The Slaves of the Padishah Part 58

What a ridiculous ending that would be!

Towards evening Emeric Tokoly paid a visit to the Prince. He approached the old man with the respect of a child, did obeisance, and would have kissed his hand, but Apafi would not permit it, but embraced him, kissed him on the forehead repeatedly, and made him sit down beside him on the bear-skin of his camp-bed.

The young leader feelingly begged the old man's pardon for all the trouble that he had caused him and Transylvania.

"It is I who ought to beg pardon of your Excellency," said Apafi in a submissive voice.

"Not at all, your Highness and dear Father. I know that you have always loved me, but evil counsellors have whispered such scandalous things to you about me that you were bound to hate me--but G.o.d requite them for it if I cannot."

"Be magnanimous towards them, my dear son; forgive them, for my sake."

Tokoly was silent. He knew that Teleki was in the tent, he saw him, but he would not take any notice of him. At last, without even looking towards him, he said, in the most pa.s.sionate, threatening voice:

"Look, ye, Teleki, you have practised all sorts of devices against me, but if you put your nose outside the tent of the Prince you will eat his bread no more. You would be in my power now, and here your head would lie, but for his Highness whom I look upon as a father."

Michael Teleki was silent, but future events were to prove that he had heard very well what was now spoken.

After surrendering the fortress of Fulek to the Turks, the Transylvanian gentlemen returned home with their army; and Michael Teleki, when he got home, paid a visit to the church where lay the ashes of Denis Banfy, and hiding his face on the tomb, he wept bitterly over the n.o.ble patriot whom he had sacrificed to his ambitious plans.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

A MAN ABANDONED BY HIS GUARDIAN-ANGEL.

One blow followed hard upon another.

In the following year the Sultan a.s.sembled a formidable host against Vienna, and the Transylvanian bands also had to go. Teleki would have avoided the war, but his representations and pretexts fell not upon listening ears. They asked him why he, who had hitherto urged on the campaign, wanted to withdraw from it now that it was in full swing? If he had liked the beginning, the end also should please him.

But the end was exceedingly bitter.

The formidable host surrounding Vienna was scattered in a single night by the heroic sword of Sobieski, the gigantic military enterprise was ruined.

The Transylvanian forces took no part in these operations. During the siege of Vienna they had been left at Raab, and Teleki did not let the opportunity pa.s.s. While the stupid Turks were fighting in the trenches, he entered into communication with the German commander at Raab and attached himself to the winning side.

Everything which the insane Feriz had prophesied in the Divan was literally fulfilled.

The Turkish armies were everywhere routed. They lost the fortresses of Grand Visegrad and ersekujvar one after the other. The fortress of Nograd was struck by lightning, which fired the powder-magazine and blew up the garrison. Finally Buda was besieged and captured in the sight of the Grand Vizier, and after a domination of one hundred and fifty years, the half-moons were hauled down from the bastions and crosses re-occupied their places.

And all those who were present at the Divan fulfilled, one by one, the prophecy that they should see Paradise before long.

Rislan Pasha fell beneath the walls of Buda at the head of the Janissaries, the Vizier of Buda was throttled by order of Kara Mustafa after the battle was lost, Rifa Aga was drowned in the Danube among the fugitives, Kara Ogli fell defending the ramparts of Buda, Tokoly killed Ajas Pasha at the Sultan's command; and, after the fall of Buda, Olaj Beg brought to Kara Mustafa for his own use the silken cord and the purple purse. It was the last purse which Kara Mustafa ever saw, for after his decapitation his head was put inside it.

And, finally, the people of Stambul, maddened by so many losses and reinforced by the rebellious Janissaries, rushed upon the Seraglio, cut down the counsellors of the Sultan, and threw the Sultan himself into the same dungeon in which he had let his own brother languish for thirty-nine years. The brother was now set on the throne, and the dethroned Sultan died in the dungeon.

And this also was fulfilled that those who had stirred up the Turks to begin the war turned against them at the end of it. Transylvania deposited its oath of homage in the hands of Caraffa, and Michael Teleki, who became a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, opened the gates of the towns and fortresses to German garrisons. The Prince paid the victors thirteen thousand florins, which it took heavy wagons two weeks to convey from Fogaras to Nagyszeben. But Michael Teleki, in addition to his countly escutcheon, got a present of a silver table service which cost ten thousand florins. So Transylvania became imperial territory, and its alliance with the Porte was dissolved.

And then it was that G.o.d called to Himself the last lovable figure in our history, the virtuous and magnanimous Anna Bornemissza.

