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LIORàRY
OF THE
University of California.
aiF^T OF-
Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH.
R.6ceiTk\i Qctobfr, 1894.
•accessions No. 5^/ f^. chss Nfi.
■t=;
r
v^->\
•V
HISTORY OF TURKEY
BY
A. DE LAMARTINE,
AUTHOR or "tHK GIRONDISTS," "TRAVELS IN THS HOLT
LAND," ETC.
-> r\
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. IIL
NEW YORK:
D. APPLBTON & COMPANY,
346 & 348 BROADWAY.
1857.
STffV
Entsskd, according to Act of Congress, In the year ISSH^ bj
D. APPLETON, ai COMPANY.
In the CIerk*8 OfQce of the District Court for the Southern District of New York
^^^i.
CONTENTS.
BOOK XXL
FAOB
Selim n. — ^His Character — ^The Grand "ViQer, H<diammed Sokdli,
Master of the Empire; — CoBceahnent of the Deatii of Sdiman
— ^Military sedition — Weakness of Selim — ^The Rnssians oom-
mence their Conquests — Joseph Nassy — The Island of Cypma—
Its Soil, Climate, and Productions — ^The Turks besiege Nicosia
and Famagosta — ^Heroic Defence^— Ca^ed by Assault — Cyprus
falls under Ottoman Dominion — Religions Excitement against
the Turks — Crusade tmder Don John of Austria — ^Naval En-
counter—Defeat of the Turks and Destruction of thwr Fleet —
Peace Negotiated by M. de Noaillea — ^Earthquake at Constanti-
nople — Death of Selim IL . . . . «7
BOOK xxn.
Amurath III. — ^His personal Appearance and Education — ^Intrigues
of his Mother to withdraw his Affections from the Sultana Sa-
fîyé — Sokolli maintains his Post as Grand Vizier — His Efforts to
naturalize the Sciences and the Arts in the Country — ^Makes
Enemies by his Innovations — His Assassination — War with Per-
sia — Sinan appointed Grand Yûaer — Opens Negotiations with
Persia — ^Is banished to Mulghara in Consequence — Siawousch^
Pasha succeeds hhn as Grand Viziei^— Expedition of Othman
against tho Persians — ^He Defeats them — ^His Reception on his
Return to Constantinople — Factions of the Harem — Christian
Churches at Constantinople turned into Mosques — ^The Greeks
and Catholics redeem their Altars— Civil War between tiie
Druses— Treasures brought by Ibrahim from Egypt — ^His Cruel-
ties against the Christians of Syria— Military Disturbances at
Constantinople— War witii Austriar-Conducted without Energy
on either Sida— I>«***^ ^^ Amurath IIL . • • . ^^
ÎV . CONTENTa
BOOK xxm.
PAoa
CHance at the Ottoman Empire — Accesdon of llahomet IIL to tbe
Empire— Massacre of his Nineteen Brothers — ^Ferfaad appointed
Grand Vizier — Replaced by Sinan and afterwaiUs Strangled —
Campaign of Sinan in Wallachia — Meets with severe Reverses»
and is again Banished to Malghara — Lala-Mohammed snooeedf
him-«At his Death Sinan is Recalled, but dies on the Eve of a
Campaign he had Planned — ^His great Riches — ^Ibrahim made
' Grand Vizier — The Sultan departs for Hungary — ^Erlan Captured
by the Turiu— Battle with Archduke Maximilian— Total Defeat
of the Germans — ^The Services of Cicala rewarded by being
made Grand Vizier-^-Soddenly Diqtlaced, and Ibrahim Reinstated
— Civil Disturbances in the Crimean-Michel of Wallachia soli-
cits Peace — His Assassination — ^Further Successes against the
Austrians — Militaiy Sedition at Constantinople — ^Mahomet HL
goes to Adrianople — His Death there — ^Aocessicm of Achmet L —
Revolt of the Janissaries and the Spahis — Achmet^s vigorous
Action restores Authority— Peace of Sitvatorok, • . 104
BOOKXXTV.
Monrad the Well-Digger sent with the Army to Aleppo— Rebellion
Suppressed — Returns to Constantinople in Triumph — ^His Death
— ^Nassouh made Grand Vizier — ^He cedes to Persia all the Dis-
puted Provinces — Is Strangled — Cossacks Invade Moldavia^
Treaty with Poland — Religious Conflicts — ^Death of Achmet L —
Mustapha Succeeds him — ^His Character— Total Unfitness to
govern the Empire — His Deposition — Othman 11. proclaimed —
Death of the Sultana Safiyé— Hostilities with Poland— Triumph
of the Turks— Cruelties of the Sultan— Success of the Poles at
Choergin, which led to a Peace— Othman determines to make a
Pilgrimage to Mecca — Revolt of the Janissaries— Mustapha re-
instated — Othman carried in Disgrace through the Streets— His
Struggle with his Enemies — Death — Tumult — Conduct of Mus-
tapha — ^The Eunuch Mahomed — Revolt of Abaza-Pasha — ^Mére-
Houssein — ^Deposition of Mustapha — ^Proclamation of Amurath
IV., 141
BOOK XXV.
The Sultana Koesem — ^Attempt against tbe Life of Schah-Abbas —
His Reception of an English Ambassador — He causes the Death
OONTBNTa T
FAAS
of liis eldest Son — ^Bekir's Govenunent of Bagdad — ^The City
beneged by Hafiz — Surrendered by Mohammed, the Son of Be-
kir — ^Bekir Imprisoned and Murdered — ^Mosonl laved by a foith-
fol Dog — The Eonnch Mustapha— Rain of Abaza oommracmg —
Hafi2 Marches against l^im^— Flight of Abaza — Mohanunod,
Khan of the Crimea, deposed — Victory of the Tutars and Coa-
sacks over the Turks — Af^araace of the Cossaek Tartars be-
fore Con8tantinq>le — ^Hafiz beaiegei Bagdad — He is depoaed by
the Army — ^Anarchy in the Camp — Hafiz restored to Command
and saTes his Army — Sedition and Massacres — ^Massacre of the
Janissaries — ^Death of Bethlem — Gabor — ^Assassination of Hafia
— Seditions — ^Amurath's Vengeance — Bia Ingnikaèd aad Cruel-
ties — ^Death of Abaza — Capture of Bagdàd-4)eath of Amurath
IV., . . . 203
BOOK XXVL
Accession of Ibrahim — ^Expedition against Azof^Rebellion of Nas-
souh-Pasha — His Dealii — The Grand Vizier, Kara-Mustapha,
the Victim of the Triumvirate — ^Efifeminacy and Excesses of
Ibrahim — ^Father Othmon — Yousouf-Pasha — Siege of Cydonia —
Execution of Yousouf — Sultanzadi succeeds him in Command —
His Death — Cruelties of Ahmed-Pasha— Revolt of Wardar- *
AU-Pasha — Ahmed deposed by the Chiefs oi the Troops — Sofi-
Mohammed — Death of Ahmed — ^The Sultana Koesem intercedes
in vain for Ibrahim — Mohammed IV. proclaimed — ^Ibrahim
Strangled — Conflict between the Janissaries and the Spahis —
T^jnrannical Conduct of the Victors — Malik-Ahmed, sumamed
the Angel — Plots of the Sultana Koesem — ^Her Death — ^Adminis- .
traiion of Ahmed Pasha— Events of the Plane-Tree— The fleet
destroyed by the Venetians — ^Koeprilu made Grand Vizier, «^ • 278
BOOK xxvn.
OSter restored by Koeprilu — ^Destruction of the Venetian and Otto- i
man Fleets in the Dardanelles — The Court transferred to Adria-
nople — Revolt of Abaza Hassan — ^His Murder— Insurrection in
Wallacliia— The Fortress of Grosswardien taken— Death of Koe-
prilu— Succeeded by his Son Ahmed — Troubles in Transylvania
— Rupture with Austria — ^Victory of Neuhoesel — Conquest of
Hungary — Peace restored — ^French Diplomacy— =-Siege of Candia
—Its Capitulation— Treaty with France— Invasion of Poland-
Battle of Choonm— John Sobieski^Death of Kiuperli, . . 8Sd
Tl CONTENTS.
BOOK xxvm.
Kan-Mnitftplui— His Incapacity— Ibrahim defoated bj the Rna-
fiant — ^Peaoe with Russia — ^Tekeli — ^AlHanoe between the Tniks
and Hnngarians — ^Tekeli proclaimed Kng — ^Progress of the War
with Austria — Siege of Vienna — Sobleski takes Command in
Poland — ^His Soocess — ^He arooses the Cath<^ Powers, and
Forms a Junction with Charles of Lorraine— Defeat and Flight
of Eara-Mostapha — Ingrstitode of Leopold — Yiotoiy at Gran
^Dealh of Kara-Mnstaph»— Dissensions in Poland— Dea^ of
Sobieski— Ibrahhn-Pasha made Qrand ^\asier— State of Aflkirs
in Htmgaiy — Pnnishment of Tekeli — Hnngary dedarod heredi-
tary in the House of Austria— 'Màh<»net IV. deposed— Accession
of Soliman IIL — Disturbances at Constantinople Capitolation
of Belgrade, 879
HISTORY OF TURKEY.
BOOK TWENTY-FIEST.
SsLiM, son of Soliman II. and of Eoxelana, was fbrtj-fiye
years of age at the moment when the empire so long coveted
fell into his hands. At first a faTorite without merit of his
mother on account of his effeminate resemblance to her,
afterwards a favorite without gratitude of his father on
account of that very mediocrity which gives security to aged
princes against the enterprises of their children, Selim II.
was one of those men who by a dissolute course of life have
been unfitted for the throne before ascending it. He seemed
to have been formed in all things both by nature and educa-
tion to exhibit, throng his pettiness, the greaUiess of his
predecessor. The great achievements that still had issue
in his reign, were but the consequences, the posthumous pro-
longation, of the reign of his father.
His countenance was as insignificant as his character ;
the blue and bright eyes of his mother, but veiled habitually
with the vapors of drunkenness, were the sole feature that
recalled the beauty of Eoxelana. The narrowness of the
forehead, the softness of the cheeks, the thickness of the
lips, the veinous coloring of the complexion, the breadth of
the neck, the retreat of the shoulders, the chub and waddling
obesity of the figure, revealed a consummate specimen of
those Ottoman Yitelliuses relaxed by debauchery, discolored
by wine, and who are left but ihe desire of torpifying them-
selves with the vile appetites of the table. Only, by a
8 HISTORY OF TURKEY.
fortunate compensation of destiny this same laxity of body
which took away all moral energy from Selim, deprived him
also of all temptation to rule by himself The lassitude of
his body seemed to extend to his soul. The effort even of
an act of will would have importuned his weakness and dis-
turbed his indolence. To deposit the government, as soon
as he should have seized it, in the hands of a man who would
dispense him from thought and action, was his most urgent
ambition. To rule was, to him, to find repose in the supreme
rank. By an accident, and by a happiness of the fortune of
the Ottomans, the grand visier, Mohammed-Sokolli, in the
hands of whom Selim was to find and to leave power, was
a great man, capable of continuing the policy of Soliman
after his death, and of disguisbg the insufficiency of his
successor.
II.
This grand visier, at the head of a victorious army of
three hundred thousand men, and ascribing what language he
pleased to the bier which he was conducting, was master of
the empire. He might suspend events, prolong the inter-
reign, sell the support of the army, dictate concUtions to the
heir to the throne. He forgot himself, and only thought of
meriting well of his country. A short and respectful letter,
written under his dictation by the secretary of Soliman, the
wise and learned Feridoun, and conveyed by the tschaousch,
Hassan- Aga, a^^rised Selim of the death of his father. In
this letter the grand viiier recommended the new Sultan to
draw near to Constantinople to be ready to seize the paternal
heritage. He undertook to conduct the army there before
it should know of the death of its master. He conjured him
not to come himself to meet the Janissaries at Belgrade or
at Adriaiu^le, for fear of finding himself made in person
the object and the sport of the seditious exactions of soldiers,
too habituated for five reigns back to extort frx>m sovereigns
in forced largesses the price of the empire.
III.
Hassan traversed with such rapidity Hungary, Bulgaria,
Thrace^ the Black Sea and one half of Asia Minor, that he
arrived the eighth day at Kntaïah, the capital of the govern-
HI8T0BY Oï TUBKKT. 9
ment wherein resided Selim. This prince was abse^ ; h«
was hunting at this moment with some of his favorites in the
▼alley of Kara-Hissar, somewhat nearer to Constantinople*
Without dismounting from his horse, upon reading the letter
of Feridoun, he took, at a galloping pace, Uie route for the
capital. His khodja or preceptor Atallah, his gnmd cham*
berlain Houseïn-Pasha, his groom Kosrew-Aga, and his
favorite Djelal-Tchelebi attended him, more impatient than he
was himself for his omnipotence. The night of the third day
after their departure from Kara-Hissar, they arrived unex-
pectedly at Scutari, a suburb separated from the seraglio by
an arm of the sea, of some three or four bowshots in
breadth. They caused to be opened to them in the name of
Selim, the country palace of the Sultana Mihrmah, who had
so much lamented Bayezid, sacrificed to the ambition of
Selim. It has been seen that after the death of this beloved
brother in Persia, she became reconciled to Selim, upon whom
depended thenceforth her whole fortune.
Selim was astonished at the calm that reigned at Scutari
and at the seraglio, of which he could perceive the doors,
the gardens and the kiosks in the diade before him. He
sent across the tschaousch Hassan, to notify Iskender-Pasha,
governor of the capital, of his presence at Scutari, and to
obtain from him an explanation of this stillness and this
silence. Iskender*Pasha feared a snare in the message of
Hassan. This governor had received from the grand vicier
no formal notice of the death of Soliman, no order to pre*
pare the city and the seraglio for the accession of a new
master. A letter in obscure and enigmatical terms, intended
to be understood by hints and half-words, had merely been
addressed him by Eeridoun at the moment of the departure
of Hassan for Kutaîah. Is^nder, an unlettered soldier,
had ill-deciphered Uie ^ligma. Besponsibk to Soliman for
the Uirone and the capital, apprehen<ting in this unexpected
aj^aranee of the heir an usurpation upon the old age of his
absent father, he hesitated between doubt and credulity.
He wrote to Selim by Hassan that he was ignorant of the
events of which he spoke, and that he had no order fi^m
the grand viiier to open the seraelio to a new master. Selim
replied that State events of this importance were never
written but in symbolical language in order to remain illegi-
ble to the intelligence of the vulgar, but that it was for him
alone, the son and heir of Soliman, to interpret them
Vol. III.— !•
10 HIBTOBT Of TtTBKBT.
BoreMigidj. Dann^ iliia ezcbange of messages between ihê
gorernor of the eapital and the new Saltan) the boetandH*
basohi, abeobite intendant of the seragliO) apprised by the
groom of Selim) sent the imperial barge to Sontari to carry
the Saltan to the palace* Selim entered it withoat retinae
and without noise in the night time. At the moment when
he set his foot upon the threshold of the door which opens
opon the sea in front of Scutari, the cannon of the castle
of Leander, a small fortress built on the shoal of this name,
between the two shores, arorised the slumbering capital that
Soliman was no more. There was a rush to the seraglio to
kail the new reign.
IV.
A steed covered with imperial ornaments stood awaiting
the Saltan on the beach at the door of die seraglio. The
bostan^ji-baschi) according to etiquette, took Sdim under the
arm to assist him in getting on the saddle. The hi^ groom
Houseïn, an old companion of exile of Selim, wisbed to re-
pulse the bostandji, as he deemed his morement disrespectful;
but Selim, who remembered the usa^ of the court where
he had sp^ his boyhood, said smihng to the aga of the
bostandjis : " Don't mind that stranger, aga ; he has not been
brought up like us in the seraglio ; he does not know its
usages or privileges ; walk in peace before my horse, and
show us the way across those gardens which I no longer
know."
The oapou*aga or chief of the white eannohs received
him at the door of the palace ; his mster, the SolUna Mihr*
mah, threw herself into his j^ns, bathing him with teara
She brought him a present of fifty thousand gold ducats, which
she had economised to offer him at the moment wh^ he
should be in need <^ layishing heavy liberalities upon the
court and the armv. The m^ti, the governor, the judges
of the army, the defterdars, the mollas, the dignitaries of
Constantinople kissed his hand. He visited the mosques and
the tombs of his ûtth^s during two days, as if to do homage
to God and to his ancestors for the reign which he was going
to inaugurate upon their turbés. But the impolitic or sua*
picious counsds of his courtiers at Kutaïah induced him
to elade the counsels of the grand viaier. Instead of await*
mSTOBY or TUBUBT. 11
ii^ Ae mrmj at Coii8taQtiiK>pl0, he hastened to Belgrade te
throw himaelf amid the seditions of the soldiers.
V.
The grand vizier had succeeded in concealing daring fifty
days from the troops the secret of ihe death of Soliman.
The army, believing that it was still commanded by him,
marched in order around his litter, saluting at each halt the
dead Sultan with acclamations. They were approaching
Belgrade, and were encamped for the night upon the border
of a forest of Hungary, when Mohammed-Sokolli, informed
by a courier of ihe speedy arrival of Selim, gave vent amid
the dîu*kness to the voice of the Koran-readers, invited
secretly by him to disclose to the troops the death of their
padischaL At the sound of these voices psalmodizing around
the litter the first verse of the Soura for the dead : " All
power ends, all men have their final hour, the Eternal alone
Imows neither end nor death," the soldiers, communicating to
each other the fatal news, broke forth in sobs. Pressing
tomultuously around the ropes of the enclosure of the im-
perial tents, they refused to raise the camp in order to weep
at leisure their sovereign. " Comrades," said the grand
vizier, mounting on hors^iack at the dawn to harangue them,
'^ why do you refuse to pursue your march on the ground of
wishing to exhale your grief ? Ought we not rather to chant
verses of joy and felicitation that the s(ml of our padischah
is entered into eternal bliss ? Is it not he who has just made
Hungary the house of Islamism ? Is it not he who has
loaded our religion, our empire and ourselves with benefac-
tions ? Is it by seditious tears and cowardly lamentations
that we ought tiius to testify our gratitude ? Ought we not
rather take upon our heads his precious remains and carry
them to his son and his successor, Selim, who awaits us at
Belgrade to execute the last will of his father, and to accord
you presents and augmentations of pay ? Resume then your
»od spirits ; leave peaceably the prayers to be said by the
Koran-readers and march."
The army in solemn silence resumed its march as a pro-
eesdon rather thwa as a victorious army. The grand vizier
trembled for a premature encounter of the soldiers and the
Sultan. The troops demanded loudly that Seum IJ. gi^ould
oome to meet the coffin of his father beyond the i>^^\)e to
13 HI0TOBT or TUBXBT.
reoeivo their oath to the new reign, mnd to gire than the
lur^saes of the accession. Selim took offence mt these ex-
actionS) which the grand vizier persuaded him, however, to
now submit to, since he had come so rashly to expose himself
to them; he feared that disappointed impatience might
exasperate the troops to even revolt. The new advisers of
the Sultan, who surrounded him at Belgrade, dissuaded him,
on the contrary, from any such compliances, degrading, in
their opinion, to his dignity. " Have you not already re-
ceived the oath of the empire in the capital ? '' said they to
him. ^^ What need then of a new profession of allegiance ?
Does the army think that it alone has the ri^ht to decree
the sceptre to its master? In the early times of the
monarchy it used to be said that, to mount the throne, the
Sultans should pass underneath the sabres of their soldiers.
This was true then ; but now that the throne is a heritage
and not an election by the troops, such reminiscences are an
offence to the majesty of the sovereign."
Selim then confined himself to awaiting the army upon
a throne of gold which he had caused to be erected in his
tent on the bank of the Danube, on the summit of a rising
ground which slopes down towards the river underneath the
ramparts of Belgrade.
^^ It is thus,'' cried the grand vizier, confiding his fears to
Feridoun, ^^ that inexperienced and irresponsible counsellors
lose empires."
Feridoun showed him a letter which he had just penned
and which he proposed to him to sign, to demonstrate to the
Sultan the peril of this conduct. " No," said the grand
vizier, " I will sign no more representations, they are useless ;
besides, how do I know even that I am still grand vizier, and
is not the Sultan master of appointing another in my
place ? "
VL
He succeeded, however, by his authority over the army,
in keeping the soldiers till the following day in order and in
silence. At the dawn of day, the hearse which carried the
body of Soliman advanced, attended by a countless multitude
across the plain towards the brink of the Danube. Selim,
in mouminff suit, came forth at the head of a mute proces-
sion from the walls of Belgrade, and walked on foot to meet
)
HI8T0BT OV TUBKKT. 13
the coffin and the anny. His precoptor Atallah «nd his head
groom Houeeïn supported him by the arms. The two pro-
oessions halted upon meeting. The Sultan raised his hands
to heaven, and the muezzins chanted the funeral prayers.
The viziers, the troops, the people of Belgrade who followed
Selim, mingled sobbings with the murjoiur of the river.
Never, since the funeral of Alexander, had the soul of a
great man appeared, in vanishing, to have thus prostrated the
soul of an army. Selim, not being known to those soldiers,
did not venture to acoost them with the majesty whidi
imposes or the familiarity which attracts. He returned into
his tent and wrapped himself up in his invisibility.
He was soon beset there by the murmur of those two
hundred thousand soldiers; they left their ranks, and
encouraging each other mutually to audacity, surrounded the
tents of the Sultan. " Is this," said they to each other,
" what we have been promised ? What is become of our
former usages ? Where are the recompenses and the presents
that are due us ? Ungrateful viziers, do you hope to elude
thus the rights of those who give and retain victory and the
throne ? Invisible Sultan, who thinkest to escape us behind
that rampart of pusillanimoiis courtiers, we will find thee
hereafter near the hay-cart."
The meaning of this menace of finding the Sultan near the
hay-cart was a seditious allusion among the soldiers to cer-
tain precedents of the army discontented with the viziers.
When the soldiers, on a march in a state of mutiny against
their generals, desired to sow disorder in the column, and
to give rise to a tumult for which no one would appear to
blame, they availed themselves of the encounter, accidental
or otherwise, of a load of hay which obstructed the road and
gave them occasion to stop the march of the army, until they
had been gratified in their exactions.
The counsellors of Selim II., trembling lest the immi-
nent revolt of the army should profane the very coffin of
Soliman, had it taken off by night and conducted to Con-
stantinople by a detachment of his guard. The grand vizier
and the pashas, called next day to the council of Selim, con-
vinced him of the necessity of yielding to the military sedition
which they had meant to prevent in dissuading him from pre-
senting himself so rashly to the soldiers before having dis-
banded the army. The prince, convinced too late of the
wisdom of the grand vizier, came forth from his tents,
14 HmoBT or rxnxsr.
received the o«tli, and gare tiie usoftl denttiom to all tlie
corps of the army. The two grand jndges availed them-
aelres of the ascendant taken bj the troops to ask him ra
their name for the severe maintenance of the laws which
Çroecribed the sale and use of wine thronghont the Empire,
'his indirect allusion to the vice imputed to Selim himself,
tolerated at Belgrade, was pnnished some days after at Se-
mendria by the banishment of the two judges.
The imperial cortege and the army drew up before Con-
stantinople at the village of Halkalti to ffive time for the
completion of the preparations for the solemn entry. The
grand vizier dismounted at a farm which he owned at some
istance from the village. The order and the silence of the
army since leaving Beljmide left no occasion to suspect a rem-
nant of resentment This calmness covered a conspiracy of
the soldiers. The troops seemed to have the intention of
shaking the htind that was about to lead them, in order to
know its force or its feebleness. In the middle of the night,
the inspsctors of the camp ran hastily to the farm of the
grand vicier ; they apprised Mohammcd-Sokolli of the noc-
turnal disorder which was the prelude to those of the day.
Bands of Janissaries, by the light of torches, made of pine
branches, sat in conclaves around tuns of wine from wnich
they imbibed insolence and drunkenness. All the neighbor-
ing villages wherein troops bad been cantoned presented the
same symptoms of secret agitation.
However, all appeared returned to order in the morning.
The governor of Oonstantinople, Iskender-Pasha, the mufbi,
the capitan-pasha, Pialé, almost as popular as Barbarossa,
were come in great pomp from the capital, to kiss the hand
of the Sultan and to escort him to his palace. The troops,
assembled by their generals, defiled with the usual cry of
long live the padischah 1 An innumerable multitude covered
the plain, the hills and the house-tops to contemplate their
new master. The Janissaries, in a compact column, cleft
with difficulty the waves of spectators. Already the gates
of the capital were entered, when a sudden reflux arrested
the Sultan himself not far from the city walls. The viziers
interrogated with anxiety the chiaoux, charged with the^
police of the ceremony, as to the causes of this slackening
and this confusion of the march. *^ It is a wagon of hay,"
replied the chiaoux, " that obstructs the passage of the Jan-
issaries at the height of the mosque of the princes."
BM90BT <Mr YVBKBT. Ifi
At tiiis word, a wéï known signal of preaeditatod tmat-
ble, the generals and the viiiers ol^ the ranks with the
breast of their horses and jnshed to the head of the c^omn
to chide the Janissaries. ^' What is the matter, braTe oom*
rades I " said at once the second rixier, P^tew-Pasha, nntil
then beloved by the soldiers for his brarery ; " yonr insub-
ordination is an insult to the majesty of your padischah."
" Dost thou think then that in this place thou art still in
Transylvania, imposing arbitrary laws upon thy soldiers ? "
replied the mutineers, overturning him from his horse in the
street, wherein his turban rolled, to the applauses of the pop-
ulace, in the mire. The capitan-pasha, Pialé, sought to
interpose his authority, theretofore inviolable, even to the
factious.
" Is it not inûimous in soldiers to thus insult the dignity
of the viziers who have led them to victory ? ". cried he
indignantly. He was answered but by hootings.
*^ What hast thou in ihj turn to say to us, old pirate ? "
cried the soldiers ; and they pulled him likewise off his horse
and tore his clothes. The aged Ferhad-Pasha, a veteran of
two reigns, thought that they must respect his white beard ;
he was knocked with the stocks of the guns under the feet of
the horses. The aga of the Janissaries himself, adding
action to supplication, knotted with his own hands a cord of
eUk around his neck, to say to the soldiers : ^' I lua at your
mercy, draw the knot, strangle your general, but respect
your padisohah 1 "
<< Ah I vile flatterer,'' cried a thousand obstinate voices,
interrupted with bursts of laughter, ^ thou wouldst give
us sugared biscuit in place of bread. But thou wilt Sius
save 3èo treasures neither <^ the Sultan nor of the grand
vixier ; and we will let thee see, in turn, the upset wagon
of hay.»
During l^ese disorders of the vanguard, Selim, anxious
and humiliated, waited shamefully in front of ^e gate of
Adrianople till it should please his soldiers to give him access
into his capital and his palace. He ordered the grand vixier
to satisfy at any cost the caprices of the troops. SokoUi,
sick at heart from both the weakness and aie sedition,
ordered entire sacks of piastres to be thrown to the revolted
Janissaries. They then resumed their march and lifted
upright the subverted hay-cart. They presently attained
the gates of the serf^lio, rushed tumultuously iato the fin^
16 msTOftT or titbkst.
court and burrioaded themadres there anew. They seoi
from thenoe a depatation, aooompanied by the disarmed and
outraged viziers, to Selim, who was shut out by their rebellion
from his own palace. Selim, stopped before the mosque of
the Sultana Khasseki, again yielded to all their exactions.
The deliyered viziers remounted horse, the Emperor ent^^
the seraglio, swept by the waves of an unpunished sedition.
The treasury was emptied for the Janissaries. The
spahis and the other bodies of the army murmured in turn,
and outraged the viziers for an equal share in the pillage.
The grand vizier, who was spying the occasion of repossess*
ing himself of his lost authority, availed himself ably of
the gorged rebels to put down the clamor of the hungry
claimants; he caused to be decapitated the chiefs of the
spahis and hung three persons who made themselves tribunes
of the populace. The treasures of the island of Chio, rav-
aged some months previous by the capitan-pasha, Pialô, and
presented by him to the Sultan, filled up this void of the
treasury. Pialé, the son of a shoemaker of Croatia, ele«
vated by the accidents and the exploits of sea-life to the
rank of being son-in-law to the Sultan, was recompensed for
his services in this sedition by the title of vizier of the
cupola, that is to say, was authorized to take his seat in the
divan, beneath the cupola, in front of the grand vizier, for the
discussion of public business.
Ali-aga Muezzinzadé (or son of the Muezzin) was ap-
pointed capitan-pasha in place of Pialé. Mahmoud-Fasha^
surnamed Sal from the name of a Persian hero celebrated for
his strength as a wrestler, received likewise the title oi
vizier. Selim thus recompensed in Mahmoud the brutal ser-
vice which the wrestler had done his interests in strangling
with his own hands, upon the order of Soliman, the prince
Mustapha, escaped through his vigor from the mutes of his
father. Lala-Houseïn (or father Houseïn), the blundering
counsellor of Selim who had taken him so fatally to Bel-
grade, was removed by the grand vizier from the pers(m of
the Sultan by giving him the government of Anato^a.
Djelal-Beg, the favorite of Selim, more complacent to the
grand vizier, was loaded with honors and with revenues by
SokoUi, so as to interest him in maintaining this high digni-
tary in the confidence of the Sultan. Sure in this way of
his ascendant in the familiar council of Selim, Sokolli rid
himself of all opposition to his policy in the seraglio. The
mSTOBY OF TUBKEY. 17
minister of finance, Yasonf-Aga, who was wont to attack
yehementlj all his measures, was seized by the grand yizier
with his own hand at the issue of the council and dcHTCred
to the executioner, who beheaded him under the archway of
the seraglio.
Sokolli reigned without obstacle. He negotiated and
signed a glorious peace with the Emperor of G^many. He
received an embassy from the Persians. This splendid
embassy, which is described by the annalists of the reign,
brought back to Selim the slaves, the arms, the horses and
camels of his brother Bayezid, slain by them to please him,
despite the laws of hospitality. A religious fanatic at-
tempted the life of the Persian envoy, Schah Kouli, at the
moment he was making his solemn ^try into the capital
The assassin was tied to the tail of an unbroken horse, and^^
whirled upon the pavement till he expired. The presents of
the Schah of Persia delivered by his ambassador, attest the
marvels of Persian industry in the midst of the civil wars
which were giving to and withdrawing the throne from the
dynasties of that kingdom. Korans bound in gilt velvet ^
and shut with clasps of precious stones ; jewel cases full of
rubies and pearls ; eight cups hollowed in massive torquoises ;
two tents wherein the embroidery designed and colored pic-
turesque landscapes ; twenty tapestries of silk inwoven with
flowers, birds, wild animals ; nine foot-carpets of the down
of camels torn from the womb of their mothers ; tent cur-
tains dazsling like doors of gold and silver ; horse-saddles
incrusted with precious stones; seven sceptres and seven
sabres cased in sheaths of crimson velvet ; pieces of woollen
cloth for the feet, so silky and so thick that a single piece
made the full burden of ten men.
An ambassador from Poland, a nation always fluctuating
in its policy, which was courting the Turks to escape the
Germans, the Russians, the Tartars, brought to Selim furs
and fire-arms, presents of the north. Sokolli accorded the
Poles what they requested of the Porte, to the end of de-
taching them from the cause of the Hungarians and of the
Germans. This grand vizier governed his master so despoti-
cally, that the Sultan, having wished to elevate his old pre-
ceptor Lala-Mustapha, to the honorary rank of vizier of the
cupola, did not dare to mention it beforehand to SokoUL
The Sultan convoked a divan on horseback in returning from
a hunt, and excused himself timidly to the grand vizier to
18 H19T0BT OF TUBXXT.
hftTiog appomied ame witkomt his adrioe, to so ki^ a dignitf
of the SUte.
Sokolli, faithful to the traditions of alliance with Franee,
sent Ibrahim-Beg to Parb. Thb ambassador asked the
king, Charles IX., for the Princess Marguerite in marriage
for Prince Sigismond of Transjlrania, whom the Porte de-
signed to derate to the throne of Poland. The month of
September, 1569, saw reduced to ashes in a single night
twenty thousand houses of Constantinople. Sokolli, sur^
rounded by the flames in a district whither he had hastened
to oppose the i»rogress of the fire, was well nigh perishing in
this vast furnace. The diligraice and the gold <^ this
minister efilAced speedily the traces <^ this disaster.
He founded at the same time at Adrianople, to the name
of Selim, the marrellous mosque Selimleh, upon the plans
oi the architect Sinan, that Turkish Palladio. The cupda
of this mosque, 8U|^rted by pillars like that of St. Pete's
at Borne, exceeds m height and in amplitude the cupola of
Saint Sophia. Sinan, who regarded this edifice as his
masterpiece, used to say himself that the mosque of the
princes at Constantinople was but the essay of an appren*
tice ; that of Soliman, the work of a finished journeyman ;
but that the Selimïeh was the production of a great master.
Four minarets, hollow obelisks, shot up their spires above the
dome to heayen like radiations of a marble crown detached
up(m the azure firmament. Three staircases, of whidi the
spirals superposed and intertwisted succeed each other with-
out ever meeting, allowed three muenins to move simul-
taneously, from the threshold to the summit, and from the
top to the foot of these minarets. The pillars, placed at a
wide distance from the centre of the dome, and concealed
in the walls, give to the cupola the appearance of an aerial
prodigy.
VII.
But these structures were but the decorations of the
reign ; Sokolli thought of the enduring strength and the pros-
perity of his race. His genius had forestalled his age in the
theory of political economy, that science of the wealth of
nations. He saw this wealth in agriculture, in commerce,
in navigation, that vehicle of international exchanges. Ho
meant to make Constantinople, by industry, what nature had
HI8TOBT Of TUBKST. 19
Biade it by âtmtton, the enirepât^ of Ana, of Europe and
of Africa, the " grand scale" of the commercial unirerse.
The highest eulogy which can be passed upon the memory
of Selim II., is that he did not thwart Ûie views and the
plans of his minister for the realization of his projects.
Sokolli masked his real idea of civilisation, too advanced
fpr his time, under the appearance of a political enterprise
which flattered the popular prejudice and hatred of the Turks
towards the Persians. He represented to the divan, and he
diffused it among the people, that the sole means of a lasting
triumph over the schism of Ali, in Persia, was to turn by
way of the Crimea the natural ramparts of aie Caucasus and
of Georgia which protect this empire on the side of the Black
Sea, and gradually to surround Persia by the route of Bagdad
on the one side, and by the Caspian Sea on the other. The
national hatred responded with enthusiasm to these concep-
tions of Sokolli. Attention then was turned to ihe north-
east coasts of the Black Sea.
The Eussians, a nation yet barbarous, emerged from the
marshes of the Baltic to enslave and nationalize some tribes
more barbarous than themselves in the forests of Muscovy,
were menacing already to cut off the Turks from the route
of Persia, of Tartary, and of the Caspian Sea. Become
Christians at the beck of one of their Czars, Wladimir,
fourth descendant of Eurik, their first chief, thev adopted
through imitation and through vicinity the Greek schism.
The Byzantine emperors sealed this conformity of religion
by giving their daughters in marriage to the chiefs of this
new people. The latter multiplied under shelter of tiieir
frosts and their forests. They began to feel their strength and
to expand towards the East, on the side of the sun, as their
BBOWBj dissolved in spring, take their current from the decliv-
ities that divert them into the Caspian Sea. Ivan Wasiliéwitz
v., their Czar, contemporary with SeUm, had just character-
ized this Eussian inclination towards the East by conquering
* The WOTd <%)*, which is definitively naturalized in our hnainesa
language, is a paronym of €rUrq)ât with the exact difference of the pre-
position. The former âgnifies a fixed jdace of both arrival and departore,
by extendon of the primitive sense which meant the thmg» so pl^ed, ^
as we say, " deposits." The term entrepôt merely adds to this idea tiie
compUcation of such place or position being situated ôrfw«^ certain other
«uroundingpositions. Its adoption into English is thus not on^^^
mate, but i more necessary 'm proportion to the higher complicatiotu-
TtrntkOor.
20 msTOBT or tubkbt.
Gafan and Astrakan firom the Tartars, and tiras i^roaobing
to the basin of the Crimea.
The Don, the ancient Tanaïs, a river of the north, pre-
cipitates itself into the Black Sea, after having farrowed
Rtissia through a coarse of three thousand leagues. The
Volga, rising in the same steppes of Muscovy, turns off in the
middle of its course from the Black Sea, and discharges itself
into the Caspian through sixty outlets. Between these two
rivers, for a long way parallel, runs an isthmus of thirty
thousand paces. In cutting this isthmus by a canal naviga-
ble to large vessels, the Black Sea and the Palus Maeotis,
which prolongs it towards the sea of Azof, would be made
to communicate with the Volga, and the Volga to transport
the Ottoman fleets and armies into the Caspian Sea, which
bathes the northern frontier of Persia. This kin^om, in-
vaded by sea and by land upon a side where it imagined
itself inaccessible, behind the billows of the Caspian, as well
as on the side of Arabia, would become a slave of the Turka
Servitude befell it whence it expected its independence.
The Bosphorus would have sent by two seas, by a maritime
canal and by sixty river outlets, its laws to Ispahan ; but
Ottoman commerce would have imposed more pacifically its
monopoly upon the Oriental and the Occidental world. The
products of Europe, sought in India, and the products a
thousand times richer of India, sought at any price by Europe,
instead of taking the long and perilous six months' circuit
of the Cape of Good Hope, then scarcely discovered, were
going to be exchanged from hand to hand by means of cara-
vans and vessels in the Ottoman market of the Caspian Sea.
The two hemispheres were obliged to traffic there under the
tents, under the flag and the tributary tariffii of Selim II.
and his successors ; the Ganges and the Indus found their
commercial confluence with the Thames, the Danube, the
Seine, the Ehine, the Tiber, the Tagus, in the basin of
Turkish Tartary ; the Black Sea became the Nile of a new
Egypt. It is inconceivable what opulence the execution of
this plan prepared for the empire, and this opulence became
at the same time a pledge of peace to the world. Sokolli,
in this gigantic conception, showed himself as great an econ-
omist as patriot. The days we live in evince sufficiently how
important it was to Turkey and to Europe to repress from
the beginning the flux of Russia towards the East.
This idea was Boman in its origin : Pliny the historian
HISTOBT or TUBKST. 21
ascribes it to the reign of the emperor Claudian, tlmt Selim
of Borne. Seleucns Nicator had presaited it already to the
Bomans ; geography presents it to all ages ; but Sokolli had
simplified and facilitated it in using the Volga and the Don
as two canals already cut to carry his fleets into the Caspian
from the Black Sea.
Sokolli succumbed, not under the magnitude of the
enterprise, but under the prejudices of five thousand Janis-
saries and of twenty thousand Turkish pioneers whom he had
sent to the sea of Azof to cut the canal. The Khan of the
Tartars, Dewlet Gheriùi, although tributary and ally of the
Turks, feared for the independence of the Crimea, if the
junction pf the two seas should thenceforth turn his dominions
into a sort of highroad of the empire. He feared, besides,
that-the assistance, always dearly purchased, of his Tartars,
might cease to seem so necessary to the Sultans against the
Bussians, from the day when the Don and the Volga, sub-
dued, would permit them to transport armies into the heart
of Muscovy, as Timour had done by starting from the same
outlets. He made then secretly every effort to render un-
popular in the camp of the Janissaries and of the Ottoman
battalions the idea of the grand vizier.
Beligious prejudice of itself seconded the malevolence
of the Khan of the Crimea. The Mussulmans, hearing
related by the Tartars that the days were twenty hours long
and the nights but four hours in the boreal regions adjacent
to Muscovy, persuaded one another that such a climate must
be in contradiction to the precepts of the Koran, which
commanded them to say the night prayer two hours after
the setting of the sun, and the morning prayer at the dawn
of the day. " How," said they, " in nights of only four
hours long shall we find time to pray twice and to sleep ?
An enterprise requiring of the Musssulmans such violations
of the Koran is therefore reproved by God. The religion
of the Prophet is destined only for the climates where his laws
can be obeyed." Murmuring and discouragement shook the
arms and the implements from the hands of the soldiers and
the workmen. A column of twenty-five thousand Turkish
and Tartar cavalry, who were marching upon Astrakan, to
expel thence the Bussians, having been thrown back by the
troops of Ivan, returned in disorder to infuse panic and
sedition among the laborers of the canaL The desertion,
âkvored by the Tartars, dispersed the camp ; the generals
22 HIBfOBT OF TUBKKT.
yielded to the soldiera ; thej embarked wiihoai orden for
Gonstantinople. The tempests of tbe Black Sea seemed to
league with the fanaticism of the soldiers to deter for erer
the Ottomans from the yast idea of their great prime-ministor.
Shipwrecks ingulfed on the return vojage a part of the
fleet ; seven thousand men only reentered Constantinople.
VIII.
Mohammed-SokoUi, discouraged firom his project of
uniting the two seas, to open to the Ottomans the route of
Persia and of the Indus, {^oposed to try by the way of
Arabia what the ignorance of his nation had caused to ûdl
by \he way of Persia. He resolved to cut the Isthmus
of Sues in order to pass the floets of the Mediterranean into
the Bed Sea, and from the Bed Sea into the Indian Ocean.
A general revolt of Arabia suspended fatally the execution
of this work, which is still meditated to this day by the
masters of Egypt and the commercial nations of the West
The invention of railroads, that terrestrial navigation, makes
it less urgent without making it less probable eventually.
The causes purely local of the insurrection of Arabia Felix
or Yemen against the governors of Egypt, related to family
rivalries among the obscure dynasties of these countries, too
imperceptible and too puerile to occupy history, But this
insurrection threatened to extend to the rest of Arabia as far
as Egypt Sokolli, to stifle it in the germ, and to remove at
the same time a rival of whom he dr^ed the old ascendant
over Selim, ordered Lala-Mustapha, the former preceptor of
the Sultan, already sent into Anatolia, to raise in Syria and
Egypt an army for the submission of Arabia.
Some thousands of Janissaries formed the nucleus of Mus-
tapha. Sinan-Pasha, governor of Egypt, instead of second-
ing the enlistment of soldiers for the army of Arabia,
opposed a calculated inactivity to the orders of the seraskior.
Sure of pleasing Sokolli by ruining the fame of his rival, he
accused Mustapha of laying snares for him at Oairo, of having
tried to poison him in a cup of sherbet, of dreaming for
himself the independent sovereignty of Egypt and Arabia.
Sokolli, whether he believed in those accusations, or <mly
feigned to believe, sent a tchaousch to Cairo to bear to
Mustapha his dismissal, and the order to coine and justify
himse^ at Constantinople. Sinan-Pasha received in his
HI6Ï0ET or TUBKBY. 23
place the i^tle of s^*askier and the oommaiid of theexpedition
against Yem^.
OthmanrOnzdemir-Pw^a, bom in Arabia, since grand
Tizier, then a mere general of Sinan, went before the seras-
kier into Yemen. In a suoeessfol and rapid campaign,
Othman scattered the rebels ; he took by storm their fortified
places. To increase his resources and to make himself more
necessary in the eyes of the divan, he enrolled in his army
some Arabian tribes and cavalry attracted by the popularity
of his name in Arabia. Sinan, jealous of the triumphs too
complete of his lieutenant, removed him, and appointed to
the command of the army a Russian parvenu slave named
Hassan-Pasha. Othman, indignant at the ingratitude of his
seraskier, fled to Mecca with a party of his Arabian alHes,
and crossing the mountains of Mesopotamia in disguise, he
came to Constantinople to demand justice.
Informed of his approach, the grand vizier, who dreaded
his connection with Lala-Mustap£&, degraded Hke him for
the «same cause, had him forbidden to enter the city. Oth-
man erected his tents outside the walls in a nei^boring
cemetery, at the gate of Adrianople, which the pestilence
that rag^d at the time covered daily with fresh graves. It
was incessantly visited, amid the snows and the rains of
winter, to contemplate this great victim of the ingratitude
of his master.
Meanwhile, one day as Selim II. returned from the chase
by the gate of Adrianople, Lala- Mustapha, a victim of the
same intrigue, but who still had familiar access to his old
pupil, directed, as by accident, the Sultan's walk alongside
the cemetery wherein Othman was languishing beneath his
tents. ^' Who inhabits so wretched a shelter against the
rigors of winter ? " asked the Sultan. " It is the son of
Ouzdemir, your faithful slave Othman-Pasha," replied the
preceptor. " He who, under the reign of your father and
under yours, has enlarged the empire by two vast provinces,*
Nubia and Yemen, after having equalled in Arabia the ex-
ploits and services of his father, is thus recompensed by the
mgratitude of your viziers, and endures the rain and cold
outside the walls of the city, where he is interdicted from
sheltering his head." Selim kept silent and entered pensive
the seraglio. The following day, a khattisherif (an order
from the hand of the sovereign which annuls all contarary orders
of the mmisters), appointed Othman-Paaha to the govern-
24 mffFORT or tubxbt.
ment of Bassora, bis natire eoantrj. Sokolli, widibg to
represent to the Saltan the danger of appointing a man so
popular to the govemment of a prorince oonterminoos with
Arabia : " Take care not to tonoh him henceforth," said the
Sultan with severitj. But Sokolli, more solicitous to guard
ihe safety of the empire than to please his all-powerful
master, changed on the very day the destination of Othman,
and sent him to a less important government.
Entire Arabia, vanquished or pacified by Sinan-Pasha,
reoognized in 1571 the law of the Turks. Sinan at the head
of his army entered Mecca, re-established the liberty of pil-
grimage, and the three caravans of Syria, of Egypt, and of
Yemen, celebrated the ceremonies of the Kaaba. Nothing
now delayed at Constantinople the preparations of Sokolli
for the expedition against Cyprus. The restoration of order
in Arabia, the reconciliation with the Russians satisfied with
their unpunished infringements on the Crimea, the peace with
the Emperor of Germany, the friendship ?rith the Poles, the
alliance more and more intimate with France, the prosperity
of the treasury, the armament of the fleet, the impatience
of the troops a long time idle, permitted, in fine, the grand
vizier to bear with the whole weight of his patient policy
Tinst the Venetians, and to wrest from them the kingdom
Cyprus. This conquest, necessary to the empire, was
besides, in the mind of the grand vizier, a judicious conde-
scension to an old caprice of Selim II.
While this prince, suspected by his father, an exile at
Kutaïah or at Magnesia, was languishing in idleness, in dis-
grace, and often in distress for money, the ordinary lot of
the heirs or victims of the throne, at that time, in Turkey,
he contracted with a companion of his youth a friendship
and a gratitude which became baleful to the Christians of
Cyprus.
This man was a Portuguese Jew named then Joseph Nassy,
&nd previously Don Miguez. He was one of those Hebrews,
thrown by the dispersion of their nation among every people,
and who were led by persecution and the dread of popular
outrage to adopt the appearance of Christianity, which they
detested in secret. The greatest crime of these persecutions
is not only to make prescripts, but also hypocrites Joseph
Nassy had the insinuating genius and the adroit graces which
the necessity of their situation gives to men who can aspire
to power only by servility. Bich already by commerce on
HISTOBT OF TITKKST. 20
leaving Portugal, he came a daring adventurer to seek at
Constantinople to aggrandize and to ennoble his acquired
wealth. Captivated to delirium by a Jewish young woman
whose beauty and opulence ravished equally his eyes and his
ambition, Don Miguez did not hesitate to abjure for love a
Christianity adopted for convenience. He married this
daughter of his tribe.
His wealth decupled by this match, the sums he loaned
with a political liberality to the ^andees of the court, the
presents in jewelry which he lavished on the serafflio, the
possession of the most renowned vineyards of Chio, of
Cyprus, of Sicily, of which he used the products to corrupt
the sensuality, then not too scrupulous, of the courtiers and
of the young heir of Soliman himself, addicted to drunkenness,
had brought him into familiarity with Selim. Like a man
who could brave present disgrace for the sake of securing
future favor, he followed the prince to Kutaïah. The
intimacy of the young Mussulman prince and of the Jewish
adventurer was such, that it used to be said at Constantinople
that Selim was not the son of Soliman and Boxelana, but
the child of a Jew sister of Don Miguez, whom an intrigue
had substituted in the harem for a still-born son of the
favorite. Money, pleasures, debaucheries, delicious wines
of the Archipelago — all was common between the two friends.
The fjQkvorite, in exciting the enthusiastic covetousness of the
prince for the gold ducats and the savory casks of Cyprus,
did not cease to represent to him this opulent island as the
paradise of the voluptuous. One day that the wine of the
sunny hill-sides of Limasol had intoxicated more than usual
the senses and the imagination of Selim, the prince, throwing
himself into the arms of his friend, swore that if he should
ever ascend the throne of the Ottomans, he would give him
the proprietorship of the kingdom of Cyprus, in acknowledg-
ment of the delights which he owed his purse and his
presents. *
Don Miguez, who saw in the promise of the future Sul-
tan, a sort of investiture, had the arms of Cyprus painted
and hung up in his house with this legend : " Joseph Nassy,
EoNG OP Cyprus."
On the accession of Selim to the throne, Nassy, who had
hastened to Belgrade to congratulate him, threw himself at his
feet. Selim, in raising him up and embracing him, gave him,
as a prelude to a gift more royal, the title of Duke of Naxos
Vol. III.— 2
26 UISTOBT OF TURKET.
and of the twelve Cjclades. By way of rent for theae im-
mense possessions, the Saltan required of his friend bot a
light tribute of two thousand ducats on the wines, which
brought the new possessor of the Cyclades one hundred and
fifty thousand ducats. The former prince, dispossessed of
Naxos and of Andros, came to drag hb degradation and his
indigence to Constantinople.
But so many dignities and so much wealth appeared to
the favorite but steps to elevate him to his vision, the king-
dom of Cyprus. He did not cease exhorting Selim II. to
extend his hand to that possession of the republic The
Venetian ambassadors, who were aware of his credit, and
who dreaded every thing from hb wealth, were tremblinff at
the resolutions of the divan. All the young court of Sdim,
Nassy, Lala-Mustapha, the capitan-pasha and his brother
Pialé, inclined for the declaration of war against Venice.
The grand vhcier and the mufti alone resisted this precipita-
tion of the seraglio. They found neither the cause just nor
the moment opportune. Venice furnished no grievance, and
her naval forces anchored in her port might be able to cover
with sails and cannons the coasts of Cyprus.
The ambitious Nassy, whose opulence could purchase
treacheries and crimes, corrupted, it is said, some pirates,
and burned the arsenal of Venice by their hands. The 13th
September a nocturnal explosion awoke the Venetians to the
light of their arsenal and their fleet on fire. The munitions
of the republic had exploded with the arsenal. The harbor,
covered the previous evening with the armament and with
the equipment of one hundred and fifty vessels, beheld next
morning afloat but hulks and wrecks on the lagoons.
This disaster decided the divan to dare alL After an
imperious summons not to be accepted by a proud and free
republic, the Ottoman expedition made sail for the king-
dom of Cyprus. Selim confided it to those who had encour-
aged it. His preceptor, Lala-Pasha, was appointed seraskier
or general of the army of debarkation. The capitan-pasha,
Pialé, commanded the fleet Iskender, beglerbeg of Ana-
tolia, Hassan-Pasha, vanquisher of Arabia under Sinan,
Behram-Pasha, governor of Caramania, and all the veteran
generals of the wars of Hungary commanded the land forces.
Three hundred and sixty ^lil in all, set out successively,
in March and April, from Constantinople to transport tlus
expedition to Cyprus,
HISTORY OF TUBKEY. 27
Ten thousand men debarked in passing on the hilly isle
of Tine, and burned it from one extremity to the other, to
punish it for its liberty which it succeeded in maintaining
against the pretensions of Joseph Nassy, Duke of Noxas. But
the inhabitants, fled for refuge to and invincible in their
citadel, left to be conquered but their houses, their trees and
their flocks. Their free souls respired anew their liberty
after the passage of the Turks.
The fleet, rounding slowly the advanced capes of Ana-
tolia, between Maori and Rhodes, coasted along Oaramania,
embarking at each harbor new reinforcements. These four
hundred sails, forming a continuous column from Bhodes
alons to Satalia, cast anchor the 1st August, 1570, on the
beach of Amathonte, on the southern extremity of the island.
The inhabitants, from the heights of the promontories and
the mountains of the island, counted with terror the number
of their enemies.
IX.
The island of Cyprus, the ancient land of Chetim, of
the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, the ancient Kypros of the
Greeks, was worthy by its site, by its climate, and its fer-
tility, of being divinized in fable as the abode of the cods
and goddesses who were the symbols of love and beauty, those
divinities of the senses. It took its name from one of the
names of Venus herself, Cypris.* The gardens, the sacred
groves, the temples of this goddess, of whom voluptuousness
was the worship, covered its promontories. Amathonte and
Paphos were the most famous. Their dnst is to this day
formed of the wrecks of the pulverized sanctuaries, baths,
fountains and statues of that feminine Olympus. Man, who
almost everywhere adores what he dreads, adores also what-
ever charms his brief passage here below and makes him
dream of the felicities of another world. Nature herself
had consecrated the island of Cyprus to sensuality and to
happiness. This land was and is still the Eden of the seas.
The waves, the earth, the sun, the air, seemed to have
brought it into being, like Aphrodite, by an amorous harmony
of the elements.
♦ On the contrary, it was the island that gave to Venoa ^^^Ppella-
tion, which it had derived from the source, less poeUc no aonot^ ^f ^ta
mines of copper, latinicé cuprvan, — Translator,
28 HISTORY OF TURKEY.
Like a floating cradle which the winds of Egypt have
gently urged from wave to wave into the eastern extremity of
the great Take of the Mediterranean^ the island, sheltered from
the north by the peaked chain of the Taurus, and from the
simoon of the deserts by the summits of Mount Lebanon,
extends over a space of nearly seven hundred miles in cir-
cumference between Syria and Caramania. The alternate
shadow of those lofty mountains seems to extend itself in
the evening and in the morning along to its shores, and to
dye with a deeper azure the undulations of the sheltered sea
which caress it with their foam.
On the side which looks towards Syria, the island pro-
longs, in declining to the level of the water, its promontory
of Demaretum, as if it sought to insinuate itself into the
deep gulf of Alexandretta, at the outlets of the Orontes, and
to present a bridge to the caravans of Aleppo and of Damas-
cus. On the side which faces Cilicia, the igle more elevated
on the borders approaches by the promontory of Epiphania
to the gulf of Satalia, that saline lake of Oaramania, en-
chased in the forests of the Taurus. Cape Crommyon, a pro-
tuberance of the body of the island between these two pro-
montories, would seem to rival the asperities of the capes of
the Taurus which it confronts. This cape is separated from
the continent of Anatolia but by a sea-channel which the
sail-crafb of the fishermen traverses in a summer night.
Cape Crommyon is connected by continuous and gentle
slopes with the (fentral and fundamental mountain of the
island, the Cyprian Olympus, the least lofty but the most
serene of the four Olympuses of that land in which antiquity
seems to have hesitated where to place the dwelling of its
gods. The poet Euripides makes the shrubberied and mur-
muring valleys of the Olympus of Cyprus the bhrth-place of
Venus Aphrodite, and the abode of the Muses, those intel-
lectual Venuses who inspire men, for moral beauty, with the
love wherewith the corporal Venus inspires the senses.
To the right and to the left of this Mount Olympus,
two chains of mountains, less elevated, running and declin-
ing down to the extremities of the land, present like a fur-
row their two slopes to two opposite suns. It is doubtless
this protuberance of the dorsal muscle of Cyprus which
caused the island to be compared by the ancient geographers to
a fleece of wool lying afloat upon the sea, to a convex buckler
that flashes off the beams of the sun, in fine, to a dolphin
mSTOBT OF TXTBKET. 29
swimming and rustling upon the wares. In the plaoe where
the Muses, Jupiter, Adonis wept by Venus, Apollo, and
Venus herself, had their names, their shrines, their wor^ips,
their pilgrimages, the Christian theogony came to substitute
the names, the altars, the pilgrimages of apostles, of saints,
of martyrs.
Cyprus, under a perpetual spring, had a soil and a popula-
tion corresponding to its site, to its climate, and to its extent.
Com, the vine, the mulberry that feeds the silkworm, the
olive which exudes the vegetable butter of the East; the
bee-hives yielding a honey as renowned as that of Hymettus;
the plane-tree, the cypress, the myrtle, of which the flower
gives languor to the senses, opium which intoxicates them,
all the plants that nourish them, all the fruits that quench
their thirst. The melon, the peach, the pomegranate, the
orange, the lemon, the apples, the pears of Cilicia, the dates
of Syria, the flgs of Salamis, multiplied upon its hills or on the
borders of its rivulets. The mariner, in approaching Cyprus,
and contemplating the chSa along its borders all verdant with
the shrubs that cover them like tapestry and drop their fring-
ing filaments into the briny wave, imagines seeing a basket
overflowing with fruits and foliage.
The animals themselves seem to partake of the opulence
and the serenity of its soil. Its oxen were chosen on ac-
count of their great size, of their horns and of their white-
ness for the sacrifices ; its innumerable doves, with bluish
wings as if dipped in the sea, formerly consecrated to Venus,
cover still with their clouds and attender* with their cooings
the woods and fountains of the islands
Thé mineral wealth was equal to the vegetable. The
rocks imbedded precious stones, such as jasper, loadstone,
rock crystal, opaL Mines of copper, a metal consecrated
no doubt on account of its origin, to Venus, Queen of
Cyprus, were worked there m the highest antiquity. Saline
marshes, on which the sea in retiring left a white crystalli-
zation like snow, furnished the island and the neighboring
continents with tie salt of Cyprus.
X.
Its history was, like that of countries too envied by con-
* To dispose to feel or inspire tenderness, compassionate or affection-
ate. This common sentiment remains without a special term in onr
clmnsj- English. — Trcmilator
80 HISTORT OF TURKKT.
Îaerors and too enervated bj a precooions civilisation, saeb. as
Sgjpt, Greece) Syria, Italy, full of yicissitades and of catas-
tropnes. Nine tyrants, served each by an army of informers,
divided it amongst them in its earlier historic times.
Female slaves, who played on instruments and who were
termed flattêresses, were charged to inebriate their senses
and to inspire them with the languors produced by an effem-
inate music diffused upon the air. The Egyptians had con-
quered it from the Phoenicians, the Persians from the Egyp-
tians, the Greeks from the Persians ; it belonged afterward to
Alexander, then to the Romans represented by Cato ; devas-
tated by the Jews under Trajan, it had fallen at the end of
the seventh century of our era, into the power of the Arabs ;
Baudouin, a crusader king of Jerusalem, and Bichard, king
of England, wrested it from the Arabs ; Richard gave it in
pledge to the Templars — ^tyrannical and plundering monks
who ravaged and enslaved Uie people in the name of Christ,
bom to emancipate them ; he then abandoned it to Guy de
Lusignan, in exchange for the crown of Jerusalem; later
still, the Genoese, merchants who bought and sold kingdoms,
made the purchase of it from the successors of Guy. The
Mamelukes of Egypt annexed it to their passing possessions,
and the Venetians slipped into it beneath the shadow of their
commerce.
A Venetian woman of their blood, Catherine Cornara,
had been wedded by the last nominal sovereign of the island,
heir of the crusaders. The agents of the republic of Venice
having poisoned the king and the son which he had had by
Catherine Cornara, this widow was declared the daughter
of the republic ; as such, she of course gave, in turn, her
kingdom to Venice, her mother. In consideration of this
free or this forced munificence, the Venetian senate decreed
a magnificent tomb to Catherine Cornara in the church of San
Salvator, and proclaimed this widow patroness of the re-
public.
The island, although disordered and depopulated by so
many internal revolutions and so many vicissitudes of con-
quest, resumed under the laws, under the protection and the
maritime commerce of the republic, an agricultural and an
industrial prosperity which made it the first colony of the
West on the frontiers of Asia. It was to the Venetians
what Cuba and Manilla are to-day to the Spanish, a richer
and more happy home exterior to the mother country.
HISTOBY OF TUBKBY. 31
Armies and fleets were kept on foot there by the republic.
Its capital, Nicosia, in the heart of the island, its naval
capitals, Famagonsta and Larnaca, its ports fortified with all
the art of European engineers and with all the prodigality
of the richest military republic of the West formed bulwarks
to be compared to those of Rhodes, of Malta, and of Bel-
grade, so long impregnable to the Ottomans.
Dandolo, under the title of inspector, governed the
island unskilfully. Hector Baglioni, a Venetian noble, was
general of the troops ; Bragadino defended Famagousta ; the
small number of their troops, which did not exceed seven
thousand Yenetian soldiers, required them to be well covered
by their walls and their vessels.
XL
The seraskier, whose four hundred vessels bore no less
than a hundred thousand combatants, disembarked without
obstruction this multitude and his artillery upon the naked
beach of Limasol, at the point of the island which looks
upon the sea of Khodes. The capitan-pasha, J^ialé, resuming
instantly the sea, cruised through the whole summer season
between Rhodes, Cyprus, and Satalia, in view of the three
lands, to combat any Yenetian squadron that should sail from
the Adriatic towards the blockaded island.
Lala-Mustapha was a novice in the conduct of an army.
Pialé advised him to attack Famagousta before Nicosia, m
order not to leave a city and an army of the enemy between
him and the sea while he should be besieging the capitaL
The seraskier, confiding in his numbers, disdained this pru-
dence, and marched wim his hundred thousand men upon the
capitaL The entire island, submerged by this deluge of
undisciplined Turks under a barbarous general, fell back
into Nicosia, into the gorges and inaccessible table lands of
Olympus.
Nicosia, a site ill chosen for the capital of a maritime
kingdom, was seated on an elevation in the centre of the
islajid.
Its area, disproportioned to the limited population, made
it vulnerable over a circumference of three thousand paces.
It was a holy city rather than a fortified city. Three hun-
dred and sixty churches or monasteries, as nnmerous as the
days of the year, attested the superstition rattier than the
32 mSTORT OF TURKEY.
prudenoe of the Elings of Jerusalem and of the Greek monks
at that time masters of the East The Venetians, with more
common sense, had demolished eighty of these diurches and
oonyents to construct bastions with their materials.
A population of a hundred thousand souls and ten
thousand soldiers, Venetian, Cypriote, Italian, Albanian, were
shut up in this capital They saw with terror, but without
weakness, Lala-Mustapha, arrived at the foot of the hill,
distribute his tents, his batteries, and hb hundred thousand
soldiers around their walls.
Six weeks of siege and five assaults repelled had raised
their hopes ; they looked every morning from the height of
their steeples to see if the vessels promised by the republic
did not make their appearance on the horizon of Khodes or
of Candia. They saw but the four hundred sails of the
capitan-pasha nearing the beach of Limasol, and landing a
reinforcement of twenty thousand Turks to swell the hosts
of the seraskier.
The arrival of these twenty thousand men in the camp
of Mustapha, was the signal for a new general assault. It
was the 9th November, 1570. The storming awaited but
the dawn of the day. Before the twilight, ^irty thousand
Janissaries had carried, by dint of men, the principal
bastions of the city. The defenders, wounded or preoipi-
tate<l from the battlements, had fallen back into the barricaded
streets in the heart of the city. Their bravest officers were
dead beneath the sabres or the balls of the Turks. The
proveditore Dandolo, the archbishop, his clergy, and the
principal magistrates, had taken refuge in the palace of the
government, of which the walls soon tottered before the
closely-planted batteries. The first Cypriote parliamentaries,
who came as suppliants towards the breaches to ask for ca-
pitulation or mercy, were swept down without other answer
than grapeshot and death. The perfidious Dervish-Pasha
passed over their bodies at the head of a column of six
thousand Jamssaries and of six cannons, which dashed in
the doors of the palace. He had seized an Italian monk,
and had charged him to go and offer to the besieged in the
castle their life and their honor, on condition of the silence
of their artillery. The monk came out with the capitulation
signed in his hand. Dervish-Pasha and his soldiers rushed
through the door opened for the monk, and tearing the
oapitiUation, massacred the Venetians. Dandolo himse& fell
HISTORY OF TtTRKBT. 88
by the sabre of Denrish^Pasha ; his blood at least washed
out his shame.
The women, fled for refuge upon the terraces of the
palace, fought until death amid the smoke and flames which
began to Mndle their garments. The mothers, bef[>re pre*
cipitatiuff themselres from the height of the battlements,
poniarded their daughters to save at least the liberty and
the chastity of those virgins from the servitude ana the
pollution of the soldiers. One of them went the length of
killing even her son, a boy of extraordinary beauty. " No,*'
she cried, in plunging the knife in his throat, " thou must
not satiate like a slave the brutalities of our assasmns.*' She
then slew herself upon the body of her child.
Twenty thousand men, women and children, precipitated
from the windows and the terraces of the houses oroken into
or set on fire, ensanguined in a few hours the streets of
Nicosia. The vessels of the Turks, which lay at anchor in
the harbor to receive the spoils, nearly sunk beneath the
weight of the slaves, the furniture, the treasures piled up by
the victors upon their fleet. The riches in gold accumulated
in the churches and the palace, are estimated-at some millions
of ducats.
The heroism of a Greek woman, embarked in the ad-
miral's vessel to be carried into slavery at Constantinople,
deceived the cupidity of the vanquisher. At the moment
when the vessels of the squadron, surcharged and crowded
against each other in the narrow port, were weighing anchor,
when the flames of the city on fire illuminated for the last
time the shores of her country to her eyes, this woman
rushing, torch in hand, upon the deck, kindled the already
unfurled sails of the vessel, to perish at least in avenging
her religion and her race. The flame, fanned by the land-
breeze and redoubled by the explosion of the powder maga-
sine and of the guns, ran like lightning from one vessel to
another, forcing the sailors to precipitate themselves from the
decks into the sea, to escape from that inextinguishable
furnace. The vessel of the grand vizier and the other men-
of-war were blown to fragments by the explosion of their
powder magazines ; the rest burned and sunk slowly in the
night, carrying down with them into the sea the noble women
and daughters of the island enchained upon their decks.
The treasury of the republic embarked upon these
Tessels, in sequins of Venice, was ingulfed totally with
Vol. IIL— 2»
34 HI8T0BT OF TÛBKBT.
the hulks beneath the waves. Turkish divers tried in rain
to follow it with the eye into ^he depths of the sea. The
billows of the sea of Ojpros roll sinoe that tragic night
upon the sand-embedded carcasses of the vessels that contain
the price of so many fruitless crimes. The spot is well
known ; there is seen from time to time to rise to the sur-
face of the harbor some splintered fragments of this vast
wreck detached by tempests from the timbers of the vessels ;
but all efforts have hitherto failed to sound the hulks so bm
to reach the treasures.
In our days, some English adventurers, tempted by the
fame of these treasures, have offered the Turks to share
them with them, on condition of raising them at their own
expense ; but the sea seems to refuse to give up to men the
price of so many indignities and so much blood.
XII.
Lala-Mustapha, intoxicated with his triumph, sent before
him the severed head of tho proveditore Dandolo to Braga-
dino, commander of Famagosta, the second city of the island,
to summon him, by terror, to open his gates. Bragadino
bore in his heart the desperate courage of an entire people,
and in his intrepidity the safety of Cyprus, if the Venetian
senate had seconded worthily its general. The hundred and
twenty thousand soldiers of Mustapha and the countless
sails of Pialé only exalted his courage to the level of his
danger. The entire autumn and winter saw the fruitless
stormings of Mustapha fail against the ramparts, pulverised
but still erect, of Famagosta.
Cyprus, confident in her hero, heard several times on the
side of Khodes the cannons of the fleets of Venice trying
to open a way through the fleets of the Turks. Two thou-
sand defenders sent from Balmatia, and fifbe^ hundred men
from the island of Candia, succeeded in forcing the harbor
of Famagosta and introducing reinforcements, provisions and
mimitions into the city.
Selim impatient, the grand vizier irritated, rebuked the
slowness of the siege. Lala-Mustapha, mortified, sent them
the heads of the generals and of the admirals upon whom
he threw the shame. Forty thousand fresh miners and
sqldiers passed in spring from the coast of Caramania to the
shores of Cyprus. The rocks of Famagosta, pierced by a
HIBTOBY OP TURKEY. 35
hundred thousand arms, opened to the Turks trenches so
broad and so deep that cayalrj could pass beneath their
vaults. Batteries of eighty pieces of cannon, of which the
calibre equalled those that battered Constantinople and
Rhodes, vomited night and day huge blocks of granite
against the ramparts.
Bragadino, resolved to bury himself beneath the ruins,
sent out of the city all the inhabitants who were starving
uselessly the garrison. This people, tottering with inanition,
appeared one morning as suppliants before the Turks ; the
Ottoman generals, affected by so much misery, let them
diffuse themselves, to seek their sustenance among the
G-reek villages of the island. Bragadino, now free in his
resolutions, saw with indifference the Turkish mines explod-
ing one by one beneath his bastions. Every breach thus
opened in his walls became the grave of the assailants.
Cannons cast beneath his eyes supplied the place of the
stone bulwarks. The narrow area of Famagosta presented
every where but mounted guns. The chief imparted to his
ten thousand soldiers a single soul. The distant signals of
the galleys of Venice, which they descried from time to
time on the sea of Candia, seemed to promise them a speedy
deliverance ; but this hope vanished as the days rolled by.
The walls were crumbled to the foundation into the ditches ;
the Venetians, compressed within a second enclosure con-
structed in earth, were awaiting until the new subterranean
mines, of which they heard the excavation beneath their
feet, should ingulf them in a sepulchre of fire. They had
now powder to last them but for three days. They would
surrender to the Ottomans but a mound of rubbish soaked
with blood.
The Ottomans appeared themselves to pity so much
useless heroism. Negotiations were opened on the breach.
The kyaya of the seraskier and the aga of the Janissaries
entered the place under a white flag, and remained as
hostages of the safety of the Venetian parliamentaries. Two
nobles of Venice presented themselves, under these securities,
at the tent of Lala-Mustapha ; they were received with the
honors due to their courage. The seraskier made them sit
on his divan ; the capitan-pasha invited them to a festival
of peace. A written capitulation assured to Bragadino and
his troops their life, their arms, their property : those of the
inhabitants who should wish to remain on the island sub-
36 mSTOBY OF TUBKBT.
mitted to the dominion of the Saltan ; in fine, yeiseb to
toansport the others to Oandia.
Three days were sufficient to evacuate Famagosta and to
embark upon the vessels the Venetian troops, with the ex-
ception of the superior officers who presided on land over
the delivery of the posts and the embarkation of the soldiers.
The third day, in the evening, Bragadino repaired to the
tents of the seraskier to take leave of that oommander-iur
chief and to give him the keys of the deserted city. The
general was accompanied by Louis Martinengo, a consummate
engineer who had presided over the defence, by Bagnioli, by
Quirina, Venetian noblemen, and by forty select soldiers, his
escort of honor. Mounted on the last horse remaining alive
in his army, dressed in the purple robe of the senate of
Venice, and having borne above his head by a Moor the red
parasol, the emblem of supreme authority in a governor of a
fortress, Bragadino advanced with confidence towards the
tents, an object of respect to the vanquishera The reception
of Lala-Mustapha was becoming, and the conversation ami-
cable; but this dissimulation covered vengeance. Lala-
Mustapha could not pardon the hero for having retarded by
fifteen months his triumph, and compromised at Constan-
tinople his credit and perhaps his head. He wished to offer
to Selim an excuse in the shape of blood.
Some historians of the catastrophe of Cyprus assign as
motive for the perfidy of Mustapha, an infamous passion
that sprung up in his soul at the sight of the young Antonio
Quirini, a beautiful youth of a feminine countenance, who
accompanied Bragadino at this audience. The brutality of
some depraved Ottomans, since the conquest of Constan-
tinople, by the unnatural vices of the G-reeks, only justifies
too well this odious supposition. The unexpected and obsti-
nate exigency of the seraskier gives it a motive.
" What guarantee wilt thou give me," said he to Braga^
dino, about to withdraw, " that the vessels of the Ottomans
which I lend thee to take to Candia thyself and thy soldiers
will not be retained by thy republic ? " " The capitulation,"
replied Bragadino, astonished, " mentions none but my word."
" Well," rejoined the seraskier, " I require that thou deliver
me as hostage this young man, who will answer by his head
for thy fidelity."
Bra^dino blushed, and was indignant at a cowardice
proposed so infSunously to a man who preferred with so much
HZ6TOBT OF TtTBKST. 37
glorj for two years back, honor to life. Tho c(nilereiiO0
became exasperated by recriminations and insults. Lala-
Mustapha reproached with reason the Venetians of Famagosta
-with haying immolated the year preyious, in full peace,
fifty Mussulman pilgrims, oast by a tempest on their island
and sacrificed by aie Christians. This too real and too bloody
remembrance seemed to require of him some dreadful re^
prisais ; he made a sign to the executioners to cut off the head
of Antonio Quirini, the innocent cause of the altercation, of
Martinengo and of Baglioni. Their heads instantly rolled
upon the carpet.
The crimes of il^agadino were to haye a slower torture.
Mustapha had him mutilated of the nose and ears, and
ordered him to be conducted in this plight cm board the flag-
ship of Rhodea There, by a refinement of torture, induced,
say the Ottoman historians, by a punishment of the same
nature inflicted upon Turkish prisoners under the goyernment
of Bragadino, he was hoisted to the yard-arms, plunged from
this gallows into the sea, rehoisted and again replunged by a
derision which seryed to prolong his consciousness and agony.
Brought back to the shore six days after, he had fixed
upon his shoulders a yoke charged with two baskets filled
with stones, which he was forced to carry up upon the bastions
of the city, to the end of thus rebuilding for the seryice of
the Turks the walls which he had defended against them.
Each time that he passed before the seraskier, present at his
ignominy, Bragadino was obliged to prostrate himself before
his executioner. At last, conducted to the square in front
of his own palace, the unfortunate general of Venice was
tied to the post used for whipping slayes, and flayed alive.
" Where then is thy Christ ? " said the executioners to him
in raillery, " why dost thou not call him to thy aid ? " The
impassable martyr did not turn his thoughts from God to
reply, but continued to recite aloud the psalm : " Ham pity
on me, Lord I " and as he had arrived at the yerse where
tiie psalmist delivers up his soul to God he expired.
This torture of eight days did not yet satiate the ferocity
of Mustapha. He hM l^e body of Bragadino quartered,
and exposed one of the four members upon each of the four
bastions of Famagosta. The skin of the bust, stuffed with
hay and tied derisively on the back of a cow, was marched
through tiie city and through the camp ; then hung anew t6
the yard-arm of a galley, then packed in a ease of cypres»
38 mcrroBT of txtbkky.
wood with the heads of Martinengo, of Baglioni, of Quirini
and of Bragadino himself) and sent a present to Selim bj
his savage preceptor. The mannikin, covered with the skin
of the champion of Cypress, exposed at Constantinople in
the bath of the Christian shives, was stolen from the guardians
by the piety of some Venetian slaves and restored, with the
sknll, to the senate of his country, where the remains of the
hero repose in a marble urn beneath the vaults of the Vene-
tian Pantheon of Saint John and Saint Paul.
The crimes against good faith, against humanity, against
nature, of this ferocious preceptor of the Sultan were lost
amid the reports of all the crimes of State and all the crimes
of religion that spread consternation, in this sanguinary
century, through Europe and Asia. It was the century
wherein Ivan the Terrible martyrized his subjects in Russia
with refinements of torture beyond the imagination of Nero ;
wherein Charles IX. in France ordered piously the Saint
Bartholomew; wherein the vanquishers of the fortress of
Wittenstein, valiantly defended, spitted the commander, a
prisoner of war, on the blade of a lance, and roasted him at
a slow fire amid the applauses of the army ; wherein the
Spaniards instituted in the Inquisition a tribunal of fire to
purify the faith. The shock of races, of religions, of schisms,
of arms, had stunned the heart of humanity, and leaves to
history no other justice to administer in such cases than the
universal execration of l^ose atrocities.
XIIL
Lala-Mustapha, the Torquemada of Cyprus, left alive,
of all the heroic defenders of Famagosta, but Henry Martin-
engo, nephew of the illustrious engineer of this name.
Instead of killing him, he was mutilated, and was condemned
to serve as slave and as eunuch in the palace of the grand
vizier.
Thus fell under Ottoman dominion this delicious kingdom
of Cyprus, which conquerors and nature had so long disputed
with each other ; the latter to make it the ^rden of the
East, the others to make it the sepulchre of its flourishing
population. The Ottomans derived from this conquest but
a gratification of pride to their arms and of hatred for their
cruelty. The island, under their clumsy administration,
never recovered from this disaster. The Venetians lost in
HI8T0BY OF TURKBT. 39
it the most prosperous of their colonies ; the Turks gained
but a sterilised land and a population exhausted by war :
the change was ruin to all parties, of which soUtude was the
sole heir.
This conquest cost the yanquishers fifby thousand men,
and five hundred thousand to the vanqubhed. This kingdom,
of which the Romans had made a present to the queens of
Egypt, Arshioë and Cleopatra, became a farm of the grand
viziers ; its revenues were appropriated subsequently to the
household of the Sultanas Y alidé, mothers of the reû
sovereigns. An empire became the appanage of a privi
slave of the seraglio.
XIV.
The fall of Cyprus and the martyrd<Mn of its defenders
rung through Europe. The barbarity of Lala-Mustapha
rekmdled national and religious hatred against the Turks.
The Pope, the national chief of Christendom, fomented by
all his efforts a lea^e of the Italian, the Spanish and the
French, to avenge the shame and the blood of Cyprus. The
grand vizier SokoUi foresaw and prevented it. He felt more
uneasy than happy at the ascendency which the expedition of
Cyprus had restored to Lala-Mustapha, his secret enemy.
He had hoped for his reverses rather than for his triumpL
He set himself to render Lala-Mustapha less conspicuous
and less necessary, by reconciling promptly the empire with
the republic of Venice.
France appeared the power most interested in dissolving
a Christian coalition which could not but politically profit
the house of Austria. He charged the ambassador of
France to go to Paris to propose the king to be the arbiter
of peace between the Ottomans and the Venetians. The
ambassador was requested by Sokolli to pass through Venice,
to make indirectly to the senate, by the way, the' first insin-
uations of peace with the republic through the mediation of
his court.
The senate of Venice dreaded more the ascendency of a
naval coalition of the West in the Mediterranean, than it
detested the Turks. It hastened to send a confidential
ambassador to Constantinople to prelude the negotiations.
This envoy, James Ragazzoni, conferred secretly with the
grand vizier at Constantinople, while the legate of the Pope,
40 msTOBT OF Txmtxr.
Cokmna, was conferring at Venice with tbe eenat^ about the
part of the republic in thccoalition against the Turks.
France and the grand yixier had not time to defeat the
efforts of the Pope, of Spain and of Austria at Yenice*
The popuUir cry against the devastation of Oyprus prevailed
over the cautious policy of the senate \ the Catholic league
was signed at the end of 1571 between Spain, the Pope and
Yenicei to humble the Ottoman power in the Levant The
general armament was fixed at two hundred vessels, at two
undred galleys, at an army of debarkation of fifty thousand
men and five thousand cavalry. The king of Spain, as the
most powerful and the most zealous of the allies, charged
himself with half the expenses of the war ; Venice with a
third ; the Pope with a sixth ; the generalissimo was to be
appointed by Spain. Messina, in Sicily, was the port of the
coalition and the point of departure of the confederates.
A high mass, celebrated with all the military and religious
pomp of the epoch, set the seal to the confederation.
The ambassador of France, who repassed by Venice in
returning to Constantinople, essayed vainly to detach the
republic from an alliance with powers who were less actuated
by the desire of avenging the Venetians than of dominating
them in their own seas. The statesmen understood the
ambassador, but the people only listened to the preachers
of the crusade. For the thirteenth time since the appearance
of the Turks in Surope religious antipathy raised against
t^em the West.
The Godfrey de Bouillon of this new crusade seemed to
have been formed by nature, by politics, and by glory, to
infuse from a high station soul, genius and vigor into this
coalition. He was the last of the knights of the West, who,
by birth, by adventures and by heroism, resemble the heroes
of fable, of romance and of poetry. This generalissimo of
the naval crusade was Don John of Austria.
There lay upon his origin a transparent veil which history
has lifted only in our day.
XV.
Charles V. had not only the genius, but also the heart of
a great man, that is to say, hungering for glory and thirsting
for love. Six years after having lost his wife, whom he loved
faithfully in her lifetime, and whom he idolized in his very
BI8T0RT or T17BKET. 41
memoTjf he was taken with one of those melaneholies which
are left in hearts made void by the eternal absence of those'
who were beloved — avoids which cannot be filled up except
by religion and by love, those two infinitudes of the souL
It was subsequently no other than one of l^ose fits of melan-
choly that made him feel a void even in the possession of
universal monarchy, and drove him to renounce the throne in
order to feed his pious sadness in the monastery of Saint Just.
While he resided in 1545 at Katisbon, and was thence
governing so many kingdoms, from Tunis to the confines of
Hungary and to the mouths of the Scheld, he loved,
with a mysterious and chivalrous passion, Barba de Blomberg,
a German lady of noble race, whose pure beauty and tender
soul recalled to him thp companion of his early years. It
was rather sadness than passion that gave birth to and at
first nourished the flame of love between these two hearts.
Barba de Blomberg had one of those voices which thrill to
even tears the memories that slumber in the t<Mnb of the
heart. Charles, who ha^^ned to hear her in the festivities
of Batisbon, felt himself rescued from his languors by a still
stronger emotion. Barba de Blomberg was invited honor-
ably to his court and admitted to the familiarity of the king,
to divert (say the memoirs of the time) the melancholy of
the prince by song.
Don John was bom the 24th FelH*uary, 1546, of these
loves. This birth was k^t mystically secret. Charles V.
had too mudi scruple for his own reputation, and above all
for the reputation of his mistress, and loved her too much to
dishonor her by his love. The infisuit, stolen by a confidant
from the mother, nursed in Germany under a borrowed name,
then carried into Spain by his nurse, was brought up until
his adolescence remote from the eyes, but near to the heart
of Charles V.
When this prince, by one of those lassitudes which some-
times seiae the happy under ike weight of their very happi-
ness, resolved to abdicate the empire to aspire only to the
celestial kingdom, and shut himself up in the solitude of
Saint Just in 1566, the child was in the care of the equerry
Quexada, to whom Charles V. acknowledged that he was its
father. Quexada was charged to bring up and to form young
Bon John with all the care comporting with the blood that
flowed in his veins, but without ever letting his pupil surmise
Uiat he was the son of the master of Europe.
43 mSTOBY OF TUBKEY.
The faithful sénritor at first confided the mysterious
infant to a poor fiddler of the village of Leganes near
Madrid. He here fortified his body in the sober and the
laborious life of the peasantry of Castile, and the curé of
the village had given him the instructions common to all the
other children of the country. When Don John had attidned
his ninth year, Quezada took him from Leganes and pre-
sented him to his wife, Madeleine d'Ulloa, saying to her as
sole explanation of the guest thus introduced into the family :
" Here is a page whom I bring you ; he is the son of an
illustrious friend of whom I have sworn not to tell the
name.''
The wife of Quezada, who had no children and who was
taken with the simple graces of the pretended page, believed
him to be the fruit of a fault of youth of her husband before
his marriage, and attached herself the more to him that she
hoped no longer to have herself an heir of his name. She
had the child to call her by the name the next in tenderness
after mother, that of aunt, and Quezada called Don John
his nephew. An accident, however, half revealed the truth
to the wife.
During the leisures which war and the court left rarely
to Quezada, the equerry of Charles V. used to come to
inhabit Villa-Garcias. Awakened one night by the flames
of a conflagration which consumed his house, he rushed to
save the child who lay asleep, even before flying to the
chamber of his wife. Madeleine d'UUoa understood from
this predilection of duty over nature that Don John was a
sacred deposit of which her husband owed account to the
emperor. Quezada, without avowing any thing, left the
supposition to take its course.
The residence of Charles V. at the monastery of Saint
Just completed the disclosure to Madeleine d'Ulloa. That
prince had kept about his person a few of his former servi-
tors, among whom Quezada was the most dear and the most
familiar. The rules of the convent interdicting the access
of Saint Just to women, Quezada had established his wife
and his page at the neighboring village of Cuacos. The
emperor thus gave himself the joy of contemplating, without
being known as his father, the page of Madeleine d'Ulloa.
He received frequently in the monastery the wife of the
equerry accompanied by the boy. Although he did not wish
as yet to reveal his birth to the page the looks wiUi which
HISTOEY OF TtJBKSY. 43
he caressed his countenance and the charm which he felt in
his amusements half revealed to the servants and to the
monks that this child was something more than a mere
diversion to the great solitary. Don John improved himself
under his inspection in all the exercises of the mind, of arms,
of horsemanship, which at that time formed the page or the
accomplished knight. History offers few scenes at once more
majestic and tender, than that of the disgusted master
of the world, seated at the window of his cell in a convent
of monks between his faithful equerry and the adoptive
mother of his child, looking at his son, the image of a too
loved mother, playing and wrestling in the garden of the
monastery, yearning to clasp him to his heart, and not daring
to tell him his name or his rank, for fear of offending God
and of scandalizing the monarchy.
XVI.
After Charles Fifth, as if the better to eradicate himself
from the empire and from the earth, had caused to be sol-
emnized before him and before his son his own obsequies, he
died, and the boy attended with Quexada at the real funeral.
He wept the emperor without being still certain that he was
weeping for his father. Quexada closed the eyes of his
master after death. He took back his wife and his page
to the mansion of Villa-Garcias, revealing his secret but to
Philip II., legitimate son and heir to the kingdom of Spain.
" There is much discussion," wrote he to the new empe-
ror, " as to the true father of Don John ; but I have always
denied and shall always keep silence. Your Majesty may be
assured that the secret is secure, although I give the boy an
education conformable to his august origin." The heroic
soul of Quexada passed completely into his pupil.
When Philip II. returned to Spain in 1559, he had
Quexada apprized to place himself on his way with his page
near the monastery of Spina. Quexada, in taking the boy
from his wife confessed to her for the first time the whole
truth about the love of his master and of Barba. Philip
IL, under pretext of a hunt, encountered, by accident,
Quexada and the page on the solitary borders of the forest
of Tonozos. He prolonged considerably the conversation
with Quexada, while gazing with visible pleasure on the
young page. The oval face, the lofty forehead, the aquiline
44 HISTOBT OF TUBKST.
nose, the prominent month, the air at once pensive and mar-
tial of the young man, retraced to the eyes of Philip II. the
rejuyenated portrait of Charles Fifth. His heart was not as
yet hardened by the fenaticism of the throne which put to
death Don Carlos. His eyes filled with tears, he embraced
the page, and named to him in a low Toice his father. Then
remounting his horse smd approaching his suite who had
moved off during this interview : '^ The hunt is at an end,"
said he, looking still at Don John ; " I have never had a
more agreeable encounter."
Don John followed from this day forth Philip II. and
finished his education under the preceptors who trained up
the King's own son, Don Carlos. He was given the signifi-
cant name of Don John of Austria. Ten years after, he
signalized his courage against the revolted Moors of the
Alpuzaras. Quexada, appointed governor of the prince,
president of the council of the Indies, general of the Span-
ish infantry, accompanied him to teach him war. Don John
and Quezada went, before the campaign, to Yilla-Garcia to
salute, the one his adoptive mother, the other his well-beloved
wife. She commended them oiïè to the other and both to
the protection of Gtod, and saw them depart with tears.
These tears were a presentiment. In an encounter with the
Moors, Don John, too far advimced, was going to fall before
the bullets which had already fractured his helmet, when hi»
brave tutor throwing himself between the Moors and him
received in the breast the discharge of the enemy. He
expired amid the conflict in the arms of his pupil, become
already a hero, but remaining still a son to him. Don John
buried him after the victory in the church of the Hierono-
mites of Baza, in awaiting till he could take back the body
to his widow.
" Quexada is no more," wrote he to Donna Magdalena, in
relating to her and in mitigating the severity oi her loss ;
" he has died as he should die, fighting for glory, for his coun-
try, and devoting himself voluntarily to save him whom he
loved as a son ; he has died crowned with immortal honor.
Whatever I am, whatever I may be destined to one day
become, it is to him that I owe and shall owe all ; it is he
who has brought me into the world by a second birth, that
of the intellect and of the heart, perhaps more noble than
the first. Poor desolate widow ! mother for ever cherished !
I remain alone to you on the earth, and I belong to you by
mSTOBT OF TUBKBY. 45
a double title, I for whom your husband has died I I who
cause involuntarily your misfortune I Restrain your despair
with your usual force of wisdom ; would that I were by you
to dry your tears or to mingle mine with yours I Adieu,
dear and honored mother! Pray Gtod to let your son
return to you to be pressed to your heart."
The young man who wrote thus in the shadow of a
throne to a poor widow of Villa-Garcia foreshowed the veri-
table hero of his age. He accomplished with all the fervor
of youth, of glory and of love, the filial pieties which he had
vowed to his adoptive mother. On return from his cam-
paigns, his first visit was to her; his earliest maritime
trophy, a beacon taken from a flag-ship of the Turks, was
sent by him to Donna Magdalena After the victory of
Lepanto, it was also on her account that he requested as his
sole recompense a favor of the Pope.
