Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xv. September 12. At sunrise of the 12th September, the crest of the Kahlenberg was concealed by one of those autumnal mist? which give promise of a genial, perhaps a sultry day, and which, clinging to the wooded flanks of the acclivity, grew denser as it descended, till it rested heavily on the shores and the stream itself of the river below. From that summit the usual fiery signals of distress had been watched through the night by many an eye as they rose incessantly from the tower of St. Stephen, and now the fretted spire of that edifice, so long the target of the ineffectual fire of the Turkish artillerists, was faintly distinguished rising from a sea of mist. As the hour wore on, and the exhalation dispersed, a scene was disclosed which must have made those who witnessed it from the Kahlenberg tighten their saddle-girths or look to their priming. A practised eye glancing over the fortifications of the city could discern from the Burg to the Scottish gate an interruption of their continuity, a shapeless interval of rubbish and of ruin, which seemed as if a battalion might enter it abreast. In face of this desolation a labyrinth of lines extended itself, differing in design from the rectilinear zigzag of a modern approach, and formed of short curves overlapping each other, to use a comparison of some writers of the time, like the scales of a fish. In these, the Turkish lines, the miner yet crawled to his task, and the storming parties were still arrayed by order of the Vizier, ready for a renewal of the assault so often repeated in vain. The camp behind had been evacuated by the fighting men; the horse-tails had been plucked from before the tents of the Pachas, but their harems still tenanted the canvass city; masses of...
