THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap, glorious action of his life was the defence ofBelgrade against the powers of Mahomet theHisdefcnce second in person. After a siege of forty days,°f Bei- the Turks, who had already entered the town,

grade, and . . . r ,

deatii, were compelled to retreat; and the joytul na-juiy 25?, ,G ’ tions celebrated Huniades and Belgrade as theSept. 4 . bulwarks of Christendom . 11 About a month af-ter this great deliverance, the champion expired;and his most splendid epitaph is the regret of theOttoman prince, who sighed that he could nolonger hope for revenge against the single anta-gonist who had triumphed over his arms. Onthe first vacancy of the throne, Matthias Corvi-nus, a youth of eighteen years of age, was elect-ed and crowned by the grateful Hungarians .His reign was prosperous and long: Matthiasaspired to the glory of a conqueror and a saint;but his purest merit is the encouragement oflearning; and the Latin orators and historians,who were invited from Italy by the son, haveshed the lustre of their eloquence on the father’scharacter . 1

In the list of heroes, John Huniades and Scan-

“ See Bonfinius (decad iii, I. viii, p. 492) and Spondanus (a. d.1456, No 1-7). Hnniades shared the glory of the defence of Belgrade with Capistran, a Franciscan friar; and in their respective narratives,neither the saint nor the hefo condescend to take notice of his rival’smerit.

1 See Bonfinius , decad iii, 1. viii, decad iv, 1. viii. The observationsof Spondanus on the life and character of Matthias Corvinus are curi-ous and critical (a. d. 1464, No. X, 1475, No. 6, 1476, No. 14-16, 1490,No. 4, 5). Italian fame was the Object of his vanity. His actions arec elebrated in the Epitome Rerum Hungariearum (p. 322-412) of PeterRuiii jnjs, a Sicilian. His wise and facetious sayings are registered byGalestus Martius of Narni (528-568); and we have a particular narra-tive of his wedding and coronation. These three tracts are all con-tained in the first vol. of Bel’s Scriptores Rerum Hungariearum.