Such was the young hero for whom birth, the influence
of Philip II. and his precocious reputation, obtained the
general command of the combined army.
XVII.
Glory was the sole heritage of those children of love,
such as Don John or Dunois. Their fathers, unable to
bequeath them either their name or their throne, wished to
bequeath them at least the victories obtained for their sub-
jects by those heirs of their blood. Not daring to make them
kings, they sought to make them heroes. Nature often co-
operated with the fathers in avenging the ]|^tards for the
superiority of rank of the legitimate princes. Children of
youth and of love, these disowned sons had the privilege of
disinherited beings; more resemblance to the father, a
mother more beautiful, an affection more tender, because it
is more concealed, an education more masculine. Those
men who receive less from fortune strain more fully the
springs of their character to make themselves a destiny
worthy of their blood. Such was Don John, already the
first of knights, before being the first of admirals in Europe.
Andrew Doria, the hero of Genoa, now old, felt himself
honored by at once prompting and obeying him in those
seas which he had filled with his name.
46 HISTORY OF TURKEY.
XVIII.
The combined fleet put out from Messina in search of
the Turkish fleet the 2ôth of September, 1571. Don John
commanded personally seventy-two vessels of Spain, six of
the Order of Malta, three of the house of Savoy; Marc-
Anthony Colonna, admiral of the Pope, commanded the
twelve galleys of îlome ; admiral Sebastian Yeniero the first
seaman of Venice, one hundred and twelve galleys, of which
several were galeasses of dimensions equal to floating for-
tresses. John of Cordova, admiral of Sicily, explored the
route with eight fast-sailing vessels. Andrew Doria sailed
in the vanguard with hb fifty-four galleys. The Venetian
fleet, divided into two squadrons, formed the centre ; the
admiral of Naples bought up the rear with thirty-two vessels.
Don John had given orders to the Sicilians at Ôie head, and
to the Neapolitans of the reserve, to flank the fleet as two
wings at the moment when it should unfold itself in line on
view of the enemy.
Don John was ignorant of the station and the number of
vessels of the Turkish fleet. After having, like Nelson in
our days, cruised during sixteen days from one shore to the
other of the Mediterranean in search of the Turkish fleet
without finding them, his instinct led him to return at full
sail, the 7th of October before day, into the Adriatic. The
first glimmerings of the dawn showed him an immense cloud
of sails behind the little islands called Echinades or Leech
Islands, which shut like so many buoys the profound gulf of
Lepanto, at the outlet of the little river AcheloOs. It was
the two hundred and twenty vessels or galleys of the Otto-
man fleet which were coasting along Albania in quest on
their side of the confederate fleet and of the battle-ground
which had so often been propitious to them under Barba-
rossa ; but Barbarossa was no more. Pialé himself, tired of
the sea, had been made vizier. An intrepid but inexperi-
enced admiral, Ali-Muezzinzadé, commanded the fleet as
capitan-pasha. His lieutenants were the Algerian Ouloudj,
the Tripolitan Djafar-Pasha, in fine young Hassan-Pasha, son
of Barbarossa. Pertew-Pasha commanded the land force
embarked upon the fleet, more embarrassing than useful in a
conflict of five hundred vessels upon an unfamiliar element.
At si^ht of the vsmguard of Don John, which veered
about behmd the Echinade islets in order to apprize the com-
mSTOBY OF TtlRKBT. 47
bined fleet, Pertew-Pasha and Hassan-Pasha, called to coun-
cil on the admiraPs vessel, advised the capitan-pasha to
remain on the defensive in the gulf of Lepanto and to
postpone the battle until his novice crews, become more
familiar with the sea, would yield more soldiers to his army
and more activity to his vessels. But all prudence appeared
cowardice to the rash, and infidelity to the fanatical. Muezzin-
zadé only crowded the more sail to fly the quicker to the
encounter of the fleet of the Christians.
XIX.
Don John, perceiving this manœuvre, hoisted at his miz-
zen-mast a small green banner of a square form, the signal
concerted with the admirals for forming the line of battle.
Each of the divisions was disposed, directed and animated
by one of those consummate seamen who had a name to lose
hj defeat or to illustrate by participation in a memorable
victory. Andrew Doria, the veteran and the example of all,
formed the right wing, and was the first to run between the
shoals of the Leech isles to deploy himself in the gulf.
The provedUore of Venice, Barbarigo, coasted on the left the
central island of Petalia or VUlordi-Marmo, and covering
his sails with the shadow of thb island, debouched of a sudden
in the gulf by the arm of sea into which falls the Acheloûs,
Don John with the bpdy of the fleet formed himself into
a vast crescent and followed slowly his two wings. He
found the Turks, deceived by the separate appearance of
Andrew Doria, ranged in column on the coast of the Morea
to engage with the Genoese admiral, instead of facing on
the whole breadth of the gulf his own vessels. The prince
of Parma, Famese, admiral of Savoy ; the duke of Urbin,
admiral of G^noa ; the commandant of Castile, admiral of
Naples ; Marc- Anthony Colonna, admiral of the Pope ; the
marquis of Santa Croce, who led the rearguard, flanked the
vessel of Don John. In a few tacks, the two fleets, now
separated by a small distance, stood still as if to measure
one another visually for a moment.
The Turks had time to change their movement in column
on the coaat of the Morea, into a line of battle as deep and
extended as that of the Christians. The sun beamed resplend-
^ently upon the glossy waves and was reflected from the
cliffs of Albania upon the sea. At the middle of its course
48 HI8T0BT or TUBKST.
it shone behind the fleet of Don John, and it danled the
ejes of the Turks, in repercossing on the sails, on the hel-
mets, on the cannons and on the cuirassés of the confede-
rates. Thousands of oars, at this moment at rest, were held
suspended on the sides of the galleys corered with combat-
ants. By a strange derision of fortune, Mussulman slaves,
forming the crew of the Christians, were praying for the
Turks while rowing for the Christians, ami on the other
hand the Christian slaves, for oarsmen of the Turkish yeasels,
were at the same time imploring secretly the victory for
their brethren in Christ The wind had fallen with the
morning breeze which sets in from the mouth of the Ache-
loiis at the dawn ; the oars alone are about to move these six
hundred slumbering vessels.
The battle commenced as if spontaneously, and by the
narrowing of the basin which forced the left wing of the
Christians and the right wing of the Ottomans to come in
contact at the bottom of the gulfl The superiority of the
number and of the land troops on the Turkish galleys was
ffttal to the proveditore of Venice, Barbarigo; he fell
beneath the boarding-pikes of the soldiers of Hassan. The
standards of Venice disappeared for a moment in that con-
flict at the extremity of the gul£
Muezzinzadé thought he had onl^ to complete the victory
by boarding the admiral's vessel which bore the green flag of
Don John. He reserved for himself alone this duel of death
in the midst of the fleets. Confl(iing in the mast of his
vessel, and in the five hundred Janissaries who covered her
deck, he rushed, without looking to see if he was followed,
upon the galley of thegeneralisamo. The two vessels, a» if
they were animated through their rigging and through their
members with the fury of the two admirals, dashed against
each other, grappled each other, crashed each other, quit
each other and re^appled during & mutual boarding which
changed their two decks, their mast and their yards into a
field of carnage, now invaded, anon lost, by the Turks and
by the Christians. The wounded and dying fallen over
board fought in the very wave& The sea was empurpled ;
blood trickled instead of water from the helm and the oars ;
a cloud of smoke and of arrows concealed from the fleets
the victory or the defeat of their two admirals.
Don John and Muezzinzadé sought each other in the con-
flict, and were at last about to meet upon a mound of dead bodies
HI810ET OF TUBKET. 49
which s^NUTttted them, when a blow given from the rigging
of the Spanish yessel, laid ppostrate the capitan-pasha at the
foot of his mast. The cries of victory from the Spaniards
and of lamentation frcrm the Turkish crew were confonnded
in a deafening clamor in the air. Don John stepped over the
body of his expiring enemy to exterminate the last group of
Janissaries on the poop, while the Spaniards, as ferocious as
ihe Africans, cut off the head behind him of the capitan-
padia, still alive. At the sight of this bleeding hesul, of
which the turban trickled blood on their foreheads, the ter-
rified Janissaries plunged into the waves or surrendered.
Don John pulled down the Ottoman colors from the mast
and hoisted the colors of Spain. The smoke, swept away
by the wmd, let both the fleets see the issue of the duel
Don John repulsed with horrcar the severed head of the
capitan-pasha which was brought him by his soldiers ; he
had it thrown into the sea as a trophy which would stain his
victory. But his soldiers, less generous than he, fished up
the head of Muezzinzadé, buoyed upon the waves by its
mnslin turban, and nailed it to the head of the main-mast to
strike dismay into the Ottomans.
The exploit of Don John and the temerity of the Capitan-
pasha decided, almost without contest, the fate of the
battle at the centre. Andrew Doria, less fortunate on the
right, let himself be cut off from the body of the fleet, and
was becalmed upon the coast of the Morea, with his sixty
vessels lost to the action. Ouloudj, with tjwenty Algerian
galleys, precipitated himself boldly into the intervals which
want of wind and inequality of movement left between the
vessels of the squadron of Doria. Already he had boarded
himself the flag-ship of Malta, prostrated hundreds of
knights, and beheaded with his own hand the commander
of Messina, their commodore, when the fall of the Turkish
flag on the vessel of Muezzinzadé disclosed to him the fate
of the principal conflict in the body of the battle.
Despairing then of the victory, and foreseeing the doom
of his own vessels, when three hundred Christian vessels,
free from enemies at the left and centre, should wheel about
like a vast net upon the right, he pierced, with forty Turkish
vessels, the line half broken of Andrew Doria, ranged
adjacent to the dielves of ^e Echinades, and making for the
open sea, saved at least this firagment of a fleet to the Otto-
mans. The unexplained disappearance of their left wing
Vol. III.— 8
50 HI8T0EY OF TUBKSY.
made the Turks beliere that it fled yaBquiflhed before the
cannons of Doria. The sool ef the Ottoman vessels van-
ished with it AU those that were not boarded by the
Spanish and the Venetians, abandoned themselves to the drift
of the wind and of the waves, and went to founder on the
rooks or on the flats of the outlets of the Aohelous. The
Christian long-boats were sent to bum their empty hulks ;
ninety of these pyres illuminated on that night with their
flames the ooast of Albania. One hundred and forty
boarded vessels, with their hundreds of cannons and their
thousands of prisoners, were partitioned the following day
amon^ tibe confederates upon tne field of battle.
The waters of Lepanto had ingulfed in a few hours
thirty thousand Turkbn bodies and ten thousand Christian.
The naval battle of Actium, fought fifteen centuries pre-
viously upon the same waters, between Anthcmy and Augus-
tus, competitors for the Boman world, had not cast up more
victims on the funeral sands of the Archelous. if Don
John and Muesneniadé had been but two ambitious rivals,
disputing with each other the possession of the universe,
this victory would have ^ven to the one dominion, to the
other servitude ; but religions and races do not perish in a
battle. The victory of Lepanto, three times more bloody
than that of Actium, gave to Don John but glory and spoils^
Precious arms, purple standards, silver crescents, pasha's
horse-tails, colden beacons which marked the mde of the
Ottoman admirals upon their poops, and twebre thousand
captives, were the sole results of the battle of Lepanta
Bome, Naples, Venice, raised in their churdies votive monu-
ments in commemoration of the victory of the cross.
The Turks, scarce touched in their vital force, which
rested on the land and not the sea, dissembled even their
disaster to the eyes of their capital Pialé, who adminis-
tered the marine, and Ouloudj-rasha, who had saved sixty
vesels, concerted to reconstruct, arm, and equip three hundred
other war-vessels in the ports of Africa, of the Morea, of
Oaramania, of Bhodes and of the Archipelago, before bring-
ing, according to the national usage, the fleet into the port
of Constantinople. The treasures, the materials, the cannons,
the rigging, the arsenab reserved by Soliman and by Sokolli
might supply three disasters of Lepanto. When the new
fleet of three hundred and sixty sail entered before winter
HISTORY OF TITRKET. 51
r
the port of Constantinople, tlie people could mistake tlie
defeat for a triumph.
Ouloudj-Pasha, for not having despaired of the fleet and
for having preserved sixty vessels to the empire, was ap-
pointed capitan-pasha or admiralissimo, in place of the brave
and unfortunate Muezzinzadé. Selim II. changed his name
of Ouloudj into KUidj^ that is to say, the sword. He found
in the grand vizier a man as capable of retrieving defeat as
of preparing victory. Some days after his elevation to the
post of capitan-pasha, and while he was occupied day and
night with constructing and arming a fleet superior to that
of the confederates, Kilidj represented to the grand vizier
that there was plenty of all tilings in the arsenals, timber,
cordage, cannons, mechanics, salaries, and that with such
resources he would engage to have ready five hundred vessels
before spring, if it were not for the ancnors which the forges
QÎ Turkey could not cast as fast as the shipwrights created
their vessels.
^^ Do not fear, pasha,'' replied with a smiling assurance
Sokolli, ^^ the wealth of the empire is such at this moment
that if it were impossible to make iron anchors and canvas
sails, we would fabricate anchors of silver, cordage of silk,
and sails of satin for our fleet."
Sokolli received about the same time an envoy from
Venice, Barbare, charged by the republic to sound the dis-
positions of the Porte. '^ Thou- art come to see,'' said the
grand vizier with a chuckle of satisfaction, ^' what is the state
of our courage or of our dejection after the misfortune we
have suffered at Lepanto ? But know that there is a great
difference between our loss and yours : in wresting from you
the kingdom of Cyprus, we have cut from you an arm, and
you, in destroying our fleet have merely clipped off our beard ;
your arm will not grow again, but our beard will sprout the
stronger and the thicker."
Kilidj put out in fact in spring with three hundred sail,
and braved the fleet of the confederates, already dissolved
by the divergent ambitions which dissolve all confederations
after a victory. France was uneasy at the alliance of the
republic of Venice with Spain and Austria confounded in a
single power aspiring to universal monarchy from Cadiz to
Amsterdam. The senate of Venice herself, cooped up
already within Austrian possessions and trembling to farther
aggrandize the ascendant of Spain, of Naples and of Genoa,
02 HISTOBY OF TURKEY.
swayed by the houBe of Austria upon the seai^ concerted
with France to detach the republic from the Catholic coa-
lition and to reconcile Venice and Constantinople. The able
French ambassador, M. de Noailles, bishop of Aix in
ProTence, subordinating religious prejudice to reason of state,
negotiated secretly with Sokolli this reconciliation, important
to the three states and above all to the balimce of Europe.
The patient and mediatorial negotiations of M. de
Noailles brought together at last the signatures of the grand
vixier and of the Venetian envoys to a treaty of peace irawn
up by the eloquent secretary of state, Feridoun. The peace
was signed between the republic and the Porte the 7th March,
1573. It was necessary, but cruel to the Venetians. The
blood uselessly spilled by them at Lepanto was thrown
away ; they consented besides to indemnify the Turks for the
sums which Selim II. had expended in depriving them of
the kingdom of Cyprus ; in fine, they acknowledged them-
selves tributary for the island of Zante, and for the places
which were left them on the coast of Albania.
This peace, glorious to Turkey, profitable to France,
shameful to Venice, baleful to the house of Austria, baffled
all the plans of Spain and of the Pope against Islamism.
Don John, the victor of Lepanto, avenged the conqueror of
Tunis. Kilidj, the capitan-pasha, sailed with two hundred
vessels and thurty thousand Janissaries to restore upon the
coast of Africa the patronage of the Ottomans. Tunis, re-
conquered in contempt of the Spaniards, became a military
colony of the Turks, and presently after an advanced post
of independent pirates, of whom the patrimony was the
pillage of the seas.
Austria, disconcerted by this success of the French nego-
tiator, hastened to claim humbly herself the continuation of
the truce which she had signed with Soliman II., said to pay
the Porte the humiliating tribute by means of which she pur-
chased the security of Hungary. Soliman would seem to
have reigned stilL
XX.
The reign of Selim II. thus far was, in effect, but the
prolongation of that of Soliman by the genius and hand of
his minister Sokolli. Selim had but one virtue, he let a
great man reign in his place. liong plunged in the delights
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 63
of the harem and the intoxication of the wines of Cyprus,
he appeared no better than a sated volaptuary on the throne.
Years, disgust, precocious infirmities, and the reflections
which the evening of life bring with its shadows, had all of
a sudden transformed him into a new man. The affectionate
and respectful reprimands of the virtuous mufti of Constan-
tinople, Abou-Sooud, had called his soul to repentance and
to virtue. Sobriety, prayer, the severest exercises of Mus-
sulman piety, had taken the place of the disorders of his
early life. He was no longer occupied but in preparing
himself for death, which he felt to be at hand.
The death of his counsellor Abou-Sooud, which deprived
him of the conversation of this sage, appeared to nim a
warning from heaven ; he wept the severe mufti as he would
have wept his spiritual father. His melancholy found no
charms but in the solitude of the gardens and the meditation
of the Koran on the brink of the sea. He regarded in the
prosperities and glories of his reign but the prosperity of
Islamism, of which he was become the dervish rather than
the Sultan. This religious melancholy, habitual to the sons
of Othman at the decline of life, recalls that of Dioclesian,
of Charles V., of Louis XIV. in another faith. The faith
of the Ottomans demands but few efforts of the reason ;
Atheism does not pervert their vices to the extent of denying
Providence. They are weak, often ferocious, never impious.
This has been seen in Amurath II., in Bajazet II. A
warning of adversity, of sickness, of religion, by the mouth
of a dervish or a sage, revives their conscience to remorse
and even to the correction of their disorders.
Such had been on Selim the effect of the reproofs of the
mufti Abou-Sooud. The favorite of his heart and the com-
panion of his debaucheries, Djelal-Beg, having uttered some
railleries against the austerity of the counsels of Abou-
Sooud, SeUm excluded sternly his old friend from his
presence, and relegated him into a distant government.
An earthquake at Constantinople and a conflagration that
devoured the kitchens and the baths of the seraglio, appeared
to him chastisements and presages which saddened farther
his spirits. He had the edifices rebuilt. His sole amuse-
ment was to contemplate the work of the artisans who
decorated them. One day as he thus visited the vast hall
of the baths, re-edified between the seraglio and the harem,
his foot slipped upon the smooth and moist marble flags of
54 HISTORY OF TUfiEIT.
the bathbg-Toom. This aoddent, aggraymted by the obesitj
of his body, and the dejection of his spirits, appeared to him
a sign so fiital, that he returned struck with stupor to his
apartments, and survived but a few days his fall.
The empire was not aware of his death until his funeral.
Sokolli sustained alone the weight of the ^vemment, of
which Selim II. was but the mute and invisible sanction.
Never did sovereign more incapable of governing reign with
more happiness and glory to his people, precisely because he
did not really reign at all His inertia availed more to his
nation than would have done a turbulent activity, and it may
be said that he served the Mussulmans even by his vices.
An incapable successor, but who feels his incapacity, is often
more useful to the development of the plans of a great man
than a mediocre and a bustling heir : tne one deranges the
ideas of the predecessor by his own ; the other lets the same
system endure for two reigns.
Such was Selim II. conqueror of Cyprus : a consummate
negotiator with Europe ; restorer of the marine of the Otto-
mans; continuator of a system of alliance with France which
created in his favor an European balance against the house
of Austria; promoter of the junction of four seas by the
piercing of the isthmus of the Crimea and of Suez ; van-
Quisher, then protector of the Venetians, whom he subor-
dinated to the system of Ottoman policy in the East to
detach them from Germany and turn them in his interest
against the Pope, his natural enemy ; vanquished one day
by Don John, but the next day vanquisher of this hero and
triumpher of the Catholic league, which by his policy he
decomposed, member by member, after having shivered it by
arms ; pacificator of the Crimea, of Poland, of Transylvania
and of Arabia; economist in fine of the public treasury,
largely voided in the years of war, more largely replenished
in the years of peace ; and being the first to conceive for the
Ottomans a new political economy in an entrepôt of the
commerce of Europe and of India, in freedom of navigation,
in the security of commerce, and in the conquests of the only
permanent wealth of an empire, the conquests of agriculture,
of labor and of peace.
Such was the reigu of Selim IL, or rather such was the
reign to which the gratitude of the Turks should have given
the name of Sokolli. Selim was but the name, Sokolli was
mSTOBT OF TUBKSY. 66
ihe soul and the hand of the empire ; but it is to Selim that
the empire owed SokolU. Posterity to be just must there-
fore divide, vnequallj but equitably, between the Sultan and
his minister the glory and the prosperity of the Ottomans.
66 HISTOBT OF TUBKBT.
BOOK TWENTY-SECOND.
I.
Selim II. had left at his death six sons and three daughters.
The sons were Moorad, Mohammed, Soliman, Mustapha,
Djehanghir and Abdallah; the daughters Esma-Sultana,
Gwher-Sultana, and Sohah-Sultana. Esma-Sultana was
given in marriage to Sokolli, Gwher-Sultana to Pialé the
oapitan-pasha, Schah-Sultana to the a^ or general of the
Janissaries, Hassan. This consanguinity of wives had con-
tributed, under the reign of Selim, to bind together the tri-
umvirate of the grand vizier, the grand admiral, and the
grand general of the empire, become thus the adoptive £unilj
of the sovereign.*
The mother of Mourad or Amurath III., the eldest of
those sons, was Nour-Banou, a Persian, whose name signifies
tooman of splendor. She had sought in her affection for
this son a compensation for the vices and the inconstancies
of the father. Amurath III. had the single virtue of a
deference for his mother. Although scarcely aged twenty-
eight years, his soul and body, al^e effeminate, presented
traces of the bad examples of Selim, and of the interested
complaisances of Nour-Banou. By his small and slim stature
and t£e oblong oval of his face, he recalled somewhat of his
grandfather Soliman II. in his youth ; but it was one of those
remote and illusory resemblances which a second glance is'
* Here is in fact the policy, the raiaon ^kre of polygamy, the same
essentially in the Turkish emperors as in the Arab chieftains of the de-
sert. Intermarriage, or in the more abstract expression generation, is
the primitive principle of social aggregation and fidelity. The means of
multiplying its applications are made proportional to the need of them,
tlvat is to say, to die social hackwa/rdmess^ andtiiie extentol the commanity.
— Translatar,
HISTOBT OF TtTBKEY. 37
Sufficient to dissipate. His paleness revealed the exhaustion
of precocious pleasures rather than reflection. His eyes
were mild, but utterly without a ray to light their languor.
His eyebrows were dark, and described the feminine arch
of the Persians upon his forehead ; the eyelashes, long as a
woman's, had the fineness of silk ; but his beard, thin and red,
contrasted with this color of his hair, and impressed upon
his physiognomy a sort of sickly and shabby air, which
recalled the murk of the dungeon rather than the splendor
of the seraglio. Addicted from his infancy to the excesses
of wine and the use of opium, his head seemed to totter
upon the bust. His look, oblique and undecided, was
covered with a light haze. Some fits of epilepsy, an in-
firmity of the body which bof ders closely on the mind, left
some wrinkles on the brow and some convulsive twitchings
on his lips. His intellect was, however, not without delicacy
nor without culture. He loved to hear the poets recite their
verses at his festivals. Music, that poetry of the sensed,
and dancing, that poetry of the movements, charmed his ears
and his eyes. The mechanical arts awakened his curiosity
and interest. Venetian painters, clockmakers of Vienna,
gave him lessons in their respective arts. But his two
dominant passions were friendship and love. His mother
had taught him above all to love.
Education had done but little for him except to develope
his nature. It may be said that mother, sister, wives and
friends, he loved to frenzy, and that this flame of his heart,
in passing at last into his senses, consumed his reign, his
reason and his life. The history of his attachments became
the history of the empire under his reign.
These attachments had commenced in him almost with
his life. Two young boys, Hungarian nobles, one named
Djafer, the other Ghaznefer, made prisoners under Selim,
had been circumcised, deprived at their request of the signs
of virility, and attached to the harem for the education and
the amusement of the young Sultan. Amurath III. had
them as favorites before having them as ministers. They
were worthy of it by their virtue as much as by their talents.
Ghaznefer especially, whose name denoted the daring lion^
and who cultivated with genius both letters and history, con-
tributed to inspire his friend with a taste for poetry and
for munificence, which begets talent in monarchical countries.
The historian Seadeddin, at once a statesman aixd annaUst,
Vol. in.— 3*
58 HI8T0BT OF TtTBKfiT.
was introduced by Ohamefer into the intimacy of young
Moorad, while still resident at Magnesia) the sojoom of the
heirs apparent» This prince made him his lala or honorary
governor after his majority» Cadiiadé, another friend of the
two fftYorites, a man as ambitious of dignities as of science,
was his political counsellor and his minister in prospect»
The poet Schemsi^Pasha, justly celebrated for his philosophic
poetry, which sanctified by the holiness of the subject the
charm of his verses, taught him the elegances of language
and the mysteries of contemplation. But the favorite
who possessed his heart among all was a young Turcoman
of a noble race, named Ouweïs.
One day as Mourad, during his compulsory residence at
Magnesia, was come to hunt swans in the wild valley of the
Caister, which is separated by Mount Tmolus from the plain
of Magnesia, he stopped for some time in the pastoral city
of Tyra (the Greek Thyatira) the capital of this valley»
The picturesque site of this city, of which the houses and
the minarets, like cliffs of white marble, gleam upon the
rapid steep of a wooded hill across the foliage of plane trees,
the shadow of Mount Taurus which shelters it, the murmur
and the coolness of the waters that foam in its cascades, the
green meadows that meander at its feet, the abundance of
wild animals that people its forests, seduced Mourad. He
prolonged there his sojourn. Young Ouweïs, who occupied a
high rank in the place, and whom the familiarity of hunting
parties permitted him to converge with, struck him by the
masculine frankness of his countenance and of his speech»
He thought he met in him a second Ibrahim for his future
reign, like the flute-player encountered almost in the same
spot by his grandfather, the great Soliman» He asked of
Selim his father permission to attach to him this proud
Turcoman, and to appoint him intendant-general of his little
court of Magnesia» Selim granted Ouweïs to his son.
The ascendant of this defterdar grew from day to day in
the domestic familiarity of exile» This ascendant was
founded neither on the culture of mind, nor on the elegance
of manners which characterised the other friends of Mou-
rad» Ouweis, illiterate and rustic, had but the rude virtues
of his deserts» He pleased his master, iike the tamed lion
which the princes of the East love to keep in their divan to
inspire fear in those who visit them»
HI8T0BY OF TUBKSY. S9
n.
A beautifdl Venetian slave named Safijé (the pure), the
first wife given to Monrad in his adolescence by the Siutana
Nour-Banou his mother, controlled the eyes and the heart
of the young Sultan. Safiyé was the daughter of a noble
senatorial house of Venice, the Baffos. In a short voya^
between Venice and Corfu whither she was going, while stul ^
a child, to rejoin her father, proveditore of the island, the
pirates of the fleet of Barbarossa took off the vessel that
bore her, and made a present of her to the mother of Mou-
rad. Her country, her beauty,, her birth, her education, made
her worthy of the loves of a prince. Mourad attached him-
self for a long time to Safiyé with the ardor of his years
and with the constancy of a l^usband. She gave him a son,
and became thus Sultana Khasseki, or mother of the prince.
For a long time the passion of Mourad for Safiyé shut his
eyes to all the other beauties with whom jealousy peopled
the harem of his mother. Nour-Banou besan to fear that
the exclusive empire of the Venetian over me heart of her
son might intrench upon her own influence. Selim II.
himself feared that the inheritance of the throne was not
sufficiently assured by an only son of an only wife. The
sister of Mourad, the Sultana Èsma, wife of the grand vizier,
conspired with Nour-Banou, with her husband Sokolli and
with her father, to introduce some rival beauties into the
harem of her brother. The mother and the sister had search
made every where for young slaves the most renowned for
their charms of feature and their witcheries of wit, who
might seduce from the Sultana Khasseki the heart of her
husband. A Persian slave and an Hungarian slave entered
despite his repugnance the harem of Mourad. The Hunga-
rian girl, more lively and more artful still than beautiful,
says the historian of this love, the Venetian Sagredo, suc-
ceeded in rivalling a moment Safiyé. But the fidelity of
Mourad deceived for a long time the hopes of his sister and
of his mother { his heart refused the inconstancy of the
amours to which he had been made to consent mentally.
The Sultana Nour-Banou, relates the chronicler of the
seraglio, Ali, in his annals in verse, accused Safiyé of magical
incantations against the fruitfulness of the two rival slaves.
Suspecting some Jewish women and some servants of the
haxem of having participated in these imaginary artifices of
60 mSTOBT OF TUBEXT.
the Venetian, he had some of them put to the rack bj the
ennuchs, and others cast into the sea by the mutes ; oth^v
still, esteemed less culpable or excused on the score of youth,
were banished into the island of Rhodes, and recalled after*
wards to marry the fayorites of the Sultan.
Meanwhile these intrigues, long pursued around the
young prince, ended with instilling into his mind unjust sus*
picions against the virtue of Safiyé. He remored her for a
moment from his bed, and gave himself up with the impetu-
osity of Touth to the excesses of a passion artificially
fomented by his corrupters in his veins. The extravagance
and frenzy of hie caprices caused a rise, before even his
advent to the throne, in the price of beautiful slaves of all
nations in the bazaars of Broussa and of Trebizond. The
number of the Sultanas Khasseki or mothers of boys,
amounted, says the historian Ali, to forty; that of the
women of his harem, passing objects of his caprices, to five
hundred. Over one hundred cluldren, sons or daughters of
these slaves, were bom in a few years of these disorders. The
government of his harem gave him more trouble than that
of his empire. His mother advised him to assign it after
herself to a favorite of his father, named Djanfeda. Djan-
feda was consummate in the intrigues and the administration
of the seraglio. We will presently see the ascendant, the
elevation and the tragic destiny of this woman, veritable
vizier of a prince of whom the sole serious business was a
sickly sensuality.
But even these vices were unable to extinguish in the
heart of Mourad the remembrance of the first and pure
felicity which he enjoyed in his chaste union with Safiyé.
Memory and repentance restored to the Venetian all her
moral influence over her husband. The others had his
debauches; she had his affection. He adored her as the
-4ixing reminiscence of his happiness, as the mother of his
favOTit&-SQn. He took from her all the resolutions of his
policy. A slave^f Venice was the veritable future empress
of the Ottomans.
Such was the exiled court of Mourad at Magnesia when
the grand vizier SokoUi sent him secret intelligence of the
death of Selim II. Mourad set out the very night for Con-
stantinople, attended only by four favorites. Arrived un-
expectedly at Moudania, a small port of the sea of Marmora,
on the bank opposite to Constantinople, impatience to seize
HKITOBT OF TUBSST. 61
tlie empire did not let him wait for the imperial gallej wbich
Sokolli was sending across the Propontis. He stepped with-
out giving his niune into a nine-oared barge which chanced
to be anchored in the harbor, and which belonged to the sec-
retary of state, the celebrated Feredoun, of whom the rowers
were the slaves. A stormy sea brought them in a few hours
of night upon the deserted beach of the seraglio near the
batteries which bordered the wall of enclosure and not far
from the Kiosk of Bajazet. It was the 21st of December,
1574, at midnight. The squalls of winter covered with
foam the strand of the seraglio, and moaned through the
cypresses of the gardens. The gates were shut, and not to
be opened at that hour but to the grand vizier himself.
Mourad, spattered with foam and exhausted from the dis-
comfort of an harassing passage in a. vessel open to the
surges, asked his companions for a little clean water to wash
his face and hands. None was found upon this pandbank ;
he was obliged to wash himself in sea-water. He then sat
himself beneath a tree to obtain shelter from the rain and
wind, while messengers were gone to wake up the grand
vizier and the seraglio, awaiting like a strange guest at the
gates of his own palace. A fountain has been subsequently
built beneath this tree where the Sultan had suffered from
thirst without finding water to quench it.
Meanwhile the grand vizier, awakened by Hassan a slave
of Feredoun, and by the pilot of the barge, hastened with
his chiaoux bearing lanterns to the beach designated by the
slaves of Feredoun. Having never seen the face of Mourad,
and fearing some snare of the partisans of his brothers, the
grand vizier, before kissing his hand and recognizing him as
his master wished to have the testimony of his mother. He
conducted Mourad on foot through the garden of the Kiosk
inhabited by Nour-Banou, now Sultana Validé. Entering
first into the chamber of the Sultana he showed her him who
was said to be her son, and asked her if she was his mother.
Nour-Banou burst into tears at the sight of her lion, and
attested to SokoUi that Mourad was their common master.
At these words, the vizier fell at the feet of the Sultan, and
invoked heaven for the long life and the prosperity of the
emperor. After the first effusions of tenderness between the
mother and the son, " I am hungry," said Mourad to the
officers of the palace, who had hastened to salute their new
master; "bring me soanetbing to eat." These words, the
62 HI8T0BT OF TUBKXT.
first uttered without premeditation bj a Sultan after his
aooeenon to the throne, made all those present turn pale.
Oriental superstition attributed to these expressions a pro-
phetic signification which was interpreted for or against the
events of the reign. They were interpreted as a cry of
ûunine raised by the people, and announcing sterility and
scarcity. They were vermed by chance the year following.
Meanwhile a more sinister and more certain presage was
calling down at the very instant the reprobation of heavcai
upon the empire. The law of the seraglio or the dynastic
canon of Mahomet II. ordained the immolation, for the
crime of public peril, of all the brothers of the Saltan on his
ascending the throne. It is affirmed that Mourad, influenced
by the Venetian Sultana Safiyé, and by his own repugnance
to shedding innocent blood, had sworn to Safiyé to revoke
this atrocious state butchery by his example, and to let his
brothers live; but the mufti interpreter of the law, more
implacable in his political interpretation than the prince
himself in his own interest, persisted in issuing a fetwa or
decision which interdicted the humanity or the pity of the
Sultan. The ministers and the executioners, armed with this
brief of the oracle of religion and justice, hastened to do
violence to the humane scruples of the Sultan, in causing
to be strangled the five princes of various a^es, sons of Selim
II. and casting before daylight the five bodies on the carpet
of the divan, beneath the eyes of Mourad.
This stepping-stone of corpses must soon or late ingulf a
throne which a state reason, perverted by a patriotism
against nature, made to repose on such unspeakable iniqui^
ties.
The next day Mourad or Amuratklll., recognized with
all the usual solemnities by religion, by the people, the army,
attended the funeral of his father and went to weep upon
the graves of the five brothers just assassinated in his name.
He distributed, the third day after these sepultures, an
imperial gratuity of one million and a half gold ducats to
the troops and the grand officers of the empire. The Janis-
saries received to themselves alone near a nullion of ducats —
(about two millions of dollars).
SokoUi, who had managed twice with equal authority
and success ^e passage from one reign to anomer, was main-
tained in the post of grand vizier rather by the policy than
the affection of the Sultan. ThQ new court saw in him a
HI8T0BT OF TUBKBT. 63
man of too many past services to ask hk head, of too mneh
{ower not to envy nis sitoatioiL The fikvorites of Amurath
II. resolved; ih concert with the Sultanas, to endare for
some time Sokolli by necessity, but to undermine him in the
mind of his master, and bring him down by degrees from
his supremacy to the rank of simple viiiers. Sokolli, like a
man too sure t)f his fortune, abated nothing of his rigor o« of
his duty toward the favorites, complotters of this league.
He dared to prosecute the defberdar Ouwels, an intimate
confidant of .^jnurath, for presumed malversation upon the
treasury of his master. Ouweis triumphed in the suit, and
humbled Sokolli by his triumph. The Janissaries and the
people, spectators of this struggle between the grand viiier
and the favorite, began to foresee the debilitation of the
authority of the man who had upheld for eighteen years back
the weight of the empire, and braved insolently a Sultan
who was abandoning himself in his minister.
The sedition so long suppressed broke out upon occasion
of the police laws against the sale of wine in the taverns,
laws renewed at the commencement of almost every reign.
One day as Amurath passed in a caique on the Bosphorus
before a Greek tavern full of drunken soldiers, the Janissa-
ries, who recognized the Sultan, held up their goblets in their
hands as in defiance of the penalty pronounced against
drinkers of wine, and drank them off to the health of the
Sultan. The grand vizier, informed of this outrage, pre-
sented himself with the Sultan at the barracks to pumsh the
guilty ; but the seditious, encouraged by the connivance of
the Isivorites, covered with vociferations the voice of the
^and vizier and the name even of the Sultan. The forced
mipunity of the body was palliated feebly by the removal of
the affa of the Janissaries.
This function, the second in importance of the empire,
was given to a Genoese renegade, named Cicala-Pasha,
whilst a Calabrian ren^ade, Ochiali-Pasha (Eili^j-Ali), the
savior of the remnant of the fleet at Lepanto, was appointed
capitan-pasha. Pialé-Pasha, a Hungarian by birth, was
vizier of the cupola ; Ahmed-Pasha, second vizier, was a
Styrian ; Mohammed-Pasha, third vizier, an Austrian ; the
chief of the eunuchs of the harem, Welzer, a Transylva-
nian^ Sokolli himself, the grand vizier, was a Bosniac.
Religion alone was the country common to all these men of
different countries. In the Constantinople of tho Sultans
64 mSTOBY OF TUBKBT.
as in the Rome of tbe popes, every fbreigner who was
willing to combat for the doctrine was accounted a citizen and
naturalized by the worship. It is to this universal naturali-
zation of its servants from every race, that the empire has so
long owed and still owes at this day its being so ably served by
its public men.*
in.
The peace maintained by Sokolli was renewed for eight
years with the emperor of Germany. The duke of TransyU
vania, Stephen Baihori, protected by the Turks, was raised
by the grand vizier to the throne of Poland. " You are
not to molest Bathory, raised by me to the throne of the
Poles," wrote the ^rand vizier in the name of Amurath to the
emperor ; " I wIéÊ you to treat the Poles with the same
respect as my other subjects. Roland is under my protec-
tion ; I have ordered the nobles of that country to choose
Bathory for their king. The Tartars one time made a king
of Poland prisoner ; it is on that account that the Poles pay
still a tribute to the Khan of the Tartars." Gonformably
to this tradition and to this investiture, the ambassador of
Poland, Sieniensky, signed a treaty of alliance, offensive and
defensive, between Turkey and Poland, a treaty which
sanctioned in one of its articles the tribute of the Poles to
the Tartars.
The republic of Venice, served by the influence of the
Venetian Sultana Safîyé, obtained from Amurath and from
the grand vizier the most liberal interpretations of its
treaties and its fixations of limits with the Porte.
Florence concluded likewise with Sokolli a treaty of firee
navigation and reciprocal commerce.
Spain herself solicited, through the ambassadors of Philip
II., a treaty of peace and friendship with the Turks. This
treaty, reduced to a truce of three years, was signed with
repugnance and with disdain by Sokolli.
' * This is a well observed and a well explained truih. Philosophers
have lately noted that the duration of the Chnrch of Rome, that the
veritable " rock of Peter," has been no other than the practice of select-
ing its official agents on the sole principle of capcicUy, The same, though
less remarked, is no less true of Turkey. In both, too, religi<m was in
reality but a condition, not the cause, of choice. In the history of neither
empire has any mention been ever heard of a native Komanism or a
noHve Ottomanlsm. — Trantiator,
HI8TOBY OF TUBKST. $5
England, a straager hitherto, on acooont of her situation,
to all diplomacy with the Ottomans, contracted for the first
time, through her merchants, business relations which soon
became political, with SokoUi ; letters were exchanged between
Queen Elizabeth and the Sultan.
The Swiss also kept for the first time a Jewish agent to
attend to the interests of their commerce at Constantinople.
Sokolli sought to naturalize the sciences and the arts as
much as peace and commerce in his country. The learned
Seadeddin Lala, preceptor of Amurath III., seconded the
grand yizier in these happy innoyations. They had in con-
cert an observatory built in frotit of the gardens of the
seraglio at Tophana, and called firom Egypt the illustrious
astronomer Takieddin to perfect and popularize the knowl-
edge of celestial phenomena among the Turks. But the
antipathy of the priesthood to the sciences which explain
nature otherwise than by oracles and by prodigies, forced the
grand vizier, the preceptor and the astronomer to demolish
their observatory as an attack upon the msyteries of heaven.*
Takieddin, at Constantinople, had the fate of Ghillileo at
Rome. The same age, in two opposite religions, saw the
always unequal struggle of prejudice and of science.
The enemies of Sokolli in the divan and in the harem
fom^ited these popular charges of impiety against the great
innovator. They attacked him first in his confidants before
dealing their blows upon himself. The secretary of state,
Feridoun, his devoted collaborator for three reigns, was
banished to Belgrade. The aga of the Janissaries, Cicala,
was Hkewise di£fgraced. Death took off at the same time
from Sokolli two of his most £ûthful supporters in the state,
Pialé-Pasha and the mufti Hamed. In fine a negro, Arab-
Pasha, whom he had married to a favorite slave of his harem
and who governed under his direction the kingdom of
Cyprus, was massacred by his own troops. They brought to
Sokolli the garments ci the negro, lacerated by a hundred
sabre cuts. He wept with pity, imagining the agony which
must have been undergone by his favorite.
The duke of Naxos and of the Cyclades, Joseph Nassy,
enriched beyond the dreams of even a Jew by the friendship
of Selim II., died at this period at Constantinople. Sokolli,
* Thî« is also the true import of the Chaldalc myth of the Tower of
Babel, which was doubtless an astronomical observatoiy.— 2Vaf»»^aft>»*.
66 HI8T0BT OF TUBKST.
of wlunn tbis adventurer had always been jealons, ordered
that hia opulent heritage should devolve to the pubUo treas-
ury. But the three defterdars or treasurers am>ointed by
Sokolli to sequestrate the succession were accused of embez*
slement by the enemies of the grand vizier, and tortured to
make them confess their pretended spoliation. Another of
his clients, Michael Cantaoaiene, a Greek of the impmal
family of Byzantium and rival of another G-reek named
Paledlogus, another remnant of the dynasties of the Byian-
tineS) was handed for presumed malversation before the gate
of SokoUi, as if to râect upon the protector the crime and
in&my of the punished protégé. In fine, the beloved
nephew of Sokolli, Mustapha-Pi^a, governor of Of<ai and
of Turkish Hungary, was murdered at Ofen by Ferhad-
Pasha, grand equerry of the Sultan, in €Le midst of his
escort of fifty horsemen, who did not dare to draw a sword in
his defence.
These presages saddened Sokolli without diverting him
from the duties of the government ; he expected to perish,
but he wished that death should find him in the tackle of the
empire. One of Jbhe last days of October, 1578, he had read
to him by Hassan- Aga, his librarian, the history of the first
reigns of the monarchy. The reader having read the narra-
tive of the battle of Oassova against the Servians and the
tragic and sudden death of Amurath I., assassinated on the
field of battle after the victory by the patriot Servian
Milosch Kabilowitch, Sokolli stopped Hassan with a gesture
at this passage of the history, recited piously the first Soura
of the Horan for the soul of the assassinated Sultan, and
cried with a fervor of presentiment like an internal revela-
tion, ^< May the Almighty accord me such a death 1 "
The foUowing day, after having held his customary audi-
ence at the paliuse of the Porte, and employed the rest of
the day at affairs of state, Sokolli, returning home, opened
still, as was his habit, his divan to all the Ottomans without
distinction who had justice or favor to ask of the grand
vizier. At the moment when he extended his hand to an
unknown person, clad in the costume of a dervish, who pre-
sented him a petition to read, the false dervish, drawing a
poniard from under his cloak, plunged it to the hilt into the
breast of the ^rand vizier. Sokolli, carrying instinctively
his hand to his yatagan to defend himself, had not the
str^igth to seize it, and fell dead in the way he desired, like
HISTOET OF TUBSBY. 67
Caasar, withomt uttering a word. The pretended dervish
was a Dalmatian fellow countryman of Sokolli, a ferocious
race which gives life for life without pity and without fear.
He alleged as the motive of his crime revenge for an injus-
tice of the grand vizier, who decided against him a suit for
property in a feudal holding in Bosnia. Public opinion sus-
pected, but without proo^ the instigation of the cruel
Mustapha-Pasha, the executioner of Cyprus, in this crime.
Amurath III. was perhaps glad of it, but not an accomplice.
The assassin avowed nothing but his hatred. He was dis-
membered the following day by four horses, each carrying off
one of the limbs from his lacerated body.
Thus disappeared the man who had been, during three
reigns, the light, the wisdom 'and the strength of the empira
History praises him better than vain words. He elevated
the empire to its apogee, and his death marks the first day of
its decline.
Mohammed-Sokolli had had no children by the Sultana
Esma, the sister of the Sultan, whom his master had given
him in marriage. The first wife whom he had married had
left him two sons, who did not inherit his immense wealth.
Forced to repudiate this wife whom he loved, in receiving into
his house a princess of the imperial blood, he had regretted all
his life that his merit and his glory had drawn upon him the
regards and the preferences of Sultana-Esma, whose ugliness
and deformity presaged him no heirs. His inordinate ridies,
not ]»roportionable to his services, but in proportion to the
humbleness of his origin, reverted at his death to the treas-
ury of the Sultan.
He left the empire at peace with the whole earth except-
ing Persia.
Let us trace back . for some years the ceaseless course of
Persian anarchy, to understand the motives, the occasions
and the vicissitudes of this war. The history of Persia is
so parallel with the history of Turkey, that one of these
nations cannot be painted without delineating the other.
IV.
The three wars of Selim and of Soliman the Great against
Persia had popularized the dynasty of the Sophis, of whom
we have related the religious origin. In Asia, as in Europe,
the people cease to fight for dynastic rivalries, while they
68 HISTOBY OF TUBKET.
ûAt for religion or for nationality. The Schah (or ihe
kine) Tahmasp owed a prolonged dominion to the efforts of
Soliman II. to dethrone him. He was not a great man, but
the good fortune of his reign was to have been the champion
of menaced Persia.
At his death he designated among his ûve sons Hjder
Mirza to succeed him. ITjrder, a favorite of his father, had
been kept near him at Ispahan, to be at hand to seize the
throne, whilst the other brothers, according to the usage of
the East, were relegated, exiled from the court, into distant
proyinces.
The policy, at onoe suspicious and imprudent, of ^e
Schahs, gave those infant princes in guard and tutelage to
the great chieftains of the tribes who composed the Persian
nation. These tribe chie& at the death of the Schahs became
frequently thus promoters and supporters of those rival com-
petitors for the throne of their father.
Young Hyder, master of the palace, of the guard, of the
ministers and the treasures of Tahmasp, had no difficulty in
getting himself proclaimed king in the capital. But the
hatred of a woman cost him, a few days after, the throne and
his life. This woman, of Circassian race, of whom the
beauty, courage and ambition exercised an influence almost
absolute upon the government of Persia, was the celebrated
Peridjan-Khan, a daughter of the Schah who had just died.
She was the niece of Schem-Khal, chief of a Circassian
tribe in the service of Persia. Schem-Khal and Peridjan
had espoused the pretensions of another son of Tahmasp
named Ismael-Mirza, who had languished in prison for over
twenty years.
At the moment when the death of Tahmasp delivered
the princes, without support in the palace, to the mercy and
' perhaps the vengeance of the new Schah, she asked an audi-
ence of this prince, and throwing herself in mourning and
in tears at his feet, saluted him king of Persia : " Hitherto,"
said to him this crafty woman, of whom the charms gave
relief to the eloquence, " you had thought me opposed to
your elevation to the throne. This was to me a means of
knowing the projects of your rivals and of defeating them.
Regard me now as the most sure and most devoted of your
slaves."
Hyder, who knew the genius and the adroitness of this
woman, thought himself lucky in purchasing her to his cause
HISTOBT OF TUBKBY. 69
by pardon and by the promise of an influence wbieb e^onld
survive the life of his father. " If you will only," replied he,
" gain your uncle Schem-Khal and the partisans of my brother
Ismael, the throne of Persia will be ours without contesta-
tion, and you will reign with me in the palace of Ispahan." —
" Enough," replied Peridjan, " leave me to go meet and flatter
my uncle, and I answer to you for the empire."
Hyder, deceived by the language of his sister, permitted
her to set out for the camp of the Circassian. She feigned
to negotiate with Schem-Khal and the friends of Ismael,
returned with them to Ispahan, accompanied by a body of
Circassian knights devoted, wrote she, to the cause of the
new SohaL
Nevertheless Hyder, distrustful of Schem-Khal, refdsed
to open to him the capital and the palace. The Circassians
entered it at night by a gate of the garden delivered to them
by Peridjan, through her accomplices of the seraglio. Hyder,
on report of the entrance of the Circassians into the garden,
tried to escape in the disguise of a woman to run and throw
himself into -the barrack of his guards. But Schem-Khal,
who espied him, recognized him, tore off his veil, and had
him poniarded on the spot by one of his slaves. The (Geor-
gians who formed the guard of the king of Persia ran to
the relief of the sovereign ; Schem-Khal, advancing to meet
them, threw them the head of the king. Atv this sight they
laid down their arms. Ismael, imprisoned hitherto in the
fortress of Al-Mout, mounted the tlurone which was procured
him by the perfidy of a woman.
He remained upon it only a sufficient time to befoul it
by his vices, and to ensanguine it by the massacre of all his
brothers, shut up together in the fortress of Cazwin. One
alone was exempted, through contempt rather than from
pity; it was Mohammed-Mirza, eldest son of Tahmasp,
blind from his birth, and who from this infirmity was deemed
incapable of ever aspiring to'the throne.
But this blind prince had two sons, of whom the one,
Hamza-Mirza, was nominal governor of the city and the
province of Schiraz; the other, Abbas-Mirza, still a child,
was confided to the tribe chief Ali-Khouli-Khan, one of the
most potent warriors of Persia. Ismael sent orders to the
70 mSTORY OF TUBKET.
military commandant of Schiraz and to Ali-Khouli-Khan ta
massacre immediately these two princes. An accident saved
them ; the courier wno bore the decree of death having been
retarded by a fall of his horse, another courier, although scft
out a day later from Ispahan, arrived an hour before the
messenger of death. * This second courier brought to Schiraz
and to Ali-Khouli-Khan the news of the death of Schah-
Ismael. This death was worthy of his life. It remains a'
mystery of debauchery and crime.
One night, as he ran dis^ised about the streets of Ispa-
han, from tavern to tavern, mdulging his depraved appetites
for wine and other orgies with the companions of his
vices, his return was awaited for until midnight at the
palace. Some confidential servants, charged to watch at a
distance over his life, often compromitted in nocturnal brawls,
revealed that they had seen him enter before dawn the house
of his favorite. This favorite was a young merchant of
Ispahan who dealt in liquors and confectionery. Upon this
indication, the sister of Ismael came forth from the palace
and had the house of the merchant surrounded respectftilly in
order to envelop the Schah with his guards upon awaking.
But uneasy toward the cl6se of the day at the silence and
stillness oi the inmates, she ordered the doors to be forced
and the apartments to be visited. The king was discovered
in a chamber of the upper story under lock. The door
broken in showed Ismael dead upon a bed, where his com-
panion lay alongside of him in the insensibility of drunken-
ness. Brought back to life by^the physicians, the favorite
of Ismael related that after having drunk all night of wine
and spirits, the king, as was his custom, completed the
drunkenness by swallowing opium pills. The box in which
he carried these pills, usually shut with a seal which he alone
broke, was not sealed this day. The companion of debauch
of the prince declared that he had remarked this to him,
bidding him beware of poison ; but the prince replied to
him that he had seen it opened before him by a woman of
his harem charged to watch over his aliments. It was
thence concluded, with or without grounds, that poison had
abridged the life of the king. But the infamy of his life
and of his death, and the joy of being delivered from his
tyranny, did not allow the search of criminality in an end
which app^ed to all a deliverance.
The blind Mohammed-Mirza took the place of Ismael
HISTOBY OF TUEKKt. 71
II. by right of sole survivor of the sons of Schah TahmaiE^.
His first act was an ingratitude and an injustice : he
strangled his sister Peridjan, who had betrayed Hyder to
crown Ismael. His vizier Mirza-Suleïman governed Persia
in his name. An object of envy and of hatred to the chief-
tains of tribes who surrounded the prince and partitioned
among them the kingdom, this vizier had already repulsed
gloriously the invasion of the Turks under Sinan-Pasha.
The grand vizier SokoUi, displeased with the slowness of
the Persian war, and eager especially to send away firom
Constantinople Mustapha-Pasha, the vanquisher of« Cyprus,
had appointed this rival in influence seraskier or generalis-
simo of the army. Mustapha-Pasha, thenceforth exercised
in high warfare by ten years' command, attacked the Per-
sians through the table-land of Georgia, a province subject,
but ill assimilated, to Persia. The Ottomans were sure of
finding there, as in the Crimea and in Circassia, more auxil-
iaries than enemies.
Georgia is the ancient Iberia of the Greeks and the
Romans. The ruggedness of its mountains, the depths of
its forests, the abundance of its waters, the charm of its
valleys, the energy of its inhabitants, but above all the incom-
parable beauty of its women, make its strength, its misfor-
tune, and its celebrity in the East. A queen almost fabulous
named Nino introduced nascent Christianiiy into the kingdom^
by her prodigies, while Constantino was imposing it by
arms upon all the countries tributary to the Greeks and to
the Eomans around the Black Sea. Two vine sprouts, tied
together in the form of a cross, were at once the sceptre and
the miraculous wand of this magical princess. Another
queen of Georgia, Tamar, surprised during sleep by her
equerry David Bagration, resolved to avenge herself of the
love of this servant by a thousand trials and a thousand
tortures. The culprit having triumphed over all the dangers,
the queen concluded to marry him. The children of this
pardoned violence reigned for generations over Georgia.
The daughter of Tamar, the Princess Roussoudan, more
beautiful still than her mother, sustained three wars against
the sovereigns of Khorassan, who sought to annex Georgia
by marrying the heiress of the kingdom.
The Persians place in Georgia the birth of the beautiful
and tender Schirin, the heroine of all their epic and elegiac
poetry. Power was habitually mingled with seduction in
72 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
those queens; it was the romantic kingdom of beantj,
governed by love and seryed by heroism.
VI.
King David, at the time of Amurath III., reigned oyer
Tiflis, and oyer the profound yalleys of Georgia wmch serve
as avenues to Persia. His daughter, although Christian,
had been given in marriage to Schah Tahmasp, in pledge of
intimate alliance against the Turks. David, after an ill-
matched battle against the seraskier Mustapha-Pasha, fled
from his capital The sovereign prince of Imiretta, the other
half of C^eorgia, joined the vanquishers to get possession
from them of T^is. Mustapha did not confide in him
sufficiently to satisfy completely his ambition. He joined
only a few provinces to Imiretta and gave Tiflis in fee to
Mohammed-Fasha, one of his generals, son of the famous
Ferhad-Pasha the cripple. He left in it a Turkish garrison
of ten thousand men to guard against the unsubmitted
Georgians this key of Persia, while he pursued his subjuga-
tion to a distance in its provinces.
Tiflis, at the present day usurped by the Russians, a city
picturesque, warlike, commercial, opulent, was, as well as the
ancient Bidlis, built by Alexander the Great Paganism,
Christianity, Islamism, covered by turns its hillocks and the
banks of its rivers with ruins and with monuments, which
attest the grandeur and the decay of a capital built on the
beaten route of all the conquerors.
Mustapha, resting upon Tiflis, ^ent his two hundred
thousand combatants into Georgia and mto the Caucasus, and
by victory annexed to the Turkish empire these provinces
of Persia. All the tribe chiefs recognized themselves allies
or tributaries of the Ottomans. But four armies advanced
at once from the. interior of Persia to dispute with the Turks
their conquests ; one upon Bagdad, another upon Erzeroum,
two upon Tiflis. One of the two latter was, according to
the example of the Georgian and the Circassian armies,
commanded by a woman, the favorite of the Schah of Persia,
brought up, like the famous Peridjan, to the profession of
arms, and inspiring, by her courage and beauty, the Persians
with heroism. She defeated the right wing of the Turks
towards Erzeroum, slew the general who commanded it, and
threw back the enemy into the spows on the heights of
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 73
the Caucasus. During this triumph sixty thousand Persians
succumbed in a three days' battle against Othman-Pasha in
the province of Shirwan. Ten thousand severed heads were
despatched by Othman-Pasha, in attestation of his victory,
to the seraskier at Tiflis. The blind king, Mohammed-
Schah, fled before him from province to province. Winter
and famine succored him by two scourges that fought for the
vanquished.
Tiflis, abandoned to itself for want of provisions, was
invested by the Persians. Mustapha- Pasha retired to Kars
and employed the winter and the spring in reconstructing
and fortifying this city, since become a formidable bulwark
of the empire towards Georgia. In the spring, Hassan-Pasha,
son of the illustrious vizier, relieved and provisioned Tiflis.
Ouzdemir- Othman-Pasha, who had been just betrothed to a
daughter of the Circassian chief, Schem-Khal, the murderer
of Hyder and the uncle of Peridjan, had cut off, at a fes-
tival, the head of his father-in-law. Schem-Khal, habituated
to the ordinary treacheries of his race, commenced conspiring
against the Turks, to whom he had just sold the Persians.
The Turks meanwhile were reinforced by an auxiliary
army of forty thousand Tartars of the Crimea, commanded
by a prince of their royal house, Adil-Gheraï. Adil, a
young, beautiful, heroic, and fascinating prince, was made
prisoner by the Persians in a sally at the siege of Schirwan.
The blind king, Mohammed-Schah, whose interest it was to
flatter the Tartars in order to detach them from the Turks,
received the prisoner at his court as a guest rather than an
enemy. The mind of Adil- Khan seduced the mother of the
Schah, a woman of superior intellect, who was the soul of the
government concealed in the harem ; his beauty seduced the
youngest sister of the king. The amours of the Tartar
prince and the Sultana came to light. Indignant Persia saw
in the matter the debasement of the king, the complicity of
his mother, the treason of his sister, the danger of the
country, sold by the passion of two women to the enemy.
The Kouroudjis, à sort of Persian Janissaries, mutinied,
broke into the harem, tore from thence Adil- Khan and the
princess and strangled them in presence of the Schah, who
asked them in vain for the life of his sister and of his cap-
tive. The mother of the king, whom they had spared, did
not leave them to wait long for her vengeance. The Kour-
oudjis, some days after their revolt, called one by one into a
VoT,. III.— 4
74 HISTOBT OP TUBKBT.
court of the palaoe to receive a gratification, were butchered
to the last man by executioners under the eyes of the king
and his mother, concealed behind some tent-curtains.
The heart of Persia was dissolving in these intrigues of
the seraglio and these pretorian seditions, while the Turks
and the Tartars were detaching slowly its members from the
body of the empire. The grand vizier SokoUi, discontented
with the sloth of Mustapha who was prolonging this eternal
campaign of Persia, had despatched only a few days before
his death a fresh army into Georgia under the command of
Sinan-Pasha, one of the first warriors of the empire. Scarce
had Sinan touched upon the frontiers of Persia when he
was recalled as ffrand vizier to Constantinople in place of
Ahmed, who had for a few days succeeded SokollL The
seraskier, Mustapha-Pasha, had always flattered himself with
succeeding his rival Sokolli in the post of grand vizier.
His disappointed ambition, or the poison which he took, it is
said, through despair in not attaining the object of his life,
took him off suddenly from the army. He died imbrued
with the blood of Cyprus, and dishonored by the executions
of the defenders of Famagosta. His wealth, his public
charities and his mosques could never vindicate his memory,
and only served to perpetuate his disgrace with his name.
VIL
Sinan, appointed grand vizier, wished in vain to march
upon Tauris ; the army, weary of inaction, refused to follow
him. He was forced to yield to the disgust of his generals,
to canton his troops in the valleys of Tiflis, of Erzeroum,
of Kars, and to return to Constantinople without other
result than negotiations merely entered upon with Persia.
An ambassador of the blind Schah, accompanied by as many
servants as there are days in the year, attended Sinan to
Constantinople.
Pending these negotiations, the army was commanded by
Mohammed-Pasha, nephew of Mustapha-Pasha, the deceased
seraskier. Mohammed was vanquished in the plain of Gori
not far from Tiflis by eighty thousand Persians. Imputing
his defeat to his colleague Mustapha-Minotschir, who com-
manded a corps of the army, he meant to have him assassi-
nated in open divan. Suspecting his murder, at the first
movement of the kyaya to seize him, Mustapha cleft his
HISTOKT OF TtJBKBT. 75
head with a blow of his sabre, wounded with another blow
ihe pasha of Diarbekir who was attending the council, and
plunged five times his poniard into the body of the seraskier.
Then rushing sabre in hand from the tent and calling his
corps of troops to avenge him, he separated himself from
the army, fell back upon Amasia, and submitted himself to
the justice of the Sultan. Mohammed, who survived his
wounds, continued his retreat upon Kars.
VIII.
These reverses and this tediousness humiliated the young
Amurath III. Sinan, on arriving at Constantinople, con-
vinced him that the presence of the Sultan in the army could
alone re-establish discipline and restore their ascendency on
the frontiers of Persia. The Sultana Nour-Banou, mother
of Amurath, and his Venetian wife Safiyé, trembling to lose
their sway over the son and the husband during a campaign
which would remove him from the influence of the harem,
were indignant against the grand vizier. They imparted
their resentments to the Sultan, whom the languors of the
seraglio had ill prepared for tho life of a camp. The empire
was to him but the swarm of women and of eunuchs who
peopled his kiosks and his gardens. He got embittered
against a vizier who spoke to him of glory. He disguised
the real motive of his anger under the reproach of having
opened negotiations with Persia instead of vanquishing. He
accused Sinan of having listened to propositions to restore
Georgia to Persia : " Every country once trodden by the
foot of the Sultan's horse belongs to the Sultan," repeated
the enemies of Sinan. Amurath exiled him to Mulghara, to
punish him for an advice which alarmed his effeminacy.
The Croat, Siawousch-Pasha, was appointed grand vizier.
Ferhad, former cook of the seraglio, become soldier by in-
stinct and general by intrigue, set out with the purpose of
browbeating fortune in Persia, at the head of sixty thousand
Janissaries, of ten thousand sappers, and three thousand
pieces of cannon, for the demolition of walls. He com-
menced by fortifying Erivan, the gate of Persia on that
side. Erivan had received its origin and its name from a
merchant who followed the army of Timour, and who had
obtained from this conqueror the privilege of cultivating
rice in the watered and fertile valley which at present feeds
76 HISTORY OP TURKEY.
the frontiers of two empires. He made it an adranced capi*
tal of Turkey, and pursued bis complete invasion of Georgia.
A parallel expedition by sea and by land along the coasts
of the Black Sea under Othman-Pasha, advanced upon Caffa
in the peninsula of the Crimea. A march of eighty days
across the Don and the steppes of Tartary had brought the
expedition as far as Derbend. The combined army of the
Turks, of the Circassians and of the Tartars, here passed the
winter, sheltered from the snows under huts of reeds. In
spring, Othman-Pasha came forth from Derbend, to give a
decisive battle to the Persians. They ran in a body to guard
this menaced flank of their nation, open through the steppes
of the Caspian Sea. The number of the Turks, Circassians,
Georgians, and Tartars of Othman, issuing from their barracks
of rushes or their burrows of earth, was such, that Othman
employed three whole days in seeing them defile before the
fate of Derbend. Four days after his army arrived on the
ank of the river Amour.
The Persians, equally numerous, commanded by their old
feneral, Iman-Kouli-Khan, awaited him upon the other bank.
)thman, mounted on a black horse, celebrated for his age and
for his impetuosity at the sight of arms, and which he had
ridden for thirty years, was himself the first to swim across the
river, followed by an entire army of cavalry. The Persians,
masters of contiguous prominences which surrounded like
two promontories the plain beyond the river, did not oppose
the passage of the Turks. They believed themselves victors
by the mere strength of the situation. They confidently
awaited daylight to show them their victory.
Othman did not give them time, that first stake of battles.
At nightfall, two hundred thousand torches, kindled of a
sudden in the hands of his cavalry, illuminated the plain, and
showed the Persians his columns of attack ready to mount
to the storming of their positions. The Persians lit up like-
wise their myriads of torches for combat. The neighing
of the black charger of Othman, heard by the whole army,
appeared to the Turks a signal and a certain omen of the
victory. It was but a charge of two hundred thousand
cavalry, dashed against each other in the smoke of torches
at the dead of night. Thirty thousand Persians dead, twenty
thousand prisoners, a pyramid of ten thousand heads ele-
vated by Othman on the banks of the river, were the monu-
ments of this " Battle of the Torches."
HISTOBY OF TUBKEY. 77
After having porsned the enemy as far as Bakou and
fortified that city, an advanced bastion of the Caucasus to-
wards Persia, Othman led back his troops across the valleys of
these Alps as far as Kaulu, that is to say, the river of blood.
There the Kussians, who watched over Persia as a prey they
might themselves one day devour, attacked the retreating
army of Othman on the passage of the river, and burned
before it the steppes to deprive the horses of grass. A
thousand horses perished daily of hunger, through this
manoeuvre of the Russians. At length, the waters of the
Kbuban broke through the ice which covered this river, and
the forests of Timar sheltered and reanimated the army.
Othman returned, after seven months of battles and marches,
to Ca£^, whence he had set out.
The Tartars of the Crimea, who had seconded his ex-
pedition, did not all see him without alarm in the heart of
their peninsula. This was torn by the intestine dissensions
of different princes of the dynasty of Gheraï, who disputed
for the sovereignty of their race. Dewlet-Gheraï, their last
Khan, had just died. He was the inveterate and fortunate
enemy of the Russians. He had carried his hordes as far as
Moscow and burned that capital, which owes its renown to
its destructions by fire, and which revives more young and
vast from its ashes. He meant to open upon this city a more
spacious and easy route, by cutting a canal from the Volga
to the Don, an eternal menace to the heart of Eussia. He
left at his death eighteen sons.
The Tartars, to prevent the inconveniences inherent in
patriarchal governments, which are the accidental incapacity
of the hereditary prince, or his infirmities of mind, or his old
age, and to ensure at the same time the continuity of their
policy internal and external, have an institution almost anal-
ogous to that of the grand vizier in Turkey. The reigning
prince is obliged, on ascending the throne, to choose for vizier
(kalgha) the eldest of his brothers, or his heir-presumptive,
designated by the constitution of Genghis- Khan. The new
Khan, Mohammed Gheraï, the eldest of the eighteen princes,
constrained by the constitution to appoint his eldest brother
vizier, but inclined by preference to give the place to the
youngest brother, Seadet-Gheraï, named this young favorite
prince Noureddin (light of the faith), and assigned him in
this title some functions and revenues which were a perilous
innovation in the State.
78 HI8T0BT OF TUBKBT.
Tonng Noareddin was of the part? who wish^ to utilize
Persia, and who dissuaded the Khan from sending reinforce*
ments of horse to Othman-Pasha. He promised three
hundred thousand, hut he continually sought new pretexts to
avoid furnishing them to the Ottoman general. The Sulian
Amurath III. and the grand viiier Biawousoh-Pasha, got
offended at these delays, and protested against the new and
illegal institution of Noureddin, in the name of the constitu-
tion of Gengis-Khan, of which the Turks were the surveil-
lants and the avengers.
Othman-Pasha, returning to the Crimea after a short
voyage to Constantinople, where he had heen to take orders
from the grand viiier, deposed, in the name of his sovereign,
the reigmng Khan, Mohammed-Gheraï. In the natural
order of succession, Alp-Gheraï, the second of the sons,
should have succeeded to Mohammed ; hut the Turks gave
the investiture to another of the hrothers named Islam-
Gheraï, who was then living at Constantinople in a convent
under the hahit of a dervish. Islam-Ghera!, sustained hy
the Turks, deharked in the Crimea in the midst of an entire
army of Tartars greedy of chaûge, who advanced on horse-
back into the very sea to surround with their acclamations the
vessel that conveyed him. Mohammed-Gheraï, thus ahtm-
doned hy his people, repudiated hy the Turks, fled into the
deserts with his family and sixty horsemen faithful to his
misfortunes. The dervish Islam-Gheraï gave the title of
kalgha to Alp-Gheraï, who pursued from step to step his fugi-
tive brother, and, getting possession of him, slew him with Us
own hand, as also his chudren. The entire Crimea, purged of
the princes favorable to the Persians, fell more and more into
the dependence of the Porte. Othman-Pasha, by this revolu-
tion on the throne, had conquered it a second time to his nation.
Armenia, Georgia, Circassia, and Caspian Tartary, had dis-
mantled, by the hand of Othman, the Persian empire of the
bulwarks and the natural allies who protected it immemori-
ally against the Ottomans. Never since Belisarius, under
Justinian, had the lieutenant of an empire, in only three
campaigns, brought off so rich a plunder to his master.
IX.
The reception of Othman on his return with the army
to Constantinople was worthy of his services. Amurath III.
HISTOBY OP TURKBY. 79
had yalKiaished from tlie lap of his pleasures ; he proudly
appropriated the yictories of his general The character, no
less modest thtm intrepid, of the yanquisher of Persia and
of Georgia inspired no jealousy in Siawousch-Pasha. The
grand yizier knew that Othman was a soldier without other
ambition than glory. The Sultanas Nour-Banou and Safiyô
congratulated themselyes on a triumph against the schis-
matics, which enhanced their influence oyer the mind of the
true belieyers. No distant war henceforward threatened
the harem with the absence of the soyereign enslayed to
iheir affection. They presided themselyes oyer the honors
which the Sultan wi^ed to pay his lieutenant when Othmaa
made his solemn entry into Constantinople. This entry was
a triumph comparable to those of the Eomans.
The 10th of July, 1684, Amurath III. adyanoed with his
court, his yiziers and his warriors, for the purpose of meeting
with Othman, to an imperial kiosk named Yali Koeschk, on
the banks of the Bosphorus. "Be seated, Othman,'^ said
the Sultan to him on his appearance in the hall, " and receiye
the welcome of thy master and of thy country into my
presence."
Othman, without appearing to haye understood this lan-
guage, unprecedented from the lips of a padischah, prostrated
himself, ^sed the ground, and pressed to his lips the skirt
of the imperial mantle. << Be seated, Othman," repeated
Amurath. Othman, in obedience, made the gesture of
sitting down, but rose at once without haying touched the
carpet of the Sultan. Three times Amurath renewed the
order to him to take a seat on the diyan ; three times Oth-
man feigned to obey through deference, but rose up instantly
through modesty. At the fourth injunction to be seated, the
yaaquisher of Persia obeyed, and kept his seat by the
repeated order of his soyereign.
" Now relate to me at leisure thy lonç campaigns, Oth-
man," said the Sultan, motioning away with the hand the
crowd of courtiers, to listen to the narratiye of his general.
Othman related the fatigues, the reyerses and the yictories
of the army in Georgia, in Circassia, and its eighty days'
march into the Steppes of Tartary to leach Derbend. When
he had described the battle of the Torches, the flight of the
80 HISTORY OF TURKEY.
PersiaQS, and the pyramids of heads erected on the bank of
the Amour : " Thou hast conducted thyself like a prudent
as well as a brave general," cried the emperor ; and detach-
ing from his own turban the heron plume enchased in an
agraffe of diamonds, he. set it himself upon the turban of
Othman.
The general, interrupted by this favor, of which the
enthusiasm of the padischah exalted the value, continued the
history of his campaigns. At the recital of his victory over
Hamza-Mirza, brother of the blind king of Persia : ^^ It is
proper that thou also receive the price of this from the hand
of him for whom thou foughtest," said Amurath. He drew
from his girdle his poniard with the hilt enriched with
precious stones, and passed it into the girdle of Othman.
At the portraiture of the defeat of Iman-Kouli-Khan,
the veteran general of the Schah of Persia, the Sultan
detached the second heron plume that waved upon his turban
in a knot of sapphires, and decorated with it the turban of
the vanquisher of Iman-Kouli-Khan. In fine, when Oth-
man had recounted the treacheries of the Tartars against his
army in the Crimea, on his third campaign, the dethronement
and the death of the khan, the inauguration of the dervish
upon the throne, and the indissoluble subjection of Grim
Tartary to the sons of Othman : " It is too much," cried
Amurath, lifting his hands above his head, as if to elevate
his gratitude to heaven, author of so many benedictions on
his reign. " May thy face, Othman, be for ever white and
dazzling in the two worlds of Europe and of Asia I May
God, who assists and avenges thee, be always propitious!
May victory follow thee wherever thy black horse shall
bear thee I May'st thou be, in paradise, seated in the same
kiosk and at the same table as he of our ancestors whose
name thou bearest, the Kalif Othman, son of Affan! and
may'&t thou, in awaiting the immortal life, increase unceas-
ingly in this earthly life in power and glory during many
years ! "
At these words, and on a gesture of the Sultan, the high
chamberlain led Othman into an apartment of the kiosk,
where he was stript to the shirt by slaves of all the clothes
he wore on entering the palace and dressed in the apparel and
arms of the Sultan himself. In this new costume, which
made him equal in exterior to the padischah, Othman re-
entered to return thanks to his master.
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 81
The conversation and the recital of the campaigns of
Persia lasted for one half a summer's day. Thé Sultan had
prolonged it on design by his interrogations, beyond the
ordinary length of the longest recitals^ to test hb general
'^ Othman has been reported to me," said he on quitting the
kiosk, as intoxicating himself with opium and brutalizing
thus his intellect ; I suspect him no longer of this vice, since
he has been able to maintain without fatigue and without
interruption a conversation and a narrative which have
endured for six hours."
Othman in fact used to stimulate his exhausted spirits
during his campaigns by the use, sometimes excessive, of
wine. After having drank some goblets of this liquor with
his favorites beneath his tent, he used to lay his head on the
cushion and be lulled to sleep by the voice of the singers.
Then awaking of himself, at the prescribed hour (two hours
after sunset), he performed his religious ablutions and said
his prayer, shedding tears of contrition for his faults, and
resuming labor or slumber according to leisure or to busi*
ness. The conviction of the sobriety of Othman which
resulted to the Sultan from that test, determined Amurath
to commit the government to the predestined personage who
had so happily conducted the war. Siawousch-Pasha was
dismissed without disgrace. Othman was appointed grand
vizier. His installation in this dignity, accompanied by
unexampled honors, was but a continuation of his triumph
on the day of his entry into the capital.
Amurath III., despite his effeminacy, knew how to reign,
since he knew how to thus recompense the hero of his nation.
But in the bosom of his external prosperities, this prince
was not happy. His infirmities of mind increased with his
disorders. His mother and the intendant of his pleasures,
Djanfeda, did not cease to present in his harem new victims
to his caprices. He changed women oftener than the muez-
zin cries the hour. His children multiplied. His very joys
at the birth of his sons were dashed with sadness. One day
as he conversed with one of his odalisques who was about to
become a mother, " Of what use is it to you, Sultan, to be
made a father ? " said this slave, alluding to the inevitable
murder of the male children of the harem ; " your sons are
not destined to live upon the earth, but to people the
tombs."
Vol. III.-
82 HISTOBY OF TtJBKBT.
XL
The rivalriea of influence and of favor which agitated his
harem were reverberated to the divan. The mother of
Amorath III» and hia wife the Sultana Khasseki Safiyé were
not always of a mind in recommending to him the same
favorites. His mother and his sister protected Siawousch-
Pasha ; Safiyé accused Siawousch of laboring to take the
throne from her son Mohammed in order to prepare the
empire for the sons which he had had himself by the Sultana
his wife, the fevorite sister of the Sultan.*
The death of the Sultana mother, Nour-Banou, at the
Juncture of the return of Othman from Persia, shook the
influence of Siawousch. The Venetian wife, Safiyé, although
suspected of having hastened by poison the death of her
mother-in-law, reigned henceforth without a rival over the
mind of Amurath. Another favorite of the prince, Ibrahim,
still remote from the summit of public honors, was the
secret rival and often the obstacle of the grand viaiers.
The harem had its factions ; they exacted immense sums
from the grand vizier» The Sultana Validé had two thou-
sand gold ducats independently of the prodigalities of
the favorites of the day. Three women foreign to the
harem of Amurath shared among them the dominion of his
feeble understanding. One was that Djanfeda-Kadoun of
whom we have already spoken, and whom Nour-Banou, the
Sultan's mother, had recommended to him in dying' as alone
capable of filling the place of herself in the administration
of his feminine household; the second was the pretended
prophetess Baziyé, a crafty and beautiful woman, of whom
accident had sometimes verified the words and the philtres.
Smitten with a gardener of the seraglio named Schoudsehaa,
she had elevated him by her intrigues to the domestic digni-
ties of the court ; the third was the Jewess Kira, a huckster
of the bazaar, whom her commerce of stuffs and jewelry for
the Sultanas introduced freely to the interior of the harem,
and who thus made herself a go-between in all the intrigues
of love and of ambition.
Three daughters of Selim II., sisters of the reigning
* The anihor had related that all male offspriog of the sisters and
the daughters of the reigniog Sultans were put to death at hirth. He
forgets then to explain if the law had been repealed, or if the present
case of its infraction be an exception. — Translator*
mSTORT OF TUBKBY. 83
Saltan, disputed with the Sultana Safijé the favor of their
brother. They were the widow of the grand vizier Sokolli,
the widow of the capitan-pasha Piale, and the princess their
sister who had married Siawousch. Another Sultana, retired
into the old seraglio, Mihrmah, daughter of Soliman, brought
up two nieces of Amurath. She married the first of these
grand-daughters of Soliman to the Genoese renegade Cicala,
a deserter of the great family of the Dorias of Genoa, and
who in abjuring their faith and their country, had transported
into the East their heroism. Death having taken from Cicala
the first of his wives of the blood of Soliman, the Sultana
Mihrmah had given him the second.
These princesses, whom their kinship with the Sultan
introduced incessantly into the palace, filled it with their
intrigues and with their passions. Esma, widow of Sokolli,
although ill-favored by nature, wished to get married a
second time, and to one of the most accomplished of the
pashas in body and mind, named Ali-Pasha, governor of
Turkish Hungary. He. had through ambition or through
fear the cowardice to repudiate his wife whom he loved, to
aggrandize himself in wealth and dignities by wedding a
sister of his master. The historian Petschewi, witness of
these cruel nuptials, says that the tears and the imprecations
of the repudiated wife of Ali, in leaving his house, would
have moved the rooks of the Balkana
Hassan-Pasha and Feredoun, the first for his wealth, the
second for his talent, were judged worthy of those alliances
with Sultana relatives of the sovereign. Feredoun, dis-
graced, as has been seen, owed his return to the favor of this
tardy marriage. The life of the Sultan, in the lap of these
luxuries and of these feminine intrigues, was spent in the
sumptuosities of hb gardens and in the puerilities of shows,
with which he amused the slaves and the children of the
harem. After having killed time in his kiosks, of which
the terraces, perfumed with roses, are cooled by the breezes
of the Bosphorus, he prolonged the day by the blaze of fire-
-works which were set off upon the heights in front of the
gardens for the amusement of his son Mohammad.
Some edifices of devotion or of public utility, which he
liked to see arise beneath his eyes to distract his idleness by
the spectacle of the activity of the laborers, diversified his
hours. He sent for this purpose considerable sums to Mecca,
to the end of protecting the holy Kaaba and the black stone
84 HISTOBY OF TUBKST.
incmsted in the walls of the temple from the innnd&itims
that had soiled it. This black stone of Abraham is, in the
Arabian and Mahometan traditions, a ruby fallen from the
heavens at the beginning of the world, of which the splendor
illuminated the earth with a light equal to that of the dawn,
and which the multiplied sins of the human species ended
with obscuring totally in proportion as humanity got more
depraved in getting older. The profane see in it but an
aerolite dropped in Arabia in the times of the patriarchs, which
shone as a fiery meteor in falling, which was extinguished
after the fall, and of which oriental allegory and superstition
made the sympathetic ruby of the sacred Kaaba.
XII.
The influence of those princesses and of those slaves of
the seraglio upon the mind of Amurath III. did not equal
that of the gardener of whom the prophetess Kaziyé had made
the accomplice of her wiles, and whom Amurath, in recom-
pense of his magical divinations, had raised to the rank of
preacher of the court. This fanatic having received from
heaven, he said, the order to get converted into mosques all
the Christian churches of Constantinople, communicated his
intolerance to the Sultan. Amurath commenced this trans-
formation of the Christian temples, under pretext that
the increased number of the Mussulmans of the capital
exceeded the number and the capacity of the mosques erected
for their worship. But the remonstrances of the ambassa-
dors, and the sums with which the Greeks and Catholics
redeemed their altars, retained their churches to the Chris-
tians.
The ambassador of France, M. de Germigny, protested
daringly against the suppression of the chapels of Galata,
and marched with an armed retinue to defend the gates.
The fear of losing so steadfast an ally of Turkey caused the
ambassador to be pardoned this temerity, while the grand
vizier threatened the envoys of the Emperor of Germany.
with confinement in the fortress of the Seven Towers.
The capitulations for the protection of Christianity in the
empire and for the privileges of navigation were renewed
and amplified at this epoch.
Hungary and Germany alone disturbed the complete
security of the divan on the side of Europe. The indopen-
HI6T0B? OF TUBKBT. 85
dent Hnngarians had elected for their king the emperor
Bodolphus. This union of Hungary and Anstria under the
same emperor displeased the Porte. The grand rizier testi-
fied gruffly his anger to the Austrian envoys. " Is it not
true," said he to them one day in public audience, ^^ that the
emperor Bodolphus is an infirm and sickly prince ? Why
have the Hungarians chosen a king who is not of their
blood ? The Germans, according to our proverb, are gelded
horses, but the Hungarians are vigorous stallions. You
urge the Hungarians to detach themselves from the protec-
tion of the SiHtans; but if they choose another king among
themselves, we will go at once into Hungary to confirm by
arms the king whom they will have taken against your
emperor." He threatened them with the pillory.
The ambassadors of the emperor endured without mur-
muring these outrages, and continued to pay the tribute and
to solicit the friendship of the Turks.
XIII.
Envoys extraordinary of all the powers of Asia, of
Europe and of Africa arrived at Constantinople to attend
jbhe festivities of the circumcision of the son of Amurath
III. and of the Venetian Safiyé. The memory of these
solemnities must have ranked in the mind of Amurath,
among the great events of his reign. They remain, in fact,
a testimony of the opulence and the manners of the court
of the Sultans at this period. Their magnificence and their
duration mark the apogee of luxury to which a tribe of con-
quering shepherds had raised, in two centuries, the throne
of the Sultans. The description of them fills whole volumes
of the memoirs of the times and of the correspondence of
the ambassadors to their courts. "We will borrow a few
pages of it from the German historians, abstracted by Ham-
mer from the archives of the Germanic courts.
" Over a year," say they, " had been devoted to preparation
for these festivities. The period of 1582 was notified to the
monarchs of Asia, of Europe and of Africa. Tschaouschs
were also despatched with invitations to all the governors of
the empire ; those whom their affairs should prevent from
attending might have their absence excused them by sending
large presents. The former intendant of the imperial kitch-
ens, Karabalibeg, was appointed intendant (emir) and the
86 HI8T0BT or TtTBKKT.
former niaohandji, Hamiabeg, inspector (naiir) of the fêtes;
the latter received from the treasurj a half a million
of ac^rs for the expenditures belonging to his department.
Cooking-honses rose upon every side ; and the hippodrome,
where Soliman had before celebrated the nuptials of his
sister, those of Ibrahim, and the circumcision of his son, was
the scene of magnificences which must put into ihe shade all
recollections of the grandest sumptuosities of past ages.
The effect answered fully to the immense preparations, and
the fetes of Amurath III. in honor of the circumcision of
his son Mohammed, remain without example in the history
of the Ottoman empire, for splendor and duration."
^' The hippodrome, which is four hundred paces long by
ÛYe hundred oroad, was set off according to the exigencies
of ihe fete and of the spectators. In the upper part, where
stands at present the hospital for the insane, there was
described a square of one hundred paces shut in with planks
and designed for cookeries. Kiosks and covered lodgings
for the Sultan, the heir presumptive and the Sultanas, were
established in the enclosure of the palace of Ibrahim-Pasha,
favorite of Amurath. Below this palace and on the same
line arose an edifice of which the base, for six feet in height,
was constructed of stone, and on which was superposed three
stories in wood : the first was assigned to the ambassadors
of foreign powers, the second to the agas of the court,
internal and external, the third to the begs, beglerbegs and
viiiers of the empire. To this construction succe^ed a
gallery of twelve feet by seven high (sic), in which were
placed the capitan-pasha and the begs of the navy."
^^In front of the palace of Ibralum-Pasha was placed the
music of the imperial chapel and the nuptial palm-trees.
Lower down on iSie same side arose the stall of the Persian
embassy, from the ceiling of which hung a lustre, diffusing
light through several huiulred tubes. Near the stall of the
Persian ambassador stood, that of the French minister.
This personage at first demanded to obtain precedence of the
Austrian envoy ; but the demand having been refused, he
absented himself from the festival, under pretext that it was
not fitting that the representative of the Most-Christian king
should attend at the ceremonies of idolaters. This tribune
was occupied by the Tartar and the Polish ambassadors.
Last of all came the gallery of the capitan-pasha, in front of
which stood the grand tent for the preparation of sherbet and
HISTOBY OF TUBKIY. 87
odber refreshments. In liie middle of the square were
elevated two poleS) of which one was painted red and the
other rubbed with oil ; the latter was crowned with a rast
circle, to which were suspended several thousands of lamps,
and which was lowered during the night in order to light
the hippodrome.''
^^The beglerbeg of Boumelia was charged with the
police of the festivities ; the beglerb^ of Anatolia had the
superintendence of the sherbets {scherheidfibaschi) ; the capi-
tan-pasha, the direction of the galleries and stages ; the aga
of the Janissaries was made chief of the guards. Five hun-
dred men robed in grotesque leathern apparel paraded the
place, carrying each of them a leathern vessel filled with
wind, with which they struck the disturbers of the peace.
Their captain, mounted on an ass which was covered by a
housing of straw mats, combined with those important func-
tions that of buffoon for the multitude.
" Three days after, the Sultanas, accompanied by a whole
arsenal of sugar works, presented themselves at the hippo-
drome. They were attended by ten or twelve prisoners
from Hungary or from Bosnia, whose feats of strength or
rather endurance were exhibited to the people. They
hacked themselves with sabre blows, they pierced them-
selves with lances ; one of them planted a spear of a pike in
his flesh ; others bristled their arms with arrows ; others still
carried hgrse-shoes nailed to their back, and the blood
trickled down in streams. The principal among them re-
ceived a revenue of four thousand aspers. But two of those
unfortunate prisoners having sunk beneath their wounds, this
inhuman spectacle was forbidden for the remainder of the fes-
tivities.
'^ Among the works in sugar, were remarked nine ele-
phants, seventeen lions, nineteen leopards, twenty-two horses,
twenty-one camels, four giraffes, nine mermaids, twenty-five
falcons, eleven cranes, eight storks, eight mallards, and a
multitude of other objects. The confectionery was carried
by fifteen dray-horses, of which eight wore housings of red
damask and seven of damask of silver. During, the distri-
bution of the sugar works, some Arabs and rope-dancers
amused the people by climbing poles, and also the obelisk
and the pillar of the hippodrome." •
» I find it quite repulsive to proeeed another lino in the translation of
these ponderous puerilitiea. The foregoing paragraphs present the Only
88 HISTOBY OF TURKEY.
We have gone into some details on these festivities,
because they were daring several years the object to which
tended all the ideas and all the negotiations of Amurath,
and because they throw a vivid light upon the state of the
empire, at that time still dreaded by the European powers,
upon the luxury of the court and of the great, the sumptU'
ousness of apparel, the taste and the amusements of the
people, the distribution into categories of the different
industries, such as they have been shown us by the proces-
sions of the different trades.*
XIV.
This picture of the nation's luxury completes the por-
traits of the men ; festivities are the history of the manners
of a people. These were saddened by the grand vizier 0th-
man with an act of tragic justice accomplished, despite the
influence of the harem, upon Hassan-Pasha, brother-in-law
of Amurath. Hassan, who dilapidated the treasures of
Egypt of which he was governor, to the advantage of his
private fortune, was recalled and thrown upon his arrival at
Constantinople into the prison of the Seven Towers. The
Sultan granted him life but on the prayers and tears of his
sister.
The favorite Ibrahim was sent to Egypt to repair the
misadministration of Hassan. Ibrahim employed in vain
some eighteen months and thousands of hands in exploring
Mount Mokattan at Cairo, and the slope of the Smaragdus
on the shore of the Bed Sea, to discover the treasures hidden
by Hassan.
A civil war between the Druses, a warlike tribe which
poiiits of the least interest in the description, which however still runs on
for ahout fifteen mortal pages, such as no one hut a German could have
had the patience of compiling, and no one hut a poet judge of consequence
enough for quoting. It is the same garish ding-dong of presents and
processions, of banquetings and hufioQueries, which the author had, more-
over, given us already more than once, and which I have heen once be-
fore obliged to spare myself and the sober reader. The thing is barren
and barbarian, beneath a glare of childish gorgeousness ; and to parade
such stuff in proof of civilization, or even real magnificence, is to betray
a serious lack of the philosophy of social progress. — TrarulcUor.
