He embarked his artillery on the Danube in a flotilla of three thousand vessels.  Then crossing the Save, which at Belgrade flows into the Danube, he left the great central river of Europe on his right, and marching almost due west through Sclavonia, approached the frontiers of Styria, one of the most important provinces of the Austrian kingdom, by the shortest route.  Still it was a long march of some two hundred miles.  Among the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, through which he was compelled to pass in his advance to Vienna, he came upon the little fortress of Guntz, garrisoned only by eight hundred men.  Solyman expected to sweep this slight annoyance away as he would brush a fly from his face.  He sent his advance guard to demolish the impudent obstacle; then, surprised by the resistance, he pushed forward a few more battalions; then, enraged at the unexpected strength developed, he ordered to the attack what he deemed an overwhelming force; and then, in astonishment and fury, impelled against the fortress the combined strength of his whole army.  But the little crag stood, like a rock opposing the flooding tide.  The waves of war rolled on and dashed against impenetrable and immovable granite, and were scattered back in bloody spray.  The fortress commanded the pass, and swept it clean with an unintermitted storm of shot and balls.  For twenty-eight days the fortress resisted the whole force of the Turkish army, and prevented it from advancing a mile.  This check gave the terrified inhabitants of Vienna, and of the surrounding region, time to unite for the defense of the capital.  The Protestants and the Catholics having settled their difficulties by the pacification of Ratisbon, as we have before narrated, combined all their energies; the pope sent his choicest troops; all the ardent young men of the German empire, from the ocean to the Alps, rushed to the banners of the cross, and one hundred and thirty thousand men, including thirty thousand mounted horsemen, were speedily gathered within and around the walls of Vienna.

Thus thwarted in his plans, Solyman found himself compelled to retreat ingloriously, by the same path through which he had advanced.  Thus Christendom was relieved of this terrible menace.  Though the Turks were still in possession of Hungary, the allied troops of the empire strangely dispersed without attempting to regain the kingdom from their domination.

CHAPTER X.

FERDINAND I.—­HIS WARS AND INTRIGUES.

From 1555 To 1562.

John Of Tapoli.—­The Instability Of Compacts.—­The Sultans’s Demands.—­A
Reign Of War.—­Powers And Duties Of The Monarchs Of Bohemia.—­The
Diet.—­The King’s Desire To Crush Protestantism.—­The Entrance To
Prague.—­Terror Of The Inhabitants.—­The King’s Conditions.—­The Bloody
Diet.—­Disciplinary Measures.—­The Establishment Of The Order Of
Jesuits.—­abdication Of Charles V. In Favor Of Ferdinand.—­Power Of The
Pope.—­Paul IV.—­A Quiet But Powerful Blow.—­The Progress Of The
Reformers.—­Attempts To Reconcile The Protestants—­The Unsuccessful
Assembly.