Nearly twenty years later when another Tartar invasion was threatened, the brave monarch found more prompt assistance, and pushed forward to the Carpathians before the Mongolians could reach the plain. This time the Hungarians won so signal a victory that the enemy, after losing it is said upwards of fifty thousand men, fled back to the East. Looking down on the magnificent city now, it is difficult to realize that distant past, or the past of three hundred years later when the Turks, after long and heroic struggles—after the national Hungarian hero, Hunyadi Janos, had defeated them in ten pitched battles—at length overcame the Hungarians and captured Buda.
For nearly a century and a half—a period in which the country was in a state of perpetual change with rival or usurping rulers—Buda was the centre of an important pashalik; the crescent flew over the castle, and the church of St. Matthias became a mosque. A relic of the Turkish occupation is to be seen in the small octagonal Turkish chapel over the grave of a holy Mohammedan, Sheikh Gül-Baba, in Buda. When the treaty of Karlowitz was signed in 1699, it was specifically undertaken that this monument should be properly preserved, and thus it is that, more than two centuries after the last pasha was driven out of Buda, the visitor may still see there a Turkish shrine, may still visit baths reminding him of the day when there was a slave market in the town and the ruling pasha had his harem on the Margaret’s Island in mid-Danube.
The Turkish occupation was disputed again and again, and Buda was often, but unsuccessfully, besieged. It was in 1686 that that occupation came to an end, when the Duke of Lorraine, in command of an army said to have been made up of German, French, English and Spanish as well as Hungarian soldiers, stormed this formidable height and took the powerful citadel. The struggle on which so much depended—the capture of Buda meant the expulsion of the Turks from the kingdom—has been summarized thus:—
“Pressed on all sides by the Austrian force, the Turks now craved a suspension of arms, and sent an aga to wait upon Lorraine for that purpose. But the Duke coolly replied, ‘I have but one duty to perform; namely to conduct the war, now declared against the Sultan your master; I will therefore make it my business to attack your general wherever I can meet him. In the meantime, I will despatch your letter to the emperor, who will acquaint you with his pleasure.’ Surprised at this answer, the aga employed every means to shake the Duke’s resolution, and endeavoured to make interest with the officers of his staff. But the only reply was, ‘Such is the Duke’s pleasure, and his mind once made up, no power on earth can turn him aside.’
“Carrying back to the Vizier this stern and uncompromising answer, the aga re-entered the fortress of Buda. A scene of hurried preparation and fearful suspense ensued. The storm was gathering fast around the devoted fortress, and the thunder at last bursting with redoubled fury on its walls, a breach was speedily effected—the Turks fought with desperation; and retreating from bastion to bastion, poured their deadly shot into the serried ranks of the besiegers. But imitating the example of their intrepid commanders, the Christian host surmounted every danger. Before sunset they took possession of those castled heights, and hoisted the Austrian banner on the tower of the old Gothic church, which still consecrates the spot, and points to the fearful scene of massacre which followed.” The pasha in command is said to have been killed “fighting in the breach with a Roman bravery.” Thereafter it is recorded the Turks were hunted through the Alföld plain like deer.
When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was journeying through Hungary, thirty years later than that recapture of Buda, she said that nothing could be more melancholy than “to reflect on the former flourishing state of that kingdom, and to see such a noble spot of earth almost uninhabited. Such are also the present circumstances of Buda, once the royal seat of the Hungarian kings whose palace there was reckoned one of the most beautiful buildings of the age, now wholly destroyed, no part of the town having been repaired since the last siege but the fortifications and the castle which is the present seat of the governor-general.”
Presumably, by the castle, Lady Mary meant the citadel on St. Gellert’s Hill, the key to the possession of the town. From this hill, as has been said, we get one of the most impressive views of Budapest, though the extensive vineyards, which used to clothe the neighbouring slopes and form a notable item in the prospect, have been destroyed by phylloxera. It was from this hill, says the tradition, that Etzel “hurled his offending brother into the Danube.”
Possibly it is the dim influence of that tradition, outweighing for a time that of the martyred bishop, which has given rise to another one that I find recorded only by Dr. Beattie, in whose words I chiefly give it. The sanctity of the spot, according to the authority of the people of the neighbourhood, has not protected it from being an occasional rendezvous for evil spirits! During the awful inundation of 1838, the summit of St. Gellert’s Hill was crowded with these unhallowed visitors, and such was their mirth and revelry, whilst from their commanding point they looked down on the perishing city, that peals of fiendish laughter bore testimony to the pleasure with which they viewed the destruction of our race. Afterwards, too—although we do not vouch for the truth of so weighty a charge—it appeared that various astronomical instruments belonging to the observatory had been turned to diabolical purposes; for the first visitor who made use of the glasses after the fiendish appearances, could see nor sun, nor moon, nor stars as hitherto—but in place thereof, he beheld a dance of witches, with Prince Beelzebub at their head—and what was unspeakably worse, with a near and dear earthly relative of his own, acting as chief partner to his Satanic Majesty. Frantic at the sight he shouted out, “Holy St. Gellert! Is that my own wife?” No reply—but down dropped the glass from his hand, and, happily for the sight of others, was broken in pieces! He rushed home; and there, at the hearth-side, sat his wife, rocking their baby in its cradle. But, as he very shrewdly observed, she was greatly flurried and disconcerted. He was, fortunately, a learned man, and having read that edifying author “Adolphus Scribonius de Purgatione Sagarum, etc.,” he remembered that this philosopher lays it down as an indisputable fact that witches weigh infinitely less than other persons; for, says he, “the devil is a spirit and subtle being, and penetrateth so thoroughly the bodies of his votaries, as to make them quite rare and light.” Now, this thought no sooner struck him than the experimental astronomer resolved to put the matter to the test, and seizing his wife with both arms, he threw her up almost to the ceiling, and might indeed have done so, it is said, with but three fingers, for in fact, despite her apparent bulk, she did not weigh four ounces! If ever philosopher had just cause to run mad, Herr Reisenschloss undoubtedly had. To the glory of his favourite author his experiment had been only too perfectly successful. When he looked at his wife, the sleeping baby in the cradle, and all the home surroundings, he became quite frantic, rushed out of the house, ravingly related his frightful story to a sympathizing friend, and subsequently found refuge in a public hospital. Afterwards it became a favourite maxim, says the grave historian in the neighbourhood of the hill, that husbands should never consult the stars too closely on “St. Gellert’s Eve.” It is a story which, for its proper presentation, like an earlier one recorded, calls for the genius of a Thomas Ingoldsby.
Reference at the beginning of this fearsome tale to the inundation of 1838 seems to call for fuller mention. The Pest side of the river is a plain, and in the spring of that year—the Danube having been covered with ice over three feet thick—when the break-up began the country was flooded in a disastrous fashion. At the first menace a breakwater of earth and timber six feet high was thrown up on the river-side all along the town front, but—
“Lo, upon a silent hour,