Cilli
endeavored to lure Hunniades to Vienna, that he might seize his person,
but the sagacious warrior was too wily to be thus entrapped.
The Turks were now in the full tide of victory. They had conquered
Constantinople, fortified both sides of the Bosporus and the Hellespont,
overrun Greece and planted themselves firmly and impregnably on the
shores of Europe. Mahomet II. was sultan, succeeding his father Amurath.
He raised an army of two hundred thousand men, who were all inspired
with that intense fanatic ferocity with which the Moslem then regarded
the Christian. Marching resistlessly through Bulgaria and Servia, he
contemplated the immediate conquest of Hungary, the bulwark of Europe.
He advanced to the banks of the Danube and laid siege to Belgrade, a
very important and strongly fortified town at the point where the Save
enters the great central river of eastern Europe.
Such an army, flushed with victory and inspired with all the energies of
fanaticism, appalled the European powers. Ladislaus was but a boy,
studious and scholarly in his tastes, having developed but little
physical energy and no executive vigor. He was very handsome, very
refined in his tastes and courteous in his address, and he cultivated
with great care the golden ringlets which clustered around his
shoulders.
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