Only after her death did Apafi feel what his wife had been to him, his guardian-angel, his consoler in all his sorrows, the brightest part of his life, and when that light set, everything around him was doubly dark. Every misfortune, every trouble, now weighed doubly heavy on his mind and heart; he had no longer any refuge against persecuting sorrow.

He fled from one town to another like a hunted wild beast which can find no refuge from the dart which transfixes it. At last he barricaded himself in his room, which he did not quit for six weeks; and if visitors came to see him he complained to them like a child:

"I am starving to death. I have lost everything. It is a year since I got a farthing from my estates or my mines or my salt-works. If the farrier comes I cannot pay him his bill for my mantle, for I haven't got a stiver. What will become of my son when I am gone, poor little Prince?

There's not enough to send him to school."

He began to get quite crazy, and could neither eat, drink, nor sleep.

The whole day he would stride up and down his room, and utter strange things in a loud voice. What troubled him most was that he must die of hunger.

At last those about him hit upon a remedy. Every day they laid purses of money before him and said: "This sum Stephen Apor has sent from your property, and that amount Paul Inezedi has collected from your salt-works. Why should your Highness be anxious when there is such lots of money?"

And the next day they presented the same purses to him over again, and invented some fresh story. And this simple deceit somewhat pacified the poor old man, but the old worries had so affected his mind, never very strong at any time, that he could never recover his former spirits. He grew duller and more stupid every day, and often when he lay down he would sleep a couple of days at a stretch.

And at last the Almighty had mercy upon him and called him away from this vale of tears; and he went to that land where the Turks plunder not, and there is no warfare.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE NEWLY-DRAWN SWORD.

The German armies were now in complete possession of Transylvania, the Turks were everywhere driven back and trampled down, the hereditary Prince of Bavaria took Belgrade by storm and put twelve thousand Janissaries to the edge of the sword. Thus the gate of the Turkish Empire was broken open, and the victoriously advancing host, under the Prince of Baden, crushed the remains of the Turkish army at Nish. Then Bulgaria and Albania were subjugated, the sea sh.o.r.e was reached, and only the Haemus Mountains stood between the invaders and Stambul.

The deluge left nothing untouched, even little Wallachia, whose fortunate situation, wild mountains, and villainous roads had hitherto saved it from invasion, saw the approach of the conquering banners.

Old S---- was still the Prince, and he now gave a brilliant example of the dexterity of Wallachian diplomacy, which at the same time ill.u.s.trates the simplicity of his character.

The armies invading Wallachia were entrusted to the care of General Heissler, who consequently wrote to Prince S---- informing him that he was advancing on Bucharest through the Transylvanian Alps with ten thousand men, therefore he was to provide winter quarters and provisions for his army, as he intended to winter there.

At exactly the same time the Tartar Khan gave the Prince to understand that he intended to invade Moldavia in order that he might follow the movements of the Transylvanian army close at hand.

The Prince liked the one proposition as little as the other, so he sent the Tartar Khan's letter to General Heissler bidding him beware, as a great force was coming against him, and he sent Heissler's letter to the Tartar Khan advising him in a friendly sort of way not to move too far as Heissler was now advancing in his rear.

Consequently both armies turned aside from the Princ.i.p.ality, and Wallachia had to support neither the Germans nor the Tartars.

This is the diplomacy of little states.

Amidst the wildly romantic hills of Lebanon is a pleasant valley for which Nature herself has a peculiar preference. Amidst the gigantic mountains which encircle a vast hollow on every side of it, rises a roundish mound. On level ground it would be accounted a hill, but in the midst of such a range of snowy giants it emerges only like a tiny heap of earth, and to this day nothing grows on it but the cedar--the finest, darkest, most widely spreading specimens of that n.o.ble and fragrant tree are here to be found. A foaming mountain stream gurgles down it on both sides, a little wooden bridge connects the opposing banks, and in the midst of the bridge a rock projecting from the water clings to the mountain side. Far away among the blue forests s.h.i.+ne forth the white roofless little houses of the city of Edena, which, built against the mountain side, peer forth like some card-built castle, and still farther away through gaps in the hills the Syrian sea is visible.

Here in former days on the heights stood the romantic and poetical kiosk of Feriz Beg.

The youth, with dogged persistence, continued to live for years in this sublime solitude with the din of battle all around him. The prophecy which he had once p.r.o.nounced in the Divan was whispered abroad among the people, ran through the army, and as every one of his sayings was severally fulfilled, the more widely there spread in the hearts of the soldiers the superst.i.tious belief that till he seized his sword they would everywhere be defeated, but when he should again appear on the battlefield the fortune of war would turn and become favourable once more to the Ottoman arms.