* The sole trades mentioned are shoemakers, bonnet-makers, cotton-
spinners, saddlers, silk -weavers, upholsterers, armorers, confectioners,
workers in gold and silver, and a few others of the like barbaric import,
— Trcawlator,
HISTORY OP TUREBY. 89
divides with the Maronites the upper yallejs of Mount Leb*
anon, recalled Ibrahim into Syria. One of the chief of the
Druses, Ebn-Maan, who ruled between Beyrout and Tripoli
of Syria, made submission to Ibrahim, and sent him his
mother with presents of Arabian horses, of goats and of
silk, productions of those savage and picturesque countries.
Ibrahim received the mother of the Drusian soheik with
kindness. Taking two silk veils which the woman presented
him, he spread one of them upon the head of the mother of
the rebel ; he covered his own head with the other, to signify
that the past was for ever veiled between the Druses and the
Ottomans. But this promise was a perfidy. Scarcely had
the mother of Ebn-Maan rejoined her sod, than Ibrahim,
enveloping him in his mountain retreat, surprised him and
had him flayed alive at Antera. The maledictions of
the betrayed and martyrized chief insurrected his whole race
on Mount Lebanon. Ibrahim, with six thousand Janissaries,
debarked from Egypt at Said, the ancient Sidon, ravaged
the entire table-land of Lebanon, exterminating the Drusian
chiefs divided among themselves. Four hundred severed
heads of these rebels preceded him to Constantinople.
The treasures in money, in jewelry, in works of art,
which he brought from Egypt and Syria upon his fleet,
ensured him a good reception from the Sultan. The most
precious of those spoils was a throne of gold which had been
chased by an Egyptian artist, in a style to rival the Floren-
tine artists. This thirone, besides the workmanship and the
precious stones with which it was encrusted, contained a
mass of gold equivalent to ten millions.* It is the imperial
seat which has served since then at the inauguration of the
Sultans in the ceremony of the accession. Two hundred
thousand gold ducats in money, two Korans of which the
binding shone with diamonds and with rubies; a curtain
embroidered in precious stones which veiled the door of fhe
temple of Mecca; three sabres, three yatagans, and three
Persian poniards with jewelled hilts ; three bucklers dazzling
with rubies ; a woman's toilet composed of seventy-nine
pieces in pure gold, of innumerable rolls of velvet, of
brocade, of Indian muslin ; one hundred white boys, seven-
teen black eunuchs, ten Ethiopian negroes of African fea-
tures, seven white Ethiopians ; seventy Arabian horses of the
* The author does not say of what, but possibly he means of francs.
90 HIBTOBY OF TUBKBT.
desert, of which ten bore saddles of gold and honsb^
embroidered with pearls ; an elephant carrying a throne, a
giraffe, a gigantic antelope, nnknown hitherto to the Otto-
mans, composed the present of Ibrahim. Amnrath III.,
who loved him and who destined him the place of grand
vizier, gave him his daughter, the Sultana Aisché, in mar-
riage. The splendor of uiese nuptials equalled the fôtes of
the circumcision.
Ibrahim, sent to Hungary to repress the armed rebellions
of the magnates Nadasdy and Palfy, whom the secret sup-
port of Austria encouraged against the Turks, returned to
Constantinople with a crowd of Hungarian prisoners in
chains, and carrying each of them tuo heads of his com-
patriots slain upon the field of battle. The envoy of the
emperor Rodolphus having sought to intercede for some of
these datives : " Dog," replied to him the vizier, " why
have you supported Nadasdy ? Why is your annual tribute
not yet paid to the Sultan ? " The sabre and the battle-axe
of the ambassador are wrested from his page and broken in
his presence. The Hungarian magnates Zriny, Nadasdy,
Bithiany, avenged these outrages by the defeat of the pasha
Sohehzvar and by the massacre of three thousand Turks at
Kanisoha. The pasha himself escaped from death ojily by
flight His horse expired under him of fatigue. He wan-
dered alone in the marshes of the banks of the Danube,
obliged to wrap his torn feet with the fur of the tiger-skin of
his caftan. Betuming obscurely and covered with shame to
Constantinople, he purchased a £bw days' life by the aban-
donment of all his treasures to the Sultan, and at last
poisoned himself for shame and for grief at having lost his
soldiers.
XV.
The ambassador of the kmg of Poland, Stephen Bathori,
was dismissed from Constantinople with severe reproaches
against his republic, which had given asylum and impunity
to the Cossacl^, enemies of the Tartars of the Crimea and of
the Turks. The ambassador, John Podladowsky, not hav-
ing promised sufficient satisfaction to the Porte, was massa-
cred with all his suite in a forest near Adrianople in return-
ing to Poland. The whole vengeance of the king of Poland
was to obey the injunctions of the divan, and to put to
HISTOBT OF TUBKBY. 91
death thirty-three Cossacks to please the ambassadors of
Amurath.
A short time after, the death of Bathory reopened the<
ordinary competitions and intrigues for the election of the
king for life of the Sarmatians. Sigismund, prince of
Sweden, was elected without opposition from the divan ; he
hastened to send Count Zamoisky, his secretary, to Constanti-
nople to request the continuation of the relations of patronage
and of deference between the republic of Poland and l£e
empire.
Queen Catherine of Medici kept up a direct correspond*
enee with the Venetian Sultana Safiyé, to obtain of Amu-
rath the aid of the Ottoman fleet against the Spanish fleet of
Philip IL, at war with France. The Jewess Kira, confidant
of the Sultana, obtained communication of one of the letters
of Catherine of Medici, and revealed the correspondence to
the Venetian ambassador, compatriot of the Sultana.
England solicited the same alliance oflensive and defen-
sive against Philip II. The grand vizier eluded the alliance
under pretext of the war with Persia, which absorbed all the
military forces of Turkey.
The Venetians, although at peace with the Porte, con-
tinued to combat on the seas of Africa the Barbary squad-
rons, allies and tributaries of the Turks. The pasha of
Tripoli, Eamazan, having been killed in his palace by the
revolted Janissaries, his widow fled upon one of her galleys
to Constantinople with a treasure of a hundred thousand
pieces of gold amassed by her husband. Four hundred
slaves and forty young women of her retinue accompanied
the widow in her flight. Adverse winds drove the galley
into the Adriatic. She cast anchor in the port of Zanté, a
Venetian island. The governor of Zanté respected in the
fugitive the rights of peace, of misfortune, and of hospitality.
But the celebrated Venetian admiral Emmo, informed of
the wealth which was carried by the vessel, awaited her at
sea in the neighbourhood of Cephalonia, and seized her as a
spoil of war. The three hundred Janissaries, faithful to the
widow of their pasha, were immolated in defending her on the
deck of the Turkish galley. The Venetians, without pity for
an innocent and defenceless woman, killed the infant of the
pasha upon the breast of its massacred mother. The forty
young women were thrown into the sea after having satiated
the brutality of the crews; a young brother of admiral
92 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
SmmO) himself partook in this debauoherj mixed with blood
before the eyes of the commander of the squadron. He
had taken possession of the most beautiful of these victims.
She threw herself at his feet imploring honor and life, certi-
fying that she was Christian and Venetian, that she had been
carried off an infant from Cyprus by the conquerors of the
island, and taken into slavery by the Barbary pirates.
Neither her race, nor her religion, nor her tears, nor her
beauty, could mitigate the heart of the ferocious Venetian.
These crimes of the Venetians at peace with the Mussul-
mans excited cries of horror and of reprisal from the Turks
throughout the coasts of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.
The Venetian Sultana Safiyé, always devoted to her native
country, saved with difficulty the ambassador of Venice at
Constantinople from popular vengeance. Her confidential
letters to the senate of Venice convinced the republic of the
necessity of a reparation proportioned to the outrage, or of
the danger of an implacable war upon the Venetian posses-
sions. Emmo and his son were disavowed and decapitated on
the deck of their galley ; the treasures and the slaves of the
pasha of Tripoli restored to his family. The Venetians, to
efface all memory of this crime committed under their flag,
united their vessels with the Turkish vessels against the gal-
leys of Philip II. Spain herself demanded a truce from the
divau. The ambassador of Queen Elizabeth of England was
not able to prevent this truce with Spain.
Pope Sextus V., of whom the comprehensive policy
transcended the horizon of Europe, tried by managements
towards the Turks and by negotiating legates sent to dissent-
ing Christian communities of the empire, to reattach to the
Boman Catholic centre the Greeks, the Armenians, the Jaco-
bites of Mesopotamia. The sect spirit, more invincible
than even national antipathies, defeated all these efforts.
The Porte did not interfere in these religious negotiations
between Christians submitted to its sway ; but the Maronites
of Lebanon alone persevered in a Boman Catholicism which
tolerated in this communion the marriage of the priests.
XVI.
The old capitan-pasha Kilidj died aged ninety in the
arms of a favorite slave of his harem. Ibrahim-Pasha, the
favorite of Amurath, succeeded him for a short time. The
HISTORY OF TUBKBT. 93
governor of Algiers, Hassan-Pasha, a Venetian renegade,
was raised by his talent to this post. Hassan, former gover-
nor of Egypt, and imprisoned in the Seven Towers for em-
bezzlement at Cairo, had been denounced by another rene-
gade from Milan, in his malversation. The Sultan, who had
then confiscated two hundred thousand ducats of it, did not
give him back his fortune in restoring him to favor. Has-
san, in order to testify his gratitude to Amurath, brought
him from Algiers ten armed galleys, and made him a present
of three hundred thousand ducats, thirty young eunuchs and
fifty young girls of singular beauty.
The war with Persia occupied exclusively the grand
vizier Othman He alone was at once capable of preparing
and of conducting it. Two hundred thousand men, seasoned
by him in his long campaigns, awaited him at Castemouni,
on the route of Erzeroum. Arrived at Erzeroum, Othman
dismissed Ferhad-Pasha, who had commanded hitherto re-
missly the Ottoman forces in observation on the frontiers of
Persia. Othman marched directly upon Tauris and burned
the capital of Aderbidjan, situated, to its misfortune, in the
middle of a plain, reckoned among the four " paradises " of
the Ottomans. In forty days he rebuilt and fortified it in
order to make it a stepping-stone of future expeditions.
But a defeat of his lieutenant Cicala-Pasha, and the murmurs
of the army, who refused to advance farther into a desert
country, forced him to retreat.
Attacked by prince Hamza, son of the blind Schah and
already vanquisher of Cicala, Othman, sick but not dispirited,
died of lassitude upon his horse in the midst of the battle.
His death brought with it the rout of the Turks. Thirty
thousand of them fell beneath the sabre of the Persians ; the
rest fled for refuge into Erzeroum. Ferhad-Pasha and Cicala
took jointly the command of the wrecks of the army.
Amurath III. replaced his deceased grand vizier by
Mesih-Pasha, an old man of ninety, whose intellect was tot-
tering xmder the weight of his years. The motive of this
inexplicable choice, at a moment when the empire stood in
need of the most active head and hand, was to let the favor-
ite Ibrahim reign behind the name of a nominal vizier.
Meanwhile the Persian prince Hamza pursued the course
of his victories over the remnants of the Ottoman army.
Winter retained him at Caswin. The sa.viour of Persia
prepared there a third campaign. The intrigues of the
94 HISTOBT OF TURKEY.
parlies who were rendÎDg his country menaced him erer on
this breach of the empire.
A strange barber named Bjondi, introduced into his
apartment to shave the prioce, cut his thrbat and escaped
without being suspected by his guards. Some ascribe the
crime of the assassin to the fanaticism of the Mussulmans,
who reproached Hamza-Mirza with too much favor towards
the Christians of the kingdom ; oUiers, to the instigation of
Ismael-Mirza, jealous of the glory and of the throne which
80 many exploits were assuring to his broUier. The blind
Schah did not survive his grief at the loss of such a
son. Ismael inherited in fact, for some months only, this
throne ensanguined by so many crimes. But the Soliman or
the Charlemagne of Persia was born, and was growing up
already in the shade. It was a child saved from the massa-
cre of the sons of Mohammed, by the cruel Peridjan. This
boy was the great Abbas, restorer of Persia.
XVII.
During the whole of the reign of Mohammed the Blind,
this Schah had vainly demanded of the tribe chiefs of Kho-
rassan, to whom the child had been, according to usage, con-
fided, to have him sent back to his court These chieftains,
attached to the diild by his misfortunes, by his graces, and
perhaps also by the hope of raising him one day to the
throne to rule in his name, had refused to give up this
pledge.
The two mostpowerful in arms of these tribe chiefs of
Khorassan, Ali-Khouli-Khan and Murshud-Khouli-Khan,
raised, on the death of Hamza and of Mohammed, the ban-
ner of the rights of young Abbas. They set the child on
horseback, despite his tender years, and taught him the
exercises and the genius of war, in order to exalt, by the
presence of the pretender their pupil, the enthusiasm of the
Persians. Victorious in several battles against the troops
of Ismael, they soon disputed with each other the honors and
the fruits of the victory gained in the same cause, and
fought among themselves the provinces which they had just
conquered conjointly.
Young Abbas had remained in the hands of Ali-Khouli-
Khan. In a battle lost against Murshud, the boy's horse
killed in the conflict rolled upon the dust. Ablms was going
HISTOBY OF TURRET. 95
to perish beneath the feet of the horses, when the cavabj
of Mnrshud, recognizing the son of the Sophia beneath their
sabres, stopped their horses, threw down their arms, fell
upon their knees before the infant king, took him np, and
crowned him on the field of battle. Conducted by Murshud-
Elhouli-Khan into the submitted capital, Caswin, Abbas was
proclaimed there without opposition. Murshud reigned in his
name more than was fitting towards an adolescent capable
and jealous of his rights to uie throne. Murshud was assas-
sinated by the partisans of the young king in the palace of
Gaswin where he assumed to reign in his place.
XVIII.
Meanwhile the Ousbek Tartars, those eternal enemies of
Persia, conquerors already of one half the provinces of the
north, were advancing in countless multitudes to take advan-
tage of the dissensions and the feebleness of the reign of
a child. Abbas marched against them without other general
than himself, wrested from them Meschid the principal capi-
tal of the empire, drove them back beyond the Oxus, and
returned with his army, prepared to make head against the
Turks who were menacing Caswin and Tauris.
Encamped upon the bank of the river Kur or Cyrujs in
the plain of Georgia, Abbas exercised there his soldiers, and
called around him all the tribes desirous of saving or aveng-
ing their common country. His youth, his beauty, his
bravery, fanaticised the two armies separated by the river.
During the truce established for the winter between the two
camps, Abbas, galloping on the sands of the Cyrus with
some of his young generals, was invited by some Turkish
officers to cross the river by swimming, and to confide himself
to their hospitality. The young prince pushed his horse
into the water, and passed some hours with the Turks without
making himself known. After this amicable interview he
invited some of his hosts to pass the river in their turn to
test the faith of the Persians. " "We are very willing," said
the officers of the army of Amurath, with the same confi-
dence, " on condition that you will enable us to see your
young Schah, of whom the courage, the genius and the
renown surpass his years and ring through Asia." Abbas
smiled and promised to satisfy them. Scarcely had they
touched the Persian bank than the respectful attitude and the
96 mSTOEY OF TUBKET.
aoolamations of the troops revealed to the Turks that this
jouDg man who had so rashly put himself into their hands
was the Schah of Persia himself. Abbas, after having
received them as a king in his tents, had them reconducted
with honors and presents into their camp.
His precocious genius did not preserve him entirely from
the superstitions and the credulities of his country and his
times. While he was checking thus the Tartars with one
hand, the Ottomans with the other, and when his good fortune,
already made known, presaged to Persia the most memorable
of its reigns, a prediction of hb astrologers upon a queer coin-
cidence of the stars, diffused among the people that great
calamities were rbing upon Persia, and that an imminent
peril menaced the sovereign. WheUier through credulity or
policy, Abbas resolved to elude the prediction and to baffle
destiny by abdicating the throne. He did in fact abdicate
solemnly, and caused to be crowned in his place, for some
hours, a criminal condemned to death for his felonies and
impieties. This wretched manikin of the throne was named
Yousouf-Sophi. , He enjoyed for three hours the palace, the
pleasures, the honors of the sovereignty of kings. The
fourth hour he was delivered to the executioner. The pre-
diction, thus verified by a subterfuge, had exhausted the
malignity of fate upon a nominal nation and king.
Abbas reascended his throne under other auspices, and
the stars promised him greater prosperity. A decisive
battle against the Ousbek Tartars, near Herat, precipitated
them into the Oxus. One of his generals, Mohammed
Ferhad-Khan, by a secret intelligence with the Ousbeks, had
resolved to let the king be crushed during this battle. Under
pretext of running to a fictitious peril, he sought to lead off
the left wing which he commanded to a distance from the
field of battle. But his generals and soldiers, perceiving
Abbas struggling alone with a handful of troops against the
masses of Tartars who enveloped him, flew of themselves to
his assistance and saved their kine.
Ferhad, accused of treason by the army, expiated his
crime by death. Ali- Verdi-Khan, who had disobeyed him to
save the king, was raised to the honors and the intimacy of
favorite of Abbas. Ali- Verdi-Khan, sent by the king with
an army to reduce to submission the border provinces
detached from the kingdom, reconquered to him the islands
of the Persian gulf which contain the pearl fisheries, and
HI8T0BY OF TUBKST. 97
the chain of mduntams called Laristan which extends from
the fertile plain of Schiraz, utmous for its gardens, its waters
and its wines, as far as the Persian gulf
Ibrahim-Khan, whose fathers governed these mountains
for four thousand years, was sent a captive to the court of
Abbas. The famous crown of Chosroes was found in his
treasury. This crown of gold, incrusted with pearls and
rubies, taken o£f and preserved for so many centuries by
this family of tributary princes, who had never been con-
quered hitherto by the masters of Persia, thus returned to
grace the brow of the worthiest successor of Chosroes.
Some gentlemen of England, a curious nation, which
explore the world as much through restlessness of mind
as through the instinct of discovery and the spirit of
mercantile speculations, were the first Europeans who hailed
in Abbas the regenerator of the East. This caravan of
English travellers was composed of Sir Anthony Shirley,
Sir Kobert Shirley his brother, and of a retinue of thirty
gentlemen of the same nation. Most of them were officers,
geographers, artists, artisans, traders, distmguished in their
country. One of them was a skilful founder of cannons.
They travelled with an Asiatic luxury under the patronage
of the Earl of Essex, favorite of Queen Elizabeth, carrying
to the courts of the East the name, the arts, the interests,
the alliances of their country.
Entertained at the court of Abbas, of whom the genius
was enlarged enough to envy to one world what was wanting
to another, they received honors and presents worthy of the
magnificence of an Indian monarch. A thousand pieces of
coined gold, each of the value of sixteen dollars, forty
Persian steeds saddled and equipped with splendid harnesses,
sixteen mules, twelve camels laden with tents of which the
curtains were embroidered with gold, with torquoises and
pearls, composed the present of the Sohah. Shirley won the
friendship of Ali-Verdi-Khan, generalissimo of the armies,
and became the European confidant of Abbas. He encour-
aged this prince and his ministers to face with confidence
the war against the Turks. He introduced the European
artillery and discipline into the regular infantry formed at
hb advice by the Schah. Abbas, to secure the neutrality of
the Christian princes, accredited Anthony Shirley his favorito
by letters, of which the terms attest the pateiarchal friend-
ship of a king of warrior tribes.
Vol. 1X1.-5
98 HISTOBY OF TURKEY.
'^Have entire confidence in him," said Abbas in his
letters of credence, '^for since he is with me, we have
always, like two brothers, eaten off the same plate and drunk
from the same cup.'' The Christians and the monks of dif-
ferent monastic orders were encouraged to reside, to practise
and to preach freely their religion in Persia. " Our reli-
gious functionaries," said the firmans of Abbas, ^^ will not dare
to molest yours or to speak to them about matters of faith."
This tolerance populated the cities of Persia and the suburbs
of the capital with Christian merchants, artisans and manufeuN
turers from all parts of the East. The ambassador of the
Schah, Shirley, experienced outrages only in Russia, where
the jealous, uneasy, and barbarous court of Moscow threw
him, despoiled of his treasure, into prison. Delivered from
his captivity after long tortures, he visited the courts of
Germany and of Italy, enlisting everywhere the assistance or
the good will of the Christian princes for Abbas, the enemy
of the enemies of the Christians.
Sure of the support of Europe, Abbas reconquered
Tauris from Ali-Pasha, to whom the grand vizier Othman
had confided the guard of it after his retreat. A Portuguese
ecclesiastic, father Anthony Govea, sent by Philip II. to the
oourt of Abbas, relates the fall of this city; Erivan followed
Ihe fate of Tauris. Abbas, before marching against Bagdad
to reattach it to his empire, wished to purge the north of
Persia of the presence of the Turks.
Let us resume the recital of the events which correspond
at Constantinople with these revolutions and these triumphs
of the Persians, regenerated by the glory of their Soliman,
Abbas.
XIX.
The old vizier of ninety, Mesih-Pasha, had ceded the
viziership to Sinan-Pasha, exiled to Malghara and then to
Damascus. The presents which Sinan-Pasha sent from his
governments to the Sultana Safiyé and to the favorites of
the harem had cancelled his disasters in Persia and his
incompetence in the divan. The mufti had been likewise
substituted by a mystical poet, author of Arabic and Turk-
ish poems, named Bostanzadé-EffendL The scherif of Mecca,
Abou-Nemi, was come to bring to Constantinople, with the
benedictions of the Kaaba, the presents of Arabia, composed
HISTOEY OP TURKEY. 99
of rich stnfl^ of satin and of cotton, of aloes, of cocoa-nuts
filled with fruit-comfits of India. Ambassadors from Abbas
demanded imperiously of the Porte the restitution of the
provinces usurped, and the ancient delimitation of the fron-
tiers of the two empires.
Siawousch-Pasha had, to fiatter Amurath III., con-
structed at his own expense on the banks of the Bosphorus,
near the stables of the seraglio, sq^ imperial palace of which
he made a present to the Sultan. Amurath entered it under
a canopy of a thousand paces long, covered with tapestry of
satin and brocade. A splendid oanquet was served him by
Sinan-Pasha and by the architects of this new palace, which
has been demolished in our own days to build the palace of
Mahmoud, father of Abdul-Medjid the reigning Sultan.
The revenues of the grand vizier were raised to a million
of ducats (that is to say, some two millions of dollars).
Atrocious cruelties, occasioned by the exactions of Ibra-
him, the greedy favorite of Amurath, and by his accomplices,
martyrized the Christians of Syria. The bishop of Jerusa-
lem expired in tortures because he would not gratify the
cupidity of the governor. France, protectress of the Holy
Places, Venice, Spain, Austria, Naples, claimed the pumsh-
ment of the despoiler and executioner of their coreligionists.
The Sultan despatched headsmen to Damascus and to Jeru-
salem to expiate those crimes by the decapitation of the two
governors.
XX.
The finances fell into disorder like the administration.
The money of the empire, that pledge of the integrity of
transactions, was altered by the Jews, inspectors of coins
and alloys. The Jew coiner of the currency presented the
treasurer of the Sultan, says the historian of this reign, Ali,
ten pieces of gold, " as thin as an almond-leaf and not
heavier than a dew drop." The Jew offered the treasurer
a present of two hundred thousand piasters, if he would
accept the money for the payment of the troops. The treas-
urer refused. One of the favorites of Amurath, Moham-
med-Pasha the Falconer^ thus sumamed from his first office in
the seraligo, accepted the present and undertook rashly to
get the pay accepted in this money by the troops of the
capital.
100 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
The Janiflsaries, indignant at the money which was in de-
rision distributed to them, revolted and covered the seraglio
with imprecations. Sinan-Pasha the grand vizier, and Ibra-
him the former favorite, second vizier, fomented secretly the
sedition through jealousy of the dominant favor of Moham-
med the Falconer. The gates of the courts were burst in by
sixty thousand Janissaries, swelled by disguised soldiers
from the other corps. The hall of the divan, where Amu-
rath deliberated with the viziers, rune with threats against
the life of the very Sultan. Never, till this day, had a sedi-
tion risen so ûtr as the sacred name of the Sultan.*
" If the beglerbeg Mohammed is not delivered to us,"
cried the seditionists, " let the Sultan tremble for himself.
We will be sure to reach him." Piles of gold and silver,
drawn from the plethoric treasury of Amurath, were set in
vain in the court under the hands of the Janissaries. Anger
was stronger than cupidity. " The first amongst us," cried
they, " who shall consent to touch his pay before the heads
of the Falconer and of the treasurer have fallen, will be
punished with death on the spot."
After having temporized and negotiated for some hours
with the rebels to save his favorite, Amurath in tears em-
braced him, took from him his poniard, and delivered him to
the vociferators. Mohammed was cut to pieces before hav-
ing descended the steps of the divan. The innocent and
virtuous treasurer, ud justly denounced to the troops, under-
went the fate which was deserved alone by the tempter.
Amurath suspected the grand vizier Siawousch and Ibrahim
of having prompted and directed the sedition against his
friend. " I was wrong," said he in returning to his harem,
" not to have delivered all the viziers to the just vengeance
of my slaves ; the most guilty have not been stricken."
Siawousch-Pasha, removed after the apeasement of the
disturbance, gave place to Sinan-Pasha. Hassan the Clock-
maker J of whom the name recalled the trade among his com-
rades, was appointed aga of the Janissaries.
It was the year in which the day of the Barricades en-
sanguined Paris, and in which Henry III. fell by the
poniard of an assassm in the midst of his court. The
Janissaries revolted anew a few days after their bloody
♦ Does the author forget what he has related us of Bajazet II., who
had been threatened in his own palace, broken into by these same Jani»-
Baries, and outraged to his face with the name of drunkard ?— TVoiij/ator.
HI8T0SY OF TUBKEY* 101
execution^ and sacked the palace of Hassan the Glockmaker,
their general. They were given as aga an equerry of the
Sultan, a popular man who promised impunity to their
caprices. The rebellion was propagated to the extremities
of the empire. Sinan, former governor of Ofen, enemy of
the Austrian alliance, was assassinated in his house. Sus-
picion of the crime fell upon two of his slaves, of whom the
bodies were discovered some weeks after in the fields, near
the walls of the city. The troops of Hungary and of the
Persian frontier revolted for grievances of pay in arrears.
Ferhad-Pasha, the aged governor of Erzeroum, was massa-
cred by his Janissaries. Djafar-Pasha, the Hungarian, for-
mer favorite page of Amurath^ was likewise besieged by his
own troops in the citadel of Kars. He parleyed with the
rebels, feigned to yield to their demands, purchased secretly
the aid of the Kurd warriors of the neighboring tribes, con-
cealing them in the city ; then, inviting his own troops to
return within the walls to a festival of reconciliation, he
massacred two thousand of the mutineers in a single night.
The troops at Constantinople forced the Sultan, by their
agitation, to change three times the grand vizier, the mufti,
and the aga of the Janissaries. An Italian renegade of
Ancona, Khalil-Pasha, was appointed aga. Siawousch-Pasha,
three timeà grand vizier, three times disgraced, was recalled
to the head of the council. A commotion of the spahis,
who demanded in their turn the head of the treasurer of the
seraglio, and which was only repressed by the sabre of the
Janissaries, of the bostandjis, of the pages and the eunuchs,
caused anew the fall of Siawousch and re-estabHshed Sinan-
Pasha.
During these military movements in the capital, the Janis-
saries of Moldavia deposed also, seditiously. De Jassy from
the throne. They set in his place a Moldavian palfrey-groom
named Aaron, who purchased them by his liberalities. The
Sultan was constrained to ratify this ignoble choice.
The king of France, Heniy IV., notified to the Sultan his
advent to the throne, sent him M. de Breves to detach him
from the Spanish alliance, and renewed with the Porte the
relations of Francis I. The grand vizier, at the instance of
M. de Breves, imprisoned in the tower of Galata the am-
bassador of the League, M. Lanscome.
102 HISTOBY OF TUBKET.
XXL
Tho divan sought an occasion of war to occupy the idle-
ness of the troops. The delays of Austria in the payment
of the tribute, the incursions of the Uscoques, Croatian
bandits, upon Ottoman territory, and the bloody reprisals of
the Turks upon Croatia, supplied it. Rodolphus II., then
emperor, called his subjects to arms, and instituted in the
holy Roman empire • and in Austrian Turkey the " Bell of
the Turks," a sort of regular tocsin ringing three times a
day and a night to call the cities to vigilance and prayer
against their barbarous enemies. Hassan-Pasha, beglerbeg
of Bosnia, lost the battle of the Koulpa against the generals
of Rodolphus. Twenty thousand Turks, driven back by the
Austrians on the steep borders of the river, broke the bridges
under the feet of the fugitives and were ingulfed in the
current. The Ottomans call the year of this defeat the
" year of ruin."
The war thus commenced was not as yet declared. The
fury of the people of Constantinople declared it of itself
The army left the city under the conduct of the grand
vizier. The dervishes accompanying the troops excited them
by their cries and their fanatical gestures. Some of them,
covered with skins of bears and lions, imitating the roaring
of these ferocious beasts, led behind them the ambassador of
Rodolphus II., Khrekwitz, in chains. He expired of suffer-
ing and outrage on arriving at Belgrade. This war, being
conducted on both sides without energy or unity, did no
honor to either Germany or Turkey. It was but a con-
stant alternation of successes and reverses, of massacres and
insubordinations, which .desolated the provinces of Hungary,
of Wallachia, of Moldavia, without giving the victory to
either of the combatants. The Janissaries did not cease
to extort payment for their valor. The Sultan exhausted
his treasury to send to Belgrade the pay and the largesses
which they exacted of their generals.
Amurath III., worn out by debauch, was languishing in
the gardens of the Bosphorus. His sole pleasure was to
contemplate from the windows of his ELiosks the sails of the
vessels that passed and repassed like huge sea-birds from the
* The reader will remember the pretension of the Germanic empire
to be the lineal descendant of the empire of the Césars ; the qnality of
holiness was added hy Christianity. — Translator.
HISTOBY OF TURKEY. 103
Propontis into the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea into
the Propontis. His natural melancholy became deeper with
the evening of his days. The sound of instruments and the
salvos of vessels which saluted him in passing with their
cannons, alone revived some slight emotion in his pleasure-
jaded senses. Some days before the illness which under-
mined his strength, he asked his musicians to play, instead
of orchestral fanfars, the melancholy and almost mournful
air of a Turkish song of which the first verses say : " I
feel myself sick of languor. Come, Death ! Keep vigil
this night by my side 1 "
While die musicians were executing this lugubrious air,
two Egyptian galleys passing under the terrace of the Kiosks
fired a volley simultaneously of all their guns to salute the
padischah. The commotion, repercussed by the lofty cliffs
of the Bosphorus, shivered the windows to fragments at the
feet of the Sultan. The patient saw in this the pressée of
his doom, to be broken like this class. " See," said he to
his women, " formerly all the salvos of my fleets united
would not have shaken these windows, which now fly into
fragments at the report of the guns of two pitiful galleys.
There is a fatal hour for every thing. The palace of my
existence totters by this law."
He died the night following of grief at quitting life.
His reign had continued for some years the greatness and
the prosperity of the reign of Soliman IT. But the son was
too weak to continue long the father.* The languor of the
sovereign after the death of the great minister Sokolli was
communicated to the empire; the epoch of decay com-
menced for the Ottomans.
We shall find in the following books the causes of this
decadence in the relative situations of the Ottomans and the
Christians, the former knowing only how to conquer, the
latter learning to govern. But we discern it already in that
universal law of human things which permits neither man,
nor nation, nor institution to stop at the summit of its des-
tiny ; which condemns all that is on the earth to a perpetual
instability, and which forces to redescend whatever can no
longer mount, or whatever knows not, as the Turks do
know, how to renew itself.
* The text has here an error, no doubt typograpMoal, Amnrath being
son and successor of 8dim H., and only the grandson of Soliman H.—
Translator,
104 HI8T0BT OF TXJEKET.
BOOK TWENTY-THIRD.
Let us cast a rapid glance over the Ottoman empire and
over the States of Christian Europe, at the moment when
the grandson • of the great Soliman II. name to give up the
last breath, and let us seek in the organic constitution of
those two great divisions of Asia, of Africa and of Europe,
the reason why the Ottomans were going to fall off, and why
the Christians were going to advance.
The Ottoman empire had as yet suffered none of those
dismemberments of population, of land or of sea, which
reduce the strength or the repute of States. Its territory
intact presented to the eye one of the vastest dominions
united by religion, race and arms, that has ever englobed
under the same name an immense zone of the earth. The
empire was composed of forty governments or viceroyalties,
and these governments were almost all of them kingdoms.
These forty satrapies were, in Europe : Hungary, Bosnia,
Roumclia, the island of Candia, Greece, the Archipelago,
Macedon, Thrace, Servia, Bulgaria; in Africa: Egypt,
Algiers, the kingdoms of Tunis and of Tripoli ; in Asia :
Anatolia, comprising the whole peninsula of Asia Minor,
Caramania, the kingdom of Cyprus, Syria, Mesopotamia,
Georgia, the Caucasus, Bagdad and the borders of the
Euphrates and the Tigris, the kingdom of Trebizond, that
of Jerusalem, Bassora, Mossoul, the Diarbekir, the provinces
of the two Arabias that border the Red Sea, Aden and a
part of the sea of the Indias ; in fine the Crimea and a part
of Tartary, &c.
* Son is here again the word iu the text, by a repetition <tf the queer
oversight jnst noted. — TrandcUor,
HIÔTOBY Oï TURKEY. 106
To these governments were added by indirect dominion
those tribatarj countries of which the Porte appointed the
princes enfeoffed to its laws : Transylvania, Moladvia, Wal*
lachia, the republic of Ragusa, and sometimes Polandi So
that the twenty kingdoms of Pyrrhus, of Perseus, of the
Bulgarian kings, of the Ptolemies, of Carthage, of Numidia,
of Mithridates, of Antiochus, of Attains, of Prusias, of
Herod, of Tigranes, of the sovereigns of Cappadooia, of
Oomagena, of Cilicia, of Iberia, of Scythia, ana of the Par-
thians, this eternal shoal of Rome, formed around Constan-
tinople, the capital of three continents, the nave, the spokes
and the felloes of the empire, which exceeded in extent, in
climate, in population and in fertility the Roman universe.
Such was the Ottoman empire the 18th of January,
1595, the day when the public criers and the cannon of the
seraglio announced to the inhabitants of Constantinople the
death of Amurath and the accession of Mahomet III., son
of this prince and of the Venetian Sultana Safiyé. What
a heritage for a people who should have known how to reign
and administer as the Turks did to fight and to conquer I
But it was the genius of administration that Was wanting to
the East, and that was then revealing itself to the West.*
Islamism with the Ottomans knew only to believe and sub-
jugate ; Christianity knew to assimilate and govern its con-
quests.
This spirit of assimilation and of government, which the
Egyptians in Africa, the Greeks and Romans in Europe, had
bequeathed to the Christian West, was to give in few years
the superioritj to the active and progressive races of Europe
over the patriarchal, heroic, but indolent races of the East.
By a providential phenomenon, which was never renewed
upon a larger scale than in this struggle of two centuries
between the Christian West and the Mahometan East, it b
* Americans may be surprised to see the late republican Lamartine
insist so frequently upon admimstnaion as the ** one thing needful " to
good goyemment. With him, if the Turkbh empire and all other em*
pires have declined, it has not been for want of liberty, of parliaments,
or constitutions ; these magic cant-words have lost their charm for him
in his late personal experience. He has seen their hollowness, with the
prompt perspicacity of the Frenchman, and he rejects them with the
pliant sincerity of the poet It is only by this negative process that he
has been led to seize the supreme value of a well-organized system of
administration. Of the philosophy of the preference, he sees no more
than does his age. — Tranalaior, *
Vol. III.— 5*
106 HIBTOBY OF TtJBKEY.
not waF) it is labor that ^ves the ownership of the wOrld.
War is a labor also, bat it is a sterile labor. The continnoos
and productive activity of races is the law of their durable
and universal preponderance. The mastery of the world,
whatever short-sighted skeptics may say, is not to murder
and to pillage, but to labor, that morality of nations.
II.
Now the East was beginning to rest firom conquest, and
the West beginning to labor* Its princes and its States,
restrained and counterbalanced by each other, had, for the
first, come to comprehend, that a universal monarchy, whether
by reliffion or by arms, was a bloody chimera which would
raise dl the other national families into revolt against the
ambitious or the fanatical who would 'dare to dream of it in
Europe. Instead of conquering, they studied to govern.
The emulation of good administration, of agriculture, of
industry, of arts, of sciences, of letters; of the organization
of labor, of navigation ; of the discovery of new territories,
islands, continents; of the discipline, of the armament, of
the tactics of permanent armies, was succeeding from day to
day in the States of Europe, to the emulation of exterminat-
ing or enslaving their fellow-men Civil wars themselves were
extinct or allayed, religious wars of orthodoxy were collaps-
ing of sheer lassitude ; the system of alliances and of Euro-
pean equilibrium was creating a public law and a diplomacy
which formed, of the great and the small powers of the
West, a confederation wherein each member was directly
interested in the independence of all the others.
The more equitable and more national distribution of
territories was registered in general congresses. The too
extensive empire of Charles Fifth was dismembered to the
advantage of an equipoise of kingdoms and of republics.
What was feeble leaned for sustenance on what was strong.
Hungary was assimilating itself to Germany, White Kussia
to Poland, northern Italy to France, the kingdom of Naples
and Sicily to Spain, Holland to England, Venice to the new
Roman empire. A league similar to that which had united
in antiquity in a single defensive group the independent
republics of Greece, was prevailing at bottom for the com-
mon defence of Europe over the rivalry of those Christian
powers among themselves. It is no longer the religious
mSTOBT OF TUBKBY. 107
oroBade of the middle ages^ bat the crusade of European
nationality and civilization.
Such was respectively the situation of Europe and of
Turkey in the last days of the sixteenth century and the
commencement of the seventeenth, at the advent of Mahomet
III.
II
The Venetian Sultana Safiyé, become Sultana Validé,
mother of the emperor, had been during the whole life of
Amurath III. his consort, the veritaWe and immovable
grand vizier of the reign. As Livia and Agrippina had
concealed from the Eomans the death of their husbands
Augustus and Claudius, so, to manage the transition to and
the possession of the future rei^n, the Sultana Safiyé had
concealed from the Ottomans the death of Amurath, until
the arrival at Constantinople of her son the Sultan Mahomet.
This prince, who was awaiting the throne in the palace of
Magnesia, was the last of the Turkish emperors in favor of
whom the viziers or the Sultanas had to practise this court
subterfuge.
IV.
Mahomet III., sure of the vigilance of his mother
around the throne, did not precipitate his journey towards
Constantinople. He landed there with his personal court
but the twelfth day after the death of his father. The
moment of his elevation to the throne was the signal of
death to all the princes his brothers guilty of having in their
veins a drop of the same blood as he. ' Never had the
prestige of monarchy cost so long a list of massacres.
Amurath III. had had one hundred and two children by
hb wives or by the numberless slaves of his harem. Twenty-
seven daughters and twenty princes lived in the seraglio the
day of his death. The constitutive law of the dynasty
allowed the daughters to live on condition of destroying
their male issue ; it ordered the immolation of the princes.
Nineteen brothers of the Sultan, of all ages, from the cradle
up to adolescence and to manhood, received the sentence of
their execution on hearing the cannon of the seraglio an-
nounce the death of their father. The Venetian Sultana
108 HIBTOBT OF TUBKBT.
Safijé, although Christian by oriçin, in oorrespondenoe with
Christian queens and in confidential intimacy with her Vene-
tian compatriots, was so familiarised with the bloody State
necessity of the Ottomans, and so jealous of a rirai reign,
that she does not appear to have opposed the least scruple
or the least pity to so many murders.
Among these victims to the unity of monarchical right,
a prince especially endowed with M the gifts of nature,
of genius, of education, excited the commiseration of the
empire ; it was prince Mustapha, the second soft of Amurath,
already mature in years, whom nature seemed to have
made for the throne after the image of Soliman II. his
great-grandfather, and whom policy had made for death.
I)e0pite the discretion of the seraglio, the fame of the
gracefulness, of the character, and of the natural genius of
this young man had transpired throughout the empire. A
mysterious popularity was attached to his name ; this popu-
larity was but a title additional to execution. Mustapha, a
pupil of the first lyric poet of the age, Baki (the immortal),
who was living still, <Ûd not murmur against a deatii to
which he knew himself condemned by birth. He wrote only
the night which preceded his execution a touching and
resigned elegy, which contained, in verses steeped in tears,
his adieus to existence. Some verses of this elegy, which
recall the mournful reproaches of the French poet André
Chénier to hb executioners, exist still. André Ohénier was
born like him at Constantinople.
The domestic drama of this long massacre remained
buried in horror without echo from the mutes who performed.
Silence is necessary to State crimes. It is why the Oriental
monarchies have plucked the tongue from their executioners.
The crime of the night could be discovered the following
day only by the nineteen bodies displayed in heaps b^ore the
throne, and buried in the same mosque with their fatiier.
V.
Ferhad-Pasha, grown old in the wars of Persia, was
appointed grand vizier in the place of Sinan-Pasha, who
returned for the third time into his sumptuous exile of
Malghara. Ferhad had espoused the daughter of the Sultana
Safiye. This princess governed under her son Mahomet
III. from the depths of the harem, still more absolutely than
under Amurath.
HI8T0BY OF TtTBKET. 109
Feriiad, to avenge the incursions of the Gennans and of the
Hungarians into Wallachia, called the army to war upon the
Danube. The spahis refused to march if satisfaction was
not given to their demands for largesses and privilèges.
Ferhad armed against them the Janissaries, and dispersed
their seditious assemblage. He banished the two former
viziers, Cicala and Siawousch, although sons-in-law like him
of the Sultana Safiyé. These two viziers were suspected of
having been the secret instigators of the agitation of the
spahis to cast discredit upon Ferhad.
A massacre, like that of the Sicilian vespers, of the
Turkish garrison of Giurgewo by the Wallachians, hastened
the march of the army upon Wallachia. Scarcely on their
route, the soldiers tore down by night the horsetails that
floated before the tent of the grand vizier when in the field,
and the golden bull that decorated the central' pillar of his
pavilion. This symptom of the discontent of the troops
appeared a presage of reverses.
The old favorite of Amurath III., Ibrahim-Pasha, son-
in-law also of the Venetian Validé, was appointed caïma-
kam during the absence of Ferhad. The post of caïmakam
was a sort of lieutenant-generalship of the empire and the
capital, a species of universal and temporary dictature, which
gave to the man invested with this title the whole authority
of the grand vizier and of the generalissimo of Constantino-
ple. Ibrahim, who aspired to the place of grand vizier for
himself, used his authority and his influence but to damage
his absent principal.
VI.
While the grand vizier was superintending the passage
of the army to the Wallachian side of the Danube, Ibrahim
obtained from the young Sultan a decree for his death. His
crime was to have said to the revolted spahis that, '^ if they
did not return to discipline, their wives would be for ever
barren." This malediction, impious to the Ottomans, appeared
to his enemies an unpardonable outrage upon the soldiers.
Instructed by his agents in the seraglio and by his wife
of the machinations prepared at Constantinople against him,
Ferhad, for the first time since the foundation of the empire,
did not await with resignation the poison or bow-string of
his master. He fled from the camp iJefore the arrival of his
110 HI8T0BT OF TtXBKET.
executioner with three thousand oavalrj of his household,
and advanced upon Constantinople.
The ffrand vizier Sinan, of whom Ibrahim had procured
the recall, advanced on his side with twenty thousand Janis-
saries in order to take command of the chiefless army. The
two hostile ^rand viiiers encountered each other by chance on
their opposite routes in the neighborhood of Ostranidja.
*' The head of the rebel is mine, his treasures are yours,"
said Sinan to his Janissaries. Ferhad, intimidated by num-
bers and by the enormity of his transgression, retired upon
an eminence with his cavalry and thence contemplated the
pillage of his tents and treasures by the Janissaries. Throw-
mg himself afterward into the forests of Bulgaria, he arrived
without being pursued at a farm which he owned not far
from the capital The intercession of the Sultana Validé
his mother-in-law, and the presents made in his name to the
Sultan by his banker named Salomon, obtained his pardon.
The Sultan sent him a Katti-scherif (an order without appeal
by the sovereign himself, superior to every other order of
the government) which authorized him to live in peace in his
farm of Litrof.
But the hatred of the caïmakam Ibrahim, which appeared
to stop before the protection of Safiyé, pursued him to
thb refuge. At the moment when the unfortunate Ferhad
was beginning to receive the visits and the congratulations
of his friends in his solitude, the bostandji-bascni came to
take him to the prison of the Seven Towers, which was only
the vestibule of execution. He was strangled juridically
three days after, by the order of the caïmakam ratified by the
Sultan. Safiyé tried in vain once more to save her protégé.
An accident fatal to Ferhad had offended the Sultan,
very jealous of his Sovereign authority. Cicala-Pasha,
another son-in-law of the Validé, having received order to
set out for the army of Hungary, wished to purchase the
horses of Ferhad, then disgraced and exiled in his farm.
The Sultana mother sent for Cicala and forbade him to pur-
chase the stables of the former grand vizier. This injunc-
tion seemed to Cicala an indication of the Intention of the
Sultana to replace speedily her favorite in power. He
related the circumstance to the Sultan, who felt indignant
that hb mother should interdict covertly what he had com-
manded openly. The head of Ferhad was delivered to his
eQcmies.
HISTOBY OF TUBKBT. Ill
VII.
The campaign of Sinan in Wallachia oommenoed by
reverses. The Turkish armj, after a long battle in the
marshes of Kalougeran, perished to a man. Sinan himself,
half-snbmerged by his horse in the quagmire, owed his safety
but to the vigor of a soldier of his escort named Hassan,
who received from this circumstance the surname of Hassan
of the Marshy become subsequently illustrious by his cour-
age. A Wallachian prisoner, devoting himself to death, set
fire to the powder of the Ottoman army.
The grand vizier, after having recomposed the army,
marched upon Tergowisoht. The mdependent prince of the
Wallaohians, Michel, expelled him from it after a siege of
some days. Sinan fell back anew upon Bucharest and upon
Giurgewo, with the remnant of his troops. Michel again
overtook him on his passage of the bridge of the Danube,
and bombarding the bridge beneath the feet of the army, he
ingulf him with his whole artQlery in the river.
During these disasters of the grand vizier in Wallachia,
an Austrian and Hungarian army, under the command of
prince Mansfcld, besieged the fortified city of Grau, in Hun-
gary. The son of the grand vizier, Sinan, lost here a third
army in endeavoring to relieve Grau. Grau succumbed after
the fall of its. gallant defender, Kara-Ali (Black Ali), who
was slain upon the breach. Despite a capitulation which
assured the women and the children of the Turks their lives
and their property, the pillagings, the ravishings, the massa-
cres of the Germans and the Hungarians at Grau stained
the good faith and the humanity of the victors. The monu-
ments, the statues, the paintings, the libraries, respected by
tiie Turks at the time of the conquest of Grau, disappeared
beneath the sword and the fire of the German soldiery.
A whole side of the imperial edifice appeared to totter
towards the Danube after these reverses. Ibraïl, Varna,
Kilia, Ismail, Silistria, Rutschuk, Bucharest, Akkerman, fell
into ihQ hands of the confederate Wallachians, Germans and
Hungarians. The terror ebbed along to the seraglio. The
Sultan ordered public prayers on the square of Okmeïdan to
avert the dismemberment of the European frontiers. An
earthquake^ responded by calamities of nature to those of
war. The grand vizier, returned almost alone to Constant!-
112 HI8T0BT or TtniKlT.
Dople, hnmbled himself beneath his disgraces, and retired for
the fourth time into the exile of viziers, Mal^hara.
A son of the Saltan's nurse, Lala-Mohammed, was
appointed grand yizier by the influenoe of the women of the
harem. He was the son of a poor villager, of the environs
of Magnesia, entered first into the palace as simple tchaousch,
thence promoted from g^ade to grade up to the rank of def>
terdar, owmg to his title of Kwter-brother of the son of
Amurath, become in fine preceptor, or lala, of Mahomet III.
in his boyhood; domestic favor raised him for three days
to the summit of dignities. A natural death prevented him
from enjoying it.
Sinan-Pasha, although aged some eighty years, was re-
called from his exile of Malghara to lend once more his sage
experience to the perils of the throne. It was his fifth
reign. Age had taken nothing from his ambition or from
his roughness. The Ottoman historians compare him to the
Roman Marius seven times exiled, seven times consul, always
cruel.
Sinan, despite his complicity with the favorite Ibrahim
the caïmakam in the ruin of Ferhad, declared himself, from
the first divan, the implacable enemy of the favorite. It was
necessary to have some one on whom to cast the shame and
the reverses of the Ottoman misfortunes. " It is you," said
he to Ibrahim, " who in your quality of caïmakam have
brought upon the nation die disasters of th(^e campaigns ;
you have sent but insubordinate soldiers and incompetent
generals.'' And as Ibrahim sought to stammer a justifica-
tion before the Sultan, Sinan arose, and dragging Ibrahim
out of the hall by his cincture, with the impetuosity and
vigor of a young man : " It is said that I am decrepit,''
cried he, in a voice of thunder ; " if Ibrahim affects to believe
in my debility, let him come down into the court, let him try
me, whether body to body by wrestling, or on horseback
with our sabres, and let the Sultan give the government to
the victor." The Sultan, blushing for his inaction in the
flower of his youth before an old man to whom the safety
of the empire had given back the verdure and the vehemence
of his young days, yielded at last to the entreaties of Sinan,
and marched in spring with a hundred and fifty thousand
men to the Danube.
Sinan died, unfortunately, on the eve of the campaign
which he had proposed, prepared, and was going to conduct*
HIBTOSY OF TITBKXT. 113
His heritage equalled the fortune of a king. Europe, Afiriea
and Asia nad accomalated it daring bis long Ufe. The
inventory of his treasure, preserved to our days, enumerates
twenty boxes fuU of ingots of gold bullion, fifteen strings
of large pearls, thirty knots of diamonds, twenty urns of
gold dust, twenty ewers of the same metal, a set of chess,
seven table-cloths of leather bespangled with diamonds,
. sixteen writing-desks, sixteen horse-saddles, thirty-four stir-
rups, thirty-two cuirasses encrusted with rubies, one hundred
and forty helmets, one hundred and twenty girdles, table
services in enchased silver, six hundred sable furs six hun-
dred lynx skins, thirty pelisses of black fox skins, two thou-
sand pieces of stuffs of interwoven gold and silk, nine hun-
dred pelisses of Russian furs, sixty bushels of pearls, six
hundred thousand ducats in gold and two millions of piasters
in silver.
These movable valuables and the treasures found at
death in the cellars of the generals and the viziers attest the
fear of confiscation, the vicious constitution of property in
Turkey. This unproductive and hidden wealth has the
effect of impoverishing, instead of enriching, a country.
The only useful wealth is that which is confided to the soil
and which is reproduced by labor. The gold of Mexico
impoverished the Spaniards ; the treasures of the East and
of Europe were going to beggar the Ottomans.
Ibrahim rose at last to the rank of grand vizier in the
place of Sinan.
VIII.
The Sultana Validé dreaded the departure of her son
for the Danube. In her despair at seeing removed away
from her the son under the name of whom she virtually
reigned, Safiyé, although Venetian by country and Christian
by remembrance, plotted a general massacre of the Chris-
tians of the whole empire, in imitation of Catherine de
Medici, her model, who had inebriated her son with the
blood of the Saint Bartholomew. The horror of this crime
aborted it in the harem where it was conceived. Tfie Sultan
confined himself to banishing from Constantinople all the
Greek Christians who were not fixed there by their family
established immemorially in the capital. To console his
mother for his departure, he added to her dotation three
114 mSTOBT OP TUBKBT.
thousaod piasters per day, a present of three hundred thou*
sand piasters per year, and a million of piasters for slipper
or toilet money.
Mahomet III. departed from Constantinople the 21st of
June, 1596. The grand visier Ibrahim commanded the
army. The secretary of state, Seadeddin, the light of the
council for two reigns back, directed the civil and diplomatic
business under the grand yizier. Seadeddin, a first-class
man in a secondary situation, was the soul of the expedition.
Arrived before the walls of Erlau, in Hungary, the
Sultan summoned the city to surrender. ^^ I swear by the
horse I mount and by the sabre that girds my loins," said ho
in his summons to the Hungarian army of Erlau, " that I
will leave you free to retire without obstacle from the for-
tress." Erlau fell in twelve days before the cannonade of
Ibrahim. The Hungarians, who had flayed alive, during the
preceding campaign, the Turkish prisoners at Hatwan, were,
in reprisal, all immolated.
The archduke Maximilian, Sigismund the revolted prince
of Transylvania, and prince Michel of Wallachia, advanced
with three armies combined to dispute Erlau with the Turks.
The vanguards had driven back Hassan-Sokolli, the son of
the funous grand viiier of this name, upon the army of the
Sultan. Some one proposed retreat "It would be un-
exampled," said Sokolli in the council, " that a padischah of
the Ottomans had ever turned his back to the enemy without
necessity." The secretary of state, Seadeddin, accustomed
to the energy of the resolutions of Soliman, supported
Hassan-Sokolli : " This," said he with a courageous sincer-
ity before the wavering Sultan, " is not a crisis in which it
will be safe to employ seconds ; the presence of the padis-
chah himself is commanded by honor and by necessity."
Meanwhile the Sultana Validé was conjuring her son to
return to Constantinople. The Sultan inclined to the coun-
sels of his mother, but he desired that his departure should
appear to the army as imposed by the viiiers. " My lala,"
wrote he to the grand vizier, " what inconvenience would
there be in my departure for Constantinople while leaving
thee here as my substitute ? "
The grand vizier and Ibrahim dared to oppose his desire
of leaving the army. The presence of the padischah could
alone restore the discipline and the zeal of the troops.
Mahomet III., overcome rather than convinced, attended the
HISTORY OP TURKBY. 115
26th of October, 1596, at the battle against the archduke
Maximilian, who commanded the Germans and the Hunga-
rians. It was, since Orsova under Bajazet I., and since
Varna under Amurath II., the most decisive duel between
the Turks and the Christians for the possession of the
Danube. Four hundred thousand combatants of both sides
were extended in two lines, separated by a ground miry and
almost liquified by the first rains of Autumn. The right of
the Turks was composed, contrary to usage, of the Asiatic
generals and troops who had ordinarily to yield the pre-
cedence to the troops of Europe. The army of Adrianople
formed the left. Cicala, son of the renegade of Genoa,
naturalized by so many services on land and sea, commanded
the van with the impetuous cavalry of Diarbekir.
The Sultan, inexperienced in war, was placed upon an
eminence a little in the rear, at the middle of the line of
battle; the sacred standard floated above his head; six
Asiatic squadrons of choice troops watched over his person ;
Seadeddin, as good a counsellor in war as in peace, was by
his side to inspire him with the moment for action; the
baggage of the army formed a rampart around the eminence.
The Janissaries, distinct from the rest of the army, were
grouped around a church in ruins that overlooked the marsh.
One hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, fastened to each
other by chains, according to the awkward usage of the
Persians and Turks, presented a formidable but immova-
ble citadel between the Janissaries and the Asiatics. Maxi-
milian, as a consummate general, disposing his army in the
shape of a cone to break the Turks in their centre, cleft
with the first charge the line that covered the eminence from
which Mahomet was contemplating the battle. His squad-
rons, passing the breach laid open through the severed ranks
oi the Turks, ascended at a gallop the eminence, and pene-
trated sabre in hand as far as the imperial tent. The
Sultan, surprised by this throng of Hungarian cavalry who
inundated on all sides his retreat, was saved but by the
pages, the wood-carriers, the tent-planters, the camel-drivers,
the cooks, armed at random with hatchets, with knives, with
turnspits, with palisade-stakes, which they found at hand
to cover their master. Seadeddin at last sheltered him
behind a dense line of baggage-waggons and camels, in the
tent of Younisbeg, general of the Mouteferrikas. "Don't
fear," said he to the Sultan ; " patience will bring us victory,
116 HI8T0BT OF TUBKST.
and fortune will suooeed to reverses.'' These words pro*
noonced with coolness in the midst of the panic, when the
hearts of men, according to the ener^tio expression of the
Koran, mounted into the throat, revired the hope of Ma-
homet. He had thrown upon his shoulders the mantle of
the Prophet, that most holy of all relics with the Mussul-
mans, under which one could not be abandoned by Allah.
At sight of this the scattered Janissaries instantly ral-
lied ; Cicala, who had placed his yanguard of Arabian cav-
alry behind a wood, and who had let pass the Hungarian tor-
nado in order to pour, at the decisive moment, upon their
squadrons disordered by the charge, flew to the assistance
of the Sultan. The assault of the imperial tents by the
Germans had sunk into pillage ; the soldiers, dazzled by the
richness of these stui& and of this furniture, divided them
amongst them in fragments, greedy of spoils before the
victory. Already the money-chests of the army, broken
open by means of axe-blows, rolled out their aspers and
golden ducats under their hands, when Cicala crushed them
beneath a charge of twenty thousand sabres. The Hunga-
rians and the Germans, disbanded, fell or fled, to be immedi-
ately drowned in the mire of the marsh. The two wings of
the Turks, a moment cut off from the centre, wheeled round
the banner of the Prophet, displayed anew upon the emi-
nence. They hemmed in the army of Maximilian, deprived
of his cavalry and of his artillery, and changed a false
victory into an immense flight. Fifty thousand Germans
perished in the marshes ; one hundred and twenty pieces of
cannon remained bemired in the hands of the Turks. Before
the setting of the sun, they saw no longer a foe before them.
The grand vizier Ibrahim completed the victory by a
pursuit at the head of his most rapid cavalry of Asia. The
Sultan, returned to his tents, received the congratulations
of his generals ; he had, owing to Seadeddin, reseized in a
few hours the vanished prestige of Ottoman armies and the
provinces detached a moment from the empire. Both the
victory and his life he owed to the manœuvre and the cour-
age of Cicala, who had not despaired amid the defeat, and
who did not fear to attack with a vanguard a whole army.
At the moment when Cicala entered the imperial tent to kiss
the hand of his master, Mahomet proclaimed him grand
vizier, the sole post worthy of such a service : " He who
has saved the empire ought to govern it," said he to Cicala,
HISTOBT OF TURKKT. 117
in delivering him the seals which he carried beneath hifl
caftan.
At the same time the Sultan, in recompensing the gene-
ral, feared to discontent thé favorite of his father and his
own, Ibrahim. On his return from the pursuit, Ibrahim
was still ignorant of what had taken place in the tent of
Mahomet. He was preparing to exercise the following day,
at a review of the troops, the functions of grand vizier ; no
one, not even the Sultan, wished to sadden him in his
triumph by apprising him of his removal. Seadeddin repre-
sented to the chamberlain, the eunuch Ghaznefer, the embar-
rassment and the danger of a longer silence, which would
leave the seals at once to two grand viziers and the State
without a government under a double authority.
Ghaznefer, although loved by his master, did not dare
reproach him with his timidity. The high-groom Ahmed, a
rough Asiatic accustomed to the frankness of camps, under-
took to get the point decided in an indirect and parabolic
form : " It is to-morrow that your Highness is to pass the
army in review," said he to the Sultan with an interrogating
look that spoke a double meaning ; " it is however necessary
that your slaves should know what horse you will mount in
passing before the troops."
Mahomet, who understood from this hint the meaning
of the groom, made no reply as to the choice of the horse,
but addressing himself to the grand chamberlain Ghaznefer ;
" Go," said he, withdraw the seals of the empire from Ibra-
him and take them to Cicala.*
IX.
Cicala was displaced as suddenly as he had been elevated.
His military severity was distasteful to the army relaxed by
the indiscipline of the recent campaigns. Thirty thousand
Asiatics of Caramania, of Bithynia and of Saroukhan, whom
* Wo were above told that the seals had been already delivered to
Cicala, and not figuratively but corporeally, from ** under the caftan of the
Sultan." It should be therefore recollected that there is a duplicate of
the article, by which one copy remained always in the hands of the Sul-
tan. At the same time, it might be asked why, in the present case, the
other was not ordered by the Sultan rather to himself, who now had none,
than to Cicala, already supplied ? The only answer I can make is that
repeatedly suggested, that our author seems above regarding these small
discrepancies. — Translator.
118 HISTOBT OF TUBKEY.
he fiad erased from the pay-roll for being absent from their
colours, traverg2d in tumultuous groups the provinces of
Europe, and, choosing themselves chiefs of their nation,
sowed revolt, pillage and terror in Asia.
The Sultana Validé, joined in intrigue with the favorite
Ibrahim, protested in her letters against the appointment of
Cicala. These letters met her son at Khirmenli, on his
return from Hungary to Constantinople. On reading these
letters of his mother, he withdrew the seals from Cicala and
restored them to Ibrahim. All the enemies of the favor-
ite, Cicala, Seadoddin, the high-eroom Ahmed were dismissed
from their places. The age and the fame of Seadeddin pre-
served him alone from exile. The Sultana Validé came to
meet her son on the route of Adrianople.
His triumphal entry to Constantinople rivalled the tri-
umphs of Soliman II. An ambassador of Persia sent by
Schah- Abbas dazzled the eyes of the Turks, by a gorgeous
train of a thousand cavalry, and by presents worthy of the
possessor of Ormus. The ambassador of Venice, Capello,
and the ambassador of France enhanced by their presence
and their congratulations the glory of the victory of Keresz-
tes. France was at this moment exhorting Mahomet III.
to join his forces with those of the king to aid the Moors
of Spain against the Spaniards.
X.
Civil disturbances in the Crimea, announced by some
assassinations in the reigning family of Gheraï, a weak cam-
paign in Hungary terminated by reverses, forced the Sul-
tana mother and her son to abandon the grand vizier Ibra-
him to public opinion.
After some vain endeavors to find a man at the same
time capable and submissive to the will of the Venetian
regent, resort was had to the prison of the Seven Towers for
Hassan-Pasha, the embezzler of Egypt, and to him was given
the government. He gained the favor of the Sultana by
promising her riches of which she grew more greedy with
years ; he lost it by asking of the Sultan the head of his favor-
ite, the eunuch Ghaznefer, grand chamberlain of the seraglio.
Reconducted the 8th of April, 1598, by the bostandji-baschi
into his prison of the Seven Towers, ho was strangled there
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 119
fax. days after. His treasures disappeared with him. His
treasurer took off the secret in his flight.
Djerrah-Mohammed, second vizier, a man of little hril-
liancy, received the seals with these words from the hands
of the Sultan : " If thou failest to do thy duty, thou wilt
be quartered, and thy name will be covered with an everlast-
ing infamy."
Under this vizier, the Austrian and the Hungarian
generals, Schwarzenberg and Palfy, took by surprise the
city of Baab. The Turkish pasha, with a sabre in each
hand, defended himself till death in the gate opened to the
Hungarians by the treachery of the inhabitants. His three
hundred soldiers fled for refuge into the powder magazine,
had themselves blown up to escape torture. The serdar of
the army of Hungary tried to wash out this affront in the
blood of the Germans. During his march upon the Theïss,
the discontented Janissaries revolted, cut the cords of his
tent that it might fall upon his head, beat him with sticks,
and left him life only on the supplications of their aga.
Othman the Earless, so named from having lost his ears,
which were cut off on the field of battle, in Persia, saved
the capital, Ofen, besieged by me Germans. Twenty thou-
sand Wallachians, \mder the order of their prince Michel, re-
appeared in Wallachia against Hafiz-Pasha, military gover-
nor of this province, to challenge the Turks. They marched
about the country the effigy of a woman dressed in the uni-
form and the arms of Hafiz-Pasha. The laughter of the
Wallachians covered with shame the brow of the Turks.
Hafiz,. vanquished, fell back upon Schumla. His shame
recoiled on the grand vizier Djerrah-Mohammed, who was
dismissed, and gave up the seals for the third time to
Ibrahim.
The favorite departed again for the Danube, at the head
of forty thousand Janissaries ; a katti-scherif of the Sultan
abandoned to him the life of the seraskier of the army of
Europe, Satourdji-Pasha, his enemy. The aga of the Janis-
saries, Hassan, was commanded to execute the seraskier.
Arrived at Adrianople, the aga invited the seraskier to a
banquet in his tent ; at the close of the repast, he drew from
his bosom the katti-scherif and made a sign to the headsmen
to massacre his guest. The head of Satourdji rolled upon
the floor. Ibrahim, absent from Adrianople during this exe-
cution, swore that it was the crime of Hassan. The perfid-
120 mcrroBT of tubkxt.
ioosneas of the ScUves oombined in this favorite with ambi*
tion and adulation, the vices of these barbarians, ill-oorered
by the varnish of courts. He marched upon Gran and re-
conquered that citadel, lost in the campaign before the last.
The Khsm of the Crimea, Ghazi-Gheraï, brought fifty
thousand Tartars to the army. But the murder of Satourdji
made him dread every thing from Ibrahim. The two
generals never joined their respective troops into a single
army, and conferred with one another but on horseback in
the open plain, attended by an equal number of cavalry.
In autumn the Khan of the Tartars refused to winter upon
the Danube, and took back his cavalry to the Crimea.
Negotiations with the court of Austria were tried during
the winter ; no understanding could be come to. Ibrahim,
who desired peace, set himself, by a severe discipline and by
a rifforous repression of all violence and all pillage, to
regaming^to the Ottomans the affection of the Hungarians,
of the Wallachians, and of all the Christian populations of
those frontiers. He effaced between them and his soldiers,
by a wise tolerance, the antipathies of religion; the Hunga-
rians, the Servians, the Wallachians, swelled voluntarily the
ranks of the Turkish army against the Germans, more undis-
ciplined and quite as barbarous at that time as their enemies.
The war of Hungary was pursued without results worthy
of history from the first year of the seventeenth century
(1600) to 1608. Ibrahim, who directed it more like a
statesman than a warrior, had transported, so to say, the
government to Belgrade.
The Sultana Validé, Safiyé, maintained herself in power
at Constantinople by her ascendant over her son. She con-
firmed this ascendant by making a present to Mahomet III.
of a slave of incomparable beauty, who gave him an heir to
the throne, Selim. These beautifril slaves introduced by the
Validé into the harem of her son were the confidants and
instruments of her policy. The habit of government, say
the Venetian accounts of the epoch, was become an in-
domitable passion in this woman. Never since Koxelana
had the harem so completely swayed the divan. The nurse
Raziyé, a go-between of this feminine court of Amurath
III., had just died, leaving immense wealth and a son, pasha
of Aleppo and beglerbeg of Erzeroum ; she was honored with
a magnificent funeral; her tomb arose like that of an
empress near the imperial palace of Beschiktasch. Cicala
HISTOBT OF TUBKBT. 121
the (Genoese, and Ghaznefer the Hungarian cunucb, confirmed
and enriched like Ibrahim in their high dignities of the
court by the Validé, brought to live with them as inheritors
of their wealth some young relatives whom they obliged
to embrace Islamism. This rei^n of women, whom to
please is the sole merit required in favorites, began to stir up
from time to time the indignation of the true Ottomans.
The corps of the spahis remaining at Constantinople for
the guard of the Sultan accused the Jewess Kira, ^vorite
of the Sultana Validé, of selling timars or military fiefe for
money instead of giving them to merit and to valor. This
traffic of military honors led the spahis to demand the head
of the Jewess. The caïmakam Khalil, who governed the
capital in the absence of Ibrahim, did not dare to refuse this
bloody satisfEtction to the spahis. Surrounded in his palace
by an outbreak of these soldiers, the caïmakam was com-
pelled to send an order to the Jewess to appear before him
with her throe sons. To give up the victim to the revolters
appeared to him the only means of averting their fury from
the head of the Sultana mother, his protectress. Kira was
cut to pieces as were also her three sons on ascending the
steps of the palace of the caïmakam. Their still palpitating
members were nailed by the soldiers to the doors of the
viziers and of the pashas accused of having tampered with
this woman in the commerce of court favors.
The empire lost, the same year, its greatest statesman in
the historian Seadeddin, and its greatest poet in the immor-
tal Baki. Another historian, the secretary of the Janissa-
ries, Ali, author of the Book of Victory^ of the narrative
of the campaign of Georgia and of the war of Hungary,
died at the close of the same year. An annalist of integrity,
impartiality and courage, Ali does not flatter even his nation
in his narratives. He understands that to flatter the pres-
ent is to corrupt the future. He is a witness for posterity.
The Turks owe him more than glory, they owe him the truth
respecting three reigns of their history.
XI.
Meanwhile prince Michel of Wallachia, intimidated and
kept in check by the presence of Ibrahim on the Danube,
at length solicited peace. Ibrahiip received a Wallachian,
his ambassador, named Dime, and sent him to Constantino-
Vol. III.— 6
122 HISTOBT OF TUBKBT.
pie to make his proposals to the divan. The eiiniioh Hafii-
Ahmed, fonnerlj victim, during the Wallachian war, of a
perfidy of Dimo, contrived to obtain from the mufti afehoa
or decision which condemned the Wallachian to execution.
Hafiz- Ahmed, their caïmakam, had him hung by hooks of
iron to a wall to expire in slow agonies. This violation of
the safe conduct and title of ambassador enraged Ibrahim ;
he complained of it in his letters to the Sultana Validé, who
procured the dismissal of Hafiz- Ahmed and the appointment
in his place of one of her protégés, Hassan the Fruiterer.
The Austrians, during the negotiations, dreading the
defection of Michel from their cause, had him assassinated
in Transylvania. Ibrahim reopened, through the medium
of the Khan of the Tartars, negotiations of peace with
Venice. Death surprised him at Belgrade at the moment
when he was to sign the peace. His remains, brought back
to Constantinople, were buried with honors almost sovereign,
in the floor of the mosque of the princes. The favorite,
become a statesman and a warrior by the long exercise of
power, a^ired, like the first SokoUi, to consolidate rather
than to oonquer. He was the first of the grand viziers who
did not blush to propose treaties of peace in the name of his
master. His death perpetuated the wars which his wisdom
was about to allay.
The Sultana Validé gave the dignity of grand vizier to
her protégé the caSmakam, Hassan the Fruiterer. The
Sultan made Hassan a present of the tents, the horses, the
camels, the mules, the arms of Ibrahim. He promised him
even his widow, the Sultana Aïsche, in marriage after the
due lapse of the months of widowhood. Hassan set out
with the promptitude of a soldier for the banks of the Dan-
ube. Sixty thousand Janissaries and spahis joined him in
the plain of Semlin, on the left bank of the river in front
of Belgrade.
The Austrians, commanded by the archduke Ferdinand,
besieged the Turkish fortress of Kanisoha. Hassan-Teryaki,
or Hassan the Opium-smokery defended it with the heroism
of an Ottoman of other days. At the approach of the
grand vizier, the Austrians abandoned the siege ; their can-
nons and their thousands of slaves remained in the trenches.
Hassan-Teryaki, seated at the gate of the city, with sacks of
piasters at his side, distributed gold pieces to all those of his
soldiers who brought him heads of his enemies. The arch-
mSTOBY OP TUBKBT. 123
dake in the precipitation of his flight had left his tent erect,
mih all its furniture, in the forced camp. Hassan entered
it, offered a prayer upon the carpet ; then, drawing his sabre,
*he cleft with a single blow the throne of the archduke, sent
it flying about in fragments, and seated himself proudly upon
the wrecks. Twenty thousand prisoners, sixty cannons, all
the treasures and all the baggage of the Austrian army fell
in a few days into the hands of Hassan-Teryaki. He aban-
doned all to his soldiers, reserving to himself but glory.
The tent of Ferdinand and the cannons were made a present
of to the grand vizier.
The Sultan also, to recompense the grand vizier, sent on
to him, with a dower of forty thousand cold ducats, the Sul-
tana Aïsche, widow of Ibrahim, whom he had reserved for
him US an incitement and a prize of the campaign.
XII.
During these successes in Hungary, an Asiatic rebel,
named Karayazidje (or the black writer) insurrected the
Arabs and the Turcomans against the governors of Mahomet
III., and bore off victory upon victory over his generals.
Exemption from taxation was the lever of this armed tribune
to agitate the populations, ill-subdued, of Cilicia and Cappa-
docia. The son of the famous vizier SokoUi, sent against
Karayazijde, towards Cœsarea of Cappadocia, annihilated at
length this rebel, who died of his wounds in the mountains
of JDjanik, a branch of the Taurus. His partisans cut the
body in pieces and buried each of its members in a different
country, so that his tomb, discovered by the Turks, should
not give up at least his entire remains to profanation.
Hassan the Fool, his brother, succeeded to his popularity.
He evoked anew the insurrection in the depths of Asia,
rolling back with innumerable multitudes upon Sokolli, who
was obliged to take refuge within the walls of Tokat. The
rebefe ravaged with impunity the valley of Tokat; they
sacked the garden of Sokolli, situated in the environs, and
called on account of its magnificence and its delights the
garden of paradise, Djennet-baghi. The parterres, instead,
of natural flowers sparkled with rubies and precious stones,
imitating the form of flowers and suroassing them in splen-
dor. These treasures of Persian art became ornaments for
the arms and for the horse-gear of the barbarians.
124 mSTORT OF TURKBT.
Tho Saltan, to punish the defeat of Sokolli, appointed in
his place Khosrew-Pasha, seraskier of the army of Tokat
against the partisans of Karajazidjo. But Sokolli was so
proud of his name, of his wealth, of his dignities, that no one
dared inform him of his dismissal. He menaced with death
whoever should speak to him of descending from his rank
of seraskier. His kayaza and his own hrother escaped with
difficulty from his fury for daring to counsel him to obey
the orders of the Sultan. He continued to defend Tokat
against the rebels, with the intrepidity and the fanaticism of
a hero, when one morning, as he was seated as usual before
the door of his palace to give orders to the troops, a Turkish
arquebusier, posted upon an eminence, took aim at him and
laid him dead, but not degraded, on his carpet. Tokat fell
with him. The chief of the rebels, Hassan the Fool, inun-
dated with his hordes Asia Minor, and invested in Kutai-
ah the new seraskier Khosrew-Pasha. Winter alone sus-
pended his progresses.
Gicala-Pasha, appointed capitan-pasha like his father,
defended the coasts of Africa against Andrew Doria and
Don John of Cordova, and ravaged the coasts of Italy.
Stuhlveissenbourg, the sepulchre of the kings of Hungary and
seat of their coronation, fell into the hands of the grand
vizier. Ofen and Pesth, separated only by the Danube,
were besieged, the one by the Austrians, the other by the
Turks. The Khan of the Tartars, Ghazi-Gheraï, returned
with his troops into Hungary since the death of Ibrahim,
contented himself with ravaging the country wherever he
passed, and chanting ditties in the Turkish tongue upon the
excellence of the wines of Tokai. The war was incoherent
udd lax, as if from weariness of fighting.
These relaxations of the war in Europe and these dis-
asters in Asia exasperated the patriotism of the spahis at
Constantinople. They drew up through their writers, and
brought, with arms in their hands, a seditious petition t^ the
Sultan, to demand of him the heads of the Hungarian
eunuch Ghaznefer, of the ex-caïmakam Hassan the Clock-
maker j and of another Hassan surnamed Timakdji, who
occupied in the divan the rank of fourth vizier. These
heads, said the spahis, were to expiate the corruptions of the
seragUo, and the baneful counsels given to the Sultan by his
favorites. The empire could be regenerated but in the blood
of its corrupters.
HISTOBT OF TUBKET. 125
Mahomet III., besieged in tis seraglio by his own defend-
ers, appeared before them upon a throne raised in the ulti-
mate court, less as a sovereign than as a suppliant. Ha
disputed with them in vain, one by one, the heads of his
dearest confidants; if one was conceded him another was
exacted. Hassan the Glockmaker, brought forth from the
prison of the Seven Towers, harangued his executioners, and
proved to them, with the orders of the grand vizier in hand,
that he had done but his duty in Asia. He was discharged
as justified. Hassan Tirnakdji implored life on his knees
before the spahis, and obtained mercy by the intercession of
the Janissaries. But Othman the k^lar-aga, and Ghaznefer
chief of the white eunuchs, more odious because they were
more dear to their master and to his mother, sacrificed with
tears by Mahomet, delivered their heads, though innocent,
to the sabres of the spahis. The Sultan was compelled to
attend at the execution, to salute the troops b^ore the
corpses, as if to thank them for the crime, and devour his
shame and sorrow in the secrecy of his harem.
XIII.
The grand vizier, called home by urgent letters of the
Sultana Validé, hastened secretly to Constantinople to restore
order and to avenge those crimes. Arrived at the gates of
the capital, Hassan the Fruiterer did not dare enter but by
night, for fear the spahis should forbid him to pass the gates.
He slipped furtively into the palace. The Sultan sent a
cnnuch to congratulate him on nis return, and to assure him
of his favor and his support. During the night, the caïma-
kam Mahmoud-Pasha, although his enemy, and the two
judges of the army, came to concert with hun the re-estab-
lishment of authority and the punishment of the guilty.
The mufbi, whom he expected to justify his severities by a
fetwa, did not attend. The spahis, informed of the measures
preparing against them, kept a close watch upon him in his
house, and had wrested from him a fetwa of death against
the grand vizier. The aga of the Janissaries and the two
grand judges of the army, intimidated by this fetwa of the
mufti, abandoned basely the cause of Hassan and imdertook
to concur in executing the decree of death.
Meanwhile Hassan, deserted in his palace by the natural
supporters of order, felt without weakness the void which
126 HI8T0BT OF TtniKST.
waa fbnntDg anmnd him. He wrote a note to tlie Saltan
idierein he traced to him the eondact to follow : ^ Mah-
moud, aga of the JaDiaearies, betrays na,'' said he ; " he is in
concert with Uie rebels ; he has promised them thirtj thou-
sand ducats for overthrowing me ; here is what you are to
answer to the report which he is going ta address you:
What my vizier does, he does by my order ; I wish that no
one else shall intermeddle in the high affairs of the gov-
ernment^^ Hassan demanded that in the ensuing night the
head of the traitor Mahmoud should expiate his intrigues
and discourage his accomplices.
Mahomet III. accorded him the Katti-scherif which
legalized the execution of the aga. The grand chamberlain
Kaxim was charged with the execution. But Mahmoud,
who suspected the snare, kept out of the way of Kazim by
concealing himself in one of the barracks of the Janissaries.
In the morning a military sedition raged unrepressed in the
barracks.
XIV.
Hassan the Fruiterer, no longer expecting succor only
through his courage and the indignation of all the patri-
otic Mussulmans, barricaded himscË in his palace, and kept
at bay the whole day the spahis by his attitude. At sunset,
ho shut himself up in a kiosk adjoining the apartment of
the Sultana Aïsche, his betrothed, who was already residing
in his palace, but into whose chamber he had not yet the
right to enter, because the ceremonies of his nuptials yriih.
the widow of Ibrahim were not entirely accomplished.
This inviolable asylum of the harem covered him until night
against the searches of the spahis. The darkness permitted
him to escape by a gate of the garden, and to install him-
self in the very house of the aga of the Janissaries, Mah-
moud, of whom he had the day previous demanded the head.
From there he during the night sent messengers to all the
generals reputed faithful, to give them orders to assemble at
the break of day with their soldiers and their servants armed
in the court of the mosque of Soliman, in front of the house
of the affa of the Janissaries.
At uie break of day the porch, the square, the court of
the palace of the aga resembled a camp under arms. The
grand vizier said the morning prayer in the mosque, then
HI8T0BT OF TUBKET. 127*
placing himself upon <me of the upper steps of the peristyle,
he read to the multitude an address of the Sultan to his
taroops.
" Janissaries, my brave servants," said this address, " I
thank youl My favor is lastingly yours; from the reign
of my ancestors up to mine you have been irreproachable.
Continue to do your duty and aid my grand vizier in punish-
ing the miscreant rebels; my favor and my friendship are
with you."
XV.
The Janissaries, moved by these words of the padischah
and by the presence of Hassan the Fruiterer^ a soldier like
them before being vizier, swore to merit the eulogies of the
Sultan and to repress the rebellion of the spahis. '^ Kemove
instantly the faithless mufti," cried they to Hassan. — ^^ Be it
as you desire," replied Hassan.
He forthwith convoked the oumelas and the five viziers
to a general divan in the mosque. All attended with thQ
exception of the capitan-pasha Cicala, the Genoese, who left
himself to be brought forcibly by the chiaoux, so as to protest
in advance against the rash resolutions about to be promul-
gated by a tumultuous divan. While the divan was deliber-
ating, the officers of the Janissaries parleyed with the spahis
encamped on the place of the Hippodrome. The spahis
rejected all overtures of peace.
Two chamberlains brought from the seraglio to the
mosque of Soliman a firman of the Saltan which ratified the
deposition of the mufti, and appointed in his place Mustapha-
Effendi, an oulema celebrated for his learning and his vir-
tues. Another firman made Ferhad-Pasha aga of the Janis-
saries in the place of Mahmoud, absconded the day before
from his palace. The new mufti pronounced without hési-
tât log the disbandment of the revolted spahis and the exe-
cution of their officers. Ferhad-Pasha leaped on horseback,
drew along with him the Janissaries and the people, swept
the Hippodrome from the spahis who crowded the place, and
took by storm the Khan of Lead, a vast rotunda roofed in
this metal, of which the spahis had made themselves a
fortress. Before the prayer of noon, the sedition, grappled
resolutely, had completely disappeared from the streets of
Constantinople and given back majesty to the palace.
128 fflSTOBY OF TUBKET.
Some rapid executions of the demagogues of the bar-
racks confirmed the yictory of Hassan. Othman Poriaz,
one of his old companions of war, confessed before him his
fault, which he attributed to the suggestions of the mufti,
and demanded a sole grace not to be strangled like women,
but io be decapitated like a soldier. Hassan accorded him
this ^race, as also to Oghuz, another repentant chief of the
spahis. AH the accomplices of the revolt pointed out by the
informers were hunted down sabre in hand. One of the
most guilty, Djizmi, to escape from Constantinople, had him-
self enshrouded and transported in a coffin by his servants to
the cemetery of Scutari, on the Asiatic coast. This con-
trivance saved him from the sword of the laws, but not from
the sword of the assassins : his servants themselves despatched
him in the mountains of Magnesia, in order to possess the
treasures he was carrying off with him in his flight.
The mufti and the caïmakam took refuge together in the
mosque of the merchants, a sacred asylum, braving their sen-
tence of death under the protection of the imans. One of
the viziers was beheaded, in spite of his rank, by the order
and under the eyes of the grand vizier. Hassan the Clock-
maker was exiled to Trebizond ; Cicala, the capitan-pasha,
whose head the grand vizier had in vain solicited, owed his
safety but to his title of son-in-law of the Sultana Validé.
But he did not dare to reappear in the divan to exercise the
functions of his minbtry of the marine.
The inflexible Hassan, incapable of bending his policy to
court managements, lost the favor of his master by the very
severity with which he served him. The aga of the Janis-
saries, Ferhad, the mufti, the defterdar, concerted to disaffeot
towards him the Sultana Safiye. They represented him as a
ferocious dictator, who was corrupting the fidelity of the
Janissaries by excessive largesses, to ^e end of securing, in
case of need, their support against the Sultan himself
Hassan read these umbrages on the brow of his master.
It was the time when the Sultana Validé was getting con-
structed outside the walls, in the plain of Daoud-Pasha, an
immense and fortified palace wherein to find an asylum in
the midst of a camp against new agitations in the capital.
One day as the Sultan vbited with the grand vizier this
palace, Hassan asked him a private audience upon an urgent
business. The Sultan, ordinarily gracious and complacent
.HISTORY OF TUBKBT. 129
towards the yiiier, deferred it coldly to the ensuing diytn.
Hassan foresaw his fall and did not seek to prevent it.
After the first divan that followed this refosal of andi-
enee, and on his return to his palace, he-*was writing the Sul-
tana Validé upon a matter of business, when the grand
chamberlain came to ask him for the seal of the empire.
He gave it without a murmur, and withdrew instantly into
his gardens of Sudlidji on the Bosphorus belonging to the
Sultana Esma his wife.
At the report of the dismissal of their favorite grand
vizier, the Janissaries revolted against their aga, Ferhad-
Pasha, and against the mufti, ascertained enemies of Hassan
the Fruiterer; they thronged beneath their windows and
threatened to bum them in their houses, if Hassan, victim
of their hatred, was not re-established in his place of grand
vizier. The mufti and the aga hid themselves in the palace
of the ca!makam, Djerrah-Pasha, their friend, who exercised,
in the absence of the grand vizier, the supreme authority of
the government.
The Sultan braves these rumors, satisfies the Janissaries
by giving them a new aga taken from their ranks, Turk- Aga;
Kazim, a man attached to the mufti, is appointed caïmakam
provbionally till the advent of another grand vizier. These
two soldiers, dear to the troops, appease their fermentation.
A Bosnian of the Christian family of Malcovich, named in-
Turkey Ali, and surnamed on account of his character Ali
the Severe, then governor of Egypt, receives the title of
grand vizier.
While the capital is being restored to tranquillity by the
skilful combination of the Sultana Validé, six mute eunuchs,
sent by the Sultan to the garden of Sudlidji, forced the
entrance of the harem of Hassan the Fruiterer, tore him
from the arms of the Sultana his wife, sister of Mahomet
III., dragged him into the sequestered garden of Khaiiedan
in order that his groans might not be heard, smd strangled
him in recompense for the throne and the life which he saved
for his master.
XVI.
Ali the Severe, to whom a mute had carried to Cairo the
seals of the empire, was coming already from Egypt across
Vol. in.— 6*
130 filSTOfiT OF T0BKST.
Sjria and OaramanU, sowing ererjwhere upon his pftssago
ezeontions and terror.
At Damasoos, Uie revolted troops eare waj before his
executioners ; at Adana decapitations and mutilations marked
kis track ; at Koniah, the four yiziers, Piali, Khosrew, Ibrahim
and AH, come in cortege to receire him, were chased from
his presence and from the cit j as dilapidators ; at Akseh jr,
the former chief of the Turcoman rebels, Ghourghour, who
carried an enormous mattock of hard wood, and who was
accustomed to plant it in the walls of cities inraded by his
soldiers, in demanding as ransom ^e weight in gold of this
club, came to make his submission to the new yizier; All
let him approach the horse's side to kiss his stirrup, and at
the moment when Ghourghour was risbg from his knees, he
out off his head with a blow of his sabre.
Another rebel, Hassan ihe Foolj an unpunished van-
quisher of Sokolli, negotiated his submission with more
prudence. Ali the Severe pardoned him and appointed him
governor .of Bosnia, in order that he might redeem by his
exploits against the Austrians his crimes against the Otto-
mans. Hassan the Fody thus pardoned, traversed Constan-
tinople with an army of ten thousand Asiatic bandits, whose
aspect diffused terror on his passage. Some of them, half
naked, carried on the neck and arms amulets and talismans
-of idolatry ; others left afloat their hair as long as th^ of
women ; they were armed with wooden lances, at the point
of which ^ey agitated white rags in order to infuriate their
horses ] strings of beads and camel bones emitting a lugubri-
ous rattle were suspended from their stirrups of cords. Tho
Khan of the Tartars, on seeing them arrive with Ali the
Fool at Adrianople, refused to tight with these savages, of
whom the contact would dishonor his soldiers. They passed
along the Danube, and all periled with Ali the Fooif their
chief, in the environs of Pesth, beneath the grapeshot of
the Austrians.
XVIL
A domestic murder ensanguined a few days after the
very seraglio.
One of the sons of the Sultan, the prince Mahmoud, a
young man of whom the military ardor and impatience for
glory disquieted the Sultana, mother by a popularity danger-
mSTOBT OF TUBKBY. 131
ous to her son, had the temerity to ask the Sultan and the
viziers for the command of the army charged to re|»:ess the
incessant rebellions of Asia. The predictions of a dervish,
doubtless purchased by a palace intrigue, promised young
Mahmoud victories and the. restoration of peace in Asia. A
few generals and some viziers tampered in this ambition
of a prince whose popularity was menacing his brothers.
The mutes strangled by night the young aspirant, his mother,
his prophet and his accomplices. Silence suppressed all mur-
mur of this execution : the crime and the penalty crossed
not the walls of the seraglio.
XVIII.
Mahomet III. went, in the autumn of 1603, to inhabit for
some months the gardens of Adrianople, in order to shake
off his remorse for the death of Mahmoud and of the Sul-
tana Aïsche, who had not been able to survive the assassina-
tion of Hassan the Fruiterer^ strangled so unjustly under
her eyes. Mahomet received also more promptly at Adria-
nople the news from the army and the reports of his grand
vizier, Ali the Severe, who was commanding upon the Dan-
ube. The defeat and the death of the ten thousand Asiatics
of Hassan the Fool, under the walls of Pesth, damped his
spirits. This army was called in Turkey the ^' army of
reverses."
