Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]
[graphic]

THE

HE elegant design for a MORNING NEGLIGÉE is designed for merino, of which any favorite hue may be employed. Our illustration is for one in mouse-color. The ornament is wrought in needlework upon the corners, with corded and braided passamenteries. It is warmly quilted. The gilel may be independent, or, as in our illustration, may have the fronts inserted.

The ZOUAVE JACKET is made of fine crimson flannel, with bouillonnées of wide silk ribbon, edged with silk braids, or, if preferred, with beads or bugles. Zouave Jackets are now much in favor, and any fancy in relation to their form or material may be safely indulged. Apropos of beads, we have seen a collar of white pearl beads, worn over an azurline blue robe. For a morning undress it was very becoming. Ladies may thus, from their own resources, add a very desirable article to their toilet.

The CAP which we give is en suite with the morning toilet. It is composed of sea-green watered ribbon and silk, with a white bead at each reticulation, ornamented with a shell and sprays of seaweed.

FIGURE 3.-CAP.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. CXLII.-MARCH, 1862.-VOL. XXIV.

[graphic][merged small]

THE great question which, for the third of a | The most momentous of national issues is de

courts Lu-pendent upon the solution of this problem.

rope is, "What shall be done with Turkey?" is one of the greatest marvels of history that a Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by Harper and Brothers. VOL. XXIV.-No. 142.-EE

band of half- civilized robbers, rushing like wolves from the steppes of northern Asia, should have subjected to their sway the most cultivated and intellectual nations of the globe; and, bidding defiance to all the powers of Europe, should have been able to capture the finest countries of the Old World, to intrench themselves upon the classic soil of Greece, and, with insult and scorn, to trample the cross of Christ and the institutions of Christianity beneath their feet.

About the middle of the sixth century a tribe of Scythian Tartars, from the banks of the Irtish, commenced their depredations. Rapidly they subjugated and absorbed other tribes. In the course of a few ages they overran all of Egypt and all of Asia Minor, and established the most energetic and bloody military despotism earth has ever known. Early in the fourteenth century these semi-barbarians could rally beneath their banners a far more powerful army than any nation in Christendom could raise.

The Turks now resolved to bring all Europe under their sway, and all Europe was appalled by the menace. They took possession of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, crossed the Straits, and with blood-dripping cimeters overran Greece. Mercilessly the Christians were massacred-the boys and the girls only being reserved as slaves, to be trained in the Moslem faith and to serve in the harems and the armies.

In April, 1453, Mohammed II., with a land army of 300,000 men and a fleet of 600 vessels, laid siege to Constantinople. For fifty-three days the storm of war beat, without cessation, upon the doomed city; and then the Turks, rushing through the breaches, sword in hand, in a few hours cut down 60,000 of the helpless inhabitants. In this terrific drama scenes were enacted too harrowing for recital, and which could not have been exceeded by an army of fiends newly arrived from Pandemonium.

Thus fell the Greek empire. The crescent was unfurled proudly from the domes of Constantinople, Athens, and Corinth; and throughout the whole of the Peloponnesus the head of the Christian was crushed by the heel of the Turk. The conqueror, Mohammed II., boasting that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peter's, in Rome, crossed the Adriatic to the shores of Italy, took Otranto, and intrenching his army there, prepared, by the energies of fire and sword, to bring the whole of the Italian peninsula into subjection to his sway. The sudden death of this stern conqueror rescued Italy from the menace, and gave a brief respite to the remainder of Christendom.

Soon again the war was renewed. For two centuries wave after wave of Moslem invasion rolled up the Danube; and the plains of Transylvania and Hungary were but a constant battle-field, where Christian and Turk met in deadly strife. About the year 1560 the Turks, then in possession of a large part of Hungary, collected an immense army at Belgrade, and commenced their march for the assault of Vienna. It was green and leafy June, and the banks of

the Danube, luxuriant in their summer foliage, were decorated with unsurpassing loveliness. For many days the turbaned and bannered host, beneath sunny skies and through flowery fields, sauntered along, encountering no foe. War seemed but the pastime of a gala day. Silken banners embroidered with gold floated on the breeze. Arabian chargers, gorgeously caparisoned, proudly pranced beneath their riders cased in glittering steel. Music from multitudinous bands enlivened the march. A fleet of barges, decorated in the highest style of Oriental art, covered the stream, impelled by sails when the wind favored, and urged by rowers when the wind was adverse.

Each night the tents were spread upon the river's banks, and a city for more than a hundred thousand inhabitants rose as by magic, with its grassy streets, and squares, and thronging population brilliant with all the regalia of war. As a fairy vision the city rose in the rays of the declining sun. As a phantasy of night it disappeared in the earliest dawn of the morning, and the dazzling host pressed on.

