All was lost now. Dobozy told his wife to fly by herself, whilst he would remain and stay with his own breast the progress of their pursuers. But the young spouse would not part from her loving husband, not even in death, and besought him to kill her rather than to expose her to the chance of falling into the hands of the pagan enemy. The desperate husband, seeing the Turks quite near to them, stabbed his youthful wife with his own dagger, and then, turning upon his adversaries, dearly sold his life. The spot where Dobozy and his faithful wife lost their lives is, to this day, called Basaharcz (the Pasha struggle).
The immense Turkish army spread all over the country, everywhere plundering, ravaging, and destroying defenseless lives, and reducing, in a war of a few months’ duration, the population of the country by nearly 200,000 souls. The capital in ruins, hundreds of other places deserted and laid waste, the country without a king, the church without any higher clergy, the greater part of the nobility, used to arms, killed—such was the condition in which Hungary was left by the Turks at the departure of Sultan Solyman. In October, 1526, he left the doomed country, having first laden his ships, sailing for Constantinople, with the treasures of the palace of King Matthias—its rare curiosities, its bronze statues, and a portion of the famous Corvinian library.
The fatal day of Mohács had entirely overturned the order in the state, and amongst the magnates who survived it party strife soon broke out. One party, acting upon the conviction that enfeebled Hungary was unable to resist, unsupported, the overwhelming power of the Turks, elected a Hapsburg archduke, Ferdinand of Austria, a brother of Charles V., the Roman emperor, king of Hungary, and since that time the royal crown has, in fact, remained in possession of the Hapsburgs. It was through this dynasty that the Hungarian people endeavored to secure the aid of the German empire against the Osmanlis. But another party amongst the great lords pursued an opposite course. In their opinion a native dynasty and peaceful relations with the invincible Turks were the means of rescuing the country from her pitiable plight. These patriots, therefore, elected as king of Hungary, John Szapolyai, the vayvode of Transylvania, and the most powerful lord in the country, and thus the nation had now two kings in the place of the one who had fallen at Mohács.