Here is a specimen of the magnificence with which this historical butcher treated his fellow-creatures:—
Among the many distinctions of Soliman's reign must be noticed the increased diplomatic intercourse with European nations. Three years after the capture of Rhodes, appeared the first French ambassador at the Ottoman Porte; he received a robe of honour, a present of two hundred ducats, and, what was more to his purpose, a promise of a campaign in Hungary, which should engage on that side the arms of Charles and his brother, Ferdinand. Soliman kept his promise. At the head of 100,000 men and 300 pieces of artillery, he commenced this memorable campaign. On the fatal field of Mohacs the fate of Hungary was decided in an unequal fight. King Lewis, as he fled from the Turkish sabres, was drowned in a morass. The next day the sultan received in state the compliments of his officers. The heads of 2,000 of the slain, including those of seven bishops and many of the nobility, were piled up as a trophy before his tent. Seven days after the battle, a tumultuous cry arose in the camp to massacre the prisoners and peasants—and in consequence 4,000 men were put to the sword. The keys of Buda were sent to the conqueror, who celebrated the Feast of Bairam in the castle of the Hungarian kings. Fourteen days afterwards he began to retire—bloodshed and devastation marking the course of his army. To Moroth, belonging to the Bishop of Gran, many thousands of the people had retired with their property, relying on the strength of the castle; the Turkish artillery, however, soon levelled it, and the wretched fugitives were indiscriminately butchered. No less than 25,000 fell here; and the whole number of the Hungarians destroyed in the barbarous warfare of this single campaign amounted to at least 200,000 souls.—Foreign Quarterly Review.
LONG SNOW.
In 1614, there was one of the heaviest and longest snows which has ever been remembered in the north of England. The Parochial Register, of Wotton Gilbert, states that it began on the 5th of January, and continued to snow more or less every day, (the heaviest fall being on the 22nd of February,) till the 12th of March,—to the great loss of cattle, and of human life as well.
A GOOD BISHOP.
The great and good bishop Morton was preferred to the rectory of Long Marston, near York, four years before what is called the great plague began in that city, 1602. During this visitation, "he carried himself with so much heroical charity," says his biographer, "as will make the reader wonder to hear it." For the poorer sort being removed to the pest-house, he made it his frequent exercise to visit them with food, both for their bodies and souls. His chief errand was to instruct and comfort them, and pray for them and with them; and, to make his coming the more acceptable, he carried usually a sack of provision with him for those that wanted it. And because he would have no man to run any hazard thereby but himself, he seldom suffered any of his servants to come near him, but saddled and unsaddled his own horse, and had a private door made on purpose into his house and chamber. It was probably during this plague that the village of Simonside (in the chapelry of South Shields) was, according to tradition, so entirely depopulated, that the nearest townships divided the deserted lands. There is another tradition worthy of notice, that when the plague raged with great violence at Shields, the persons who were employed about the salt works entirely escaped the infection.
When the London mob was excited, by the movers of rebellion, against the bishop, this excellent prelate, on his way to the House of Lords, was almost torn to pieces. "Pull him out of his coach!" cried some; others, "nay he is a good man;" others, "but for all that he is a bishop!"—"I have often," says his biographer, heard him say, he believed he should not have escaped alive if a leading man among that rabble had not cried out, "Let him go and hang himself," which he was wont to compare to the words of the angel uttered by Balaam's ass. At that time he was seventy-six years of age, and, on that account, when the protesting prelates were, for this act of duty, committed to the Tower, he was remitted to the custody of the usher; and then, so little had he regarded the mammon of unrighteousness, that he had scarcely wherewith to defray the fees and charges of his confinement.