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THE PEOPHET MAHOMET'S PEOMISE 231 name as the Prophet. Among those who in the army were under the influence of religious ideas or traditions the coming attempt to capture the city was looked forward to hopefully and joyfully. To the ignorant and thoughtless among his barbarous followers the promise of unlimited plunder which Mahomet the Second held out was a stronger inducement ; but to the better informed and more religious, and to some extent to all, the hope of winning paradise furnished a powerful allurement to battle or at least a compensatory consolation at the prospect of death. After this digression I return to the preparations which Mahomet was making at Adrianople for the execution of his great design, and to those which the emperor had in hand for the defence of the city. In the first weeks of January, the fame reached Con- Urban's stantinople of a monster bombard or gun which was being bombard, cast in Adrianople. Ducas gives interesting information of its history and describes it as the largest possessed by the Turks. In the autumn of 1452, while Mahomet was finish- ing the castle on the Bosporus, a Hungarian or Wallachian cannon founder named Urban, who had offered his services to the emperor and had been engaged by him, was induced by higher pay to go over to the enemy. He would have been content, says Ducas, with a quarter of the pay he received from Mahomet. 1 After learning from him what he could do, the Turks commissioned him to make as powerful a gun as he could cast. Urban declared that if the walls were as strong as those of Babylon he could destroy them. At the end of three months he had succeeded in making a cannon which remained for many years the wonder of the city and even of Europe, and marks an epoch in the 1 The Turks have rarely failed in obtaining able European soldiers. Moltke was in the Turkish service. The first Napoleon narrowly escaped taking a like service. (See Von Hammer.) More recently they have had in General Von der Golz one of the ablest German soldiers.