the Duke of Lorraine, flushed with victory, hurled their masses upon the disheartened foe, and the Turks were routed with enormous slaughter.  Seven thousand gory corpses of the dead strewed the plain.  Many thousands were driven into the river and drowned.  The fortress was taken, sword in hand; and the remnant of the Moslem army, in utter discomfiture, fled down the Danube, hardly resting, by night or by day, till they were safe behind the ramparts of Belgrade.

Both the German and the Polish troops were disgusted with Leopold.  Having reconquered Hungary for the emperor, they were not disposed to remain longer in his service.  Most of the German auxiliaries, disbanding, returned to their own countries.  Sobieski, declaring that he was willing to fight against the Turks, but not against Tekeli and his Christian confederates, led back his troops to Poland.  The Duke of Lorraine was now left with the Austrian troops to struggle against Tekeli with the Hungarian patriots.  The Turks, exasperated by the defeat, accused Tekeli of being the cause.  By stratagem he was seized and sent in chains to Constantinople.  The chief who succeeded him turned traitor and joined the imperialists.  The cause of the patriots was ruined.  Victory now kept pace with the march of the Duke of Lorraine.  The Turks were driven from all their fortresses, and Leopold again had Hungary at his feet.  His vengeance was such as might have been expected from such a man.

Far away, in the wilds of northern Hungary, at the base of the Carpathian, mountains, on the river Tarcza, one of the tributaries of the Theiss, is the strongly fortified town of Eperies.  At this remote spot the diabolical emperor established his revolutionary tribunal, as if he thought that the shrieks of his victims, there echoing through the savage defiles of the mountains, could not awaken the horror of civilized Europe.  His armed bands scoured the country and transported to Eperies every individual, man, woman and child, who was even suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents.  There was hardly a man of wealth or influence in the kingdom who was not dragged before this horrible tribunal, composed of ignorant, brutal, sanguinary officers of the king.  Their summary trial, without any forms of justice, was an awful tragedy.  They were thrown into dungeons; their property confiscated; they were exposed to the most direful tortures which human ingenuity could devise, to extort confession and to compel them to criminate friends.  By scores they were daily consigned to the scaffold.  Thirty executioners, with their assistants, found constant employment in beheading the condemned.  In the middle of the town, the scaffold was raised for this butchery.  The spot is still called “The Bloody Theater of Eperies.”