Is man himself in his wild wrath."
Solyman spent two years in making preparation for another march to Vienna, resolved to wipe out the disgrace of his last defeat by capturing all the Austrian States, and of then spreading the terror of his arms far and wide through the empire of Germany. The energy with which he acted may be inferred from one well authenticated anecdote illustrative of his character. He had ordered a bridge to be constructed across the Drave. The engineer who had been sent to accomplish the task, after a careful survey, reported that a bridge could not be constructed at that point. Solyman sent him a linen cord with this message:
"The sultan, thy master, commands thee, without consideration of the difficulties, to complete the bridge over the Drave. If thou doest it not, on his arrival he will have thee strangled with this cord."
With a large army, thoroughly drilled, and equipped with all the enginery of war, the sultan commenced his campaign. His force was so stupendous and so incumbered with the necessary baggage and heavy artillery, that it required a march of sixty days to pass from Constantinople to Belgrade. Ferdinand, in inexpressible alarm, sent ambassadors to Solyman, hoping to avert the storm by conciliation and concessions. This indication of weakness but increased the arrogance of the Turk.
He embarked his artillery on the Danube in a flotilla of three thousand vessels. Then crossing the Save, which at Belgrade flows into the Danube, he left the great central river of Europe on his right, and marching almost due west through Sclavonia, approached the frontiers of Styria, one of the most important provinces of the Austrian kingdom, by the shortest route. Still it was a long march of some two hundred miles. Among the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, through which he was compelled to pass in his advance to Vienna, he came upon the little fortress of Guntz, garrisoned only by eight hundred men. Solyman expected to sweep this slight annoyance away as he would brush a fly from his face. He sent his advance guard to demolish the impudent obstacle; then, surprised by the resistance, he pushed forward a few more battalions; then, enraged at the unexpected strength developed, he ordered to the attack what he deemed an overwhelming force; and then, in astonishment and fury, impelled against the fortress the combined strength of his whole army. But the little crag stood, like a rock opposing the flooding tide. The waves of war rolled on and dashed against impenetrable and immovable granite, and were scattered back in bloody spray. The fortress commanded the pass, and swept it clean with an unintermitted storm of shot and balls. For twenty-eight days the fortress resisted the whole force of the Turkish army, and prevented it from advancing a mile. This check gave the terrified inhabitants of Vienna, and of the surrounding region, time to unite for the defense of the capital. The Protestants and the Catholics having settled their difficulties by the pacification of Ratisbon, as we have before narrated, combined all their energies; the pope sent his choicest troops; all the ardent young men of the German empire, from the ocean to the Alps, rushed to the banners of the cross, and one hundred and thirty thousand men, including thirty thousand mounted horsemen, were speedily gathered within and around the walls of Vienna.
Thus thwarted in his plans, Solyman found himself compelled to retreat ingloriously, by the same path through which he had advanced. Thus Christendom was relieved of this terrible menace. Though the Turks were still in possession of Hungary, the allied troops of the empire strangely dispersed without attempting to regain the kingdom from their domination.