But the demon of war, though with music and acclaim, always leads his legions to the black day of storm and woe. The Turks had ascended the Danube about 150 miles, when they came to Zigeth, a small island which occupied the centre of the stream and effectually commanded both banks. Here the Austrians had erected an almost impregnable fortress; and now the songs of the march were doomed to sink away into the wail of death. The Turks could not advance a mile until this fortress was battered down. But the heroic commander, Zrini, and his whole garrison had taken an oath upon the cross that they would surrender the fortress only with their lives.

Week after week, by day and by night, the tempest of war thundered and surged around these ramparts. The besieged having guns in battery to sweep all approaches, mowed down their assailants with awful carnage. But gradually bastion after bastion was crumbled by the tremendous cannonade; and the fortress, utterly demolished, presented but the aspect of a craggy pile of rocks. The Turks, reckless of life, rushed over the smouldering ruins, covering them like a swarm of bees. They had apparently cut down every survivor of the garrison, and were just raising the shout of victory, when there was an earthquake roar, and an explosion almost as appalling as the archangel's trump.

Zrini, true to his oath, torch in hand, had descended to the subterranean vaults and fired the magazine, where tons of powder were stored. The whole citadel-men, horses, artillery, and rocks-were thrown into the air, and fell a commingled mass of ruin, fire, and blood. Thus the hour of victory became to the Turks the hour of utter and hopeless defeat. Having lost their leader and a large portion of their army in the strife and the terrific final explosion, they commenced a precipitate retreat, with broken, bleeding battalions, to recruit their resources for another campaign.

[graphic][merged small]

For many years after the repulse at Zigeth the conflict continued to rage between Moslem and Christian with varying success. At length the Turks, with an army of two hundred thousand men, were again ascending the Danube, encountering no force which could for a day arrest their progress. Universal terror seized the inhabitants throughout the populous valley, and precipitately they abandoned their homes. As the cruel host, their cimeters dripping with blood, approached Vienna, the Emperor Leopold, with the royal family, fled at midnight, and thousands of the inhabitants followed, terror stricken, after them. All the roads leading west and north from the city were crowded with these fugitives.

It was on a sunny morning in July when the banners of the advance-guard of the Turks were first discerned from the steeples of the Austrian

metropolis. Like an inundation the mighty host came surging on, and sweeping around the city. invested it on all sides. The fierce cannonade was speedily commenced.

The Emperor had fled to Poland for aid. Zobieski, the Polish King, a man of marvelous energy, placed himself at the head of his highly. disciplined army of sixty thousand men, hastened by forced marches to Vienna, and fell upon the beleaguering host with such fury that the army of the Grand-Vizier, having lost a fourth of its number, turned and fled. The rout was so entire that the whole of the Turkish encampment, with all its treasures of Oriental opulence, was abandoned to the victors. Zobieski pursued the fugitives down the Danube league after league, pelting them with bullets, balls, and shells, until they found refuge behind the walls of Belgrade.

[graphic][merged small]

Another century of incessant bloodshed passed away as the Crescent and the Cross were arrayed against each other in deadly fields of strife which can not be counted. The Turks, strongly fortified at Belgrade, issued from their ramparts at pleasure. Austria prepared an expedition for the recovery of that fortress. Prince Eugene, with an army of sixty thousand men, suddenly appeared before the walls and commenced the siege. The Sultan sent two hundred thousand men for the relief of the garrison. The Turks, however, not venturing to attack a warrior so renowned as Eugene, intrenched themselves in a semicircle on the heights outside of the besieger's camp, thus encircling him, as it were, in

a net.

One of the most marvelous events of war ensued. Eugene prepared, with that genius which has given him world-wide renown, to attack the hosts whose batteries were menacing his rear. Twenty thousand of his troops were detached to hold the garrison of Belgrade in check, and to repulse any sallies. With the remaining forty thousand, the enemy then outnumbering him five to one, he made ready for the assault in a midnight surprise.

The favoring hour came. The sun sank in clouds at the close of a stormy day, and Egyptian darkness enveloped the armies. The glimmer of innumerable camp-fires alone pointed out the position of the foe. To each brigade, battalion, regiment, and division the Prince minutely assigned its duty, that there might be no confusion. As the bells of the beleaguered city tolled the hour of midnight, three bombs, simultaneously discharged, put the whole Austrian army in rapid but silent motion. Speedily they traversed the space between the two camps, and in dense columns rushed over the ramparts of the foe. Cannon, musketry, bayonets, swords, cavalry, all were employed amidst the thunderings and the lightnings of that midnight storm of war.

The Turks, thus suddenly aroused from sleep, amazed, bewildered, terrified, fought for a short time with maniacal fury, often pouring volleys of bullets into the bosoms of their friends, and with bloody cimeters smiting indiscriminately upon the right hand and the left, until, in the midst of a scene of darkness and confusion which no imagination can conceive, they broke and fled. Two hundred thousand men, with cries of terror, rage, and despair, were rushing they

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »