Harper´s New Monthly Magazine, 1869, Vol. 24 (Classic Reprint)
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| Partner: | buecher.de |
| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Alden, Henry Mills) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Harper´s New Monthly Magazine, 1869, Vol. 24 About the middle of the sixth century a tribe of Scythian Tartars, from the banks of the Irtish, commenced their depredations. Rapidly they subjugated and absorbed other tribes. In the course of a few ages they overran all of Egypt and all of Asia Minor, and established the most energetic and bloody military despotism earth has ever known. Early in the fourteenth century these semi-barbarians could rally beneath their banners a far more powerful army than any nation in Christendom could raise. The Turks now resolved to bring all Europe under their sway, and all Europe was appalled by the menace. They took possession of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, crossed the Straits, and with blood-dripping cimeters overran Greece. Mercilessly the Christians were massacred - the boys and the girls only being reserved as slaves, to be trained in the Moslem faith and to serve in the harems and the armies. In April, 1453, Mohammed II., with a land army of 300,000 men and a fleet of 600 vessels, laid siege to Constantinople. For fifty-three days the storm of war beat, without cessation, upon the doomed city; and then the Turks, rushing through the breaches, sword in hand, in a few hours cut down 60, 000 of the helpless inhabitants. In this terrific drama scenes were enacted too harrowing for recital, and which could not have been exceeded by an army of fiends newly arrived from Pandemonium. Thus fell the Greek empire. The crescent was unfurled proudly from the domes of Constantinople, Athens, and Corinth; and throughout the whole of the Peloponnesus the head of the Christian was crushed by the heel of the Turk. The conqueror, Mohammed II., boasting that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peter´s, in Rome, crossed the Adriatic to the shores of Italy, took Otranto, and intrenching his army there, prepared, by the energies of fire and sword, to bring the whole of the Italian peninsula into subjection to his sway. The sudden death of this stern conqueror rescued Italy from the menace, and gave a brief respite to the remainder of Christendom. Soon again the war was renewed. For two centuries wave after wave of Moslem invasion rolled up the Danube; and the plains of Transylvania and Hungary were but a constant battle-field, where Christian and Turk met in deadly strife. About the year 1560 the Turks, then in possession of a large part of Hungary, collected an immense army at Belgrade, and commenced their march for the assault of Vienna. It was green and leafy June, and the banks of the Danube, luxuriant in their summer foliage, were decorated with unsurpassing loveliness. For many days the turbaned and bannered host, beneath sunny skies and through flowery fields, sauntered along, encountering no foe. War seemed but the pastime of a gala day. Silken banners embroidered with gold floated on the breeze. Arabian chargers, gorgeously caparisoned, proudly pranced beneath their riders cased in glittering steel. Music from multitudinous bands enlivened the march. A fleet of barges, decorated in the highest style of Oriental art, co-Arered the stream, impelled by sails when the wind favored, and urged by rowers when the wind was adverse. Each night the tents were spread upon the rivers banks, and a city for more than a hundred thousand inhabitants rose as by magic, with its grassy streets, and squares, and thronging population brilliant with all he regalia of war. As a fairy vision the city rose in the rays of the declining sun. As a phantasy of night it disappeared in the earliest dawn of the morning, and the dazzling host pressed on. But the demon of war, though with music and acclaim, always leads his legions to the black day of storm and woe. The Turks had ascended the Danube about 150 miles, when they came to Zigeth, a small island which occu
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