Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/123

Rh that same year, Herberstein had very little opportunity of distinguishing himself. In 1508, the Venetians deprived the emperor of his possessions in Friuli, Carniola, and Istria, in which latter country Herberstein’s father possessed the territory of Mährenfels; and during a short armistice, he was sent in 1509 to Venice, on a diplomatic mission to recover this estate, but he was not successful in his endeavours. During his stay in Venice, he witnessed the great fire in which the celebrated arsenal was consumed. In the same year, the lower Austrian states sent a corps to the assistance of the emperor to Friuli, under Duke Erick of Brunswick. Herberstein was in this corps, and was present in different engagements. Not long after, his eldest brother sent him, with twelve horsemen and thirty-two foot soldiers, to Mitterburg, in order to garrison the place; and he undertook this charge, because, as he says in his book, nobody else would go there. In this expedition he attacked Alben, from which place the enemy, together with the faithless inhabitants, fled at his approach. “They took refuge in a church,” he says; “and when the Croats asked if they should break into it, as they should take many prisoners, I replied, that one ought not to touch the house of God. For this, God afterwards rewarded me.” In the same year he was present at the siege and capture of Rasburg, where he distinguished himself so much, that on the 4th of October, he was taken into the immediate service of the emperor, or, as he himself describes it, in Cohortem Prætorianam. In March 1510, the Vene-