From every side troops hurried to the
salvation of Austria from the Turks. Italy, the Netherlands, Bohemia.
Poland, Germany, sent their quotas, till an army of one hundred and
thirty thousand men were gathered around Vienna, thirty thousand of them
being cavalry.
Solyman was appalled at the tidings brought him. It had become a
question of arithmetic to his barbarian intellect. If Guntz, with less
than a thousand men, could defy him for a month, what might not Vienna
do with more than a hundred thousand? Winter was not far away. It was
already September. He was separated from his flotilla of artillery. Was
it safe to advance? He answered the question by suddenly striking camp
and retreating with such haste that his marauding horsemen, who were out
in large numbers, were left in ignorance of the movement, and were
nearly all taken or cut to pieces.
Thus ingloriously ended one of the most pretentious invasions of Europe.
For three years Solyman had industriously prepared, gathering the
resources of his wide dominion to the task and fulminating infinite
disaster to the infidels.
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