ortified town not far from Raab, which
Archduke Maximilian had taken by storm two years before. Finding their
existence monotonous and payments unpunctual, they rose upon the
governor; Michael Maroti, and then entered into a treaty with the Turkish
commander outside the walls. Bringing all the principal citizens of the
town, their wives and children, and all their moveable property into the
market-place, they offered to sell the lot, including the governor, for a
hundred thousand rix dollars. The bargain was struck, and the Turk,
paying him all his cash on hand and giving hostages for the remainder,
carried off six hundred of the men and women, promising soon to return
and complete the transaction. Meantime the imperial general,
Schwartzenberg, came before the place, urging the mutineers with promises
of speedy payment, and with appeals to their sense of shame, to abstain
from the disgraceful work. He might as well have preached to the wild
swine swarming in the adjacent forests. Siege thereupon was laid to the
place. In a sortie the brave Schwartzenberg was killed, but Colonitz
coming up in force the mutineers were locked up in the town which they
had seized, and the Turk never came to their relief. Famine drove them at
last to choose between surrender and a desperate attempt to cut their way
out. They took the bolder course, and were all either killed or captured.
And now--the mutineers having given the Turk this lesson in Christian
honour towards captives--their comrades and the rest of the imperial
forces showed them the latest and most approved Christian method of
treating mutineers. Several hundred of the prisoners were distributed
among the different nationalities composing the army to be dealt with at
pleasure. The honest Germans were the most straightforward of all towards
their portion of the prisoners, for they shot them down at once, without
an instant's hesitation. But the Lorrainers, the remainder of the French
troops, the Walloons, and especially the Hungarians--whose countrymen and
women had been sold into captivity--all vied with each other in the
invention of cruelties at which the soul sickens, and which the pen
almost refuses to depict.

These operations and diversions had no sensible effect upon the progress
of the war, which crept on with the same monotonous and sluggish cruelty
as ever; but the incidents narrated paint the course of civilization more
vividly than the detailed accounts of siege and