The Schah of Çersia, Abbas, provoked by the Ottoman
beglerbegs of the frontier, had beat back the Turks as far as to
Erzeroum and Kars ,' he was menacing Bagdad. The immi-
nence of the danger forced the divan, met at Constantinople
under the caïmakam Eazim, to recall from exile Hassan the
Ghckmaker, then residing at Trebizond, and to give him the
command of the army of Persia. The empire, uncovered on
all sides by the absence of the court and of the grand vizier,
sought to parry from itself the blows that were dealt it by
so many enemies.
The indolent Mahomet III., although in the prime of his
years, was languishing at Adrianople amidst his eunuchs and
women. One day as he passed on horseback in the streets
of the city, a dervish, to whom Ottoman manners then per-
mitted to say anything in the name of Allah, stopped the
horse of the Sultan, and, seeing doubtless on Mahomet's
countenance some symptoms of exhaustion, forewarned him
132 HI8T0ST OV TUBKXT.
•f a catastrophe before the lapse of many days. MahwMt,
of wh<Hn the soul was more sicklv than the l>odj, was orer*
whelmed bj the prophecy in which his superstition made
him hear a decree of Hearen. He died, in fact, the fifty-
fifth day after the prediction of the dervish.
His reign, which had been but the reign of his mother,
was the date of great internal seditions which were going to
diake the throne and to dislocate the empire. Mahomet
III. can bo accused but of the misfortone of his character.
Nature had made him kind and just ; his weaknesses were
those of his intellect ; his crimes were those of his favorites
and of his mother.
Three women of different characters, but of equal ambi-
tion, Elizabeth in England, Catherine de Medici m France,
the Venetian Sultana Safiyé at Constantinople, seemed to
have been predestined towards the close of this century to
govern at the same time three empires, and to astonish by
turns the world : the first by the despotism of her will, the
second by her bloody court-intrigues masked by religion, the
third by the ascendant of her charms and of her ambition
over a harem. Neither of them had ever* spared their
enemies: Elizabeth beheaded her favorites and a queen,
Catherine de Medici decimated a people while assassinating
a party in a sect, Safiyé saw strangled nineteen brothers and
one of her daughters by Mahomet III., to secure the th^ne
against competitors. Europe and Asia were equally bloody ;
but Elizabeth was sanguinary through policy, Catherine do
Medici through faction, Safiyé through maternity. The one
was a queen, the other an intriguer, the third a mother. The
motives for their vindictiveness are differently explained, but
the same horror covers them all. It is not given to either
politics, or religion, or nature, to wash the hands of these
three women who steeped the sceptre in blood.
XIX.
Two children shut up in the seraglio remained alone of
the four sons whom Mahomet III. had had by different
women : Ahmed or Achmet, aged fifteen years ; Mustapha,
aged thirteen.
Achmet was one of those characters without vices and
without virtues, who leave no other traces in the life of
nations but the dates of their advent and of their death.
HISTORY OF TtXRKET. 133
Mnstax^a was stultified bj congenital idiotism, which could
make him but the sport of events. He owed his life to that
idiotism, and to the reverence which the Ottomans feel for
the destitute of intelligence, in whom they think themselves
obliged to venerate the fatality and, so to say, divinity of
misfortune.* The new Sultana Validé, that beautiful slave
given to Mahomet by his mother, whether through humanity
or through religion, did not allow the mutes to sacrifice a
weak-minded child to the security of the throne. Achmet,
who loved his brother, shielded him with his affection against
the law and the practice of the murders of the seraglio.
The young Sultan, directed by his mother and by his
governor Lala-Mustapha, was the first to know the death of
his father in the seraglio. He hastened, by the counsel of
his mother, to write with a scrawling and tremulous hand a
Katti-scherif to the caïmakam Kazim, depository of all
• power in the absence of the grand vizier. He enveloped it,
according to usage, with a silk handkerchief, and had it
carried by the chief of the white eunuchs. Kazim was
ignorant, like the whole city, of the death or illness of
Mahomet. He endeavored in vain to decipher the illegi-
ble characters of the Katti-scherif set before his eyes. " Who
has given thee this writing?'' demanded he of the chief
of the eunuchs. ^' It is not a Katti-scherif; it is not the Sul-
tan's hand." — '^ That I do not know," responded the eunuch ;
" but the writing has been given me for thee by the governor
of the harem." Kazim, more and more astonished, called
to his aid the secretary of state Hassanzadé, present in the
room. " Caïmakam," said the paper, " by the order of God,
my father died this night, and 1 am thy master ; maintain
order in the city ; if the least commotion should take plaoe^
I will have thee decapitated."
This news, this order, this menace made the caïmakam
Jremble, at once to be caught in a snare or to disobey an
order of the padischah. He hastened to write the kislar-
* This is sheer poetry. The simple trath is that the Ottomans, like
other primitive and strange peoples, were led to venerate idiotism as a
gùigviarity in their own species, which, without heing noxioos or repol-
•ive to them, fascinated hy its mffttery. The strangest bodily deformities
can produce nothing of this kind, because the deviation in the visible
oigan appears to settle the defect of faculty ; but in the case of a diyer*
gence or a destitution of nUetttffence, while the body appears exterioily
normal, the thing is utterly inconceivable and therefore direful to simple
i^es. — TranskUor.
134 HI8T0BT OV TUBKBT.
aga, goTerner of the harem, a note to obtain light upon this
dark matter. ^ There has been just presented to me, your
nnworthy aenrant," said he in thb note to the kislar-aga, a
Katti-8<merif of which I cannot oomprehend the meaniog.
I know not if it be addressed as a real and serious order, or
nmj^j to test mj fidelity ; relieve me from this perplexity.''
jFor sole answer to this note, the chief of the eunuchs
eame to take the caXmakam, and conducted him to the
seraglio. Kaiim found there the young padischah already
seated upon the throne, surrounded by M the grand officers
of the household of the palace. He Imelt before his master
and took his orders for the funeral of Mahomet.
The members of the divan, or the imperial council, were
convoked without knowing the motive of their convocation,
to an extraordinary session. They found in the seraglio a
vacant throne elevated in the court of Felicity, at the foot
of the steps that led up to the last door of the horenu «
They surrounded, without daring to question each other, the
throne, awaiting the appearance of Achmet. All of a sud^
den the folding doors of the harem were thrown open, and
they saw come forth a prince of fifteen years coifed in a
black turban, who saluted gracefully the council, and seated
himself on the throne amid the cries of the chiaoux, extend-
ing his hand to the lips of his viziers. The ceremonies of
the first interment were accomplished. Those who attended
craped their turbans with a black shawl; the c(^in of
Mahomet was exposed upon a bier ; verses of the Koran
were read around the coffin ; donations were distributed to
the poor and to the orphans, and the young Sultan re-
entered the harem to await the arrival of the grand visier
before impressing a direction on the new reign.
XX.
Ali the Severe, instructed at Belgrade of the death of
his master, arrived at Constantinople on the eighth day.
Achmet I. confirmed him in his post and charged him to dis-
tribute in gratuities to the troops the twelve thousand
gold ducats of the tribute of Egypt which the grand vizier
brought with him for the initial exigencies of the reign.
The Venetian Sultana Safiyé was banished for the rest
of her dayS) with an immense suite of servitors, of slaves
and of women who composed her court, to the old seraglio,
HI8IQBT 07 TUBUÎT. 135
that magnifieent and dreary exile of £dlen courts and repu*
dialed harems. The chief of the white eunuchs (the oapou-aga)
and the chief of the black eunudis (the kislar-aga), or gover-
nor of the harem, devoted to that princess, were removed. The
intendant-generai of her household was strangled. The new
Validé thus took vengeance for the yoke long home from the
old.
^' Set off at once to lead the army into Hungary," said
the Sultan to his grand viiier immediately after his corona-
tion. Ali the Severe comprehended in the absoluteness of
this order the umbrages of the governor Lala-Mustapha, and
of the harem, who were quite willing to use his arm, but not
his influence. CicalarPasha was sent off the same day to the
army of Persia to combat Schah- Abbas.
This warrior prince had annihilated the Turkish army
of Soherif-Pasha, and had constrained him to sign a capitu-
' lation at Erivan. The day on which Scherif-Pasha pre-
sented himself in the camp of the king of Persia to discuss
the articles of the capitulation, he found the Schah seated
in the comer of a common tent, upon a piece of carpet piled
with arms, but surrounded with all the Elhans of his prov-
inces. Abbas had made himself a soldier in order to become
again a sovereign. He rebuked harshly the vanquished, and
marched on Kars, the last refuge of the Tui^
Cicala-Pasha «retrieved in some days the honor of the
arms of the Sultan; but, beset by the indiscipline of his
troops, he was compelled to fidl back upon Erxeroum to pass
4he winter there in inaction.
XXL
Ali the Severe set off regretfully from the capital ; he
stopped for fifteen days at Halkalu, the first halt outside
Constantinople, under pretext of awaiting there the treasure
of the army. ^^ If thou carest for thy head," wrote to him
ihe Sultan, " thou wilt proceed on thy route to-morrow."
Ali the Severe, who felt his reign at an end, died of dis-
couragement on arriving at Belgmde. The seals of the
empire were offered to Hafii-Pasha, a man of unfortunate
celebrity for his defeat at Nieopolis. On his refusal, the
grand-viiiership was given to an old general of the frontiers
named Lala-Mohammed-Mustapha. The plan of the harem
seemed to be to keep always at a distance from the capital
186 HUTO&T or TUBUT.
the grand rinen, and to gorern by the calmakam deroied to
Lala-Maatapha and the Sultana Validé.
The boirtandji-basohi was sent into Asia to bring bade
the head of the former calmakam Kasim, aocused of extor*
iionB in the goremment wherein he was kept in exile.
Ejuim, apprised by his confidants, eluded the search of the
bostandji, and arrived by another route at Constantinople.
Achmet L accorded him, together with a feigned pardon, the
permission of i^pearing before him.
The diran was assembled ; Achmet, changing tone, de*
manded with indignation of Kasim why he had disobeyed
twice his Katti-scherifs. A fetwa delivered immediately by
the mufti declared the unfortunate calmakam worthy of
death. Achmet I., in whom indifference to blood was in
advance of his years, made a vesture ; the bostandjis cut off
in open divan the head of Kasim. His body, placed with
derision by the executioners upon a packhorse, was paraded,
through the streets of the capital
" Take good care," said the young Sultan to the new caïma*
kam Mustapha Sarikdji ; ^' if thou committest the same faults,
the same sabre will cut off thy head as it has that which
thou hast just seen fall."
Some months after, the new caïmakam, undermined wi<^
the Sultan by an intrigue of the mufti and of the high treas-
urer, having retarded a few days, for wani of funds in the
treasury, the pay of the Janissaries, was called unexpectedly
to the seraglio. Achmet awaited him surrounded with the
enemies of his minister. At a signal of the Sultan, the
executioners strangled him and threw his body in the basin
of the fountain of the divan.
Dead bodies were the playthings of this boy upon the
throne. Owing to the execrable principles suggested to him
by his mother and his corrupters, to kill was with him to reign.
A grandson of Sinan was appointed caïmakam.
Two sons were bom at the same time to the Sultan before
the age of fifteen, Othman and Mahomet.
XXIL
The grand vizier negotiated still at Belgrade for peace with
Germany. The plenipotentiaries demanded the restitution
of the territories conquered reciprocally since the beginning
of the last war, the delivery of the fortress of Kanisdia, the
mSTORT OF TURKEY. 137
remmciations of the Saltans to the right of patronage
which they assumed over Transylvania. An armistice pre-
pared the conferences ; they opened at Pesth, then at Ofen ;
broke off, resumed, adjourned, reopened to be again broken
off, they ended, after long vicissitudes and some intervals of
war, in the investiture of the kingdom of Hungary, and of
Tranyslvania being given by the grand vizier to Bocskaï,
protégé of the Turks. This new king gave them back in
return the fortresses of Lippa and of Temesvar. The Otto-
man governor of this fortress was expelled by the inhabitants
in arms. He fled for refuge to Belgrade, where the Sultan
had him decapitated for his misfortunes. The grand vizier,
recalled to Cfonstantinople and reprimanded by Achmet for
kis tardiness, was threatened with removal or with death.
While he was going, at the orders of his master, the
Janissaries and the spahis revolted against their officers and
stoned some of them to death. Achmet I. convoked them
in the court of the seraglio. They were presented their pay
and their cooking pots; they refused obstinately to touch
either until they should have received justice. The Sultan,
robed in a red pelisse in sign of anger, adjured them ener-
getically to return to their duty. " You are offered your
pay," said he to them indignantly ; '^ wherefore these mutinies
i^inst your padischah ? Deliver up yourselves those who
mislead you."
" Padischah," replied, in the name of the soldiers, one of
the oldest agas of the army, ^' it is not thy slaves fed upon
thy bread in thy seraglio who commit these insolences, it is
foreigners, who, after having formed the garrisons of Hunga-
rian fortresses, have been incorporated contrary to usage in
our ranks."
" Name them then," «ried the Sultan. The aga handed
him a list of the newly enrolled of whom the murmurings
had agitated the soldiers. Surrendered immediately by their
aeoomplioes, these agitators were decapitated on the spot.
'^ Mark well," said Achmet then to the Janissaries, ^^ if
there be any amongst you who foment new seditions, I will
have them executed like these culprits; take away your
dead, and appear not again but in a temper of obedience in
my presence."
Such vigor in a Saltan of sixteen years confounded the
rebels and re-established autiiority completely. The srand
visder, who arrived the same day, desired in vain some delay
138 HI8T0BT OF TUBKBT.
to follow up the negotiations, tken prospering, with Aoslria.
'* Depart, without reply, and at the instant, for Asia," said
Achmet. The minister, although unwell, was obliged to
plant for the night his tents at Soutari. His illness was
a^ravated by his terror. He was aocused to the Sultan of
feigning indisposition in order to dispense himself ffom,
obeying.
^' Do not make thyself any longer sick," wrote to him
with his own hand the Sultan, ^'but mardL" The sole
reply of the grand yisier was to die the following day.
Dervish-Pasha, his riral in ambition, was accused of haying
had him poisoned by a Portuguese physician. The charge
was without grounds ; he died of humiliation and of terror.
Deryish-Pasha succeeded him. His immense wealth was
taken away from his children and poured into the treasury
to pay the cost of the campaign of Persia. Djafar-Pasha, a
European ren^ade, who had goyemed Cyprus, was made
capitan-pasha. Deryish sought to apply to the goyernment,
relaxed under two reigns, the system of inflexibility, of
promptitude and of ferocity, of his young master. ^' Do not
judge me from my predecessors," said he to the members of
the diyan, at the opening session of the council ; '^ I will
haye the head cut off of the first amongst you who will put
off business to the following day."
The seraskier of the army of Persia, Oicala, had died
after the reverses of Eneroum. The grand yiiier appointed
Ferhad t?ie Foot, a sort of fiiyorite of the troops, to conduiot
the war. This Ottoman Souwarrow, on his arrival at Scu-
tari, was assailed by ten thousand Janissaries and twenty
thousand spahis already assembled to inarch under his orders
to the frontier of Persia ; they demanded with fierce cries
their pay fallen in arrears, and cut «the cords of hb tent to
enshroud him beneatii the canvas, a soldier-like way of do-
posing viziers and generab by the seditious.
Ferhad stepped out from his tent before it was {ros-
trated, mingled with the revolters, picked up stones, with
which he filled his pockets, and pelted like them his own tent
^' And I too, I am a spahi, and I have not received my pay ;
ought you to be paid when I am not ? " He then fell to
cutting himself the cords of his tent, and thus appeased
the murmurs by the laughter of the soldiers. His campaign
was disorderly like his mind.
HISTORY OF TtlRKBT. 139
XXIII.
The grand vizier Dervish-Pasha was accused justly of
those reversefiï> He confined himself to punishing and did .not
govern; the fear which he inspired recoiled upon himself,
lie gave orders to a Greek architect for the construction of
a magnificent palace in the district of tine seraglio. The
palace finished, he asked the architect for the account of his
expenses. The Greek brought him his memorandum. Der-
via, after having looked it over with some frownings of the
eyebrows, appeared to be discontented with the amount.
" This is a. large sum of money which you ask of me,"
said he. The architect, intimidated, took back his bills, and
tore them. " The slave and his goods are the property of
his master," said he humbly to the grand vizier ; " it would
have never entered my head to present you those accounts
and to ask for an asper if you had not yourself called for
them."
The avarice of the grand vizier rejoiced at having thus
paid for a palace by a frown of the eyebrows and by an equiv-
ocal observation ; but the Greek swore in his heart to pay
himself by the blood of the miser. The outworks not being
yet completed, he constructed, as if by order of the grand
vizier, a subterraneous passage which conducted from the
palace of Dervish-Pasha to the gardens of the seraglio.
When ike tunnel was nearly touching on the wall of the
gardens of the Sultan, he had information given by a sham
informer to the chief of the white eunuchs, governor of the
seraglio, of this mysterious gallery, which could have no
other object than to cover some enterprise against the
safety of the majesty of the padischah.
Achmet I., indignant, communicated the report of the
chief of the eunuchs to his preceptor and to the muftL
They exasperated his suspicions and rendered the necessary
fetwa to justify the execution of the culprit. The plain
existence of the secret passage was a sufficient witness of
the crime. Dervish-Padka, on entering the following day
the divan, was seized by the bostandjis, of whom he had
formerly been aga, and strangled without being interrogated,
on a gesture of the Sultan. His body, extended on the
carpet, having retained in the agony some convulsive move-
ments, Achmet drew his sword from the sheath, and out off
with his own hand the head of his grand vizier. *^ His
140 HISTOBT or TUBKST.
hideous head," says the historian Naïma, translated by Ham-
mer, " rolled like the head of Alghol (the Medusa of the
Arabs and of the Turks) at the feet of the starry hearen of
the soverei^ majesty.'' The Greek had avenged himself
for his fear by treachery.
Daring these palace dramas at Constantinople, Mourad*
Pasha, the negotiator of Derrish-Pasha at Pesth, came to
sign at length with Austria the peace of Sitvatorok. This
treaty confirmed, at the cost of slight restitutions of
invaded territories and fortresses, Turkey in its preponder-
ance upon the Danube and over th& larger moiety of Hun-
gary. It was preceded and facilitated by a special treaty
of bocskaï, king of Hungary and feudatory of the Turks,
with the emperor.
The treaty of peace of Sitvatorok contained in seventeen
articles the conversion of the tribute paid by the empire to
the Turks into an annual present of thirty thousand gold
ducats ; an indemnity, paid at once, of two hundred wou-
sand piasters to the Porte ; the reciprocal despatch of am-
bassadors to Constantinople and to Vienna triennially with
presents of an arbitrary and unlimited value ; equality of
ceremonial and of respects between the Sultans and the
Emperors of Germany ; renunciation of all mutual aggres-
sion upon the frontier ; the confirmation of the treaty con-
cluded between Bocskaï, king of Hungary, prince of Tran-
sylvania, and Austria ; the optional extension of this peace
to the king of Spain if he should desire to adhere to it
The sole substantial check to the Ottomans contained in the
treaty of Sitvatorok was the renunciation of future inva-
sions upon Hungary or Germany.
The conquerors consented for the first time to set them-
selves a limit to their conquests. They could no more
advance, but they might retrograde towards the Danube.
There commenced for the Ottoman empire a moral retreat
within its limits, at last defined; it doubted of itself, and it
taught to its enemies to hope better and to dare more against
it The treaty of Carlowitz, a century later, marked out the
space from which it had receded.
This treaty nevertheless was honorable to Ottoman diplo-
macy, and covered with a just consideration its principal
agent, Mourad-Pasha, surnamed the Digger of weUsy whom
the Sultan had just elevated to the perilous post of grand
vizier.
HISTOBT OF TUBKBY. 141
BOOK TWENTY -FOUETH.
The peace of Sitvatorok permitted the new grand vizier to
direct the whole of the forces of the empire to the suppres-
sion of the disturbances which were perpetuated in Asia,
since the rebellion of Karayazidji (the black writer), and on
the frontier of Persia more and more menaced by Schah- Abbas.
Mourad the Well-digger^ immediately after having organ-
ized the government at Constantinople, set out with the élite
of the army for Aleppo.
Aleppo was the heart of the revolt which was agitating
Caramania and Arabia. The sons of Karayazidji, at the
head of the remnant of the bands of their father, were
ravaging all Asia Minor, from Adana and Koniah to
Broussa. Djanboulad, a chief of the Kurds, an indepen-
dent and warlike people between Turkey and Persia, invaded
Mesopotamia. A Druzian emir of Lebanon, the celebrated
Fakhr-el-din, named Facardin by the Europeans, constituted
himself, by dint of heroism, of policy and of genius, a veri-
table empire in Syria. The family of Djanboulad (in Arabic,
soul of steel) had been, not long since, invested by the
seraskier Cicala with the government of Aleppo? Cicala,
vanquished and returned to Aleppo, had poniarded with his
own hand the first Djanboulad to avenge the treacheries of
which he accused him during the campaign. Ali, brother
of the assassinated Kurd, had, to avenge in turn this iniqui-
tous murder, pillaged Aleppo, besieged Tripoli of Syria, en-
rolled thirty thousand Kurds or Syrian adventurers of all
countries, and occupied with this nomad army the great
capital of Mesopotamia, Damascus. Eight thousand horse-
men of the desert, divided into six squadrons and called the
body guards of the standard, formed the movable nucleus
of the army of the Kurd.
1^ HI8T0BT OF TUBKST.
The grand risier, on his way towards Aleppo, had nego-
tiated with the subaltern chiefs, subdued the others, killed
several of them by treachery, and filled up the wells with
their bodies. This wholesale sepulture given by Mourad to
the rebels confirmed the surname of Digger <yf Wells which
the soldiers had given him formerly, on their being routed
from Persia, for bAvinff fallen with his horse into a well dug
beneath the walls of Tauris.
Koniah, sirayed by Ahmed-Beg-Serradjazadé (the son of
the saddler), an unsubdued chief, had opened to him its gates.
The inhabitants of Koniah, satisfied with the government of
this tribe chief, who maintained peace there after having
subjugated it, ocHijured the grand viner to confirm Ahmed-
B^ in his government, while he should go himself to pacify
Syria. Mourad-Pasha affected to incline to this policy ; he
had Ahmed-Beg invited by a safe conduct to the divan with
the principal iimabitants of the city.
'^ I wish," said he, ^' to confide to thee the guard of Koniah
while I shall march myself against Ali-Djanboulad ; but if I
am in need of reinforcements how many men canst thou fur-
nish me ? " " Thirty thousand without diffLculty," responded
Ahmed-Beg. The grand vizier dismissed him upon this
promise, loading him wi^ felicitations and with honors.
But when the chief of the rebels had left the divan, the
viiier, turning towards his counsellors and towards the in-
habitants of the city who interceded for Ahmed : ^^ If I leave
behind me," asked he of them, " a man who can raise by a
gesture thirty thousand soldiers of his own, and that this
man should lâîber my passage fortify himself in Koniah, what
would be the result to my own soldiers ? " Silence testified
to the grand vizier that the question was unanswerable.
" Dig one well more," said he to the chiaoux, " and bury this
too powerful man in the soil which he has usurped."
At the city of Angora, between Koniah and Aleppo,
Mourad-Pasha likewise exterminated Kalender-Oghli, the
lieutenant of another rebel, with thirty thousand of his
followers, by getting them all massacred at night by the
hosts with whom he had assigned them their lodging.
Djanboulad awaited Mourad with forty thousand veteran
Kurds at the Iron Gates between Syria and Caramania.
The mnd vizier turned this position by another route, and
^ve him battle in the plain of Syria called the Plain of
Pigeons. The Janissaries, proud of their superiority and of
HISTCMtT OF TtrBKBT. 143
their arms, annihilated in a single charge this swarm of
Kurds, called by them with contempt, *^ grasshoppers of the
desert." The battle was prolonged but by the pitiless mas-
sacre of the prisoners ; thousands of heads arose in pyramids
beneath the hands of the executioners. The Arab horse of
Djanboulad brought him without halting to Aleppo. The
inhabitants, informed of his ruin, droye him out next day by
pelting him with mud, and massacred in the streets and the
gardens ten thousand of his Kurds who sought to fly in the
footsteps of their chief.
Damascus did not await, to purge itself of the Kurds,
the approach of the army of the grand vizier. The spahis
took up there their winter quarters ; numerous troops tra-
yensed the desert to reinforce, against Sehah- Abbas, the gar-
rise»! of Bagdad, under the order of Cicala, the Genoese son
of the renegade who had taken the name of Mohammed-
Pasha. Cicala, by his mere appearance at the gates of
Bagdad, put to flight the revolted troops who had taken
possession of it. The overloaded barge in which their chief
was crosdng the Tigris to take refuge in Persia, was ingulfed
in the river.
IL
While the grand vizier was thus exterminating every
where before him the remains of the rebellion, Djanboulad,
escaped upon a boat firom the port of Latakié, went under
different disguises to confide himself to the generosity of the
Sultan himself at Constantinople.
Having asked for mercy and obtained pardon of Achmet
L, the Kurdian chief amused for eight whole days the young
padisohah with the recital of his exploits and his adventures.
The Sultan, henceforth sure of him, accorded him the govern-
ment of Temesvar in Hungary, to employ, against his enemies
of Europe, an arm which had so long shaken his empire in
Asia. A young brother of Djanboulad, who was afterwards a
favorite of anomer Sultan, was incorporated among the pages
of the seraglio. But scarcely had Djanboulad taken posses-
sion of his government of Temesvar, than the grand vizier,
without minding the imprudent favor of his sovereign, had
him strangled by his own soldi^s, ashamed to obey a Kurd
adventurer.
144 mStOBT OF TUBKST.
III.
The grand TÎzier retraced his steps to fight in the nôA»
borhood of Broussa two other rebel chiefs, Kalender-O^li
and Karayazidji, son of the former mover of these long
revolts of Asia. Ealender-Oghli, who had braved the Saltan
as far as the plains of Nicomedia, would not Uiten to utj
overtures of settlement.
" ïhe murder of Djanboulad," said he bn the eve of the
battle to his chiefs assembled in council of war, '^ enlightens
us sufficiently on the sincerity of the Ottomans. Their
pride has been often humbled for fifteen years back by our
eabres. They reign in name over their provinces of Asia,
we reign over them in fact. Aiden, Konhh, Angoni, Samu-
khan, the mountains and the coasts of Crtr^mauin are our
fortresses. The booty of their cities is our heritage.
Hitherto we could have temporized or bave trumftted with
them ; open and desperate war is now our m\e p»iiey. We
will vanquish, we will beat back into tlie sea of Marmora this
decrepit vizier, who better knows how to ;i3s*sainai@ than
to combat. But if fortune should again he favaratiiu to thii
valiant trickster, be it so I it will besufFioient fur u.s ihyt tlie
recital of pur great actions shall pass from mouik to iBOvtii
to posterity, and that our names shall be immortal like o«r
exploits."
The battle, given in the defile of Geksous, responded to
the ferocious energy of the harangue. The Egyptians and
the spahis of the grand vizier gave way a moment before the
charge of twenty thousand cavaliers of Kalender-Oghlî.
Victory inclined to the rebels. The aged Moiirad-Pasha,
despite the weight of his years, pushed his horse into the
thick of the conflict, drew from its scabbard an Indian sabre,
formidably curved and blessed, which the Arabs of Yemen
had given him forty years before, while he was governing
their tents, made three cabalistic signs in the air with the
blade, and rushed with a cloud of Janissaries on tlm esrdry
of the enemy.
Arrested at the head by this charge, and surrounded on
the flanks by the infantry which Mourad had concealed
behind some rocks, the rebels gave way in their tuj-n, and,
cut off at all the gorges by corps judiciously dispoped, left
fifteen thousand dead in the defiles of Geksoun. l^e reel
contrived with Kalender-Oghli to slip by the mountains of
HISTORY OP TURKEY. ' 145
kilo Persia, where Schah- Abbas enrolled them in his
Lj on ootjition of abjuring the sect of Omer.
IV.
B«l ike M rebellion rejoined its fragments behind the
tfH^âlUfê of tkc vizier. Another chief of the Kurds named
MalmovQ, l^rc^her of Khalil the Long, expelled from Bagdad
by Cicala, arrived at Tokat with ten thousand combatants
to join the standard of Kalender-Oghli, of whom he knew
not the defeat.
Mourad-Pasha, forgetting anew his ninety jrears, and
finding not the strength but the daring of youth in his will
to conquer, left his infantry at Geksoun, and returned with
Aii^nd select cavalry upon Tokat, to annihilate
w l^ni of insurrection between Persia and Cara-
Bwowed by a tent of summer linen and a carpet
for prayer, lis whole baggage, he outstripped the fastest of
liis eavalry toth in the march and in the charge. Over-
wkolloed at once by age, by indisposition and by weariness,
Iwt iOftaiiied by his spirit, he was seen at the mid-day halts
to kftve himself dismounted from horseback, like, say the
recitals of âiiô campaign, a living corpse, to remain some
^ Bonutes immovable, redining on the wayside as if life had
been entirely extinct, then to call to him his servants, and
Biako them set him anew on his horse, which he managed with
ike Tiger oi a young man.
He at iMt reached Maïmoun, near Siwas in the defiles of
Bftibovre, aad after a desperate struggle exterminated him
from Caramknia. Ten thousand heads arose in pyramids on
the site of the battle, where they still whiten the bed of a
torrent
The pasha of Diarbekir, Nassouh, ordered on by Mourad
Ions before^ joined him at Baibourd. This pasha, who was
t^làe same time one of the viziers of the Porte, led a nu-
merous army, magnificently equipped, but rather tardy, to
the grand vizier. The latter sat before his summer tent,
upon a threadbare old carpet, to see defile before him the
army of Nasaouh, followed by his horses, by his arms and
his parade.
At the sighl of the grand vizier, Nassouh dismounted
respeot&Uy, hid% and kissed, according to custom, the foot
of the old man. Mourad, alt}iough growlmg internally with
Vol. III.— 7
146 HI8T0BY OF TUBEET.
anger, kissed the general on the eyes, arose, took him by the
hand, and led him with an ostentation of îslyot into his tent.
He was unwDling by public reproaches to weaken in the
army respect for those who exercise command. But when
the tent concealed the two viziers from the eyes and ears of
the soldiers :
" Why," said Mourad to Nassouh, " dost thou arrive so
late ? Thy army has, thanks to my care, long since been
ready for the field; thou knowest that I had no other
soldiers than those I conduct daily to battle against enemies
springing up from Tokat to Aleppo, from Aleppo to Broussa.
The distance from Diarbekir into Syria was not great : is it
through contempt of my white beard that thou art not come
to join me ? But thy contempt would fall on the padischah
rather than upon me. If I had been vanquished, is it thou
who could have resisted alone Kalender-Oghli, Yazidji,
Maïmoun, Khalil the Lang ? If I were to demand a fetwa
of the mufti to decide the pxmishment deserved by the chief
of a Mussulman army stronger in number, and who leaves a
weaker to be crushea, what would the fetwa say ? ... ."
Nassouh, confounded, drooped the head, comprehending
that the fetwa would pronounce death.
" My son," resumed the old man, '^ the hand of the
padischah is long ; if he were to send thee one of the six
horse tails which thou hast just now planted before my tent,
in ordering thee to give up the three tails that follow thee,
and to descend to the grade of simple bes, or even if he
ordered thy execution as traitor, what woul£t thou have to
say in thy vindication ? "
The silence of Ni^souh-Pasha appeared to mollify the
grand vizier \ he confined himself to having made liîm tremble
for his head, and feigned to pardon him. Nassouh left the
tent arrayed in a cs^tan of honor, and was reoonducted to
his troops with an escort worthy of a vizier. " Pardon," said
Mourad, on seeing him remount his horse, '^ is the alms of
victory."
His return to Constantinople, across the pacified provinces,
obtained him the name of grand justiciary^ of sword of the
empire^ of restorer of the monarchy. His vengeances were
as rapid and as unlooked-for as his victories. AU who had
' mSTOBT OF TtJBKBY. 147
Ertioipated in the old rebellions could only appear trembling
fore him.
Emir-Schah^ beg of Begschyri, was strangled in the midst
of a festival to which he had been invited to congratnlate him
on his return to obedience. While the gaests were eating
pilau — a dish of boiled rice seasoned with butter, which is
served at all repasts with the Turks — a page threw a cord
around the neck of Emir-Schah, and tugged it with both
hands with so much vigor, that the grains of rice leaped from
the lips and from the nostrils of the victim upon the table.
Severity cost him tears, he used to say, but he considered
it as one of the virtues which heaven enjoined upon viziers.*
He used to recite every instant some verses of the Koran
which sustained him in his qualms of weakness. Before
combating, he came off his horse, extended his arms upon
the ground, moistened the dust with his tears, kneaded it in
his hands, and spread it as an ointment on his gray hair and
on his white beard.
" Do not humble me yet to-day. Lord," he would say
aloud to God ; '^ do not abandon me, thy servant, in the com-
bat against the Infidels ; take pity on my old age ; thou
knowest my intentions sincere for the safety and the &ith
of the empire." The blood which he spilled appeared to
him a tribute of which heaven would reproach him for having
spared a single drop.
One day, as he was getting, according to his cu6tom,t a
well dug wherein to pile the bodies of the executed rebels,
he perceived a spahi passing on horseback with a young lad
on the horse behind him. He called the spahi and ques-
tioned the boy. " How," said he to him, " art thou come
into the camp of the rebels ? "
The child, with the simplicity of his age, replied that his
fiither, having nothing to eat, had been forced by hunger to
enroll himseS for hire amon^ the rebels. " What was the
trade of thy father ? " demanded the vizier. " He played the
lute," replied the young pi;isoner. "Ah I ah ! " rejoined Mourad
with a cru^l smile, " he excited, then, the courage of the re-
volters against the faithful ? " and he ordered the chiaoux to
kill the son for the trade of the father.
* He was right; nothing less would have kept the Turkish empire
together.^-7Van«2ator.
t A proof that this was the true origin, not that the author gives, of
his app^tive. — Thmelator.
148 HI8T0BT OF TURKKT.
The oliiaonx, toodied by his yean, his ooantenuice, hia
innocence and his tears, refosed to execnte the order. '^ Why
should we kill this poor child ? " said they. Some Janis-
saries called for, refosed with the same repugnance : '^ Are
we executioners ? " said they, " and will we be more bar-
barous than the executioners themselyes, who refuse to stain
their hands with the blood of this young boy ? "
Mourad turned towards his pages, who all fled with horror,
and left the yiner alone with the ohUd. '^ Yerr well I " said
the implacable old man, whose ninety years of age had not
deadened his fimaticism ; " I will myself be the executioner
of the &ith." He seised the child in his tremulous hands,
strangled him on the margin of the well, and threw him
on the pile of bodies which filled it to the brink
*' Cowardly Mussulmans,'' cried he to those around him
seized with horror, '^ know that rebels like Kalender-Oghli
and Kara-Saïd, are not come forth from the womb of ^eir
mothers with a horse between their legs and a sabre in their
hand ; they have all been children like this one, brought up
like lum in crime, and trained to pillage and murder by their
fathers ; this boy had imbibed with his mother's milk their
principles, and though his education were recommeneed a
thousand times, the natal perversity is such, that it could
neyer be effaced in him ; it is thus," added he in pointing
to the well where he had thrown his victim, '^ that we must
extirpate the very roots of evil."
Then he recited an Arabic saying of the inhabitants of
Yemen, whence he had drawn his fanaticism, and which says :
" That once ascended to a great height, and in leaping over
abysses from rock to rock in pursuit of the antelope, the
hunter cannot avoid slipping but by bleeding his own feet in
order to render the rock less slippery beneath his steps."
YI.
His return to Constantinople was triumphal : he entered
it preceded by four hundred stands of colors taken from the
rebels of Arabia, of Syria and of Asia Minor. Each of
these colors bore inscribed on it the name of one of the
£Ekctious chieû annihilated by his arms. Thirty thousand
heads of their soldiers had been sent to Constantinople
during the campaign ; thirty thousand others marked with
pyramids of skulls the spots where Mourad-Pasha had de-
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 149
featod their armies; one hundred thousand rebels were
buried in the wells.
The spoils brought off from these executions were de-
posited by the old warrior at the feet of the Sultan. The
defterdar, Baki-Pasha, treasurer of the empire, who had
brought off but a million of ducats collected from the rebel
popuLeitions of Syria, was thrown into the prison of the Seven
Towers.
VIL
Achmet I., more confident than ever in his vizier after
having so happily tried him as warrior, employed him anew
as negotiator m the difficulties which the death of Bocskaï,
a tributary king of Hungary, had raised again between
Austria and the Porte.
According to the treaty of Sitvatorok, Transylvania was
to become again an independent kingdom on the death of
Bocskaï. Upon this event, attributed to a crime, the nobles
of Transylvania, provoked secretly by Austria, chose for
sovereign Bakoczy, a popular and bustling personage, who
was aspiring to the throne. The Austrians hastened to re-
cognize him ; the Porte claimed its privilege of investiture,
and appointed on its side Homonaï, another Transylvanian
noble, reigning prince of Transylvania.
After a long negotiation interpretative of the treaty of
Sitvatorok, Austria paid a present of two hundred thousand
ducats to the Porte. Poland drew closer by a new treaty
the ties ^of friendship and of dependence which attached it to
the Ottoman empire. It engaged to cover Moldavia against
the allied independent Cossacks of Eussia. The Porte, on
its side, renewed the promise to protect Poland against the
Tartars. The Poles contracted the obligation of paying
tribute to the Turks.
The grand vizier, despite his age, meditated vengeance
against Sohah- Abbas who was humbling for many years back
the Ottoman arms. He obtained from the Sultan the
authority of taking the armies to the frontiers of Persia ;
but before leaving, he wished to deliver Asia from an old
anmestied chief of the faction of Asia named Yousouf-Pa^a.
" Thou art a brave younc fellow," he wrote to him, " I
know that thou governest wim justice thy old compaidons of
war ; why, then, is thy name still cited among the doubtful
160 HIBTOBT OF TXJBKET.
aerrants of the empire ? If I were to send an army against
thee thou wooldst end with repenting it Oar power has been
ffiven by Gk>d, and no revolt can prevail against it I^anbou-
utd, Kalender-Oghli, Kara-SaSd were more formidable than
thon; where are th^ ? I tow to thee by heaven that thou
hast nothing to fear mm the padischah ; we are entering on a
campaign by his orders against the old red-head the Persian ;
come to my camp of Scntari ; thon wilt kiss the hand of the
Saltan ; thon wilt receive my instrnctions to secnre, daring
ike war which I am ^ins to make, the fidelity and the peace
of Asia. Gonsolt with uïj wise men ; thou mast know what
is best to be done ; reflect well and answer me.*'
Yonsoaf, after having consolted his friends, thought that
obedience was more safe for him than hesitation ; he set off
with an escort to the camp of the visier at Scutari. The
Sultan, to attend at the assembling and the departure of the
army, had brought thither his seraglio into his summer kiosk.
He was i^iorant of the plan of old Mourad, and was aston-
ished at his slowness in departing. Weary of these delays,
he wrote a katti-scherif to Mouradto order the immediate de-
parture of the troops. Mourad hastened to the palace and
confided at last to Achmet the premeditated murder of
Yousouf-Pasha. The Sultan approved the treachery of his
vizier.
Yousouf arrived at length in the camp. He pitched his
tents not &r from those of the grand vizier. Mourad re-
oeived him as an anxiously awaited guest ; he made him sit
on the carpet in front of him, knees against knees, loaded
him with presents, as also his escort, and conducted him to
the palace of Scutari to kiss the hand of the Sultan.
The object of this reception was to assure completely,
respecting the good faith of the grand vizier, another sus-
pected chief of the populations of Asia, friend of Yousouf,
named Mouselli-Tschaousch, whom he wished to allure into
the same snare.
After having sojourned a month in the camp of Scutari,
Yousouf, called into the tent of Mourad-Pasha, received the
investiture of the opulent Sandjak of Magnesia. This
unexplained favor appeared exorbitant to the divan. " See,"
said the viziers and the pashas to one another, " see this old
man, with his feet already in the grave, ruins the treasury to
^ve a former rebel the meed of we oldest fidelities."
The Sultan himself, beset by the murmurs of the oour-
HISTORY OP TURKEY. ' 151
tiers, ended by believing the failure of the mental faculties
of his prime minister. "My lala (my father), he wrote him one
day, thou art become old and canst no longer conduct a war,
designate to me thyself in this answer whom thou wouldst
like for seraskier, or depart thyself within three days,"
Mourad-Pasha, instead of answering, came himself to
the palace, and conjured the Sultan to allow him time to
work out his plan of exterminating, by a single blow,
some dangerous chiefe of Asia before quitting the capital.
An emissary of the grand vizier, Soulfikar, was gone in his
name to meet Mousselli-Tschaousch. Dazzled by the pros-
pects of favor, Mousselli-Tschaouscb attended him to Koniah.
While he was intoxicated with honors and wine in the
delightful gardens of Meram near this city, Soulfikar had
him massacred at a festival, and sent, with an escort of ten
couriers, his head to Scutari.
" God be praised," cried Mourad on receiving this head
and ordering that it be exposed the following day at noon
before his tent to the eyes of the camp. He kept the secret
until morning, and invited Yousouf to come to take breakfast
with him in his tent.
The repast served : " My beloved son," said the old man
to his victim, " thou knowest my affection for thee ; thou
knowest that I cannot take my coffee without thee ; let us
go seat ourselves at the back of my tent to enjoy ourselves
more freely, for to-morrow, if God please, thou wilt take
leave of me for ever."
While they were thus making towards the tree in the
shade of which was spread the breakfast cloth, the chief of
the eunuchs of the grand vizier approached, and bowing
before his master : " The beg of Awlona," said he to him,
is just arrived in the camp and requests to be admitted' to
your presence, what am I to answer ? " Can I not, then,"
said the crafty old man, with an apparent impatience, "have
a single hour of tranquillity ; I will go to receive the beg.
An instant," added he addressing himself to his kyayas and
his agas, " sit you here, until I return, and keep company
with my son Yousouf."
Yousouf sat down to breakfast with the agas and com-
menced eating in awaiting his host. But the carver present-
ing him with one hand a dish of sheep's feet, pulled with the
other his turban over his eyes ; another seized him by the
hands, while a third struck off his head with a sabre. His
152 HISTORY OF TUBK£T.
bleeding head, joined to that of Monaselli, was hoisted on a
pike pClnted before the festive tent The body, left upon
the grass, threw the companions of Yoosouf into consterna-
tion.*
The yizier however did not yet set out; he wished to
leave behind him other impressions of terror in the eyes of
the doubtful servants of the monarchy. The same repast
was to serve for two murders ; the denerdar Etmekdjizadé,
of whom the zeal appeared suspicious in Syria, was invited
by him to the same honors and the same trap.
In crossing the Bosphorus in a caïque to attend the
vizier's invitation, Etmekdjizadé saw an unknown barge pass
by so closely as to touch his own ; the hand of one of the
rowers threw him an anonymous note which warned him of
the danger. He made the rowers put about and returned to
Constantinople. The note was from the Sultan himself who
loved the defberdar, and who had not been able to obtain his
head from the inflexibility of his grand vizier.
" My padischah," wrote the alarmed deflerdar to the
Sultan, " come to my aid 1 deliver me from the ambushes of
Mourad. Give my place to another. I abandon to him my
tents, my horses, and my equipages, rather than return to the
camp, where I am awaited by death."
Achmet I. tried in fact a second time to rescue the def-
terdar from the hatred of his minister. He called Mourad
to the palace of Scutari. ^^ Be seated, mv lala," said he to
him kindly, " thou art old and I venerate thy years." " Thy
slave will do no such thine," replied Mourad in prostrating
himself, " he knows too well his duties." " I have a favor to ask
thee," continued Achmet. " Is it then for the padischah to en-
treat his slave ? " replied the old man. " Yes, I entreat thee,"
resumed the Sultan, '^ to grant me the life of the defterdar
whom thou desirest to put to death ; to-morrow he will pre-
sent himseK in thy tent, pardon him, and let him live." " It is
the order of my padischah," said the vizier, " it is enough ; "
and he prostrated himself anew.
The defterdar was pardoned, but four pages of the
seraglio, who had been charged with transmitting him the
secret notice to which he owed his safety, were strangled in
the palace.
* One does not see the meaning of aU this management and thafe
manoenyres, which seem moreover still less in character with Monrad
than with the nsoal massacres. — TYanskUor.
HISTOBY OF TUBKBT. 153
The campaign of Persia and the departure of the army,
which had been but a feint of Mourad, were adjourned to
another year. The grand vizier, without leaving Scutari
and without fighting, had vanquished. The chief of the
black eunuchs daring to murmur before the Sultan against
the inertness of the old man who had, said he, wearied the
army and wasted the year : " Hold thy tongue, wretch,"
replied Achmet to him ; " how darest thou blaspheme against
the most able of viziers ? Mourad is old, but hels a valiant
combatant for the faith, a minister consummate by genius
and by years ; his head has served me as efficiently as his
arm ; he has reconquered Asia from the comer of his tent
His intellect is worth to me an army. Utter not a word more
against him ; let him go or stay, all is welL"
VIIL
Ee-entering Constantinople, Mourad-Pasha resumed his
habits of diplomat, and deadened the quarrels of the com-
petitors of Transylvania. Full of deference towards the
French ambassador M. do Salignao, he permitted five Jesuits
protected by France to found schools at Constantinople, and
to try for the seventh time the impossible reunion of the
Greek and the Latin worships under the head of the Pope.
The Venetians, through their ambassador, opposed as fiur
as they could the progress in Turkey of a religious order
which increased the influence of the Popes, their enemies in
Italy. Religious agitation followed here, as every where,
this able and always militant militia. The Jesuits were
not slow, as we shall soon see under other reigns, to incur
and to provoke these dissensions and persecutions. Repulsed
by the Greeks, they addressed themselves to the Armenians,
less sustained by the divan. After having vainly essayed to
reattach them to the Roman Church, they accused them, as
of a crime, with their fidelity to their faith.
Mourad, little attentive to those subjects of discord
between the enemies of Islamism, thought of nothing but of
satisfying France and of favoring her protégés, to attach her
to the empire. The schism of the Turks and of the Per-
sians gave him more concern than these differences of Chris-
tian ecclesiastics.
He set out in spring for the frontier of Persia with the
title of serdar. The troops of Roumelia, of Anatolia, of
Vol. III.— 7*
154 msTomT ov tttbxst.
Gurunania, of Siwas, of Damasoiu, of Aleppo, of TschQder,
of DiarbeUr, of Batoon, of Erseroum, of ELars, of Alba*
nia, the Janissaries, the submitted Kurds, the spahis, the
feudatory contingent, the topdjis or artillerymen, and all the
paid and regimented corps of the empire composed this
immense army. The renown of the courage and experience
of the Tizier surrounded him with a prestige which seemed
to attach victory to his life. His ninety-two years of
studies, of diplomacy, of battles and of government had not
outworn his mind. He saw without fear the approadi of
death, provided that his life should contribute to the last
mcmient to the consolidation of the power of the Sultan.
One of his most virulent, but most capable, enemies, the
vizier Nassouh, having come imprudently into his caiip, it
was proposed him to take advantage of the occasion to get
rid of him. '' No, no," said he, " that wretch hates me, but
he wields equally well the pen, the tongue and the sabre ; his
death would be a bad service to the Porte ; God preserve me
from putting to death men capable of being grand viziers
after me.*'
Death did in fact surprise him a few days after, in his
tent, on his march towards Erzeroum, and Nassouh-Pasha,
wh<Hn he had spared, was appointed provisionallv by the
generals to take his place as serdar at the head of the troops,
ochah* Abbas, intimidated by this slow display of forces»
hastened to negotiate with Nassouh to stop the overflow of
the Turks upon his frontiers. The army, fnrloughed, re
turned to Constantinople to await in its cantonments the
issue of the negotiations.
IX.
Nassouh-Pasha became from serdar grand vizier. He
had married a daughter of Achmet I. still in the cradle, and
who died before coming of age. The har^n, since Amurath
III., had lost all influence over politics. Achmet had been
made to believe by the long sway of the Sultana Safiyé, of
the governess of the harem Djiuifeda, of the Jewess Kira
and of the thousand odalisques of his &ther, that sorcery
made part of the influende and the attraction of women. He
dreaded to allow himself to be swayed by the charms whidi
had so agitated the two last reigns. Impetuous, but sobw in
his amours, he loveà but the mother of his two sons. This
HISTORY OF TUBKBT. 155
woman watched with a ferocious jealousy over the bed of
the Sultan.
Achmet having receiyed as a present from one of his sisters
a young slave whose bei^uty appeared to dazzle too much his
eyes, the Sultana consort secretly strangled her with her
own hands. To conceal the crime froin Achmet, she dressed
in the clothes of the murdered slave another odalisque and
had her introduced in the dark to the apartment of Achmet.
Achmet having discovered the imposition and the crime,
deplored bitterly the death of the slave whom he had pre-
ferred, and striking his guilty wife with the haft of his
poniard on the face, he trampled her under foot on the
carpet.
A few days after this horrible domestic drama, Achmet,
passing on horseback through the Hippodrome, received on
the shoulder a blow of a stone launched by a fanatical der-
vish. The head of the dervish rolled at the feet of the
horse of the Sultan.
An ambassadress of Georgia, a country where all politics
were in the hands of women, astonished Constantinople by
her beauty, her luxury and her eloquence. Ambassadors
from Schi^- Abbas gave occasion to splendid fetes, in which
Achmet wished to dazzle the Persians. He fought himself
on horseback in the lists against thb grand vizier, and his
djerid, launched by his hand with Sie vigor of youth,
grazed the head of Nassouh. Some memorable hunts in the
forests of Maoedon and Adrianople piled up before the
Sultan's eyes twelve hundred deer and thousands of birds
of prey. He returned to pass the summer in his palaces of
the Bosphorus, in the midst of devotions and of festivals.
Two years of complete tranquillity, secured by the
energy of old Mourad, succeeded to the agitations of so
much warfare. The new grand vizier Nassouh ceded to
Schah- Abbas, in a treaty of definitive peace, all the disputed
provinces wluch the Turks iiad usurped from the Persians
idnoe the reign of Mahomet II.
X.
The contestations relative to Transylvania were renewed
ceaselessly between the Turks and Austria. This province,
since the death of Bocskaï was torn by the diver* preten-
sions of the Bathorys, kings of Hungary, of the Rokoczys
156 mSTOBY OF TUBKKY.
and of Gabriel Betblen, by tarns elected by the nobles of
Transylvania, and seeking support some from the Turks,
others from the Germans, these from the Wallachians, those
from the Poles. The independent Hun^rians, in urging
their rights anterior to the treaty of Sitvatorok to this
province, augmented farther the confusion and the anarchy.
The pa^as governing the frontiers of Turkish Hungary
protected by turns the rival pretensions of all their ephe-
meral princes of Transylvania. Gabriel Bethlen, sustamed
a moment by the nobles of Hungary, had just signed secretly
with Nassouh a treaty by which " the nobles and magnates
of upper Hungary engaged, in the interest of Bethlen, to be
the friends of the friends of the Turks and the enemies of
their enemies.'' Those pretensions and those treaties, dis-
cussed and interpreted without end between the negotiators
of Vienna and those of the Porte, were agitating the public
peace without entirely breaking it, on the side of the Danube.
On the side of Asia, a debarkation of Cossacks came to
surprise and sack the maritime town of Sinopé on the Black
Sea. The grand vizier Nassouh sent tardily a squadron to
retake Sinopé ; ashamed of his improvidence, he concealed
the disaster from Achmet. The preceptor, the mufti, the
chief of the eunuchs, a faction of the seraglio opposed to
Nassouh, denounced this reverse and this negligence of the
grand vizier to the Sultan. They represented to him with
the eloquence of hatred the vile birth of this foreigner, come
forth from the forests of Albania where his father was a
Chrbtian wood-cutter, to be a hewer of wood (baltadji) in
the kitchens of the seraglio, then tschaousch or headsman
of an aga of the Janissaries, then groom, then chamberlain,
then governor of a province, then enriched to opulence by his
marriage with the only daughter of a chief of the Kurds of
Messopotamia, sufficiently rich and sufficiently ambitious to
have offered to pay forty thousand gold ducats for the place
coveted by him of grand vizier ; a factionist in thp camp of
the aged Mourad, spared by this old man who was to have
put him to death, become his successor by the choice of the
troops rather than the free selection of the Sultan, betrothed
to the daughter of the padischah, reigning an absolute and
insolent master over his benefactor,* alienating from him all
* Here is a portrait, and it was a common one in " despotic '* Turkey,
of the elevation of talent fipom humilil^ of circumstances, which is rarely
reproduced, in even our democratic days, in the most perfect, or at leaAt
pretentious of all republics, in this particular. — Dranalator,
HISTOBT OF TURKEY. 157
hearts by his exactions and his cruelties, peddling shameful
peace treaties with the Persians and the Hungarians, permit-
ting insults to the coasts of Caramania and of Morea, by the
vessels of Florence, of Genoa and of Malta, letting Sinopé
be devastated by a horde of Cossacks, and concealing these
disasters from the Sultan to elude himself the just chastise-
ment of his crimes.
Such allegations, falling on the soul already ulcerated of
Achmet I., were too conformable with his own resentments to
let him hesitate at vengeaînce. The Sultan distrusted for a
long time back his fidelity ; a recent and accidental circum-
stance had disclosed to him a secret manœuvre of his grand
vizier with the Tartars of the Crimea, to give them a prince
of his own choice. One day as Achmet was falcon-hunting
with Nassouh in the marshes of Adrianople, he saw an
unknown falcon dart from a bower of alders upon his, and
tear from it the prey which it was bringing to the Sultan.
" Who is the insolent," cried he, " who dares with his
bird to take off from me the product of my chase ?" On
galloping to the alder bower, from which the falcon had
pounced upon his, he fell into the midst of a group of Cir-
cassian cavalry concealed by the trees and covered with
resplendent arms. These cavaliers were the escort of a
prince of the house of Gheraï, arrived unknown to him some
days before at Adrianople, at the secret invitation of the
grand vizier, who wished to elevate him to the rank of Khan
of the Crimea. The princes of the Tartar family of the
Gheraï are the sole legitimate successors by blood of the
E rinces of the imperial house of the Ottomans, if ever this
ouse should become extinct at Constantinople.
This mystery and the insinuations of the enemies of
Nassouh persuaded Achmet that his grand vizier was medi-
tating perhaps a change of dynasty, to raise his protégés to
the throne and to reign in their name. He did not for
a while give vent to his suspicions ; but he threw the Tartar
prince and his retinue into the prison of the Seven Towers.
XI.
A few days after this event, the Sultan, coming out from
the mosque where he had been to attend the prayer of
Friday, was apostrophized by an emir (a descendant of the
Prophet) who complained with tears of the unpunished
158 HISTOBT or TUBKET.
abduction of his wife bj a funiliar aasooiate of Naafioidi :
*^ My padisohah, padisohfOi of all the Ottomans/' cried the
outraged emir, ''what means this tyranny by a scum of
Albanians and Kords corrupted by your vizier, and who
abuse the fikvor with which you cover them to humiliate and
mar^rise your slaves ? "
On the return of Achmet to Constantinople, Nassouh,
who felt collecting against him a cloud of hatred, sought to
deal his enemies a sudden blow by the hand of the Sultan ;
he asked him for the heads of the mufti, of the chief of the
Uack eunuchs, and of his lala or &vorite preceptor. Ach-
met apprised them and refused their life to Nassouh. In-
dignant at a refusal which presaged him a disgrace, he
resolved, with the ferocity natural to his race, to prevent
their triumph by their death, and to avoid the chastisement
which he would incur, by flight. He ordered his kyaya
Beïram, Albanian like himself, to assassinate the khodja,
the chief of the eunuchs and the mufti, and posted fifty
thousand Albanian cavahr of his guard at the gate of Con-
stantinople to protect, aner these three murders, his flight
into the mountains of Albania.
Boïram, a friend as faithless as he was a ferocious accom-
plice, revealed the plot to the chief of the black eunuchs
and to tiie muftL They convinced Achmet of the infidelity
of his minister. The Sultan dissembled until the ensuing
divan. There Nassouh demanded more imperiously the
heads of his three enemies. '' If you do not deliver them to
me,'' said he, " I resign my functions, and will poison myself."
The word poison revived in the memory of Achmet the rumors
which had formerlv been current about the poisoning of old
Mourad-Pasha in his camp by his ambitious rival " Ah !
traitor," cried Achmet, ''it is then thou, in reality, who
hast poisoned Mourad !
He did not dare nevertheless to either strike or re-
move him yet, either because he dreaded a sedition of the
Albanian Janissaries in his fiivor, or that he hesitated to
shed the blood of his son-in-law. The following day, which
was a Friday, a day on which the Sultans come out in state to
attend prayers at the mosque, Achmet sent orders to his
vizier to accompany him to mosque, as usual; Nassouh
refused, alleging an indisposition. This refusal appeared an
outrage to the majesty of the padischah, a prelude of unpar-
donable revolt. Two hundred bostandjis, commanded by
mSTORT 0» TUEKKT. 159
tiieir generals, incorraptible gaardians of the seraglio, went
up in arms to the palace of the grand yiader, forced open the
doors and strangled afber having disarmed him.
XII.
Thus died this Albanian, whose good fortune, natural
genius, ferocious courage, savage eloquence, insatiable ambi-
tion, adventurous intrigue and desperate resolution would
have made him a great man, if the impetuosity of his passions
and the arrogant levity of his character had not made him
an adventurer baleful to his master, to the empire and to
himself. His incalculable treasures, composed of bushels of
pearls, of tons of ducats, of eighteen hundred gold-hilted
sabres, a single one of which cost fifty thousand ducats, of
twelve hundred horses of hunting and of war, of heaps of
stuffs of gold and carpets of Persia, of twenty thousand
camels, of six thousand oxen, of four hundred Arabian
mares, of five hundred thousand sheep browsing the pastures
of Europe and of Asia, restored to the treasury of the
Sultan all that it had lavished on this unworthy favorite.
Mohammed-Pasha, another son-in-law of the Sultan, re-
ceived the seals of the empire. The mufti Seadeddin did not
long enjoy his triumph over Nassouh ; the pestilence took
him off a few days after the death of his enemy. He was a
historian of the Ottcnnans, as had been his father. His
brother Mohammed-Seadeddin succeeded him in the dignity
of mufti and in his virtues. Arrived at Constantinople the
day of the fanerai, it was he who in quality of muffci offered
prayer over the coffin of his brother.
XIII.
The grand visier Mohammed signaliied his adminis-
tration only by rashly rupturing the peace with Schah-
Abbas, and by a campaign without glory terminated by ja
second peace without dignity. Acmnet I. appointed, to
retrieve the honor of his arms, the capitan-pasha Khalil,
grand vizier.
An army of Cossacks had invaded Moldavia, beaten the
governor of Silistria, Mustapha ths Drunkard^ and driven
from his dominions the prince of Moldavia installed by the
Porte, Stephen Tomsa. I^ender-Pasha, sent by ihe grand
160 HISTOBT OF TtlBKBT.
vizier into Moldaris, drove back the Cossacks and reinstalled
Tomza and his family. Five hundred Cossack prisoners,
the mother, the wife and the daughter of the Moldavian
prince, crowned daring the invasion of the Cossacks, were
sent loaded with irons to Constantinople. On the route,
the widow of the rebel prince of Moldavia, whom the Mol-
davians styled the Domina^ lost the youngest and most
beautiful of her daughters, betrothed to a Moldavian noble-
man, a prisoner like herself. The Turks and her family
offered vainly for^ thousand ducats as reward to whoever
should find her. Taken off by a Tartar-Khan of the Crimea
captivated by her charms, she reappeared but a year after
with two twin children whom she was nursing, the fruit of
the abduction from which she had escaped too late. Satiri-
cal popular ballads on this disappearance and this return
amused the Turks and amuse them still with the adventures
of the brides of Moldavia.
Kussian ambassadors, sent to Constantinople to prevent
the irruption of the Turks pursuing the Cossacks into their
frontiers, arrived laden with coarse presents, like their indus-
tries at that period. These presents consisted in furs, in
birds of prey trained for hunting, and in sixty large teeth
of fishes.
A treaty with Poland, signed at Boussa the 27th of Sep-
tember, 1617, prevented an approaching conflict between the
Turks and the Poles on the Dniester. The Poles obliged
themselves to hinder thenceforth the Cossacks from crossing
the line of Ocsakow, and renounced all intervention in the
quarrels of Wallachia, of Moldavia, of Transylvania.
Some religious convicts, raised by the manœuvres of the
Jesuits protected by France, disturbed the peace between
the Catholic powers and the Porte. The Jesuits wero
thrown into the prisons of the Seven Towers for having
bribed the vicar of the Greek patriarch at Constantinople in
their favor. This vicar was handed as their accomplice.
The ambassador of France paid thirty thousand ducats for
the ransom of his imprisoned coreligionists.
Cardinal Clesel, son of a baker, like the vizier of
Turkey, determined the emperor of Austria to send to Con-
stantinople a solemn embassy to resolve the difficulties of
Transylvania.
The Sultan Achmet I. died without having seen the end
of these negotiations. He was only twenty-eight years of age.
HISTOBT OF TUBKST. 161
His reign, cominenoed at fourteen years, bad occupied a
large space in time, a small one in history. Some fits of
energy or rather cruelty in the commencement of his career
had ended in the weakness that yields by turns to all coun-
sels. He loYcd the good, and he wished the just ; it is the
praise which is accorded him unanimously by the historians
and the ambassadors of his epoch ; but he was neither great
nor generous. The throne was too high for his soul.
He left seven sons, Othman, Mourad, Ibrahim, Moham-
med, Kasim, Bayezid, Soliman, destined some for the throne,
the others for the tomb. But of him history must acknowl-
edge that he had, the first of the Sultans, spared the life of
his brother Mustapha in mounting the throne. Such an act
in such a time merited him the benedictions of the Ottomans.
At his death, his memory was lamented, it was not accused-,
the l^urks do not ask more of their sovereigns than has been
given them by nature.
XIV.
The traditions of the family of €knghis-Khan, which
regulate the rights to the throne with the Ottomans, would
give the crown to the brother of the deceased padischah
rather than to his sons. Age prevailed over blood in these
Tartar traditions. It was this default of right to the throne
in the direct line that had occasioned so fatally in the impe-
rial family the murder of the brothers of the Sultan; to
spare his brothers was to disinherit his sons. This consider-
ation enhances Achmet I. and the Sultans his successors who
have followed his example; but this time the example
became disastrous to the empire.
Mustapha was but the shadow of a prince. Nature had
stricken him with an eternal stupor from his birth. If
* This constitutional extenuation should have been stated by the
author in his philanthropic declamationâ against the law of Mahomet
n., eyen at the risk of somewhat damaging the sentiment and eloquence.
He ^ould, moreover, have been aware that, in political philosophy, the
change denounced marks a transition from barbarism towards civilization.
The collateral descent is that befitting an age of warfare, when the great
requisite is that the government be kept continually in full-grown hands ;
but when society has, like the family, ûxed and rooted itself in the soil, the
political inheritance, being of a peaceM and persistent nature, can with
impunity await the lapse of acddental minorities. The goyemment at
this penod is passing to principlea&ompenoni! it is beooming ùuMutional
from having been but mereij Junctional, — Dranslator.
162 HISTOBT OF TUBKBT.
tbe Ottoman laws bad stiimlated that to become Saltan, cme
sbould be a man, Mostapba, respectfully discarded from the
throne, would have ceded the Empire to his nephews. But
the law was fatal as nature. There was then no hesitation
in proclaiming Mustapha I.
The Ottomans on seeing him issue from the gloom of
the seraglio, where he was languishing for fourteeen years
back in the arms of women, between his mother, his nurse,
and his odalisques, read upon his countenance the failure of
his reign. A head tottering upon a frail body, a long visage
that terminated in a pointed chin, the sign of an old child-
hood, hollow cheeks, petulant and drivelling lips, a com-
plexion which the blood animated with no sort of color, eyes
that looked at nothing and seemed permanently dazzled. —
Such was the exterior of Mustapha I. His intellect, with-
out being quite extinct, was perpetually asleep ; his life was
purely mechanical ; he had but those instinctis of pain or
pleasure, unreflecting and often impetuous, which are the
passions of the child or the brute; his propensities were
spasms and not inclinations; his leisure was employed in
looking, from the summit of a terrace bathed by the current
of the Bosphorus, at the foaming and subsiding of the
everlasting waves, and in throwing pieces of gold to the
fishes in his ponds, which the glitter of the metol attracted
to the surface.
XV.
Under such a prince, the mother would have been free ta
reign if she had had the charms of Boxelana or the ambition
of Safiyé ; but the mother of Mustapha, mastered by the
kislar-aga, chief of the eunuchs and governor of the
harem, aflbrded not even to this ambitious eunuch sufficient
consistency of ideas and character to found upon this woman
a government of favor. The nurse of the Sultan, married
to the grand equerry, rivalled her in influence in the harem ;
thus a Kurdish woman, who had no other title to authority
than having dandled on her knees through a long infancy,
an idiot, was about to govern Asia and Europe at the will
of her caprices. The eunuch, in order to ruin these two
women, hastened to disclose hunself to the vizier the abso-
lute incapacity of Mustapha. He conspired with the mother
of Othmian, eldest son of Achmet I., the overthrow of this
HI8T0BT OF TUBKBT. 163
phftntom and the elevation ot Othman to the throne. No
one had any interest in sustaining a shadow of a sovereign,
who could not present a basis for any calculation. A unani-
mous coup d^Etat, concerted between all the leaders of the
church, of the law and of the army, and deliberated without
passion in a general divan, deposed the 26th February, 1618,
Mustapha, and proclaimed Othman II.
XVI.
The deposed Sultan was shut up anew in a retired
apartment of the seraglio, with his mother, Ynn nurse and his
slaves. He had not even mind enough to know that he had
mounted and descended in a few days the steps of corona-
tion and of abdication. He smiled alike at all the scenes of
this drama, extending his hand with the same indifference to
be kissed by his viziers and to be manacled by his jailers.
Khalil-Pasha commanded during these palace events in
quality of grand viziw and of serdar the Turkish army to the
frontiers of Persia. Some advantages which he obtained over
Schah- Abbas, appeared to him simcient to justify a truce.
Galled back to Constantinople, the Sultan took firom him the
seals, and reinstated him in his office of capitan-pasha.
Othman II. thus punished him for having raised his uncle to
the throne, having sustained him there for three months, and
having thus retarded his own accession. He appointed in
his place, Oguz-Pasha, who left no trace in the government,
and after some months of indecision, was in turn substituted
by Ali the Hcmdsome^ son of the governor of Tunis.
Ali the Handsome was of Greek blood, native of the
graceful isle of Cos, in the Archipelago. He had the fea-
tures, the genius, the eloquence and intrigue of his race ; he
had also the instinct for me sea and the naval aptitude early
exercised upon the coasts of Tunis. Elevated from grade
to grade to the governorship of tha island of Cyprus, he
had justified this run of fortune by great sea services ren-
dered the Turks. The ^ils and the prizes which he had"
brought to Constantinople, and with which he had enriched
the treasury of the Sultan and the arsenal, had dven him a
popular renown; his grace, his keenness, his heauty, his
adroit flatteries, had enslaved to him the heart of the young
prince.
Othman II. accorded to his grand vizier the exile of all
164 HISTOBY OF TUBKBT.
hifl rivals. Tho former grand vizier, Offoz-Mohammed, son-
in-law of Achmet I., went to languish, despoiled of his pro-
perty, and to die in Syria ; the chief of the black eunuchs,
who had made and unmade emperors, expiated his intrigues
by an exile to the recesses of Ethiopia whence he had come ;
the khodja, or preceptor of Othman, a companion of whom
the vizier felt sometimes trammelled by the credit, was sent
off into the deserts of Mecca.
Death delivered also the old seraglio of the domination
of the Sultana Safiyé, wife, mother and grandmother of so
many princes. She left, after fourteen years of retreat in
this asylum, her authority in the seraglio to the Sultana
Kœsem, sumamed ths moonfciced^ favorite wife of the Sul-
tan Achmet I. The brothers, still children, of the reignine
padischah, Mourad, Soliman, Kasim, Ibrahim, were sons of
this Sultana. During her influence over the heart of Ach-
met, she formed a friendship with her rival, the Sultana
Mahfirouz, that is to a&j^ favorite of the stars of the nighty
and mother of Othman. These two women had promised
mutually, to continue to love each other and to sustain one
another, in the interest of the life of their children, what-
ever might be after Achmet their destiny.
Mahfirouz, faithful to her promises, authorized her son
Othman, to visit in the old seraglio the Sultana Kœsem. This
palace and its gardens, a sort of living necropolis of fallen
powers and repudiated beauties, were never visited by the
sovereigns on the throne. Their mothers and their wives
would have viewed with a jealous eye those familiarities be-
tween the new and the old harem. Othman II. was the
first of the padischahs who violated, in behalf of a favorite
of his father, these suspicious scruples of the court. He
accepted a domestic fete which was given him by the Sul-
tana Kœsem, and passed four days and four nights in the
old seraglio, charmed with the conversation of his step-
mother without exciting the jealousy of his mother.
XVII.
An intrigue of the Poles with Gratianl, Prince of Mol-
davia, gave occasion to hostilities between the Porte and the
republic of Poland. Iskender-Pasha encountered the Poles
in the plain of Moldavia. Twenty thousand Sarmatians
slain in the battle, and ten thousand prisoners put to the
HISTOBT OP TURKEY. 165
Bword as rebels, was the sole and prompt result of this war.
The Poles proposed to repass the Dniester, to pay one hun-
dred thousand ducats for the expenses of the war, to double
their annual tribute. They sent hostages, and demanded
some of Iskender-Pasha, to sanction the security of the nego-
tiations. Iskender-Pasha designated the Tartar Prince, Can-
timir, as hostage of the Turks with the Poles. " Are you
then become giaour (infidel) ? " cried the Tartar Cantimir,
when Iskender spoke to him of his transmission to the camp
of the Poles ; " for thirty years back my sabre is steeped in
the blood of their fathers and of their sons, and you would
give me up to them to be spitted and roasted by a slow fire !
With these Poles who keep no promise, we should hold con-
verse but with the sabre ;" and he retired, says Nauna, his
face red with blood, like a glass full of wine.
All the hostages, to whom Iskender made the same pro-
position, refused after the example of Cantimir. The Poles
retreated in disorder to the Dniester. Arrived at the brink
of the river, they revolted, as usual with them, against their
general, who wished to establish order in the passage of the
river, and to save in the first place the cavalry. Pending
the sedition, the Tartars and the Turks got up to the dis-
banded Poles. Gratiani, Prince of Moldavia, victim of
their provocation to revolt, was slain in the rout and his head
sent to Constantinople. Kalinowsky drowned by his horse
in the Dniester, Zolkiewsky attained upon the bank, crene-
lated with their heads the gate of the seraglio ; Koniecpolsky,
alone spared among the chiefs of this brave and turbulent
nobility, was cast into the prison of the Seven Towers.
Forty thousand Poles piled with their bodies the banks of
the river. These triumphs inflamed the pride and the inso-
lence of Ali the Handsome : he treated all the Christian
envoys as if vanquished.
The father-in-law of Gratiani, named Borissi, agent of
the republic of Venice, was strangled for having represented
the grievances of his nation; the ambassador of Bohemia
and of Hungary, countries subject to Austria and revolted
against their Emperor, Ferdinand II., who offered their aid
to the Ottomans, was menaced with the bowstring or the
bastinado in full divan.
The extortions of the grand vizier filled the coffers of
the Sultan. He presented to his mother on the festivals of
the Beiram, eighteen Mahometan young women, twenty
166 HI8T0RT OF TURKEY.
Persian horses, and a hundred caftans embroidered in pearls.
The defterdar, or treasurer, too moderate in his exactions,
was imprisoned in the fortress of the Seven Towers, and two
millions in gold of his personal fortune were confiscated.
The island of Cyprus was taxed fifty thousand ducats beyond
the usual impost. Persia and the Porte exchanged presents
of which the list dazzles the imagination of the very Orien-
tals. A thousand rases of porcelain of China, for^ relyet
carpets, sixty of the down of camel-foab wrested from the
womb of their dams, horses, elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses,
in fine, slaye girls of conspicuous beauty, cemented the false
and precarious friendship of the two peoples.
A State crime ensanguined these pomps : a brother of
the Sultan, Prince Mohammed^ son of another woman than
Mahfirouz, guilty of giving too much hope to his mother by
his precocious intelligence and by his virile character, was
strangled the 12th January, 1621, by the mutes. State
reason did not pardon the gifts of nature ; stupidity was the
condition of being allowâ to live. '^ Othman, Othman,"
cried the victim, on seeing the mutes advance to tear him
from the arms of his mot£er, " I pray God to abridge thy
days and to overthrow thy empire. May thy life be wrested
from thee as thou wrestest mine from me! "
The grand vizier, aleady sick of the stone, at the moment
when he suggested this ferocious prudence to the Sultan, did
not survive the crime. A fanatical and stupid Albanian,
named Housseln-Pasha, succeeded him. He proceeded from
Hie bostandjis, whence he slipped into the Janissaries. His
sole maxim of government was that the globe belonged to
the Sultan, and that each volition of his master was an order
from heaven. He was one of those men, absolute in their
opinions through ignorance, who carry aU authority to its
excess, that is to say, its ruin. He hastened to involve the
young Sultan, Othman, entered upon his eighteenth year,
into a useless war against vanquished Poland.
Upon the route to Adrianople, the Sultan, riding at the
head of the army, was approached by four dervishes, issuing
of a sudden from the arch of a bridge, to ask him for alms
with loud cries. Their meanings, their rags, their gestures,
set prancing with astonishment the steed of Othman. His
terror rendered him ferocious, and the heads of the four beg-
gars rolled at a gesture upon the ground.
HISTOBT OF TUBKBY. 167
XVIII.
Arrived on the right bank of the Danube, Otbman II.,
wLile bridges were being constructed for the passage of the
troops, showed himself to the army, arrayed in the cuirass
of his ancestor, Soliman the Great, of whom he aspired to
equal the high deeds. His exploits were confined to shooting
arrows at the prisoners, and striking them with as much cal-
lousness as if they were a lifeless target. This cold cruelty
made indignant his own soldiers.
At Ghoerzim, the sixty thousand Poles, commanded by
their hereditary princes, repelled the onset of the Turks and
the Tartars. The srand vizier was displaced in punishment
of this reverse. Dilawer, pasha of Diarbekir, sumamed {he
Intrepid, received the seals of the empire. The Poles this
time sustained by Austria, Bussia, France, the Pope, Hun-
gary, struggled with firmness against the hundred thousand
Turks of the Sultan. The losses equal, after a long cam-
paign, led to the making of a peace, wherein neither of the
parties either gained or lost but the spilt blood of two hun-
dred thousand men.
Othman IT., pressed by love to return to Constan.tin(M)le,
encountered at Adrianople the young fSivorite slave who had
just made him father of his first-bom. This odalisque was
a Eussian, like Eoxelana, and exercised a similar ascendency
and fascination over the heart of Othman. Her, name
was, Miliclia. Bom in a cottage, taken off a child by
the Tartars, made a present of on account of her beauty to
the grand vizier, Mourad, under the reign of Achmet L, she
was, on the death of this old man, given to the chief of the
black eunuchs, Mustapha. The eunuch became attached to
her as a father, had her brought up as his daughter, and gave
her her freedom. Othman, naving seen her one day on one
of his visits to the head of his eunuchs, was dazzled and
intoxicated with her charms. He asked the chief of the
eunuchs to cede her to him ; the eunuch answered with re-
gret that he could not without violating the law, cede a free
girl but to a man who would make her his wife. Othman
did not hesitate to remove at this cost the scruples of the
eunuch. He married Miliclia, and had by her a son. His
love, augmented by the joy of being a father, made the Bus-
sian slave supreme over aU the women of his palace, even as
she reigned over his own heart.
168 HI8T0RT OF TUBKST.
He found at Constantmople his old preo^tor, tho khod-
ja Omar-Effendi, returned from his exile to Mecca after the
death of his enemy, Ali the Handsome. This khodja and
kblar-agha, Soliman, executioner of the fratracide upon the
unfortunate Sultan Mohammed, concerted to govern jointly
their young master. The Russian Sultana, become mother,
and more and more beloved, filled the palace with festivities
and plays.
During one of these exhibitions, in which she caused to be
represent^ the military scenes of the war of Poland, a
gun burst, and killed the infant son of the Sultana aad of
Othman. The dread of leaviog the empire without an heir
determined Othman to marry four legitimate wives. His
policy induced him to choose the free daughters of the high-
est dignitaries of his government. After having eepoused
a daughter of Pertew-Fasha, he celebrated his nuptiaU with
the daughter of the mufti.
XIX.
It is less dangerous to a despot to violate the laws than
the customs of his people j the murmurs of the Janissaries
and of the people were raised against this violation of the
usages of the' Sultans in the choice of their wives. It was
feared that the kinship with the families to whom Othman
II. thus allied himself, would appear one day to ground a
right to the throne in their descendants. Some parsimo-
nies of the ministers in the largesses to the spahis in times
of war, the reduction of the rate of a gold ducat per head
cut off the enemy on the field of battle, m fine, the early and
impopular departure of Othman for Syria in the fleet which
was going to combat Fakhr-eddin, emir of the Druzes,
changed in a few days the murmur into sedition.
The grand vizier and the mufti opposed to no purpose
the departure of the padischah for Syria. The chief of the
black eunuchs and the preceptor had concerted to advise
this armed pilgrimage to the holy places; their super-
stitious piety flattered Othman with the saintly glory of
having been the first Sultan to visit Mecca. The celebration
of his nuptials with the daughter of the mufti did but sus-
pend a few days the expedition.
A dream precipitated it additionally : Othman dreamt
the night of his marriage, that the Prophet had approached
HISTOKT OF TURKEY. 169
his throne with an angry countenance, and had struck him
on the face. The preceptor, consulted on the interpretation
of this vision, replied that it was a severe warning from the
Prophet, irritated by the retardations opposed by the padis-
chah to his pilgrimage to the tomb of Medina. This inter-
pretation appeared to him an oracle. The mufti, his father-
in-law, resisted courageously the fanatic faction who urged
the Sultan to an impolitic absence from his capital in fer-
mentation. Othman tore with anger the fetwa of the mufti,
in which this supreme interpreter of the religious law de-
clared that pilgrimage was not obligatory upon sovereigns.
A sacred vertigo was whirling him to his ruin.
He gave orders to plant his tents at Scutari, first hah of
the armies departing for Asia. At this order, the Janissaries
and the spahis revolted and stoned the chiaoux hastening to
repress the sedition in the name of the vizier. Convinced that
the departure of the padischah without them was but the
result of a project of the favorites of Othman II. of levy-
ing foreign Janissaries and spahis in Syria, and infringing
thus their privileges and their military monopoly, they
assembled tumultuously on the Place of the Hippodrome,
and drew up a question of law, put in these terms to the
muffci:
" Is it lawfully permitted to slay advisers who urge the
Sultan to illegal novelties, and who dilapidate the public
property of the true Mussulmans ? "
The mufti, without fearing the dangerous caprices of his
son-in-law, replied, that such a murder was permitted ; this
response legitimated the revolt.
The aga of the Janissaries and the officers of the regi-
ments forming the garrison of Constantinople, were chased
with stones from the Hippodrome, where the seditious were
encamped. The Janissaries, already embarked upon the fleet
at anchor in the Sea of Marmora, near the fortress of the
Seven Towers, disembarked in spite of their officers and ran
to join their comfades on the square of the meat-market.
Assembled in a body before the palace of the preceptor, they
called him to his window and enjoined him to come down
and take word to the padischah from his troops.
The preceptor, instead of acceding to this summons,
made his escape by the gardens, in the disguise of a dervish.
The palace of the grand vizier, of whom the soldiers did not
know the innocence, was defended with fire-arms against their
Vol. til— 8
170 HI8TOBT OF TURKST.
reokleas fury. Without weap(m8 to force the palace, the fiM-
tionists ran to search them in the ffonamiths^ shops adjac^it
to the bazar ; the gunsmiths by their supplications persuaded
them to withdraw. Night fell and dbpersed them in their
barracks.
XX.
The seraglio, shut up, was full of trouble and conflictii^
counsels. Othman II., having convoked there the oulemas,
ordinary and respected organs of public opinion, demanded
of them the cause of these agitations. They told him that
*^ his departure for Mecca gave inquietude to the soldiers and
fired them with anger against his preceptor and the chief of
the eunuchs, reputed the advisers of this project."—" Go,"
replied to them with obstinacy the Sultan, '< and tell the
troops that I consent to give up my journey into Asia, but
that I will not consent to remove either my khodja or my
kislar-aga."
Darkness and sleep prevented the oulemas from accom-
plishing their errand before daylight ; vague rumors increaised
the peril during this night It was told to the Janissaries
that the bostandjis, mustered in a body in the gardens of the
seraglio, were preparing a crushing sally into the city ; it
was said to the bostandjis that the Janissaries were debark-
ing the cannons of the fleet to make a breach in the gates and
walls of the gardens.
XXL
The sun of the 19th May, 1622, arose upon Turk^
under these auspices. The Janissaries and the spahis, en-
camped in the vestibules and in the courts of the mosque of
Mahomet II., sent a deputation to the oulemas to convoke
them to a conference. The oulemas replied that they would
not join themselves to a camp of soldiers in insurrection,
but that they were going to meet in the Place of the Hippo-
drome, where there would be an opportunity of attending
their deliberations. The revolters, at these words, said reli-
giously their morning prayer, and after having invoked three
times with loud voice the name of God, went in order to the
Hippodrome.
The mufti was there awaiting them, surrounded with the
twelve priprâpal sheiks, or preachers of the mosques of the
capital. Two secretaries of the troops, Khalil and Feredoun,
presented, in the name of the soldiers, a list of six victims,
of whom the revolters demanded the heads, in expiation of
their crimes. These six names, devoted to death in the
tablet of proscription, were those of Khodja-Omar ; of the
kislar-aga, or chief of thé eunuchs, Suleiman ; of the segh-
ban-bashi Nassouh, of the caïmakam Ahmed, of the high
treasurer Baki, and in fine, of the grand vizier Dilawer-
Pasha (the Intrepid).
The oulemas and the mufti, after having debated upon
some of the names, and especially upon that of Pilawer-
Pasha, the grand vizier, whom they knew to be opposed like
themselves to the journey, went to the palace to present
to Othman II. the conditions of the army.
" Take no farther notice of them," replied disdainfully
the Sultan ; " they are a rabble without chiefs who will soon
disperse of themselves through anarchy."
" Padischah," replied the sheiks, " whatever is not granted
to revolutioners, they take ; your illustrious ancestors, in
similar junctures, have always opposed such exigencies by
some sacrifices to justice or to necessity."
"Hold your tongues," cried Othman in a peremptory
tone, " you talk as if you were yourselves the counsellors of
the revolt, and if you say a word more I will have your
heads cut off as their accomplices."
The oulemas disconcerted remained silent; their faces
expressed their fears, less of the wrath than of the obstinacy
of the Sultan. The aged Housseïn-Pasha, formerly grand
vizier, a man whose age and whose fidelity placed his devot-
edness above suspicion, threw himself in tears at the feet of
Othman :
" My padischah," said he, " what are we in your presence ?
If the rebels demand also my head, hasten to throw it to
them; forget us and think of your own safety." Othman
was affected, but inflexible. The oulemas and the mufti
were confined as hostages in the gardens of the seraglio, and
the sedition was left to growl on outside the walls.
XXII.
The delay of the oulemas in bearing back to the Place
of the Hippodrome the answer of the Sultan, led the revolt-
172 HISTOBT OF TURKEY.
en to suppose that the seraglio was defended by the bos-
tandjis and by the gunners in force, and that their parley-
men were retained prisoners. One of them, to assure him-
self with his own eyes of the attitude and of the number of
the defenders of the seraglio, ascended to the top of one of
the minarets of Saint Sophia, and directed from thence his
gaze into the interior of the imperial gardens ; they were
empty. The certainty of not encountering resistance doubled
the daring of the rioters ; they collected in the first court,
filled it with their throng, and mounted upon the crenelated
platforms of the walls which separated the first court from
the second. The wood-boxes of the court supplied weapons
to those who had none ; inactive nevertheless in this camp
for some hours, they seemed to accord the Sultan time for
reflection and the dignity of concessions.
From moment to moment an only cry interrupted this
sinister silence; this cry demanded the heads of the khodja,
of the eunuch and of the grand vizier. The sole crime of
Dilawer-Pasha was to have the day before caused his palace
to be defended against the rioters, and to have strewed with
the bodies of armed rebels the threshold of his palace.
XXIII.
The gates of the second court swung at last upon their
hinges, and it was instantly thronged by the troops. The
same waiting, the same silence, the same cry were here repeat-
ed. The gates of Felicity j guarded by some white eunuchs,
were burst open like the former by the assault of the soldiers,
armed with logs. They seemed to hesitate, however, through
a respect of habit, to enter the portal which they had thrown
open. One of the oulemas, seated on a block of stone be-
fore the vestibule of the palace, advanced towards the sol-
diers and said to them in a low voice : " Our words have been
of no avail ; enter and speak yourselves."
The crowd entered timidly at first, and as if undecided
what they were going to will or venture. A single voice
became, as always, the unanimous voice of the multitude.
*• We want the Sultan Mustapha," said this voice, wrung with-
out deliberation from the desperate impatience of a single
individual, or perhaps prompted by some eunuchs to an ac-
complice. " Yes, yes, we want the Sultan Mustapha," re-
HISTORY OF TUBKBY. 173
peated in an instant the crowd, as if relieved û'om the
oppression of its incertitude.
At this accidental rallying-word of the revolters, the
multitude ingulfed itself in the opened portals of the
palace, and inundated the vestibule and the apartments.
They ran through them at random and without guidance,
going astray in this endless labyrinth of the seraglio and of
the gardens which separate the different kiosks, and yocifer-
ating still with growing vigor the same cry :
"We want the Sultan Mustapha."
AU was desert, silence, mystery, to the revolters in this
city of kiosks, of gardens and of courts. An oulema, more
familiar than they were with the places, showed them with
the finger the harem. It was surounded with a thick wall,
which was without doors on the side of the gardens. The
soldiers, in order to cross it, piled a mass of wood against
the wall, to penetrate into the harem by the windows of the
cupola.
While they were demolishing the cupola, on calling
loudly the name of Mustapha, a voice, remote and timidly
articulated, cried from the depths of the harem : " The
Sultan Mustapha is here."
This voice, recognized as that of the invisible captive,
animated with a desperate ardor the assailants. Despite the
arrows shot from below at them by some negroes, eunuchs
faithful unto death to their post, three Janissaries descended
by ropes from the unroofed cupola into the halls of the
harem, and ran, invoking the name of Mustapha, through the
rooms and corridors of the sacred palace. They found at
last in a back room, the unfortunate Mustapha, half reclined
upon an old mattress, and guarded by two mute slaves stand-
ing before him.
" My padischah," said to him in falling at his feet the
three Janissaries, "the army is waiting outside to crown
you."
The idiot, as insensible to the restoration as to the fall,
replied to them only with a vacant smile : " I am thirsty."
Since the commencement of the sedition, through inadvertence
or through cruelty, neither nourishment nor water had been
brought to his retreat. The Janissaries on the roof passed
down some water in a leathern vessel. One of those who
entered by the roof into his prison, went out by the door and
ran to the old seraglio, to announce to his mother that hfis
174 HISTOBT OF TtTRKBT.
son had been found alive, and that he was going to be rein-
stalled npon the throne.
XXIV.
While the mother, who beliered her son to hare been
strangled, passed from despair to the delirium of joy, Mus-
tapha, hoisted on his mattress aloft upon the cupola, was
received into the arms of the Janissaries, let down into the
court, and carried, to be shown the people, upon the horse of
the mufti. But his debility and his emotion disabling him
to keep on horseback, even with the assistance of the two
slaves who supported him beneath the arms, he was dis-
mounted and exhibited upon a throne in the hall of the
palace. Confounded by the acclamations and the prostrations
of the crowd, he with a gesture of infantile horror repulsed
the aspect of the naked sabres which were dazzling hb eyes,
enfeebled by his dark confinement.
During this exhibition of Mustapha I. upon the throne,
other scenes were agitating the courts on the outside, between
the oulemas and the rioters. The barrack proclamation of
Mustapha was one of those hazards of revolutions which
rashly overstep the end, and which consternate the very agi-
tators by the excess of their own victory. The mufti,
father-in-law of Othman II., and the oulemas, enlightened
men, who knew the imbecility of the uncle of Othman, were
very far from the idea of driving from the throne a prince,
ill counselled, to place on it a prmce incapable of any coun-
sel at alh They merely wished to substitute themselves for
the preceptor and the eunuch. Disconcerted spectators in
the court of the proclamation and of the reappearance of
the idiot, they regarded this oration but as one of those de-
liriums of the people, or of a soldiery, which must fall before
the reprobation of statesmen. A violent altercation arose
between them and the Janissaries, liberators of Mustapha.
