From the fortress is to be had an extensive view over the low-lying country through which the Danube here flows, of its broad stream, and of the wooded islands formed by its branchings, while to the south are the beautiful hills and woodlands of the Fruska-Gora. After the river has turned southwards again, looking back over the winding course of the stream, the Gibraltar of the Danube remains long visible. Karlowitz, the next stopping place, on the right bank, is not only celebrated as having given its name to the wine of the district, but is a point of historical importance as that where the Treaty of Karlowitz was signed in 1699. That treaty, which removed the Turkish frontier to Servia, and by which Austria acquired the greater part of Hungary and Transylvania, was signed in a building above the town, where now stands the chapel of Mariafried.
The scenery here is pleasantly diversified, with its wooded and vine-grown hills, while the river is broken up by many islands. At Slankamen, on the right, is an obelisk commemorating a defeat of the Turks in 1691; a little beyond, on the left Tisza (Theisseck), is situated at the confluence of the Danube with the greatest of its tributaries—the Tisza (Theiss), which, rising in the Carpathians, flows for about seven hundred and fifty miles west and south, through the great Hungarian plain of the Alföld to its junction here with the Danube. As we approach Zimony (Semlin), its Millenary monument and castle remains are to be seen on the hill above it, while beyond we get a glimpse of the towers of Belgrade.
At Zimony (Semlin) we reach the last Hungarian town on the right bank of the Danube—a town which as a frontier station has been, and is, a place of some importance. From where the Drave flows into the Danube to where the Save comes in just below Zimony (Semlin), is the eastern boundary of the old kingdom of Croatia, now incorporated with that of Hungary. Largely masked by trees, much of the town is hidden from the water, and when we get into it we find in its low white houses, its shops and larger buildings a blending, as it were, of east and west. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are described as German, and the rest are mainly Croatian and Servian. Its small market square, a little distance from the quay, with its booths on which clothes, beads, and cheap jewellery, fruit, vegetables and meat are exposed, offers an animated scene. Here, too, are said to be many gipsies, and here, in the hotel court-yard, is one of the few places in which I heard one of the gipsy bands for which Hungary has long been famous.
The gipsies (zigeuner) have given their name to the lofty hill, the Zigeunersberg by the Danube side, on which are the ruins of the castle of Hungary’s chief national hero, John Hunyadi (whose name in its Hungarian form, Hunyadi Janos, is familiar all the world over as that of a medicinal mineral water!). The hill should be climbed for the view it affords far over the Danubian plain; of the broad flowing Danube, where it is joined by the seemingly greater Save; of the valleys of these two rivers; and of the towns and roofs of the “White City” of Servia—Belgrade. It is a magnificent view, and while contemplating it we may well remember something of the famous hero who lived in the old-time castle hundreds of years ago—within sight of the town before which he had repeatedly shown his prowess in fighting the Turks in days when the Crescent threatened to dominate a large part of Europe.
Though the historians tell us that Hunyadi was the son of a small landowner, popular tradition gives him a more romantic origin, for the story runs that his father was no less a person than King Sigismund. It is said that the king, being in Transylvania, became enamoured of a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth Morsiani, to whom he presented a ring, saying that if she ever brought it to the palace, he would fulfil the promises which he had made “to load their child with honours.” Some months later Elizabeth married a Wallachian nobleman, and soon after gave birth to a son, to whom was given the name of Janos or John. When King Sigismund had his camp in the neighbourhood, Elizabeth visited him, showing the child and the ring, on which occasion the king renewed his promises, and told her to go to Buda, which, after her husband’s death, she did. One day little John was playing with his mother’s ring, when a crow flew down and carried it off. The boy, we may be sure, cried out, when the king, who happened opportunely to be passing, heard him, shot the bird, and was greatly astonished to recognize the token which he had given the Transylvanian maiden some years before. On finding out who the boy was, the monarch adopted him, gave him a military education, and when he grew up, gave him the estate of Hunyadi, in Transylvania, and many villages, and granted him as his coat-of-arms a crow carrying a ring in its beak. Thus it was that John acquired his surname, and also the nickname of Corvinus, which is most frequently associated with his son Matthias. This is one of several versions of the romantic story which has grown up about the fame of Hungary’s national hero—the man who in the fifteenth century saved the kingdom again and again, who again and again drove back the tide of Turkish conquest. Gibbon says of him that “the idea of a consummate general is not delineated in his campaigns. The White Knight [Philip de Commines calls him the White Knight of Wallachia] fought with the hand rather than the head, as the chief of desultory Barbarians, who attack without fear, and fly without shame; and his military life is composed of a romantic alternation of victories and escapes. By the Turks, who employed his name to frighten their perverse children, he was corruptly denominated Jancus Lain, or the wicked; their hatred is the proof of their esteem; the kingdom which he guarded was inaccessible to their arms.”
