hich both armies withdrew into winter-quarters. The
campaign of 1664 opened also to the advantage of the Ottomans; but in
attempting the passage of the Raab, (Aug. 1,) at the fords near St
Gothard, the sudden swelling of the stream cut off the communication
between one division of their army and the other; and being attacked at
this juncture by Montecuculi, they sustained the most signal overthrow
which the Osmanlis had ever yet received from a Christian power--17,000
of their best troops were slain or drowned, and the vizir, hastily
drawing on the remains of his forces, sent proposals of peace to the
Austrian headquarters. Yet such was the indefinite awe with which the
prowess and resources of the Ottomans were at that time regarded, that
the Imperialists made no further use of their victory than to conclude a
truce for twenty years, the conditions of which, in effect, ceded all
the points for which the war had been undertaken. Abaffi was recognised
as Prince of Transylvania, and as a tributary of the Porte--the two
important fortresses of Great-Waradin and Neuhausel, which the Turks had
taken during the war, were left in their hands, and a breathing-time was
thus afforded to the two empires for the mortal struggle which was to be
decided, nineteen years later, under the walls of Vienna.

[10] "The Turk," says Montecuculi, "who is always armed, never
finds time bald, but can always seize him by the forelock: the
number of his victories, and the extent of territory which he
has taken from the Christians, and which they have never been
able to recover, sufficiently proves this, and shows the
rashness and folly of those who pretend to make light of his
power."

Notwithstanding the ill success of his arms, the vizir was received by
the sultan, on his return with the army in the ensuing spring to
Adrianople, with such extraordinary distinction, that those who had
hoped to profit by his expected fall, could explain such continued
favour only by the supposition that sorcery had been practised on the
mind of the monarch by the mother of the all-powerful minister.
Solicitous to retrieve his military reputation in the eyes of the
soldiery, Kiuprili now determined to assume in person the conduct of the
long-continued war in Crete, and to bring the struggle to a close by the
capture of Candia, the siege of which had already reached near twice the
duration of that of Troy. To supply the deficiencies of