most formidable, in 1683. The city escaped only through
the timely assistance of the Poles under Sobieski. Ten years later the
tide had changed. The Austrian armies, led by Prince Eugene, defeated
the Turks in a succession of decisive battles, and put an end for ever
to danger from that quarter. Hungary and Transylvania became permanent
Austrian possessions.

Amid such alternations of fortune the growth of Vienna was necessarily
slow. In 1714, after six centuries of existence, its population
amounted to only 130,000. The city retained all the characteristics
of a fortress and frontier-post. The old part, or core, now called
the "inner town," was a compact body of houses surrounded by massive
fortification-walls and a deep moat. Outside of this was a _rayon_ or
clear space six hundred feet in width, separating the city from
the suburbs. These suburbs, Leopoldstadt, Mariahilf, etc., now
incorporated with the inner city in one municipal government,
were then small detached villages. From time to time the rayon was
encroached upon by enterprising builders, with the connivance of the
emperor or the garrison commander. The disastrous wars with France
at the end of the last century and beginning of the present were in
reality a gain to Vienna. Napoleon's bombardment and capture of the
city in 1809, before the battle of Wagram, demonstrated conclusively
that the fortifications were unable to withstand modern artillery.
Accordingly, after the general European peace had been established
by the Congress of Vienna, the city was declared officially by the
emperor to be no longer a fortification. But the walls and ditch, so
far as they had not been injured by the French, were still suffered
to remain: they were substantially intact as late as 1848, and were
strong enough to enable the revolutionists who had possession of
the city to hold it for forty-eight hours against the army of Prince
Windischgraetz.

The final reconstruction of the city was not begun in earnest until
1857, and occupied ten years or more. The walls were leveled to
the ground, the moat was filled in, a broad girdle-street (the
Ringstrasse) laid out to encircle the inner city, and the adjacent
ground on either side was converted into building-lots. In this brief
space of time Vienna was changed from a quasi-mediaeval town to a
modern capital of the most pronounced type. The Ringstrasse became a
promenade like that of the old Paris boulevards, but broader, grander