o the fears of the French king,
against whom he had formerly declared war as a sovereign prince unjustly
expelled from his territories. He possessed great military talents, and
had threatened to enter Lorraine at the head of forty thousand men, in
the course of the ensuing summer. The court of France, alarmed at this
declaration, is said to have had recourse to poison, for preventing the
execution of the duke's design. At his death the command of the imperial
army was conferred upon the elector of Bavaria. This prince having
joined the elector of Saxony, advanced against the Dauphin, who had
passed the Rhine at Fort-Louis with a considerable army, and intended to
penetrate into Wirtemberg; but the duke of Bavaria checked his progress,
and he acted on the defensive during the remaining part of the campaign.
The emperor was less fortunate in his efforts against the Turks, who
rejected the conditions of peace he had offered, and took the field
under a new vizier. In the month of August, count Tekeli defeated a
body of imperialists near Cronstadt, in Transylvania; then convoking
the states of that province at Albajulia, he compelled them to elect him
their sovereign; but his reign was of short duration. Prince Louis of
Baden, having taken the command of the Austrian army, detached four
regiments into Belgrade, and advanced against Tekeli, who retired into
Valachia at his approach. Meanwhile the grand vizier invested Belgrade,
and carried on his attacks with surprising resolution. At length a bomb
falling upon a great tower in which the powder magazine of the besieged
was contained, the place blew up with a dreadful explosion. Seventeen
hundred soldiers of the garrison were destroyed; the walls and ramparts
were overthrown; the ditch was filled up, and so large a breach was
opened that the Turks entered by squadrons and battalions, cutting in
pieces all that fell in their way. The fire spread from magazine to
magazine until eleven were destroyed; and in the confusion the
remaining part of the garrison escaped to Peterwaradin. By this time
the imperialists were in possession of Transylvania, and cantoned at
Cronstadt and Clausinburgh. Tekeli undertook to attack the province on
one side, while a body of Turks should invade it on the other: these
last were totally dispersed by prince Louis of Baden; but prince
Augustus of Hanover, whom he had detached against the count, was
slain in a narrow defile, and his troops were obliged to