In the annals of the Church there is another great victory over the Turks recorded which once more demonstrated the power of the rosary.  It was the great victory in the campaign against the Turks at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

After the Turks had been defeated at sea, they endeavored to conquer on land.  They forced their way to Hungary, and had taken possession of eight provinces, when Emperor Charles vii sent an army against them under the command of Prince Eugene.  This army was composed of only seventy thousand men.  With this meager force Prince Eugene defeated two hundred thousand Turks and laid siege to Belgrade, their stronghold.

Prince Eugene, before engaging the enemy, implored the help of the Blessed Virgin, through the rosary, and then with confidence in God’s assistance went to battle and to glorious victory.  Thirty thousand Turks were slain on the battlefield; the others fled.  The rosary again had won the victory, and on the feast day of the Blessed Virgin.

In the same manner as the rosary was a successful weapon against heretics and other enemies of the Church, it has demonstrated its wonderful efficiency in individual cases of stress, and of such I will mention a few instances.  In the year 1578 a fearful epidemic devastated the city of Pavia.  The terrified people made a public vow to build a chapel to our Blessed Lady of the Rosary if the epidemic would cease.  And the very day the vow was made the epidemic did abate.  A similar case happened in Cologne, where people were saved from an epidemic after such a vow had been made.  That cases like these are innumerable’ is manifested by the many chapels built as a result of such vows, and by the votive tablets in pilgrimage churches dedicated to Mary.  Sight is restored to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, the use of their limbs to the crippled, diseases of all kind are cured, by invoking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin by means of the devotion of the rosary.

The conversion of a hardened sinner is, after all, a greater miracle than all cures of disease.  And such conversions to this day are as numerous as they were at the time the rosary was introduced.  Entire nations, provinces and cities have been converted to God through his devotion.  Blessed John, a companion of St. Dominic, wrote a book about the miraculous power of the rosary.  The blessed Alanus de la Roche tells of a bishop, in whose diocese morality was decadent, who finally took up the devotion to the rosary, explained it to his people, prayed it with them, and had it introduced in all parishes.  Soon the people abandoned their evil ways.

St. Clement Hofbauer assures us:  “When I am called to a sick man of whom I know that he is averse to making his peace with God, on the way I pray my rosary, and when I reach him I am sure to find him desirous to receive the Sacraments.”

The holy doctor Alphonsus of Liguori relates from his experience:  “The walls of Jericho did not collapse more quickly at the trumpet call of Josue than false teachings disappear after the earnest praying of the rosary.  The swimming pool of Jerusalem was not as healing for the bodily sick as the rosary is as remedy for the spiritually diseased.”