Figure 4.9: Predjama Castle in Slovenia. Predjama Castle, perched in the mouth of a cave in southwestern Slovenia, exemplifies the feudalism from which modern Europe eventually emerged. First mentioned in the historical record in the thirteenth century, Predjama became legendary as an impregnable fortress in the fifteenth century, when the Austrian Imperial Army laid siege to it for over a year, ignorant of a passage through the cave that kept the castle supplied. The Austrians finally succeeded in taking the castle and then the region when Predjama’s owner, Erazem Leuger, was betrayed by one of his own men, who had informed the Austrians of the castle’s greatest vulnerability. A cannonball killed Erazem in Predjama’s unprotected outhouse.