This slight success, after so many disasters, caused immense exultation.  The Duke of Lorraine was lauded as one of the greatest generals of the age.  The pulpits rang with his praises, and it was announced that now, that the troops were placed under a true child of the Church, Providence might be expected to smile.  Soon, however, the imperial army, while incautiously passing through a defile, was assailed by a strong force of the Turks, and compelled to retreat, having lost three thousand men.  The Turks resumed the siege of Orsova; and the Duke of Lorraine, quite disheartened, returned to Vienna, leaving the command of the army to Konigsegg.  The Turks soon captured the fortress, and then, ascending the river, drove the imperial troops before them to Belgrade.  The Turks invested the city, and the beleaguered troops were rapidly swept away by famine and pestilence.  The imperial cavalry, crossing the Save, rapidly continued their retreat.  Konigsegg was now recalled in disgrace, as incapable of conducting the war, and the command was given to General Kevenhuller.  He was equally unsuccessful in resisting the foe; and, after a series of indecisive battles, the storms of November drove both parties to winter quarters, and another campaign was finished.  The Russians had also fought some fierce battles; but their campaign was as ineffective as that of the Austrians.

The court of Vienna was now in a state of utter confusion.  There was no leading mind to assume any authority, and there was irremediable discordance of counsel.  The Duke of Lorraine was in hopeless disgrace; even the emperor assenting to the universal cry against him.  In a state almost of distraction the emperor exclaimed, “Is the fortune of my empire departed with Eugene?” The disgraceful retreat to Belgrade seemed to haunt him day and night; and he repeated again and again to himself, as he paced the floor of his apartment, “that unfortunate, that fatal retreat.”  Disasters had been so rapidly accumulating upon him, that he feared for every thing.  He expressed the greatest anxiety lest his daughter, Maria Theresa, who was to succeed him upon the throne, might be intercepted, in the case of his sudden death, from returning to Austria, and excluded from the throne.  The emperor was in a state of mind nearly bordering upon insanity.

At length the sun of another spring returned, the spring of 1739, and the recruited armies were prepared again to take the field.  The emperor placed a new commander, Marshal Wallis, in command of the Austrian troops.  He was a man of ability, but overbearing and morose, being described by a contemporary as one who hated everybody, and who was hated by everybody in return.  Fifty miles north of Belgrade, on the south bank of the Danube, is the fortified town of Peterwardein, so called as the rendezvous where Peter the Hermit marshaled the soldiers of the first crusade.  This fortress had long been esteemed one of the strongest