The Mussulmans host recoils in terror, leaving their dead and wounded behind them. Horrible spectacle! Instead of the lately brilliant ranks the ground is strewn with mangled bloody limbs, writhing like worms in the dust. The next moment the splendid array again covers the ground; the corpses are no longer visible, they are hidden by the feet of the living. The beaten squadrons are sent to the rear; fresh battalions fill their places; the assault is renewed. The fire of the guns no longer keeps them back. They cast down their eyes, shout “Allah!” and rush forward. An earth-rending report resounds, a fiery mine has exploded beneath the feet of the assailants; fragments of human limbs intermingled with strips of tempest-tossed banners fly up into the air amidst whirling clouds of smoke. The second assault is also flung back, and in the meantime the Christian army has succeeded in drawing a line of wagons across their front. And now a third, now a fourth, assault is delivered, each more furious than the last. The Christians begin to despair; every regiment of the Turkish host is now engaged with them, only Kucsuk has received no order to advance. Hassan would win the battle without him.
There he stands, together with his staff, directing the most perverse of battles, hurling his swarms against unassailable rocks, assaulting entrenched places with cavalry; at one time distributing orders to regiments which had ceased to exist, at another sending to consult with commanders who had fallen before his very eyes. Those around him listened to his words with astonishment, and not one of them durst say: “Dismount from your horse, you cannot see ten yards in front of you!” The din of the renewed assaults sounded in his ears like a cry of triumph. “Look how they waver!” he cried; “look how the Christian ranks waver, and how their banners are falling in the dust! Shoot them, shoot them down!” and none durst say to him: “These are thy hosts whose death-cries thou dost hear, and it is the fire from the Christian guns which mow down whole ranks of thy army!”
The Ottoman host had begun its tenth assault, when Hassan sent a courier to Kiuprile on the opposite shore with this message: “Thou canst return to Paphlagonia! We have won the battle without thee. Tell them at home what thou hast seen!”
Kiuprile, seriously alarmed lest he should have no part in the glory of the contest, immediately mounted the whole of his cavalry, flung a bridge over the river, and began to cross it.
This happened at the very moment when Ismail Pasha was leading the Osmanlis to the tenth assault.
The leader of the Christian host, Montecuculi, no sooner perceived Kiuprile’s movement, than he called together his generals and gave them to understand that if they awaited Kiuprile where they stood they would be irretrievably lost.
They were just then loading their guns with their last charge.
Many faces grew pale at this announcement, and a deep silence followed Montecuculi’s words. Yet his words were the words of valour. Three heroes had been in his army—one of them, the French general, the Marquis de Brianzon, had already fallen; the other two, still present, were the German general, Toggendorf, and the Hungarian cavalry officer, Petneházy.
At the commander-in-chief’s announcement the faces of both remained unmoved, and Toggendorf, with the utmost sangfroid came forward: “If we must choose between two deaths,” said he, “why not rather choose death by advancing than death in flight?”
“Not so, my lad,” cried Petneházy, enthusiastically grasping his comrade’s hand; “we choose between death and glory, and he who seeks glory will find a triumph also.”
“So be it,” said Montecuculi, with cool satisfaction, thrusting his field-glass into his pocket and drawing forth his thin blade; and, while he sent the two heroes to the two wings, he placed himself in front of the army, and commanded that the barrier of wagons should instantly be demolished.
The last discharge thundered forth, and from amidst the dispersing clouds of smoke two compact army columns could be seen rapidly charging—they were Toggendorf’s cuirassiers and Petneházy’s hussars.
Petneházy made straight for the still hesitating Moldavian army, which, with Prince Ghyka at its head, had as yet taken no part in the fight. Heaven itself gave him the inspiration. The Prince of Moldavia had been waiting for a long time for someone to attack him, that he might at once quit the field of battle to which he had been constrained to come, though it revolted his feelings as a Christian to do so; consequently, when Petneházy was within fifty yards of his battalions, they, as if at a given signal, turned tail without so much as crossing swords with the foe, galloped off to the left bank of the Waag, and so quitted the field.
This flight threw the whole Turkish army into disorder. A more skilful general would indeed have withdrawn the whole host, but, because of his shortsightedness, Hassan did not perceive that the Moldavians had fled, and nobody durst tell him so. Ismail Pasha immediately hastened to fill up the gap; but before he had reached the spot, Toggendorf’s cuirassiers were upon him, and he was caught between two fires in a moment. The Janissaries received the full brunt of the swords of the cuirassiers and the hussars, and in the first onset Ismail Pasha himself fell from his horse. A hussar rushed upon him, and severing from his body his big bared
