“Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.  All they shall speak and say unto thee,

“’Art thou also become weak as we?  Art thou become like unto us?  Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations!’

“They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee, saying, ’Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, and didst shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners?’”

The death of Charles Gustavus was the signal for the strife of war to cease, and the belligerent nations soon came to terms of accommodation.  But scarcely was peace proclaimed ere new troubles arose in Hungary.  The barbarian Turks, with their head-quarters at Constantinople, lived in a state of continual anarchy.  The cimeter was their only law.  The palace of the sultan was the scene of incessant assassinations.  Nothing ever prevented them from assailing their neighbors but incessant quarrels among themselves.  The life of the Turkish empire was composed of bloody insurrections at home, and still more bloody wars abroad.  Mahomet IV. was now sultan.  He was but twenty years of age.  A quarrel for ascendency among the beauties of his harem had involved the empire in a civil war.  The sultan, after a long conflict, crushed the insurrection with a blood-red hand.  Having restored internal tranquillity, he prepared as usual for foreign war.  By intrigue and the force of arms they took possession of most of the fortresses of Transylvania, and crossing the frontier, entered Hungary, and laid siege to Great Wardein.

Leopold immediately dispatched ten thousand men to succor the besieged town and to garrison other important fortresses.  His succors arrived too late.  Great Wardein fell into the hands of the Turks, and they commenced their merciless ravages.  Hungary was in a wretched condition.  The king, residing in Vienna, was merely a nominal sovereign.  Chosen by nobles proud of their independence, and jealous of each other and of their feudal rights, they were unwilling to delegate to the sovereign any efficient power.  They would crown him with great splendor of gold and jewelry, and crowd his court in their magnificent display, but they would not grant him the prerogative to make war or peace, to levy taxes, or to exercise any other of the peculiar attributes of sovereignty.  The king, with all his sounding titles and gorgeous parade, was in reality but the chairman of a committee of nobles.  The real power was with the Hungarian diet.