the turks’ cellar.

You enter the old town of Vienna from Leopoldstadt by the Ferdinand Bridge; and, walking for a few minutes parallel with the river, come into a hollow called the Tiefer Grund; passing next under a broad arch which itself supports a street spanning the gulley, you find on the left hand a rising ground which must be climbed in order to reach a certain open space of a triangular form, walled in by lofty houses, called “Die Freiung,”—the Deliverance. In it there is an old wine-house, the Turks’ Cellar, and there belongs to this spot one of the legends of Vienna.

In the autumn of the year sixteen hundred and twenty-seven, when the city was so closely invested by the Turks, that the people were half famished, there stood in the place now called “Freiung,” or thereabouts, the military bakery for that portion of the garrison which had its quarters in the neighbourhood. The bakery had to supply not only the soldiers, but bread was made in it to be doled out to destitute civilians by the municipal authorities; and, as the number of the destitute was great, the bakers there employed had little rest. Once in the dead of the night, while some of the apprentices were getting their dough ready for the early morning batch, they were alarmed by a hollow ghostly sound as of spirits knocking in the earth. The blows were regular and quite distinct, and without cessation until cockcrow. The next night these awful sounds were again heard, and seemed to become louder and more urgent as the day drew near; but, with the first scent of morning air, they suddenly ceased. The apprentices gave information to the town authorities; a military watch was set, and the cause of the strange noises in the earth was very soon discovered. The enemy was under ground; the Turks, from their camp on the Leopoldiberg, were carrying a mine under the city; and, not knowing the levels, had approached so nearly to the surface that there was but a mere crust between them and the bakehouse floor.

What was to be done? The danger was imminent—the remedy must be prompt and decisive. A narrow arm of the Danube ran within a hundred yards of the place: pick and spade were vigorously plied, and in a short time a canal was cut between the river and the bakery. Little knew the Turks of the cold water that could then at any time be thrown upon their undertaking. All was still. The Viennese say that the hostile troops already filled the mine, armed to the teeth, and awaiting only a concerted signal to tell them that a proposed midnight attack on the walls had diverted the attention of the citizens. Then they were to rush up out of the earth and surprise the town. But the besieged, forewarned and forearmed, suddenly threw the flood-gates open and broke a way for the water through the new canal under the bakehouse floor; down it went bubbling, hissing, and gurgling into the dark cavern, where it swept the Mussulmans before it, and destroyed them to a man.

This was the origin of the Turks’ Cellar; and although the title is perhaps unjustly appropriated by the winehouse I have mentioned, yet there is no doubt that the tale is true, and that the house at any rate is near the spot from which its name is taken. Grave citizens even believe that the underground passage still exists, walled and roofed over with stone, and that it leads directly to the Turks’ camp, at the foot of the Leopoldiberg. They even know the size of it, namely, that it is of such dimensions as to admit the marching through it of six men abreast. Of this I know nothing; but I know from the testimony of a venerable old lady—who is not the oldest in Vienna—that the bakers’ apprentices were formerly allowed special privileges in consideration of the service once rendered by some of their body to the state. Indeed, the procession of the bakers, on every returning anniversary of the swamp-in of the Turks, when they marched horse and foot from the Freiung, with banners, emblems, and music, through the heart of the city to the grass-grown camp outside the city walls, was one of the spectacles that made the deepest impression on this chatty old lady in her childhood.

The Turks’ Cellar is still famous. It is noted now, not for its bread or its canal-water, but for its white wine, its baked veal, and its savoury chickens. Descend into its depths (for it is truly a cellar and nothing else) late in the evening, when citizens have time and money at their disposal, and you find it full of jolly company. As well as the tobacco-smoke will permit you to see what the place resembles, you would say that it is like nothing so much as the after cabin of a Gravesend steamer on a summer Sunday afternoon. There is just such a row of tables on each side; just such a low roof; just such a thick palpable air, uncertain light, and noisy steamy crowd of occupants. The place is intolerable in itself, but fall-to upon the steaming block of baked veal which is set before you; clear your throat of the tobacco-smoke by mighty draughts of the pale yellow wine which is its proper accompaniment; finally, fill a deep-bowled meerschaum with Three Kings tobacco, creating for yourself your own private and exclusive atmosphere, and you begin to feel the situation. The temperature of mine host’s cellar aids imagination greatly in recalling the idea of the old bakehouse, and there comes over you, after a while, a sense of stifling that mixes with the nightmare, usually constituting in this place an after-supper nap. In the waking lethargy that succeeds, you feel as if jostled in dark vaults by a mob of frantic Turks, labouring heavily to get breath, and sucking in foul water for air.

