Matters being thus arranged, General Seckendorf took the command of the Austrian troops, with the assurance that he should be furnished with one hundred and twenty-six thousand men, provided with all the implements of war, and that he should receive a monthly remittance of one million two hundred thousand dollars for the pay of the troops.  The emperor, however, found it much easier to make promises than to fulfill them.  The month of August had already arrived and Seckendorf, notwithstanding his most strenuous exertions, had assembled at Belgrade but thirty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry.  The Turks, with extraordinary energy, had raised a much more formidable and a better equipped army.  Just as Seckendorf was commencing his march, having minutely arranged all the stages of the campaign, to his surprise and indignation he received orders to leave the valley of the Danube and march directly south about one hundred and fifty miles into the heart of Servia, and lay siege to the fortress of Nissa.  The whole plan of the campaign was thus frustrated.  Magazines, at great expense, had been established, and arrangements made for floating the heavy baggage down the stream.  Now the troops were to march through morasses and over mountains, without suitable baggage wagons, and with no means of supplying themselves with provisions in so hostile and inhospitable a country.

But the command of the emperor was not to be disobeyed.  For twenty-eight days they toiled along, encountering innumerable impediments, many perishing by the way, until they arrived, in a state of extreme exhaustion and destitution, before the walls of Nissa.  Fortunately the city was entirely unprepared for an attack, which had not been at all anticipated, and the garrison speedily surrendered.  Here Seckendorf, having dispatched parties to seize the neighboring fortress, and the passes of the mountains, waited for further orders from Vienna.  The army were so dissatisfied with their position and their hardships, that they at last almost rose in mutiny, and Seckendorf, having accomplished nothing of any moment, was compelled to retrace his steps to the banks of the Danube, where he arrived on the 16th of October.  Thus the campaign was a total failure.

Bitter complaints were uttered both by the army and the nation.  The emperor, with the characteristic injustice of an ignoble mind, attributed the unfortunate campaign to the incapacity of Seckendorf, whose judicious plans he had so ruthlessly thwarted.  The heroic general was immediately disgraced and recalled, and the command of the army given to General Philippi.  The friends of General Seckendorf, aware of his peril, urged him to seek safety in flight.  But he, emboldened by conscious innocence, obeyed the imperial commands and repaired to Vienna.  Seckendorf was a Protestant.  His appointment to the supreme command gave great offense to the Catholics, and the priests, from their pulpits, inveighed loudly against him as a heretic,