They had hastened at the first cries of the multitude in
favor of Mustapha I. to advise Othman II., retired into the
depths of the harem, to deliver up the khodja and the grand
vizier. Othman, who retained near him these two victims
in order to sacrifice them at the last necessity, at the ransom
of his own head, caused to be opened in silence a secret door
of the palace, and threw out his two friends to the fury of
the soldiers. Their bodies gratified without deflecting the
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 175
onieltj of the assassins ; the ciles of long live the SvUan
Mustapha I continued to ring around the seraglio.
" Madmen, what more do you want ? " said vainly the
oulemas to the soldiers ; " you have obtained more than you
had asked for ; leave now the padischah in peace." " We
have, in fact, that which we wanted," replied ironically the
soldiers and the people ; " we have restored our Sultan Mus-
tapha I." " Brothers and companions," resumed the mufti
and the sheiks, ^' the Sultan Othman salutes and congratulates
you ; he has delivered to you those whom you demanded, and
he will deliver you others still if you require it ; we certify
it to you in his name. But if you replace the Sultan Mus-
tapha on the throne which he cannot occupy, you prepare for
yourselves and the Ottomans calamities and repentings;
listen to the wise." " You should have told us so before,"
replied the soldiers ; " now it is too late ; we have recovered
our padischah Mustapha and you must recognize him with
us." " No, no, that is not legal, so long as the Sultan Oth-
man shall be upon the throne," continued obstinately the oulcr
mas. " Legal or not," cried the more impatient of the peo-
ple and of the army ; " here is what will compel you to
silence or to the proclamation of the sovereign to whom we
render what is his due, the empire !"
The sabres, the axes and the sticks of wood lifted over
the head of the mufti and of the sheiks, taught them that
a sedition is never repressed by those who have themselves
excited it. One amongst them died of fear upon the spot,
the others saluted with the voice the idiot whom they
denounced at heart. The muezzins, mounting by their orders
upon the minarets of the mosques, proclaimed through the
capital the Sultan Mustapha I., padischah of the Ottomans.
He was hoisted upon a chariot with the two slaves compan-
ions of his captivity ; a mameluke, Dervish- Aga, escorted him
on horseback in guise of the grand equerry ; the people and
the soldiers tacMed themselves to the coach-pole and con-
ducted the Sultan with his seditious cortege to the old
seraglio, to present him to his mother. The mother and the
son embraced each other and congratulated themselves on
having escaped the fate of the Sultana Mahfirouz and of her
son, immolated some days before by order of Othman II.
176 HISTOBT or TUBKET.
XXV.
Meanwhile the inyisible Othman still intimidated the
revoit. The ramor ran that he had gained Scutari in dis-
guise, and that he was to return with a corps of fiuthful Jan-
issaries to aveuge his outrages, reconquer the seraglio and
crush Mustapha I. The revolters, uneasy for the security of
their idol, conducted the new Sultan and his mother into the
mosque of the Janissaries there to watch over him during
the night
Ouiman had in fact left the seraglio ; flying the violated
precincts of his palace, he had slipped in ^e dark along to
the beach, where the bostandjis his rowers kept his bar^
afloat to transport him to Scutari But ^he terror of me
invaded seraglio and of the gardens, overrun by the revolters,
had put the rowers to flight. There was no seaman to aid
Othman to weigh anchor and take the management of one
of his caiques. He escaped with Housseïn-Pasha, hb former
vizier, by a postern gate of the garden, and took refuge in an
upper apartment of the mosque of the princes, adjacent to
the barracks of the Janissaries to negotiate with them his
reconciliation and to implore their support. Housseïn-Pasha
walked behind him, bearing purses of gold to tempt the
cupidity of the soldiers.
In going along, a servitor of Housseïn-Pasha remarked in
a low voice to the old vizier : " Is it quite prudent however
to bring the Sultan so near the barrack of his Janissaries, who
have just set upon the throne another padischah ? " — " The
empire and fortune," replied with a religious resignation to
fatality the ex-grand vizier, ^' belong to him to whom they
are given; it matters little who will be Sultan while the
peace of the world is not interrupted." The world in the
language of the Ottoman statesmen was the capital of the
empire.
XXVI.
From his unknown retreat in the mosque of the princes,
Othman II. sent for the aga of the Janissaries, who deplored
secretly the conduct of his soldiers. He charged him to
offer fifty ducats to each man, a piece of scarlet cloth for
their uniform, and an increase of pay of ten aspers per day
if they would return to duty and depose Mustapha I.
HISTOBY OF TtTBRET. 177
The officers, informed of these offers by the general,
showed themselves inclined to accede to them. At sunrise,
they assembled the Janissaries in the court of their barrack
The general mounted the porch-steps to be heard the farther
in haranguing them* But the soldiers, distrustful, suspected
some snare. They had got wind of the nocturnal confer-
ences of the aga with the emissaries of Othman. At the
first words of weir chief recommending an accommodation :
" Down 1 down 1 with the traitor," cried they from the court
to the Janissaries immediately surrounding the general;
" strike the traitor, do not let him go on."
A soldier, acccomplice of all the others, pushed at these
cries the aga off the platform of the porch and precipitated
him down the steps; a thousand nf&ed sabres cut him to
pieces before the last breath had departed. The lieutenant
or kyaya of the general and the tschaousch, chief of his
escort, fled into the mosque to announce the murder to 0th*
man, of whom they knew the asylum.
While this prince and his latest friends were deploring
the fate of the aga, an omen of the same fate to themselves,
a band of Janissaries ran to the old seraglio to salute the
Sultana mother of Mustapha, and knowing the imbecility of
the son they prayed her to appoint herself a grand vizier
capable of seizing and of saving the empire.
" Is there any one amongst you who can write ? " demanded
this woman, an illiterate slave herself, of the soldiers. A
private Janissary, named Kara-Mossab, stepped forth from
the ranks ; he composed and committed to writing, under the
direction of the Sultana, the diplomas of the chief dignities
to which she, a woman, and a common soldier were, from
the depths of the old seraglio, to appoint in concert the men
whose names should first occur to the seditious.
Baoud-Pasha, son-in-law and favorite of Achmet I., was
appointed grand vizier unknown to him; Dervish- A^a, he
who rode on horseback alongside the grotesque chariot
wherein the populace drew Mustapha through the streets,
received the office of grand equerry; in fine, Kara-Mossab
himself, who held the pen, was raised to the rank of marshal
of the palace, in recompense, without doubt, of the daring
initiative which he had suggested to the Sultana.
Vol. III.— 8*
178 HiaroM of tùbeby.
XXVII.
But the Janissaries and the people would already wait
no longer, to put in exercise their authority and their anar*
chioal vengeances, the sanction of the grand rizier or of the
mufti.* Masters of a phantom sovereign whom thej sur*
rounded in their aga's palace, they made him deliver at their
pleasure, by a gesture, by a cry, by an entreaty as so<m
accorded as presented, all the oracles that were thought
requisite to their purposes. The murders of Omer the
khodja, of Nassouh the ex-grand vizier, of Bake the treasu-
rer, were ratified too late ; those of Ahmed the caïmakam
and of all the viziers whose name arose to the lips of an
enemy or of a malcontent, were proscribed with acclamation.
All the measures of police or of discipline taken against the
debauchery and license of the taverns in the last days of ^e
reign of Othman II. were abolished.
The soldiers, always prompt to sacrifice the civic libertieS|
demanded unanimously that the new grand vizier, their
creature and work, should govern dictatorially the empire
with the absolute despotism of a mess-master. The Sultan,
who was incapable of refusing or of consenting, acquiesced
with a nod of the head, under the prompting of two black
slaves standing behind him, like nurses by the side of an
infant.
XXVIII.
Meanwhile those of the Janissaries who had just massacred
their general on the steps of the barrack went about, upon
the indication of some traitors, in search of Othman II.
They were pointed out with the finger the ill-covered refuge
of the prince in the kitchens of the poor, appurtenant to the
mosque of the tombs. They discovered him crouched under-
neath some mats, and having on but a shirt or white tunic
fitting closely to the body, and for turban a red skull<^i^
like that of the eunuchs in the interior of the harem.
A soldier, through derision or through pity, coifed him
with his own turban. The others, dragging and pushing him
brutally into the court of the mosque, wMch rung with im-
* Thus the peq>le, m the fiist moment of their power, broke down
those ehecks which the most absolute of despotisms had itself submitted
to for centuries. — Tran^ator»
HISTOBY OF TTTRKBT. 179
precations and abuses, made Mm mount a lame horse, bare-
boned and mangey, which was being taken to the receptacle
of dead and useless animals. It was from this itinerant pillory
that they exhibited to the people him who, the day before,
diffused, according to the Ottoman expression, " his shadow
over the world."
The old vizier, Housseïn-Pasha, and the chief of the
bostandjis, Mahmoud, surprised in the same asylum where
they were unwilling to desert their master, were driven by
blows of the flat of the sabres at the heels of the horse.
Mahmoud was èpared by the soldiers because he had, as
chief of the police of the taverns, connived at the carousals
which his patrols used to observe at night. As to the old
vizier Houssein, a veteran dreaded by the troops on account
of the severity of his reprimands in the camps, the Janissa-
ries did not pardon him for having led them to the mouth of
the cannons in the last war with Poland, and for having
answered to those who represented to him his prodigality of
the blood of the troops : " What signifies our life I The
great object is victory I Does the padischah lack soldiers ?
When we shall have no more asses, we will mount horses."
Not being able to plunge their sabres into his heart, pro-
tected by the coat of mail which he wore imderneath his caf-
tan, they cut off the head, which they carried in triumph
before the Sultan and threw the body under the feet of the
horse. " Alas I " said Othman, forgetting his own misery to
lament his old friend, " he, at least, was very innocent ; if I
had followed his advice, misfortune and ruin would not have
befallen me."
These noble complaints did not mollify the soldiers ; in a
military mob all turns into crime against the victims, not
excepting their attitude. It despises them if they are
cowardly ; it hates them if they prove courageous. Raillery
blindfolds pity in the people : " Dear Othman ! noble padis-
chah ! " cried to him the relentless soldiers who sought for
merriment in execution, "young and beautiful prince, of
whom the word is the law of the world, are you not pleased
to patrol this night the streets of Constantinople attended
by your faithful bostandjis to catch the drunkards detained
late in the taverns by Greek wine, to chain the Janissaries
and the spahis on the galleys of your fleet and to have them
thrown into the sea ? " The people applauded by bursts of
ribald joviality these barrack derisions.
180 HISTOBT OF TUBKET.
Others, more serious in their fury, demanded of him :
" If it was by miserable reviews of seghbans that his ances-
tors had raised the edifice of the empire ; if it was Syrians,
Egyptians, bostandjis who built the fortresses of the Danube
and of the Euphrates."
A Janissary, more dastardly and ferocious than the
others, son of a goldsmith of Constantinople and depraved
by the ignoble vices of the capital, walked at the side of his
horse and pinched the skin of his leg between his two fingers
in order to extort from him a cry of pain. " Accursed
wretch ! " said the Sultan, weeping in spite of himself, with
shame and with rage, " dost thou not remember that I was
yesterday thy padischah, and that thou didst postrate thyself
before him whom thou dost now outrage ? "
Arrived at the barrack in front of the mosque, where
Mustapha I. had been conducted by the people, Othman was
delivered to the guard and mercy of the chief of the Jaiiis-
saries. The window of the chamber where the Janissaries
watched their victim was visible from the gallery of the
mosque. The two princes and the two reigns were thus sepa-
rated but by the square. The people and the soldiers
rioted between the barrack and the temple, the first saluting
with their acclamations the new prince, the others abusing
and execrating hb predecessor.
The tragic grandeur and the pity of so singular a specta-
cle began however to affect the multitude. The muezzins
being mounted at mid-day on the high galleries of the mina-
rets to call the people to prayer, the rumor ran that it was
the signal for the execution of Othman. All faces on the
square were forthwith turned towards the barrack, where the
deed must be expected to take place :
" No>.no, no," cried a thousand voices in the crowd, " ad-
dressing themselves to the Janissaries of the ffuard in the mess-
room ; no harm ought by any means to be done the deposed
Sultan. That the Sultan Mustapha should reign at present
over us, we are willing, but let the life of the Sultan Oth-
man be preserved against future casualties."
The grand vizier, Daoud-Pasha, who had just arrived
upon the place, went up to the room which served as prison
for Othman, and, pushing him with the hand to the window,
he showed him to the people to appease their clamors and
to attest that he was still alive.
HISTOBT OF TURKEY. 181
XXIX.
This unexpected emotion of the people in his favor gave
something of hope to Othman II. ; he ventured to appeal to
the heart and reason of his gaoler : " What do you intend
to do with your emperor ? " said he to the soldiers, shaken
by the cries of pity of the people. " What I it is you,
Janissaries, the supporters of the empire, who accomplish its
ruin and your own ! " Then remembering ±he old turban
that was dishonoring his head, and throwing it with indigna-
tion away from him, and imploring with the brow bare, the
eyes in tears, the voice broken with sobbings, his guards :
" If I have involuntarily oflfended you," said he to them,
" pardon me ; yesterday I was your padischah, to-day I am
nothing ; let me be an example to you I You also may have
to experience the vicissitudes of this world, you also may
have need of commiseration."
The soldiers were becoming affected, the chief of the
chiaoux of the grand vizier who had gone up with Daoud-
Pasha to the room, wished to prevent, by stifling his voice,
the effect of the supplications of Othman. He threw the
cord around his neck to strangle him. But Othman, who
spied him with the eye, as the convict feels by presentiment
the presence of the executioner, passed his two vigorous
hands between the cord and his throat, and, untying the slip-
knot, suspended at least a moment his death.
The of&cers of the Janissaries present cried to the
chiaoux to precipitate nothing in such a moment, in such a
place and before the people, who would render him responsi-
ble for the death of a Sultan whom there appeared a dispo-
sition to spare. Daoud-Pasha, anxious to press an execution
which would assure the throne to his pupil, influence to the
Sultana his stepmother, the government to himself, encour-
aged with a look the executioners :
" Babarian, what is it then that I have done to thee,"
said Othman, " that thou comest to beg here my death from
my slaves ? Have I not twice rescued thee by a word from
the death which the grand vizier wished to inflict on thee ?
Have I not replaced thee in spite of the divan in the digni-
ties of which thou hadst been stript? Whence has sprung
thy virulent hatred against me ? "
^^ He is a serpent," cried from the other side of the place
the Sultana mother of Mustapha to the Janissaries, of whom
183 H18T0RT OF TUBKET.
she saw the indecision, and of whcnn she heard the tomolts ;
'' he is a serpent, do not hearken to him ; if he slips from
your hands, he will put you all to death."
Daoud-Pasha, who heard the voice of the Sultana, made
a sign to the headsmen to tighten the cord ; but the officers
interfered to obey the murmur of pity in the crowd. 0th-
man IL, taking confidence from their intervention, turned
towards the mess-master, who was answerable for him to his
comrades : " Who has given thee thy employment ? " asked
he of him, hoping that it was himself, and that gratitude
would be awakened by the remembrance of benefaction. — " It
is the Sultan Mustapha," responded the commander of the
barrack. — " The Sultan Mustapha," rejoined Othman, " is an
idiot who does not know even his own name; come, open
this window and let me speak to my servants."
The officer, overawed or affected, opened a window of
the room that looked upon the peristyle of the mosque, of
which an ancle touched the barrack of the Janissaries. The
instinct of life in a youn^ man who shrunk from death, the
energy of character which had not weakened since the day
before in a sovereign precipitated from the throne, the hope
which the favoring cries restored to his soul, the conscious-
ness of the imbecility of the competitor opposed to him,
experience of the fickleness of popular movements, confi-
dence, in fine, in the impression which must be wrought upon
the multitude by the aspect of his nakedness and the elo-
quence of his tears — all this gave to Othman accents as
pathetic as the situation. He had disconcerted the soldiers,
floored the grand viader, he did not doubt of managing the
people.
" My agas, my spahis, my Janissaries," cried he to the
soldiery who listened to him underneath, "and you my
fathers, who have protected me in my cradle, defended me
in the camps, instructed me in the divans, guarded me upon
the throne, if through ignorance, through youth, through
mistaken good intention I have given ear to unfortunate
counsels, wherefore humble me in this manner to the debase-
ment of your own sovereignty ? If you do not wish me for
your padischah, say so at once, and I will know how of
myself to descend and to die without degrading either you
or me by those indignities that cast dishonor on the Ottoman
name." The people mingled among the soldiers shed tears
HISTORY OF TtJBKBY. 183
at iiiese words, and a few Toioes already oned to pardon
repentance, and to reconduct Othman to the seraglio.
XXX.
The Sultana, mother of Mustapha, at the voice of Oth-
man II. and at the noise of those fluctuations of the multi-
tude, had come out upon the gallery of the mosque, then
re-entered at the cries of terror of her own son to give him
confidence and to suggest him a countenance less infantile.
But the poor phantom of a sovereign had no sooner lost sight
of his mouher than he relapsed into his fa.intings. At the
slightest counter-shock of the external tumults produced by
the strife of clamors between the people and the soldiers, he
bounded frightened on his divan. Seated on the mihrab of
the mosque between his two mute and attentive slaves, he
would start up with a jerk at the louder rumblings of the
square below, fancying that the satellites of Othman were
forcing the doors to immolate him, would rush to the window
as if to fly them, and, clinging to the gating which barred
the glass outside, would tear his feeble hands with the angles
of the iron trellis, in the effort to force it open and give him
an issue for escape. His two slaves reseated him with diffi-
culty in his place. The ^ctators, full at once of terror and
of pity, were at a loss whether they ought rather to deplore
the lot of such a creature in having been carried against his
will to the throne, or the empire in having by and by to sup-
port such a master.
" Come, come, be calm, I am here, my lion," his mother
used to say, receiving him trembling in her arms. '^ My
lion, my tiger, my son, my padischah, be worthy of thy peo-
}^e and of thy mother ; thou seest thy officers kneel respect-
fully, and that I do not tremble."
Othman on the other side, within a few paces of the
mihrab of the mosque, although in the peristyle of another
edifice adjacent, was struggling for life with the same intre-
pidity which animated the Sultana for the life of her son and
for the empire. Pale, half-naked, bare headed, his shirt torn
off his shoulders, he adjured by turns Daoud, the people, the
soldiers to have pity on him and on themselves by reflecting
to what a master they were about to give themselves upon
the corpse of their legitimate padischah.
The gestures of the Sultana, the cries of Mustapha, the
184 HISTOBT OF TUBKST.
supplioations and the objurgations of Qthman, dû^nted with
each other alternately or altogether the attention of the
multitude. Daoud-Pasha, still behind his victim with his
executioners, availed himself of one of those moments when
the heads of the crowd were turned towards the gallery of
the mosque, and ordered a third time the chief of the
chiaoux to throw the cord around the neck of the Sultan.
The commander of the barrack, who had already pro«
longed the agony of Othman, by untying the noose and in
permitting him to present himself at the window to address
the spectators, detached a third time the cord and flung it
indignantly to the chiaoux. The Janissaries, whose first
fury had had time to evaporate and to change into compas-
sion, applauded the humanity of the barrack-master. Daoud
withdrew in adjourning reluctantly the crime, and Othman,
confided to the guard of the Janissaries, remained suspended
between death and life in the barrack, with a handful of old
soldiers.
XXXI.
The grand vizier passed from the barrack into the
mosque, and hastened to avail himself of the rest of the day
to put Mustapha I. in possession of the seraglio and of the
throne. The same uncovered car, drawn by the revolted
soldiers and by the populace, which had conducted Musta-
ha to the palace of his mother, conveyed him also between
is two négresses from the mosque to the seraglio. A count-
less multitude saluted him with pity, with good wishes, with
acclamations. The Ottomans, compassionate for his double
misfortune, rejoicing at the restoration of liberty to a poor
captive, forgot for a moment that they were also giving the
throne to a mere shadow.
During this march, half triumphal, half derisory, Daoud-
Pasha, for the purpose of removing from their barrack the
mass of the Janissaries, of whom the presence intimidated
his designs, had them apprised secretly, by his confidants,
of the treasures which Housseïn-Pasha and Othman II. had
deposited the day before in the palace of the aga, from which
the fugitive prince had been taken to conduct him to the
barracks. At this intelligence, the Janissaries quitted tumul-
tuously their mess-rooms, forgot Othman, and precipitated
themselves in a throng upon we aga's palace^ to pillage and
hi
HISTORY OF TUBKKT. 186
dmde amongst tbem the pretended treasures. They found
the treasures of Housseïn, and the tumultuous partition of
this plunder kept them aloof, distracted and drunk in the
taverns a part of the night.
Daoud, informed of their negligence to watch their host-
age, ran by torchlight with a band of chiauox and bostandjis
to the barrack, under pretext of transferring the deposed
sovereign to a prison more worthy of the majesty of the
prisoner. This escort, lighted by torches, led through the
streets the most tumultuous, the unfortunate Othman to the
fortress of the Seven Towers. The people, who followed
with different feelings the cortege, withdrew gradually when
the fortress doors had been closed upon the prisoner.
The rumor ran in the crowd that the life of Othman
would be spared to restore him repentant and corrected to
the throne, if his uncle should be found a second time inca-
pable of reigning. The thought of death was neither in the
mind nor in the wishes of any Ottoman uninterested in the
question of the throne. Those alone, in small number, de-
sired his death, who felt themselves unpardonable through
the excess of their outrages, and who could not live in
security if they should leave him life : such were Daoud and
the Sultana, thenceforth arbiters of the fate of Othman, and
whom his life condemned to tremble constantly for their do-
minion and even their head.
Accordingly, the doors of the fortress of the SeVen *
Towers were sarcely shut upon Othman II., and the silence
outside had scarce announced the dispersion of the people
from the streets, when Daoud-Pasha, assisted by the chief
of the djebcdjis and by two robust chiaoux, entered the
chamber of the prisoner, bearing the cord of silk in his
hands.
Othman, of whom twenty hours of anguish had neither
prostrated the energy, nor enervated the vigor, and who had
three times already eluded death by retarding it, combated
with desperation against his four assassins. The chamber
where the scene had taken place, rung a long time with the
cries, with the rumblings, with the reactions of a terrible
struggle between this young man of eighteen years and those
well-practised executioners. It was protracted for a long
time in the dark : Othman doubtless hoped, that, by sus-
taining it till the extinction of his strength, the noise might
bring to his relief the guards of the Seven Towers, or that
186 HISTOBT OF TUBwnr.
the people might force the gates at the voice of their Sultan*
The guards were accomplices and the people were gone.
The chief of the djebedjis succeeded at last in passing
and in pressing the noose of the string around the neck of
Othman, while Daoud and the two chiaoux, with their knees
upon his breast, tried to tear away his hands from it, and
to hold still his legs. Their united efforts were insufficient
to hold thU lion, when one of those ferocious executioners,
named Kalender-Oghli, seised and squeezed with an iron
grasp, the sources of virility in the body of Othman. The
pain wrung a terrible cry from the young man ; he fell into
a swoon ; he was strangled, already inanimate.
Daoud cut off one of the ears with his own poniard, and
wrapped this bleeding cartilage in his silk handkerchief, to
carry to the Sultana Validé this certain testimonial of the
reality of the death of Othman II. and of the uncontested
diadem of her son. It was the first sacrilege of the Otto-
mans against the majesty of ihs ihadow of God,
XXXIL
M. de Hammer, whose erudition often compares race to
race, crime to crime, with advantage to human experience,
has drawn a parallel between the death of the Greek Empe-
ror, Andronicus, and that of the Turkish Emperor, Othman,
'which we think worthy of transcription.
'^ The ûite of Andronicus and that of Othman II. pre-
sent," says he, " remarkable similitudes. When Andronicus
was conducted to Chilaï (now Bebek) where he had formerly
caused to be blinded and thrown into prison Alexis Oome-
nus, the sea, as if it bore a remembrance of the executions
with which he had so often stained its waves, rejected him
with violence on the shore. Loaded with chains by the
archers, he underwent, in presence of his very competitor
Isaac, the most ignominious treatment : he was buffeted on
the cheeks; he was kicked with the foot; the women, whose
husbands he had deprived of sight, tore off his hair and
broke in his teeth ; a hand was cut off him, an eye was
plucked out, and he was thrown into the tower Anemas of
the palace of the Blakernes, where he remained without any
species of nourishment. A few davs after, he was deprived
of the remaining eye, and was marched through the city upon
a mangy camel, to make him serve for a laughing butt to
HISTORY OP TURKEY. 187
the populace. Some of these knocked him on the head with
sticks, others emptied upon him vases of urine and stuffed
his nostrils with dirt ; others still squeezed into his mouth
sponges saturated with filth. Then he was hanged upon the
Hippodrome, hard by the two columns, between the statues
of the she-wolf and of the hyena. In the midst of his suf-
ferings, he cried : " Lord^ have pity on me / break not a reèd
àUflready broken. His ruffianly tormentors tore off his clothes ;
one of them plunged a pike down his throat into the intes-
tines. Two Latins pierced his sides with their swords, to
see which of them had the keenest edge. Then he expired, in
the act of raising towards his mouth the bleeding stump of
his arm, of which probably he wished to suck the blood to
slake his thirst. This execution is the most cruel and the
most ignominious of those which have been ever inflicted on
a dethroned sovereign, and here the Byzantine barbarity has
far surpassed the Turkish."
We will not develope this bloody parallel of the German
historian, in aggravation or in excuse of the one or of the
other crime. We will only say that Andronicus had
merited death, and that Othman II. had merited but pity.
But the bare death of a guilty prince is a crime when in-
flicted without judgment. The people who inflict punishment
without right, without judges, and without pity, take in turn
the crime upon themselves, and dishonor humanity instead of
aven^ng it.
The reign of Othman II. left behind it no other trace
than his dead body to the history of the Ottomans.
XXXIII.
His body was buried clandestinely during the night in
the tomb of his fethers. The mufti, of whom Othman II.
had espoused in spite of him <Jie only daughter, and who did
not pardon the dead Sultan the moral violence which he had
endured in not daring to decline this honor, refused to pray
upon his tomb ; he abdicated voluntarily the pontificate,
rather than render religious honors to his son-in-law.
The second reign of Mustapha I. commenced by those
oscillations and those reactions which agitate the mind of a
people or of a soldiery after the triumph of great seditions.
A few days after the installation of Mustapha, while this
prince attended with his mother at a family festivity at the
188 HISTOBT OF TURKEY.
house of the grand vizier, Daoud, the soldiers trooped around
the palace of Daoud and constrained him by their vocifera-
tions to come down into the court and assign them reason for
his crime.
" Why," cried they to him, " hast thou killed against our
will the Sultan Othman, whom we had intrusted to thy
guard ? " •
" I have killed him," replied the grand vizier, " by the
orders of the master of the world, the Sultan Mustapha, our
padischah." This response, which threw on the chimerical
will of an idiot the fatality of the crime, silenced and
appeared to satisfy for this day the soldiers. The shade of
the Sultan imposed upon them still. But the following day
they presented themselves in larger numbers on another pre-
text, demanding with loud cries the heads which had escaped,
by favor of the tumult, the day of the catastrophe of Oth-
man. They were those of Omar, the preceptor bf Othman,
of Ahmed, the caïmakam, of Nassouh-Pasha and some
others, advisers, viziers or favorites of Othman. Daoud
abandoned to them without difficulty all those heads to save
his own. But flight and the inaccessible mountains of Asia
saved the victims.
The pages of the seraglio on their side, ashamed to serve
a phantom prince, and in(^gnant at the murder of a Sultan
of their own years, who flattered their pride and their ambi-
tion, assassinated by night their governor, the chief of the
white eunuchs, accused by them of having contributed to
the deposition and the execution of Othman, their idol.
They hung by the legs the body upon the Place of the Hip-
podrome.
" This eunuch meditated," they said, " to kill likewise,
at the instigation of the Sultana Validé, and of Daoud, her
son-in-law, the young princes still living, brothers of Othman
II., nephews of Mustapha." The spahis and the Janissaries,
agitated by the pages, assembled anew to summon Daoud to
answer on his head for the life of those youths, reserved per-
haps for the throne. The new mufti, named Yahya, con-
vinced the Sultana Validé of the unanimous unpopularity of
Daoud, upon whom recoiled perpetually and justly the blood
of his victim.
Daoud, attacked by all, even by his accomplices, and ill
sustained by his mother-in-law, who saw the empire tottering
in his hands, ceded the supreme dignity to Mere-Housseïn,
HISTORY OP TURKEY. 189
former cook of the seraglio, become, by the sport of fortune,
general of the army of Hungary, and governor of Egypt.
The firmness that was expected of him against the incessant
seditions, failed, through his complicity m the murder of
Othman. One day, as he was distributing the pay to the
troops, a soldier rushed upon him, sabre in hand, crying :
" What have you done with the Sultan Othman ? " It was
the cry of remorse of the soldiers and of the people, break-
ing forth in an individual voice. This remorse was mount-
ing to fury. The avenging soldier struck, slightly and at ran-
dom with his sabre, Housseïn and several of the officers of his
retinue, before falling himself beneath the blows of the chi-
aoox and the muezzins.
This tumult did but excite another. The grand vizier,
to escape from the sedition of the troops, resolved to send
them, under pretext of war, to a distance from the capital
He began by removing the aga of the Janissaries, Dervish-
Pasha, a turbulent man, whom we have seen on the day of
the fall of Othman, accompanying the car as groom of Mus-
tapha to the old seraglio. The grand vizier, to disguise this
exile, made Dervish governor of Caramania. An imperial
bark transported him to the port of Moudania on the Asi-
atic coast of the Propontis.
The Janissaries, uneasy at the disappearance of their
aga, and pretending that he had been drowned in the pas-
sage, rushed tumultuously with arms in hand, into the courts
of the seraglio, demanding clamorously the removal and the
punishment of the grand vizier. The Sultana Validé, at-
tracted by these cries from the harem, dictated to her terri-
fied son a suppliant katti-scherif, addressed by this prince to
the soldiers : "Appoint grand vizier Daoud- Pasha, Gourdje
Mohammed-Pasha, or Lefkeli Mustapha-Pasha, I care not
which ; he whom you shall choose will be my choice."
This sftrvile katti-scherif augmented the embarrassment
and the fury of the troops. They felt incapable of obeying,
but still more incapable of governmg. Their cries redoubled.
The Sultana Validé, who had dictated this katti-scherif to
her son, tried what her presence could a second time effect
upon the mind of the troops. She came forth covered with
a transparent veil from the harem, and presented herself as
suppliant to the soldiers. The unusual sight of a woman of
whom the beauty and the tears were half disclosed through
the Indian muslin spread over her features, respect for the
190 HUiTOBT OF TURKEY.
mother of their emperor, the reoollection of the energy whid
she had displayed to save and to crown her son, devoid of
reason on the day of the revolution, made the factionists fall
at her feet They tore the katti-scherif whereby the Saltan
resigned to them the right of appointing a grand vizier, and
cried to her that they would obey him who would be chosen
freely by the padischah.
Mustapha-Xefkeli, brother of the nurse of the Sultan,
was appointed by the influence of his mother. Scarce had
he governed a few days than a new revolt arose against him,
under pretext that he had given the highest dignities of the
church to a driver of asses and a musician, his friends. A
third grand vizier in the space of three months, Gbordji-
Mohainmed, received the seals.
XXXIV.
The public authority discredited at its source, being no
more upheld by respect, could no longer be so by terror.
The puerilities of Mustapha I., in spite of the mystery with
which the seraglio endeavored to conceal them, became
known throughout Constantinople. At one time Mustapha,
escaping from his guardians, would run from kiodk to kiosk
in the gardens of the palace, invoking, with loud cries 0th-
man to come and rid him of the weight of the government,
forgetting, like the emperor Claudian demanding back his
wife, that he had signed himself the warrant for the murder
of his nephew. At another time he would enter on horse-
back his barge, and imagine he was thus traversing the sea.
Sometimes he thought himself a prophet and favored by
celestial revelations, which complaisance and adulation used
to verify to gratify him. The credulous multitude, inclined
to venerate the weakness of the intellect as a sign of inno-
cence, a favor of heaven, used to admire in these revelations
the finger of God upon the inspired idiot.
The sheiks of the mosques availed themselves of this
prestige of the pretended inspirations of Mustapha, to edify
the ûiithful and to accredit the idea of his sanctity. " He
shuts himself up whole weeks to weep and to pray in his
apartments," said they, in the pulpits; "he beholds his
nephew, Othman, transfigured into paradise, and crowned
with an imperbhable diadem. Pray for your saintly padis-
HISTORY OF TUBKBY. 191
tbahy that God may console his sufferings and bless his
tears." The people wept and prayed.*
The grand vizier, in order to gratify the sheiks of the
mosques, having published a severe interdict against the sale
of wine to the troops in the taverns, was dismissed amid the
cries of the soldiers. Dervish-Pasha, before appointed and
deposed, as has been seen above, was named anew and de-
posed a second time. A eunuch, named Mohammed, grown
old in the high functions of the government, succeeded to
Dervish. There were fair hopes of a man broken to the
business, and who had never mingled in any of the factions
of court or barrack which rent ^e state. The people of
Constantinople, weary of barrack anarchies, were favorable
to the eunuch who was determined to repress them. They
menaced the favorite of the Janissaries, Dervish-Pasha, with
obliging him to give an account of his wealth.
The Janissaries, in their first fermentation against the
eunuch, were hooted by the multitude : " You tremble for
your falconer^'* said the people to the soldiers, (it was the
surname of Dervish, a trainer of falcons before his fortune,)
*' and you have deserted, like coward mutes, your padisohah,
Othman, of whom you were eating the bread and the salt,
and who had been delivered to you as a sacred deposit in
your barrack by us and by the present Sultan, Mustapha."
The Janissaries, depopularized by their ingratitude and their
sacrilege against Othman, knew not what to answer. Al-
ready, under pretext of avenging Othman, governors, gen-
erals and pashas, declared themselves absolved from obedi-
ence to the Porte, and swore to make the Janissaries atone
for the murder of the young Sultan. Of this number were
Yousouf-Pasha, Governor of Tripoli in Syria, and Abaza-
Pasha, Governor of Brzeroum.
Yousouf was a Turcoman, raised to power by cunning,
confirmed in it by crime, to whom the luck of his misdeeds
had given the daring to commit greater. He had long since
driven the Janissaries from his province, and had enrolled
in their stead bands of seghbans, a local and personal mili-
tia, a tool, accomplice, and victim by turns of his ferocious
executions. Such an enemy, armed with a grievance so real
and so national as the murder of a Sultan, was formidable to
the Janissaries.
* It seems, then, that tiie priests and people are the same in Turkey
as the world over. — TrasMlator,
192 HISTOBt OF TURKEY.
Abaza, who took his name from his tribe, tke AWmi «f
the Black Sea, neighbors of the Circassians, wa) a pri(M>B«r
become slave of the old grand vizier, Mourad, Tftnqnisher of
the Persians. Kemarked for his courage on the fleet of
Khalil, the capitan-pasha, Abaza, rose from grade to grade,
and finally to the government of Merasch. An enemy of the
Janissaries, like Yousouf, he was of the number of the aen-
erals who levied, in Syria and in MesopotaiBiai well disci-
plined militias, and whom Othman II. proposed to join, to
deliver himself from the yoke of the Janissaries, when the
discovery of this idea cost him his throne and his life.
His declared revolt caused the outbreak in Constanti-
nople of a new sedition against the eunuch Mohammed*
The capitan-pasha, Khalil, and the grand vizier murmured :
" The Janissaries are the instigators and tlni sccrtjt t^ap*
Ïorters of the rebel; Housseïn has given him bis daoi^hter."
tut these murmurs, which found no echo in the muHitude,
died away before the impassibility of Molninimed, Tb«
shame and the execration of their crime, reproved by all good
Mussulmans, began to weigh so heavily upon the i^irit of
the soldiers, that they sought to discharge thcînsolvee of it
at any cost. The spahis cast it upon the Janissaries^, tbt)
Janissaries upon Daoud, son-in law of the SuUan% Daoud
upon Mustapha I. ; no one wished to bear any loo^r the
responsibility of this blood which cried for vengeance îa
every soul.
It is honorable to human nature to see a nation like a
great criminal, tormented by the remorse of an unpunished
assassination, and demanding, so to say, of divine* justice,
to accord it either the pardon or the expiation of innocefitt
blood.
XXXV
The spahis, not being able to tolerate the blame or even
the silence of their officers, who reproached them wîth tiieir
complicity in the death of Othman, separated their cause
from the Janissaries their companions. They asaenibled of
themselves in the mosque of the Hippodrome, where the
drama of the death of the nephew and of the cort^natiou of
the idiot was accomplished before their eyes, and had drawn
up by their secretary a petition to the Sultan, Mustapha I.,
conceived in this wise : ** If the padischah has really or-
Ik
HISTORY OP TURKET. - 193
iered tb« mvrdçr of tlie Sultan Othman, let liîm say so, and
let him purge our honor from the calumnies of the people."
• This demand, without an answer for several days, encour-
Aged the people, the sheiks and the oulemas, to demand still
loader, not now to stigmatize, but to chastise the revolt
against Othman. The spahis, to further exculpate themselves,
called with loud clamors for the investigation and the judg-
ment of the murderers. " Deliver us the assassin," said they
to i^ evleÉias, ^^ and we will do him justice ourselves."
The Sultan, summoned by the cUimoring of the spahis
to declare the truth, replied by a laconic katti-scherif, which
repudiated the death of his nephew. " I have never said to
nuy 013 e that the Snltan Othman should be put to death,"
B^i the 8ult»û JMustapha in this k^tti-scherif ; ^^ Daoud has
lied. If the murderers live still, they must expiate their
crime."
This express disavowal of Mustapha, in testifying that he
himself waa indignant at the murder to which he owed the
throne J left to the Janissaries and the spahis, in order to
appease the people j but the part of executing vengeance upon
tkelr own miadeeda. Tiiey affected more zeal and more fury
than the people themselves in the investigation and the exter-
mination of the regicides. They diffused themselves sword in
hari] dur m g tht night through the streets, pursuing every
wiieri^ thoȉ whose name was at all connected with the mur-
der of Othman.
The chief of the djebedjis, one of the four assassins who
had strangled the young prince in the prison of the Seven
Towers, was torn from his house, dragged to the border of
the same fountain where the imfortunate Othman had asked
in vain for some water to drink in marching to death. His
head was cut off on the brink of the fountain, as if the blood
thus shed was meant to expiate the drop of water refused so
cruelly.
XXXVI.
The streets rung for two days with cries of vengeance
against Daoud-Pasha, the most guilty, the most powerful,
and the most ferocious of the authors of the revolution. He
had succeeded in escaping by the gate of his harem, and con-
cealing himself in the suburb of Aïoub, in the humble resi-
dence of a spahi grateful for some favors. The pertinacious
Vol. III.— 9
194 HISTOBT OF TURKEY.
search of the soldiers disoorered him at last on the third day
crouched under the horse's litter in the stable of the
trooper. His garments were stript from his body, he was
robed in derision with a mass of rags covered with dirt, and
hoisted on a dung-cart to be conducted, through the hooting
streets, to the prison of the Seven Towers, the scene of his
crime, destined to be that of his punishment.
Kalender-Oghli, the third of the assassins of Othman
become chief of the police of the capital, under the viiiership
of his accomplice, Daoud, was àrs^^goà with the same igno-
miny to the Seven Towers. The feigned fury of the troops
and the real anger of the people appeared a moment to be
satisfied by these expiations ; they reflected more than befit-
ted the security of the throne, not upon the innocent Mus-
tapha I. but upon the reigning Sultana, his mother.
The aga of the Janissaries, at the secret instigation of
the harem, deeply interested in saving Daoud, assembled his
soldiers in the mosque, and feigning to appeal to their mili-
tary generosity : " Comrades,!' said he to them, '^ now you
are satisfied ; Daoud-Pasha is imprisoned, his ùAe is in the
hands of the padischah, his proper judge and master ; pro-
mise to utter no more imprecations against Daoud, and no
more to agitate the city with cries of death against any body."
The soldiers, deceived by this semblance of magnanimity,
made the promise and returned in silence to their barrack.
XXXVIL
During this cessation of the soldiers, the Sultana Validé
and her daughter, the Sultana, wife of Daoud, conspired
with all the artifices of two women, drawing by handfuls
from the public treasury, to save a son-in-law and a husband.
They did not disguise from themselves that the punishment
of their instrument would be the prologue to their own exe-
cution. Their largesses and their promises succeeded in
creating during the night a party for Daoud. The. execu-
tioner himself, won over by their gold, engaged to have the
execution conducted with sufficient slowness to give the
liberators of Daoud time to muster and to rescue him.
The following day, in fact, at the moment when Daoud,
conducted from the Seven Towers before the divan, heard
his sentence of death, and was carried by the executioners
in his rags of the preceding day to die before the fountain.
HISTORT OF TURKEY. 195
bespattered with the blood of the chief of the djebedjis,
the executioner left him more time than was accorded to
convicts for prayer.
Daoud, kneeling without a turban, the naked sabre of
the headsman already brandished over his head, drew all of
a sadden from his bosom and read aloud the katti-scherif of
Mustapha, which ordered him to murder Othman. This
afterhand katti-scherif had been doubtless surprised from
the Sultan and slipped by trusty hands into those of Daoud, to
serve as his justification at. the last moment. The Janissa-
ries in the confidence of those two women, affected to declare
themselves fully satisfied, covered the reading with acclama-
tions, pushed aside the executioners, tore ofif I)aoud from the
fountain, brought him a horse richly caparisoned, and led
him in triumph to the mosque, the forum of so many tragic
vicissitudes of fortune. The people, as fickle in the Con-
stantinople of the Ottomans as in the Byzantium of the
Greeks, saluted with hurrahs this sudden turn in the fate of
Daoud, and followed the tumultuous current created by the
soldiers.
All pressed around the horse of the ex-vizier, boasting
of having contributed to his safety, and asking him to throw
them a fragment of the rags he had on, for the purpose of
being able to present it to him in the day of his power, and to
claim the price of the life whieh they had rendered him by
their sedition. In passing in front of the bakery of the spahis,
one of these soldiers gave him his turban, another his c^tan,
a third his horse and his arms.* On entering the peristyle
of the mosque, the Janissaries, still more interested than
the spahis in the impunity of their accomplice, stripped him of
his chance garments, brought more sumptuous %nes, and
placed upon his head the golden-fringed turban of the viz-
iers. Daoud, invested tumultuously with this supreme dig-
nity by the vociferations of a hancLful of rebels, recognized
the exigencies of the soldiery, by distributing in advance to
the most obsequious, the places of kiaya, or chief of the
ohiaoux, of viziers, with military fiefs and largesses.
But the hour which he thus employed in confirming his
power instead of employing it to assure his safety by flight,
was turned already against him. The spahis became indig-
« But he was, according to the antbor, already on horseback, and a
hone " richly caparisoned," to boot. — Traruhtor,
196 raSTORT OF TURKEY.
nant at the conduct of the Janissaries ; the people, at the
conduct of both the military flEU^tions. The yenal popu-
larity, won a moment at the price of gold by the two Sul-
tanas for their favorite, crumbled before the crushing unpop-
ularity of the unpunished and now triumphant assassin of
Othman II. The seraglio was surrounded to demand from
the grand vizier vengeance upon this mere derision of the
laws. The grand chamberlain of the palace, Damadi- Ahmed,
offered himself to the eunuch to go with the bostandjis and
precipitate Daoud from his insolent triumph. Attended by
some thousands of bostandjis and capidjis, he mardied with-
out hesitation to the mosque amid the encouragements of the
multitude. He scattered, By his mere presence, the Janissaries,
the spahis and the populace that escorted Daoud ; he wrested
from them without resistance their idol, and placing Daoud
on the same car in which the latter conducted his victim,
Othman, to the Seven Towers, he led him back into his pri-
son and had him beheaded, as also KalenderOghli, his
accomplice, in the same apartment and on the same spot where
these two miscreants had thrown down, strangled and muti-
lated their padischah.
Thus, the reprisal of the same place, as the reprisal of
the same punishment, serves once more to attest that ven-
geance, intelligent and inevitable, which punishes the murder
of the victim by that of the murderer.
Their bodies were dragged by the legs into the sea.
XXXVIII.
The old eunuch, Mahomed, who regarded with a forced
passivenegs these vengeances of public opinion, accepted them
for want of being able to avert them. He was even con-
strained to employ the authority of Mustapha I. in displac-
ing, in banishing and in executing the chief fomentbrs of the
revolution which had placed Mustapha upon the throne.
His rival, Mére-Housseïn, secretly urged the people and
the troops to demand more bloody reparations of the death
of Othman. It was with him a means of getting himself
popular in the empire, of vilifying the eunuch and the Sul-
tana Validé, and of remounting on their ruin to the power
which he had held but for so few days.
" The empire," he. was wont to say aloud to his partisans,
making allusions to the age of the eunuch, who was eighty
HISTOBT OP TURKEY. 197
years, and to the ascendant of the Soltana Validé over the
old man, ** is governed by two old women and by an idiot.
Is it wonderful that every thing is going to ruin ? "
An Albanian aga, named Suleiman, an instrument of
Mére-Housseïn, undertook to stimulate this fermentation of
discontent in the troops, and to push the murmurs to the ex-
treme of sedition. The officers of the Janissaries and of
the spahis put their heads together to wrest by force the
government from those decrepit hands. Their soldiers,
secretly encouraged by them, assailed, the 5th February, at
daybreak, the divan, and thus addressed the old vizier : " It
is you,*' said they, " ^ho give up our brethren and our officers
to the executioner; we want you no longer; we desire
to be governed by vigorous ministers Retire instantly,
lay down voluntarily a power for which your age and your
mutilation unfit you f otherwise our sabres will lay you on
the steps of the divan, and our hands cast your minced mem-
bers into the waves where you have thrown Daoud."
XXXIX.
The old man^ abandoned by all, and even by the Sultana,
gave up the seals into the hands of the rebels, who trans-
ferred them to Mére-Housseïn, their instigator. Five hun-
dred sugar-loaves to the soldiers, caftans of honor to the
chiefs of the revolt, and two hundred thousand ducats to the
Janissaries, recompensed, in the seraglio itself, the insurrec-
tion that thus dishonored it. Mére-Housseïn let the eunuch
retire in peace into the harem, but he banished all the men
who gave him umbrage by their talents and could aspire to
the rank of grand vizier.
XL.
Mere did not scruple to attach to him the favor of this
soldiery by the same, corruptions and the Same licenses by
which he had purchased it. He had the floor of their
mosque covered with rich carpets of new silk ; he assembled,
on the square of the meat-market, the head cooks of the
messes, who formed under this title the staff of each regi-
ment : " Comrades," said he to them, " pray for the direction
of the rei^n of our happy padisohah, and Keep yourselves in
peace; t&e wherever you please, your meats, your wax
198 HISTOBT OF TUBKST.
li^ts, your wood, and all that you find naeessary : thank
God, the padischah is sufficiently rich to treat lib^ally his
slaves."
The Janissaries cheered the yizier, and carried their
insatiable exiffenoies quite as far as the want of popularity of
their accomplice pusned. his complaisance towards them.
All was indiscipline, haphazard, and pillage of the shops and
the tareasury of the capital Public opinion^ enslayed but in-
dignant, revealed itself by multiplied conflagrations in Oo&-
stantinople, anonymous notices, which substituted fire for the
voice, and insurrected the people by terror and despair.
XLI.
Abaza-Pasha, revolted at Tripoli, took advantage of
these agitations of the capital, to advance securely with hm
army of avengers of Othman II., into Caramania. Master
of Siwas and of Angora, he procured the assassination of
Yousouf-Pasha, revoked in the same cause at Merasch, under
pretence that this colleague meditated reconciliation with the
regicides. At Cesarea, where he entered a victor, the sheiks
received him as a libeifator : " Fear nothing," said they to
him before the people, "fortune is on thy* side. Thou art
the envoy of God, He gives thee power to deliver the Mus-
sulmans from the oppression of the tyrant Janissaries."
Abaza, at the head of sixty thousand men, confiscated
every where the property of the Janissaries to defray the pay
of his troops. The enemy and declared executioner of this
soldiery, wherever on his march he discovered a Janissary,
he had him beheaded after having horseshoes nailed to hia
heels, in sign of assimilation to brutes. Master of entire
Anatolia, he blockaded for three months back the capital
city of Broussa.
This unpunished dismemberment of the empire by a rebel
foreigner, of a race deemed barbarous, the fires that devoured
nightly whole districts of the city, the insolence of the sol-
diers, the emulation of license between the ^ahis and the
Janissaries, the imbecility of the Sultan, the incapacity of
his mother, a woman who had but the energy and the mobility
of her passions, but no solidity of judgment, the lurking
intrigues of the Sultana Koesim, in the old seraglio, who
plotted to substitute her son Mourad to the son of the Validé
upon the throne, kept the public in a perpetual anguisL
HI8T0BY OF TUBEST. 199
1%e otilemas, indignant at the excesses of the military domi-
nation, summoned the mufti to preside over their meeting in
the mosque of Saint Sophia, to deliberate upon the public
danger. The mufti, to augment the popular fermentation,
replied, that, " as long as Mére-Housseïn was grand vizier,
no remedy was applicable to the wounds of the nation ; that
he was going to see the Sultan to solicit the deposition of
this impious minister and corrupter of the troops, and that
he wovdd appear no more before them until he had ob-
tained it."
The spahis, apprised of the courageous course of the
mufbi, assembled at the gates to hinder him, by threats of
death, from going to the seraglio. One of them, son of a
cutler, cried to his comrades : ^^ Do not let him out, or
else you will all be massacred." The mufbi brayed their
threats and their arms ; he went up, under the escort of
patriot Mussulmans, to the seraglio. Mére-Housseïn, dread-
ing this collection of armed men, surrounded himself with
bribed troops in the palace of the aga of the Janissaries.
From there he ordered the oulemas of Saint-Sophia to dis-
perse. The oulemas, strong in number, in right, in the
moral support of all good Mussidmans, received his messen-
gers with imprecations aiîd turned them out of the mosque.
Some ventured to go in deputation to the barrack of the
Janissaries to make a last appeal of patriotism to the heart
of the soldiers : '< The Sultan Mustapha," said they, with
tears in their eyes, to the soldiers, " is destitute of reason ;
the government b conducted or rather torn in his name at
the caprice of the harem or of the adventurers who sway it ;
ruin is upon us ; let us call legally another princ^ to the
throne ; what say you of it ? " The soldiers, separated at
this moment from their chiefs, interrogate each other with
the eye and confess the calamities of the country. " What-
ever side," replied they at last, " our masters, the oulemas,
take, we will follow them."
XLIL
The oulemas, satisfied with this deference of the soldiers,
returned to Saint-Sophia to give tiieir colleagues assurance
as to the disposition of the troops, and to pursue their de-
liberation on the evils of theempire. Mére-Housseïn sends
them in vain other negotiators to persuade them to retire.
200 HISTOBT OF TUBKST.
They come out in a body «round Saint-Sophia with the turban
of Akhschemseddin, one of the martyrs of Islam who was
buried in the mosque of Aïoub. They unroll this sacred
turban to make it a banner. All the sheiks of the other
mosques of Constantinople brins their standards to Saint*
Sophia to join with that of Akhschemseddin. The people
salute with acclamations the mosque of Saint-Sophia adorned
with those thousand streaming standards: but arms are
wanting, and night falls without a declaration of the troops
reconquered by the liberalities of the grand vizier and the
Validé.
Mére-Housseïn launched on Saint-Sophia a scum of Jan^
issaries and of Albanians under the orders of a tschaousch of
Caramania. They broke in the doors, massacred some oulé-
mas, and threw their bodies in a sewer to conceal the eyidenoes
of their crime. A dervish who had addressed the people in
favor of the oulemas was hanged the following day. The
civic consternation hid itself before the tyranny of the
soldiers ; but the oulemas desired in secret the success of
Abaza, and called him by their emissaries to deliver Oon-
stantinople.
XLIIL
Meanwhile the grand vizier, uneasy at the immobility of
the spahis, who were separating their cause from that of
the Janissaries, and who had appeared to tamper in the civic
insurrection of the oulemas, resolved to exterminate the
spahis. His plan, known only to some of his confidants,
consisted in assembling them after the fêtes of Beïram in a
court of the seraglio under pretext of receiving their pay,
and in having them shot down from the windows and the
port-holes by his Albanians.
An accident caused the plot to transpire. During the
fêtes of the Beïram, the defterdar of the grand vizier came
to seat himself upon the bench of one of the shops of the
covered bazar, to see defile in front the processions. Some
soldiers of the corps of the spahis dared to dispute with him
the place. "Are we not," said they to him insolently, " the
fEkVorites of the padischah, and thus entitled to take the
privileged places wherever we choose V " " Take the place,
then," replied bitterly the imprudent defterdar ; " but after
the festivals you will have justice."
HISTORY OF TtJffKBY* 201
Thîs mdiscretion, reported from barrack to barrack, ex-
oited with anxiety and with anger the spahis. They ran in
arms to the divan of the grand vizier. ** You meditate our
destruction/* cried they to him, " but we on our part want
your head." The seraglio, inundated with their cohorts, re*
sounded with their imprecations. The Sultana Validé con*
jured Mére*Housseïn to yield to necessity and to appease the
tumult by retiring. " No, no," said he, " I have received the
government from the hands of the Janissaries, and I will
fflve it up into their hands only when the Janissaries shall
demand it." He absconded from the seraglio and went to
place himself, like Hassan the Fruiterer y under the protec-
tion of the Janissaries in their barrack. These soldiers,
flattered by his confidence in them, and reigning, in fact,
through him, received him with cries of fidelity. Mere*
Housseïn retired into the mosque.
Meanwhile, in the absence of the aga of the Janissaries,
their kyaya or second general represented to the soldiers
'^ the danger of sustaining by arms against the armed spahis
a vizier repudiated by the majority of the people and of the
troops, and of compromising the domination of the army
over the seraglio by setting one moiety of the troops to fight
the other, in the single interest of a vizier odious to the
nation. Is it not better," said to them the kyaya Beïram,
" that you should come to an amicable understanding with
your brothers, the spahis, to choose together a vizier impar-
tial between the two corps ? "
This advice prevailed. The Janissaries and the spahis,
admitted in equal number into a barrack deliberation, deposed
in concert Mére-Housseïn. The seals, delivered by this
minister into the hands of the mufti, were carried in a silk
handkerchief to the Sultan. The troops designated as an
impartial vizier an officer named Ali tne Archer^ from the
name of his early profession.
Ali the Archer, directed by the mufti and the oulemas,
popular in the multitude, all-powerful by the combined elec-
tion of the Janissaries and the spahis, convoked the same
evening the judges of the army, the mufti, the viziers, the
generals, the imans, the sheiks of the mosques — the orffans
religious, legal and military, of the Osmanlis — and set them
to deliberate upon the public peril.
The deposition of the Sultan Mustapha I. and the procla-
mation of prince Mourad or Amurath IV., a child of eleven
Vol. III.— 9*
202 mSTORT OF TtTRKET.
years, the eldest of the snryiying sons of Aclunet I , were
voted unanimously in the very precincts of the palace of Uio
Sultan and almost in his presence. The morning was not
awaited to take off the new Sultan from tàe harem of his
mgther, the Sultana E^aesim, and to salute him on the throne
padischah of the Ottomans.
It was.one of tllose pacific revolutions wherein evident
necessity justifies unanimous resolution, and where the pat-
riotism of all soars superior witiiout opposition and without
crime to the ambitions and the intrigues of a small minority.
Nature had deposed Mustapha in creating him. The soldiers
themselves acknowledged for the first time with a remnant of
shame that the calamities of the country ought not to be to
them an opportunity of extorting money, and they renounced
the ratifications habitual on the change of sovereign.
Mustapha I., his mother, his wives and his slaves, returned
to the old seraglio.
Never did infant prince receive the empire in a more
complete degradation of glory, of order, oùà of force. The
Persians had coi^uered seven provinces and a capital, Bag-
dad, from the Turks; Abaza possessed entire Asia; ihe
anarchy of the soldiery possessed the rest The principle
of hereditary monarchy had, in three rei^s, sapped the very
foundations of the monarchy : this principle had^ given it in
thirty years two minors and an imbecile ; it was now going
to give it a tyrant.*
* It is not properly the principle of inheritance that gave those evils,
it was rather the opposite principle of election, nsnrped by the soldiery.
Had the sane broth^ of Achmet L been left, as that principle required,
to inherit, or his son Othman not been deposed by the re-ele^ihn oi an
idiot, both the evils which the anther speaks of had been avoided in
point of fact. As to the contrast between the two principles, it is but
poetry, if not qnite pnerility. There is no abtolute preference between
these processes of government, unless it be that one is fitter for a more
advanced civilization. But then it .would be, for this very reason, the
more unfit for a less forward people, and then the less preferable rela-
tively. Lamartine does not dream of asking himself whether, with an
openly élective monarchy, the Ottoman empire could have existed a single
decade ; he, on the contrary, commends election at the very moment
when its parM exercise hat brought, according to his own narrative,
this empire to the verge of ruin \^~TranskUor,
HISTOBY OF TUBKST. 203
BOOK TWENTY-FIFTH.
Thb reign of a child could be for a long time but the reign
of his mother. The Sultana Koesim, mother of Amurath
IV., a woman accustomed to govern under Ahmed I., still
young and beautiful, bound by affection or interest to the
eminent men of the empire, penetrating in intellect, prudent
in understanding, ambitious, if not by nature at least by
situation, had the adroitness, from the recesses of the old
seraglio, to save the life of her son and to prepare his advent
to the throne. The Sultana Validé, mother of Mustapha I.,
intimidated by the ascendant of the Sultana Koesim, over
the divan and the people, had been deterred from the mur-
der, often proposed, of ker rival and of Amurath. The
murder of Othman II. had excited too much unpopularity
and too much horror against her to add to it the murder of
other sons of Ahmed. The Ottomans would not have par-
doned her for cutting up by the roots, in favor of a preca-
rious and imbecile prince, the imperial dynasty; it was to
these scruples that Amurath had owed his life, and that he
was come now to owe the throne. The hand of his mother,
who had raised him to it, was alone capable of sustaining
him.
Amurath IV. was but a child; but he was besides a
sickly child. His precocious intelligence, nurtured in the
retirement of the old seraglio by an assiduous mother, was
not obscured, but eclipsed by a natal infirmity, inherited
from his father. Some ffits of epilepsy foreboded him a short
life and a reign as convulsive as the spasms of his soul. His
oval countenance, pale, melancholy, but of a pensive and
penetrating expression, recalled the features of the Sultana
Koesim, surnamed Mahpetker, or the splendor of the moon ;
his hair and eyebrows were dark like those of that Persian
204 UI8T0BY OF TUBKSY.
slave ; his eyes large, well-cut and of a sombre azure, were
pleasing to look upon in repose ; but the least emotion of
the passions stirred up in the depths of his soul, sent to the
eyes, says the Venetian narrative, a character of aberration
and of menace that betokened premature tyranny. His
mother, whom all the annalists of the time represent as
possessing a great soul and a great character, had accustomed
him from the cradle to domineer and to will with the abso-
lute and quick capriciousness of a woman. Brought up
during twelve years between the sceptre and the bow-string,
beneath the terror of a death perpetually undecided over his
head, uncertain whether he was going to be the victim or the
executioner, he became suspicious like the one, ferocious
like the other. This education under the dagger seemed
admirably contrived to form a sanguinary prince. It had
produced its fruits, and this Turkbh Agrippina produced her
Nero.
IL
The ceremony of his circumcision followed immediately
that of his religious investiture with the sword of Othman
in the mosque of Aïoub. His mother dictated to him the
names of the viziers to whom he iias to commit the govern-
ment until the period when he could exercise it suitably
himself. Keman-Kesch Ali-Pasha, the author of the revo-
lution which had just raised her from the recesses of the old
seraglio to the side of the throne of her son, was maintained
by her in the functions of grand vizier. No man was more
interested than Ali-Pasha in upholding the work of his own
hands.
Ali, who had been so courageously seconded in this
popular movement by the muffci Yahya, made haste to be
ungrateful, for fear of being enslaved to the moral authority
of his accomplice: he deposed the mufti and exiled him
from the capital. He appointed in his place the former
mufti Ezaad, grandson of Seadeddin, a man esteemed for
his virtues, but whose elevation was only meant to color the
injustice done Yahya, and to prepare that dignity for Bostan-
zadé, the father-in-law of Ali. He caused to be arrested and
conducted to the Seven Towers the preceding grand vizier
Gourdji-Mohammed and the capitan-pasha Khalil, under the
factitious accusation of a state plot against the young Sultan.
HlflTOBY OF TUBKSY. 205
Thdr 8ale crime was to impede bis ambition in ibe divuu
Tbe kiaja of the Janissaries, Beiram, who had harangued
the soldiers in the barrack against Mére-Honsseïn and thus
prepared the coalition of the Janissaries and tbe spahis in
favor of the dethronement of Mustapha I., was appointed
aga of the former body and received in marriage the sister
of tbe Sultan. The capitan-pasha Redjeb espoused another.
Hafiz, governor of Diarbekir and a man of great promise,
bad already married tbe eldest of the three sisters.
III.
The accession of Amuratb lY. presented a sad coinci-
dence not only with the revolt of Abaza in Anatolia, but
also with the ùl\ of Bagdad into the hands of the Persians.
Schab- Abbas, as worthy of the name of Great with the
Persians as Soliman II. with the Turks, had continued to
negotiate, to reign and to fight from his infancy, until all the
provinces of ancient Persia, dismembered under his prede-
cessors, were restored, reconquered and pacified throughout
the vast expanse of tbe empire. Wiser than Genghis Khan
and than Timour, instead of wasting the forces of his people
on precarious and hazardous invasions of India or Turkey,
Schab- Abbas set himself to consolidate tbe pristine nucleus
of Persia, judging with the sagacity of a statesman that pos-
terity does not award enduring glory to adventurers but to
founders, and does not measure the fame of a great man by
the spaoe he has overrun, but by the empire which he has
left organized behind him.
His last wars against the Turks and against the Ouzbeks
had been but wars of defence to re-seize Tauris and Bagdad
conquered by the Ottomans from his territory. After each
campaign or each victory, he had listened to or made himself
propositions of truce or of peace. His ambassadors had
quite recently again brought to Mustapha I. presents worthy
^ the sumptuousness of tbe East. But these ambassadors
themselves bad been able to take an estimate of the imbe-
cility of the Sultan, tbe anarchy of tbe seraglio, the un-
checked revolt of Abaza, the decadence of tbe empire, and
the facility of detaching from it a fragment additional. At
the same time Schab- Abbas was patient, like men who feel
that the tide of things is setting in in tbe direction of their
fortune. He did not declare formal hostilities against a peo-
206 HiiTOBT or tubkst.
pie whose ealamities were fighting for hhn more effeotoallj
tiian he eoiild. He had the §rt of waiting — ^this dirinatory
secret of minds who let events mature themselves.
His last victory over the Turks for the recovery of
Tauris was well nigh having cost him his life. At nightfall,
while his victorious soldiers were leading mai»es of prison*
ers Turkish and Kurdish into his camp, he had seated him-
self to drink sherbet upon a hillock of the field of battle in
front of which were passing the captives. He perceived
among their number a warrior of colossal stature conducted
by a young Persian soldier scarce out of his boyhood. He
ordered the prisoner before him, and questioned him as to
his nation and family. " I am," replied the chained giant,
" of the race of the Kurds and of the tribe of the Moukris."
At this response, Schah- Abbas remembering that he had
among his own generals a Kurd refugee from this nation and
a deadly enemy of this tribe, ordered to deliver the prisoner
of war into the hands of his compatriot named Boustem-
beg, to be made by him his slave or his guest according to
his pleasure. But Boustem-Beg, who was at this moment
seated among the guests of the king, refused nobly the pres-
ent thus intended him. ^^ My honor, it is true," said he
to Schah- Abbas, ^^ would demand that I take vengeance
upon this enemy of my house ; but 1 have sworn never to
take advantge of the weakness of an enemy disarmed, cap-
tive and unfortunate, to satisfy the vengeance of my family."
Schah- Abbas, at this moment fuddled by the wine which
he had just drank and with a remnant of the wrath which
animated him against the Kurds, forgot his usual magna-
nimity and made a sign to behead the prisoner. At this
gesture, the iron-muscled Kurd snaps by an effort the cords
that handcuffed him, snatches a poniard from the cincture
of one of the Persism chiefs, and rushes upon the king, with
the purpose of dying at least in immolating the enemy of
his race. In the confusion of this scuffle, the torches that
lit the table fall and are eztin^ished; the warriors of
Abbas start up to aid him ; but hands search at random for
hands in the dark; swords cross swords; all daggers are
uplifted, and none dares strike for fear of reaching uie heart
of a friend in meaning to sacrifice an enemy. At last Abbas
was heard to cry as he stru^led in the dust : '^ I hold his
hand, I have wrested from mm the poniard ; strike without
fear of hurting me."
RI8T0BY OF TUBKIET. 307
At these words, the servants and the gnests had pierced
with a hundred dagger wounds the colossal Kurd, lying oa
the ground upon the body of the king. The torches relit
œchibit a commixture of blood and of wine upon the carpet
of the tent Abbas, without losing any thing of his coolness,
resumed his seat^ before the tent and continued throughout
the night to driuk and to count the heads which his soldiers
threw at his feet
A short time after, he re-captured the island and the
opulent port of Ormus from the Portuguese. An English
ambassador, Dodmore Cotton, in the name of the East India
Company, came with a retinue of gentlemen of his nation to
congratulate him on this conquest and to conclude with Per-
sia a treaty of commerce. These envoys relate, in their
report to the East India Company, their sumptuous recep-
tion at the audience of Abbsus the Great.
" Sir Dodmore Cotton and the gentlemen accompanying
him remained in an antechamber for some moments before
being presented ; and instead of coffee, which is offered ordi-
narily on similar occasions, they found before them a rich
repast, served on dishes of gold, with a great abundance of
wines that flowed from flasks of massive gold into goblets of
the same metal. From this apartment they were conducted
across two others which are represented to us as splendidly
decorated, full of golden vases enriched with jewels and con-
taining rose-water, flowers and wine. After crossing these
apartments, they reached the grand hall of parade ; tib^ high
oflcess of the crown were ranged all around, along the wall
like so many statues ; none of them made the slightest move-
ment, all was profound silence. Beautiful- boys, wearing
brilliant turbans and embroidered robes, carried cups of
wine and handed them to those who wished to drink. Abbas
was arrayed with great simplicity in red cloth : he wore no
ornament ; his sword-hilt idone was gilded. The principal
magnates, who were seated at his side, were dressed with as
little parade, and it was visible that the king, in the midst
of that blaze of wealth and grandeur, affected simplicity.
Perhaps his pretensions to the character of pontiff demanded
that in pubUc he should show a personal contempt for the
riches and vanities of earth.
^^ The ambassador explained, through an interpreter, the
object of his mission: it proposed a league with Persia
against the Turks, and to obtain satisfaction for Sir Eobert
208 mtfOBT or tubut.
Shirley, an Eafflish gentleman in ihe semee of S4iali«
Abbas, who had been insulted and pillaged by a Pereiaa
noblemaD.
^^ The response of the king," says the reoital, " was per«
fectly gracious. He expressed his contempt for the Turks,
promised to compel the sons of the deceased noble to render
satisfaction to Shirley, and offered to reoeiye, erery year,
English cloth in exchange for a thousand bales of silk which
he would see delivered by his officers to British agents at
Goura. Abbas, it is said, was much amused at the embar-
rassment of Sir Podmore Gotten in striving to seat himself
cross-legged according to the usage of the country. But
wishing to please his guest, he called for a glass and drank
to the health of the £ng of England : at the name of his
sovereign, the ambassador rose and took off his hat ; Abbas
smiled, lifting also his turban to show that he partook of the
respect for the king of England.
'^ The sole thought of this prince, at the height of the
glory which he ascended to, was," continue the European
ambassadors, '^ to pacify his dominions. His severity was not
his character, but his policy. He knew that a despotic
government can never be founded but upon a timid and com^
plete submission to the authority of the monarch. He suc«
ceeded to perfection in attaining this end; and the long
peace which he secured to Persia should be attributed above
all to the wisdom of his government He labored more
assiduously than any preceding sovereign for the améliora-
tion and the well-being of his kingdom. He took the city
of Ispahan as the capital of his empire ; and the population
of this city Was nearly doubled during his reign. The
fraud mosque, the magnificent palace of Ohehel-Setoon, the
eautiful avenues and palaces called Char-Bagh or the " four
gardens," the main bridge over the river Zainderood ; and
several of the splendid palaces of the city and the suburbs
were built by this prince. Mushed owed to him also the more
important of its works. He had constructed, at immense
cost, a causeway which crosses the whole of Mazenderan, and
rendered thus this impassable region accessible to armies and
travellers in all seasons of the year. He built bridges upon
all the rivers of Persia ; and it is to the munificence of this
prince that the traveller is indebted for finding every where,
in this country, spacious and solid caravansaries.
"He had fbur sons," adds this narrative, "whom he
mSIÎORT OP TtTRKET. 209
regarded with ddight w^ile they had not yet attained the
aee of manhood, and shown those great and noble qualities
which he should wish them as a father ; but when all Uhe
wishes of his heart seemed satisfied, he could not bear to
see the eyes of his subjects turned upon another than him-
self. He entertained suspicions of the premature ambition
of the eldest of the sons, named Sophi-Mirza."
This prince, endowed with t^o heroism and the magna-
nimity of his father, had, it was believed, conspired against
the life of Schah- Abbas, through resentment of a punish-
ment which the king had inflicted upon a favorite corrupter
of the son. Abbas, like Constantino and Soliman, forgot
that he was father, to remember only that he was judge and
king. He confided his sorrow and his resolution to punish
his son to one of his generals named Karatchy-Khan, van-
quisher of the Turks and the most devoted of the supporters
of the throne ; he besought him to undertake the execution
of his son, as he had stricken down his enemies, since that
unnatural son was meditating parricide. The aged Khan
threw himself at the feet of his master and implored him to
take his own life rather than to render it odious by forcing
him to be the assassin of so generous a prince.
Abbas did not press him farther ; but he soon found in
Beh-Bood-Khan an instrument more disposed to serve him.
This nobleman, as if in vengeance of a personal injury, slew
the prince as he was getting on horseback in the very court
of the palace and fled into the stables of the king. The
monarch, under pretext of the respect he owed an ancient
usage which rendered this asylum sacred, hindered the exe-
cution of the assassin. If he allowed it, said he, it would
be to prejudge the cause and to cast suspicion upon an inci-
dent which needed to be cleared up : it was requisite to sus-
pend prosecution until the son of Sophi-Mirza, who was still
an infant, should be of age to demand vengeance for the
blood of his father. But even this veil was presently with-
drawn ; Beh-Bood-Khan came forth from his ayslum and
was elevated to employments of distinction. Meanwhile,
there is satisfaction in learning that this wretch met at last
with the due reward of his infamy.
Abbas, as soon as the crime had been committed, b.ecame
a prey to the most torturing remorse. He sought occasions
to put to death all those of his courtiers who had envenomed
hifl soul against the son whom he wept, it was said, sincerely.
210 HI8T0BT OF TXTBKST.
Bat ha reierred for Beli-Bood an exeoution more cruel : he
ordered this man so obedient to bring him the head of his
own son. The rile sUye obeyed. At the moment when he
presented to Abbas the head of the jaanft man, that prince^
with a bitter smile of contempt, asked him, what were his
feelings ? " I am very unhappy, replied Beh-Bood. — ^* Thorn
wilt 1^ happy, Beh-Bood," said Abbas, ^^ for ^on art ambi^
tioos and thy heart is now like to that of ihj master."
Soon after the death of Sophi-Mina, his cniel fikther,
still suspicious, caused the eyes to be torn out of his two
other sons. If we may trust a contemporaneous writer and
a Frenchman, the fate of one of these prinoes was attended
with most tragic circumstances. This young man, whose
name was Khoda-Bendeh, was as distinguished for courage
and talent as his eldest brother ; but he was more prudent
in aYoiding whatsoever nu^ht awaken the suspicions and the
jealousy of his &ther. He shunned flatterers and refused
the praises justly due to his noble actions. This conduet
did but add to the glory which occasioned his danger.
The first symptom which Abbas save of his suspicions
was to put to death a man who was the tutor and intimate
friend of his son. Knowing that the only crime of this
officer was the too great respect which he bore his master,
the young prince presented himself at court. There, giving
free vent to his just indignation at what was done by Abbas,
he forgot all prudence and thought no more of hiis safety.
It is related that he was irritate to the degree of derange-
ment, and that he dared, in the presence of even his father and
hb king, to draw his sword. The fatal order of death was
given on the spot ; but Abbas consented to deprive him but
of sight
Cut off from the light of the day, the prince fell into
deep despair. Nothing could please him more, and his whole
life was passed in forming vain projects and fruitless purposes
of vengeance against the author of his life and his misfor-
tunes. He had two children ; the elder was an amiable girl
named Fatima, who was the idol of her grandfather, and who
had obtained over him an extraordinary influence. Abbas
appeared unhappy when little Fatima was not by him ; her
voice could alone mitigate the violent fits of passion to
which he daily became more and more subject The prince
listened with a ferocious joy to what was told him of his
daughter's influence and of the need which the king had of
her towards his happiness.
HIBTOBY OF TUBKBY. 211
Ooe day as she oame to play in his amis, he clatched her
with the fiury of a maniac and instantly strangled her. The
mother, stupefied, screamed and said to him that it was his
cherished daughter he had killed ; instead of hearkening to
her, he rushed to seize his son, still an infant, and to satiate
likewise upon him his frenzy. The wretched princess suc-
ceeded in rescuing from him the child and sending to inform
Abbas. The rage and the despair of the monarch on
beholding this horror gave to his son a moment of joy. The
wretch fed with avidity upon that horrible vengeance, and
ended the terrible scene by drinking off a dose of poison
which terminated in an instant his unfortunate existence.
This prince expiated, like all the despots of the East, the
grandeurs of external power by the anguishes of his domes-
tic life. The dynastic system of the East made of sons and
of brothers the presumptive enemies of their own blood.
This system forced the kmgs or the Sultans to outrage nature,
and nature avenged herself in torturing their heart.
IV.
Such was the state of Persia, and such the apogee of the
grandeur and of the misery of Schah- Abbas at the moment
when an epileptic infant was ascending at Constantinople the
throne of an idiot uncle. Of all the conquests that Persia
had to reclaim from the Turks, Bagdad was the only
one which had not yet completed the glory and the ambition
of Schah- Abbas.
But Bagdad, although nominally in submission to the
Turks, was agitated with an independence which wanted
really but the name of revolt This ancient and splendid
capital of Arabia and of the Khalifs was torn between the
rebel pashas of the Sultan and the leaders of Arabian fac-
tions, who imposed on it by turns the tyranny of their great
tribes of the desert. It was by itself alone an empire lost
on the confines of Mesopotamia. The intestine revolutions
of this province and of this capital presented as much of
fickleness, of tragedy and of blood as Ispahan or Constanti-
nople.
A short time before the advent of Amurath IV., the
government of Bagdad, half Turkish and half Arab, was
effectually divided between the civil governor and the beg-
krbeg or military gov^nor. The civil governor was Arab^
212 HISTORY or TUBKKT.
tiie military one was Ottoman; hence inoessaot dissennonf
of race and of attributions between the two rival authorities.
The civil governor or sub-bashi was Bekir, a tribe chief^
of great influence in the city and in the desert. He had
at command twelve hundred cavalry (azabs), who counter*
balanced upon occasion the military force of the beglerbeg
Yousouf-Pasha. Bekir obeyed the Porte but on condition of
reigning in his own country.
One day, while Bekir was visiting the tents of hb tribe
in the country, his son, named Mohsunmed, pretending him-
self menaced by the beglerbeg, insurrected the city in the
name of his father's popularity and pointed the cannons of
the ramparts against the citadel. The father at this intelli*
gence massacred five hundred Turkish soldiers, whom he had
taken with him perfidiously from the city, under pretext of
assisting him to levy some tributes ; then he with his Arabs
re-entered Bagdad and continued to blockade Yousouf in the
fortress. One of his rivals of popularity in the city^
Mohammed-Aga, who had taken part with the beglerb^
Yousouf, seeing the citadel on the verge of succumbing, came
forth, and with his two sons advanced to implore tha gene-
rosity of Bekir. ïhe pitiless Arab caused all three to be
thrown in a boat which was filled with kindled sulphur and
bitumen, and abandoning them to the current of the Tigris,
seated himself on the bank to see the torture and to hear
the cries of Mohammed and of his sons.
Yousouf had to capitulate and withdraw from the city.
Bekir reigned there with unshared dominion, in the mock
name of the Turks. He interdicted to all the pashas who
were sent by the Porte the entrance of Bagdad. The
Porte, indignant, at last appointed Hafiz, pasha of Diarbekir,
serdar or supreme general of an expedition against Bekir.
The governors of the provinces of Maraseh, of Mosoul, of
Amasia, of Sirvas and of entire Mesopotamia, had orders to
join their troops to his army. The Kurds joined him at
Mosoul, under command of the beg of Kurdistan.
Obliged to turn back to face Abaza, a revolted pasha of
Merasch, who was advancing upon his right flank, he sent
the half of his army only before him, to the walls of Bagdad.
Bekir came forth, and, without accepting battle, harassed
HISTORY OP TURKEY. 213
with his Arabian cavalry the motionless army of the Turks,
rfiut in betwecA the desert and the city. Hafiz, coming up
with all his forces, fell upon the Arabs of Bekir, and raised
in the desert a pyramid of several thousand heads of rebels,
before his tent, after the victory. He crossed the Tigris and
besieged the city on the side of the fortress " of the Bird,"
the main redoubt of Bagdad upon the river.
Pressed by Hafiz, from whom he could expect no manner
of mercy, Bekir offered through his emissaries the city to
the Persians, if they would only succor him against Hafiz.
Schah- Abbas, always watchful for the events which might
restore to Persia the most regretted of her provinces and
the most splendid of her capitals, advanced thirty thousand
men, under the orders of his best general, Sophi-Kouli-Khan.
At the approach of these troops, Bekir, changing his
part, proposed to Hafiz to defend with him Bagdad against
the Persians, called in by his own intrigues, on condition of
being invested by the Porte with the hereditary government
of the city. Hafiz replied to this offer but by lifting his
poniard upon the throat of the negotiator of Bekir. The
following day Bekir declared himself subject of Schah-
Abbas, and sent insolently, not now in his own name, but in
that of the king of Persia, a summons to Hafiz to evacuate
with his army the Persian territory. One of the three hun-
dred Persian nobles who had entered the city of Bagdad
was the bearer of the summons.
" We are not upon Persian territory," responded Hafiz ;
"we are here to chastise a rebel, and our mission cannot
break the peace between the two empires." — " The bird that
enters the net belongs to the hunter," replied the envoy. —
" The bird of which you speak is in our cage," rejoined the
serdar, placing his hand upon his scimitar ; " if it flies away
into your nests, we will not pursue it." — ^* A truce to vain
words ! " exclaimed haughtily the Persian ; " withdraw from
the walls of Bagdad, or Kartschghaïkhan will soon compel
you. y — ^^ If the peace be violated," replied Hafiz, " the respon-
sibility falls on your head."
VI.
At the moment when these combats, these negotiations
and these treacheries were holding in suspense the fate of
Bagdad, the grand vizier sent to Bekir the title of pasha, of
214 msTOBT or tubkst.
hereditary goyemor of the city and of defender of the
" Honse of Salvation," the religions sarname of the capital
of the Kalifis. This satisfaction of the ambition of Bekir
made of this Arab, before traitor to the Ottomans, a greater
traitor to his new master. He ordered to be called before
him, one by one, the three hundred Persians whom he intro-
duoed into the fortress <^ of the Bird," massacred them, and
had their three hundred bodies suspended from the battle-
ments of the city wall in order to terrify the Persian army.
He kept but one of them aliye to be the bearer to the
general of Sohah-Abbas of the news of his treachery.
*< Long life to the king Schah- Abbas," said he ironically m
thb message; ^^he has deliyered us by your presence from
the oppression of the Turks ; we are now free and masters
in Bagdad ; be the bearer to your sovereign of the thanks
of Bdkir."
VII.
Hafix drew off his useless army towards Mosoul, after
this shameful transaction of the Porte.
Meanwhile, Schah- Abbas, indignant at the perfidy and
the insolence of the new pasha Bekir, appeared, fourteen
days after, before the walls of Bagdad, to avenge the
outrage done his honor and his soldiers. Bekir implored
the succor of Hafix. This serdar, occupied in driving back
the army of Abaza which was marching upon him towards
Mosoul, was unable to send but a detachment to Bagdad.
This detachment, commanded by Houssein-Pasha could not
force the line of the complete blockade of the Persians, and
Houssein-Pasha, called by thejn into a conference, was
massacred in reprisal of the massacre of the three hundred
Persians victimized by Bekir.
The siege had lasted now three months ; the mines had
opened sixty breaches in the ramparts ; hunger and terror
had driven numbers of the inhabitants to desert into the
camp of the Persians. The son himself of Bekir, brought
up in the father's perversity, did not hesitate to conspire
against that father with the besiegers. He was named
Mohammed, and commanded the citadel of Bagdad. The
promise of beinff made governor of the city by Schah- Abbas
in place of his rather, induced him to open the gates, daring
the night of the 28th of November, 1623, to the besiegers.
HIOTOKT OF TUKKET. 215
Bekir learaed on awaking, by the sound of the Persian
tymbals and by the chanting of the Persian muezzins upon
the minarets, that he was the victim of his son and the
prisoner of Abbas. " The city is the Schah's," shouted
through all its sections the public criers. " The king of
Persia accords a general amnesty to all the inhabitants.
Let the markets be re-opened, and let no one molest his
neighbor under pretext of difference of religion or of race
in the common capital of the descendants of the Khalifs."
This amnesty and tolerance of Abbas changed in an instant
into security and plenty the terror and scarcity of the
capital. Abbas wished, not to destroy cities, but to re-edify
a monarchy.
Bekir, brought at noon into the presence of the Schah,
found his unworthy son seated along side the vanquisher to
judge and to punish him. This unnatural son outraged his
father by words and gestures, and reproached him, in the
name of the treason which he had just committed, with the
treacheries which that father had committed against the
Turks and Persians. The paternal treasures were aban-
doned to him in recompense of his parricide.
VIII.
Meanwhile the amnesty and tolerance of Abbas could
not prevail long against the religious animosity of the Per-
sians, followers of Ali, against the inhabitants of Bagdad
become, under the Ottomans, followers of Omar. Exe-
cutions and martyrdoms ensan^ned the conquered city.
Nouri-E£fendi and Omar-Effendi, famous preaciiers of the
two chief mosques of the city, having generously refused to
blaspheme the name of Omar and the name of Othman,
were hung from a palm-tree with a camel halter which
passed through their jaws, 3,nà fired at leisurely, as a living
target, by the fanatics who coveted a part in their blood.
Bekir, confined beneath the eyes of his miscreant son in
an iron cage, was therein tortured for six days and six nights.
The seventh day the cage was suspended over a fierce fire
which reddened the bars of the grating, to constrain him to
disclose the hiding place where he liad put his treasures.
His son attended at this torture of his father to encourage
it. Bekir was at last thrown into a bark becoated with
216 HI6T0BT or TTTBKBT.
pitch and sulphur to perish of the same tortare by which he
had martyrised the aga Mohammed.
The entire city contemplated without pity, from the
banks of the Ti^is, the torments of the traitor, punished
by treachery. Abbas, alone shocked at the atrocity of the
son of Bekir, to whom he had promised the heritage of his
fitither, exiled him into Khorassan, where the executioners
soon after avenged the cause of nature and of heayen.
Thus returned Bagdad into the hands of Persia. Schah-
Abbas sojourned there some days to visit the tombs of the
saints of Islam. He sent his army to pursue Hafis as fitr as
the walls of Mosoul.
The fidelity of a dog to its master, according to the his-
torian, Petschewi, saved the city and the army. A Kurd
woman, enamored of a Persian, and who had promised to
open him a secret gate to the ramparts, got up during the
night to accomplish her promise; she was already aiming
the hatchet at the head of her sleeping husband, when the
dog, witnessing the crime, sprung at the throat of the faith-
less wife, laid her prostrate, and, awaking by its furious bark-
ing the guards of the citadel, saved at once its master, the
city and the army. In the trenches of Mosoul is seen the
tomb of the dog, of which tradition has preserved the
memory.
^ IX.
Amurath IV. relieved the dejection of the Ottomans, at
the news of the fall of Bagdad, but by blood. The grand visi-
er Ali gave him the example df, and taste for, executions. Sus-
pecting the governor of Egypt, Beber-Mohammed, of being
come to Constantinople in the hope of succeeding him in the
supreme power, he summoned Beber to the divan. Befbre
the opening of the session, he assembled some bostandjis of
the guard and said to them : ^^ The padischah has ordered
the death of a great culprit, which of you will offer him-
self to execute the sentence ?"
One of the protegees and most grateful favorites of the
governor of Egypt, named Kara-Mahmoud, not knowing who
was the victim^ presented himself first to obey the Sultan.
" Very well," said the grand vizier, *• strike then him whom
I shall strike."
A moment after, the governor of Egypt was announced.
HISIOBY OF TUBKBT. 2l7
Tli6 grand viiier arose, adTaneed to the porok of the palaee,
and, overwhelming with invectives Beber, who was ascending
the upper steps, struck liim a blow of the fist upon the breast,
and threw hun backwards to the ground. At this signal,
Mahmoud recognized too late that the person whose death
he had just promised, was his protector and second father.
Turning away the head, he allowed his bostandjis to finish
the murder of his benefactor.
The Sultan was thus inured to the spectacle of execu-
tions. Two days after, a discontentment of the troops hav-
ing wrung by force from him the dismissal of the aga of the
Janissaries, Beiran, his brother-in-law, he ordered to appear
before Mm, after the concession was accomplished, the aga
of the spahis, in the divan, and saw from the bottom of a
stage which was separated by a grating, the head of this aga
roll upon the floor.
At the instance of the Sultana Validé Koesem, protect-
ress of the ex-chief of the black eunuchs of the harem of
Ahmet I., the grand vizier recalled from Mecca this exile, to
restore him to his place in the seraglio. " Beware of this
perfidious eunuch," said his friends to him, ^^ he will ruin
you." The eunuch Mustapha, reinstated in fact in his post
of confidence, and conspiring with the mufti, was not slow
to verify those menaces. He told the Sultan what the grand
vizier had hitherto concealed from him, the fall of Bagdad,
the progress of the revolt of Abaza-Pasha, the victories of
the Persians, the poverty of the treasury, the insubordina-
tion of the lumy, the degradation of the reign under a
minister who made the seraglio tremble, but who left the
provinces to anarchy.
Amurath IV., says the Venetian narrative, sent secretly
for the mufti, and asked if it was true that he desired to
resign his place to leave it to the brother-in-law of the grand
vizier. The mufti, astonished, declared that he had never
given this hope or made such an insinuation to Ali. Amu-
rath, convinced of the ambition and falsehood of his first
minister, commanded him to the seraglio and had his head
cut off before his eyes. The treasures of Ali, which
amounted to seven hundred thousand piasters in money in
his coffers, replenished the void of the imperial treasury.
Mére-Houssein, the former grand vizier, involved in other
intrigues of his own, and guilty of a portion of the calami-
ties of the empire, was also strangled the same day, and his
Vol. flL— 10
218 HISTOBT 07 TUBKST.
Spoils, valaed at fifty thousand ducats, augmented the con-
fiscations which flowed back to their source.
An old Circassian, named Mohammed-Tsoherkesse, from
the name of his country, a former groom of the Sultan, nur-
tured in the palace and in the camps, incapable of business,
was raised in spite of himself to the . rank of grand vizier.
After having abused with the rudeness of a barbarian the
envoys and the protcjgées of the Christian powers to make
them pay for their rel&ous privileges at Jerusalem or else-
where, Mohammed-Tscherkesse mustered the army to crush
finally the rebellion of Abaza.
Abaza continued, under Amurath IV., his part, thence-
forward without a motive, of avenger of Othman II. Amu-
rath upon the throne, was himself the living avenger of his
brother; but the rebellion had struck such root into the
habits of Caramania, that any pretext served for the unsub-
dued Turcomans to follow Abaza. His real insurrection was
against the Janissaries ; he massacred them without mercy
and without exception, wherever he met them in the cities
which had opened to him their gates.
