It is here that Hungary’s greatest poet, Petöfi, perished in the battle of Schässburg on the 31st of July, 1849, when the revolted Hungarians, led by the Polish general Bem, were crushed by the superior numbers of the Russian troops come to Austria’s assistance.
Petöfi’s body was never found, nor had any one seen him fall, and for many years periodical reports got afloat in Hungary that the great poet was not dead, but pining away his life in the mines of Siberia. There seems, however, to be no valid reason for believing this tale, and more likely his was one of the many mutilated and unrecognizable corpses which strewed the valley of Schässburg on that disastrous day.
SCHÄSSBURG.
(Reprinted from publication of the Transylvanian Carpathian Society.)
To the west of the town we catch sight of a solitary turret perched on the overhanging cliff above the river; it is said to mark the place where a Turkish pacha, besieging the town with his army, was slain by a shot fired from the goldsmiths’ tower. The pacha was buried here sitting on his elephant, and this tower raised above them, while that other tower from whence the shot was fired, held ever since in high honor, was decked out with a golden ceiling. This latter has now fallen into ruin, and the inscription on the pacha’s resting-place has become almost illegible, but the legend still runs in the people’s mouths, and is told in verse as follows:
“By Schässburg, on the mountain
A turret gray doth stand,
And from the heights it gazes