At last harvest and vintage were over. Corn and fruit of all descriptions had been garnered, and there was wine in the cellars. And then? Why, then, late in the autumn, the too confiding people were massacred wholesale; and those of them who managed to escape fled back to their hiding-places.
Then followed winter, such a winter as had not often been matched in severity. The Danube, frozen hard, offered an easy passage; there was no European army to oppose them, for the heads of Christendom were fighting among themselves, and the Mongols crossed over to do on the right bank of the river what they had already done on the left.
Always rather savage than courageous, the Mongols obliged their prisoners to storm the towns, looked on laughing as they fell; cut them down themselves from behind if they were not sufficiently energetic, and drove them forward with threats and blows. When the besieged were thoroughly exhausted, and the trenches filled with corpses, then, and not till then, the Mongols made the final assault, or enticed the inhabitants to surrender, and then, with utter disregard of the fair promises they had made, put them to death with inhuman tortures. The Mongols were exceeding "slim," as people have learnt to say in these days. One example of their savagery will suffice.
The most important place on the right side of the Danube was the cathedral city of Gran, which had been strongly fortified with trenches, walls, and wooden towers by its wealthy inhabitants, many of whom were foreigners, money changers, and merchants. As the city was thought to be impregnable, a large number of persons of all ranks had flocked into it.
Batu made his prisoners dig trenches all round, and behind these he set up thirty war-machines, which speedily battered down the fortifications. Next the town-trenches were filled up, while stones, spears, and arrows fell continuously upon the inhabitants, who, seeing it impossible to save the wooden suburbs, set fire to them, burnt their costly wares, buried their gold, silver, and precious stones, and withdrew into the inner town. Infuriated by the destruction of so much valuable property, the Mongols stormed the city and cruelly tortured to death those who did not fall in battle. Not above fifteen persons, it is said, escaped.
Three hundred noble ladies entreated in their anguish that they might be taken before Batu, for whose slaves they offered themselves, if he would spare their lives. They were merely stripped of the valuables they wore, and then all beheaded without mercy.
For weeks Dora and Talabor had journeyed on, avoiding all the main roads, travelling by the roughest, most secluded ways, and seldom falling in with any human beings, or even seeing a living creature save the wild animals, which had increased and become daring to an extraordinary degree.
Wolves scampered about in packs of a hundred or more, and over and over again Talabor had been obliged to light a fire to keep them off. He had done it with trembling, except when they were in the depths of the woods, lest what scared the wolves should attract the Mongols.
Bears, too, had come down from the mountains, and had taken up their quarters in the deserted castles and homesteads, and many a wanderer turning into them for a night's shelter found himself confronted by one of these shaggy monsters.