At Siwas, three officers of the Janissaries having been
made prisoners by his lieutenant, Djafar, a rebel more fero-
cious than himself, they were bound upon the backs of
camels and paraded through the streets, stuck over with
burning matches, which traversed the flesh of their shoulders
and burned them slowly, amid the applauses of the people.
'^ Such is the recompense," shouted before them the public
criers, " of soldiers who betray and slay their padischah."
The routes were covered with the unburied dead of the Jan-
issaries, of the spahis, of the topdjis or gunners, reputed
guilty of the murder of Othman.
The army of Abaza, strong by sixty thousand Turco-
mans, and by his own fanaticism of fidelity to the blood of
his master, advanced anew from triumph to triumph towards
Siwas. Encamped in the valley " of Snows," it awaited, in
taking exercise, the army of the grand vizier. The com-
mandant of Siwas, Taïar-Pasha, although devoted in appear-
ance to his cause, complotted with another of his lieutenants,
Koulaoun-Pasha, to ruin him. Their peace was made with
the grand vizier. Taïar-Pasha meanwhile meditated the
HISTOBY OF TURKEY. 219
destruction at the same time of Abaza by Koulaotm and of
Koalauon by Abaza. He set himself to sow mutual dis-
trust between those two chiefs, having it insinuated to Abaza
that he was betrayed by Koulaoun, and persuading Koula-
onn that he was menaced by Abaza. Abaza, simple as a
barbarian, was entirely governed by a fanatic sheik of Ces-
area, who guaranteed lum the favor of heaven for his holy
cause, and who showed him in the prospect the elevated
post of grand vizier, and restorer of the Ottoman monarchy.
The ruin of Abaza commenced by his credulity to the
suggestions of Taïar, the governor of Siwas. Convinced
that he was sold to the Porte by his perfidious lieutenant,
he invited Koulaoun-Pasha to a festival in the camp, before
the walls of Siwas, and had him assassinated after the ban-
quet. He addressed, after this execution, a threatening let-
ter to the aga of the Janissaries at Constantinople, to
announce imprudently to this soldiery the irreconcilable
hatred with which he burned towards them. This ironical
letter of Abaza, prompted by his treacherous counsellors,
was the brand most sure to kindle against him the anger of
the army of the grand vizier. Here it is :
" To our honored lord and brother, the kiaya
of the Janissaries,^^
^^ Thou ezcitest thy soldiers to march against the rebel
Abaza, under the orders of the grand vizier. It is an affair
of honor with the Janissaries, without any doubt ; but why
forget the begs and the spahi^ ? Courage ! continue to merit
the bread of the padischah by thy services ! Had this noble
zeal but seized you earlier, you would not have looked tran-
quilly upon the murder of your master in open mosque.
Unfortunately, your brethren, the spahis, not content with
the best places under the cupola of the divan, have possessed
themselves of the functions of tax collectors and administra-
tors, and there is nothing left for you : yet, without your
fraternal aid, could they, I ask you, have done the deed ?
But you have had the plunder of the richest palaces of Con-
stantinople. You are the cause of the ruin of Islamism.
If the Sultan Othman had taken refuge at the door of the
spahis, his fate would have been very different. Have you
acted for gold ? But the unfortunate padischah would have
readily promised you fifty ducats per head. Although the
220 HIBTOBT OF TtmKBT.
mother of the Saltan Mustapha be of the £unil^ of Abaia
and my kinswoman, and that I might have rejoiced at her
elevation, the heavens are my witness, that, if I have taken
arms, it is solely to avenge the blood unjustly shed. Assem-
ble then all thy warriors round thee. Like Nebuohodonosor,
who avenged the innocent blood of the prophet John, by the
massacre of sixty-six thousand Israelites, I mean to alaj
sixty-six thousand Janissaries in vengeance of the murder of
the padischah. I will see thee on the day of battle, and we
will know then if the spahis shall prove to you of great
assistance. These men, who, with your assistanoe, had not
the means of feeding a horse, are now masters of the land
and possessors of extensive territories. Madmen 1 what
have you there ^dned by your treachery ? the baleful name
of murderers of a Sultan! By my soul! when Khalil-
Pasha was aga of the Janissaries, I was his equerry ; I
know consequently how things passed in the staff; it is the
kiaya who gave the word. Or, if you pretend to have had
no part in the crime, and affirm tliat it was committed by
Daoud-Pasha, give up the murderers I
" May salvation be upon thee ! "
" There is a little man somewhat full of his self-impor-
tance," said the kiaya of the Janissaries, on reading aloud to
them the missive of Abaza ; '^ if we let him go on, ho will
massacre more Janissaries than there are existing in the
whole empire." — **We were but twenty-five thousand at Ohoe-
zim against the Poles," cried a private soldier ; " the Sul-
tan, who enlarged our number to forty thousand in days of
pressure, may well at present raise it to the force of eighty
thousand."
Indignation seized the army. The aged Tsdierkesse,
unfit for the command, yielded me place of grand vizier Mid
the conduct of the war to Hafiz, the vanquisher of the Per-
sians. Hafiz was kinsman and former friend of Abaza; but
he washed himself of all treason by the known loyalty of
his character. He set out at the head of eighty thousand
combatants, infuriated enemies of Abaza, and encamped
during twenty-one days in the fertile plain of Koniah.
Time, seduction, perfidy, were wasting the forces of the re-
volt, and augmenting his numbers. Possessing the qualities
of the statesman no less than those of the general, he knew
that, in the face of anarchy, to wait is to vanquish.
HI8T0BY OF TURKS7. 221
XL
His soldierai blamed his sloth, of which they did not un-
derstand the wisdom. Impatient to encounter in Abaza
their personal enemy, they tried several times to march be-
fore the order for engagement. The intrepid Hafiz threw
himself sabre in hand before the vanguard, to oppose their
unreasonable ardor. He save battle omy after assuring him-
self of the defection of the Turcomans, who composed the
Principal forces of Abaza. They passed over with Taïar-
*asha to the Turks at the first shot.
The Kurds and the Arabs, old companions of Abaza,
were not shaken by this defection ; but a panic disconcerted
those whom the sight of an army could not terrify. The
battle horse of Abaza, held in lease by a groom, while its
master was offering a prayer before joining the battle, hav-
ing escaped from uie servant, galloped wildly upon the line
of the Kurd cavalry. The troops of Abaza, at the sight of
their general's horse without a rider, believed Abaza to have
fallen by the hands of the Turks, and disbanded at the first
shock, as they lost their cause in having lost their chief.
Abaza himself, seeing himself without an army before the
battle, threw himself upon the fleetest of his horses. Which
one of his slaves by prudence kept saddled and bridled near
his tent, and fled at full speed with the best mounted of the
Kurdish cavalry. All his infantry fell into the hands of
Hafiz, who extinguished their old rebellion in their blood.
Mountains of heads were the monuments of this rout. The
wives and children of Abaza, captured in their fiight, were
sent prisoners to Hafiz, who spared them from the massacre.
Abaza himself, arrived at Erzeroum, shut himself up there
with the remains of his defenders.
Hafiz, satisfied with having purged and pacified Anatolia,
postponed to other times the extermination of the author of
the revolt, master still of a fortified city and a mountainous
province. He sent him back his family, received his submis-
sion to the Sultan, and guaranteed him the title of pasha of
Erzeroum. Troubles and disasters in the Crimea called him
back to Constantinople to repair around the Black Sea the
vanished ascendant of the Turks.
222 HISTOBY OF TURKXT.
XIL
The two brothers, Mohammed-Gheraï and Schahin-Ghe-
ra!, had been for a long time, proscribed from the throne by the
Porte, which had conferred the title of Khan of the Crimea
upon another prince of their house, Mohammed-Gheraî, hay-
ing escaped from the fortress of the Seven Towers, wheiB
the Turks had detained him in captivity, and Sohahin-Gheral,
fled for refuge into Persia to Abbas the Great, were returned
to the Crimea to insurrect and to enroll partisans amonff
the Noghais Tartars. Schahin-Gheraï (tJie falcon) believed
himself, upon the faith of a dervish, reported prophet, called
to the empire of the East, because this empire was promised,
according to the prophecy, to a prince of the house of
Gehraï who should bear the name of a bird. The two
brothers, coalesced against the Khan appointed by the Porte,
had expelled him from the throne of the country. Moham-
med had usurped the title of khan ; and Schahin, according
to the queer constitution of the Crimea, governed under him
in title of khalga or successor designated to the throne.
Their tyranny soon raised murmurs and factions in the
Crimea. They caused to be massacred on their passage the
Bussian envoys sent to Constantinople, and pillaged the pre-
sents intended for the Sultan. They recruited a numerous
army of Tartars under the false pretext of invading Poland,
but in reality to march upon Adrianople, during the reign
of the imbecile Mustapha I. They proclaimed openly the
design of availing themselves of the anarchy of that shadow
of a reign, and to substitute by force of arms their dynasty,
throng right of kindred, for the legitimate line of Othman,
on the verge of extinction. Both of them without children,
they had just proclaimed a young prince, a bastard of the
former khan, Feth-Gheraï, Noureddin, that is to say, heir
presumptive to the crown of the Crim Tartars.
The object of this adoption was to rally to their course
the partisans of the ancient branch of the family, dis-
possessed by them of the throne, all in excluding the legiti-
mate heirs of this branch. The birth of this Noureddin,
named Ahmed-Gheraï, was surrounded with that prestige of
the mysterious and the ' marvellous which feiscinates with
particular readiness a shepherd people. The former Khan
of the Crimea, according to the popular traditions, having
received as present a young Moldavian slave girl of high
HISTOBY OF TURKEY. 223
hiffh and of most exquisite beauty, had treated her respeot-
fally, notwithstanding his admiration, &nd confided her to an
old man, his ancient preceptor, named Hadji- Ahmed, until
he could send her back securely to the boyard her father.
One night however, at the hour when the Elhan dismissed
his court to go to sleep, one of his favorites annoxmced to
him as a happy piece of news that the yoimg Moldavian slave,
reputed virgin, had just given birth to a son, and he added,
in smiling and congratulating the Khan, that this child must
become one day a ^eat prince. The Khan, offended at
being suspected of this dereliction of the hospitality promised
to the daughter of a boyard, and rejecting the suspicion of
paternity whereupon he was complimented, hurled his slippers
in the face of the imprudent informant, and gave orders to
slay the old man, the slave and the child. But, whether it
was that this order was but a trick of the Khan to hide his
frailty under the pretension of anger, or that Kadji- Ahmed,
apprised in time, had prevented By flight the execution, the
old man, the mother and the son disappeared.' This son,
brought up in the steppes of the Crimea by shepherds igno-
rant of his high birth received among them to his ado-
lescence the name of Mustapha.
The two brothers G-heraï, usurpers of the throne of the
Khan the father, real or supposititious, of Mustapha, dis-
covered him in the tents of the shepherds, had him brought
to their court and proclaimed him Noureddin, to the prejudice
of his cousins, heirs direct and legitimate. This preference
excited violent quarrels between young Hassan-Gheraï, grand
nephew of the deposed Khan, and the Noureddin. Hassan-
Oheraï, in one of these boy quarrels, dared to call the Nou-
reddin a Moldavian shepherd and a bastard of a slave.
This nickname stuck to the young pretender to the sover-
eignty of the Tartars.
xm.
The Porte was offended that tributary princes and rela-
tives of its dynasty should dishonor their blood by the adop-
tion of a bastard, and should set up pretensions to even the
throne of Constantinople. The divan deposed Mohammed
and restored the former Khan.
Mohammed and his brother resisted this order. " What ! "
replied they to the capitan-pasha come to reduce them to
224 HI8T0BT OF TUBKIT.
salMnissioDy '< is it justice and policy to oottdemn ns to expa*
triation, at the moment when we haye assembled a hundred
Ihonsand Tartars to defend yon against your enemies of
Poland and of Asia ? All Ôie inhabitants of our steppes
haye already harnessed the wagons and are waiting but the
order for departure. Is it the moment to send us back
shamefully to our yourds, into the depths of the desert?
When we shall haye abandoned the Orimea, when it shall
haye fallen into the hands of the infidel Busidans, do you
think of remaining masters of Caffa and of your citadels ? "
XIV.
The oapitan-pasha, deaf to these remonstrances, saye
battle to the hundred thousand Tartars and to the myriads
of Cossacks their allies. The Turks, yanquished and crushed
by numbers, remained dead or prisoners on the field of
battle. The price of a Turk in the tents of the Tartars was
so reduced by the crowd of the captiyes, that an Ottoman
slaye was purchasable for a glass of bouza (a Crimea beer
extracted immemorially from fermented barley among the
Tartars).
Caffa, depriyed of its defenders, was occupied by Moham-
med-Gheraï. The capitan-pasha, to recoyer this citadel of
the maritime Crimea, was obliged to recognize shamefully the
soyereignty of the two brothers and of the bastard Noureddin.
He re-emlMurked with the wrecks of his army, of his artillery,
and of his fleet. This triumph exalted the pride of the two
tyrants of the Crimea. They sacrificed to their security all
the mirzas, princes or tribe chiefs, suspected of fidelity or
merely remembrance of the legitimate branch. The preg-
nant wife of prince Cantamir, their enemy, chief of the Tar-
tar faction opposed to that of the brothers, was burned in a
slow fire before their eyes. They pursued himself into Wal-
lachia. But Cantamir at the head of thirty thousand Tar-
tars, Moldayians and Wallachians of his partisans, threw
their army into the Danube, red, says the historian, with the
torrents of blood poured forth upon its banks.
It was during this campaign of the Tartar princes of the
Crimea against Cantamir and the Turks, that the Cossack
Tartars, nomads, cayaliers and pirates, rayaging equally land
and sea, appeared for thé first time since the occupation of
the Bosphorus by the Turks, in yiew of Constantinople»
HI8T0BT OF TUBKST. 225
They equipped one hundred and fifty donble-prowed two-
helmed barks, fit to mancearre in all directions without veering.
Each of these barks carried twenty rowers and twenty com*
bâtants. The Eussians, pirates of the same rivers and the
same seas before them, had taught them this construction of
vessels fit to run into the narrow inlets and the mouths of
shallow streams. Seven times within historic memory, these
incursions of the Scythians, of the Eussians and of the
Cossacks their imitators, had spread terror through the ports
of the Euxine and of the Bosphorus.
After having pillaged the shores of the Black Sea, the
Cossacks, allies on thb occasion to the Tartars of the Crimea,
burned the delightful village of Bouyoukdéré, the seat of
pleasure and of luxury of the Ottomans as of the Greeks
during summer. The flames of Bouyoukdéré brought forth
six hundred sail from the port of Constantinople to drive
back those savages beyond the Bosphorus. Ten thousand
Janissaries, spread along the two banks of the strait, marched
in line with the fleet to shut both land and sea to those inceu'
diaries. The Cossacks formed their squadron into a crescent
in the middle of the broad basin that forms the Bosphorus
between Bouyoukdéré and the coast of Asia, and awaited
proudly the* setting of the sun and the land breeze, which
rises with the fall of ni^ht, to reenter the Black Sea. They
.burned in retiring the beacon of the strait, where their mi-
cestors, some seven centuries before, debarked to diffuse
terror amoi^ the Greeks.
The Turks, to prevent their return, hung from one bank
of the strait to the other, at the entrance to the Black Sea,
the famous iron chain which used to shut up before Mahomet
IL the entrance of the Golden Horn to Constantinople.
XV.
Hafiz, after having restored some confidence to the cap-
ital, set out with twenty thousand Janissaries for Diarbekur.
The army which had under him vanquished Abaza, reinforced
by those new troops and served by a revolt of the Georgians
who had just massacred thirty thousand Persians in the
Sicilian vespers of Georgia, advanced to reconquer Bagdad.
" I have the keys of Bagdad at my girdle," sung on his rout
the presumptuous Hafiz.
The siege, prolonged during six months for want of 8u£Gl-
Vol.111.— 10*
226 HI0TOBT 0¥ TtTBKKT.
oient artillerj, gare to Schah* Abbas the time to oome to tiM
relief of his besi^ed capital. The garrison of Bagdad
sainted him dnrinff three days and three nights with tàùvoê
repeated from the neight of the ramparts. The battle ao-
cepted the following day by Hafiz was more bloody than
decisive. The sacred band of Schah^Abbas, composed often
thousand chosen cavalry, bound by oath to victory or death,
beat back every where the Ottomans. The wt of the spahis
himself flying before the irresistible cloud of Persian cavalry,
sought a refuge in the ranks of the Janissaries. These fero-
cious soldiers cut off his legs in rallying him upon his cow*
ardice, in order to punish the limbs that served him to save
his head from the sword of the Persiana Hafiz, snatching
himself a lance from a foot soldier and rushing in, chanting a
war-song, to the front rank of the Janissaries, saved the
honor of the army : he annihilated to the last man the sacred
band of the Persians.
XVI.
This victory, followed by vain negotiations between
Abbas and Hafiz, wearied with impatience the Janissaries.
« We have no longer either horses or asses," said they, what
can we do a day more before those walls ? " The mutinous
soldiers struck down the tent of the grand vizier upon his
head. Hafiz, deposed tumultuously by his army, was im-
prisoned in a fortress of the banks of the Tigris, called the
Castle of Iman. One of his lieutenants, favorable to the
wishes of the soldiers, Mourad-Pasha, was proclaimed grand
vizier. Othman, the standard-bearer of the banner of Hafiz,
refused to give this symbol of the viziership to the rebels.
" Who are you," said he to them, " to arrogate the right
of deposing and appointing a grand vizier ? This tent is
that of the Sultan our master ; as long as I am left a hand
to defend it the sacred standard will not leave it." The
intrepid soldier let his two arms be cut and hacked to pieces
in clinging to the standard. His courage inspired remorse
in the mutineers ; they raised up the tent, replaced the colors
before the door, and brought back Hafiz, promising to him
obedience.
" Where are now, then," said he to them, " those brave
soldiers who made oath to me to conquer or to die before the
walls of Bagdad ? " He asked them two days' patienoo ; he
HIBTOBY OF TUBKBY. 227
w«8 answered but by clamorous orders to make a prompt re-
k«at. '^ If thou hast a sabre long enough," repeated to him
the soldiers, '^ take Bagdad to-day ; if not, take refuge among
ih» Bed-Heads," a nickname of the Persians.
Meanwhile Hafiz, obtaining the delay, implored to see the
effect of a mine which was to carry off by its explosion a flank
of the ramparts. The mine went off by imprudence or by
treachery before having been conducted as far as the founda-
tions. At the sight of the walls intact, the entire army re-
volted with augmented fury against its general. The tents
of the vizier, me treasury, the baggage, the provisions were
pillaged; the artillery dismounted and transported to the
fortress of Iman on the way to Mosoul. The grand vizier
and the Janissaries sought here themselves an asylum against
the anarchy of the camp.
Schah- Abbas, informed of these discouragements and these
revolts, broke off all negotiation, saying that " it was not the
usage to treat with an army in flight." The cannon of Soli-
man, brought from Constantinople and hidden by the artillery-
men in the sand, fell into his hands and went to decorate the
palace of Ispahan. Hafiz turned round, however, to drive
back the Persians hanging upon his rear-guard to harass
him, and vanquished them at two marches from Bagdad.
The evening of this victory he was able with impunity to
behead the seditious tribune of the army, Mourad-Pasha, the
instigator of the disorders and the retreat. This victory
and this execution allowed him to shelter the army in Mosoul.
The Sultan wrote him to canton the army and pass the
winter at Aleppo in awaiting the reinforcements that were
being levied in the empire. This young prince, who culti-
vated poetry, as did Hafiz himself, exchanged during the winter
several letters in verse with his grand vizier. The Sultana
Koesem, his mother, sustained the vanquisher of Abaza in the
mind of her son against the intrigues of the seraglio. She
discovered hitherto Inhini alobe the heroism which retrieved
the reign abroad, and the literary tastes that decorated it at
home.
The letters in verse of the young Sultan, upon political
and sacred subjects were signed by Amurath IV., but in-
spired and dictated by her. Serious business, if we trust
the historiographers of the times, was intermingled in
them with the amusement of leisure. The game of chess,
familiar to ike Turks as to the Persians, suppUed them allu-
228 HISTOBT OF TUBKST*
âoDi of a dovUe meanisg to the Sultan and to hk miaisttt;
*^ Is the queen no loi^r upon the board to bring me back
my knights ? " wrote Hafiz. '^ âaye you no knights then to
take the king ? " responded Amurath to his general The
title of son-in-law of the Sultana Validé and brother-in-law
of Amurath, authorized these literary familiarities between
the imperial £unily and the grand yizier.
XVIL
But the habits of sedition in the army and revolutions in
the capital prevailed still over the ability of the Sultana
mother and oyer the devotedness of Hafiz. The army of
Aleppo refused to march anew upon Bagdad, and the troops
of Constantinople, pretended constantly new grievances
against the divan, to extort concessions or heads from the
young monarch, whom they had crowned in order to rule
him, not to obey.
The caïmakam, Ck>urdji-Mohammed, who held the place
of grand vizier during the campaign of Persia, and whose
experience and fidelity were the strength and guide of ihe
Sultan, became an object of hatred to the Janissaries. After
having vainly demanded his head from the Sultana, who pre-
ferred courageously to expose her own and that of her son
to such base ingratitude, the soldiers beset and massacred
him on the steps of his palace. He had held, under eight
Sultans, the highest functions of the divan and the army ;
he died at eighty years, protecting the infancy of his master.
Scarce was his blood grown cold when a new inconstancy
of the Janissaries demanded the heads of those who slew
the caïmakam ; they killed and cast into the sea the assassins
of Gourdji-Mohammed. Some demanded imperiously of the
mufti a decision authorizing the murder of the Sultan Mus-
tapha I. ; others wished to keep him still alive as the pledge
of a third revolution. One time they gave their popularity
to those who had concurred in the overthrow of the prince ;
anon they executed them without trial, as they had executed
Daoud. The tschaousch, more lettered than his fellows, who
had served as secretary to Mustapha I. for the composition
of the katti-sherifs at the old seraglio in the day of the de-
thrcmement of Othman II., was immolated and left unburied
in the Hippodrome.
Emeutes had no other means of repression thaji new
HIBTOBY 07 TUBKST. 2S^
em^ites ; those of the army responded to those of the capi-
tal. Abaza, who had been left the government of Erzeroum
and the nncleus of his rebellion, availed himself of this an-
nihilation of all discipline, to recruit in the depths of Ana-
tolia fresh forces to his party. Hafiz, removed by the divan
to please the factions, returned without honors to Constan-
tinople. Khalil-Pasha, grown old in the post of capitan-
pasha, was appointed in his place on account of the ascen-
dant which he was supposed to have over the chief of the
rebels, Abaza, who had been his slave and who retained
gratitude for his benefactions.
XVIII.
Khalil, after having settled the difference between the
Poles and the khans of the Crimea, went to plant his tent at
Scutari, the first halt of the viziers, on their expeditions into
Asia. Before entering on the campaign, he made a visit to
the old sheik, Mahmoud of Scutari, venerated as an oracle
of God by all parties, and whose call had often been a refuge
to the prescripts of all revolutions. Khalil, at the period of
his first viziership, had owed his life to the hospitality of the
sheik Mahmoud. He had retained for him the gratitude and
piety of a disciple.
" There you are then once more at the summit of affairs,'*
said with an accent of contempt for human grandeurs the^
man of God. Khalil interrogated him in vain upon the
issue of the war ; the prophet wrapped himself in a silence
which appeared of ill omen to the superstitious Janissaries.
The contingents of all Anatolia joined Khalil at Aleppo.
By an imperious letter, he summoned thither Abaza. The
suspicious attitude of this former rebel-chief at Erzeroum left
the army in doubt whether to view him as an auxiliary or as
an enemy. " The soldiers do not like thee as seraskier]^^ said
Khalil to him in the letter ; '^ make haste then to come to
my camp as volunteer, and to merit by thy services the mercy
of the padischah."
The army of the faithful pashas who joined Khalil en-
camped before the walls of Erzeroum. Abaza, undecided,
dared neither to open nor to close the city. " What then is
this slave, this faction-leader,'' cried the pashas, " who traffics
his fidelity and the concurrence of his lewends (personal
militia pf the pashas) with the Sultan ? We will be sure to
230 HI0IOBT OF TimKET.
bring kirn to his dntj with the same sabre whidi has often
prostrated khans and the sons of kings."
Abasa, informed of those mmors and Hiose menaces,
feigned great seal for the service of the Sultan, inspired con-
fidence in the pashas, and, falling upon their camp in the dead
of a dark night, massacred six moosand Janissaries snrprised
in their sleep. One of the seraskiers, the braye Dishleng-
Pasha, was snrprised half-naked in his tent, where he was
drying his clothes saturated with the rains of the day. He
leaped in his shirt on horseback, having but his sabre to de-
fend himself The kiaya of Abaza transpierced his neck
with the blade of his lance.
Abaza, dismounting and lifting the head of the dying
Dishlene, addressed him these worcb of regret and of friend-
ship: "Noble pasha, my old brother in arms, open thine
eyes; thy son is still alive." Dishleng responded but by
a sigh. Abaza himself placed the body upon his horse,
and Drought it toErzeroum to give it sepulture. These
pities, these treacheries, these generosities, these massacres,
habitual to the same man, in these barbarous and heroic
races of the Caucasus, recalled the tears and the frenzies of
the heroes of Homer.
While Abaza was tenderly burying the general of his
enemies, he was having massacred in the city, without excep-
tion, all the pashas and all the Janissaries made captive by
his lewends. The drawers of the Janissaries, scolloped at
the knee, so as to leave the joint free when they should kneel
to take aim, served to betray them in the disguises which
they assumed to escape the massacre. One alone out of ten
thousand succeeded in softening his executioners and escap-
ing, to be the bearer to Constantinople of the news of this
slau^ter of a whole army.
Eiialil hastened with troops to Aleppo to avenge the blood
of the seraskiers and of the Janissaries. Abaza, his ancient
slave, was deaf to his voice and shut the gates against him. The
snows forced the grand vizier to raise the siege, and to seek
a shelter for the army in Tokat A third of this army per-
ished of cold and of hunger in the snowy défiles of those
mountains. Entire battsdions were ingulfed under ava-
lanches. Those reverses raised against the grand vizier the
cry of the empire. Khalil, deposed and followed by the
shadow of the army, destroyed without having combated,
expired of grief at Scutari without having dared to enter
HisTOBT OF tubkbt: 231
Ccmstantinople. His virtues, always called in too late had
never brought but signal misfortunes to his country.
XIX.
The Sultan replaced him by Khosrew, pasha of Diarbo-
kir, who then commanded at Tokat the wrecks of the army
lost at Erzeroum. He was a ferocious Bosniac, of whom
sanguinary inflexibility was the sole policy. He commenced
by striking terror into all the chiefs of the army-service, by
executions, over vdiich he presided himself, seated upon an
elevated stage before his tent Tokat, where he was recon-
structing the army, saw fall in this way the heads of the def-
terdar, of the treasurer, of the beg of Magnesia, of the
judge of the camp and of Hadji-Pasha, son of a Sultana,
whom the imperial blood did not preserve from deatL
The Sultana Koesem sent a million of piasters to Kosh-
rew to pay the troops. The pay discharged and the negli-
gences punished with death brought in a few weeks to Tokat
an affluence of all the begs and the provincial contingents
from Egypt to Georgia. A march of fifty leagues in
three days brought the army and artillery before Erzeroum.
Abaza, surprised by this promptitude, took refuge in the cita-
del. The counsellor of Abaia, the sheik of Gesarea, con-
vinced that a capitulation was the sole salvation of Erze-
roum, presented himself in a shroud with a rope round his
neck, before his master, to conjure him to yield to his fate.
Abaza capitulated on condition of keeping with him his
troops, withdrew from the city, and went to encamp in the
valley of Erzeroum at a small distance from Khosrew.
Khosrew, ûiithful to the capitulation agreed upon, broi^ht
with him Abaza to Constantinople, presented him to the Sul-
tan, obtained his pardon, and appointed him, to change his
country, governor of Bosnia. The ignorance of the barba-
rian was such, that he had to inquire if Bosnia was in Asia
or in Europe, and that he took Austria and Bohemia for
being two fortresses of Hungary. But his address at man-
a^ging a horse, and his vigor in launching a djered gave de-
light to the young Sultan, who used to tid^e pleasure in wit-
nessing his equestrian exercises from the height of a gallery
of the Hippodrome.
232 HI8T0BT 07 TUBKST.
XX.
The repression of the Persians on the frontiers, the recon-
stitution of the army, the energetic re-establishment of sub-
ordination in the troops and the divan, in fine, the extinction
of the rebellion and the removal of Abaza, had made Khos-
rew the absolute dictator of the nation ; he not merely gov-
erned, but reigned in the divan. The secretary of the Jan-
issaries, Malkodj, favorite of the Sultan and of the Validé,
dared alone to resist sometimes the absolute orders of the
Bosnian. Having one day hesitated to write an order which
was dictated to him hy the grand vizier in opposition to the
will of the Sultan : " Write, slave I " said Khosrew to him ;
'' am I not the all powerful interpreter of the will of the padi-
schah, the highest in the empire ? Write, I tell thee, what
I order thee ! " — ^^ Merciful vizier," replied the secretary, kiss-
ing the skirt of Khosrew's mantle, " the head is responsible
for what the hand writes ; take back my place and give it to
a slave ; I will accept as a favor my dismissal" A creature
of Khosrew was elevated to the functions repudiated at this
cost by the proud Malkodj. The Sultan pardoned all to him
who had been able to subdue the troops.
Schabin-Gberaï, one of the two usurpers of the Crimea,
overturned by the legitimate khan and by prince Oantemir, his
general, had taken refuge in Poland. The Porte demanded
in vain his extradition. The Poles justified their conduct in
aiding him.
The religious quarrels between the Catholics and the
Greeks, revived by the protegees of France, agitated anew
the Christian diplomacy at Constantinople. The Greek print-
ing-house, established in that city, was assailed and sacked.
The Jesuits, expelled as the instigators of these troubles,
sought to establish themselves at Naxos, to possess them-
selves of the religious administration of the Archipelago and
of Jerusalem. The agitation sown in these islands by their
presence occasioned their imprisonment at Chio, and finally
their expulsion from the Ottoman empire, despite the urgency
of France and Spain in favor of this monastic order.
The tributary prince of Transylvania, Bethlem-Gabor,
ambitious of the throne of Hungary, of Moldavia and Wal-
lachia, uuder the title of the kingdom of the Daci, who had
agitated so long Vienna and Constantinople with his intrigues
and his double-faced policy, delivered by his death the divan
mSTOBY OF TUBKET. 233
and ihe court of Vienna of a perpetual ferment of discord.
This death permitted Austria and the Porte to sign a new
treaty of peace at Szoen in the palatinate of Comom, on the
consolidated basis of the treaty of Sitvatorok.
XXI.
Amurath lY., arrived at this period at hb seventeenth
year, and matured by the lessons of Hafiz, suffered impa-
tiently the prolonged yoke of his mother and of the chief of
the black eunuchs, Mustapha, secret counsellor of the policy
of the harem. Offended that his mother had given, despite
his repu^ance, one of her daughters to the capitan-pasha,
Hassan, his present favorite, the Sultan had his sister car-
ried off by force from the harem of Hassan, to whom she
had been delivered. Some days after, he caused to be
strangled in his harem, between the arms of another of his
sisters, another of his brothers-in-law, Kara- Mustapha.
These sudden executions struck terror into his mother.
She tried to deaden his ferocity by festivities, by caresses,
and by presents of female slaves, of Persian horses, and of
purses containing ten thousand ducats in gold. The clever
Sultana by these complacencies regained her influence over
her son.
XXII.
The news of the death of Schah- Abbas restored to the
divan the audacity and the hope of reconquering Bagdad.
Khosrew marched with one hundred and fifty thousand men
upon Aleppo. His route was marked by his severities and
executions. Tourmisch-Beg, governor of Koniah, born like
him in Albania,, and grown old in the service of the Sultans
without having tampered for a day in the factions of the
capital or of the- camps, was summoned by Khosrew to deli-
ver up his supposed treasures.
" Give up thy wealth," exclaimed the vizier, " or thy
head will be the forfeit."—" If my hour is not come," replied
coolly the old beg, " it is in vain that you menace my life ;
if you sully your hands with my innocent blood, mine will
weave you a collar for the last judgment. I am over eighty
years, and can show as many wounds received for the faith
and for the empire ; but under a tyrant steeped in blood like
234 HISTOBT OF TUBKBT.
you, it is better to die than to Uve.^' WiHioat justice to his
yirtues and without pity for his white hairs, Khosrew inter»
rupted his reproaches by the order of death.
At two marches fiu*ther on the defberdar of the army,
Aboubekre, was murdered and his property confiscated to
the army treasury. At Serabad, the chief of the Kurds,
Mir-Mohammed, called before the diran of the vizier, and
foreseeing the trap, put on a coat of mail under his dothes.
Khosrew, after having abused him, called the executioner.
The Kurd, resolved to sell and not to surrender his life, drew
his sabre to plunge it in the breast of the mnd vizier.
The kiaya precipitated himself between Mir-M(3iammed and
the assassin. The sabre of the Kurd cut by the same blow
the hand off the kiaya and half the wooden post of the tent
behind which Khosrew took shelter. At the outcry and the
tumult, the officers of the vizier entered and pierced with
twenty poinard blows the Kurd, at length floored. His
suite, who armed themselves to defend him, fell by the
sabres of the chiaouz. Seven bodies decapitated and piled
before the door of the tents, attested the ferocity of Khos-
rew and the fidelity of the Kurds to their emir.
XXIII.
The Persians, fallen from their heroism on the death of
their hero, the great Abbas, let the hundred and fifty thousand
Turks advance at leisure through their richest provinces. The
magnificent palace of Hassan- Abbas was converted into a heap
of ruins. Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatan, the capital of the
first dynasties, the rival of Babylon and of Suza, celebrated un-
der Islamism for its mosque styled the mosque of '^ the Thou-
sand and one columns," and for the tomb of the poet Hafiz, the
Solomon by wisdom, the Anacreon by the voluptuousness of
his verses, of the Persians, was burned by the grand vizier.
The sacred domes of the mosques, the palaces, the walls of
Ecbatan, crumbled beneath the flame, the axe or the ham-
mer of the Ottomans. They spared not even the trees
which used to cover with the shade and the fruits of a per-
petual spring the borders of the rivulets of that delicious
plain. A cloud of smoke and ashes floating in the air for
several days above the Temple of Persia, announced to the
adjacent provinces that the ferocity of. Khosrew spared not
even nature herself This passage of the vizier is still called
mSTORT OP TTTEKKT. 235
in the Persian traditions the " visit of the pitiless man."
Alexander, Genghis and Timonr had not left a trace more
baleful on the soil and in the memory of Persia.
Retrograding thence, by order of the Sultana Koesem,
towards Bagdad, Khosrew and his army crossed the fabulous
mountain of Baghistan, scene of the immortal loves of Fer-
had and the beautiful Schirin, the Heloise of the Persians
wid of the Turks. Respect for the &bulous monuments of
poetry prevails in the Ottomans over respect for the real
ones of history. They contemplate with awe the immense
cliff cut to a precipice by the amorous Ferhad to cut a canal
which was to convey a flood of milk (the foam of the cas-
cades) to the feet of his lover. They revere the old pome-
granate-trees, sprung, according to the poetic fable, from the
blood of Ferhad.
The Persian army was annihilated in trying to defend
this garden of Persia and those tombs of the kings of its
dynasties. The remnants of it fled for refuge within the walls
of Bagdad. The best generals of Khosrew and more than
half his army perished in assaulting them. Bagdad once
again saved Persia.
Khosrew, humbled, repassed the Tigris, cutting the
bridges behind him, and regained, like Hafiz, Mosoul, after
a month's march, harassed through the desert. His fury,
on reaching Mosoul, wreaked itself upon the seraskiers and
the begs accustomed to disturb the army, whom he accused
of his disasters. He invited them to a banquet, and had
them slaughtered in a body by the headsmen ouly posted in
the hall. To repair the losses of the army, he sent for forty
thousand Crim Tartars, and passed the winter at Mardin
awaiting them.
XXIV.
This series of reverses and of atrocities, did not inter-
net at Constantinople either the fetes or the intrigues of the
seraglio. The divan was occupied diplomatically with the
a&irs of Transylvania, of Moldavia and of Wallachia,
brought up again by the election of the Hungarian magnate,
Rakoczy, to the tributary throne of Transylvania. Rakoczy,
after the example of his predecessor, Bethlem-Gabor, aspired
to the royalty of the three provinces united under the name
of the loDgdom of the DacL His alternate negotiations
236 HI8T0BT OF TXTBKET
with Turkey and with Austria, made him at one time the
client, at another the suspicious ally, and at another the ene-
my of these two courts.
The Tartars of the Crimea, at war a moment with the
Poles and Russians, received orders from the divan to return
into their steppes and take their troops into Persia, to the
assistance of Khosrew. This army, slowly formed, and vainly
waited by the grand vizier at Mardin, caused the second
campaign of Persia to be postponed to the year 1631.
Khosrew returned discredited by his inaction to Aleppo.
Hassan, the favorite of the Sultan and of the Validé,
obtained the dismissal of Khosrew and the appointment of
Hafiz-Pasha, former grand vizier. Khosrew, whom his bar-
rack ferocity and his caresses of the soldiers had made popu-
lar in the camps, feigned to obey with resignation the orders
of the Sultan, but fomented secretly an insurrection of
the troops in his favor. The revolt broke out at Diarbekir
and at Aleppo. It was propagated across Anatolia to the
barracks of Constantinople, The rebels raised of them-
selves their camp, and forced their generals to lead them to
the capital. Khosrew had proceeded there before them,
attended only by his nephew and a handful of his partisans.
At their instigation, the spahis and the Janissaries,
thronging without chiefs upon the square of the Hippo-
drome, demanded during three days and three nights the
heads of the traitors. They designated by name, as being
such, the grand vizier Hafiz, the mufti Yahya, the defterdar
Mustapha, the ûivorite Hassan, appointed recently aga of
the Janissaries, Mousa-Tchelebi, another favorite, all re-
puted accomplices of the intrigues of the harem against
Khosrew, and guilty of the reverses of the late Persian
campaign.
The harem trembled at their cries. The fourth day, the
doors of the court of the seraglio, forced by the rioters, de-
livered the palace itself to their tumult and vociferations.
They kept in wait for Hafiz, whom his duties were to bring
at noon to the divan, to immolate him on the steps of the
palace. Some friends warned Hafiz not to expose himself to
his enemies. He was already on horseback to visit his post.
^^Nq," said he, ^'I have seen last night my destiny in a
dream ; I do not fear to die for my duty."
The crowd opened and shut presenUy behind him. The
soldiers hurled him from his horse with blows of stones, tore
HISTOBY 0» TUBKEY. 237
Ilia garments, took off his turban, trampled him under their
feet, and were going to despatch him, whea his serrants
wrested him half-naked and bleedmg from their hands, to
take him to the infirmary of the seraglio. He wiped the
blood and dust from his face, borrowed a turban of the bos-
tandjis, and appeared before the Sultan to counsel him to
yield to the storm and to take back the seal of the empire.
" Qo, my aga," said the Sultan to him, "and may God
protect thee I For my part, I can no longer protect any
one ! "
Hafiz left the palace by a postern door upon the gardens,
gained the beach of the sea, and crossed to take refuge at
Scutari
XXV.
The Sultan himself, called upon by the rioters, appeared
at their cries, on the threshold of the divan door. His yi-
ziers and servants pressed closely around him. A dialogue
interrupted by confused clamors was established between the
nearest of the soldiers and the Sultan. "What do you
want from your padischah ? " said he to them. — " Seventeen
heads of your viziers and your favorites," responded the
rioters ; " deliver them instantly, or think of yoursell" —
"You are incapable of hearing me," rejoined ^murath,
stunned with clamors, menaced with gestures ; " of what use
was it to call me, if not to listen to and to discuss with me ? "
He turned off with a gesture of despair and indignation to
avert his eyes from such a spectacle. His pages threw them-
selves between him and the soldiers and succeeded in shut-
ting the outer door of the seraglio.
" The seventeen heads 1 the heads ! the heads I " cried
with redoubled fru*y the soldiers, "or descend from the
throne like Othman II ! "
The councils in the interior of the seraglio participated
in the trouble and in the terror of the outside. The ene-
mies of Hafiz had slipped among the viziers. Redjeb-Pasha,
the most accredited of them, declared to the Sultan, with a
feigned grief, that from time immemorial, the law, the policy,
and the majesty, that supreme policy of the Sultans, had
been to sacrifice the lives of their servants to save the world,
and that he must imitate his ancestors or expose the padi-
schah himself to the fittte of Othman II.
238 HISTORY OF TURKBT.
AmuraUi IV., h<^ing still to obtain the pardon of the
moat cherished of his favorites by his apparent condescen-
sion to the anger of the day, sent the chief of the bostandjis
to Scutari to bring back Hafiz to the palace. Hafiz, scarce
escaped, did not hesitate anew to imperil himself for his
master. He got into a boat and crossed the channel, urging
himself the rowers. Arrived at the seraglio by a secret
inlet, he held himself ready to live or to die at the caprice
of the fickle rage or the pity of his enemies.
The Sultan thought, from the silence of expectation of
the multitude, that its anger slackened or had wearied
itself in the courts. He ascended his throne in the chamber
of the peristyle, had the doors thrown open, and ordered
some of those who appeared to be the tribunes of the sedi-
tion to approach him in order to hear and report his words
to their comrades.
The emotion of the moment, fear for his mother and for
himself, compassion for Hafiz, who listened concealed behind
the drapery of the canopy, his paleness, his gesture, his ac-
cent, his tears, would have given persuasion to his dis-
course if hatred could ever let itself be persuaded. He
adjured the troops, he represented to them the remembrances
and the remorse of the murder of Othman, the dishonor to
the empire, recoiling upon the throne, upon the army itself,
from th^e violences done the free volition of the representa-
tive of tSe khalifs, the inutility of the vengeances which they
demanded, since he had acceeded of himself to the wishes
of the ^rmy and the people, by removing his grand vizier
and disgracing his favorites ; the cowardice, in fine, of strik-
ing when down the disarmed vanquished, who had but their
enemies for judges and their enemy's pity for safety. He
besought them, in the name of his youth and of his future
renown, not to constrain him to give them innocent blood as
the price of a reign thus stained with ingratitude and injus-
tice in thQ eyes of posterity.
A murmur now favorable, anon sinister, ran at these
words throi:^h the hall and the courts ; the most contiguous to
him were affected, the most remote redoubled their impatience
and imprecations at these delays. Amurath was going to con-
tinue his vain endeavors ; Hafiz, who judged by me voice and
the countenances, the inutility and the danger of resistance,
had just ended in silence the ablutions and prayers for the
dead; he lifted with the hand the curtain that concealed
HISTOBY OF TUBKBY. 239
him from the eyes of the crowd. His white beard made him
known instantly to the soldiers, despite the turban of the
bostandji. He prostrated himself at the foot of the throne,
then rising with the elasticity of a man who had fgrmed a
great resolve :
" Great padischah," said he to the Sultan with a firm
Toice, *4et a thousand slaves like Hafiz perish rather than
a hair of thy head or a golden nail of thy throne ! I only
implore thee for the sake of thine innocence and thy glory,
not to strike me thyself or by the hand of any of the servi-
tors, so that I may die a martyr and not a criminal, and that
my blood may recoil upon their heads ! I ask for sole favor,
that mv body be buried at Scutari." Then kissing the
earth which was going to cover his corpse against the outrages
of his assassins ; '^ In the name," added he, " of the al-
mighty and all-merciful God, there is no other power, no
other mercy than that of God. "We are come from God, we
return to him."
After this supreme profession of faith, he rose and pre-
sented himself with an erect air and a disdainful countenance
to the blows of the spahis. The sobs of the Sultan, the
tears of the pages, the downcast head and dismayed physiog-
nomy of' the viziers, attested the constraint and the shame
of this accepted sacrifice. Although disarmed, Hafiz laid
prostrate at his feet, with a blow of the fist dealt upon the
head, the first of the soldiers who dared to lay a hand upon
his old general ; the others lifting up at once their sabres
pierced his body with seventeen wounda A Janissary knelt
upon the corpse and cut off the head, which he hoisted as
the trophy of the day to the eyes of the multitude. The
pages spread a shroud of green silk upon the body to wrap
it on the bark which was to carry it to the tomb that had
been promised it at Scutari
" Infamous and cowardly assassins ! who fear neither God,
nor Prophet, nor padischah ! " cried Amurath IV., returning
in desperation to his apartments, ^^ you will experience soon
or late the just vengeance that awaits you."
Hassan, aga of the Janissaries, the second victim claimed
by the rioters, owed his life to the fidelity of a handful of
Janissaries who defended their general against the assassins.
The defterdar escaped under favor of the tumult. The dis-
missal of the mufti sufficed the rancor of the intriguers, who
240 mSTOBY OF TXTBKBY,
had mchided him in the proBoriptioii, in the hope of rudng
upon his ruins.
XXVI.
All appeared to be appeased by the blood of the grand
vizier and by the appointment to the highest dignities of the
favorites and the instigators of the sedition. Eedjeb-Pasha,
the adviser of the sanguinary concession, was come to the
summit of his ambition; he abandoned or prosecuted his
accomplices.
Khosrew, the principal author or the pretext of all those
troubles, and who awaited the result at Koniah, was the first
delivered by Redjeb to the resentment of the harem. Mour-
tesa-Pasha received orders to take, with it corps of the army,
the government of Diarbekir, and to execute, in passing by
Koniah, the just vengeance of the Sultan : '' I want but his
head,'' said the Sultan ; ^^ his immense treasures are thine."
Meanwhile, Redjeb had in secret informed Khosrew of
the danger. Khosrew, shut up in his house at Koniah, sur-
roundea himself with the band of troops whom he brought
in his train. Mourteza, having verified to the judges of the
city the order of death of the faction-leader, commenced to
demolish his residence by artillery. Khosrew, sick or feigning
sickness, sent his kiaya, Ali, the Hungarian, to submit m his
name to the orders of the Sultan, and pray Mourteza to come
with confidence and communicate them to himself. The chia-
oux, concealed behind the wall of the court, was to rush upon
Mourteza, wrest the firman from his hands and massacre hun.
The executor of the vengeance of Amurath IV. foresaw
the snare. He remained at the head of his troops, and sent
the firman of the Sultan by Soulfiker, his lieutenant. Khos-
rew, abandoned by the people of Koniah, to whom Mourteza
had promised in ike name of the Sultan a part of his spoils,
resolved to die with the resignation of defeated crime and
fanaticism.
" Our lives are the padischah's," said he to Soulfiker,
after having read the firman ; ^' but since the pasha of Diarbe-
kir had a firman of death against me, why did he not present
it forthwith ? What was the need of bombarding my house
and making me pass for a rebel ? God forbid that I should
be such ! God is all-powerful ; I do not murmur at his de-
crees : but, please God, vengeance is not distant and many a
head IS still to fall"
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 24L
Having ttus spoken, he said a prayer, implored with tears
the mercy of €rod and not of men, and held forth his neck
to the rope. His immense riches and sumptuous equipages,
amounting to over a hundred thousand ducats in gold, were
confiscated. Mourteza-Pasha refused, despite the grant of
the Sultan, to appropriate an asper of them. All was sent
by him to the Sultan. Amurath IV., in recompense, gave
him in marriage the widow of Hafiz.
XXVII.
The execution of Khosrew and the arrival of his trea-
sures and of his horses afConstantinople, became the signal
of a new explosion of the troops. The grand vizier, KeiÇeb,
fearing for himself, had it insinuated to the soldiers that the
vengeance of the harem was constantly suspended over the
head of Hafiz's murderers, so long as Moussa the favorite,
Hassan the aga of the Janissaries, and Mustapha the former
treasurer, retained the secret favor of the Sultan. At these
insinuations the shops were closed, the people and the soldiers
diffused themselves through the streets demanding this sup-
plement of heads. The masses of snow that fell upon Con-
stantinople the evening of the first day, served to disperse
these assemblages. The followmg day, the rioters, collected
in larger number, inundated the court of the seraglio, de-
manding with fierce cries the three heads alluded to, and
under pretext of inquietude for the princes, brothers of .
Amurath IV., whose life, said they, was menaced by the
favorites of the Sultan.
Amurath, drawn, as at the former time, by these outcries,
from the shade of the seraglio, was forced to present himself
and to supplicate the midtitude. He swore that he waâ
ignorant of the retreat where Hassan and the defterdar had
concealed themselves since the execution of Hafiz. He or-
dered up the four princes, Bayezid, Suleiman, Kajim, Ibra-
him, and showed them to the people, to confouna, by their
presence, the calumny which accused him of having immo-
lated them.
" What do you want of us ? " said to the chiefe of the
sedition the eldest of the captives thus forced by their im-
portunate protectors from the peace of their kiosKS and the
anxious tenderness of their mother. " Leave us in peace to
our retirement : beware of pronouncing our names, for you
Vol. III.— 11
242 HISTOBT OF TTTBKET.
wotild thus bring guspicion upon our innocent heads. Haye
you then no fear of God, no respect for the padischah your
master ? Heaven will protect us sufficiently without you."
These reproaches touched the people; the four youths
were taken back to their kiosks. The sedition appeared
allayed ; but the grand yizier, Eedjeb, was playing the double
part of counsellor within doors, and inciter outside. He
persuaded Amurath lY. to dismiss publicly from the seraglio,
and under his own guard, the younff favorite, Moussa, in
order, said he, that this mark of condescension and of con-
fidence given to the troops miffht convince them of his sin-
cerity and make them give up demanding the heads of Has-
san and the defterdar. He made oath to his master that he
would answer on his head for the life of Moussa and the
generosity of the people.
Amurath refused long to expose by this measure the life
of a friend whom he loved with a passion entertained for a
brother. The a4vice of the capitan-pasha, son of the hero
I)janboulad, decided him. He nad more confidence in the
capitan-pasha than in the vizier. "I consent," said he at
last, in tears; '^ but remember that you are hostages for my
friend, and that if a hair should fall from the head of Mous-
sa, your heads will answer for it" Moussa was delivered on
the faith of these promises to the grand vizier, who con-
ducted him to his palace.
Scarce had he arrived there, than a band of Janissaries, of
spahis and of populace assembled before the gates of the grand
vizier, demanding by their vociferations uiat the ûivorite
should be given up to them. The perfidious Eedjeb appealing
then to Moussa by him : '< My child," said he with appa-
rent compassion for his innocence and for his years, " a thou-
sand lives like thine and mine are nothing in order to save
that of the Sultan. However let us not despair; I am
going to see what we can obtain from Uie rebels."
Then taking along with him the unfortunate youth, as if
to the end of parleying with the multitude, he ordered in a
low voice his servants to push him violently by the shoulders
and precipitate him down the steps of the piazza. The
young man was received at the bottom on the points of a
thousand, daggers, which lacerated him to pieces, while the
astute vizier, affecting a concerted horror, cried to the assas-
sins : " S£op ! don't you know that I have guaranteed his
life to his friend ? "
mSTOBY OF TUBKEY. 243
Hassan, discovered the same day in the chapel of his
magnificent villa of Rebek, was conducted on a horse un*
tackled from a Bulgarian wagon, in the midst of jeers, upon
the place of the Hippodrome, strangled and hung by the
legs to the branches of a plane-tree, which served as gallows
for the execution of vulgar criminals, and left during several
days a sport to children and the populace. The defterdar
too, discovered some days after by the proscribers, was
decapitated on the order of Redjeb by the headsman, and
hung upon the same plane-tree where swung the body of
Hassan.
Such crimes, tolerated or favored by the grand vizier,
could be but preludes to the deposition of Amurath IV. and
perhaps to his execution. Bedjeb had too much offended,
not to hate him ; he allowed it to be openly proposed to sub-
stitute him by one of his brothers, who should owe him the
throne and whose gratitude would ensure his power.
He purchased his popularitv at the cost of the toleration
of all the excesses of the multitude and of the troops ; the
massacre of the generals by the soldiers was become a
pastime of the barracks. The spahis mocked the djebedjis,
an inferior regiment who spoke also of strangling and hang-
ing their aga on a plane-tree. ^' Although your aga be an
officer of importance in the empire,'' said the Janissaries and
the spahis to their worthy rivals in assassination, '' he is by no
means of sufficient dignity to be hung from the same branch
as Moussa, Hassan and Mustapha." — " Do you think then,"
replied the humiliated djebedjis, '^ that we also are not men,
and that we are so fsa despised that it will not be permitted
us to massacre our aga and become, in turn, imposing
rebels?"
The Janissaries having challenged the djebedjis to this
crime, too lofty, they said, for them, the djebedjis replied to
the challenge by running to their barrack and massacring,
through pure rivalry of atrocity, their aga, the brave and
virtuous Sahib. The populace, imitating the soldiers, filled
the city with orgies and tumults. The emulation of anarchy
raised and prostrated daily, during two months, new tribunes
of the multitude. The excess of criminality restored re-
morse to the people, and vengeance for the murder of his
fiivorite gave the energy of despair to the Sultan.
His mother, the Sultana Koesem, a Greek by birth and
character, kept up, from the depth of her harem, secret
244 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
relations with two yiziers of her nation who pofNsessed and
betrayed the confidence of Eedjeb. These two Greeks,
elevated by the rebels to the highest dignities of the Porte,
were the yizicr Boum-Mohammed and the new a^a of the
Janissaries Koese-Mohammed. The one and the other, with
the prudence of an ambition which knows how to bound, in
order to consolidate its fortune, saw more security in the
gratitude of the Sultana and of her son, saved by their means,
than in the fluctuating favor of the multitude. Elevated by
sedition, they wished to confirm themselves by loyalty ; an
instinctive tactic of intriguers who, after mounting, dread to
redescend. They kept up a secret correspondence with the
Sultana Koesem, watching attentively for the hour when the
disgust of the people and the lassitude of the troops should
permit the Sultan to strike the anarchy on the head, in his
grand vizier.
This hour at length arrived, the Sultana notified her son.
Amurath lY., animated by vengeance, dissembled to make
the blow more sure. Redjeb, unexpectedly called to the
seraglio on the evening of the 18th of May, 1632, after the
divan, hastened to the orders of his master. Arrived in the
second antechamber of the palace, the eunuchs opened him a
low door which gave access into a cabinet where the Sultan
awaited, he was told, to confer with him alone.
On entering he saw before him but eunuchs and mutes,
whose physiognomies and silence made him totter on his
gouty legs. The curtain separating this apartment from
that where the Sultan was awaiting rose. Amurath was
standing at the other ex;kremity of the room ; his resolute
countenance and his attitude revealed the man who had
uttered at the age of fifteen this expression, which remains
a proverb of hatred among the Turks : " Vengeance may
be adjourned, but does not grow old."
He recalled, in a collective grievance, from the recesses
of his implacable memory, all that the perfidious popularity
of his minister had imposed on him of terror and of outrage
since his infancy. " Come forward, perfidious cripple,"
cried he with a voice of thunder to the grand vizier, whom
the gout and consternation were fixing stirless to the cham-
ber threshold.
Redjeb stammered excuses and protestations of inno-
cence.
" Hold thy tongue and prepare to die, giaour I " rejoined
HISTOBT OF TUBKET. 245
the Saltan ; and turning towards the white eonnchs : ^< Let the
traitor," said he to them, " be instantly beheaded." The
executioners were not apprised, for fear of revealing by some
indiscretion the design of the murder. The white eunuchs
substituted them, cut off the head of the grand yizier and
threw the body at the door of the seraglio to the numerous
retinue of servants, of clients and of accomplices who were
waiting his exit from the palace.
The audacity of the vengeance disconcerted his parti-
sans ; the head stricken, they feare<£ for the members. They
dispersed in consternation, fancying that they felt already on
their own necks the cold steel whi<^ had dissevered that of
Eedjeb. The Sultan, determined this time to reign or to
die, left no breathing-time to the rebels. Sure of himself,
of public opinion, of the support of Roum-Mohammed in
the divan, and of the asa of the Janissaries in the barracks,
he gave the seals of the empire to an intrepid Albanian,
devoted to the Sultana Koesem, named Tabinïassi, a man of
hand of whom the Sultana was the head. He boldly con-
vened the troops to a general review on the place of the
Hippodrome, mounted upon a throne erected under the peri-
style of the mosque, surrounded himself with viziers, with
pashas, with agas, with judges, with imans, with oulemas of
influence over the soldiers and over the people, and studying
from the outset to separate the cause of the Janissaries &om
that of the spahis, the most discredited of the rebels, he
courted verbally the former and scolded harshly the latter.
Then after having caused to be read by the grand vizier a
decree of reform which restored to the oulemas the places and
the emoluments of which the spahis had possessed themselves
against the laws : " If my spahis are docile and repentant," *
said he, " they will send me some of their irreproachable
veterans to bear me their excuses and to implore my mercv."
Addressing himself next to the Janissaries, and affectmg
to consider them the inflexible columns of the throne, he
commented to them a passage of the Koran which commands
Mussulmans to obey God, the Prophet and the Sovereign.
" The padischah," said he to them, " were he an Ethiopian
slave, is the shadow of God and the centre of the Divinity
upon earth ; cease then to transact with rebels and to tolerate
sedition, so that your padischah may remedy freely the
calamities of the empire, and that you may, like your fathers,
vaunt of having well merited of the throne and of the
people."
246 HISTOBT OF TURKBT.
Amurath lY . was do less an orator than he was a poet ;
he sometimes lacked energy, but never dignity nor résolu*
tion. His words altered the mind of the J anissaries, ea^
to wash themselves before the people of all complicity with
rebels, and all share in the calamities which public murmur
began to impute to them. ^^ The enemies of the padischah
will henceforth be our enemies," cried they with one voice ;
" we swear to protect no longer the rebeb." They sealed
individually this military oath by an oath more sacred made
to the mufti upon the Koran.
The veterans of the spahis, who were called around the
Sultan to present him the excuses of their corps, feared that
he would command their execution. Amurath contented
himself with their terror. " You other spahis," said he to
them with a smile of disdain, " are a queer body whom it is
difficult to get to listen to reason and to practise justice ;
you are forty thousand in the entire empire, and all of you
claim some crade, while the number of places to be given
is only five hundred. Your exigencies and extortions have
disturbed and impoverished thp kingdom. The lure of
office has increased amongst you the number of bad men,
who, refusing to hear the words of the sage and senior of the
troops like you, pass their time in oppressing the people, or
plundering the pious establishments and in makmg them-
selves a sad character of tyranny and rebellion."
The spahis responded : " We do not take the name of
rebels, we are friends of thy friends and enemies of thy ene-
mies. We do not approve the license which despises the
orders of the padischah, but we find ourselves unable to
check it."
" You are right," continued the Sultan ; " you are not
powerful enough against the number of the wicked. But if
you be sincere in your words, expel them from your ranks,
cease to demand offices, and swear it on the holy Koran, like
your brothers the Janissaries."
The spahis, crushed by the number of loyal Mussulmans
who seceded from them, and confounded by the words of
Amurath IV., swore as their comrades had sworn.
The judges of the army and of the provinces then arose
with a concerted indignation to draw a picture of the dis-
orders, the violences and the depredations of the rebels in
the capital and in the provinces, where the oppression of the
soldiers took off all authority from justice.
HI8T0BT OF TURKEY. 247
An Arab, judge of one of the proyinoes of Asia, raised from
his seat by the portraiture and his resentment of those military
tyrannies, exclaimed, that he himself had had his house forced
open and his furniture pillaged, for haying made a decision
according to his conscience and not according to the barrack
despotism. " My padischah ! " cried he, drawing his sword
from the sheath, notwithstanding the presence of the sove-
reign ; " believe me, the sole remedy for all that, is the
sword."
The Sultan, without gainsaying or blaming him, made a
sign to him to be calm and to be seated.
This divan on foot confirmed the coup d'Etat of Amu-
rath and gave back its nerve to the empire.
XXVIII.
The day following, Amurath IV., encouraged by this suc-
cess, called to the divan Ahmed- Aga, chief of the spahis,
and ordered him to designate and deliver up to him the most
culpable of the soldiers for an exemplary punishment
Ahmed, having bargained in stammering obedience, was
beheaded at a gesture of Amurath in open divan.
One of the most popular tribunes of the revolt, Saka-Mo-
hammed, called to the palace of the grand vizier, presented
himself with a retinue of rioters of whom he was the soul,
and full of confidence in his popularity, wished to discuss
before the crowd with the vizier. " Stop his mouth with the
sabre," exclaimed the vizier as reply.
His head rolled with that of another of the barrack de-
magogues named Djanin. Their bodies were . immediately
dragged without honors to the sea. The other chiefs of the
revolt and of the party, concealed themselves, fled or were
hanged without a murmur from the people. Nothing is more
UDgrateful than a sedition when struck with terror ; * after
ha\ring adored its chiefs as idols, it turns to hate them as
corrupters. The death of the ass is the fete of the dogsy
says the Turkish proverb. The rebels of the provinces has-
tened to convert themselves into informers and executioners
of their accomplices. They sent to the divan the heads and
limbs of their leaders in order to save their own. Despot-
ism found them as base as anarchy had found them insolent.
* TbAt is to say, lest courtly, that nothing is baser than the multi-
tude. — Tratulator,
248 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
One of the most potent of the rebel ohiefis, EliAS-Paaha,
yanquished at Magnesia and besie^d in Pergunos, capitu-
lated, on condition of preserving his life, his titles and his
honors, with the generals of Amurath. He dared to come to
Constantinople on the faith of this anmestj. Amurath
awaited him in his pleasure palace of Istawros on the bankg
of the Bosphorus.
" Giaour," said ho on perceiving him, " why hast thou not
obeyed me when I sent thee orders to evacuate Pergamus,
and go serve me at Damascus ? " — " I was sick," stammered
Elias, in excuse. — ^' Detestable liar," exclaimed the Sultan,
" thou wast not sick to sack Maraesia, the imperial residence
of my ancestors. Let the head be cut off this traitor ! "
A bostandji precipitated himself on the defenceless pasha
and sawed off his head with his knife.
Every day of this year was named after the name of an
illustrious victim. Mahmoud- Oghli, murderer of Hafiz, was
strangled and thrown into the sea ; Mustapha, the def terdar
appointed by the rebels, hanged before the door of the bakery
of the seraglio ; the Pole, Semawski, who was proclaimed
King of the Moldavians, and who disputed this title with the
Greek, Elias, protected by the Turks, imprisoned in the
Seven Towers, then beheaded and thrown into the Bosphorus.
The rapid current of the Sea of Marmora towards the Black
Sea, in laving the beaches of Constantinople, threw up nightly
the dead bornes of Janissaries and spahis, in whom were re-
cognized with Juddering the fomei^ters celebrated or obscure,
of recent or of former revolts. During the silence of the
laws, the treasured vengeance of the Sultan had noted the
names, the men and the misdeeds ; nothing was fcH-gotten,
nothing pardoned. He took pleasure in confounding hia
justice^ his policy and his anger.
The sole vice with which the Ottomans reproached Amu-
rath lY., a vice punished by them in his favorite Moussa,
that Antinous of the Ottomans, was a suspicious friendship
for the young Greek pages of the court. His mother feared
less, for her influence in the seraglio, from these favorites
than from a female rival.
A tradition, accredited by incontestable historical testi-
monies, attributes to the fatal example and to the witiy
repayée of one of the companions of his youth, the change
which perverted of a sudden at this period the religious
sobriety of Amurath, and the transformation of his absti*
HÎ8T0ET OF TtJBKET. 249
flenee from wine into a taste and a habit of dnmkennesa.
Here is the tradition such as it is reported, from Ottoman
sources, by the French historian, de Swaberry.
Mustapha Bekri, grandson of the divine poet of that
name, was a young courtier, celebrated for his debaucheries
Mid witticisms. One day, Amurath, in disguise, perceived
a man lying in the mud ; he took him for a madman ; he was
told he was only drunk. At the same moment Mustapha,
Mustapha the drunkard, rose and ordered the Sultan to lie
down by his side. The arm of Amurath, which was up-
lifted, fell with surprise at this excess of insolence.
. " How darest thou," said he, " to utter me an order, me,
who am the Sultan Amurath?" — "And I," replied the
drunkard " I am Mustapha-Bekri ; if thou art willing to sell
thy city, I will be Sultan in my turn, and thou wilt be Mus-
tapha-Bekri.'*
Amurath demanded where he would find money enough
to pay for Constantinople.
" Let not that trouble you," rejoined Mustapha, " I will
even do more : I will also buy the son of a slave, I will buy
thee." And thereupon he turned over and went to sleep.
Amurath had him taken up all covered with mud and
carried to the seraglio. The frunes of the wine being dissi-
pated at the end of some hours, Mustapha was astonished
to find himself in gilt apartments.
" Is it a dream ? " said he to those around him ; " where
am I ? in the paradise of the Prophet ? " — " Nothing of the
kind," he was answered ; " but you have made a bargain
with the Sultan."
Mustapha, seized with terror, feigned illness, and said
that he was going to die if he was not brought some wine to
revive his spirits. Mustapha concealed the cup of wine
beneath his robe, when Amurath had him called and sum-
moned him to pay several millions as the price of the city.
" Sublime emperor," said the drunkard jovially, in hold-
ing up the pot of wine, " behold what had yesterday the
power of purchasing Constantinople ; believe me, if you only
possessed such a treasure, you would find it preferable to the
empire of the Universe." — " How so ? " asked Amurath, —
" By drinking," said Mustapha, " this liauor."
The Sultan was persuaded, tried the Deverage, and drank
of it copiously. He soon found himself too straitened by
the limits of the globe : he spoke no more but of great en-
VoL. III.— !!•
250 mSTOBT OF TtTBSST.
tefprises, and experienced a gaiety which seemed to haro
more charms than the diadem. In fine, he foil asleep ; but
on awaking some hours after with a yiolent headache, he
ordered in his anger to have Mustapha called before him.
'^ Here is a remedy for your illness," said the latter with
a smile, and presenting him a cup full of wine. Amurath
drank it o£ The ache vanished, the gaiety returned, Bekri*
Mustapha became a favorite. What is more astonif^ing is,
that he was not found unworthy of the dignities wherewith
he was invested»
XXIX.
The severities of the Sultan excited the anonymous re*
prisais and the satirical pamphlets of the voluptuous parti*
sans of tobacco, of coffee and of wine. ^' Dismiss the eu*
nuchS)*' said one of these epigrams, " who give us sleepless
nights, in parading the streets sword in hand and shutting
our houses to innocent enjoyments, before proscribing the
negro (it is thus they styled the grain of the coffee), and
before proscribing the harmless smoke which ascends to
heaven, and dissipates, tyrant, the acridity of the blood
which thou dost daily cause to mount from hearts oppressed
by thy executioners." •
The imans and the sheiks of the mosques, more daring still
in their reproaches, scarce disguised them in the very presence
of the Sultan imder flimsy allegories. To scandalise the peo-
ple by the contrast between the partial tolerance of great
vices and the bloody repression of small ones, they recited
in the pulpit a feble of Nasireddin, the Pilpay, the Esop,
and the La Fontaine of the Turks.
" A man," said the Indian fable, ^^ that masked satire of
despotism, was one day tilling his field by the aid of two
oxen, the one large and strong, the other small and weak,
harnessed to the same plough \ the small one not being able
to co-operate, the laborer wMpped the large.-^" Why do you
strike the ox that draws," said a passer by, " and spare that
which refuses to draw ? " — "Because the small one," replied
the husbandman, " would never be inclined to draw, if it had
* It is curious to mark this coincidence between the somptaaiy legis-
lation of an Asiatic despotism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
and that of several of the states of our " model repuUic '* in the nineteenth.
HISTOET OF TURKEY. 251
not along side it the example of the obedience and of the
efforts of the large one." Strike then the great whom you
spare, and the people will follow your precepts — such was the
moral of this apologue.
This dumb murmur was exasperated by the unjust execu-
tion of a judge of Nicomedia, whom the Sultan hanged before
his eyes, on the gate of the city, in his magisterial pelisse
and turban, because Amurath lY., in going to Broussa, had
found the road to be ill repaired. The oulemas, offended in
the person of their colleague, spoke of revolt and of deposi-
tion in the capital " Quicken your return," wrote to her
son the Sultana Koesem, who, from the depths of the seraglio
espied the public rumors ; " there is talk of deposition."
This message encountered Amurath as he was deer-hunt-
ing in thef forests of Mount Olympus. Without returning to
Broussa, he galloped as far as the banks of the Sea of
Marmora, threw himself into a fishing-boat, despite the tem-
pest which endangered large vessels, and traversed the Propon-
tis in a night. Arrived next day without attendance at his
palace at Scutari, in front of the seraglio, Amurath retem-
pered his despotic power in blood, and reconquered his liberty
in vengeance.
He seemed to respire a new life. His martial activity;
his address on horseback, his vigor at the djereed, his pres-
ence in all places, his indulgence towards the soldiers, his
inflexibility towards the officers, his eloquence at the council
board, his courage in repressing with his own hand the first
symptoms of murmur or sedition, his fatalism in defying
the dagger of the assassins in the tumultuous throngings of
the soldiers or of the people, contrasted happily with his pas-
sive indolence in the harem. The boy had disappeared, the
man was bom; but the man, depraved by the oppression
which he had undergone, and the precocity of despotism which
he had been constrained to exercise. Defiance and vengeance
by turns governed and supplied the laws ; gratitude itself
imposed no check upon his passions.
Boum-Mahommed, who had opposed the despotism of
the throne under Bedjeb, having affected at Aïntab some
indications of independence, Amurath had him besieged and
massacred by Yousouf-Deli, pasha of Damascus, a former
rebel eager to evince his honest zeal against new rebels.
Yousouf, called soon after to serve at Constantinople, received
in recompense the death which he had just given to Boom-
Mohammed.
262 HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
Insorrected Arabia was brought back to sabmiflsion bj
Koer-Mahmoud, one of those men who had done the most
towards the deslaruction of anarchy. Twenty thousand houses
of Constantinople burned in three days and three nights by
a conflagration naving agitated the capital with a first tremor
of discontent, Amurath ordered the closing of the cafés,
those sources and echoes of sedition. He traversed himself
on horseback during the night the streets of the city, attended
by a cohort of executioners to pxmish on the spot all infrac-
tions of this order.
No sovereign had hitherto repressed more rigidly the use
of wine. * He sent for the chief of the bostandjis and gave
him the order, impious according to the Ottomans, to com-
mand the mufti, the judges of Constantinople and certain of
the factious leaders, to quit the capital under paiu'of death
and go in exile to Cyprus. He added a secret order for
their decapitation, if the next morning with the dawn thej
had not quitted the city. He recollected that the mufti had
been with the perfidious Redjeb one of the guarantees for
the life of his &vorite Moussa, and although the mufti was
innocent of the disloyalty of the vizier, Amurath was glad
to sacrifice two victims for the crime of one culprit.
The night over, he wished to assure himself personally
of the execution of his order. He crossed the channel of
Scutari, mounted horse, followed the sea beach along te the
fortress of the Seven Towers, and encountered on the strand
the mufti, whom adverse winds had hindered from embarking
on the vessel which awaited him to take him te Cyprus.
He affected to see in this obstacle a disobedience to his will,
had the mufti seized by the bostandjis, thrown into a wagon
of straw bound for the next village, and executed under his
eyes in the house of a Janissary of Aga-Stefano.
The first interpreter of the religious and of the civil law,
the chief of the oulemas and of the sheiks, was buried in
the sand of the beach. The magnificent tomb which he had
built for himself at Constantinople awaited in vain his re-
mains ] the tomb deceives like life. Thus perished the sage
Akizadé, guilty of having wrested one day from his sove-
reign the object of a licentious favor, and above all of hav-
ing been the chief of the law in times when law had no
longer an existence. This promptitude in action and this
obstinacy in vengeance scandalized the public conscience, but
quelled the public murmurs.
HI8T0BT OF TUBKST. 253
XXX.
Amarath prepared himself to conduct in person, after
the example of Soliman the Great, three hundred thousand
men into Persia to reconquer Bagdad. The grand vizier
was already at Aleppo, the base of operations against the
Persians.
Seditions over which he triumphed disturbed this first
assemblage at Aleppo, a city no less turbulent than Damas-
cus. The aga of the Janissaries was deposed by the émeute,
and the grand yizier himself assailed with stones in his
palace. His guards with difficulty saved his life firom the
first fury of the revolters. The revolt was, however, extin-
guished in the blood of the guilty; but the chief of the
chiaoux, who had signalized himself for courage against
them, perished himself by his fidelity. Accused by the
grand vizier of an excessive zeal, which displeased the army,
he was sent back to Constantinople. A chamberlain of
Amurath awaited him on the route with a firman of death.
The aga, on sight of the firman, succeeded in softening the
executioner by demonstrating to him the error of the padis-
chah ; he obtained postponement of the execution until he
could have manifested his innocence to the Sultan himself.
Amurath was as un^ateful and as pitiless as his grand
vizier. ^^ Infamous liar,^ said he on listening to the justifi-
cation and contemplating the tears of the ill-requited servant,
" it is you who prompted the sedition which you afterwards
fought to quell ; and now you would wish to float uppermost,
like oil, upon the waves of tumult. Let him be beheaded."
Before departing for the army, Amurath IV. resolved
to purge the capital, the provinces and the different army
corps of all those who had given, during the times of agita-
tion of his minority and of his weakness, the least symptoms
of turbulence, of popularity or of connivance at the ill-ex-
tinguished factions. He wished to leave terror and silence
to reign in his absence around his mother.
The Sultan, served in his researches by the zeal of the
proscribers, did not disdain to pursue himself the victims
who escaped his spies. The chief of the emirs, AUamé,
who had been the host of the mufti decapitated on the day
when the mufti and the oulemas, his guests, had murmured
too loudly, in the freedom of the festival, trembled through
254 RI0TOBT OV TUBKSY.
fear of inolasion, although innocent, in the proscription list
Allamé heard himself called one night from the street hy
his name ; and reoognixm^ the Toice of the Saltan, he came
down, half-naked and resigned to death, at the order of the
tyrant The Saltan, on horseback, ordered him, in walking
on, to relate him the most secret circumstances and dis-
courses of that fatal banquet Allamé related to him that
it was but a private and accidental meeting of which tho
object was to reconcile the mufti with the chief of the emirs.
During this protracted questioning, Allamé, out of breath,
kept up with cUfficulty in talking, to the rapid pace of the
horse. Amurath IV. seemed to enjoy the trepidation of the
old emir running alongside of his horse, and brandbhed his
sabre above his head. At last, he dismissed Allamé, grant-
ing him his life, and recommending to him more care in
future in his conversations with his suests.
^^ I am the invisible guest of au my slaves," said he to
him ; '^ return in peace to thy residence."
During these executions in Constantinople, the grand
viiier completed the annihilation in Syria of the domination
of Fakhreddin, the heroic chief of aie Druses and Maro-
nites, whose independent empire, created by his ffcnius, ex-
tended from Tripoli to the confines of Egypt and over the
two flanks of Mount Lebanon. The agitators of the empire
had given time to Fakhreddin to enlarge and to consolidate
his sovereignty.
Five warlike and industrial races, the Druses, the Moro-
nites, the Metuolis, the Hebrews, the Arabs of Judea, united
into one body beneath his hand, equalled at least the force
of Albania. The bravery of Fakhreddin, his organizing
genius, his journeys to Florence to ask the alliance and the
aid of the Medici, his marine, his commerce, the inaccessible
sites of his fortresses in the valley of Baalbeck imd the
gorges of Lebanon, his policy, by turns obsequious and me-
nacmg to the Ottomans between Egypt, Bagdad, Damascus
and Mount Taurus, made him, although frequently sur-
rounded by the Turkish armies, the arbiter of Syria and
the rival of the Sultans. Tripoli, Latakié, Beyrout and the
ancient Sidon, the modem Ptolemais upon the sea, Baalbeck,
Jerusalem, Nazareth, Safad, Tiberias, Daïrol-Camar or the
" convent of the moon," in the inland districts, furnished
him ports, cities, fortresses, warlike villages, marines for his
navy, recruits for his army, subsidies for his treasury, skilled
workmen for his manufactories of silk and of arms^
HISTORY OP TOTKEY. 255
Undecided in religion like all the sovereigns of Lebanon,
obliged to govern several races with the same sword ; Chris-
tian with the Christians, Catholic with the Tuscans, Drusian
with the Druses, Mahometan with the Turks, statesman with
all, his multiple toleration kept in pacific community those
populations antipathic in faith. He created in Syria that
patriotism of the mountains of Lebanon, which sometimes
rends itself by factions, but which always reunites under the
great emirs of this country for the common independence.
The emir Fakhreddin had raised Syria, during a twenty-
five years reign, to the level of the most flourishing civiliza-
tions of Europe. Tuscany, his model, and the Medici, his
allies, did not offer in the plains of Florence, of Pisa and of
Lucca, the image of a more prosperous agriculture or of an
elegance of manners more refined. The plain of Beyrout
and the valley of Bkaa, overlooked by the acropolis of Baal-
beck converted to a fortress by Fakhreddin, were the gar-
dens of Asia Minor. We still admire there the ruins, at
once Moorish and Italian, of the palaces, the villas, the
fountains, the aqueducts, the roads and the monuments of
this great heir of the khalifs and of the crusaders, repre-
sented by the same man.
On the appearance of the vanguard of the three hun-
dred thousand Turks whom the grand visier had assembled
under pretext of a Persian war at Aleppo, Fakhreddin, fore-
seeing that he would be first to be swept away by this tor-
rent of men, had insurrected Syria and massacred twenty
thousand spahis cantoned between Tripoli and Aleppo. At-
tacked in reprisal of this extermination by the army of the
grand vizier, he had conquered at Mizereb ; but beaten in
his turn in the valley of Bkaa, his son was left dead upon
the field of battle, and he himself, disbanding his Syrian
levies in a body, fled with the élite of his troops into the
forges of Upper Lebanon. Pursued as far as those caverns
y thirty thousand Ottomans ready to bar up his asylum, he
surrendered himself with two of hia sons to Ahmed-Pasha,
general of the army of Syria»
They were sent on to Constantinople, where he died
without his fame having suffered an eclipse from his misfor-
tune. His two sons were brought up among the pages of the
Sultan, to perpetuate in the high dignities of the empire a
name which was the glory of four distinct people. His
defeat left Syria without its soul, and the route of Mesopo^
tamia open to Amurath IV.
356 HI8T0BT or TUBKST.
At the moment when fortune gave him np this iUostrioui
rebel, the resentment of the Janissaries against another
ancient rebel, the celebrated Abaza, was avenging him for
the terrors which this man inspired him with in his infimcj.
Abaza, as we have seen, had been consoled fbr his loss of
Erzeroum by the goyernment of Bosnia. The Janissaries of
hb province, of whom he did not dismise his obstinate
hatred, conspired his ruin with a powerfiu family of Bosnia,
the Loboghlis. They fell one day upon him at a hunt and
wounded him with several blows of a sabre. The intrepid
and vigorous Abaza defended himself like a lion against this
pack of assailants, called up his escort, slew with his own
hand the chief of the Janissaries, Othman, and put the rest
to flight.
The murder en masse of the ûimily of the Loboghlis,
and an impolitic attack at this moment of the Venetian city
of Zara discontented the Sultan. Abaza was removed to
the command of Widdin, whither he took with him his troops
of Bosnia. It was the moment when the Czar of Russia
solicited the Turks to have the Poles attacked by Abaza,
while the Emperor of G^ermany, occupied by the revolts of
the empire, was unable to succor Poland against the Rus-
sians and Turks united. The Khan of the Tartars with
Abaza in fact inundated the plains of Kaminiec.
Abaza, after this dubious expedition, was recalled to
Constantinople. He was on horseback in the train of Amu-
rath, the day this prince directed the execution of the mufti
on the brink of the sea.
Amurath IV., despite the protestations of the Poles,
fomenters of the perpetual incursions of the Cossacks of the
Don, set out himself with the Circassian chieftain and forty
thousand men for Adrianople. The war, confided anew to
Abaza, was short and followed by a precarious peace. There
was no fixed or regular policy in that republic of Poland,
governed by the constant oscillations of its equestrian aristoc-
racy and its military demagogues. The ambition of the
magnates and the turbulence of the camps threw it, ten
times in the same century, into the alliance of the Turks, of
the Hungarians, of Q-ermany, of the Tartars, of the Swedes,
of the Cossacks or the Russians-— equally fickle in war and
incapable of peace.
Amurath, remaining at Adrianople to supervise more
closely his generals, pursued there the course of his tragic
HISTORY OF TURKBT. 257
executions. A young and beantifol Bosniac, son of a Greek
merchant of that province, named Mustapha, had succeeded
to Moussa in the heart of the prince. This favorite had
been in the service of Hassan, pasha of Bosnia, before hav-
ing fascinated the eyes of Amurath. He wished to efface in
the blood of his fbrmer master the humiliating reminiscences
of his primary servitude. Hassan-Pasha, calumniated by
him, was condemned to death by a secret order. Suleiman-
Pasha, invested with the government of this province in the
place of Hassan, was charged at the same time with the exe-
cution of his predecessor.
Suleiman set out from Adrianople with forty horsemen to
fulfil this order. A friend whom Hassan entertained at court,
named Schaban, learned a day before the departure of Sulei-
man the object of his journey. He mounted horse and gained
some hours upon the new pasha. On his arrival at Seraï, resi-
dence of the governor of Bosnia, he found Hassan attending
night-prayer in the mosque. He stooped to his ear and said to
him that his successor and his murderer was at the gates of the
city, and that he had not a moment to lose if he would escape
death. Hassan, issuing hastily from the mosque and disap-
pearing under favor of the night, slipt into the house of his
sister and concealed himself in female apparel in the harem.
Escaped thus from the searches of Suleiman, he took
refuge in a cavern of Mount Arighan in Wallachia. Be-
trayed by a Walladiian shepherd, who used to bring him
bread and milk, and perceiving from a distance the soldiers
to whom the shepherd had shown the cavern, Hassan slew
him with an arrow and disappeared in the forest, whence he
succeeded in reaching Constantinople ; he there escaped the
more easily that he was there less suspected, and there he
awaited the return of better times.
Thirty dervishes of Adrianople had posted themselves
in a defile, through which the Sultan was to pass on his return
from a chase, with the intention of demanding alms for their
convent. Their sudden and savage aspect scared his horse ;
the animal in prancing threw the rider. He .punished this
accident as a crime, and the heads of the thirty dervishes
rolled at the instant upon the ground.
With him death did not await conviction ; suspicion was
punished before being tried. One of his servants was em-
paled because a diamond, recovered afterwards, had been mis-
laid in the palace. One of his pages was strangled, because
268 HIBTOBY OF TUBKEY.
in playing with the Saltan the equestrian game of the djereed,
the joong man had inclined his body to elude the blow and
thns bafiled the address of his master. The poet Nefi, the
Turkish Juvenal, formerly guest and protegee of Amurath,
adventured to write some satirical verses against the ca!ma-
kam, Be!ram-Pasha, the Sejanus of this Tiberius ; Beïram
demanded vengeance of Amurath.
" I give thee his head, if the oulemas sanction it," said
Amurath. The oulemas, consulted and being often sufferers
themselves from the shaifts of the poet, ratified the condem-
nation. Nefi was sent to execution. He had so inveterate
a habit of raillery that his last expression was still an epi-
gram. The aga of the chiaoux, ordered to lead him to tne
sea shore, the place of execution, had the barbarity to say to
him on the way : " Follow me, Nefi, we are going to a place
where thou canst pick up wood to make thy shafts.-:— '^ Cursed
clown," replied the poet smiling, << dost thou also then dabble
in satire ? "
Abaza, on his return from the war of Poland, did not
escape the envy with which the long favor of that former
rebel, become the most elegant of courtiers, had inspired the
caïmakam Beïram and the favorite Mustapha. Abaza, of
whom the rebellion had been but a glorious fidelity to the
throne of Othman, found with Amurath the excuse of his
crime in the motive of the crime itself. The Sultan could
not hate a man who had agitated for ten years the empire,
and massacred forty thousand Janissaries to avenge the mur-
der of a Sultan.
The renown, the riches, the chivalrous bravenr, the grace,
the natural éloquence, the adroit adulation, the cultured
mind of this Circassian, rendered him the Alcibiades of the
Ottomans. The Sultan never went out on horseback with-
out being attended by Abaza. His horses, his arms, his
equipage, his costume served as models for the youth of the
armies. The rumor ran that Abaza would receive the com-
mand of the army of Persia, and that he promised to con-
quer Iran in one campaign.
So much presumption and so much ûivor hastened his
fall. The favorite did not forgive him his severities in Bos-
nia against his ûtmilj, of whom Abaza had coveted the
wealth. He was besides accused of having received large
presents from the Armenians, for getting these Christians
the exclusive possession of the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem.
HISTORY OF TXTEKBT. 269
Abaza, familiarly questioned as to the sum of the present by
Amurath, dissembled as to the amount. Amurath did not
pardon him the lie. It was suggested to him that Abaza
thus dissembled the enormous treasure which he had accu-
mulated in his palace of the Bosphorus, but to defray a
second rebellion against him. These suspicions worked to
frenzy the mind of the Sultan. He rode out before dawn,
attended by the chief of the bostandjis, to exhale his anger.
In following the narrow beach of the sea, which serves as
road in front of the village of Beschiktasch, now the palace
of the Sultans, he found the way blocked up with an ox-
wagon, driven by a Bulgarian peasant Amurath pierced
him with an arrow ; the wounded peasant .fell beneath the
bbw.
" Go cut off his head," said Amurath to the bostandjl
The aga, more humane than his master, ran towards the pros-
trate peasant, and feigning to believe him dead in order to
save his life, he returned without having drawn his sabre,
towards the Sultan. " Long life to Your Majesty," said he
to him, " the insolent soul had fled the body as soon as your
arrow had touched it."
Amurath came back more thoughtful to the porch of
Saint-Sophia. There, without dismounting, he sent the
aga of the bostandjis, Djoudjé, to order secretly the caïma-
kam Beïram, who was holding the divan in this portico, to
have massacred all the Armenian corrupters of Abaza, who
were on that day to present themselves at his audience.
Djoudjé, in order not to be recognized by the Armenians
who were already besieging the gates, took off his costume
of aga of the bostandjis in an adjacent guard-room, and
entered the portico in the garb of a private soldier of the
army of Boumelia. The caïmakam recognized him in the
disguise and made him a sign to approach : <' What is there
new ? " asked he by gesture in the language t)f the mutes,
known in the seraglio-—" Great anger of the master," replied
in the same language the bostandji. Then he communicated
the order of death against the Armenians. The caïmakam
and the judges of the divan shuddered, but obeyed. The
heads of the principal Armenians were sent to the seraglio.
Abaza arrived there at this moment by order of the Sul-
tan, to accompany him, as usual, in his rides. Amurath
ordered that he be shut up in the coop of the seraglio. He
next wrote a firman of death and sent it by Djoudjé to his
260 ' HI8T0BT OF TUBKET.
old favorite. Abaza, iû gaiing on the firman, bowed the
head. " It is the will of my padischah," said he, and he
knelt to say a prayer. His head fell without a murmur at
the last verse of the soura of the dead. The hand of a
Saltan punished him for all the blood whioh he had spilt for
the supremacy of the throne.
XXXI.
Immediately after this execution, Amurath lY., of whom
the tents were already dressed at Scutari in the midst of two
hundred thousand men, set out for Persia.
The terror of Constantinople had passed with him into
the army ; its discipline, cemented momently and in all the
grades by blood, strewed dead bodies on the route of the
army. The slightest fiiult was mortal. The executioners
entered before him every city to purge it of the last sedi-
ments of the old revolts spared by Khosrew or by the grand
vizier. Amurath, mute, would order before him the chiefs
of the cities or of the tribes, and his two fin^rs of the right
hand lifted or shut indicated without words to the execu-
tioners the life or the death of the suspected. Outside the
gates of the city were ranged the corpses of the executed,
an avenue of terror along which he marched the troops.
All offences and crimes were equal before the sabre. At
the prairie of Trumpets, Gourdji-Othman, chief of a numer-
ous cavalry brought to the Sultan, was murdered foï having
formerly partaken in the murder of Othman ; a feudatory
tschaousch, Djeaherizadé, for having smoked a handful of
. tobacco leaves ; at Cesarea, the town judge, for a slight ne-
glect in the supplying of provisions.
The bodily strength and savage energy of the young Sul-
tan recalled their ancestors to the Turcomans of Oaramania,
who witnessed his march through their natal valley. At
Dewli-Kara-Hissar, a wild goat of colossal stature having
rushed upon the horses of his travelling-carriage, Amurath
leaped from the vehicle upon his horse, encountered the sav-
age animal and prostrated him with a blow of his club.
" The hand of €rod is with you," cried the army, astonished
at this athletic exploit.
Encountering a little after Mustapha-Pasha, the giant of
the army, he lifted him out of the saddle on his outstretched
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 261
arm, and held him a moment suspended like a plaything in
his iron hand.
