Eighth and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the fair
city of Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through the
north he came into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and,
introduced by an Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice of
Baron Kisell, general of artillery, he obtained employment, and went
to Vienna with Colonel Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regiment
he was to serve.

He was now on the threshold of his long-desired campaign against the
Turks. The arrival on the scene of this young man, who was scarcely
out of his teens, was a shadow of disaster to the Turks. They had
been carrying all before them. Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, was
a weak and irresolute character, and no match for the enterprising
Sultan, Mahomet III., who was then conducting the invasion of Europe.
The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Mathias, who was to succeed him,
and Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, also to become Emperor of Germany,
were much abler men, and maintained a good front against the Moslems
in Lower Hungary, but the Turks all the time steadily advanced. They
had long occupied Buda (Pesth), and had been in possession of the
stronghold of Alba Regalis for some sixty years. Before Smith's
advent they had captured the important city of Caniza, and just as he
reached the ground they had besieged the town of Olumpagh, with two
thousand men. But the addition to the armies of Germany, France,
Styria, and Hungary of John Smith, "this English gentleman," as he
styles himself, put a new face on the war, and proved the ruin of the
Turkish cause. The Bashaw of Buda was soon to feel the effect of
this re-enforcement.

Caniza is a town in Lower Hungary, north of the River Drave, and just
west of the Platen Sea, or Lake Balatin, as it is also called. Due