roughly drilled, and equipped with all the
enginery of war, the sultan commenced his campaign. His force was so
stupendous and so incumbered with the necessary baggage and heavy
artillery, that it required a march of sixty days to pass from
Constantinople to Belgrade. Ferdinand, in inexpressible alarm, sent
ambassadors to Solyman, hoping to avert the storm by conciliation and
concessions. This indication of weakness but increased the arrogance of
the Turk.

He embarked his artillery on the Danube in a flotilla of three thousand
vessels. Then crossing the Save, which at Belgrade flows into the
Danube, he left the great central river of Europe on his right, and
marching almost due west through Sclavonia, approached the frontiers of
Styria, one of the most important provinces of the Austrian kingdom, by
the shortest route. Still it was a long march of some two hundred miles.
Among the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, through which he was
compelled to pass in his advance to Vienna, he came upon the little
fortress of Guntz, garrisoned only by eight hundred men. Solyman
expected to sweep this slight annoyance away as he would brush a fly
from his face. He sent his advance guard to demolish the impudent
obstacle; then, surprised by the resistance, he pushed forward a few
more battalions; then, enraged at the unexpected strength developed, he
ordered to the attack what he deemed an overwhelming force; and then, in
astonishment and fury, impelled against the fortress the combined
strength of his whole army. But the little crag stood, like a rock
opposing the flooding tide. The waves of war rolled on and dashed
against impenetrable and immovable granite, and were scattered back in
bloody spray. The fortress commanded the pass, and swept it clean with
an unintermitted storm of shot and balls. For twenty-eight days the
fortress resisted the whole force of the Turkish army, and prevented it
from advancing a mile. This check gave the terrified inhabitants of
Vienna, and of the surrounding region, time to unite for the defense of
the capital. The Protestants and the Catholics having settled their
difficulties by the pacification of Ratisbon, as we have before
narrated, combined all their energies; the pope sent his choicest
troops; all the ardent young men of the German empire, from the ocean to
the Alps, rushed to the banners of the cross, and one hundred and thirty
thousand men, including thirty thousand mounted horsemen, were sp