The grand vizier, Mohammed-Pasha, came forth to meet
him at Sinorowa and preceded him to Erzeroum. His entry
into this frontier capital recalled the marches of Timour or
of Alexander. Three hundred thousand men, cavalry or in-
fantry, bordered the road on each side for the space of six
leagues before the gate of the city. The following day, he
received with great pomp the presents of all the chiefs of
the army, of all the pashas and all the tributaries jealous of
surpassing one another in devbtedness by the prodigality of
their tributes in men of arms, in slaves, in horses and in
coined gold.
A few marches brought this multitude before the walls
of Erivan, the nearest fortress of the Persians. A cloud of
dust, raised by those myriads of men and horses and kept up
by the wind, concealed from them the ramparts of Erivan.
The artillery of the city cleft of a sudden this cloud, and the
bullets ploughed the earth at the feet of the horse of Amu-
ratL " What do you fear," said he to his viziers ; " can a
man die before the day appointed him by destiny?" A
trite but just expression of Napoleon to his soldiers, of
Caesar to his rowers, and of all the fatalists.
He disposed his troops, and harangued them chief by
chiefl " Thou," said he to Ahmed-Pasha, governor of Erze-
roum, " it is nothing to have captured Elias the rebel, and
forced Fakhreddin in his caverns of Lebanon ; here is the
day to show what thou art ! "
" Thou," said he to the son of Djanboulad, " thou, son
of him who was justly styled the heart of steel, show to-day
that thy soul is of the metal of thy father's, so as to consum-
mate thy tièle to the viziership."
" Thou," aga of my Janissaries, " listen attentively : The
condemnations in the capital, the chastisements inflicted
upon drunkards and tobacco-smokers are not exploits of
heroes ; here is the moment, here the ground, whereon to
show another courage than that required in police punish-
ments. I mean myself to show mine, and to see in the
midst of the conflict how my agas make my Janissaries
flght."
" And you, my wolves," said he to the soldiers, " take
earo not to retreat ; do not weary of striking, of killing, of
cutting off heads, and of picking up balls to be sent baâ^to
262 mSTOBT OF tubket.
ike Persians ; unfold your pinions, whet your talons, my fal-
cons, my eagles ! and fetch me your prey ; here are heaps of
parses of gold to pay you for the heads you shall cast at my
feet"
Eight days of siege exhausted the courage, the provisions
and the munitions of Erivan. The soul of Schah- Abbas
had departed from Persia. The actual ruler was his grand-
son, Sam-Schah, son of that miraa, whom Schah- Abbas had
formerly sacrificed to his suspicions, and to whom, in dying,
this faâier, tortured by remorse, had desired, against the
wishes of the magnates, to restore the throne.
Sam-Sdiah, still a youth, had distinguished himself thus far
but by the murder of his favorite Sultana, of his mother, and
of those of his viziers who reproached lum with his vices.
His ffenerals trembled to conquer as much as to be con-
<|uered, not knowing if victory would less endanger their
life than defeat. jSl that was not servility was discourage-
ment and treason in the kingdom. The Khan Emirgoune,
formerly mirsa and military favorite of the great Abbas, was
ashamed to serve so infamous a master. He meditated
abandoning him to his &te, and providing an independent
fortune for himself. He did enough for the honor of arms,
not enough for the safety of Persia. The eighth day he ap-
peared, after having given and received hostages, in the camp
of Amurath, to treat for his defection. His generals, who
accompanied him, carried their sabres suspended around the
neck. Amurath arrayed him with three caftans of honor.
" Why, for three moons back tiiat I tread with my sol-
diers the soil of your king, does he keep himself concealed
like a woman ? " — " My padischah," replied Emircoune, " it is
because your sword has the blade of death and that your
courser is of noble blood." Emirgoune, recompensed for
these flatteries and for his defection, received the title of
pasha and the government of Aleppo. The Persian army,
which left Erivan under the faith of a capitulation and an
amnesty, was annihilated some days after by the pashas of
Damascus and of Caramania.
The joy of this victory gave to Amurath the audacity of
a crime which he as yet hîwi not dared to execute upon the
son of his father. Two of his favorites, bearing secret fir-
mans, set off for Constantinople with the order to strangle
the two princes Bayezid and Suleiman. The horror of this
crime was mingled in Constantinople with the festivities of
HISTOBT OF TURKEY. 263
Tiotorj, and threw ihem into consternation. The yictims
were the hope of a milder reign.
XXXII.
The courage of Amurath IV. seemed to equal his cruelty.
He was the first to plunge into the Araxes on the passage of this
river, and his horse almost submerged by the waves attained
the opposite bank but through the devotedness of some sol-
diers who swam to hold its head above the water. He broke
in himself by axe-blows the gates of Djewres, constructed of
a wood so thick and so hard that the catapult was deadened
upon it. Tauri^ thus without defence, opened before him
and became a heap of ruins.
Winter brought back to Constantinople Amurath, impa-
tient to triumph in the eyes oi his subjects. This triumph
was but a series of executions. Blood stifled each day the
murmur excited by bloodshed. The interpreter of the am-
bassador of France was executed, for having fomented the
pretensions of France against Austria for the exclusive pro-
tection of the Holy Places. The Greek patriarch was taken
off from his church and martyrized by night in the fortress
of the Seven Towers, for having corresponded vrith the Rus-
sians, and for having exposed the intrigues of the Jesuits,
who were favored by Spain and by France. A partisan of
the Jesuits, named Oarfila, purchased for fifty thousand
piasters the office of patriarch.
The caïmakam Beïram, in recompense for the murder of
the two princes strangled in the seraglio, was appointed
grand vizier. Amurath wished no longer for servants but
for accomplices. Before departing again for Persia, he
caused to be sacrificed to his security, the seventh of his
brothers, the young Sultan Kazim, guilty of having given,
as he grew up, the hopes of a better future to the people, and
left alive but one of the children of his father, the last and
fragile germ of the dynasty.
Tranquil as to what he was leaving behind him, he joined
the 23d February, 1638, the innumerable army encamped at
Scutari. He issued from the seraglio and entered Scutari in
the costume of an Arab warrior of the times of fable, an-
terior to Mahomet. Hb horse was mailed with iron; he
wore a helmet of polished steel, enwreathed with a red shawl,
264 HI8T0BT or TUBKIT.
rolled torban-wise, and with the two ends floatmg over hia
shoulders.
A month after, the army advanced bj a hundred and ten
marches upon Bagdad. The whole empire in arms seemed
to follow the Sultan. His executioners ensanguined all the
stations of the army, as in the former campaign. Innocence
did not save from the capricious cruelty of t£e Sultan. At
Nicomedia a courier from Constantinople overtook him, to
announce the birth of a child of which his favorite slave
was just delivered. The courier, who was ignorant of the
sex of the inûtnt, having had the temerity to say that it was
a son, and having been belied by another letter, was empaled
for this obliging error.
At Synada, of which the speckled marble passed for
having been colored by drops of the blood of Atys, he put
to death the judge of the city. At Akschyr, the country of
the fabulist Nasireddin, he wrote some verses on the waU of
a cloister, on the brink of a fountain of which the murmur
used to inspire the Turcoman Esop. At Ilgoun, he ordered
to be flayed alive a dervish reputed invulnerable by his fol-
lowers, and who had formerly raised a faction in those moun-
tains. " Don't be in a hurry," said the dervish martyr to the
executioner who was striving to shorten his sufferings.
At Koniah, having gone out at night, according to his
usage, in disguise to observe the order or the disorder of the
camp, he recognized in the chief of the police Khosrew, a
former porter of the factious vizier Redjeb. The Sultan had
not seen his face since the seditions that oppressed his in-
fancy. The remembrance awakened his vengeance; he
threw involuntarily a mortal look at Khosrew. This per-
son perceived it, and confided hiâ terror to a page, thé son
of Fakhreddin, who was talking with him at this moment.
A few hours after the encounter, he received, in fact, an order
to present himself in the tent of the diief of the chiaoux.
He went there with arms under his clothes. On entering the
tent, the chiaoux upon guard did not return his salute : this
sinister symptom confirmed the presages of death which he
had conceived. At the moment when the aga of the chiaoux
was ordering his execution, he stabbed him with a poniard,
cleft with his sabre the cloth of the tent, and escaped amid
the darkness of the night
The emir of the Druses, who had succeeded Fakhreddin,
was decapitated as he stooped to kiss the feet of the padis-
HI8T0BY OF TUBKET. 265
ohah. At Aleppo, the gorernor of Kara-Hissar, who had
taken off from the salihdar a young Greek of famous beauty,
expiated by his life this rivalry wim a favorite of the Sultan.
At Nizibe, the same salihdar, having maliciously accused the
fsunous physician of Amurath, Emir-Tchelebi, of preparing
qpium for his patients, and of making use himself of that
intoxicating preparation to excite his imagination, the Sultan
asked of a sudden his physician to show nim the packet of
pills which he carried between his clothes and his skin.
" What is that ? " said he to him in pointing to the packet.
" An innocent preparation of opium," replied Tchelebi.
" Very well, if it be innocent, take it off in my presence,"
rejoined Amurath.
Emir-Tchelebi swallowed a few of the pills and shut the
packet, saying to the Sultan that what was harmless and even
useful taken in a small dose became deadly poison in large
quantities. But the tyrant, equally facetious and cruel,
ordered his physician to swallow all, and to hinder him from
neutralizing the venom by an antidote, he proposed to him a
game of chess, and observed with a ferocious attention the
progress of the poison upon the countenance and in the intel-
lect of his victim. At the third game of chess, Emir-Tchelebi,
succumbing to the lethargy, was taken off dying to his resi-
dence. His attendants proposed to him in vain th^ proper
restoratives. - " No," said he ; " under a master like ours, and
with enemies such as the salihdar, it is better to die once
than to live threatened with a daily death." He had an
iced sherbet brou^t to him of which aie cold made the opium
mortal, and expired.
At Biradjik, the Sultan crossed the Euphrates on bridges
of boats, and had the army followed by a flotilla of eight
hundred barks laden with siege artillery and with provisions.
He there ordered to be crushed with mallet blows the hands
and the feet of some Arabs found smoking tobacco.
At Mosoul, an Indian ambassador brought to Amurath
the felicitations and the presents of his sovereign. Among
the presents was admired a cincture of precious stones, of the
value of fifty thousand gold ducats, and a buckler reputed
impenetrable to the arrow and the sabre. It was formed of
the ears of elephants and of the hide of the rhinoceros.
Amurath, to test his own force and that of the armor, struck
the buckler wiib the e<^ of his battle-axe and deft it with
Vol. m,— 12
286 HISTORY OF TUBKBT.
the blow. He sent it baok (xmtemptaoiisly to the soverêiga
of the Indias.
The hundred and ninetj-seventh day afiber its departure
£rom Constantinople, the army descried the ninety-seven
towers of one of the sides of Bagdad and the walls of tea
thousand paces or of five leagues in circumference which sur-
rounded the city of the Khal^ Amurath's tent was planted
in front of the great Iman, a saintly tomb upon a hill on the
banks of the Tigris. The dust that rose the following day
from the excavation of entrenchments by three hundred
thousand men obscured the air. Each of the viziers and of
the pashas received orders to attack one of the gates of Uie
fortifications of the besieged city. The emulation of glory
and of reward doubled the ardor of the troops. The SchsSi
of Persia, Sam-Schs^, approached to relieve the place. The
first shock on the banks of the Tigris was terrible to the
Turks. Amurath scolded the grand vizier for his slowness
in filling up the trenches and ^ving general assault.
" Would to God," replied Taïar-Pa^a, " it was as possible
for you to take Bagdad as it is for me to die to serve you 1 "
He ordered the assault for the following day. Three
hundred thousand men preparing for victory or death filled the
night air with the murmur of pravers arising from the camp.
At the ^wn of day, the cry otAUah kêriml <jk)d is great t
gave the signal for escalading at all the breaches. The army
mounted like a tide firom the trenches upon the walls.
The grand vizier, with death before him on the ramparts
and deam behind him in the tent of Amurath, was fighting,
sword in hand, in the broadest breach, when a ball passed
through his head from the forehead to the nape, and laid him
lifeless in the arms of his soldiers. His body was reclined
upon the edge of the trench to preside still, althou^ dead,
over the battle which he had engaged in. '^ The bird of his
soul," says the Turkish historian Naïma, translated by Ham-
mer, ^' flew off from its terrestrial cage into the rosy bowers
of paradise ; he had been happy in me, a martyr in death,
this supreme happiness when it obtains us paradise 1 "
" Ah ! Taïar," cried the Sultan, on learning the death of
his grand vizier, ^' thy life was more precious to me than a
thousand towers like those of Bagdad." Then turning to-
wards the capitan-pasha Mustapha, and delivering him the
seal of the empire with the command of the assault:
" Come," said he, " show thyself worthy of my confidence,
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 267
«nd demote for me thy life ; it is thou who art to conquer me
Bagdad.»
The army, a moment suspended in its onset by the death
of the vizier, rushed upon the steps of his successor with the
unanimous cry of fatality : " Who knows the day of death ? "
Before the smoke of the ramparts had been dispelled by the
wind which follows at noon the current of the Tigris, the
two hundred towers of Bagdad, breached by the cannon of
the Turics, were evacuated by the Persians descended into
&e city.
An honorable capitulation was signed between the khan
who commanded in Bagdad and the Sultan. '^ Let every one
retire at his will from the city," said' Amurath, in receiving
the keys on a salver of gold. But the soldiers, animated to
take vengeance for the large number of their dead, did not
ratify this magnanimity of their padischah. Under pretext
that the Persians had themselves recommenced the combat
in the city, they massacred, pillaged and burned for the rest
of the day the inhabitants and the prisoners. Deaf to the
voice of the viziers and of the pashas, they did not listen
even to the reiterated orders of the SultaH.
The melee was so confused and the massacre so furious,
that Amurath, to get intelligence of what was passing in the
city, was obliged to send on horseback a Tartar boy from
among his pages, at the risk of his life, into the midst of the
tumult. The youth reported to him that the Persians, hud-
dled up in a confused multitude within the tower and towards
the gate ''of Darkness," were defending themselves des-
perately, and that the salihdar and several pashas fell dead
or wounded by their hands. The Sultan sent the heavy ar-
tillery which had been cast at Biredjik ; the tower of the
gate " of Darkness " fell before those enormous bullets.
Thirty thousand Persians, remains of the eighty thousand
which had formed the garrison of Bagdad, escaped by this
gate, crossed the river, scattered themselves some among the
reeds of the Diala, others in the caverns of ihe rocks of
Scherban, where they perished by the sabre of the Egyp-
tians sent in pursuit of them. The fortress, which con-
tained the magazine of Bagdad, was engulfed in the explo-
sion of the powder. Eight hundred buffaloes of the army
which pastured on the glacis, strewed with their mangled
limbs the roofs and the streets of the city.
Amurath was pleased to see a treachery in this accident.
268 HI8T0BY OF TUBKST.
He ordered, under pain of deaUi, all the inhabitania of Bag-
dad who lodffed a Persian in their houses to massacre their
gaeet He himself, mounted on a throne on the brink of
the Tigris, had brought before him one thousand Persians
disoovered in the city, accompanied each by a tschaousch
appointed for his executioner. At a motion of the Sultan,
the thousand heads rolled off together beneath the thousand
sabres on the bank. Forty thousand other heads of Per-
sians, immolated by the fimaticism of religion, of race and of
yengeance, strewed the route of Amurath on his departure
from Bagdad. He left there a Turkish garrison of ten thou-
sand men, under command of Hassan the Little, aga of
the Janissaries. No battle eyer cost the Persians so much
blood as this shameful capitulation of Bagdad. Courage
spares nations more blood than does cowardice.
Amurath, on quitting Bagdad, addressed an insulting
challenge to the âchah <^ Persia by way of farewell '^ If
thou art a man, show thyself," said he to him ; '^ it does not
become those who arrogate the throne to remain hidden
behind their walls; he who fears the horse ought not to
mount him ; he who is dazzled by the glare of steel ought
not to gird on the sabre ; what has been written from all
eternity always ends with being accomplished."
XXXIIL
The return of Amurath IV. to Constantinople recalled
the entry of Mahomet IL into that capital He brought
back to the Ottomans pride, yengeance and the keys of the
second holy city, the rampart of the faith and of the empire.
His mother, the Sultana Koesem, who had accompanied him
as his guardian genius through the whole campaign, preceded
him in a grated yehide of which the wheels were sUyer, fol-
lowed by eleyen other wagons bearing the harem. The yizi-
ers and the oulemas, mounted on horses of parade, preceded
and followed the Sultana. Amurath, surrounded by fifty
khans of Persia, chained at his side to his stirrup, came
after, clad in Persian armor and his shoulders coyered by the
skin of a leopard, such as Alexander is represented after the
conquest of Babylon, that Bagdad of antiquity.
He was bringing back not only conquest, but peace signed
by the grand yizier Mustapha. The Porte in this wise
treaty had retrocedod Eriyan in exchange for the renuncia-
HI8T0RY OF TUBKET. 269
tion by Persia of her rights to Bagdad. The ca!makain
Mohammed, who had goTemed with so much probity and
honor the capital daring the absence of the Sultan, was
strangled for recompense. The pretext for his death was
his removal of Mathias Bessaraba, waywode of Wallachia.
XXXIV.
Glory and peace gave back Amnrath IV. to the vices
that sallied his youth before the heroic epoch of his life. The
Persian, Emirgoune, had succeeded in his favor to Abaza.
The refinements of luxury and of sensuality of the palace of
Emirgoune made Amurath a frequent visitor. The vile de-
baucheries, the frequent drunkennesses enervated in a few
months the strength which the fatigues of two campaigns had
not impaired. A deadly languor assailed him at the age of
thirty-one. In the fits of his last fever, he sent the order to
strangle Ibrahim, the last of his brothers, preserved hitherto
fi*om his jealousy by the Sultana Koesem. The Sultana di-
rected to answer that the order was executed, but Amurath
demanded to see the corpse.
As obedience was eluded under various pretexts to tibiis
order of a dying man who would drag his successor along
with him into the grave, Amurath sat up in the bed to go
himself and make sure of the execution of his father's child.
His strength failed him rather than his cruelty, and he sunk
back exhausted in the arms of the salihdar. His last word
was the impotent order of a crime ; he died in the belief
that it was accomplished.
XXXV.
If he had not been a tyrant, he would have been a great
man. The hero and the hangman were mingled in his nature.
His cruelties were provoked by the anarchy of the Janissa-
ries and the spahis, who had tyrannized his infancy, dishon-
ored and oppressed the nation. It is the usual misfortune of
military dominations which have to call in one tyrant to ex-
terminate a thousand.
His physiognomy towards the close of his life had con-
tracted the ferocity of his reign. The Persian poets of his
times portray him under the lineaments of an antique
wrestler with short legs, burly bust and limbs knotted by
270 HISTORY OF TURKEY.
colossal articulations. *' His hur,*' saj tlioj, '' and beard
were black and thick, his eyebrows threw a sinister shade
upon the eyes, which glared with a fickle flame; two deep
wrinkles between the eyes seemed to brood upon thoughts
constantly strained, like a bowstring about to propel the
arrow of death ; thousands of heads rolled at his word upon
the dust ; his robust arm hurled darts as far as a musket
does the baU ; the djereed, hurled by his hand, transpierced
planks of two fingers in thickness ; his pleasures were savage
and cruel like his character ; he hunted with thirty thousand
bush-beaters, who started deer, wild goats and wild boars
before his horse.
'^ As at the approach of the storm the birds are silent
and hide under the foliage, so every thing stood mute upon
his terrible appearance. The necessity of using no other
expression than signs in his presence," add the Ottoman his-
torians, describing a symptom of tyranny which Tacitus
might have envied, " carried under his reign the language of
mutes to its perfection. The winking of the eyes, the im-
perceptible movement of the lips, the clatter of the teeth or of
the fingers became substitutes for speech; all was reserve,
in sentiments and impressions, lest the secret of terror or of
horror should escape the souL"
The '^ Old Man of the Mountain '^ was not served with
more devotedness and promptitude. One day as he had
dropped from the balcony of the seraglio a paper which slipped
from his hands, and as his pages were rushing emulously down
the stairs to rescue the leaf from the wind, one of them, to
arrive first, leaped into the court and broke a leg, but brought
back the paper. This zeal unto death won him the attention
of Amurath, and elevation to the first dignities of the empire.
His severity, at first just and politic, had ended by de-
generating into frenzy. Some women whom he encountered
dancing and singing to amuse themselves in the meadow of
"Fre^ Waters," one day that he was melancholy, were
drowned to punish them for their joy when the Sultan was sad.
The son of one of his pashg^s, whom he chanced to perceive
from the windows of one of his kiosks passing on horseback
too near the walls of the seraglio, was killed by an arrow from
his hand. A boat, laden with women, which sailed before
the gardens, was sunk by a cannon shot, for some offence of
the rowers. A favorite musician was strangled for having
chanted Persian music.
HISTOBY OF TURKEY. 2*71
One of his Italian contemporaries, who resided at Con-
stantinople, asserts that Amnrath read assiduously Machi-
avel, to perfect himself in the theory of tyranny. His
favorite axiom, " Vengeance may grow gray, but does not
grow old," was a spontaneous inspiration anterior to his
knowledge of the theories of the Florentine statesman.
The tyrant like the poet is born ; nature is followed and not
learned. Amurath TV, had no need of a teacher to hate and
to avenge. His entire reign was but one vengeance; he
found his policy in his resentments.^
XXXVI.
The luxury of the empire under his reign equalled the
Persian ostentation of the Greek monarchs of the Lower
Empire. His stables, of which the mangers were of massive
silver, and the halters chains of the same metal, contained
no fewer than nine hundred saddle-horses for his use. Each
of these hunters, coursers and war-horses, had his history and
his genealogy ; race is the nobility of animals. Eight hun-
dred dray horses carried the baggage of the emperor on his
campaigns or in his journeys to Adrianople. Five thousand
camels were kept always ready to transport his court equi-
page. Six hundred were laden with the cash treasury that
followed the army. Eight himdred mules carried his slaves
and his tents. Each of the pages of his seraglio had thirty
riding horses for his sole use.
The Persian monarchs of the heroic ages did not dazzle
Asia with a larger army of domestics, of courtiers and musi-
cians. The sages of the empire foresaw in these things its
decline. Amurath IV. himself permitted that this luxury
should be reproved in every other than the sovereign. A
philosophic statesman of his divan, Gourdjali, the Montes-
quieu of the East, wrote under his eyes, and dedicated to
himself a book remaining monumental on the Decadence of
the Ottomans. The counsels which he gives in this book to
the Sultan, are confined in general to carrying back the State
to its ancient manners, and to presenting as the " perfection
of reason," the old vices of the Turcoman usages. Few men
* So did also, the author should have added, the Turkish Empire
find in them its rescue from anarchy and dissolution. For such is the
trae moral of tiiis, like other tjnrannies. — Tran^ator,
272 BI8T0BT OF TUBKBT.
are sufficiently free from the prejudioes of their eonntry to
escape the narrow horizon of their time and of their race.
The two only nseM adyices which Groordiali gave to
Amorath in his treatise on the Decadence, and which were
adopted by the Sultan, was the necessity of reforming the
too abusive independence of the pashas in the administration
of their proTinces, the augmentation of standing armies well
disciplined and paid, carried under this reign to two hundred
thousand men, and the creation of model troops chosen from
among the Janissaries to afford a type and pattern to the army.
These two institutions of Amurath lY. retarded the effects
of the decline ; but this violent restoration of the authority
of the Sultan by terror and not by virtue,* was cemented
only by blood.
* l^oetiyl ' nonsense! 'Viitae among wolves I Moderation with
barbazians I Reason with the rabble 1 — Tramlator, *
HISTOBT OF TUBKKT. 273
BOOK TWENTY-SIXTH.
Two women, and a prince in his adolescenoe affrighted to
stupor, inherited this empire, of which the springs just
strained to tyranny were going to be relaxed to licentious-
ness by the death of the tyrant.
The first of these women was the Sultana Koesem or
Validé, widow of Achmet L, mother of Amurath IV., Greek
by race, an imperial nature of whom beauty, fecundity, genius,
ambition justified by talent, had made the veritable empress
of two reigns, and who alone was capable of governing the
third under the name of the feeble Ibrahim. The second
was the Sultana Tarkan, Greek also by birth, brought up
with predilection by the Sultana Koesem, to be the favori te
of her son, given as only wife to Amurath by his mother ;
mistress for some time of the heart of this prince, neglected
afterwards, always honored, unfavored by nature with either
the greatness of mind or the superiority of character of her
mother-in-law, enslaved by policy and by filial habit to the
will of this able woman, and disposed to let her continue
under the new reign the omnipotence which she had wielded
over the preceding. She was the mother of an infant scarce
out of the cradle, named Mohammed.
IL
Ibrahim, last son of the Validé, to whom reverted the
throne by the death of Amurath IV., and who owed, as we
have seen, his life to the protection and daring artifice of
his mother, was but a pliant plaything in the hands of this
Sultana. Brought up in the solitude of the harem, aspiring
but to be forgotten, witness of the successive murders of his
idiot uncle, Mustapha I., and of four of his brothers, immo-
Vol. III.— 12*
274 mSTOBY OF tttrkbt.
lated in proportion as their agos drew too near to the years of
ambition^ certain of being sacrificed soon or late in torn to the
umbrages of the tyrant, apprised a few days before, by the
terror of the harem, of the order of death issued against him
by Amurath, preserved by a precarious subterfuge, and taking
refuge with some eunuchs in the most remote apartment of the
Sultana mother^ this voung prince imagined hearing in each
rumor of the palace the footsteps of the mutes or of Amurath
himself, coming to discover his asylum and fulfil the order
for his execution. His hand on the bolt of the kiosk where
the Sultana had concealed him, he fancied having but that
door between him and death.
The noise and the cries of Long live the Sultan Ibra-
him, by the viziers, the pages, the bostandjis who thronged
to salute the new emperor, appeared to him an artifice of his
assassins to allure him out from his place of refuge and to
strangle him upon the threshold. He refused to believe the
death of Amurath lY. and to open the door to those who
were presenting him the empire, notil the Sultana his mother
should have attested it. She hastened to do so; but the
word of even his mother did not appear to him as yet a testi-
mony sufficiently conclusive of his security; it was found
necessary to bring from the seraglio the body of Amurath,
and to show it to him through the window of the kiosk, to
decide him to open. He did not believe himself living but
on seeing his brother dead. At this sight he drew the bolt,
and the viziers fell at his feet.
After having received their congratulations and the em-
braces of his mother, he himself assisted in carrying back
the body covered with a shroud to the palace. He committed
to her to whom he twice owed his life the charge of reigning
in his stead. She left the grand vizier Kara-Mustapha, her
creature, at the post to which her influence had elevated him
in the last years of the reign of Amurath. He was a Hun-
garian by birth, whom His courage, his integrity and his ser*
vices had elevated, grade after grade, from the rank of private
Janissary, to the highest functions of the State. He deserved
it by his virtues ; but accustomed to receive from a despotic
hand the impulsion of a will superior to his own, he was more
fit to be the hand than the head of a reign.
Ibrahim, entirely annihilated by the habit of subordinat-
ing every impulse of his soul to his mother's, contented him*
self with living without desiring to govern. He was ener-
mSTOBY OF TUBKBY. 2*75
yated by the premature pleasures of the harem^ which the
usages of the seraglio left for the only dÎTersion of their
captivity to the incarcerated princes. His mother and his
viziers presented him every Friday— the day consecrated by
the Mussulmans to conjugal union — afresh slaves, the tribute
of the Archipelago, of Greece, of Persia and of Oircassia.
Exciting perfumes ended with vanquishing the infirmity of
Ibrahim, and two male children were born the first year of
his reign.
III.
An expedition of reprisal against Azof, principal city of
the Cossacks of the Don, stormed and burned the capital of
that population, now Tartar, anon Eussian, then Polish, ac-
cording to the capricious genius of those pirates of the land.
Mohammed Gheraï, Khan of the Tartars, lent the Turks a
hundred thousand Tartar auxiliaries for this expedition. The
pasha Sultanzadê, commander of the Ottoman army, rebuilt
Azof and fortified it to make it a barrier against the Cossacks
and the Eussians, their ordinary allies. The grand vizier
availed himself of the authority accruing from this happy
expedition to punish the former salihdar, the all-powerfid
favorite of Amurath IV., for his tyrannies and depredations.
Forty chiaoux despatched upon his trace to Adrianople, got up
with and executed him upon the way. The Sultana v alidé,
who designed giving in marriage to this opulent salihdar one
of her daughters, was indignant at the murder, and pre-
pared for its chastisement. The occasion soon offered of
itself.
Nassouh-Pasha, appointed governor of Aleppo by the
grand vizier, was informed on the route that his appointment
was a snare, and that an order of death transmitted to his
predecessor awaited him in Syria. He turned back immedi-
ately with his troops, announcing loudly the intention of
being revenged of the government and of revolutionizing
the capital. His approach and these rumors revived in Con-
stantinople the former ferments of sedition ill suppressed by
the late tyranny. The grand vizier marched out to the
encounter of Nassouh all the Janissaries and the spahis
which he had in the city. They were repulsed in the plain
of Nicomedia. Nassouh, victorious, planted his tents of
rebellion at Scutari, in view of the gardens of the seraglio ;
^276 HI8T0BT OF TUBKST.
he there awaited the tdtle of grand visier which his
plices flattered him with beinff each day about to recei^o
from the weakness and terror of Ibrahim.
Deceived by his friends and betrayed by his kiaya, who
drew him into the snare, he dared at last to cross the Bos-
phoros with a handful of his friends to receive from the
grand vizier his pardon and the general command of the
army of Roumelia. Surrounded, at his debarkation on the
beach of the seraglio, by the guards of the erand visier, he
escaped from their sabres but by flying, with an escort of
cavalry, into the mountains of Bulgaria. Hb son, aged six-
teen years, not being able to follow him in his flight, was left
behind him in one of his farms adjac^it to the Bosphorus.
Overtaken himself a few days after, as he was posting to
Boutschuk to pass from thence into the camp of the Tartars,
he was brought back loaded with chains to Constantinople,
and executed like a vile criminal on the place of the Hippo-
drome. His head ensanguined the following day the çate of
the seraglio which he had menaced. His brother Àli was
strangled in the bark that bore him into exile ; his son, in-
con>orated among the pages of Ibrahim, retrieved the honor
of his house, and became one of the most authentic and im-
partial historians of the empire. He relates without aston-
ishment and without murmur the execution of his own
father, so much does reverence for fatality exclude in the
Ottomans the idea of vengeance.
Soulflkar-Pasha, accomplice and lieutenant of Nassouh,
fell a victim to the same dissimulation of the divan. Ap-
pointed governor of Cyprus, the admiral who commanded at
that station had the order to allure him, imder pretext of a
festival, on board the admiral's vessel, and presented him at
the close of the banquet the order of death. These execu-
tions, reminiscences of the reign of Amurath IV., were the
policy of the harem and not that of the grand vizier Musta-
pha. The latter submitted to rather than ordered these
atrocities.
IV.
A triumvirate of favorites, the secret council of the Sul-
tana Validé, governed under her, and was indignant at not
governing in partnership. This triumvirate was composed
of a man of agreeable but light character, Sultanzadé-
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 277
Pa^; of Yoosouf, the equerry of Ibrahim, and of Djindji,
his khodja or preceptor. Those khodjas of the Sultans had
in the seraglio nearly the same fonctions as the spiritual
directors of conscience of Catholic soyereigns used to fill at
ih/e Escuriel, in Spain : influences without attributions, but
dominating all others. The reputation of the present khodja
of being versed in magic and in medicine, the secret which he .
pretended to possess of composing philters which would restore
the youth and vigor of his pupil, had sustained him in the
highest rank of favor.
The Sultana Koesem, since the murder of the salihdàr,
committed without her consent, served the hatred of these
three men against the grand vizier. This hatred was en-
venomed daily by the animosity of a woman of importance
in the harem, the Kiaya Khatoun, governess of the odalisques,
ministress of the Sultan's pleasures. He did not cease
to complain of the stinginess of the grand vizier in the
administration of the harem. Her accusations appeared
worse than crimes to a prince dominated by women. The
Kiaya Khatoun, in concert with the Sultana Validé, and with
the triumvirate inimical to Kara-Mustapha, complained bit-
terly to Ibrahim of the negligences of the grand vizier, who
left her, she said, in want of wood to bum in the apartments
of the harem. Ibrahim, indignant, sent to interrupt the
divan which the grand vizier was presiding over at that
moment in the palace to reproach him with this wrong
to his women.
" Why," said he with a severe tone on perceiving him,
" have the five hundred loads of wood asked by the Kiaya
Khatoun for the harem not been delivered ? " The grand
vizier excused himself, threw the blame upon the im-
portance of affairs of St^te which had diverted his attention
from these details. Then permitting himself to give an im-
prudent lesson to his young master at a moment when his
enemies sought an occasion to compromise him : " My
padischah," said he, " was I then to suspend the divan, and
to interrupt the discussion of the highest affairs of State, I
who am thy representative and thy shadow, to occupy myself
with these miserable five hundred loads of wood which were
not worth all together five hundred aspers ? Wherefore do
you question me about these wagons of wood instead of
questioning me upon the situation of your empire, upon the
happiness oi your people and the security of your frontiers ? "
278 mSTOBT OF tubkey.
This liberty of speeoh, interpreted into a lecture and an
oatra^ by the enemies of Kara-Mostapha, made his friends
tremble for his safety. They represented to him his impm-
denoe : '^ Is it not throngh affection for him," replied he,
'Hhat I told him the truth? Am I to flatter instead of
serving him f It is better to die honest and free than to
live an adulator and a slave."
Meanwhile, to counterplot his enemies, he conspired him-
self the ruin of the most dangerous of them, which was
Yousouf, the aga of the Janissaries. Emissaries of the
grand vizier, sent ^th gold into the barracks, suggested to
the soldiers to reftîse to touch the plates of rice which would
be served them in the court of the seraglio — a sign of dis-
content that presaged a revolt, and of which the respon-
sibility devolved upon the a^ These manœuvres, disclosed
to Yousouf by his informers m the barracks, armed the trium-
virs with a real grievance against their enemy. Ibrahim,
informed and convinced by them of this intrigue of his
vizier, sent for one of the most accredited casuists of the
oulemas.
" If I were to put to death my lala (my father)," a
familiar title of the grand vizier, asked he, " would my
subjects be dissatisfied with me ? " " God forbid," replied
the oulema, " the necks of your subjects, my padischah, are
not strong enough to support the weight of your anger ;
they are all more slender in your presence than the edge of
your sabre suspended over them. The death of your grand
vizier would fiU them with joy."
Ibrahim, reassured, attended as usual at the council of
the viziers in the seraglio, and made two or three knocks
of impatience upon the trellis of gilt wood that concealed
him from the eyes of the divan. At this signal the council
was silent and dispersed ; the grand vizier remaining alone
in the seraglio, presented himself, according to etiquette, at
the door of the apartment of the Sultan to converse with
him confidentially upon State business. The mutes inter-
dicted his entry ; he withdrew uneasy to his palace, took
under his clothes a Koran to read in case of need the death
prayers, and returned through the iron gate to the seraglio
The Sultan was walking gloomy and irresolute in his saloons ;
the presence of the grand vizier, not authorized by usage to
this familiarity, irritated him.
'^ My lala," cried he, with anger in his looks and his voice,
HIBTOBY OF TtJBKBY. 279
" I must admire your coming to my house as to your father's,
uninyited ! " Then, without letting him finish his justifica-
tion about the fermentations of the Janissaries, which he
attributed to the fact that the padischah no longer sustained
with sufficient frankness his minister ; " Thou liest, traitor,"
said Ibrahim to him ; " it is thou who hast fomented this
rebellion ; I will find some one more worthy than thou to
hold the seals of the empire. Take him," pursued he, turn-
ing towards the chief of the bostandjis and pointing with his
hand to the grand vizier.
The bostandji, uncertain if the padischah intended by the
pronoun the State seal which was carried by the viaier or the
viaier himself, interpreted the word in the less terrible sense,
and received the seal from the hands of Kara-Mustapha
By favor of this mistake, the deposed grand viaier got back
to his house, trembling with the fear of having the headsman
at his heels, disguised himself, and escaped through the roof
of his harem. He descended upon a deserted spot, before
the little mosque of Naali, adjoining his harem, where hay
and straw were sold, and hid himself, without being seen,
under a hay*cock, to await the night.
Meanwhile, when the bostandji-baschi took back to the
Sultan the seal from the grand vizier. ^^ Blockhead," said to
him furiously the padischah, ^^ it is not the seal, but the man
himself that I demanded of thee. Go, and bring me instantly
the head of the traitor»"
Five hundred bostandjis surrounded, at this order, the
house of the g^and viaier, broke in the doors, penetrated even
to the apartments of his women, without finding their victim.
But one of them having got upon the roof of the harem, and
observing from this elevation the environs, thought he per-
ceived under the hay the movement of a breast respiring, ran
thither with his companions, rummaged the hay-co^ with the
point of his sabre, and discovered the fugitive.
Kara-Mustapha defended himself to no purpose with his
drawn sword, and succumbed to the force of numbers.
Gagged and transported to the place of the Khodja-Pasha, he
was strangled on the brink of the fountain of Kara-AIL
His body was taken to the Sultan before committing it to the
sepulchre which he was careful to prepare himself in his day
oi fortune.
280 HI8T0BT OF TVBKXT.
The favorite Saltanzadé inherited the position of him of
whom he had contrived the ruin. A fresh favorite, Scheker*
bouli, a woman of Persian birth, began to rival in the heart
of Ibrahim the ascendant of the Validé. This favorite, to
alienate the Saltan from his mother, concerted with the
Khodja-Djendji to entice him to Acbianople. The grand
visier uid the Snltana Validé, nneasy at this removal,
broa|;ht him back to Constantinople by feigned symptoms of
sedition. Two sons, Selim and Othman, were bom to tho
Saltan daring this excarsion of pleasare to Adrianople.
The Khan of the Crimea, Mohammed-Gherai, was de^
posed, and his son, Islam-Ghcrai, invested with the sov-
ereignty. When he presented himself at the seraglio to give
thanks to Ibrahim for his investiture, he found the Saltan
without pelisse or turban, respiring the coolness of the morn-
ing air on the brink of a basin of the garden. *^ Listen,
Iskm," said the Sultan, " I have made thee Khan. Be hence-
forth like thy fathers, the friend of my friends, and the
enemy of my enemies. What is thy age ? " pursued the
Sultan. '^ I am forty," replied Islam, ^^ and through the
misfortune of my captivity, I mount to-day for the first time
a horse ; but I hope, however, to manage sufficiently well my
charger to repay you in services for the honor you have con-
ferred on me. Between the Eussian and Polish infidels and
me there will be but the edge of the sabre."
The Czar of the Eussians, Alexis Michaïlowitz, sent
ambassadors to Ibrahim to congratulate him on his accession
and to renew his assurances of friendship. " You must,"
replied the Sultan to the Czar, " restrain the Cossacks upon
the seaboard of the Black Sea, and continue to pay the Khan
of the Crimea the tribute which the Czars of Moscow have
always paid to my Tartars."
The Porte, in order to remain faithful to the stipulations
of the peace of Szoen with Austria, refused to the ambitious
Kakoczi, vassal prince of Transylvania, to sustain his preten-
sions to upper Hungary, Wallachia and Moldavia. Baron
de Czernin, ambassador of Austria, brought to Constantinople
the presents of the Emperor. He claimed in vain for the
Boman empire the keys of the Holy-Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
The Sultan replied that the possession of the holy places had
been conferred immemorially by a treaty of Mahomet himself
BISTORT OF TURKEY. 281
on the Greek Christians, and that on any condition he would
not derogate from the engagements of this treaty.
The harem continned to ocGnpy him more than the empire.
Women, perfumes, and furs, were the three delights of his
terrestrial paradise. His mother, his viziers, his pashas, his
favorites no longer sufficed to search and furnish him the
fairest slaves of Georgia, of Persia, of Poland, of Italy,
those native lands of female beauty. The censors of the
seraglio, in which was constantly kept burning the exciting
?erfumes of Arabia, had raised the Asiatic price of amber,
'he price of sable-skins, for apparel and carpeting the harem,
arose tenfold above the ordinary value. His passion for
odorous flowers was so frantic that, instead of heron plumes
mounted upon knots of precious stones — ^the imperial decora-
tion of the turban of his ancestors — ^he intertwined in the
folds of his turban, in his hair and around his ears, whole
garlands of flowers. This effeminate decoration scandalized
the soldiers and the people. He invented a loose gown, all
formed of sable fur, of which the contact caressed all over
the skin, and which had no fold and no cincture to chafe his
delicacy. Each of the buttons of this voluptuous winding-
sheet was made of a single precious stone of the value of ten
thousand gold ducats.
His prodigality on dresses for the countless women of his
harem, led him to send out to sea to meet the vessels of
Genoa and Venice upholsterers charged to forestall the
shawls, the muslins, the velvets, which the activity of com-
merce did not suffice to bring to Constantinople. He diverted
himself from one pleasure but with another. He left the
women of his harem but for flute and tambourine-players,
musicians, singers, dancers, and buffoons— diversions neces-
sary to the melancholy consequent on his debauches. Like
Nero, Caligula, or Sardanapalus in his excesses, he degraded
the first offices of the empire or of the army to the degree
of making them the reward of his coarsest orgies. It is thus
that he appointed aga of the Janissaries a Bohemian named
Ahmed, who used to amuse him by grotesque trivialities, and
that he rewarded with the place of capitan-pasha a Greek
pyrotechnist who represented in lines of fire, in an illumination
of Ûie seraglio, the vessels, the masts and sails of the fleet
282 HIBTOBT OF TXTBKET.
These two favorites of a caprice had sense of shame enough
to decline what the prince had felt no shame, in his ex-
trayagance, to offer them.
He formed his habitual society from men devoted to
pleasure, as if pleasure was the only serious business of
the State. He ran at night with them on horseback from
the new to the old seraglio, usually inaccessible to the reign-
ing Sultans, searching amon^ the women sequestered in uiis
depot of princesses, of favorites and of slaves, the remains
of celebrated beauties. Already father of seven sons, he
had raised to the rank of Sultana Khasseki (Sultana consort)
seven women of his harem. Each of these had her palace in
the seraglio, her court^ her grand officers, her dower on the
treasury, espied slipper money ^ her pleasure boats, her cur*
ricles, her eunuchs, her slaves. Seven other favorites in
title, but not yet mothers, had for slipper money the revenue
of so many provinces. He gave beside to each the salable
disposal of certain great offices of the State, so that accident
or overbidding used to desi^ate, from the depths of the
harem, by the hand of an odalisque, an illiterate and foreign
girl, the candidates to the most important functions of the
government.
The depraved imagination of Ibrahim wished to vanquish
even nature. He coveted a gigantic wife, the object of his
visions. Emissaries, sent out by the Kiaya-Katoun, sought,
by order of Ibrahim, in all the gynécées of Asia, « young
girl of extraordinary stature. They discovered a colossus
in a young Armenian woman— a race celebrated for the am-
plitude of its forms and the elevation of its stature in these
mountains, the Helvetia of the East. Taken off from her
family and presented to the Sultan, Ibrahim fancied finding
in this colossal consort an incomparable phenomenon of
nature. He attached himself to the Armenian woman with
such frenzy, that the frantic favor of this odalisque alarmed
not only the Sultana Khasseki, but that even the Sultana
Koesem herself trembled for her influence. Ibrahim gave
as apanage to this giantess of the harem, the government of
Damascus. The Sultana Koesem, feigning also a wish to
honor in her the idol of her son, invited the Armenian to a
feast, and had her strangled by the eunuchs during the ban- .
quet. They persuaded the inconsolable Ibrahim that his
favorite had died suffocated by the excess of obesity which
HISTORY OF TXJRKBT. 283
he admired in her. Ho bewailed her as a prodigy of beauty
which nature would never renew for him.
The chief of the black eunuchs or the kislaraga, goy-
ernor of the harem, was then the eunuch SunbuUu (a name
signifying the possessor of hyacinths). The usage of the East
appropriates to eunuchs the names of flowers or perfumes
by allusion to the women, those animated flowers with which
they only are familiar in the palaces of the princes or of the
great. SunbuUu, like the eunuchs of the Pharaohs of
Egypt, of the Schahs of Persia, of the Greek emperors of
Gonstantinc^e^ and of the Sultans of Stamboul, had for him-
self the luxury of a harem. He had purchased a slave who
was about to become mother. The beauty of this slave,
encountered frequently by the Sultan in the interior apart-
ment of SunbuUu, adjoining the harem, so dazzled Ibrahim
that he asked her of the kislaraga as nurse for a son of
which one of his wives, the Sultana Tarkan, was just deliv-
ered. The predilection which the Sultan felt for the nurse
of his son Mohammed extended to even her child ; he pre-
ferred this child of a stranger to even his own son.
One summer day as he was playing on the brink of a basin
with his privileged women, the children and the nurses,
amusing himself by pushing them into the water to enjoy
their fright and to have the pleasure of seeing them swim
in regaining the bank, the Sultana Khasseki, mother of Mo-
hammed, jealous of the preference which the Sultan showed for
the child of a stranger over his own, broke into insulting re-
proaches against the nurse. Ibrahim, in a fit of anger at
the Sultana who abused his favorite, tore from the bosom of
its mother her own son Mohammed and hurled him by the
legs into the cistern of the warden. The eunuchs drew out
the child half-drowned, ana his forehead retained through
life a scar from this madness of his father. SunbuUu,
trembling lest the vengeance of the Sultanas and of the Va-
lidé Koesem, should hold him responsible for the disorders
of which his beautiful slave and her nursUng were the occa-
sion in the harem, resigned of himself the perilous place of
kislaraga, and embarked with his treasures, his harem, the
nurse and his infant son, to «nd his days at Mecca. As-
saUed in the vicinity of Oarpathos by the squadron of Malta,
he perished in fighting with intrepidity; his two hundred
slaves, the thirty women of his harem, the nurse and the
infant became the prey of the Knights. The infant, brought
284 HI8T0BT OF TUBKBT.
op by them in ^e Christian ûâth, and reputed the son oi
the Saltan, entered the monastic order of Saint- Dominiok,
and was celebrated in Spain and in Italy under the name of
Father Othman,
vn.
Meanwhile the yices and the insanities of the seraglio
did not prerail over the virile and enterprising g^us of the
Sultana Koesem, who governed in the name of her son.
The pride of superadding a territory to the empire inspired
her with the expedition of Gandia.
A Dalmatian, a bom enemy of Yenice, which possessed
still this island, was become capitan-pasha, and did not cease
to commend this conquest to the imagination of the Validé.
This Dalmatian, named in his infancy Joseph Maskovich,
and since Yousouf-Pasha, was bom in Yrana in Dalmatia,
neighboring the Venetian city of Zara. His mother was
a poor slave; he had commenced his adventurous life as
stable-boy in the stables of the beg of Nadin-Sinan ; his
indigence was such that he followed barefoot the horse of
the beg, and that he owed his first slippers to the charity of
an old woman of Vraua, touched wiUi his beauty and his
misery. A chamberlain of the Sultan, who was passing by
Dalmatia, in returning from Venice, was stmck with his
features and his intelligence. He took him into his service,
carried him to Constantinople, obtained for him the place of
porter of the seraglio, at the wages of seven aspers per day.
He passed from this humble function to the rank of Wood-
splitter, then of bostandji of the seraglio. Ibrahim remarked
him, brought him near his person, discovered in him as much
aptitude as grace, and made him, by the advice of hb mother,
his favorite salihdar after the death of the salihdar Mus-
tapha.
Vindictive as a Dalmatian, zealous as a renegade, ambi-
tious as a parvenu, Yousouf aspired to the post of capitan-
pasha solely to avenge himself on Venice, whose yoke had
weighed upon his country and on his family. He attained
it : the Sultana Koesem had liim named commander of the
forces of sea and land of the expedition which she was pre-
paring in silence. The Sultan affianced him before his de-
parture to one of his daughters, aged two years, named Fa-
tima. A fleet of five hundred sail, carrying three hundred
BISTORT OP TTJBKBY. 286
and thirty thousand men, left the 30th April, 1645, the Sea
of Marmora and the Golf of Salonica to land on the island
of Candia.
VIII.
Ancient Crete, the tomb of Jupiter, the kingdom of his
grand-daughter (the nymph Ida, who gave her name to the
h>ftiest of its mountains), the fortunate island, sumamed in
antiquity the nurse of J ove, was the first of known lands
where man forged the metals. The Dactyles* of Mount
Ida are the fabled or real blacksmiths of the old world ; its
cities, its villages, its mountains, its fountains are the museum
of the antique theogony. The fertility and population of
the island equalled those of Egypt. The Cretans sowed
wheat before the Triptolemus of the Greeks ; they invented
the first code of laws that ruled the cities and the kingdoms
of Asia.
An aristocracy of privilege had succeeded there to a
unique democracy which based the equality of the citizens
upon the degradation of a caste of slaves, f Always at war
with the Greeks, sometimes victors, sometimes vanquished,
they joined through Asiatic patriotism the league of Mithri-
dates against the Eomans. The first Eoman expedition
against Crete, under the command of Anthony, father of the
triumvir, perished completely under its arms. The Eoman
soldiers, hung at their own yard-arms, were engulfed with
their galleys in the waters of the island. MeteUus, lieuten-
ant of Pompey, conquered without subduing them. The
nobles poisoned themselves in a body in order not to survive
the independence of their country ; the people escaped servi-
tude by flying into the forests and the inaccessible caverns
of Mount Ida, where they kept up a perpetual revolt against
the Eoman oppression. Brutus and Cassius fled there for
refuge after the triumph of the tyranny of Octavius over the
enervated liberty of Eome. Constantino, on dividing the
* Priests of Cybele, goddess of the earth, of course mineral as well
as agricaltnraL — TtunskUor,
f This democracy was not at all rmiquej nor even uncommon, in an-
tiquity. On the contrary, a slave-basis was not only general in fact, but
deemed essential even by speculation, as see, for instance, Aristotle.
Nay, accordingly, in even the modem and model American Republic, are
not the Slave States the classic land of the Democracy ? A fact that
passes for a practical paradox with our profound politicians. — Ibid.
286 BISTORT OF TUBSET.
empire with his successor, gave Crete in part portion to Con*
stantios. The Arabs took it oiF from the Bysantines ; Ban-
douin, the crosader, King of Jerusalem, from the Arabs ;
the Genoese, from Baudouin; the Venetians, from the Ge-
noese ; it remained in their possession during three centuries,
and was become, by the exertions of the Senate of Venice,
the citadel of the Mediterranean, when the Greek Sultana
Koesem commenced by the hands of Yousouf the twenty-five
years conquest which was to assure to the Ottomans that
key of Syria, of Egypt, of the Archipelago, that maritime
bulwark of the three continents where reigned Islamism.
IX.
Cydonia, the military capital of -the island, surrendered
after three months of a heroic siege to the Ottomans. They
had thenceforth a foothold in the island. They left there a gar-
rison of twelye thousand men, under the command of Hassan-
Pasha, and deferred to the following years the slow and con-
tinuous conquest of the rest of the island and of the block
of mountaina At his return, Yousouf, despite the support
of the Sultana, found death as the recompense of his suc-
cess. Salih-Pasha had been just appointed grand vizier ; he
apprehended the competition of Yousouf He had Ibrahim
persuaded that Yousouf spared the prisoners at Candia to
enrich himself with their ransom, and that he was loitering
with the war to prolong his authority and his importance.
^^ Eepair instantly back to Candia, or I kill thee," said
Ibrahim, impatient to finish this incomplete campaign.
" My padischah," replied the serdar, astonished in his turn
at thb ignorance of the conditions of a maritime campaign
in winter, " you know nothing of sea affiairs ; we have besides
no rowers, and the galleys wUl not move without them."
" Infamous rebel," rejoined the Sultan, " pretendest thou
to lecture me on sea affairs ? " Then turning to the bostandji-
bashi : " Bring me his head," said he to him on leaving the
apartment.
The bostandji suspended some moments the execution of
an inconsiderate order, which he attributed to the vehemence
of the blood of Ibrahim, and of which he expected the revo-
cation from his reflection. He confined himself to shutting
up Yousouf in the kiosk " of the Birds," a grated prison for
the viziers between their disgrace and their execution. Nei-
HISTCMIY OF TURKEY. 287
tber tke previous friendship, nor tHe title of son-in-law of
ike Saltan, nor a son who was born to Yousonf on the veir
day,* nor the touching supplication which the prisoner ad-
dressed by the officious hands of the bostandji-bashi to Ibra-
him to ask him for at least the favor of life, could make him
pardon his insolence to his master. Ibrahim ordered to
strangle his favorite, his son-in-law, and the conqueror of
Oandia in the kiosk "of the Birds," and had his body
brought before him either for enjoyment or for mourning.
He contemplated with a sort of melancholy pleasure the
cheeks, still colored mih a remnant of life, of the beautiful
serdar : " Alas I alas I " said he, moved to pity over his
victim, as if he had not been the executioner, " alas 1 alas 1
for those beautiful rosy cheeks ! "
The avidity of enrichiDg himself with the presumed trea-
sures of the conqueror of Cydonia was the principal cause
of the murder of Yousouf. His enemies diffused aie report
that he brought back vdth him and hid from his master in-
calculable treasures, among others a column of massive gold.
He brought back in refSity but glory, an integrity rare
among generals, and an island of inestimable price to his
country. . When his property was inventoried, the column
of massive gold sunk to a column of yellow marble of
Egypt streaked ^th red. This column was employed by
the architect of the Sultana Validé to suppoirt the pew of
the Saltan in the mosque she was building at Scutari
Kesentment against the Venetians for their resistance to
him in Candia, and the descents which they used to make in
i^e Morea, excited Ibrahim to the rage of ordering a general
massacre of the Greeks and the Christians in ms capital.
The mufti, Abou-Saïd, called upon to authorize by a religious
fetwa this sanguinary order, refused happily to give it the
sanction of God. He made the Sultan tremble before the
crime of massacring so many of his innocent subjects, and
before the depopulation of the capital, of which these Greeks
* This child could have been scarcely by the daughter of the Sultan,
who, accordmg to the author, was but " two years" of age at the de-
parture of the expedition, but a few months before ; and if by another
woman, one does not see how Ibndiim should have been softened by the
dxcomstance in favoor of a faithless son-in-law. — TVanslator.
288 HI8T0BT 09 TumxiY.
and Oluriatiaafl were the BtreiigUi and wealth. He eaosei
to be brought to the divan the regiiiters of the taz-eolleotor«,
and counted in Constantinople alone two hondred thousand
Armenian and Greek tax-payers, without including the
Franks.
The ruin rather than the crime made the Sultan recedes.
He confined himself to interdictmg the residence of Stam-
boul, the Ottoman part of the city, to the ambassadors of
the Christian powers, and fixing for their residence the sub-
urbs of Oalata and of Pera, on the other side of the Golden
Horn. The Jesuits who sought to wrest from the Francis-
cans the service of the holy places, were accused of having
provoked by their intrigues the arrest and the expulsion of
their competitors the Catholic monks. The Austrian am-
bassadors received from their court, the 5th March, 1646,
the order to protect the Franciscans against the Jesuits,
guilty or innocent of the ambitious views that were imputed
to them.
The grand vizier Salih studied, during the mir with the
Venetians for the possession of Candia, to detach Austria
from their cause, and to remove sH grievance of that court
against the empire, by renewing severely to Eakoczy, prince
of Transylvania, the prohibition to disturb the Austrian
provinces. ^' Tell thy master," said the Sultan, addressing
in frdl divan the envoys of Eakocsy, " that he should not
build upon the embarrassments which are occasioned me by
the Venetian war, that I have armies enough to make myself
obeyed at all points, and that if he renews his incursions
upon the territory of the emperor of Austria, my brother
and my friend, I will depose him from the sovereignty.
Hear and tremble."
The accent, the look and the gesture of Ibrahim, struck
such terror into the soul of the agent of Eakoczy, that he
died of the shock of these words upon re-entering his palace.
XL
The complacent Sultanzadé had received in the place of
Yousouf the command of the second expedition to Candia.
The servility of this courtier sometimes astonished the capri-
cious despotism of the Sultan himself.
" How is it," said Ibrahim one day to Sultanzadé, " that
thou always approvest without exception whatever I say.
HI8T0BT OF TtlBKXT. 289
B&d all that I do whei^er good or evil ? " — ^^ My padîschah,"
replied the ûiyorite, ^' jon are the khalif, the shadow of Qod
upon the earth, and all that flows from thy mind is a divine
inspiration; even in cases where your volitions have the
appearance of error or of contradiction which our weak in-
teUigenoe may conceive to be unreasonable, these volitions
have a secret wisdom which yonr slave should take for
granted and respect without being able to comprehend
them."
Sultanzadé sometimes relaxed from this official servilism
in his confidential intercourse with friends. He showed one
day to the high-judge Abdoul-Halem, his confidant, an auto-
grai^ letter of the Sultan, or khati-scherif, written in the
delurium of drunkenness, and of which the language, impe-
rial to him, would have -appeared to any other the scandal
ùi the sovereignty and the ignominy of the throne. '^ Listen
to me," said this khati-scherif of the Sultan, who began by
dishonoring with his contempt the ministers of his power ;
" my ancestors have sent too much gold and jewels to Mecca
and to Medina ; cause that they be instantly brought back
into my treasury ; otherwise I will have your skin torn off,
and have it stuffed with straw and make it a scarecrow to
the birds."
^'Thou seest," said Sultanzadé to the high-judge his
friend, after having read to him thb khati-scherif, ^' to what
abjectness I am reduced by these insensate caprices of a
rabble of favorite slaves, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French,
Persian, Greek, who reign in the seraglio. God only knows
how all this will end."
Sultionzadé died upon landing in Crete. Housseln-Pasha
continued the conquest in his pUce with the title of serdar.
The city of Betimo and several other strongholds of the
kland were added to the area occupied by the conquerors.
The capital, Candia, held out stilL
Dalmatia, wrested city by city from the Venetians by
Tekeli-Pasha, Aaof defended triumphantly by the capitan-
pasha Mousa, against an attempt of the Russians, honored
the viziership of Salih, despite the apathy and scandals of
the court.
XIL
Ibrahim, after having exhausted the excesses of debauch,
Vol. III.— 13
290 HI8T0KT or TU&KXT.
WM now •yhaaiting the eztraTagaaoes of pride. Irriiaied
at often meeting, in his rides through the city, some ohstacles
to the rapidity of his coorsers, ho ordered the viaier to inter*
diet the entry of the capital to every species of wagon ; it was
to interdict to Constantinople the indispensable mode of provi-
sioning itself in hay, in straw and in wood. Obedience was
eluded and illasory. Meanwhile in going one day on horse-
back to the plain of Daoad-Pasha, the eyes of Ibrahim were
offended by the sight of a wagon of forage coming into the
city ; he (Milled the grand visier, and without listening to his
excuse ; " Let him be strangleîd 1 '' cried he, " let him be
strangled 1 "
The absence of an executioner and of a rope left some
moments of reflection and some possibility of a return of
Ibrahim to cool blood. But as obstinate in the execution
as he had been abrupt in the order, he stored the next
house, belonging to the iman of the village, and caused to be
strangled before his eyes the unfortunate Salih with the well*
rope. He sent from thence the seal of the grand vizier to
he capitan-pasha, vanquisher of the Eussians at Aio£
B^ntanoe, a few days after, led him to withdraw the
seal from Mousa, and confer the rank of grand vizier upon
Ahmed-Pasha. The Sultanas and the transient favorites
disposed more fully than ever of the empire. The govemot
of JBroussa, who furnished snow and ice for the dierbets of
the two seraglios and the kiosks of the favorites, having lost
his way among the glaciers of Mount Olympus, and his pro-
longed absence having countenanced his death, his place of
governor was given to a favorite of the washerwoman of
the harem. Ibrahim, contrary to the proscriptions of the
Koran, espoused an eighth wife, and had a carriage made for
a favorite, of which all the nails were precious stones.
Cimdia continued to defend itself against the fleets and
the reinforcements sent incessuitly from Constantinople to
Housseïn-Pasha. The serdar, struck with two balls on the
fiice in an assault, bound himself his shattered jaw with the
shawl of his turban, and continued to fight at the head of
his Janissaries. Malta, Florence, Eome, the illustrious vol-
unteers of all the Catholic nations brought assistance to
Candia. Housseïn complained of the tardiness of the capi-
tan-pasha, who was strangled for his negligence. The grand
vizier effected likewise the decapitation of all the pasl^ or
governors connected with his predecessor Salih, of whom he
HI8T0BT OF TUBKET. 291
apprehended tlie resentment. Every morning the people
oame to examine with horror at the gate of the seraglio
what were the heads that fell the past night.
XIII.
These executions drove terror itself to revolt The son
of the former grand vizier Salih, named Mohammed-Pasha,
governor of Erzeroum, had escaped death through difficulty of
reaching him in his remote government. He concerted with
Wardar-Ali-Pasha, governor of Kars, to make resistance to
the tyranny of Ibrahim.
Wardar-Ali-Pasha knew himself devoted to execution for
having refused to send to the harem of Ibrahim the beauti-
ful Georgian, Perikhan, daughter of a prince of those coun-
tries, affianced to Ipshir-Pasha, the son of his friend. The
two pashas made an appointment with each other to meet at
Tokat where to proclaim the insurrection, and whence to
march on Constantinople.
Mohammed, on the route with his guard towards Tokat,
encountered two chiaoux officers who were carrying back
to Constantinople the head of his uncle, Mourteza-Paaha,
decapitated by them at Siwas. He asked them to show him
the firman by virtue of which they put his uncle to death.
The chiaoux avowed to him, that the warrant of death, con-
cealed by them from his researches when they passed through
Erseroum, was inclosed in a leaden flask sodden to their sad-
dle-bow, in which the Turks carry water on a journey. He isaw
that this would soon or late be also his own lot, saw no safety
but in audacity, and tempted by negotiation the fidelity of
Koeppilu-Pasha, a man of integrity and ability who was
marching at the head of the troops sent against him and
against Wardar-Ali, his accomplice. He wrote the latter
from Angora to beware of the artifices of the Porte, and
especially of Ipshir-Pasha, that perfidious friend for whom
he had compromised himself in preserving the beautiful bride
from the slavery of the harem of Ibrahim.
Wardar-Ali, incredulous to his advices, received Ipshir
in his camp. The traitor Ipshir, purchased secretly by the
Porte, fell of a sudden with nis bands of cavalry on the dis-
armed troops of Wardar, precipitated this chief himself
from his horse, bound him and delivered him to Koeprilu :
'^ Perfidious wretch ! " cried he to Ipshir, on seeing him take
292 HI8T0BY OF TUBKBT.
part in tlie preparations for his execution, " is it thus Aaft
thou recompensest the generosity which I haye had in brar-
ing ^anny to guarantee t^y betrothed from ontrage ? "
His severed head was sent by Koeprilu to the Saltan.
Ibrahim, instead of recompensing Ipshir for his perfidy, con-
demned the beautiful Perikhan, the involuntary cause of the
revolt, to be exposed by the light of torches to the profana-
tions of the multitude ; but the indignation of the Mussul-
mans constrained him to revoke this atrocious order.
Ibrahim coveted the wife of the grand vizier Ahmed ;
this vile sycophant of all his caprices repudiated the wife to
whom he owed his fortune, so that the Sultan might e^trae
her legally. In return for this ignominious ingratitude,
Ibrahim gave in marriage to Ahmed the Sultana Bibi, his
daughter. This traflBc of wives was celebrated by fetes during
which Ibrahim repeated the follies of Caligula. He was seen
to appear in public with his beard tressed in precious stones,
after the example of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, to illu-
minate the bazaars by night and turn darkness into day to
amuse the fancies of his silly slaves ; the following day he
caused to be shut up all the shops and even the very gates
of Constantinople, m order to change the ordinary tumult
of day into the silence and solitude of night
XIV.
Meanwhile internal dissensions began to agitate the
harem, and the jealousies of the wives were preparing palace
revolutions. The Sultana Validé Koesem took alarm at the
influence which the Sultana Tchekerbouli retained, despite
her rivalries, over the mind of the Sultan. The government
was escaping from her into the hands of the vile slaves
whom she herself had given as playthings to her son. The
shame of this reign recoiled in public opinion upon the
mother of him who was thus dishonoring the throne. She
disguised from herself no longer that the Ottomans would
confound her soon or late in the same reprobation and the
same punishment. Tchekerbouli and all her faction of men
and women in the harem were exiled to the recesses of
Nubia, under pretext of illicit treasures accumulated by this
favorite during her influence.
The grand vizier Ahmed augmented the unpopularity of
Ibrahim in establishing a new impost called the amber and
histobt'of tubkst. 293
f%»T tax. The passion of the Sulten for women and for
downs did but increase by his profusions. His Persian and
Arabian favorites who used to lull him to sleep by recount-
ing to him the poetic fables of their country, spoke to him of
a padischah of ancient times whose palace had for wain-
scoting, for ceiling, for carpeting, only yelvet cushions
and the most precious sable peltries. His imagination got
impassioned for this palace of furs, and his orders despatched
to the governors of aU his provinces imposed on them this
tribute of animal skins under severe penalties. He exacted
also an extraordinary tribute of precious stones for the
crowns with which he loved to ornament the brow of his
women.
The murmur arose with the disorder. The judge of
Galata devoted himself to express it, at the risk of his life,
in the name of the empire. He put on the habit of a der-
vish, and overwhelmed, in full divan, the grand vizier with
the reproaches of the empire and the divine malediction :
" Do with me what thou wilt," said he to him after ; " I
have spoken ; there can befall me through my freedom of
i^ech but three things : either you kill me, and I bles? my
martyrdom in advance ; or you will banish me, and I rejoice
in advance at no longer living in a city scandalized by your
excesses ; or you will despoil me, and 1 have forestalled you
by despoiling myself and taking the cowl of the dervish."
The Sultana Koesem, despite her title of mother and her
old autibority, displeased by her representations to her son,
and was exiled from the seraglio into the garden of the sub-
urb, called the ^rden of Iskender-TchelebL The principal
officers of the Janissaries, who were mutely indignant at
these excesses, were invited to a feast given by me grand
viiier at the gate ^' of Gannons," under pretext of celebrat-
ing the marriage of his son with a daughter of the Sultan.
This banquet was to be ensanguined by their execution.
Informed on entering of the destiny which awaited them,
they hastened to take flight to the mosque of the centre, a
place consecrated by the great seditions of the troops, and
to convoke the chiefs and veterans of all the armed corps of
the ci^ital : the muffci, the preachers, the oulemas, the agas.
A signal only was wanting to the revolt consummated
ab-eady morally. At the dawn of day, the Janissaries, with-
out weapons and with folded arms, surrounded the mosque;
the pac^e awaited silently the deliberation of the oulemas.
S94 nmoET ot tubkst.
The seraglio, abandoned, tremUed at its soHtode. IbraUm
sent at last to the mofii a chamberlain to ask him the oanse
of this illicit assemblage.
" Let the padisohah,^' replied the mufti in the name of
all, ** deliver ns the grand vizier, otherwise we do not dis-
perse." Without waiting the answer of the Sultan, th«
assembly deposed the grand vizier, and appointed in his stead
one of those men who occur sometimes to the memory of the
multitude on account of their venr obscurity. It was Sofi-
Mohammed-Pasha or Mohammed the Pious, a former spahi,
become defberdar or treasurer of the empire under Otiiman
IL, and retired since, to consecrate himself to prayer and to
virtue, in a garden of the suburbs, where he practised the
philosophy of the cénobites. Tom from this garden by
the oulemas ttnd the agas, the presence of this venerable old
man in the mosque caused a burst of acclamation and of
tears. The people imagined they sanctified their revolution
by placing it under the auspices of sudi virtue.
Sofi-Mohammed, thus proclaimed, presented himself, de-
spite the assembly, at the seradio, to obtain the princess rati-
fication of the nomination of me people. He kissed respect-
fully the skirt of the Sultan's peliisse. '' I have deposed
Ahmed," said Ibrahim to him ; '^ but how wouldst thou have
me deliver to his enemies him who is the husband of my
daughter. Go, and answer to me for his life."
Sofi-Mohammed returned to the mosque to implore the
pardon of Ahmed. His intercessions failed before the fury
of the multitude. He returned in consternation to ihe
seraglio.
" Old dog," said to him Ibrahim, who had resumed con-
fidence from the sloth of the revolters, " it is thou who hast
excited the troops, to become vizier ; but never mind, thy
turn will come." He maltreated with blows of the fist the
old man, innocent of all participation in the émeute. Sofi-
Mohammed, insulted and buffeted by the prince, overwhelmed
by the people, impotent between both, came off from the
seraglio and took refuge in his garden.
The chiefs of the troops and of the multitude pursued
him thither and brought him back by force to the mosque of
the centre. They at the same time had Hie gates of the city
occupied by detachments charged to intercept the communi-
oations of the seraglio with the provinces; they sent to the
Sultana Koesem, exiled in the garden of Iskender-Tchelebi,
HI8T0RT OF TUBKBT. 295
a guard of honor to protect her against the attempts of her
son and bade her watch over the life of the princes, her
ffrandsons, the hope of the empire. From the retirement of
her garden, the ^nltana Koesem, at the same time mother
and politician, directed through her agents among the troops
all the threads of the reyolution.
XV.
Already the rebels spoke openly of deposing the Sultan
himselfl *' Has he not murdered Salih-Pasha ? '' said they ;
*'has he not murdered Wardar-Ali, the only man then
oapable of reforming the empire ? Has not his body been
without sepulture lor twenty days, the prey of dogs and
ravens at the gate of the seraglio ? " — ^^ The padi^hah,"
said the most moderate of the orators at the mosque, ^' has
lost the world by brigandage and tyranny ; the populations
are ruined, the infidels have taken fifty strongholds of Bos-
nia and blockaded the Dardanelles : let him' depose his vi-
zier, let him give to us his head, let him banish his favo-
rites, and we will disperse."
These discourses, reported to Ibrahim, were eluded by
him as powerless murmurs. Ten thousand artillery-men and
bostandjis encamped with cannon in the courts gave him
assurance as to his life. Night fell ; the oulemas, satisfied
by vain roeeches, were retiring one by one, deferring to the
morrow the resolutions to be taken. " Imprudent men," said
the officers, *' if we disperse this night, it will be impossible
to assemble us to-morrow ; let us not separate imtil order
be re-estalished in the world ; let us pass together the night
in the mosque."
The Janissaries took possession respectfully of the oule-
mas, and offered them for the night a military hospitality in
their barracks adjoining the mosque.
XVI.
Meanwhile the grand vixier Ahmed, betrayed in his
crime by the indiscretion of his accomplices, had interrupted
the fete which he was giving in his garden on occasion of the
marriage of his son, and hâ retire with his principal offi-
wrs into the seraglio, protected by his guards from Ûie noo-
tomal riot of the Janissaries. Instructed hour by hour of
296 HIBTOBT OF TUBKST.
the explosion and of the promss of the hunirrection in the
moeqne, he had despaired of nis safety. Prorided with six
thousand dncats in gold carried bj a draft horse, his fingers
adorned with two rings of the yalue of twenty thousand
piasters each, with a third ruby ring of which the price was
inestimable, he had mounted horse in the court of his
stables, and, attended by two of his inseparable pages,
Khalil and Abdi, had taken refuge, through some obscure and
deserted lanes, at the house of the most devoted of his
Mends, Deli-Burader*
His retreat beinff soon made known to the rebels, he was
forced to seek another asylum in the house of Ahmed the
Long, his former client ; the spies of the oulemas pursued
thither his traces. He thought to blind them by retiring
alone on foot, before day, into the house of another of his
friends, then absent, Hadji-Beïram.
Hadji-Beïram anticipated the suspicions of the rebels by
revealing perfidiously himself the retreat of the vizier in his
harem. The chiaoux tore him thence and conducted him
before his successor, Sofi-Mohammed. Far from triumphing
over the catastrophe and the dbtress of his enemy, Sofi-Mo-
hammed embraced him with tears in his eves, and seated
him with honor by his side. Ahmed asked nim as the sole
fi&vor to be permitted to withdraw, for the residue of his
life, to Mecca, an exile equivalent to apolitical and civil death
among the Mussulmans. Appeal was made to the mufti to
determine the lot of the prisoner. The mufti, less compas-
sionate than Sofi-Mohammed, issued, amid the popular
acclamations, a fetwa of death against the instrument of the
crimes of Ibrahim. He was asked, before reading him the
sentence, for a list of his treasures, on giving him the assur-
ance that his life would be ransomed by a full avowaL He
huckstered like a miser, adding at each menace an enormous
figure, and concealing still the greater portion of his prodi-
gious opulence. His interrogatory exhausted, he was left
alone with his attendants in a barred chamber, awaiting the
pardon which he was promised as the price of the confession of
his riches. He untied his turban, said a prayer, and laid him
on the carpet to sleep, his two pages extended at his feet.
He was awakened under pretext of conducting him before
Sofi-Mohammed, his protector, who had, it was said, pleaded-
and obtained his pardon from the troops. Arrived at the
bottom of the dark staircase, two strong hands seized him
HlflTOBY OF TtJBKET. 297
behind; he turned round and by a torchlight reoogniied the
headsman Kari-Ali, the usual executioner delivered by him-
lelf : ^^ Yile giaour»" cried Ahmed on recognizing with horror
the headsman. ^^ Gracious master," replied ironically Kara-
Ali, bowing derisively as if to kiss the lappet of his caftan ;
then seiaing him by one arm as his aid did by the other, the
two executioners conducted him on foot through the hoot-
ings of the people along to Cannon-Gate, on the verge of his
own pleasure-garden, where the day previous he planned the
murder of the agas of the Janissaries. There, Kara- All
having struck him down like an ox with a blow of the fist
upon the forehead, tore off his turban and squeezed the rope
around his neck His body, placed crosswise npon a horse,
was thrown upon a heap of rubbish in the place of the Hip-
podrome^ where the oulemas, on reassembling at the break
of day in the mosque, recognized him and were encouraged
by the view of their enemy lying lifeless at their feet.
XVIL
The grand judge of Koumelia, Mousslieddin, who went
with the oulemas to the mosque to induce oblivion of his
misdeeds by his adhesion to the triumphant revolt, was
tumbled from his horse, stripped of his turban and dragged
bareheaded and bloody upon the steps of the peristyle. ^He
got up and threw himself upon the stirrup of the mufti, em-
bracing his leg to implore protection against the assassins.
The white vestments of the pontiff were sprinkled with the
blood that eushed from the wounds of the judge. The in«
tercession of the mufti was not able to save the culprit: the
soldiers prostrated him anew, cut off his head, and placed it
between the legs of the body laid prone upon the breast, ac-
cording to the derisive rite of executed infidels.
The khodja of the Sultan, Djindji, had also dared to pre-
sent himself at the mosque to participate in the deliberation.
The death of the ^nd vizier and of the judge of Roumelia
presaged to him his lot. He exchanged apparel and turban
with a poor iman of the mosque and escaped, without
having been recognized, by a gate of the garden. The agaa
of the Janissaries cast with indignation the blame of those
two illegal murders upon the populace, excited by the oule-
mas, more cowardly and more cruel than the soldiers. They
oame out of the temple and from the steps haranirued the
VoL.m.— 13»
S9S fltBTORT OF TtntSSY.
Jtidflflaiies, obiding them for ^ase ignoble aasaauiiatioiM
«nnmitted with impmiitj in their presenee. The Janissa*
ries, who wished a reyolntion, bat not a massacre, arrested
the sheddmff of blood by the populace upon the Hippodrome.
The ottiemaS) entered npon this session, deputed the
Judge of Mecca, Hassan, to the seraglio to summon the Sol*
tan to the mosqne. They hoped in this way to wrest him
from the ten thousand deifenders who were encamped with
ordnance in the courts» On the refusal of Ibrahim, they
convoked the Sultana Validé to the meeting, praying her to
bring along with her the eldest of the princes, Mohammed,
whom they resolved to proclaim Sultan in place of the pro»
faner of the throne.
XVIIL
The Sultana Koesem had all to fear and nothbg more to
hope from Ibrahim» Deprived of the influence which she
had hitherto exercised with so much happiness over two
reigns; sacrificed to the vile favorites who made the son
ashamed of his deference towards his mother ; witness of
the humiliati<ms to which Ibrahim subjected his daughters
Aisché, Fatima, Khaniadé, in the harem, in compelling them
to hand the ewer and the coffee like servants to his slaves ;
trembling from day to day for the life of the princes whom
a caprice of Ibrahim might cause to be strangled even in
her arms; exiled already in the garden of I^ender; me>
naoed with a more severe and remote exile to the island of
Rhodes, the Sultana mother had no hope of safety but in a
revolution. But if a revolution was necessary to her rescue,
a deposition followed inevitably by a regicide was repugnant
to the heart of the mother as much as of the politician. She
still loved Ibrahim, the child whom she had hidden at the
peril oi her life from the umbrageous cruelty of Amurath
lY., and under the name of whom she had ruled sovereignly
the empire during the years of his adolescence. She be*
lieved herself more sure of regaining and preserving her
ascendant near a prince bound hand and foot upon the
throne, under a council of her own composition, and
with viciers attached to her cause, than under the govern*
ment of an infant of violent character and weak intellect
who would be indebted for the throne to rebels, and who
would give them through gratitude and through necessity
HISTOBT OF TUKKET. 299
tlie antiiarity she wished for hersd£ The part of all-pow*
erfal arbiter between Ibri^ûm fallen, but not dethroned, and
the oolemas her acccmiplioes, appeared to her then justly
preferable to that of cruel mother sacrficing her son to
erown her grandson.
She represented to the deputies of the mosque, to the
mufti and to the old aga of the Janissaries, Mousslieddin,
orators of the people and of the soldiers, that it was better
to respect Ibrahim, by wreaking their wrath upon his min-
isters, than to set the fatal example of deposing a padischah.
She promised to go immediatly to see him to the seraglio,
and to dispose him to the concessions and the necessary
guarantees to preserve the nation from the scandals and the
degradations which she deplored no less than they. She
spoke to them of a reign purely nominal, under the surveil-
lance of a council of government, composed of the oulemas,
the ^eiks and the agas the most accredited for their virtues,
their talents and their authority in the capital. After hav-
ing dismissed them with these prospective views, she dressed
herself in mourning as a suppliant of the people and of the
prince ; she likewise robed in mourning her two slaves and
her black eunuch who carried the &n before her, and coifed
in a black turban from which fell over her face a dark veil,
she entered her barge in order to proceed with the two little
princes to the seraglio.
She found the courts already invaded by the oulemas,
^e agas, the judges, the mufbi, the aged Mousslieddin and
their colleagues. The bostandjis, cdiaken by the ocmstancj
and the unanimitv of the revolt, had opened the gates to the
ehi^ and oratora of the mosque of the centre ; a confused
mass of people and of soldiers without arms inundated
behind them the approaches of the palace ; they called with
loud cries for the Sultana Koesem and the young princes.
She made her appearance alone in the funeral costume we
have described, preceded by the black eunuch who was fan-
ning her upon the steps of the gate of Felicity. Her aspect
imposed sUence on the crowd. This woman represented to
the eyes of the Ottomans forty years of domination ; the
dieri^ed memory of a Sultan of whom she had been the
spouse ; two reigns conducted vigorously by the hands of a
woman, — the one happy so long as it had followed her sug-
gestions ; the other full of hope at its commencement, and
which had soiû: bat wiUi her influence upon her son; she
SOO HURFOmT OF TI7BKIT.
represented in fine, in the grandsons that remained to ber,
tiie whole sarviving dynasty of Othman, and the whole fît-
tore of the empire.
XIX.
Accustomed twice in her life to the tumults and to the
tragedies of the movements of the multitude and of the
troops, she spoke to them with that eloquence so natural to
the Greeks, heightened in her by the habits of State busi-
ness so long discussed in her presence, and by the energy <^
her sentiment of maternity, of patriotism and of ambition.
She dared, from the opening words, to chide with motherly
severity those oulemas and those veterans revolted in her
cause, and demanding more than she judged requisite her-
self for her security as for the safety of the empire. ^^ Is
it just, is it wise, is it respectful in you to excite these insur*
rections ? And are you not all here the privileged slaves of
this house ? "
At these words of the Sultana, the veteran MoussUeddin
dared to interrupt her : ^^ August mistress," replied he to
her, ^^ what you say is true; we have all received benefits
from this house, and I more than another, since I enjoy them
these forty years back ; but it is exactly our attachment to
your blood and our gratitude for so many benefits ih&t for-
bid us to look on longer with a culpable indifference upon
the ruin of this house and of the country indissolubly bound
up together. Oh I would to God that I had not lived to
witness such days ! for what do I now need ? What time is
left me to enjoy riches or dignities by afl ambition which
would ill become the brief remainder of my days ?
^^ Mother of the Ottomans ! the folly and the injustice
of the padischah, your unworthy son, has put the world in
danger. Our frontiers are dropping ofi^ while he abandons
himself to pleasures, to debaucheries, to scandalous prodi-
galities from a treasury ill-replenished by the shameless sale
of offices. Your oulemas are assembled and they have ren-
dered a fetwa which declares legitimate the deposition of the
padischah Ibrahim, and the installation of the young padis-
cbah, your grandson Mohammed. So long as those acts are
not accomplished, there is no quiet to be expected from
either the people or the troops ; yield to our inflexible reso-
lution ; if you set yourself in opposition to it, it is no longer
HI0TOST ÙW TUBMXt. 301
against rerolters, but againtt ike àeomcm of the laws, o£
râigion, and of coantrj) that jour soldiers would have to
conibat ; the revolt will have passed to your side."
The Sultana felt that it was necessary to give way before
a resolution sanctioned by the deliberation of the oulemas,
interpreters of the law, and before the fetwa of the mufti,
tiiat oracle of religion. She tried, however, a third time to
prevent the t(^l fall of Ibrahim, and to bring over the chiefs
of the law and of religion to the idea of a council of re-
gency which, without deposing her son, would govern in his
name. The high jud^e of Anatolia, Hanefizadé, a man de-
liberate and cutting m his words, next spoke in the name
of the oulemas :
" Gracious Empress,'^ said he, '' we are come here full of
confidence in your wisdom and in your patriotism ; you are
not only the mother of the padischah, bear it in mind, you
are the venerated mother of all the true believers : the more
you shorten this crisis of the empire, the better will it be for
alL Our troops are every where beaten by our enemies ;
there are no bounds to the traffic of places ; the Sultan, ex-
clusively occupied in satisfying hb passions, has wandered
from the paths of the law. The call to prayer upon the
minarets of Aya-Sofia is deafened by the noise of the fifers
and trumpeters, of the cymbals and the flutes of the seraglio.
No one can without danger give counsel to the Sultan, as you
have experienced yourself The markets are given up to
pillage ; the innocent are put to death ; the favorite slaves
govern the uwid"
The Sultana Validé still essayed to struggle against the
general will : ^' All these evils," said she to them, *' are the
doings of bad men ; these should be removed and replaced
by men of sense and conduct."
" What would that avaU? " replied Hanefizadé. « Has
he not had executed men of competence and valor, such as
Kara-Mustapha and the conqueror of Cydonia, Yousouf-
Pasha?»
'^ But how is it possible to set upon a throne a child of
seven years ? " objected the Sultana Validé.
"According to the sentence of our lawyers," rejoined
Hanefi, " a madman cannot reign, whatever be his a^e, but
rather an infant endowed with reason : it is on this principle
that our fetwa is founded. With a sovereign still an infant,
but possessing rati<mality, a wise viiier may put to order the
303 mraoBT or tuikit.
ufoM, while an inauw Snhin rniiit the empire b j mnrder,
infitmr tod oomtptioii.'' *
The respeotfolness of this laagnage and the leagth of
the deliberation, in one of thoee moments which did not ad-
mit of deliberation, bat of prompt reeolres, drove some <^
tiie agas of the troope and aboye all Kara-Tdielebi, a soldier
without self-eontrof, to aoclamationa of impatience 00 irrer-
erent to female modesty and to ihe majesty of a sovereign,
that the historians indicate without daring to repeat them,
that Kara-Tchelebi afterwards expiated them with justice im
his own blood. Patience failed the people and the troc^ ; the
Sultana, humiliated, came to understand that the revolution
would respect her but so far as she herself riiould conde-
scend to the will of the revolution.
*' Very well," said she, without appearing to have heard
the outrages of Kara-Tchelebi, '* I wiU go for my grandson
Mohammed, and coif him with the turban."
An unanimous acclamation called for the grandmoth»
and the child. The Sultana reappeared at the gate of Fe-
licity, and presented the boy to the people. He was seated
upon a throne, before which the crowd defiled in order and
sUence, for fear the confusion, the multitude, the cries and
the arms might intimidate to terror and even to tears the
infant, torn of a sudden from the arms of the women in the
tumult of a revolution. The bostandjis, to whom his eyes
were accustomed in the gardens of the seraglio, assured
the uneasy Sultana of the security of her grands(m ; she
retired with a heart full of anxiety for Ibrahim.
XX
During the ceremony of the popidar coronation at the
gate of fVslicity, the mufti, the viiiers, the oulemas, the
salihdar, and the general of the bostandjis himself, become
domestic executors of the will of the people who surrounded
* This debate and several others In the coarse of tiie irork should
foraiah matter for refledion to Amezicani. It would show them that tlM
independence of calling royal mlers to aooonnt is not confined to tiie
populations of the ** Juigio-Saxon " race. The English deposed their
sovereign once or twice ; the Ottomans (those British bywords of Oriental
servility) deposed their saltans some half a dozen times. And these sul-
tans were, moreover, sovereigns of twenty tunes the conséquence, is
power, population, territory, of the Epglish. — Trcm^aior»
mSTOBT OF TUBKEY. 303
the palace, oame to signify to Ibrahim, abandoned by his own
court, his deposition and the coronation of his son.
^^ Traitors, '' cried Ibrahim at these words, '^ am I not
yonr padischah ? 'What does that mean ? " — " No," replied
Abdoolazis, the most resolute and the most insolent of the
oulemas ; ^^ no, thou art not our padischah ; thou wast neyer
such, for thou wast not such in virtue of the laws, and thou
hast violated thyself all laws, trampled under foot both jus-
tiae and religion. Thou hast ruined the world; thou hast
wasted thy time in frivolities and debaucheries; thou hast
dissipated the treasures of the empire in the gratification of
puerile or criminal caprices. Corruption and cruelty have
governed the world in thy place."
Ibrahim, overwhelmed by these outrages, turned towards
the mufti and the aged MoijœsHeddin, whose respectful atti-
tude attested some remains of regard and of pity for him.
"But at all events am I not your emperor?" said he to
them. « Why should I quit the throne ? "
" It will be only for a few days," replied some of the
deputation. The purpose was to deceive him so that his
obstinate resistance should not lead the agas to more extreme
violences than the deposition.
^^ I understand you," r€(joined he, with a rage which no
longer considered either the force or the moment or the
danger; "you are all ingrates and traitors. You are,
besides, men devoid of reason. What 1 a child of that sise,"
added he with an ironical gesture and lowering his hand
towards the ground, "is it a child of seven years that you
mean to make padischah ? But how should such an infant
reign? You will then appoint also as padischah this old
imbecile?" in pointing to the aged Mousslieddin. "Be-
sides, is not that child my son ? "
Abdoulasiz cut short his speech by outrages so scandalous
that Uie historian^ witness of the scene, can only mention
them. He sullied the revolution as Ibrahim had sullied the
throne. Ibrahim disdained to reply to this flatterer, become
censor in a di^. He apostrophised anew ^e mufti and re-
proached him with his ingratitude. " Is it not I who have
made thee what thou art ? " said he to Mm. " No," replied
the mufti) adroit at turning upon destiny a gratitude he was
unwilling to owe to man; " it is not thou, it is the Almighty
God."
Ibrahim in forcbg the mufti against his will and her
304 mSTOBT OP T0RKST.
own to ffire him his onlj daughter in numriage, and in send-
ing her back afUrwarda with oontempt, had oertainlj changed
the fayor into an ontrace. The mufti avenged not only the
empire but his profaned daughter.
Deaf to those imprecations and maledictions of the Snl'
tan upon their head, the military agas seised him by both
arms, and drew him, despite his desperate resistance, into
the imperial chamber. He resigned himself at length, and
crossing his arms, become free, upon his breast : '* This," said
he, bowing ^e head, *^ was written upon my brow ; it is the
order of God, let as go."
He was eiint up with two of his fayorite slayes in the
kiosk of ^* the Birds" — the yestibole of death or of a per-
petual imprisonment Of his whole empire and his whole
harem, he had now but a dungeon, a mat and two slayes.
His mother herself dared not to yisit him, for fear of being
suspected by the oulemas.
XXI.
Meanwhile, like Nero at Home, Ibrahim had still a party
in the towers and the barracks, where the corruption of
princes secures by license the yile fayor of the populace.
