Chapter 163: The Fortress of Veszprém
September 21, 1526, The Fortress of Veszprém, Hungary.
Situated along the vital, strategically indispensable borderlands of western Hungary was the Fortress of Veszprém.
It was a sprawling citadel of ancient stone, serving as the primary logistical anchor and the final defensive bulwark before the open plains leading directly to Vienna.
Mustered within the courtyard and stationed along the frigid stone battlements was the entirety of the local Hungarian border garrison.
There were exactly 11,200 men garrisoned at Veszprém...
The garrison was fractured into three distinct formations.
The core consisted of 2,000 heavily armored Hungarian knights and men-at-arms, men who still believed that personal bravery and heavily padded velvet doublets could alter the trajectory of a musket ball.
Flanking them were 3,200 traditional Hussars... light cavalrymen adorned in brightly colored silks and pelts, armed with curved sabers.
The remaining 6,000 men were peasant levies, ripped from their agricultural quotas, possessing no standardized training.
They shivered in the damp autumn air, clutching hunting spears and rusted scythes.
Standing atop the highest western battlement, gazing out over the sfog-choked plains, were the two men responsible for this nightmare...
Count István Báthory, the supreme commander of the fortress, was a man thoroughly imprisoned by his own ego.
He wore an expensive, gilded suit of full plate armor, intricately etched with the crest of his noble house.
Beside him stood Commander Farkas, a grizzled, scarred veteran of the border skirmishes who served as the Count’s tactical advisor.
"The men are restless, My Lord Count," Commander Farkas muttered, his breath pluming in the air as he looked down at the freezing peasant levies huddling around their smoky campfires in the courtyard below. "The rations are thin. The local storehouses were emptied by the magnates before the siege lines were even drawn. If we do not receive a massive influx of grain and silver currency soon, the levies will break."
Count István waved a hand. "They are peasants. It is their divine duty to bleed for the Kingdom. Besides, we do not need them to hold out for a month. We only need them to hold the walls for another twenty-four hours."
The Count turned his gaze toward the northwest, toward the borders of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire.
"The couriers explicitly confirmed the diplomatic treaties," Count István declared. "The Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke Ferdinand have rallied their forces. An Austrian vanguard of ten thousand professional men-at-arms, backed by a Holy Roman army of twenty thousand Landsknechts, is marching to our relief. They will arrive by tomorrow at noon. We simply need to hold Veszprém until the Imperial banners crest that ridge, and then we shall ride out and crush the heathens in a glorious, honorable melee!"
Commander Farkas did not share the Count’s boundless optimism...
To march thirty thousand men through the unpaved dirt roads of the Austrian border required a level of organizational competence that the fragmented Holy Roman Empire simply did not possess.
Farkas knew the Imperial commanders were likely currently squabbling over the placement of their tents and arguing over who had the right to lead the vanguard.
"Tomorrow is a very long time in a siege, My Lord," Farkas warned, his voice low. "Grand Vizier Pargali Ibrahim Pasha commands the center, and Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey leads the Akinji cavalry. If they deploy their bombards before the Emperor arrives..."
"Then we will endure the bombardment!" Count István interrupted. "The walls of Veszprém have stood for two hundred years. No heathen cannon can shatter solid Hungarian stone. And when they exhaust their powder, my Hussars will ride out and run them down like the dogs they are!"
As the two Hungarian generals continued to argue over the obsolete doctrines of chivalric combat, the autumn wind suddenly died down.
The fog blanketing the eastern plains began to slowly dissipate, rolling back like a theatrical curtain to reveal the absolute reality...
A lone sentry, stationed in the highest watchtower above the main gatehouse, suddenly blew a discordant blast on his warning horn.
The sound shattered the morning silence, instantly sending a shockwave of panic through the 11,200 men trapped within the castle walls.
Commander Farkas rushed to the edge of the stone parapet, pulling a Venetian spyglass from his belt.
He extended the tubes with hands and pressed the glass lens to his eye, peering into the dissipating fog.
The blood instantly drained from the veteran commander’s face...
Emerging from the fog, stretching across the entire eastern horizon for as far as the human eye could see, was the Ottoman army.
Through the spyglass, Farkas saw perfectly aligned, geometric squares of Janissary infantry, their muskets gleaming like a forest of steel under the rising sun.
Flanking them were sprawling formations of Sipahi heavy cavalry.
But it was what Farkas saw being dragged into the center of the Ottoman siege lines that truly broke his spirit.
Drawn by teams of fifty massive oxen each, were the Sultan’s heavy siege bombards.
Count István stepped up beside his advisor.
"My God," Count István whispered. "The Austrians... the Emperor’s army. They must arrive tomorrow."
Commander Farkas lowered his spyglas. He looked at the endless sea of Ottoman steel.
The suffocating, damp fog that had blanketed the eastern plains of Veszprém did not merely dissipate; it was pushed back by the sheer heat of a hundred thousand marching bodies and the smoke of countless campfires.
Standing atop the highest parapet of the fortress, Count István Báthory and Commander Farkas were paralyzed.
Through the tubes of his imported Venetian spyglass, Commander Farkas attempted to quantify the enemy forces...
They simply did not stop coming.
For every square of Janissary infantry that marched into the staging grounds, three more emerged from the horizon behind them.
Their matchlock muskets caught the autumn sunlight, creating a blinding ocean of steel that stretched for miles in every direction...
Farkas shifted the spyglass, attempting to count the artillery train.
Dozens turned into scores, and scores turned into hundreds...
Massive siege bombards, drawn by teams of sixty oxen, churned the plains into a nightmare.
Behind them rolled hundreds of lighter, mobile field guns, escorted by topçu artillerymen who moved with a terrifying efficiency that made the Hungarian levies look like a flock of panicked sheep.