ACT II.
SCENE I.
Enter SIGISMUND, FREDERICK, and BALDWIN, with their train.
SIGISMUND. Now say, my lords of Buda and Bohemia,
What motion is it that inflames your thoughts,
And stirs your valours to such sudden arms?
FREDERICK. Your majesty remembers, I am sure,
What cruel slaughter of our Christian bloods
These heathenish Turks and pagans lately made
Betwixt the city Zula and Danubius;
How through the midst of Varna and Bulgaria,
And almost to the very walls of Rome,
They have, not long since, massacred our camp.
It resteth now, then, that your majesty
Take all advantages of time and power,
And work revenge upon these infidels.
Your highness knows, for Tamburlaine's repair,
That strikes a terror to all Turkish hearts,
Natolia hath dismiss'd the greatest part
Of all his army, pitch'd against our power
Betwixt Cutheia and Orminius' mount,
And sent them marching up to Belgasar,
Acantha, Antioch, and Caesarea,
To aid the kings of Soria [63] and Jerusalem.
Now, then, my lord, advantage take thereof, [64] And issue suddenly upon the rest;
That, in the fortune of their overthrow,
We may discourage all the pagan troop
That dare attempt to war with Christians.
SIGISMUND. But calls not, then, your grace to memory
The league we lately made with King Orcanes,
Confirm'd by oath and articles of peace,
And calling Christ for record of our truths?
This should be treachery and violence
Against the grace of our profession.
BALDWIN. No whit, my lord; for with such infidels,
In whom no faith nor true religion rests,
We are not bound to those accomplishments
The holy laws of Christendom enjoin;
But, as the faith which they profanely plight
Is not by necessary policy
To be esteem'd assurance for ourselves,
So that we vow [65] to them should not infringe
Our liberty of arms and victory.
SIGISMUND. Though I confess the oaths they undertake
Breed little strength to our security,
Yet those infirmities that thus defame
Their faiths, [66] their honours, and religion, [67] Should not give us presumption to the like.
Our faiths are sound, and must be consummate, [68] Religious, righteous, and inviolate.
FREDERICK. Assure your grace, 'tis superstition
To stand so strictly on dispensive faith;
And, should we lose the opportunity
That God hath given to venge our Christians' death,
And scourge their foul blasphemous paganism,
As fell to Saul, to Balaam, and the rest,
That would not kill and curse at God's command,
So surely will the vengeance of the Highest,
And jealous anger of his fearful arm,
Be pour'd with rigour on our sinful heads,
If we neglect this [69] offer'd victory.
SIGISMUND. Then arm, my lords, and issue suddenly,
Giving commandment to our general host,
With expedition to assail the pagan,
And take the victory our God hath given.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II.
Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, and URIBASSA, with their train.
ORCANES. Gazellus, Uribassa, and the rest,
Now will we march from proud Orminius' mount
To fair Natolia, where our neighbour kings
Expect our power and our royal presence,
T' encounter with the cruel Tamburlaine,
That nigh Larissa sways a mighty host,
And with the thunder of his martial [70] tools
Makes earthquakes in the hearts of men and heaven.
GAZELLUS. And now come we to make his sinews shake
With greater power than erst his pride hath felt.
An hundred kings, by scores, will bid him arms,
And hundred thousands subjects to each score:
Which, if a shower of wounding thunderbolts
Should break out of the bowels of the clouds,
And fall as thick as hail upon our heads,
In partial aid of that proud Scythian,
Yet should our courages and steeled crests,
And numbers, more than infinite, of men,
Be able to withstand and conquer him.
URIBASSA. Methinks I see how glad the Christian king
Is made for joy of our [71] admitted truce,
That could not but before be terrified
With [72] unacquainted power of our host.
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER. Arm, dread sovereign, and my noble lords!
The treacherous army of the Christians,
Taking advantage of your slender power,
Comes marching on us, and determines straight
To bid us battle for our dearest lives.
ORCANES. Traitors, villains, damned Christians!
Have I not here the articles of peace
And solemn covenants we have both confirm'd,
He by his Christ, and I by Mahomet?
GAZELLUS. Hell and confusion light upon their heads,
That with such treason seek our overthrow,
And care so little for their prophet Christ!
ORCANES. Can there be such deceit in Christians,
Or treason in the fleshly heart of man,
Whose shape is figure of the highest God?
Then, if there be a Christ, as Christians say,
But in their deeds deny him for their Christ,
If he be son to everliving Jove,
And hath the power of his outstretched arm,
If he be jealous of his name and honour
As is our holy prophet Mahomet,
Take here these papers as our sacrifice
And witness of thy servant's [73] perjury!
[He tears to pieces the articles of peace.]
Open, thou shining veil of Cynthia,
And make a passage from th' empyreal heaven,
That he that sits on high and never sleeps,
Nor in one place is circumscriptible,
But every where fills every continent
With strange infusion of his sacred vigour,
May, in his endless power and purity,
Behold and venge this traitor's perjury!
Thou, Christ, that art esteem'd omnipotent,
If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God,
Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts,
Be now reveng'd upon this traitor's soul,
And make the power I have left behind
(Too little to defend our guiltless lives)
Sufficient to discomfit [74] and confound
The trustless force of those false Christians!—
To arms, my lords! [75] on Christ still let us cry:
If there be Christ, we shall have victory.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III.
Alarms of battle within. Enter SIGISMUND wounded.
SIGISMUND. Discomfited is all the Christian [76] host,
And God hath thunder'd vengeance from on high,
For my accurs'd and hateful perjury.
O just and dreadful punisher of sin,
Let the dishonour of the pains I feel
In this my mortal well-deserved wound
End all my penance in my sudden death!
And let this death, wherein to sin I die,
Conceive a second life in endless mercy!
[Dies.]
Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, URIBASSA, with others.
ORCANES. Now lie the Christians bathing in their bloods,
And Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend.
GAZELLUS. See, here the perjur'd traitor Hungary,
Bloody and breathless for his villany!
ORCANES. Now shall his barbarous body be a prey
To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe,
Through shady leaves of every senseless tree,
Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin.
Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams,
And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell,
That Zoacum, [77] that fruit of bitterness,
That in the midst of fire is ingraff'd,
Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride,
With apples like the heads of damned fiends.
The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame,
Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf,
]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end.
What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil,
Which we referr'd to justice of his Christ
And to his power, which here appears as full
As rays of Cynthia to the clearest sight?
GAZELLUS. 'Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord,
Whose power is often prov'd a miracle.
ORCANES. Yet in my thoughts shall Christ be honoured,
Not doing Mahomet an [78] injury,
Whose power had share in this our victory;
And, since this miscreant hath disgrac'd his faith,
And died a traitor both to heaven and earth,
We will both watch and ward shall keep his trunk [79] Amidst these plains for fowls to prey upon.
Go, Uribassa, give [80] it straight in charge.
URIBASSA. I will, my lord.
[Exit.]
ORCANES. And now, Gazellus, let us haste and meet
Our army, and our brother of Jerusalem,
Of Soria, [81] Trebizon, and Amasia,
And happily, with full Natolian bowls
Of Greekish wine, now let us celebrate
Our happy conquest and his angry fate.
[Exeunt.]