to Wallachia with his forces before he could consider their old friendship restored, Michael carried his duplicity so far as to conclude a truce with the emissaries and make a proposal to exchange hostages.  The negotiations were, however, in all probability insincere on both sides; and, after further delay, the emissaries returned to their respective camps, and the opposing armies met in hostile array upon a plain between Hermanstadt and Schellenberg.  Here each prince addressed his troops previous to the encounter.  Cardinal Andreas, divested of his clerical robes and fully equipped and mounted, denounced Michael in the bitterest terms.  His brethren, he said, still herded sheep and pigs in Wallachia.  He had associated himself with robbers and with a miscellaneous rabble collected from all parts to ruin the country.  ‘Be not afraid,’ he added, ’of this nation of Sclaves, who, from time immemorial, have been conquered subjects of the Hungarians, and who should be punished rather with rods and blows than with the sword.’  Thus, and much more in the same strain, spake Andreas.  Michael, on the other hand, spoke of his enemy with contemptuous jocularity, as a mounted and perjured priest who had allied himself with the Turks, the enemies of Christendom, whilst he himself claimed to represent fidelity to Christianity and the Empire.  Moreover, he held out to his troops tho prospect of great booty if they were victorious.

We shall not attempt to describe the engagement which followed.  At the very outset it declared itself to some extent in Michael’s favour through the desertion of one of the most influential leaders in Andreas’s army.  It was chiefly a series of encounters between isolated detachments of troops, and in many cases not only were men of the same nation arrayed against each other, but the opposing forces were under the leadership of near relatives.  The first to yield, after a fierce and protracted contest, was Andreas, who fled from the field believing the battle to be lost.  His brave generals, however, rallied his men, and to a great extent retrieved the fortunes of the day.  In fact they fought so successfully that a portion of the Wallachian army, where Michael himself was in command, took to flight, and for a time dragged its leader along with it.  The cowardice of Andreas prevented the Transylvanian leaders from taking advantage of this turn in their favour; and Michael, seeing that all was not lost, made strenuous efforts to rally his troops.  By threats, blows, and angry exclamations, he at length succeeded in arresting the stampede, but it was not until he had with his own sword run two fugitive captains through the body that he was once more successful in leading his followers into the field, and this time in effectually routing the enemy.  This end was facilitated by an event similar to the one which commenced the fight.  The Poles in Transylvanian service, seeing their leader flee, and regarding his cause as lost, deserted in a body in order that they might not lose their share of the booty.