The prince, glad of such an ally, made him camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunder the Turks.  Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of the frontiers into what Smith calls the Land of Zarkam—­among rocky mountains, where were some Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes, Renegadoes, and such like, which he forced into the Plains of Regall, where was a city of men and fortifications, strong in itself, and so environed with mountains that it had been impregnable in all these wars.

It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did not always attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in which he was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the city of Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases.  But the region is sufficiently identified.  On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was the town of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode or Prince of Transylvania.  South of this capital was the town Millenberg, and southwest of this was a very strong fortress, commanding a narrow pass leading into Transylvania out of Hungary, probably where the River Maruct:  broke through the mountains.  We infer that it was this pass that the earl captured by a stratagem, and carrying his army through it, began the siege of Regall in the plain.  “The earth no sooner put on her green habit,” says our knight-errant, “than the earl overspread her with his troops.”  Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the Christians encamped on the plain before it.

In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age of chivalry, about which Smith had read so much.  We cannot but recognize that this is his opportunity.  His idle boyhood had been soaked in old romances, and he had set out in his youth to do what equally dreamy but less venturesome devourers of old chronicles were content to read about.  Everything arranged itself as Smith would have had it.  When the Christian army arrived, the Turks sallied out and gave it a lively welcome, which cost each side about fifteen hundred men.  Meldritch had but eight thousand soldiers, but he was re-enforced by the arrival of nine thousand more, with six-and-twenty pieces of ordnance, under Lord Zachel Moyses, the general of the army, who took command of the whole.

After the first skirmish the Turks remained within their fortress, the guns of which commanded the plain, and the Christians spent a month in intrenching themselves and mounting their guns.

The Turks, who taught Europe the art of civilized war, behaved all this time in a courtly and chivalric manner, exchanging with the besiegers wordy compliments until such time as the latter were ready to begin.  The Turks derided the slow progress of the works, inquired if their ordnance was in pawn, twitted them with growing fat for want of exercise, and expressed the fear that the Christians should depart without making an assault.

In order to make the time pass pleasantly, and exactly in accordance with the tales of chivalry which Smith had read, the Turkish Bashaw in the fortress sent out his challenge:  “That to delight the ladies, who did long to see some courtlike pastime, the Lord Tubashaw did defy any captaine that had the command of a company, who durst combat with him for his head.”