Moyses, seeing no prospect of regaining his patrimony, and
determining not to be under subjection to the Germans, led his troops
against Busca, was defeated, and fled to join the Turks. Upon this
desertion the Prince delivered up all he had to Busca and retired to
Prague. Smith himself continued with the imperial party, in the
regiment of Earl Meldritch. About this time the Sultan sent one
Jeremy to be vaivode of Wallachia, whose tyranny caused the people to
rise against him, and he fled into Moldavia. Busca proclaimed Lord
Rodoll vaivode in his stead. But Jeremy assembled an army of forty
thousand Turks, Tartars, and Moldavians, and retired into Wallachia.
Smith took active part in Rodoll's campaign to recover Wallachia, and
narrates the savage war that ensued. When the armies were encamped
near each other at Raza and Argish, Rodoll cut off the heads of
parties he captured going to the Turkish camp, and threw them into
the enemy's trenches. Jeremy retorted by skinning alive the
Christian parties he captured, hung their skins upon poles, and their
carcasses and heads on stakes by them. In the first battle Rodoll
was successful and established himself in Wallachia, but Jeremy
rallied and began ravaging the country. Earl Meldritch was sent
against him, but the Turks' force was much superior, and the
Christians were caught in a trap. In order to reach Rodoll, who was
at Rottenton, Meldritch with his small army was obliged to cut his
way through the solid body of the enemy. A device of Smith's
assisted him. He covered two or three hundred trunks--probably small
branches of trees--with wild-fire. These fixed upon the heads of
lances and set on fire when the troops charged in the night, so
terrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay.
Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leagues
of Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the last
desperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of the