Though divided from each other but by a short branch of the Danube, which here forks round the large War Island, and the broad Save, Zimony (Semlin) and Belgrade differ greatly in appearance and character. From the tree-surrounded Croatian town at the foot of its green hill, we pass on to the Servian city with the pleasantest of anticipations, for Belgrade from the Zigeunersberg is remarkably picturesque with its fortifications and other buildings on the river-side hill, and the towers and roofs of the main part of the town showing beyond. But our anticipations are not altogether realized, and it is with something of disappointment that we wander about the town of warlike and tragic memories.
Arriving at Belgrade, we are for the first time made aware of the necessity of carrying passports. To be exact, passport formalities have to be gone through twice—once on the quay at Zimony before we are allowed to embark, and secondly at Belgrade, before we are permitted to get any further than the police office. Leaving the quayside on the Save, to which the steamer has brought us, we may take one or other of the steep streets up into the central part of the town; perhaps the best method is to follow the road to the left, and so reach the Kalemegdan Park, on the citadel hill, whence we get good views over the two rivers and the town, and may recall the distant times when the citadel of Belgrade was a kind of key fortress in the long struggle between the Turks and their northern neighbours; when it was occupied now by Turks and now by Magyars.
Here Hunyadi Janos for a time was commandant, and here when the Moslems held it, he fought for its recovery; here, too, when a huge Turkish army encompassed the place, came Hunyadi again with the warlike monk Capistran, and with a much inferior force, compelled the investing army to raise the siege and retire to the south. The Sultan, Mahomet II. had attacked the place with an army of two hundred thousand men on the land sides, and with a powerful flotilla from the river, and the Christian population had given up all hope, when Hunyadi appeared with such a force as the preaching of Capistran could bring to the task of upholding the Cross and expelling the hated Turk. So fiercely did the Hungarian army attack the Turkish boats, that they seemed to carry all before them, and the waters of the Danube are described as having run red with blood. Before the day ended thirty thousand Turks are said to have been slain, Belgrade was relieved and the besiegers in retreat.
The importance of the strategic position at the junction of two great rivers, and with an outlook towards the great plain on the north, seems to have been recognized in early times, for the Celts are said to have first raised fortifications on this rocky summit in the third century before our era. By them it was named, and for a thousand years it remained, Singidunum—during which period it was successively in the possession of the Romans, the Huns, Sarmatians, Goths and Gepids, and then again in that of the Romans. In the eighth century the Franks, and in the ninth the Bulgarians, secured it, and held it until the eleventh, when they were evicted by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. The Hungarians, under King Stephen, conquered it, to be followed by Greeks, Bulgarians and Hungarians again. In the fourteenth century it seems first to have fallen into the hands of the Servians, who later ceded it to Hungary. Then it was alternately occupied by Hungarians and Turks during the long period of their intermittent warfare, while later Austria and Turkey held it by turn for brief periods. Austria captured it in 1688 to lose it two years later, again in 1717 to hold it until 1739, and yet again in 1789 to lose it in 1792. Then it was Servians and Turks who alternately disputed the mastership, and it was only in 1866 that the Turks finally gave up the citadel. It was presumably the Austrian attack of 1789 which was commemorated in the wonderful alliterative verses, the opening lines of which have become so popular that they almost deserve inclusion among our nursery rhymes. The lines, which were written in 1828 by the Rev. B. Poulter, Prebendary of Winchester, are not widely familiar in extenso, and may therefore be appropriately quoted when we are regarding Belgrade as a much-besieged city:—
“An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,