From Lignitz They Turned
Aside Into Hungary, And Reduced The Whole Of That Country To The North Of
The Danube.
During the winter, they crossed the Danube on the ice.
Gran,
the capital of Hungary, was taken by storm, and Bela, the unfortunate king
of Hungary, had to take shelter in one of the islands at the head of the
Adriatic. So terrible was the alarm in Europe, that the inhabitants of
Sweden and the north of Germany neglected, in 1238, to send their ships, as
usual, to the herring-fishery on the coast of England; and, as observed by
Gibbon, it is whimsical enough to learn, that the price of herrings in the
English market was lowered in consequence of the orders of a barbarous
Mogul khan, who resided on the borders of China[4]. The tide of ruin was
stemmed at Newstadt in Austria, by the bravery of fifty knights and twenty
cross-bow-men; and the Tartars, awed by the fame of the valour and arms of
the Franks, or inhabitants of western Europe, raised the siege on the
approach of a German army, commanded by the emperor Frederic the Second.
After laying waste the kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria, the
adventurous Batu slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga, and
established his seat of command in the city and palace of Serai, both of
which he had caused to be built upon the eastern arm of that noble river.
Another of the sons of Tuli, Shaibani-khan, led a horde of 15,000 Tartar
families into the wilds of Siberia; and his descendants reigned above three
centuries at Tobolsk, in that secluded region, and even reduced the
miserable Samoyedes in the neighbourhood of the polar circle.
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