Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/249

 tion, but also acts of ferocious cruelty. For whatever lately-captured prisoners they had they cut in pieces, and bound themselves by a great oath, that, if they took any fortress of ours, they would behave therein in a similar way in return, and would not spare and leave alive any German, either woman, old man, or child, nay, not even a dog that belonged to a German. In this ill-humour they wished to sabre even the Christian ambassadors, and more especially us prisoners, and would have carried this into execution had it not been, firstly, for the Divine protection, and secondly, for Ibrahim Pasha and the aga in command of the janissaries, who immediately surrounded the whole place where the Christian ambassadors were living with us with a strong guard of janissaries, and allowed no one to have access to us. Orders were then given to us not to show ourselves to any one, but to remain in our tent, and not to quit it under pain of death.

As the Turks remained three days at Zolnak for sorrow and never moved, our ambassador kept constantly applying to the pasha, through his chiaous, that, according to his promise, fifty hussars, or Turkish archers, should be assigned us, to escort us as far as Buda. But the pasha was vehemently enraged, and threatened to have us all put to the sword, asking whether it was in return for this that he was to set us at liberty, because our fathers, uncles, and brothers, had behaved so dishonourably to their dear friends the Turks at Hatwan? Although, if they had murdered the men only, it would have been no wonder, since the nature of war often brings that with it; but it was a doggish, brutal, and unheard of thing to behave thus cruelly to the innocent female sex and little chil-