Possibly when fully awakened you begin to consider that the Turks’ Cellar is not the most healthful place of recreation to be in; and, cleaving the dense smoke, you ascend into sunlight. Perhaps you stroll to some place where the air is better, but which may still have a story quite as exciting as the catastrophe of the imperial bakehouse: perhaps to Bertholdsdorf; a pretty little market-town with a tall-steepled church, and a half ruined battlement, situated on the hill slope about six miles to the south of Vienna. It forms a pretty summer day’s ramble. Its chronicler is the worthy Markt-richter, or Town-justice, Jacob Trinksgeld; and his unvarnished story, freely translated, runs thus:—

“When the Turkish army, two hundred thousand strong without their allies, raised the siege of Raab, the retreating host of rebels and Tartars were sent to overrun the whole of Austria below the Enns on this side of the Danube, and to waste it with fire and sword. This was done. On the ninth of July, detached troops of Spahis and Tartars appeared before the walls of Bertholdsdorf, but were beaten back by our armed citizens. Those attacks were repeated on the tenth and twelfth, and also repulsed; but as at this time the enemy met with a determined resistance from the city of Vienna, which they had invested, they gathered in increased force about our devoted town, and on the fifteenth of July attacked us with such fury on every side that, seeing it was no longer possible to hold out against them, partly from their great numbers, and partly from our failing of powder; and, moreover, seeing that they had already set fire to the town in several places, we were compelled to seek shelter with our goods and chattels in the church and fortress, neither of which were as yet touched by the flames.

“On the sixteenth, the town itself being then in ashes, there came a soldier dressed in the Turkish costume, save that he wore the leather jerkin of a German horseman, into the high street, and waving a white cloth, he called out in the Hungarian language, to those of us who were in the fortress, that if we would ask for grace, both we and ours should be protected, and a safe conduct (salva quartier) given to us, that should be our future defence. Thereupon we held honest counsel together, citizens and neighbours then present, and in the meantime gave reply, translated also into Hungarian, that if we should agree thereto, we would set up a white flag upon the tower as a sign of our submission. Early on the morning of the nineteenth of July there came a Pasha from the camp at Vienna, at the head of a great army, and with him the same Turk who had on the previous day made the proposal to us. And the Pasha sat himself down upon a red carpet spread on the bare ground, close by the house of Herr Streninger, till we should agree to his terms. It was five o’clock in the morning before we could make up our minds.

“Then, when we were all willing to surrender, our enemies demanded, in the first place, that two of our men should march out of the fortress as hostages, and that two Turks should take their places with us; and that a maiden, with loose streaming hair, and a wreath upon her forehead, should bring forth the key of the town, seeing that this place had never till then been taken by an enemy. Further, they demanded six thousand florins ransom from us, which, however, we abated to four thousand, handing to them two thousand florins at once, upon three dishes, with the request that the remainder should be allowed to stand over till the forthcoming day of John the Baptist. As soon as this money had been paid over to them, the Pasha called such of our faithful garrison as were in the church to come out and arrange themselves in the square, that he might see how many safe-conducts were required; but, as each armed man came to the door, his musket was torn out of his hand, and such as resisted were dragged by the hair of the head into the square by the Turks, and told that they would need no weapons, seeing that to those who sought for mercy, the passes would be sufficient protection. And thus were our arms carried away from us.

“As soon as the whole garrison, thus utterly defenceless, were collected in the public square, there sprang fifty Turks from their horses, and with great rudeness began searching every one of them for money or other valuables; and the citizens began already to see that they were betrayed into a surrender, and some of them tried to make their escape—among others, Herr Streninger, the town-justice; but he was struck down immediately, and he was the first man murdered. Upon this, the Pasha stood up, and began to call out with a loud, clear voice to his troops, and as they heard his words, they fell upon the unarmed men in the market-place, and hewed them down with their scimitars without pity or remorse—sparing none in their eagerness for the butchery, and which, in spite of their haste, was not ended till between one and two o’clock in the afternoon. Of all our citizens, only two escaped the slaughter, and they contrived to hide themselves in the tower; but those who fled out of the town were captured by the Tartars, and instantly dispatched. Then, having committed this cruel barbarism, they seized the women and children who had been left for safety in the church, and carried them away into slavery, taking care to burn and utterly destroy the fortress ere they departed. And when Vienna was relieved, and the good people there came among the ruins of Bertholdsdorf, they gathered together the headless and mangled remains of our murdered citizens to the number of three thousand five hundred, and buried them all in one grave.”

In “eternal remembrance” of this catastrophe, the worthy town-justice, Trinksgeld, in seventeen hundred ordered a painting to be executed, representing the fearful scene described. It occupies the whole of one side of the Town-hall, and in its quaint minuteness of detail, and defiance of perspective—depicting, not merely the slaughter of the betrayed Bertholdsdorfers, but the concealment of the two who were fortunate enough to escape, and who are helplessly apparent behind some loose timber—would be ludicrous, were it not for the sacred gravity of the subject.

As it is, we quit the romantic little town with a sigh, and turning our faces towards Vienna, wonder what the young Turks of eighteen hundred and fifty-four may possibly think of the Old Turks of one hundred and thirty years ago.