But a great campaign, at no considerable distance from the walls of Vienna, had occupied the attention of Germany during the autumn.  Mahomet had taken the field in person with a hundred thousand men, and the emperor’s brother, Maximilian, in conjunction with the Prince of Transylvania, at the head of a force of equal magnitude, had gone forth to give him battle.  Between the Theiss and the Danube, at Keveste, not far from the city of Erlau, on the 26th October, the terrible encounter on which the fate of Christendom seemed to hang at last took place, and Europe held its breath in awful suspense until its fate should be decided.  When the result at last became known, a horrible blending of the comic and the tragic, such as has rarely been presented in history, startled the world.  Seventy thousand human beings—­Moslems and Christians—­were lying dead or wounded on the banks of a nameless little stream which flows into the Theisa, and the commanders-in-chief of both armies were running away as fast as horses could carry them.  Each army believed itself hopelessly defeated, and abandoning tents, baggage, artillery, ammunition, the remnants of each, betook themselves to panic-stricken flight.  Generalissimo Maximilian never looked behind him as he fled, until he had taken refuge in Kaschan, and had thence made his way, deeply mortified and despondent, to Vienna.  The Prince of Transylvania retreated into the depths of his own principality.  Mahomet, with his principal officers, shut himself up in Buda, after which he returned to Constantinople and abandoned himself for a time to a voluptuous ease, inconsistent with the Ottoman projects of conquering the world.  The Turks, less prone to desperation than the Christians, had been utterly overthrown in the early part of the action, but when the victors were, as usual, greedily bent upon plunder before the victory had been fairly secured, the tide of battle was turned by the famous Italian renegade Cicala.  The Turks, too, had the good sense to send two days afterwards and recover their artillery, trains, and other property, which ever since the battle had been left at the mercy of the first comers.

So ended the Turkish campaign of the year 1596.  Ancel, accordingly, fared ill in his negotiations with Germany.  On the other hand Mendoza, Admiral of Arragon, had been industriously but secretly canvassing the same regions as the representative of the Spanish king.  It was important for Philip, who put more faith in the league of the three powers than Henry himself did, to lose no time in counteracting its influence.  The condition of the holy Roman empire had for some time occupied his most serious thoughts.  It seemed plain that Rudolph would never marry.  Certainly he would never marry the Infanta, although he was very angry that his brother should aspire to the hand which he himself rejected.  In case of his death without children, Philip thought it possible that there might be a Protestant revolution in Germany,