ally, made him camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunder
the Turks. Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of the
frontiers into what Smith calls the Land of Zarkam--among rocky
mountains, where were some Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes,
Renegadoes, and such like, which he forced into the Plains of Regall,
where was a city of men and fortifications, strong in itself, and so
environed with mountains that it had been impregnable in all these
wars.

It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did not
always attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in which
he was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the city
of Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases. But the region
is sufficiently identified. On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was the
town of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode or
Prince of Transylvania. South of this capital was the town
Millenberg, and southwest of this was a very strong fortress,
commanding a narrow pass leading into Transylvania out of Hungary,
probably where the River Maruct: broke through the mountains. We
infer that it was this pass that the earl captured by a stratagem,
and carrying his army through it, began the siege of Regall in the
plain. "The earth no sooner put on her green habit," says our
knight-errant, "than the earl overspread her with his troops."
Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the Christians
encamped on the plain before it.

In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age of
chivalry, about which Smith had read so much. We cannot but
recognize that this is his opportunity. His idle boyhood had been
soaked in old romances, and he had set out in his youth to do what