tori,
shook off the Turkish bondage, defeated many of their armies, slew some
of their pashas, and gained the title of the Scanderbeg of the times
in which he lived. Not able to hold out, however, against so potent
an adversary, he resigned his estate to the Emperor Rudolph II., and
received in exchange the dukedoms of Oppelon and Ratibor in Silesia,
with an annual pension of fifty thousand joachims. The pension not being
well paid, Sigismund made another resignation of his principality to his
cousin Andrew Battori, who had the ill luck to be slain within the
year by the vaivode of Valentia. Thereupon Rudolph, Emperor and King of
Hungary, was acknowledged Prince of Transylvania. But the Transylvania
soldiers did not take kindly to a foreign prince, and behaved so
unsoldierly that Sigismund was called back. But he was unable to settle
himself in his dominions, and the second time he left his country in
the power of Rudolph and retired to Prague, where, in 1615, he died
unlamented.

It was during this last effort of Sigismund to regain his position that
the Earl of Meldritch, accompanied by Smith, went to Transylvania, with
the intention of assisting Georgio Busca, who was the commander of the
Emperor's party. But finding Prince Sigismund in possession of the most
territory and of the hearts of the people, the earl thought it best
to assist the prince against the Turk, rather than Busca against the
prince. Especially was he inclined to that side by the offer of free
liberty of booty for his worn and unpaid troops, of what they could get
possession of from the Turks.

This last consideration no doubt persuaded the troops that Sigismund had
"so honest a cause." The earl was born in Transylvania, and the Turks
were then in possession of his father's country. In this distracted
state of the land, the frontiers had garrisons among the mountains, some
of which held for the emperor, some for the prince, and some for the
Turk. The earl asked leave of the prince to make an attempt to regain
his paternal estate. The prince, glad of such an ally, made him
camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunder the Turks.
Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of the frontiers into what
Smith calls the Land of Zarkam--among rocky mountains, where were some
Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes, Renegadoes, and such like,
which he forced into the Plains of Regall, where was a city of men and
fortifications, strong in itsel