It is now necessary to retrace our steps for a few years, that we may note the vicissitudes of Austria, while the empire was passing through the scenes we have narrated.

Ferdinand I., the brother of Charles V., who was left alone in the government of Austria, was the second son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Spain.  His birth was illustrious, the Emperor Maximilian being his paternal grandfather, and Ferdinand and Isabella being his grandparents on his mother’s side.  He was born in Spain, March 10, 1503, and received a respectable education.  His manners were courteous and winning, and he was so much more popular than Charles as quite to excite the jealousy of his imperious and imperial spirit.  Charles, upon attaining the throne, ceded to his brother the Austrian territories, which then consisted of four small provinces, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, with the Tyrol.

Ferdinand married Ann, princess of Hungary and Bohemia.  The death of his wife’s brother Louis made her the heiress of those two crowns, and thus secured to Ferdinand the magnificent dowry of the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia.  But possession of the scepter of those realms was by no means a sinecure.  The Turkish power, which had been for many years increasing with the most alarming rapidity and had now acquired appalling strength, kept Hungary, and even the Austrian States, in constant and terrible alarm.

The Turks, sweeping over Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Syria, all Asia Minor, crossing the straits and inundating Greece, fierce and semi-savage, with just civilization enough to organize and guide with skill their wolf-like ferocity, were now pressing Europe in Spain, in Italy, and were crowding, in wave after wave of invasion, up the valley of the Danube.  They had created a navy which was able to cope with the most powerful fleets of Europe, and island after island of the Mediterranean was yielding to their sway.

In 1520, Solyman, called the Magnificent, overran Bosnia, and advancing to the Danube, besieged and captured Belgrade, which strong fortress was considered the only reliable barrier against his encroachments.  At the same time his fleet took possession of the island of Rhodes.  After some slight reverses, which the Turks considered merely embarrassments, they resumed their aggressions, and Solyman, in 1525, again crossing the Danube, entered Hungary with an army of two hundred thousand men.  Louis, who was then King of Hungary, brother of the wife of Ferdinand, was able to raise an army of but thirty thousand to meet him.  With more courage than discretion, leading this feeble band, he advanced to resist the foe.  They met on the plains of Mohatz.  The Turks made short work of it.  In a few hours, with their cimeters they hewed down nearly the whole Christian army.  The remnant escaped as lambs from wolves.  The king, in his heavy armor, spurred his horse into a stream to cross in his flight.  In attempting to ascend the bank, the noble charger, who had borne his master bravely through the flood, fell back upon his rider, and the dead body of the king was afterward picked up by the Turks, covered with the mud of the morass.  All Hungary would now have fallen into the hands of the Turks had not Solyman been recalled by a rebellion in one of his own provinces.