reconstructed as churches, were pulled down, and the modern church of the Franciscans and the Bishops' Seminary occupy their place. I felt curious to see in Temesvar, or its environs, something of the Turkish period, but except a tombstone embedded in the wall of an edifice, and a small suburb which still bears the Arabic name of Mahala," memorials of the quondam masters of Hungary are no longer visible.

The principal feature of Temesvar is the great square, on which are the Catholic and Greek cathedrals; the former an extensive edifice, built during the government of our active and ingenious countryman, Count Andrew Hamilton, who was president and commander-in-chief in the Banat between 1734-8, and distinguished himself by great activity in building and other improvements. During the bombardment the crypt of the cathedral offered a secure asylum against the shells; but the roof being also supposed, from being vaulted, to be shell-proof, the body of the church was at one time occupied by between sixty and seventy persons, when a shell burst through the roof, "with such a thundering noise," said one of its inmates, "that I almost thought the day of judgment had arrived," but strange to say, although many had received contusion, nobody was killed, and popular belief ascribed the immunity to the immediate interposition of the patron saint, Gerard the Martyr.

At right angles with the cathedral, is the principal edifice of the town, the palace of the government, which occupies the space between two streets, but so overdone with ornamental consoles, vases, wreaths, and arabesques of the eighteenth century, that it looks like a château in the vista of one of Boucher's landscapes; and every time I pass its portals, with grinning satyrs forming the keystone of the arch, I fancy a fine gentleman with a clouded cane, bloom-coloured coat, satin breeches, and ailes de pigeon, would be more fitting the genius loci, than the Pandours of the imperial commissioner, with their waxed moustachios and frogged hussar jacket.

A triple line of fortifications, according to the most

approved rules of Vauban, encircles the town: beyond each curtain is the ravelin; beyond each bastion the contregarde; and an envelope of solid masonry forms the third and outer line of defence. The great defect of the fortifications is, that in the lapse of time they have sunk at various places, on account of the marshy land, so that the relative gradation of the outer to the inner works is, in several places, disturbed to such an extent, that the former is not sufficiently dominated by the latter. This has been produced by the bastions, curtains, and casemates, forming a heavier mass of masonry, to which the heavy artillery in position have contributed.

The principal gates, three in number, are named from the directions in which they lead,-Peterwardein, Transylvania, and Vienna. At the first, my attention was drawn to a hole in it, which had been made by a cannon-ball, which certainly fulfilled its functions. Behind this gate, in the earlier part of the siege, stood eight Uhlan horses; and the ball, on entering, went right through the gate, and then through one horse after another, lodging itself in the body of the eighth. Without the Peterwardein gate, and beyond the rayon of the fortress, is the Josephstadt suburb, intersected by the Bega canal, cut in 174560, to connect Temesvar with the south-western part of the Banat, in connexion with the Theiss, Danube, and Save, which, with its straight lines, and boats in the distance, like black dots, its alleys of trees and brick houses, reminds one of Holland. Here is a crowd of canal craft; here the large magazines of the Banat wheat, and a constant bustle of loading and unloading.

Returned to the Peterwardein Gate, the traveller continues his tour of the ramparts until he arrives at the old castle of the Hunyady, which is within the fortifications, and is now the armoury. This castle constructed by John Hunyady, Count of Temes, in 1442, was the kernel of Temesvar, and the scene of many remarkable accidents, the detail of which would lead me too far away from the immediate object of my journey. Being built with great solidity, it resisted better than most of the houses in the

town, but its towers, rising above the bastion, are quite unroofed. It resisted every 30 lb. shell, but all the 60 lb. shells that struck burst through, so that we walked from room to room on temporary planks. Here I saw piled up 11,000 muskets taken from the Hungarians; the total number of fire-arms taken on the field or delivered up in the arsenals and fortresses being no less than 661,000. This mass of materiel arose from the profusion with which the bank-notes were printed, and the prodigious activity of the officers. "They did nothing on a small scale,” said the officer in charge; "you see those bellows there,"pointing to an enormous pair for a mortar foundry,"eighty of them were made to one order, and found by us in Arad."

