lasted without interruption for two days and a night.  Hunyady himself was several times in deadly peril.  Once his horse was shot under him.  He was to be found wherever assistance, support, encouragement, were needed.  At last, on the morning of the third day, as the Turks, who had received reinforcements, were about to renew the attack, the Waywode of Wallachia passed over to the side of the Turks.  The Waywode belonged to the Orthodox Eastern Church.  He had joined Hunyady on the way, and his desertion transferred six thousand men from one side to the other, and decided the battle in favor of the Turks.  The Hungarians, worn out by fatigue, fell into a discouragement, while Hunyady had no fresh troops to bring up to their support.  The battle came to a sudden end.  Seventeen thousand Hungarian corpses strewed the field, but the loss of the Turks was more than thirty thousand men.

Hunyady, again left to himself, had again to make his escape.  At first he only dismissed his military suite; afterward he separated from his faithful servant in the hope that separately they might more easily baffle their pursuers.  Next he had to turn his horse adrift, as the poor animal was incapable of continuing his journey.  Thus he made his way alone and on foot toward the frontiers of his native land.  After a while, looking down from the top of a piece of elevated ground, he perceived a large body of Turks, from whom he hid himself in a neighboring lake.  He thus escaped this danger, but only to encounter another.  At a turn of the road he came so suddenly upon a party of Turkish plunderers as to be unable to escape from them, and thus became their prisoner.  But the Turks did not recognize him, and, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, the rest went on in search of more prey.  His two guards soon came to blows with one another about a heavy gold cross which they had found on the person of their captive, and, while they were thus quarrelling, Hunyady suddenly wrenched a sword out of the hand of one of the two Turks and cut off his head, upon which the other took to flight, and Hunyady was again free.

In the mean time, however, George, the Prince of Servia, who took part with the aristocratic malcontents, and who, although a Christian, out of pure hatred to Hunyady had gone over to the side of the Turks, had given strict orders that all Hungarian stragglers were to be apprehended and brought before him.  In this way Hunyady fell into the hands of some Servian peasants, who delivered him to their Prince.  Nor did he regain his liberty without the payment of a heavy ransom, leaving his son Ladislaus as hostage in his stead.

He thus returned home amid a thousand perils, and with the painful experience that Europe left him to his own resources to fight as best he could against the ever-advancing Turks.  The dependencies of the Hungarian crown, Servia and Wallachia—­on whose recovery he had spent so much blood and treasure—­instead of supporting him, as might be expected of Christian countries, threw themselves in a suicidal manner into the arms of the Turks.  They hoped by their ready submission to find favor in the eyes of the irresistible conquerors, by whom, however, they were a little later devoured.