It was this event which placed the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary on the brow of Ferdinand, and by annexing those two kingdoms to the Austrian States, elevated Austria to be one of the first powers in Europe.  Ferdinand, thus strengthened sent ambassadors to Constantinople to demand the restitution of Belgrade and other important towns which the Turks still held in Hungary.

“Belgrade!” exclaimed the haughty sultan, when he heard the demand.  “Go tell your master that I am collecting troops and preparing for my expedition.  I will suspend at my neck the keys of my Hungarian fortresses, and will bring them to that plain of Mohatz where Louis, by the aid of Providence, found defeat and a grave.  Let Ferdinand meet and conquer me, and take them, after severing my head from my body!  But if I find him not there, I will seek him at Buda or follow him to Vienna.”

Soon after this Solyman crossed the Danube with three hundred thousand men, and advancing to Mohatz, encamped for several days upon the plain, with all possible display or Oriental pomp and magnificence.  Thus proudly he threw down the gauntlet of defiance.  But there was no champion there to take it up.  Striking his tents, and spreading his banners to the breeze, in unimpeded march he ascended the Danube two hundred miles from Belgrade to the city of Pest.  And here his martial bands made hill and vale reverberate the bugle blasts of victory.  Pest, the ancient capital of Hungary, rich in all the wealth of those days, with a population of some sixty thousand, was situated on the left bank of the river.  Upon the opposite shore, connected by a fine bridge three quarters of a mile in width, was the beautiful and opulent city of Buda.  In possession of these two maritime towns, then perhaps the most important in Hungary, the Turks rioted for a few days in luxury and all abominable outrage and indulgence, and then, leaving a strong garrison to hold the fortresses, they continued their march.  Pressing resistlessly onward some hundred miles further, taking all the towns by the way, on both sides of the Danube, they came to the city of Raab.

It seems incredible that there could have been such an unobstructed march of the Turks, through the very heart of Hungary.  But the Emperor Charles V. was at that time in Italy, all engrossed in the fiercest warfare there.  Throughout the German empire the Catholics and the Protestants were engaged in a conflict which absorbed all other thoughts.  And the Protestants resolutely refused to assist in repelling the Turks while the sword of Catholic vengeance was suspended over them.  From Raab the invading army advanced some hundred miles further to the very walls of Vienna.  Ferdinand, conscious of his inability to meet the foe in the open field, was concentrating all his available strength to defend his capital.