"Belgrade!" exclaimed the haughty sultan, when he heard the demand. "Go
tell your master that I am collecting troops and preparing for my
expedition. I will suspend at my neck the keys of my Hungarian
fortresses, and will bring them to that plain of Mohatz where Louis, by
the aid of Providence, found defeat and a grave. Let Ferdinand meet and
conquer me, and take them, after severing my head from my body! But if I
find him not there, I will seek him at Buda or follow him to Vienna."
Soon after this Solyman crossed the Danube with three hundred thousand
men, and advancing to Mohatz, encamped for several days upon the plain,
with all possible display or Oriental pomp and magnificence. Thus
proudly he threw down the gauntlet of defiance. But there was no
champion there to take it up. Striking his tents, and spreading his
banners to the breeze, in unimpeded march he ascended the Danube two
hundred miles from Belgrade to the city of Pest. And here his martial
bands made hill and vale reverberate the bugle blasts of victory. Pest,
the ancient capital of Hungary, rich in all the wealth of those days,
with a population of some sixty thousand, was situated on the left bank
of the river.
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