order as is aforesaid and there merrily reposed themselves until nine of the Clock at night At which time the Tables with great reverence taken away the Turks as men well contented and full
of Joy returned to Buda the Instruments of Musick Trumpets and Drums on every side sounding about them with much glee and as it were witnessing unto Heaven and Earth the great Contentment they had received And yet was all this fair shew nothing else but deep Dissimulation mixt with most foul Treachery for a little before their departure they of Pesth were advertised That the Turks in great number well appointed were come out from Buda to surprise Pesth during the time of the Feast being in hope that the Christians all busied in this Action had left the Walls of the Town unfurnished of defence But they too well acquainted with their Treacheries to put any trust or confidence in their fair shews had as well provided for the Defence and Safety of the Town as for the Magnificence of the Feast abroad By which means the Turks disappointed of their intended purpose were in the attempting thereof repulsed and so glad to return as they came back again to Buda The next day after the Commissioners for the Emperour complained unto the Bassa and the rest of the Turks Commissioners of this so treacherous dealing who excused themselves as altogether ignorant thereof disavowing the Action for want of Success which had it been effected they would to the uttermost have shamefully maintained An ordinary course among the Great with Speech and Countenance in shew to condemn that for want of effect which they in Heart and Mind could for their own Profit have wished to have been performed Nevertheless the Turks the next day as if no such thing had been meant requested the Christian Commissioners to come to Buda as they had done to Pesth but they as well by Proof as by Report perceiving the evil meaning of the Turks excusing themselves returned to Strigonium as loth any more to adventure themselves into the Power of their faithless Enemies yet left they Geisberg at Pesth with Commission to continue the Negotiation for Peace with the Bassa of Buda if he should find him thereunto disposed or any hope of bringing the Treaty to good effect or issue Mahomet the late Sultan had a little before his Death as is before declared set at Liberty the County Ysolan carried away Prisoner to Constantinople after the taking of Alba-Regalis and sent him with Letters of Credence to intreat of a Peace to be made with the Emperour with promise to yield himself again Prisoner if he failed to obtain the same for whom the French Ambassador became Pledge He having now delivered his Letters of Credence unto the Emperour and commanded to say what he had farther in charge declared That the Great Sultan offered to deliver unto his Majesty the strong Towns of Buda Alba-Regalis and Canisia in exchange of Transilvania and Valachia whereunto he laid claim promising on his part to make a most firm and sure Peace with the Emperour for the time to come and to give thereof such assurance as should of him reasonably be demanded The Bassa of Buda also amongst other the fair Remonstrances of Peace had offered unto the Emperour's Commissioners to restore Canisia and Agria for Pesth Hatwan and Vacia together with the Remission of all such Payments and Tributes as were by the Emperour due unto the Great Sultan for the Kingdom of Hungary All which fair Shews and Offers though much unreasonable were nothing but windy Words to delay the time and subtil Baits to deceive the Christians for the Event and Issue which giveth life to all Actions with a form unto them agreeable hath by Experience taught the Christians That all the glorious and glozing Proceedings of the Turks in this business of the Peace so much wished and expected of the Christians were but Nets and Snares wherewith to intangle them with the vain hope thereof until that they in the mean time might fortifie their Towns with new Supplies of Men Munition Victuals and whatsoever else was needful the more easily afterward to annoy them at their Pleasure and so to laugh at their Simplicity and light belief For Mahomet being dead and Achmat his Son yet by reason of his Minority under the Tuition of his Mother and other the great Bassaes succeeding in his Place the Turks aggravated the Conditions of the Peace and propounded them so far from reason as that any man might see them now to have no more desire or regard of Peace after that they had dispatched that for which they seemed before desirous thereof insomuch that they sent a Messenger in Post from Constantinople unto the Bassa of Buda to forbid him upon the pain of his Head any farther to continue the Treaty of Peace but forthwith to renew the War. So this Peace so much expected and now of the People generally holden for as good as concluded suddenly vanished into Smoak nothing remaining of that Body composed of so many Wishes more than a vain Expectation now dispersed with the Wind of the Turkish Treachery And yet during the time of this Negotiation for Peace sought for by the Turks both by often Letters and Messengers many a solemn Oath had passed both from the Sultan Mahomet and from the Visier Bassa for their faithful and sincere dealing in the Treaty thereof as By the God of Heaven and Earth By the Books of Moses By the Psalms of David and By the Holy Evangelists Oaths much used of Turks and reserved for their greatest Solemnities and strongest Assurances of their Leagues and Promises all which for all that having served but as Baits and Trains to beguile the simple and well-meaning men lay now neglected and unregarded such is the faith and assurance which men have from faithless and untrusty men The Treaty of Peace thus broken off it was forthwith by some bruited That Achmat the Great Sultan under the Conduct of the Visier Bassa his Governour was himself in Person with a most huge Army about to come into Hungary some others in the mean time reporting that he was letted so to do by reason of the Persian Wars whereunto he was of necessity to send the greatest part of his Forces so that he would but only send one of his great Bassaes with the remainder of his so great an Army against the Christians in Hungary being before sworn never to return again unto Constantinople until he had brought the Countries of Transilvania and Valachia with the remainder of Hungary under the Obeisance of the great Sultan together with the Country of Austria and especially the strong City of Vienna the end of the Turkish Emperours Conquests and that to this purpose the Grand Seignior had with great rigour in all places levied great sums of Money upon his Subjects for the maintenance of his so great an Army It was by others reported also That only the Preparations for so great an Army should be made this year the Turks being resolved to do much therewith the next year and therefore willing to bestow much in