The idea of

Passing the infantry barracks - the lower part of which is bomb-proof, and forms a section of the fortification-we got out at the gate of Transylvania, and came upon the principal suburb of Temesvar, called the Fabrik, the newer buildings of which, having in the long peace unfortunately encroached on the rayon of the fortress, are much destroyed. The suburb received the surname of Fabrik from the manufactories of metal, clothes, paper, hats, &c., which Count Mercy, the first Governor of the Banat after the conquest, attempted to establish. Count Mercy was a brave soldier, but no political economist. transplanting European civilisation to the Banat was a good one; the symmetrical streets of Temesvar stand as well as the Magyar bombs have allowed them, and the Bega canal which followed was well calculated to call out the resources of the Banat; but manufactories in a country where capital and labour are scarce, and land so abundant as to make the growing of corn and the rearing of cattle the only profitable speculation, soon showed results that might have been expected: the agricultural colonies flourished and the manufactories died a natural death.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SIEGE OF TEMESVAR 1- COMMENCEMENT OF SIEGEWATER CUT OFF A SORTIE - FIRST BOMBARDMENTSECOND

BOMBARDMENT-HORSE-FLESH EATEN-FEVERS

CONFLAGRATIONS-THE SIEGE RAISED.

When I saw that there was not a single house in all the town that had not been injured, and that I had not been in a single house in which I did not see several rooms blown to pieces with shells, I had what I never had before-a full and complete conception of the "horrors of war." During my stay in Temesvar, almost every topic of conversation bore directly or indirectly on this wonderful defence-the great event in the modern history of the town, and as it is one of the most moving episodes of the revolutionary war, I string together whatever I have been able to collect on the spot, either in the way of oral or documentary information; as, on making known my wish, the engineer officer, who, at the conclusion of the defence, was the surviving director of the operations, had the extreme kindness not only to afford me every information in his power, but to accompany me to the localities, and make everything as clear as possible for a scientific cicerone to do to a non-professional man.

The first shot of the whole war was fired at Gross Kikinda. The Servian populace having been thrown into a state of fervour by the unjust attempt of Mr. Szentkiraly, the Magyar Commissioner, to take the Servian baptismal

The military history of the recent war having been so frequently given to the public, I have avoided as much as possible going over ground already occupied. To this rule I have judged it proper to make two exceptions;-a portion of a chapter devoted to clear up the strategy of Bem in Transylvania, and this account of a siege which forms an episode of itself, and which I could scarcely pass over in an account of Temesvar; but both accounts are made up from authentic information derived on the spot, and a careful personal examination of the localities, and therefore are original.

registers of the church, and substitute Magyar ones, the turbulence of the populace being enhanced by the odious communistic tendency which accompanied the revolution of 1848. A political revolution, in the name of liberty, that imposed on whole nations baptismal registers, of which nobody understood a word but a handful of Magyarised nobles, was not likely to give general satisfaction; and when the sensible burghers of Temesvar saw that the splendid financial talents and resources of M. Kossuth consisted in the seizure, by military force, of several millions sterling value of corn, forage, horses, cattle, sheep, and all the necessaries of an army, from saltpetre and charcoal, to sugar and coffee; and the payment for them, in bubble notes, having no relation to real property; they shook their heads, and stood aloof. Between 6,000,000l. and 7,000,000l. sterling of this worthless paper were coined; and if the Magyar loyalists, the Servian, the Slovack, or the Roman, refused to give the best horse in their stable, in return for this paper, he was liable to be shot.

No sooner had Bem taken Herrmanstadt. and annihilated Puchner in Transylvania, than the corps of General Count Leiningen, sent to relieve this brave soldier, but unfortunate general, found its object rendered impossible of accomplishment, and slowly retiring before Bem, reentered Temesvar. Bem made dispositions with a view to attempt to hem him in, and take prisoner this corps of Leiningen before its arrival at Temesvar, and sent orders to this effect to Count Vecsey, the Hungarian general commanding the Banat; but this haughty Magyar, offended at receiving peremptory orders from a man whom he considered a Polish adventurer, disobeyed, and Leiningen reentered Temesvar.

In the north of Hungary, black clouds gradually gathered round the career of Windischgrätz as the spring advanced. Kapolna, hotly contested for two days, was claimed as a decided victory by neither party; and then followed Gödöllo and Waitzen, blow after blow, with an electrical effect on the Magyar troops in the south, and, on the