Agitation arose in the cafés and in the mess-rooms in his
name. It was asked by what title lawyers, sheiks and agas
had precipitated from the throne a legitimate padischah to
cover their ambition of reiffning in the name of an infant
scarce out of his cradle. There was an affected alarm at
this phantom government under a phantom padischah. The
viiiers and the agas trembled to leave a hope or a pretext for
this dangerous repentance of the troops. The mufti was
asked if it was permitted to depose and put to death a padis-
chah who put the dignities of the empire to auction.
" Yes," replied laconically the mufti, ^' does not the Koran
say, ' If there be two khalifs, kill one of them ? ' "
. Armed with this fetwa which authorized the regicide, the
mufti, executioner and judge at the same time, the grand
visier, the judges of the army, the agas of the Janissaries,
oi the spahis and the other corps, presented themselves at the
seraglio to execute their sentence. The horror of the regicide,
the dread of the vengeance, tardy, but infiedlible, which had
overtaken all the murderers of the first immolated Sultan,
pity for a prince more despised than hated by his servantS| had
mSTORT OF TURKEY. 305
turned the sera^io into a desert. Pages, bostandjis, capidjis,
all fled or refused a complicitj in the murder. The mufti
and the viziers were constrained to force with their own
hands the door of the kiosk of the Birds, which no one con-
sented to open.
When the iron gates were fallen from their hinges beneath
their blows: "Where is the executioner?'' demanded the
vizier. The executioner, Kara-Ali, had absconded from fear
of sullying his hands with the sacred blood of a padischah.
He was however discovered; he was dragged pale and
trembling before the murderers ; he fell at the feet of the
grand vizier, and demanded that he be killed himself rather
than be forced to kill his padischah, swearing by the heavens
that his trembling hands and tottering knees would not
allow him to fulfil his bloody office.
^^ Cowardly and infamous giaour," said to him the grand
vizier in dealing him a blow of a stick on the head, " come
and die ! " " Kara-Ali and Ali-Hammal, aids of the execu-
tioner, were pushed by. force into the hall of the kiosk.
They enter with a horde of chiaoux the chamber of the pri-
soner. The viziers, the mufti, the agas, ranged themselves
in silence on a lofty and grated platform, whence the eye
surveyed the interior of the prison lighted by the dome.
Ibrahim, whom the thickness of the walls had hindered
from hearing the dumb tumult of the gate and the dialogue
of the grand vizier with the executioner, was seated, his
eyes upon the Koran, in a comer of the divan ; his two
slaves standing and with hands crossed upon the breast,
seemed to listen to the reading. The Sultan was dressed in a
black caftan, a red pantaloon tied around the waist with a
torn shawl; a Grecian cap of wool, dyed in purple, was
substituted for the turban, the garland of flowers and tho
Çrecious stones which coifed him in his day of majesty.
!he paleness, the thinness and the melancholy of his counte-
nance abeady attested the shade and the lividity of the
dungeon.
On perceiving on the platform the mufti and the vi-
ziers, his enemies, and seeing enter his apartment the execu-
tioner Kara-Ali, a mute personification of death, whom he
had so often sent himself to his victims, he understood hia
lot, and rising with a bound, the eyes lifted towards tho
platform : " Is there then here none of those who have eaten
of my bread ? " cried he in the tone of a suppliant; " none
306 ^ HI8T0BT OF TUBKSY.
wko would take pity on me and come to m j aid ? Those
barbarians mean to kill me. Grace 1 oh ! the grace of mere
lifel"
Then addressing himself personally to the mnfbi, in
whose soul he hoped to waken some remains of the old afiisc-
tion, interrupted by the injury done his daughter : ^*See,
Abdoul-rahim," said he to him, *^ see how strange is the
blindness of men and the play of destiny. Yousouf-Pasha had
adyiaed me to haye thee executed as a fommiter of dtsturb*
ance and a traitor ; I did not consent to thy death, and thoa
art now eager for mine. Read the Koran like me, read the
Word of God, who reproyes cruelties, injustices and in-
gratitudes."
The yiziers made a sign to the executioners to do ihmr
duty. Kara-Ali and his aids laid their hands upon the
shoulders of the prisoner ; he escaped from them and fled
into a comer of the chamber, by the side of his slayes,
whose feeble hands disputed liim a moment with the execu-
tioners. While the rope was fastened around his neck, his
imprecations and maledictions inyoked still the yengeance of
heayen upon the Ottomans, assassins of their padischah.
His last breath was a blasphemy against his people. His
body, taken into the court which separates the Kiosk of
Birds from the palace, was layed and perfumed by the
imans, and buried in the tomb of the Sultan Mustapha I.,
near the mosque of Saint Sophia.
The Koran was read over his graye, and amber and aloes
burned therein to purify his soul in the smoke of per-
fumery. The dead tyranny became itself sacred before the
religion of a people who had sent back the culprit or the
madman to the true judge.
XXII.
The reign, short, stormy and full of palace agitations, of
a child of seyen years, was but that of the Sultana Koesem,
sometimes seryed, sometimes thwarted by the ûtctions which
she had raised, and which she was in her turn constrained to
endure.
The fayorites of Ibrahim were buried aliye in the old
seraglio. The Sultana Koesem exempted from this exile
only the young mother of Mohammed, the Sultana Tar-
khajEi) a Bussian or Polish slaye, whom her ignorance and
msmmr of tubksy. 307
lier docilitj to the will of her mother-in-law had r^dered
KiM>ffeii8iye near her son. The profusions of Ibrahim on his
women had exhausted the treasury. It was replenished bj
the confiscations practised on the favorites of that prince.
His preceptor, the Khodja-Djindji, who had absconded from
the mosque of the centre, was discovered and tortured by the
executi(mer to make him confess his riches. Fearing poverty
more than pain, he avowed only little by little his treasures,
and when the rack had wrung from him his whole fortune,
the sabre io6k away his life.
These extortions upon the favorites of Ibrahim supplied
the treasury over one hundred and fifty millions of piasters,
which were distributed in gratuities to the troops to interest
tiiem in the revolution, the au^rs of which they were
beginning to accuse.
The example of the rewarded sedition had already reached
even the pages of the three seraglios of Constantinople, a
sort of military and civil colleges where the youths of high
ûimilies were formed to arms and to affairs to recruit the
army or the government. Menaced for an act of indiscipline
with corporal punishment by the capou-aga, the pages re-
volted, barricaded themselves in their seraglios, and sustained
a siege against the bostandjis. Their sedition was put down
only by granting them two hundred promotions of officers in
the spahis and in the Janissaries.
Each pasha trafficked his obedience with the ^and vizier
Sofi-M(^ammed. This old man knew better to humor than
to ^vern ; the revolution, of which he had been the
passive instrument, treated him as a tool and not as a min-
ister ; the spahis, the Janissaries, the oulemas, the agas were
beginning to charge each other with the death of Ibrahim as
a crime ; remorse was agitating the barracks.
" I call God to witness," cried the veteran Mousslieddin,
'' that I also have taken no part in this murder ; interrogate
its true authors, the mufti and the grand vizier."
The pages, combined with the spahis, demanded fiercely
the punishment of the guilty. The grand vizier and the
mufti, justly menaced, ordered the Janissaries to keep within
their barracks. The mufti rendered a fetwa against the
agitators, conceived in a verse of the Koran : ** If they re-
volt against each othery slay them untU they respect the
word of God:'
This fetwa appeared to allay the sedition ; but the kiaya
806 HmOBT OF TUEKST.
of tiie grand risier, in a mf^i Tfmod ilnoi^ tiie ciiy, haTing
erased to be deoapitated throe ^pahis, jÂerced Uiroogh the sole
of their feet with the blade of their lanoes, and left thôr
bodies exposed upon the Hippodrome. The cry of youpeance
broke out next morning in the barracka The spahis, o&nded
at an ignominious punishment in c(Atrayention of their |viT*
il^es, crossed in a body die Bosphorus between Scutari and
the point of the seraglio and encamped under flying banners
on tiLe Hippodrome. The fires of the camp, excited by a
storm wind, threatened to set the city on fire. They d^KMed
the regecide mufti and a^^inted in his |daoe the former
mufti Abousald. This old man eluded the seditious a]^>oini-
ment, and harangued them to inculcate wiser counsds.
The Sultana Koesem dictates to her son a kattinscheri^
whereby the Sultan conjures the spahis to lay down their
arms, delivers them the grand visier and the mufti, authors
of the revolution, and authorises them to designate tbdmselves
a grand vizier. At the reading of this kattinscherif, the agas
of the Janissaries, assembled at the seraglio, protest that
they will defend the grand vizier and tiie mufti, their crea-
tures. The zeal of tiieir soldiers is stimulated by a present
of fifty piasters each. The two corps come into conflict
before the column of Constantine. The Janissaries, a moment
vanquished, are brought back to the attack of the Hippo-
drome, by the aged Mousslieddin. Thousands of dead bodies
strewed this square.
The heads of the spabis, says the historian Naïma, wit-
ness and actor in this civil war, were recognized by the gray
hair under the caps ; the heads of the pages by tiie dark and
yellow curls of the hair. Pursued by tiie victors and im-
molated as far as to the court of the mosques, the pages of the
spahis fled to the summit of the minarets, where was heard
instead of the call of the muezzin to prayer, cries of terror
and of supplication, imploring life and forgiveness. Mouss-
lieddin, no less compassionate than brave, made the fugitives
come down, and defended them from the fury of the Jan-
issaries. He permitted the relatives of the revolters to come
to recognize and bury their sons or their brothers in the
midst of the dead. The others were thrown without sepul-
ture into the sea, despite the Mussulman maxim of religious
legislation : ^^ The dead expur^^te the revolt, the rebel corpses
must be respected as if their blood had atoned for their
fault.»
mSTORT OF TUBKET. ^)9
The spirit of reralt was propagated through the prorinceSé
To allay it, it was proposed to the divan to confer upon the
rebel leaders the grades and the goyemments which they
coveted. The grand vizier consented ; but the inflexible old
man, Mousslieddin, exclaimed that ^^ the greatest of misfortunes
to an empire was not to be torn by civil wars, but to have a
government which conferred honors and recompenses as the
meed of rebellion."
One of the chiefs of the party of Caramania, Haïder-
Oghli, the Turcoman, having been brought loaded with irons
before the divan, the grand vizier reproached him with his
crimes. ^' My gracious lord," replied the Turcoman, ^' the
cub of the wolf becomes a wolf ; each must sell according
as he buys, and the son follows the example of the father ;
it is thus that I am become brigand as was my father. Black
Haïder-Oghli."
*' Disclose to the divan," continued ihe vizier, " ifhere
thou hast secreted thy treasures."
<<Why that is a question to be put one but on the day of
judgment," replied the prisoner ; ^' do you think, then, that I
have shed so much blood, burned so many cities, to confess
to you one by one my plunders? Alas 1 alas 1 the night
approaches. I was bom but yesterday, and I die toHlay ;
end the thing as quick as possible, it is the only grace I ask
you."
XXIIL
The Janissaries, abusing their victory, oppressed insolent-
ly the capital and the provinces : they abducted women from
Constantinople; they took by storm a bathing house of
Gallipoli; their agas imposed their caprices on the grand
vizier, and plotted his ruin after having raised him. The
Sultana, secretly irritated at the murder of her son Ibrahim
despite her efforts to preserve at least his life, complotted
with the agas against the divan and against the mufti. The
humiliation of the Ottoman arms during these intestine agi-
tations afforded a fair pretext for her resentments.
HoQsseXn, left without reinforcements, abandoned the
siege of Candia, the Venetian fleet burned a part of that of
the capitan-pasha in the waters of the Archipelago. The
Sultana, in concert with the agas, convoked a divan on foot
in the seraglio, to deliberate on the disasters of the fleet
310 HI8T0BT OF TUSKBT.
and of the army. Her Bcm, wbom she had indued to imî>
tate her attitade, the expression of her eonntenanoe and her
words, presided over the divan. The grand yisier excused
himself, allying the difficoltj of the times. The child, read-
ing his part in the looks of his mother, replied with a frown
<^ the eyebrows.
'* Go, thon art not fit to be grand yisier ; ^re up the seal
of State. And thou," added he in presenting the seal to
Kara-Monrad, aga of the Janissaries, '* take it ; I will see
what thou canst do." Then taming towards the grand
judge, Am-Effendi, supporter and accomplice of the grand
▼isier, the Sultan reproved him with selling by auction the
hi^est attributions of justice. '^ Dear child," replied the
grand judge, astonished, '* who has taught thee that at thy
age?"
This insolence, intended for the Sultana Koesem, set
boiling her anger and broke her silence. '' When the padis-
chah delivers a command to his slaves, is it respectful,"
cried she, '* to answer him by sneering : Bear child, who has
taught thee that ? It is the voice of the world that has
taught it to him. The very children know our misfortunes,
and raise their voices against your iniquities. In spite of all
the treasures extorted and lavished, you have obtained but
seditions at home and disasters abroad. You wish to put
me myself to death, I know it, because my vigilance impor-
tunes you. I have lived through seven reigns, God be
praised ! and I have governed three of them. If I were to
die now, the worid would not be recast from top to bottom,
nor would it on the other hand relapse into ruin ; my life is
not of such importance. At one time the plan is to put me
to death, at another to enslave the padischah; but the hour
is come for choosing between you and him."
Death must have followed upon words such as these ; the
new grand vizier, Kara-Mourad, received, orders from the
Validé to strangle Sofi-Mohammed, his kiaya and his ac-
complices. The mufti escaped the punishment by flight.
His place was given, after some time, to Behayi-Effendi,
whose faculties, enervated by the use of opium, left no ap-
prehension of any inconvenient intervention in the affairs of
the Validé.
HI8T0BT OF TURKKT. 311
XXIV.
The peace of twenty-two years, was renewed with Aus*
tria, and the siege of Candia renewed with fresh energy by
Housseïn. But the constant revolts of his lieutenants and
soldiers against him were neutralizing his courage and his
tidents. The grand vizier Kara-Mourad, after some rebel-
lions vanquished in Asia Minor, gave himself up to the idle-
ness, the intemperance and the debaucheries of his youth.
His shameful vices scandalized the capital; he passed his
days in the gardens which he owned in tne Greek villages of
the environs of Constantinople, where intoxication was bru-
talizing his mind. He was often seen, attended but by a
simple muezzin, sacristan of the mosque adjoining his palace,
a drunkard like himself, returning unsteadily on his horse
from his drunken orgies out of the city. The public contempt
for the man was reflected upon the government
The Sultan erew up in years and in reason. The Sul-
tana Tarkhan, his mother, dictated to him a menacing kàtti-
Bcherif for Kara-Mourad. " Have I made thee grand vi-
zier," said this letter from the hand of a child, " that thou
shouldest pass thy time in thy gardens and thy vineyards ?
Occupy thyself with the business of the empire ; otherwise
I cut off thy head."
Kara-Mourad, struck with stupor on perusal of this let-
ter, and anxious to discover which of his enemies had sug-
gested to the Sultan a remonstrance so superior to his years,
Bent for the writing-master of the padischah. He was an
eminent sheik of Mecca, recently invested with the confi-
dential function, named Beschir-Aga. Interrogated by the
grand vizier as to the author of the katti-scherif, Beschir-
Aga vowed that he was utterly ignorant on the subject ; he
avowed however to Kara-Mourad, that the child, for a few
days back, had frequently asked him how to write the words
'' I cut off thy head^^ a usual formula in the last line of
katti-scherifb. The grand vizier changed audaciously the sus-
pected writing master for another. The Sultana Tarkhan
was indignant at this usurpation of her maternal preroga-
tives. This young Validé, thitherto pliable and docile to the
will of the Sultana Koesem, her mothfer-in-law, began to be-
come restive against the prolonged domination which was
infringing on her private influence with her son.
The division of parties in the divan was repeated in the
812 HiaiomT ov tuxist.
harem. The Saltftna modier, dkeredited in Ae ejes of her
eon, Kara-Mooimd, the creatnre of the Snltana grandmother.
Kara-Monrad, by the advice of the aga of the Janissaries,
Begtasch-Aga, lus kinsman and his friend, resigned of him>
self his functions into the hands of the young Sultan. " M j
padischah," said he to him, '^ there ou^ht to be no more than
one grand yiiier in the empire ; here is the seal : do not gire
it to a Janissary, for fear of leading to the ruin of the
wotW
He started immediately for Ofen with the title of gor*
emor of Hungary. Malek- Ahmed-Pasha, a man hitherto
obscure, but fitvorod by the Sultana Tarkhan, succeeded him.
The illustrious astronomer of the court, Housseïn, judge of
Medina, friend of Kara-Mourad, partook in his disgrace.
Exiled at first into Stenia in Bosnia, then recalled to Constan-
tinople through the intercession of the Sultana Koesem, his
protectress, he prophesied, from the inspection of the stars,
his own end. The mufti Behayi, formerly obliged by him,
rendered unconsciously a fetwa of death against him, under
pretext of impiety, but in reality, to please the Sultana Tar-
khan. The day preceding that on which the secret fetwa was
to be executed, Housseïn consulted the stars, and recognized
that the morrow was one of the days of evil omen. He
ordered to saddle his horses and equip a bark in the morning
to pass this baleful day beyond aie precincts of Constanti-
nople. Scarcely had he put to sea than the executioners
invested his residence, and, embarking upon his track, over-
took him near the fortress of the JDardanelles, strangled
him, and threw into the sea the body of one of the first
astronomers who had raised the science of the heavens, with
the Turks, almost to the level of Egyptian and Arabian
knowledge.*
XXV.
The new grand vizier, invested with all the Êivor of the
Sultana Tarkhan, was Malek- Ahmed, a Georgian by origin,
brought in childhood to the seraglio, and celebrated for his
* The reader should keep in mind the " poetio license " of oar
author's eulogies on Turkish men of letters, and eflpecianj of «etenoe.
The personage in question now, the text itself presents a plain tutrotoffer.
We need not^ however, question the good faith of the poet-historian. —
fOMomt or TUBKST. 313
«Éflenlûie beauty, wliioh obtained him the surname of the
Angd, A man of honor, integrity, disinterestedness, he
iHr<^)0sed to the divan reforms and retrenchments of the exor-
bitant salaries of the viziers, the agas, the troops, and espe-
cially of the clergy, which were exhausting the treasury.
The Sultana Koesem was opposed to these economics which
went to disaffect the dervishes, those religious tribunes of
the people, always ready to aggravate its murmurs.
''Dear soul," replied to her Sarikatib, astronomer of
the seraglio, disciple of the sa^ and unfortunate Housseïn,
and secretary of the divan, '' since the worid exists, we have
not heard that fortresses or provinces have been con<}nered
or defended by the prayers of dervishes and of mollas. If
you ask who has gained thb battle, who has taken that for-
tress? you are answered: it is drunken Ibrahim-Pasha or
some other pasha debauchee. The maledictions of the der-
vishes and mollas are as powerless as their prayers, and I
do not fear to take upon my own head the whole burden of
their curses.''
These economics and some alterations of the nominal
value of the currency palliated one evil by another. The
Druses revolted in Syria ; the Kurds, upon ihe frontier of
Persia ; Smyrna and Salonica, the two commercial places of
the empire, insursed against their governors ; the luxury oi
the harems, of the equipages and the tables, devoured at
Constantinople the revenues of the provinces. The historian
Ewlia, relates that Mohammed-Pasha, his patron, son of a
treasurer of the empire, and more celebrated for his table
than for his exploits, possessed a table service of silver and
of Chinese porcelain of an incalculable value, napkins em-
broidered with gold and precious stones, forty cooks who
relayed each other twenty by twenty when he travelled, in
order that he should find every where the same luxury and
the same delicacies : sixty horses carried in his train his
edible provisions; seven stewards, chiefe of his kitchens,
directed each a group of his Cooks.
To ihi& luxury of the great, corresponded as usual the
misery of the people. The imports, disproportioned to the
means of the rate-payers, overwhelmed agriculture and com-
meroe. An insurrection of all the traders and all the work-
men of Constantinople to exact the abolition of excessive
taxation, overturned Malek- Ahmed from power.
The Sultana appomted in his place the saUhdati^ Smk
Vol. Ill— 14
314 maicmr cm nmxsr.
nevadi-PadbA, foraarij aa Abwaa dare, pi o motoi firan
Ipmde to gnde for his ralor to tke soveniffleiit of His»-
gtrj. SiawOTBch, by the oonnseli of the Sultana Koeeem,
went to the barraoka of the Jankaaries to aak their proteo-
tion for the young Saltan. B^taadi-Aga, the most turbo-
lifil, ibe moat popular and moat aa^ttona tribene oi thia
aoldiery, granted it on han^^ tenna, which {daoed thia body
at the pnoe ùi the grand TÎaîer'a complete deference to their
lAeaaore. ^ I will obey the orden of my padbchah, and not
yomra," relied with di|^ty Siawovadi: ''your necks and
mine oi^t to be in his presence not thick and stifE^ but
sloider rad ]>Hant as the blade of our sabrée.^'
The Janiasariea consented to rmess the rmnnant of
popular seditiim which still ibmmited at the gates ci the
seraglio.
XXVI.
This calm was but precarious; the fire of hatred waa
brooding in the harem and coold not £01 to soon break out.
The Siutana Koesem, from whom the Snltana Validé had
wrested the empire by the saccessiTe elcTation first of the
beaatifol Malek- Ahmed, then of the intrepid Siawonsdi-
Pasha to the rank of grand yizier, wished to retain it at any
cost Begtasch- Aga, Greek like her, attached to her cause
by expectation, by ambition, by the genius of intrigue, by
the community of country, was h^ suf^rt and her instru-
ment in the military party. She disposed, by her popular-
ity of the Janissaries, whom she agitated and appeased at
will
The Sultana TarUian had it rumored in the harraft, in the
seia^^ and in the barracks, that the Sultana Koesem was
conspiring mih Begtasch-Aga, through greed of power, the
d^oeition and then the murder of her grandscm, Mahomet
I V. ; idle meant, it was said, to substitute t<^ this child, too
docile to the influence of the Sultana Tarkhan, his mother,
another of the grandsons, young Souleiman, son of a mother
who would let her dominiUie wii£out rivalry the seraglio, from
the height of her old age and her experience.
A daye of the harem, named Maleki, charged to super-
vise the Sultan's beverages, revealed a plc^ of real or im-
aginary poisoning in a sherbet prepared by the confecUoner
<» tiie seragUo, OuweîEhAga. Trembling, or feigning to
mSTOBT Of T0BKBT. 31*
tremblé to the life of her oMd, the Sultma Tarkban filled
the palace with terrors and with tears. Nothing attests the
reality of the crime ; but these accusations preferred on one
side, on the other repelled as calumnies, were as a signal of
civil warfare in the capital and in the barracks.
The Janissaries, notified by the Sultana Koesem of the
dangers which she ran in the harem where her death waa
demanded, and agitated by Begtasch-Aga, thronged tumul-
tuously to the number of ten thousand at the gates of ihe
seraelio, demanded imperiously the heads of the counsellors
ci the Sultana Tarkhan, who were ruining the empire, and
who were dishonoring, in order to depriye her of the tutelage
of her grandson, the mother of the Ottomans, the patroness
of the troops, the prorideiioe of tiie warid^ the Sultana
Koesem. Their cries did not even respect the Sultan, son
of the enemy of their protectress and of their aga. They
mingled in their Tociferations against the mother, the niune
of the Sultan Souleiman, already crowned in their desires as
in ^e heart of his grandmother.
This night was brooding over a revolution planned un-
known to the two children in the seclusion of a harem and in
the tumult of a barrack. The Sultana Koesem shut up in
her apartments, with her eunuchs and hw waiting^women,
expected anzioudy, but with oonfid^ce, that the accomplices
of Begtasch-Aga, her liberator, would come to knock at the
gates of the harem, to bring her the head of her rival and
to demand Souleiman as padisdu^.
xxvn.
However, publie opimon, that destiny of political move-
ments, had pronounced within a few hours against the Janis*
saries and against the Sultana their idoL The deliberate
and r^igious fidelity of the Ottomans towards their sov-
erei^, Ihe tender age of Mahomet IV., the interest attaching
to his innocence and to his helplessness, environed with the
nuures of perfidy and of ambition ; weanness of the yoke of
a woman, long a que^i, but whose insatiable passion of
reigning survived the fitting age; the rumor, fake or true,
that the widow of Ahmet I., poisoner of her grandson, had
promised her hand, lœr treasures and the empire, to Begtasdi-
' Aga, in recompense for the death of her daughter-in-law, the
Siutana Tarkhan, lor tiie depositicm of Mahomet lY ., fcnr the
tl6 HiefOBT OV rVVKKT.
proekmaiioii of Soalemiaii ; horror, in Use, «i Ae pr o toB de d
plot of poisoning by this nmmlnrftl grandmotiier, «droiUj
otroolated in the palace and through the dty— all these things
oonoorred to turn the tide of public oi»nîon in fiiror of
Mahomet and of his mother.
An armed faction and a few ooleraas, obstinate instrur
ments of the grandmother, appeared alone for hmr caose at
the ffates of the palace ; the entire empire was for her riral
and her ehild.
xxvni.
The grand risier Siawonsdi, although surprised in his
palace by the hour, by the promptitude of the erent, by Ihe
niffht, was easy about the life and the liberty of the SoUao.
The seraglio, guarded a^aiiMit all ^nei^^cies, by troops,
bostandjis, pages and faithful eunuchs, answered to him for
the young padisohah against all surfurises of the grand-
mother. His martial character, his fiune as a soldier, iSb ser-
rices, his old age itself gave him with the public and with
the i^whis, his an<neirt comrades of the ciunp, a moral author-
ity with which the Janissaries ^mselTes were obliged to
compound. No reyolution was po^ble without either the
concurrence, ike neutrality or the violent death of the grand
riiier ; but even his death was but a desperate resource oi
the factions, whom the blood of the upright old man would
not fidl to expose to the resentm^it of the soldiers and of
the people.
Èegtasoh-Aga comprehended ^is impediment to his en-
terprise, and he resolved to try to elude it before making an
attempt to vanquish it. While his soldiers were investing on
every side the palace gardens, to the end of hindering the
grand vizier from getting in to defend his master, he con-
voked in a mosque adjac^it to the principal gate of the
seraglio, the viziers, the oulemas, the f^as and the mess-mas-
ters of the party of the Sultana Koesem. Sure of the
majority, of the complicity and of the hand of all these con-
spirators, he sent to summon the grand vizier to appear im-
mediately in that assembly to confer with him on the noctur-
nal movements of the capital. The grand vizier, disarmed
and surprised in his palace by a military sedition, of which
the aga of the Janissaries was himself the mover, had not
time to deliberate. His daring and his codoess w&m the
HISrOBT (Mr TTOKBY. 817
oaI J resonree for the safety of the empire and of his master*
He presented himself with an apparent compkisance at the
invitation of Begtasoh.
The Janissaries and the oolemas reoeiyed him in the.
mosqae with the respect and the deference which the fac-
tions, uncertain of the fortune of the day, affect towards
those wh<Mn they would seduce before intimidating them.
Begtasoh- Affa addressed the meeting in the name of alL
He deplored the degradation of their military ^ery, the
frontiers inyaded, the fleets burned, the public offices sold,
the coin adulterated by the former grand vizier Malek-
Ahmed ; the eunuchs, under an incapable mother, masters of
the government, and subjecting the wisdom and the virtues
of the first statesmen to the boyish whimsies of a child who
had his words put in his mouth and his katti-scherife in his
hand. He declared, in the name of the oukmas and the agas
present and unanimous, that the prolongatipn of such a
phantom reign would be the ruin of the Ottomans ; that the
grand vizier himself would obtain from his vain efforts but
the blame of those disasters, degradation or death ; that the
sole genius capable of retrieving the tottering empire was
tiie genius of that woman superior by her experience, and by
her courage as by her a^e, who had witnessed seven reigns,
and with whom the jeiuousy of a Sultana Validé without
talent was disputing, the last but to ^ive it up to slaves and
eunuchs ; that the sole resort remainmg to the defenders of
the faith and the country, was to oblige that Sultana with
her son to descend from the throne, and to restore the reign
of the Sultana Koesem by proclaiining her other grandson
the Sultan Souleiman.
''Swear,'^ added he, addressing himself to the grand
vizier, ** swear with us, upon the heaa of your ancestors, that
you will second us in this generous project."
Siawousch, who did not think he owed the truth to assas-
sins, feigned to tamper in this conspiracy of public safety,
and swore by the Koran to aid the rebels in saving the
country. The conspirators, well satisfied with having nei-
ger to combat nor to immolate a man so popular for his vir-
tue, let him depart with honor from the mosque.
XXIX.
The fiu^n-Ieaders, feeling sure of him, permitted him
818 HisTomT or tvuxt.
to pâM die Uoekide of the palftoe aod to entor tiie eerwlie
by the iron gate of the gardena. The eonidaiits of tiie S«l-
tana Koesem, kept Ma gate half open to introdaoe, at the
hour agreed upon, the Janinariea of B^^tasch-Aga into Uie
harem, where she was to present them, for padiadiah, Prinoe
Sonleiman. This etrenmstanee oonyinoed him of ih» eomA-
ranee of the Snltana at tiie premeditated mvder of Maho-
met lY. He had the gates mstened behind him : he posted
some bostandjis at all the issaes, and ran to the smiglio,
resolrd to die or to save the infimt eonfided to his tntela^
Meanwhile the chief of the black ennnchs of the Sultan,
named Sooleiman-Âga, one of those men who die, like a
tamed Hon, at the feet of the thnme to which ihej are
chained, had snspected the plot «id anticipated, hj his mea-
sures, the presence of the grand yisier. The pages, awak-
ened widi a bound at his roice and at tiie rumor of the
perils of the Sultan, had massacred their governor whom
they had wrongly thought an accomplice of the Janissaries,
forced the doors of their mess-rooms, run to arms and agi-
tated the yaltadjis, the bostan^is, the eunuchs and the agas
upon the steps of the sate of Felicity.
Siawousch-Pasha, in dismounting from his horse before
his door, harangued energetically the defenders of the
palace ; then entering with Souleiman-Aga into tàe interior,
he knocked at the closed doors of the sequestered apartment
where ike Sultana^ Tarkhan, in ignorance of the tumult of
Uiis night, was reposing by the si& of her son. The kislar-
aga of the Sultan, haying refused them entrance, Souleiman-
Aga laid him dead with a blow of hb poniard, and calling
the hundred and twenty eunuchs set to guard the child and
the mother: — ^''What are you doing?" cried he to them
through the door ; '' you sleep while the Janissaries are in-
vading the approaches of the seraglio to slaughter you;
those traitors, in concert with the Sultana Koesem, mean to
strangle the padischah and to elevate Begtasch-Aga, their
chief, to the throne by making him marry that old hag whom
the poison has disappointed, and who now directs the sabre
against her grandson."
XXX.
At these words the doors are opened, the hundred, and
twenty eunuchs arm themselves with their pozdards, the
mSTOBT OF TUBEST. 819
graad Tirier and Sonleiman-Aga prempitate then^lves into
làe chamber of the Sultana Tarkhan. They awake her, thej
reyeal to her hastily the iirgen<5y of the peril At the first
words of the vizier, the Yaudé leaps from the bed beside her
son, who lay sleeping, with no suspicion of the death suspend-
ing over his head : " my son 1 " cried she, drooping ovot
him and embracing him convulsively, " we are lost" The
boy afirightened sat up in the bed, and extending his arms to
Souleiman-Aga : " father 1 " said he to him, '* save me ! "
The vizier and the eunuch, affected at seeing their sove-
reign implore hi& slaves, threw themselves at the feet of the
chud and of the mother, ancl swore to sacrifice themselves
for him. Souleiman-Aga, taking him in his arms, carried
him in his night-shirt, by the light of the torches, into the
throne hall, ^ere were assembled all the defenders of the
seraglio, and holding him up to the view of the pages and the
bostandjis : '^ Let those who eat the bread and the salt of the
padischah," cried he, '^ come to his aid."
At this lurid light, at this spectacle, at this exhortation,
the viziers, the agas, the pages, the chamberlains, the bos-
tandjis, the baltadjis fall with an unanimous movement upon
their knees before this symbol of right, of innocence, of
majesty, and swear to defend him with their blood. " Don't
fear, my padischah," said Souleiman-Aga, " please Qod, all
the heads of your enemies will be to-morrow at your feet."
XXXI.
During these scenes of frîçhtfulness and feeling in the
harem, the grand vizier convoked to the palace, under penalty
• of death against any who should hesitate an hour, all the
pashas, beglerbegs, (miefs of corps, agas, lewends and mag-
nates of the empire, with all those of their armed followers
wliom they should have at hand, and with provisions for three
days. A lurking hatred against the Janissaries, common
oppressors, fidelity to the sovereign, affection for the child,
confidence in Siawousch-Padia, filled before dawn the quays,
the gardens, the courts, the apartments of the seraglio, with
an army of all arms whose number was doubled by the en-
thusiasm of devotedness. All the gun-boats of the fieet and
the caïques of the harbor debarked there in silence the arms,
the guns, the munitions of the arsenal, sufficient for a pro-
tracted siege.
890 HISTOBY OF TtmKBT.
The tehror of the niffht was changed into fiiry against
the authors of so detestable a plot The name of the Sul-
tana Koesem was on every lip. The hundred pages and
bostandjis, guided by the chief of the black eunucms, Soulei-
man-Aga, detached themselyes from the throng and directed
their course in silence towards the kiosk of the grandmother
to take off from her the Prince Souleiman, in whose name
die pretended to reign stilL
The eunuch on guard at the door refused to open ; the
pages raised their poniards to strike him ; he fell upon his
knees and implored life in return for the revelations which he
offered to make to the Sultan. He was led before Mahomet
IV. ; he threw himself at his feet, and delivered him the key
of the secret treasures of his grandmother; but at the
moment when he stammered an excuse and a supplication, a
bostandji cleft his head with the blow of an axe. The child,
alarmed, uttered a cry of horror, and hid his face in the
bosom of one of the eunuchs, who carried him still in his
arms.
XXXII.
Meanwhile the pages and the three hundred eunuchs
white and black, attached to the personal guard of the Sul-
tana Koesem, defended heroically the outer doors of the
kiosk, and piled up the threshold with their dead. Soulei-
man- Aga placed the Sultan in the hands of the grand vizier,
and ran, with a band of pages and bostandjb, to reinforce
the assailants. He was the first to penetrate, hb sabre
trickling with blood in his hand, the labyrinth familiar to
eunuchs of the apartments that composed the harem. ,
The Sultana Koesem, at the sound of his footsteps in the
corridor, thought it was the Janissaries of Begtasdi-Aga
come to deliver her and bear her to the throne.
" Are they there ? " said she in a low voice, opening a
wicket in the door.
^^ Yes, it is the Janissaries," answered Souleiman- Aga ;
" only come out."
But the Sultana, having recognized her error, and fore-
seeing her ruin in the Ume of voice of the chief of the
eunuchs attached to her rival, fled for refuge in the dark to
the n[iost sequestered of her apartments, hid herself in one
of those deep closets wherein the slaves pack up by day the
HisxoBT or TiniKST. 321
matresses and carpets of the ni^t. THere, wrapped up hy
the hand of one of her women in à roll of matd, she h(^>od
to escape the first fury of the enemies, and to leaye Begtasch
time to come and chance her fortune. Bnt the ra^ of the
icoglans and of the bdtadjis did not stop before either tiie
inviolability of the harem or before the majesty of the
mother and the grandmother of so many Saltan& They
precipitated themselves, in the traces of Sooleiman-Aci,
into the sacred precincts, where, however, they songht in vain
for their prey.
A devoted slave, giving her life for that of her mistress,
presented herself to them arrayed in a rich costume and said :
'< Strike, I am the Sultana Koesem."
They were going to plunge the dagger in her breast, when
Souleiman-Aga apprised them of their mistake. They
turned a moment their poniards against the eunuch himself,
accusing him of connivance wil^ the Sultana Koesem, and
of wishing to defraud them of their victim. But at the in*
stant when Souleiman was going to fall by the hand of his
friends, a baltadji, breaking open the furniture and the closets,
seized the legs of the Sultana under the mat in which she
had been rolled. '^ Be silent," said she to him in a low
voice, " and thy fortune is made for ever."
But hatred prevailing in the bostandji over avarice, he
dragged the Sultana from her asylum and called his com-
nanions to contemplate her. She held still in her hand a
nandkerdiief full of gold sequins which she had the precau-
tion to take from her treasury to give the Janissaries whom
she was expecting. She was dressed, in expectation of the
events of the night, in the richest stuffs of the imperial ward-
,robe; her legs and her arms were adorned with precious
stones ; her fingers biased, by the light of the torches, with
glittering rings ; she wore as ear-pendants two diamonds of
the shape and size of a Caramania nut, a present of Achmet
L, her husband, in the time oi her youâi, her beauty and
her loves.
The group of baltadjis and of icoglans, dazzled and
struck with a remnant of respect at jthe sight of this mother
Gi the eçipire extended in those imperial ornaments on the
cupet at their feet, seemed to hesitate between veneration
and anger. The Sultana, reading their indecision in their
looks, leaped up with a vigor superior to her years, unfolded
the han d k er chief, and scattered, to relax their persecution, a
Vol. in.— 14*
8tt mSfOBT Of TfTBKSr.
iiM>w«r of fleqmiiB and of jewoLi on the floor. Vflalt her
aasftn a ina stooped to pick them up, she fled from chamber to
ofa*mber throntfh the harem, and attained a gate of the
gardens where me darkness fàyored her ffight JBnt a page,
mmre keen than the baltadjis, got np to h^, prostrated her,
•trailed hard affamst the desperate resistance of this in-
trepKl woman, and with his knees npon her breast held her in
calling to him the baltadjis. They ran : one of them, named
Mohammed*Baltadji, tore, in absence of a cord, one of the
oortain-ropes of sUk from the door, and stmng it aronnd
her neck nntU the swooning Snltana appeared to be dead
beneath the hands of the assassins. Her sable fors, her ear^
pendants, her bracelets, her rinss, her necklaces torn from
her person became the prey of wese executioners.
They threw the body almost naked, according to the order
of the fetwa rendered by the mnfbi, on the payement where
the bodies of criminals are exposed, before the ffate of the
kiosk of *^ the Birds." He who carried the head was bitten
on the thumb, by that mouth almost inanimate, with so mu<^
force that he could make her unloose the teeth but by a stroke
of his poniard in the throat. The assassins, belieying her
dead, were going away to bear the news of her murder to
the ffate of Felicity, when looking htuck they beheld the
naked and bleeding phantom of the Sultana getting up and
making off in the dark. They returned to finish their
yictim, who had feigned death by a last instinct <^ Hfe. She
struggled still agamst them with the strength of an athlete,
and succumbed a second time but to numbers. The cord,
again strung about her neck and tugged with the handle of
an axe, wrung at length from her the last breath. The jets
of blood that issued from the wounds, from the ^nesand from
the ears of this colossal woman, although she was then oyer
sey enty, eyinced the greenness of her old age, and the masculine
energy of that Albimian, whom it was requisite to kill t¥rice
in order to wrest from her the empire.*
* I need not cantiQii the ferioas reftdernot to take thif scene tor exact
history; I'do not» for my part^ think it even plausible romance. The
coloring transcends the license aUowed historians, howerer ** popnlar.**
The inddents (of whidi, moreover, I have left out some as too grotssque)
bear for the most part the stamp of pf^olar imaguiation ; or what
amounts to ih» same thing, of Oriental puerility. I dare not say that
they are on this account the less agreeable to geneoral readers, in opposi-
tion to the use of them by such an artist as Lamartine. But though
some setting-off may be allowable t» wife the pecfk to instmctiT» xeiâ«
HI8T0ET OF TUBSBT. 823
The crime whidb public luiiied diar^ her with, of
plotting the deposition, the poisoning, the murder of her
grandson, is uncertain. Her talents, her services to the
empire, her long and glorious sway of intellect over three
reigns, her firm, tranquil and vigorous regency, so long as it'
was not sapped in the serad[io by the harem, are reid. If
those three reigns wherein Turkey was retrieved or sustained
by her baud do not bear her name in history, they bear her
impress.
Adored in her youth, cherished in her maternity, ven-
erated in her old age, hurled from the regency and from life
while still in the vigor of her intelligence by one of those
palace catastrophes of which confusion conceals the mystery,
her life is a monument of the maternal genius of woman
affiled to the government of Oriental nations. Rozelana
was more winning and more a wife, the Sultana Koesem was
more vigorous and more a mother. The one governed by
seduction, the other by genius. The reign of the one ended
with her beauty, the reign of the other but with her life.
Roxelana owed all to nature, the Sultana Koesem owed all to
policy.
Both the one and the other attest that the institutions
which proscribe women from public liberty and public life
are ineffectual, even with the Mussulmans, against nature
which gives to them different but as many rights as to m^B,
and that conjugal love or filial piety often restores to a
superior woman, ev^i in the govermment of empires, what
the jealousy and the ingratiude of the laws endeavor vainly
to deny them.* To reign through the love of a husband or
through the deference of a son, is not to be excluded from the
throne, it is to reign twice.
xxxip.
The murder of the Sultana Koesem and the concourse of
ing, a ooarse excess is shockiiig to the austere migesty of history. It is
l&e trîckÎDg àSû, qaeen in the fir^peiy of a coarteiaa — TramiXatof.
* Why, the ooafessioii of tiiose side-door inflaenoe» peculiar to tiie
sex would of itsdf he an abondant warrant for denying them pnhlio
powers. For if conceded them, they wonld enjoy, not as the author
daims, '* as many ** rights, hnt at least doable as many, as man : the
masculine bill </ rights would be sapwadded to tiie feminine, which is^
moveoTer, it seems, almady an overmatch for men and laws. A cnrions
■amj^ of the kg^ (to say noâûng of philosophy) of even the higher
order of your sentimental politidaoa— 2VtNuIti(or.
até BmOftT W TUSKXT.
the fwpié «round the b«mer of the piophti, th«t OriBaa
of the Ottomans, nnfturled bj Siawoneeh-Puha befine the
Mnfflio, tiirew the Janienries into ooneternation by deetroj-
ing wnr iBaini{Hring of eeditkm, and difioaed terror into the
eonclave of the rebel leaden at the moeqne.
B^;taaoh-Aga akme, more interested, as more ^;ailtj,
persevered in the revolt, and spoke of firing the eajntal to
foroe the oitisens assembled at the sera^dio to ran to snceor
their menaoed families and property. He mounted on horse-
back and appeared before the J anissaries who were mardiing
back disooun^^ to their barracks. He conjured ihmn to
return and to shake o£f ihe yoke of the eunuchs who had
just strangled the mother of the soldiers : '^ We do not mean
to depose the padisohah," said he to them, retracting his de-
signs of tiie night before ; ''we only wish to avenge the murder
of our VaUdé."
The Janissaries undecided listened with coldness. One
of them, breaking silence by one of those popular i^postrophes
which disconcert the tribunes by touching on their secret
motives, said to him : '' Are you, then, the heir, the son or
the husband of the Validé, that you should take in hand her
cause against the padischah ? "
A sneering laugh burst forth at these words, which made
allusion to that tide of husband of the old woman, which
used to be given Begtasch-Asa. The Janissaries abandoned
him to his perils and returned to obedience. The spahis and
all those of the Janissaries of the old barracks who had not
partaken in the movements of the night, presented themselves
at the gates of the seraglio to swell the number of the de-
fenders of the throne. The Sultan, by the counsels of Siar
wousch-Pashs, sent to the mosque of the centre, the now
deserted seat of the rebellion, an imperious katti-scherif :
I' You, agas of my Janissaries," said he ; " thou, their general
in chief ; thou, their general in second; thou, Begtasdi-Aga,
appear instantly before me in the divan, or otherwise mis-
fortune will be&ll you."
Begtasch-Aga, on ihe receipt of this katti-sdierif which
completed the discouragement of the conspirators, had in
vain brought before the oarracks the sacks of gold and silver
designed to corrupt and to retain them ; the Janissaries re-
fused to open the sacks, for fear of sullyiug their hands with
the pay of a facHoniti (factieux). The koul-kiaya made haste
to merit weu of the victorious party by inveighing against
msxcoer aw tubxbt* 380
tiie beftd <^ the faetion. He Teptotndheà BegtMd»-Ags
with haring opened his purse-gtringg only when it became
neoesaarj to ran«om his life at the cost of his treasoree^
The agas, the oulemas and the scuoondar j chiefe, wrote letters
of excuse and presented thems^yes, as men deceived by an
adventarer, at the seraglio ; they thought themselres, they
sidd, accomplishing the wishes of the padisohah. Begtasch-
Ag^ himself was constrained to follow them. His popn-
larity in the barracks seemed to him a safeguard against the
vengeanoe ci the seraglio.
Siawousch-Pasha, m fact, received with an apparent in^
dnl geneethe repentant rebels. He appointed Begtasch- Aga
governor of Broussa, and ordered him to start wimout delay
for his ^vemment. Whether from audacity or from terror,
Begtasch- Aga, instead of leaving, concealed himself in the
city. Discovered the following day by the new aga of the
Janissaries, Hassan, he was tied upon an ass, and conducted
to the seraglio amid the hootings and the curses of the same
soldiery who acclaimed him the day before. Culpable popu-
larities do not survive the fall of their idols ; the people love
every where to make an individual atone for the factions
which he has mustered ; they love to wash themselves in the
blood of their leaders from the stain of vanquished seditions.
The baltadji Mohammed, who had dragged from the
doset the Sultana Koesem, encountered the insulling cortege
of Begtasch- Affa : <^ Traitor," cried he to the vanquished
aga^ '^ what had I done to tltôe that thou shouldst yesterday
demand my head at the mosque ? " << Miserable assassin,"
refdied Begtasch- Aga, "do not condemn me to see thy
face."
He was strangled by the mutes in the outer courts of
the seraglio, and his body cast into the sea. His avarice
had, in fact, deadened his ambition. There was discovered
in his bathing-room, sealed up in massive masonry, two im-
mense vases frill of gold ducats, of sequins and of precious
stones, presents of the Sultana Validé or products of his
rapine.
The astronomer, secretary of the divan, Sarikatib,
althoii^h a stranger to the conspiracy, expiated the friendship
which was borne him by the Sultana Validé. A jest of this
Ottoman Juvenal cost him his life. During the scandal of
the venality of officers under the last but one crand vizier,
Sarikatib, leaving the seraglio, was encountered by one of
Ui fimAi who tmktà hàm iriianoe h» was oomiog. <' I «m
OQBie," mlied he wiA an aooent of indignation, *'from ïbû
ilaye marlet" Like Oato, he prereated the executioner by
the poniard, and died deploring ike deoadenoe of his oonntry.
The black ensoch, Sooleunaa-Aga, of whcnt the co(d-
nees and intrepidity snpplied the abe^ce of the grand viiier
and aared hia master, was raised to the highest grade c€
domesticity in the palace, that of kislar-aga. He had been
rentable grand yiner the night of danger. The SoHana
Tarkhan, now Validé and mistress of the goremment, com»
vitted to him, nnder title of kislar-aga, the tutelage <ii the
child wh(Hn he had preserred^ and the absdnte direction of
tiie diran. He used his inflnrace with the insolence of an
Etinopkn parreno.
XXXIV.
Siawonsdi-Pasha soon got tired of the title of Tixier
purely honorary under a favorite who dictated his orders by
the mouth of an infant and a woman. '^ It is not the power
of a grand riiier,'' said he oft^, ^< this shameful skrery to
whi<^ I am condemned undw nesro eunuchs.''
These murmurs were imputed to him as a crime. The
Sultana, enslaved herself by gratitude to the eunuch, sought
lU once a grand viiier suffioientiy s^arcmg to sustain the em-
pire, sufficieotiy resigned to endure a protector in Souleiman-
Aga. The empire held but one sudi, it was Koq>rilu, a
pj^ha grown old in wars and councils, a stranger to actions,
one of these men whom bvor neglects because tixey disdain
to seek it, and who are left to reach the wane of l^e before
peo]^e recogpise in them the safety and the grandeur of em-
pires. His name was already distinguished ; but the dread
oi his superiority withheld it from i& ears of the Validé.
The minuch d^nanded of the Sultana-mother the dismis-
sal and the death of Siawousch-Pasha ; she granted only the
rénovai, and an exile to Malghara. Scml^unan-Aga had
appointed in his place an old man who was verging on the
second in&ncy, named 6ourdji-Mohammed,aged some ninety-
two years. His <»ducity was his title. Souleiman-Aga
wkdied to reign under a phantom. He caused the exile ot
two counsellors of the Siutana who had pronounced the name
of Koepnlu, and banished this personage himself to Gu#-
tendjil, in order that distance might eSii^ the ^loodor of
BUrtOBT 09 rUKKXf. 9SS
Ub merit Eziortôoiis ffled ihe tr^uiirj ; the pkoes of ag»
of the Janissaries, of defterdar, of gnuid ehamberlain, of
riiier, were giren to the court instramente and the bnffooiiB
of Sonleiman-Aga. Ipsohyr-Padia and Abaia-Pasha, sons
of the great rebel, revolted in Caramania, and advanced upon
Broossa. They were shamefullv negotiated with, and their
retreat and submission purchased by giving them both gov*
emments and subsidies*
Egypt, a prey to insurrections and to anarchy, was
escaping from Ûie direct and regular adminbtration of the
Porte. The Sultan convoked a solemn divan to deliberate
on the course to be adopted respecting this important prov-
ince of the monarchy. The Sultana Validé attended behind
the grating of the tribune of her s(m. The grand viner, with
the fistlessness and the loquacity of old age, proposed the first
and maintained long the baleful system of life government, a
sort of partial abdication which makes the provinces a life
possession, and presently hereditary of the pashas. He was
refuted with eloquence and indignation by Masoud-Pa^a, a
statesman brought to light by this discussion in a council of
eunuchs. The grand vizier insisted, and, in his answer,
daimed to satiety the respect which should be had for his
great age.
" My father,'' cried the Sultana, rising with impatience
and parting the curtains whidi veiled her from the, divan,
^ we have not here to do with the beard, either white, gray
or black ; our concern is with the best council and the wisest
policy."
Masoud conquered in this scene the oonfid<mce of the
Sultana. In the evraiing she convovked a new divan in t^e
kiosk of the palace, called the kiosk of the SêOj because it
steeps its walls in the waves. ^ The question req>ected the
navy. The grand visier discoursed on it as he had done on
Egypt. Masoud, encoun^ed by the approbation of the
Validé, convicted him or ignorance and of unskilfalness.
The Sultan, prepared beforelMmd by the part of his ipother,
had passed to Gourcyi-Mohammed a katti-scherif : ^' I could
not read it," said the grand viaier ; " order in the secretaiy
of the divan that he may read it"
The mufibi, presept, took the katti-soherif and read:
^ Thou, my viiier," sud the laconic letter, '^ give up the
aeal."
The tremUiog and convuUve hands ot this old man
328 HI8T0BT or TUBKIT.
ooidd not unknot the dtrincs of the sQk pone wbordn HkB
yinen carry the seal upon Sieir breast The grand chamber-
lain was forced to asnst him in this trembling of his finira
which still clang pitifollj to this toy of his expiring ambition.
He stammered some complaints about the injustice and the
ingratitude of men. Masoud, without decency of sentiment
or language, apostrophized him with contempt, hopin^^ thereby
to elerate his own &yor. Gourdji-Mohammed retired wiw
tears in his eyes. This outrage upon old age is rare amoiugr
the Ottomans, who think that age is a consecration by Ood,
and that experience is the liying oracle of business.
The Sultan assembled the following day the council, and
was the first to broach the question of dioosing a grand
yisier. The mufti referred this free choice to the padischah
alone. Masoud demanded a postponement and the appoint-
ment for the present of a simple calmakam or lieutenant*
general of the empire ; others asked for yizier Houssein-
Pasha, the serdar or generalissimo of the army of CretCi
esteemed and beloyed by the army. The agas of the Janis-
saries and of the spahis opposed this, as a measure which
would take its head from the active army under Houssein
and give encouragment as well as joy to the Yenetiana
The Sultana Tarkhan, who was getting bolder in State dis-
cussions, and who wished to please the generals by back-
ing their advice, spoke from behind the curtain against the
choice of the brave Houssein.
All united on the name of a pasha hitherto obscure, but
whose reputation for inexorable severity presaged the empire
an executioner rather than a minbter : it was Ahmed-Pasha,
a ferocious Albanian, issued from among the pages, become
kiaya of the grand vizier formerly massacred by the revolted
spahis upon the Hippodrome, ^scaped with difficulty himself
on that occasion, and who had retained from those disorderly
military movements a profound horror of indiscipline, which
avenged itself of the terror l^at he lutd been made to feel
by the terror which he struck in turn into the factions. He
accepted on condition of absolute independence in his acts.
XXXV.
His brief administration was but a series of reprisals
against all those who had any way been implicated in the
li^ seditions. He bearded Souleiman-A^ himself and
HISTOBT OF TURKEY. 329
procured ihe exile of this eunuch to tlie recesses of Egypt
He deposed the mufti for having, in a fit of anger, pulled th«
beard of an old judge of Caffa in the Crimea. By a quarrel
with the capitan-paima, he brought about his ears the viziers,
the agas, the harem. It was rumored that he thought of
ridding himself of the irksome yoke of the Sultana Validé
by substituting, like Begtasch-Aga, Souleiman, son of
another woman, for the young Sultan Mahomet IV. The
credulity of the harem conspired his fall and his death.
The Sultana, to conceal the snare from him, was lavish
of het favors ; she sent him, on the eve of a festival, a caftan
of sable fur and a poniard of which the hilt was set with
diamonds. As he was con^atulated upon these favors:
'^ Fools," said he to his familiars, ^^ how little you know of
courts I All this is but a presage of my execution. I have,
to serve the padischah, turned every one against me ; I did
not reflect that to resist all is to devote one's self to ruin ; I
reap what I have sown."
Dreams confirmed him at night in the reflections of the
day. He was called unexpectedly to the seraglio. He had
a presentiment of his death, and prepared himself before
going out by the ablution and the prayer of the dying:
^^ Thank God," said he in passing the thre^old, ^^ my enemies
will not live long."
The Sultan, seeing him come, apostrophized him with a
borrowed anger beyond his years, and ordered the bostandjis
to strangle him.
^' My padischah," said in bowing to him the faithful but
importunate vizier, " you put me to death unjustly; on the last
day my two hands wUl press heavily upon your head." The
child averted his eyes and the mutes pulled the cord. The
body was delivered to his only daughter to be buried in the
sepulchre which he had constructed himself underneath the
cypresses of ScutarL
His crime was to have served too faithfully a feeble power
which knew not how to sustain its servants. The capitan-
pasha, Dervish-Mohammed, his enemy, succeeded him.
XXXVL
The agitation of the provinces was propagated to the
capital. A sheik of Ommïah, who passed for a prophet, de-
clared from the pulpit at Constantinople, in the name of God,
S30 HBnOBT OF TI7BKST.
Hiat ail the calamities of the Ottomans were owii^ to the
influence of the Soltana Tarkhan, and that it was necessary
either to exile or to marry her to a pasha who would take hor
off from the mtrigues of the harem. These exhortatioDS ex-
citing the people, the fanatic was embarked by night and
transported into the depths of his mountains.
The gorenMHT of Bgypt, the eunudi Abderrahman, who
hastened to Constantinq>le with his treasures from Cairo to
purchase the place of grand risier, was accused of hadng
oonourred in tne murder of the Sultan Ibrahim. '* As soon
as the registers of Egypt which contain the secret i3i his
treasures arrive," wrote the Sultana-mother to her son, ^ thoa
wilt kill him." The grand yisier represented to the Sultan
that the priyilege of the eunu<^s was not to be executed save
within the precincts of the seraglio. Abderrahman was
stra^led on entering.
This execution struck terror into the eunuchs; their
abasement by this murder increased the influence of the
women. The nurse of the Sultan, married by the Sultana
Koesem to the grand coffin-maker of the seraglio, a favorite
slare of the same Sultana, named Antar, married to Mour-
tesa, pasha of Erseroum, disputed with each other the gov-
ernment of the harem. The young brother of the Sultan,
Souleiman, the object of so many suspicions, was shut up in
the kiosk of the '^ Box-garden," a dark vestibule of death,
a sort of limbo of the pakee, intermediate between the throne
and the bowstring.
The new chief of the black eunuchs, Belram-Aga, be-
come kislar-aga of Mahomet lY., resumed over this child
the influence taken from Souleiman- Aga by his banishment.
The pages thanselves, companions of the sports and exercises
oi Mahomet, were objects <^ jealousy to his mother. -Beïram-
A^ apprised by the preceptors of the prince of the grow-
ing familiarities between the Saltan and the pages, remarked
one day that this boy took a too exciting pleasure in those
diversi<»)s with children of his age ; he made a sign to him
to enter his apartments.
^^My lala," said Mahomet, <^my ancestors, I am certain,
were, accustomed to pass the fete days in the playroom of
the paffes to be witnesses of their progress in the exercises
of boify and mind, and I find in it tte same pleasure as my
fathers."
Beïram went to complain to the Sultana Validé of the
HI8T0BY OF TITBKEY. 831
disobedienœ of her son. " Why," said he to her, " do yo»
permit the Sultan to pass his ni^ts with the pages ? Do
jou not know, then, that there are some of these youths iHio
aspire to become his fay(»rites in order to wrest him from
your authority ? "
" Aga," replied the indulgent mother to the eunuch,
*' my lion is yet an innocent child who is amused with the
sports of his age ; let him stay up till midnight."
Beïram-Aga, substituting his own harsh severity for the
motherly tenderness of the validé, returned into the hall of
the pages, took the Sultan by the hand, and obliged him to
return, to his apartments, saying to him that this was the
order of the Validé.
Q%e diild murmured and shed tears of humiliation ; the
pi^es, offended, drew their poniards, and ^e mutes had diffi«
culty in protecting the eunuch against the émeute of these
fiftvorites. The pages interested in their caiuM» Ihe spahis,
offended, like them, by an alteration of the currency which
filched some aspers from their pay. They pillaged the house
of the defberdar ; they protested against the ordinances oi
^e aga of the Janissaries which interdicted them the use of
tobacco. << Leare us free to smoke," cried they in the courts
of the seraglio, ^* or this smoke which you smoth^ will be-
come the flame of revolt against you."
xxxvn.
The grand vizier Dervish-Mohammed died in those
distractions of the empire. Terror and corruption procured
die appointment of the amnestied agitator of Asia, Ipschyr.
The title of grand vizier did but increase his audacity. He
refused to leave Aleppo, of which he was the governor, under
pretext of disturbances to be appeased in Asia. He ordered
all the beglerbegs to join him in spring, at Koniah, as if he
meant to appear as conqueror and not as vizier at Constanti-
nople : '^ See those troops," said he to the chamberlain iHio
brought him a letter from the Sultan calling him imme-
diately to his post, '< and judge if with these forces I will
stake my head against the letter of a diild."
Entire Asia considered him a dictator who was gomg to
purge and to renew the empire ; the court and the capital
trembled at having added a legal title to so much insolence.
The irresolution of the divan gave occasion to see&es and
HiarMT or titeskt.
wfaMi turned its ddiberatioiui into tamvlts. The
eapitan-pasha escaped from the poniards of t^ ennuehs, wbo
reprosehed him, in tlie pretence of the Saltan, with the blood
of Ibrahim, only bj opening his way to flight with sabre in
hand. Ipschyr, already arrired from Nioomedia, entered Con*
stantinople in triomi^ The Sultana YaLidé, to satiate his
ambition, ga^e him the hand of the young Sultana Aïsdie,
b<^ daughter, and sister of Mahomet lY. He proscribed
or immolated all his enemies in t^ divan.
The defterdar, Morali-Pasha, of whom the Yalidé had
begged the life, was captured by four chiaoux. Before arriv-
ing at his place of exile, he was stripped of his clothes, cov-
ered with the coat of a peasant who was working on the road
side, and strangled in the fields. The oppression of the new
visier raised up against him the tro<^ thonselves who had
been hitherto its instruments in the capital It was insin-
uated to the Janissaries that the destruction of their body
was the obiect of his armaments in the provinces and of his
fikvors to we Asiatic troops, brought with him into the capi-
tal A petition, carried round by torchlight in the Hippo-
drome by the Janissaries, demanding the head of Ipschyr
and of ihie mufti, insurrected in one night the entire city.
While the grand viiier was taking refuge in the seraglio,
the revolters pillaged his house and found there four hundred
thousand ducats in gold, the fruits of his exactions : <^ What
is to be done ? " cried the Sultan. All were silent in the
oouncil ; the aga of the Janissaries, emboldened by the dis-
tress of Ipschyr and unvdling the general enmity against
the common oppressor, rose: ^^My padischah," said he,
^ your slaves are satisfied with you ; but they do not wish
your lala. — So long," added the oapitan-pasha, ^^ as the grand
vizier and the mufti, his aocon^lice shall live, the troops will
not disperse."
Ipschyr, caught in the net of his ambition, prostrated
himsdf to give up the seal, as humble in adversity as inso-
lent in his power. ^' It is his head we want," cried the troops
across the bars of the palace. His head was brought them
into the Hippodrome. The people passed it from hand to
hand like a toy, and the soldiers planted it upon the point
ci a lance. His party died with him : the popularities of
power {de caserm) strike less root than those of opinion ;
Abaia-Pasha alone, his accomplice in revolt, whom he kept
at Scutari at the head of a corps of Asiatics to intimidate
HXSfOlT or TITBKST. SSS
Ae oapiti^ remuned âi^hfitl to him after his d^ith. One
half the troops of Abaza had deserted to join in Constanti-
nople the insnrreoted spahis and Janissaries. Gourd-Mo-
himimed, formerly kiaja of Ipsohyr and now a deserter of
his cause, went to Scutari to conjure Abaza to disavow his
«tead Mend, and to submit himself with his handful of Asia-
tics to the new yizier. '< Let thy face become purple with
shame," replied Abaza, shocked at so much baseness, and
he set off with his troops for the m^mntains of Caramania.
XXXVIII.
An Armenian, named Souleiman-Pasha, husband of a
Sultana, owed the seal to the favor of the Validé. His un-
decided and feeble hand could not arrest ihe general decay
of the government. He resigned, and Koeprilu was spoken
of anew ; but the smallness of his fortune, at a time when
all was to be purchased, even obedience to the empire, sup-
plied a pretext for discarding him. " How should a man
without fortune be able to govern the tvorld f " exclaimed
Souleiman-Pasha himself.
The seals were sent to the conqueror of Crete, the serdar
Housseln. A calmakam was instituted for the mean time.
It was Sournazen-Pasha, the admiral, a man ambitious and
turbulent, who aspired to usurp the government himself.
The agitation which he secretly fomented amongst the troops
forced the Sultan to hold a divan on foot, — a sort of mili-
tary and popular session on occasion of seditions.
The troops demanded that the Sultan should, contrary to
us]^, come forth from the court of the seraglio by the gate
of Felicity, to present himself in the AM-Kiosk, situated
at an angle of the garden and opening by its balconies on
the square where they were assembled. Mahomet IV. took
his seat there behind the iron grating. The counsellors of
his youth surrounded him to prompt him his responses.
New clamors demanded the removal of those counsellors,
that the padischah, now at the age of reason, might speak
from himself; the viziers disappeared from his box. How-
ever, the two chiefs of the white and of the black eunuchs
squatted invisibly at his feet to murmur lowly their sugges-
tions. A judge, named Hassan, speaking on the part of the
people, demanded the reform of abuses and thirty heads
registered by name upon a lii^ He threw by way ^ doeu-
S84 HnfOBT ov TirnsET.
I oM^bmfttorj of hif ohums a haadftil of oUpp^d vMpetB
«pon the gromtd— a oarreney whieh was deo^ring and rtdiH
iag the people.
The two eamidia, of whom the heads were eompriaed in
the proaeriptkm liât, made the Sultan utter vague promises
of redress of those wrongs. The oalmakam adraneed in
torn to the window and j^mised, in the name of the Sultan,
that the thirty oulprtts would be deiqpoiled and banished.
^ But do not ask their heads,'' added he in delwenee to the
Sultan. ^ Take care of thj own," replied the inflexible erowd.
The unfortuntae youth saw torn from his feet the two
ehiefii of eunuohs, his fiivorites, of whom he had thus pleaded
Tainly the cause. They were stranded b^ore his eyes, and
thttr bodies were thrown from the height of the balecmy to
the multitude. Three otiier eunuchs wure precipitated idfter
them. The lala, the dierished precep^r of Mahomet TV. ;
the high treasurer; the capou-aga, ^ief of the guards of
the seraglio, the kular-aca, his mut chamberlain ; the head
tax-collector, Hassan, the grand marshal of the palace,
Shaban-Khidifé ; in fine, the aU-powerfnl Méléke, succeesÎYe
&yorite of two Sultanas Validé, demanded, disputed, tra^
fieked and pitilessly refused to the supi^cations and the sobs
of the Sultan, were flunff lifeless from the same tribune to
the sokUers and the people.
This pile of corpses mounted to the level of the balcony
of the kiosk. The caïmakam Soumasèn-Pasha, picked up,
as he had joemeditated, the seal of the empire in this blood.
But scarce had Mahomet lY. jMroclaimed him grand risier
than the troops his accomplices, envying his fortune, ex-
claimed on seeing him reoeive the seaLi: '^Wretdi! hasi
thou ihea insurrected us but to make thyself grand visier ? "
XXXIX.
These cries of just reprobation precipitated him fh>m his
poflri^ at the very moment when he had come into possession
of it. So mauy crimes were repaid him but by two hours
of power. Siawousch-Pasha, the former grand vizier, was
recalled from Mulghara to resume the tutelage of this
bloody minority.
The thirty bodies, dragged by the Janksanes and by the
nopulace on the place of the Hippodrome, were hung by the
legs to the branches of an immense i^ano-tree, whereon, by
BlflSOBT OF TUlSXt. 33ff
a. j«ft reprisal of time, the mieroiui Mahmoud IL, avenger
of his ancestors, was destined to haag the bodies of Janissa-
ries annihilated in their last crime. It is from this tree, à
living pillory of victims and of execiùiioners, that those
melancholy days of the youth of Mahomet lY. have received
the name ^ events of the plane-tree.
This long massacre and those hideons trophies had not
sstisied the Janissaries. During ike ten days that preoeded
the arrival of Siawousch, every morning, the people, on ris-
ing, came to count the d^ bodies suspended during the
mght to the branches of <^e plane-tree.
Siawousch, sick of the gout, a sicbiess exinatory of idle-
ness and the indulgences of the harem, died on his arrival,
the very night he caused to be strangled his enemy the def-
terdar. The victim and the murderer were carried together
to the £eld of ike dead, goinff to accuse and to excuse each
other before tixe supreme Ju^ga
Mohammed-Pawa, ihe wry-necked, governor of Syria,
was called to the seals. Forty wounds received in the wars
with Persia, of which one had severed a muscle of ihe neck,
had obtained him this surname and the office. The new
caXmakam, Tousouf, {mrged, in awaiting his advent, the city
£rom the nocturnal bands which oon^ued to reign over ike
Hippodrome, and to hang the victims pointed out to them on
the fatal plane-tree. He wrung fr(nn the Janissaries them-
selves, assembled round the bamier of the Prophet, the pun-
ishment of their own agitators, Roum-Hassan, Schamli, Jam-
acali, and Kara-Othman. Their heads were ejqM)sed in tw-
nnr to their accomplices before the sate of the sera^o and
under the tree which ^ey had turned into a gibbet.
XL.
It was learned, the day after those massacres, at Con-
Btantdnoide, that the fleet of the ci^itan-pasha Kenaan was
destroyed at the mouth of the Dardanelles by the Venetians.
Eighty vessels or galleys were burned or sunk in this battle
by Admiral Marcello, whose name remained thenceforth no
less terrible to the Turks than that of Don John of Austria,
after the disaster of Lepanto. Tenedos, Lemnos, Samothrace,
ishinds of the heart of the empire, returned under the do-
minion of y^iice.
Mohammed the wry-necked, scarce arrived at Constanti-
83C BUnOBT 07 TintKBT.
aM)p^ diâoorered A {dot of the ambitioiis Ma8(md, bceone ittoM
by the inooiuuderate &yor of the Sultana Tarkhan, too mwk
banned with his eloquence in the diran. He had conspired
the deposition of Mahomet lY., and the coronation of Sou
le!man, of whom he expected the guardianship. Sent in ex-
ile to Broussa, and conspiring there to revolt Caramania, ihe
judffe of Broussa, who watched his movements, exposed them
to &e Porte. A letter of the Sultan ordered t^ judge to
send his head to the mufti. On receipt of this letter, the
judge directed the investment, by a bana of simulated hunt^
era, of the country house of Masoud, situated on the steeps
of Mount Olympus. He was taken by surprise, eating fruits
with his women m a kiosk of his gardens, by moonli|;ht.
At the sight of his murderers, he did not submit like a
pontiff, but drew his sabre and foii^ht desperately for lifis
and for vengeance. His body, left on the brink of the foun-
tain where he had come to seek the delights of a summer
night, was visited next day, in throngs, with equal curioûty
by the Mussulmans and by the Christians of Broussa. The
one revered in him a martyr, the othera execrated in him a
persecutor who shut up, while he was mufti, the Christian
churches of Constantinople. Masoud, the second of the
muftis deceased by execution, was of the worot sort of per-
secutors, a persecutor without faith, a hypocrite of fcmati-
cism. The intrigue, the ambition, the agitation of his life,
his talents and ms eloquence during this Froruk^ of the
Turks, under the minority of Mahomet lY., recalls the Car-
dinal de Retz, in France. Men of tumult, both one and the
other, they never could attain to the elevated object of their
ambition ; they looked for glory, they attained noise.
XLI.
These executions did not re-open the Dardanelles, block-
aded at Tenedos by the Yenetians, did not reinforce the army
of Candia, did not fill up the void (^ the treasury, did not
restore the fleet, did not recruit the army. The Saltan, who
was growing up in years and in reason, assembled vainly
divan upon divan, to infuse, by his reproaches to the vizier,
some vigor into the monarchy. The fall of Mohammed the
* A well-known faottoof and Uoody epoch in French kistcny.— >
TnmMar,
HISrOBY OF TUBKBY. 397
wry-Tieehed was resolved by a generous impatience of the
young Sultan. " I wish," said he one day to the divan, " to
march myself at the head of the troops against the Vene-
tians who are ravaging our provinces of Greece : prepare
me, vizier, an army and a fleet worthy of a padischah."
The grand vizier pleaded impossibility of extemporizing
a fleet at a time when indiscipline had ruined the obedience
of the troops, seditions the organization of the empire, the
Venetians and the tempests the materials of a new fleet, and
when the public treasury, receiving no longer the produce of
the imposts, could be replenished but by voluntary offerings
from aie enriched, as greedy to retain as they had been
grasping to acquire.
The Sultan having communicated this response to his
mother, die had called to her by night, in a secret interview,
the old Koeprilu, who carried in his head the council of the
empire. ^^ All is penshiog," said she to him, ^^ for want of a
man capable of sustaining and retrieving iJie world ; dost
thou feel thyself to have, as it is said, the courage and the
genius to accept, in a situation so desperate, the burden of
the government ? "
" Yes," replied the old man, " with the aid of Gtod and
the blessing of the Sultana Validé, I take the engagement of
re-establishing all, on condition of controlling aU, of suffer-
ii^ no equal and no rival in the absolute confidence of the
Sultan and of his mother, of seeing my orders implicitly rati-
fied by him, and of being believed by him and by you upon
my own word, and not upon the calumnies of enemies."
The Sultana vowed, in the name of her son and on her
own part, to keep faithMly to the conditions of this absolute
dictature demanded by the necessary man. The following
day, Koeprilu received the seal of State, in full divan, from
the hands of the Sultan, and Mohammed the wry-necked
was sent into exile.
The turdy advent of a single man was the restoration of
A whole people. The hand of the young Sultan, in feeling
gropingly so many heads, at last lighted on the predestined
of the empire.
Vol. III.— 16
338 HI9T0BT or TITBKXT.
BOOK TWENTY. SEVENTH.
Wb flhoald neither too miioh depreciate m^i often capa-
ble, but nnfortmiate, wbo cannot arrest, with all their efforts,
the decadence of empires, nor too much exalt those who re-
tricTe them. Independently of merit, there is a destiny
wUch goes for mndi in the good fortone or the ill saccess of
statesmen. In the course of human affairs, there are ill-
chosen moments when nothing is possible even to virtue, to
heroism, to genius, and whidi seem to doom misfortune to
those who lire and who reign beneath their influence. There
are others when those advarse circumstances appear, so to
say, exhausted, when excess of eril, sheer weariness of anar-
chy, terror or shame at the general ruin, the return to order,
that equilibrium of societies, and the coincidences of the
public mind with fiiyorable events, render all things easy, be-
cause the most difficult then becomes possible. Evil has its
excess, as good has its apogee. Arrived at llie summit of
the good, nations descend; £dlen to the worst, they re-
mount : it is the law of our human nature, inflrm in crime as
it is in virtue.*
* ThÎB paraphrase of the Shakespearian ** tide in the affairs of m^i "
^^hat political philoic^j of the poets of all times — voaj be oonTenient
to enslain the contrast, no less sadden than extreme, between Ûte Empire
and me Republic, in the author's own countiy. Destiny is indeed the
habitual excuse of failure, if not incompetency, for it spares at once the
trouble and the exposure of deeper scrutiny : it may be left, however, as
a charitable consolation to defeat. But where is the human /)rc>^rew,
the ind^nite perfeotibflity of the party of which Lamartine has been so
lately the "predestined'' leader, i^ as he now thinks, the social system
be like that monarch of the song, who marched his soldiers up the hiD
but to march them down agtun ? — Trandatar.
HI8T0BT OF TUBKET. 339
Turkey was in one of those honrs when a people is seised
with shame of itself, and when the prospect of its inevitahle
rain gives it back the will and the energy of self-salvation.
The whole merit of Koepriln, this Eichelieu of the Otto-
mans, was to have faith in this recuperative force of his na-
tion ; his whole good fortune was to nave been called to the
government just at the moment when Turkey was willing to
be governed. A year sooner, he would have been swept
down in the ^end crash of things and men ; a year later,
there would be no empire to save. Dates, which are the
opportunity of things, do not receive sufficient attention, in
the estimates formed of statesmen by philosophic historians.*
The years in which they rise are one of the principal ele-
ments of the justice or the injustice that is done to their
name. God has reserved himself a larger part than is be-
lieved in political glories : he who has appeared before Pro-
vidence calls him is a pest ; he who comes at the nick of the
age is a great man. Such was Koeprilu, called by the
western historians Koproli, and more generdly KiuperlL
II.
Nothing up to those latter times had signalized him for
the supreme power, and his old age, which was advancing
with his seventy-second year, seemed rather to detrude him
from the active scene of public business where he had hitherto
played parts, though honorable, almost fruitless.
It was said that his family was of French origin j there
is nothing to confirm or to contradict it. The family, till
then obscure, may have floated, like so many others expatri-
ated by the movement of religions and of races, from the
coast of France to that of Italy, from that of Italy across
the Adriatic, and have nationalized itself in Albania. The
Albanian father of Kiuperli had transported his family and
his goods into one of the fertile valleys of Asia Minor, near
Am as i a. The village from which he took his name or to
which he g^ve his was caJled Koepri (the Bridge) ; it is now
Called Visir Koepri or Visirs' Bridge, in remembrance of
three great statesmen given by this liamlet to the glory of
* This is trne in fact. But it is not tho dates that are of value, but
the princ^les that give them meaning. And these principles are over>
looked, not by *' ph&osophic historians," bat by historians without philo-
sophy, which is as yet the common case. — Trcmdator,
340 HI0TOBT or TUBKBY.
Uie empire. Situated at tiie foot of a loftj moontain, at the
oonfluenoe of two torrents which rash to swell the river
Haljs, an affluent of the Black Sea, it is renowned for its
waters, for its barley, for its pears, its apples, its raisins, its
cherries and its wooL It is in bringing quite young by the
Black Sea, these products of the pastures and of the orchards
of his father to the market of Constantinople, that Kiuperli,
acquainted with the purveyors of the palace, became first an
aid and then the chief of the kitchens of the seraglio.
Although illiterate like an Albanian shepherd, his intelli-
gence and his zeal attracted the notice of the grand vizier
Kara-Mustapha, his compatriot, who brought him out of the
kitchen to pas him into the army, and to rise from grade to
grade up to the rank of mirakhor or grand equerry.
The vicissitudes of those agitated times had kept him
almost always remote from the court since his youth ; at
one time governor of Jerusalem, anon of Damascus or of
Tripoli, always irreproachable and esteemed in his different
functions, impressing with a hi^ opinion of him the pashas
who traversed his provinces, dreaded by the factions, beloved
by the people, and forming around him a clientage of esteem
and of friendship, which gave umbrage to no superior ambi-
tion — ^it is thus that he had reached an old age without splen-
dor but without shade ; one of those men of whom the genius
is suspected but at the hour of setting. Mohammed the
wry-necked had recalled him from Damascus, then appointed
him to the inferior government of Gustendjil, when his name
began to be pronounced with a low voice in the seraglio. Ki-
uperli, offended at this unmerited banishment to Gustendjil,
had postponed his departure, contemplating from the shade
in which he was placed the anarchies and the ruins of the
empire.
His elevation astonished and scandalized the numerous
pretenders to power, who were hardly acquainted with his
name. The oulemas used to say : " Why, he is an ignora-
mus who can neither wfite nor read." The soldiers said :
" He is a mere civic administrator who knows nothing of
war, and who has let himself be vanquished by the rebel,
Warder-Pasha." The financiers said : ** He is a man with-
out means, who can do nothing for the penury of the trea-
sury." All said : " He is an old man, deprived by years of
that fire of the blood which imparts force to human voli-
tions ; and he who mounts so late and so high must soon
HISTORY OP TURKEY. 341
descend into the tomb to which alone he should have turned
his thoughts."
III.
The first acts of Kiuperli were not slow to belie these
presages of envy and of ignorance. He renounced from the
first day the impoverishing system of extortions which put
capital to flight, and restored gold to the currency by restor-
ing confidence to proprietors. He energetically refused
the Sultan the head and treasures of his predecessor, Moham-
med the tory-neckedj whom the courtiers wished to kill for
his spoils.
A religious sedition of the orthodox Mussulmans a^inst
the derrishes and the sophis their adversaries, having agitated
the capital some days after his installation, he embarked res-
olutely for the island of Cyprus all the intolerant fanatics
who were disturbing the mosques in the name of their mystic
visions. A mendicant monk, named Turk, on account of his
savage austerity, who concealed the most shameful lusts be-
neath the appearance of asceticism, wished to bring back the
Mussulmans to the nudity of the brute, to proscribe loose
pantaloons, the use of combs, spoons, as instruments super-
fluous to man, to whom God had given fingers ; plate, Btufb,
arts, music, dancing, were likewbe the object of his sumptu-
ary maledictions. This madman ranted with more indecency
the philosophical maledictions of Jean-Jacques-Eousseau
against the state of civilization. ^' But," added he in pro-
fessing also the famous impeccability of the Christian quietists
of the seventeenth century, " man once sanctified may give
himself up in secret, without sin, to all the pleasures of
licentiousness."
Kiuperli exiled him into contempt, instead of populariz-
ing him by martyrdom ; he removea the mufti who had lent
a hand, through weakness, to the persecutions of the sect
of the orthodox, against the sect of the sophis, those Puri-
tans of Islamism. The defterdar having been assailed with
stones by the Janissaries on pay day : " Take patience like
me," said he to him, " until patience gives us strength, and
have your broken windows repaired ; 3ie day will come."
Temporization, that policy of the aged, wore out what
force could not yet crush. Sedition ceased to be popular.
Behind the vizier the factions began to feel a public opinion,
that supreme vizier.
342 msTOBT or tubket.
IV.
The ambassadors of Persia brought pledges of peace;
tiie Emperor Leopold I. of Germany asked the renewal of
the truces ; King Gostayos of Sweden implored the aid of
Kiuperli against the Bossians. He promised it to this
prince on condition of reconciling himself with the Poles,
the natural enemies of the^ Russians. The Poles, on their
part, denounced to him a conspiracy of thé Bussians for
exciting in the empire a rebellion of all the subjects of the
Sultan professing aie Greek religion ; he felt the importance
of such an insurrection at that epoch when the empire
counted five armed Mussulmans to one unarmed Greek. He
refused to the Poles the impolitic war wherein they sought
to engage him at the north, while the war with Venice re-
auired all his attention and all his forces at the south. Al-
iiough the Catholic and chiyalrous spirit of the French no-
bility did violence to the policy of Louis XIV., in going
individually to fi^ht and die as volunteers in Candia, he
had no difficulty m retaining that power in the traditional
alliance of Francis I., through fear of the ascendant which
the decay of Turkey would give the house of Austria, that
eternal rival of France.
V.
The Turkish demagogues of the plane-tree having recom-
menced their conclaves to resume by terror the ascendant
which they had wielded on those days of massacre, he went
to the house of the mufti and demanded a fetwa legitimiz-
ing in advance all the acts of his administration : " But to
what purpose ? " asked the mufti, astonished. " To be as-
sured of your fidelity," replied Kiuperli, " so that if ever the
enemies of public order should succeed in seducing you or
intimidating you as they have done your predecessors, this
writing may testify before the Sultan and before posterity
that we have acted in concert for the safety of the worW*
The mufti, bound to his friend by tJbis community of
purpose, furnished with confidence the fetwa. It contained
the annihilation of the spahis, those factionists of all the
revolts. On horseback, at the head of the Janissaries whom
he had detached from their old accomplices, Kiuperli invested
them with troops and cannon in their barracks. At the
HISTOBT OF TUBKKT. 343
dawn of day all the State eprps convoked by his orders at
the seraglio received from the Saltan, kept invisible, a katti-
scherif thus conceived : '^ Since my accession to the throne
the spahis have not ceased to disobey, to trifle with the re-
spect they owe me and with the honor of the empire. In con-
sequence we have charged our grand vizier to annihilate them ;
let the good lend assistance to my vizier against the perverse.
The chiefs of the rebels must be seized and put to death."
The measures were taken, the lists drawn up, the guilty
designated, the fetwa covered all with the authority of law and
reli^on ; the chiefs, seized by the grand vizier and by the aga
of the Janissaries, during their nocturnal round, were in the
hands of the executioners. Sixty heads of fsiction chie&, in
the number of which were those of the kiaya of the Djebed-
jis Khalil-Aga, of the grand chamberlain Khasseki, Mous-
tapha-Aga, fell before the grated window of the seri^lio,
where, some two years before, the Sultan endured the bloody
exigence of the factions and delivered to death his eunuchs
and his preceptor. The weakness of his infancy and the
outrages inflicted on him were thus washed out on the very
spot where the offenders had triumphed over him. Kiuperli,
obscure and timid, so long as the hour had not arrived for
the complete restoration of the jbhrone, appeared all of a
sudden to the Ottomans like the armed phantom of justice,
the executor of the vengeance of God.
The former grand vizier, Siawousch-Pasha, counting on
the support of the harem, and spotted with some reminiscen-
ces of old factions, having temporized with the order of exile
which he had received, Kiuperli demanded his death as an
example to obscurer culprits. The Sultan refused by the
suggestion of his mother. ^' Take back, then, the scab," re-
joined the inflexible minister, ^^ since despite your engage-
ments with your slave you do not ratify all that I juc^e
necessary for your safety."
" My Ma," replied Mahomet IV., " do as thou wilt ; I
abandon the heads of all who cross thy designs." The menace
was sufficient to send off Siawousch.
VL
Order thus restored internally, he reconstituted the fleet
and the army, recovered in his wiU the martial vigor of his
youth, and advanced himself by land at the head of the
344 HI8TOBY OF TTTBKET.
troops on the Enropean coast of the Dardanelles, to raise the
blockade while the fleet was sailinj; abreast with the army.
The Janissaries aboard the squadron having faltered at the
first shock from the Venetian yessels, Kiuperli ordered to
fire npon the cowards from the coast batteries and forced
them to return to the charge. The flag-ship of Mocenico,
admiral of the Venetians, was blown up, being struck in the
powder-hold by a heated ball from the fortress of the Dar-
danelles. This explosion set on fire two hundred Venetian
galleys, cannonaded at the same time from both banks. A
thick smoke, rolled back along the channel by the south wind,
covered during two hours the awful mystery of this struggle
between men, ships, fires, winds and waves. The Ottoman
fleet had perished with that of the Venetians. The Dar-
danelles were but one vast cemetery of vessels of which the
hulks were smoking still. But the sea of the Archipelago
and of Crete was reopened to the Ottomans.
" Come, my falcon," cried the Sultan on receiving at his
return the gunner, Kara-Mahommed, who had pointed the
cannon at the flag-ship, <^ let the bread of the padischah be
for ever thy legitmiate nourishment 1 May Gtoa recompense
the brave such as thou ! " He kissed him on the eyes, at-
tached with his own hands two aigrettes of precious stones
to his turban, and stripped off his own caftan to put it on
him.
Kiuperli did not conceal the cowardice of the Janissaries,
although interested in managing them for their support of
him against the spahis : to flatter the faults of his soldiers
appeared to him as impolitic as to corrupt them. Their kiaya
and seven of their colonels who had drawn their soldiers into
flight wore beheaded behind his tent, and their heads thrown
with contempt into the sea. The capitan-pasha, dreading his
vengeance, took refuse with some vessels on the coast of
Africa. Kiuperli quieted his fears by indulgent letters. A
new squadron, rapidly equipped by his orders, transported
the vizier and the army to Tenedos. The island fell back
Sromptly into his hands. Lemnos followed the lot of Tene-
os.
VIL
j^uperli sent from Tenedos to the Sultan an invitation
to transfer his court to Adriaaople, lest in his absence he
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 345
might be beset by the intrWes of the ambitioTis and by the
seditions of the people. The passion of Mahomet IV. for
the chase supplied a pretext for this removal. A pigeon
which he transpierced with an arrow at the age of eight years
in the Fresh-water valley, had been chanted by the jpoets of
the capital as an exploit worthy of his ancestors. This
Sultan never dreamed of higher glory.
In 1658, an expedition against Bakoczy, prince of Tran-
sylvania, removed anew Kiuperli from Adrianople during
winter. An ally of the hetman of the Cossacks, who fur-
nished sixty thousand cavalry, Bakoczy, attacked on one side
by the grand vizier, on the other by two hundred thousand
Tartar cavalry, who inundated his provinces, left one hundred
thousand dead upon the field of battle, and took refage with
his wrecks behind the Theïss. The rest of the youths of
Transylvania were led into slavery by the Tartars of the
Crimea. Barcsay was invested by the Porte with the sov-
ereignty of Transylvania, subject to a yearly tribute of forty
thousand ducatk. ' '.
VIIL
A revolt of Abaza-Hasan in Asia Minor recalled Kiuperli
to arms. This rebel, companion of Ipschyr, had, as has been
seen, quitted Scutari with a handful of Turcoman lewends
after the murder of that vizier. The annihilation of the
spahis had served him with a pretext for insurrecting anew
ihe Turcomans, and marching with a hundred thousand horse
upon Broussa. He despatched thence to the Sultan deputies
charged to demand the dismissal of Kiuperli, the extermi-
nator of the spahis.
"I will not dismiss my faithful vizier," replied Ma-
homet IV.; "he has executed my orders." He followed
Kiuperli to Scutari to encounter Abaza. Three pashas and
thirteen hundred spahis of the army of the Sultan, who were
discovered to have a secret understanding with the rebels,
were massacred by order of the grand vizier.
Mourteza-Pasha, his lieutenant, at the head of fifty thou-
sand Janissaries, lost eight thousand men in the first battle
against Abaza. The grand vizier, without reproaching him
for his reverse, reinforced him with a second army. He drove
Abaza back to the Euphrates. Perfidious negotiations were
opened between the two generals before the walls of Aleppo.
Vol. m.— 15»
846 HIBTOBT OP TITBRBT.
M<mrteta persuaded the simple and erednloos Turcoman fhal
if he retired from the citj and the citadel of Aleppo, his
pardon would be easily obtained from KiuperlL Abaza
withdrew beyond the wails. Monrtesa entered the city. A
truce reigned between the two camps. Under pretext of a
ftte of reconciliation, Mourtesa invited Abasa-Hassan to re-
enter Aleppo with a retinue of cavalry. The inhabitants of
Aleppo, among whom this escort were billeted, had orders to
massacre each his guest at the signal of a cannon discharged
from the fortress.
At the close of the supper given by Mourtesa-Pasha to
Abaia, " Give," said he to the pages, " give the pashas, our
brothers, water for the ablutions of evening prayer." Instead
of ihe water of ablutions, the posted satellites of Mourteza
shed at this signal the blood of their guests. Abaza and
thirty of his generals fell by the dagger of the assassins.
The cannon-shot announced their parting breath to the hosts
of the Turcoman cavaliers of the guard ; each of them
brought a head to Mourteza. Thus perished the revolt by
treachery — a sad vicissitude of despotic governments.
IX.
The hero almost fabulous of the age, the conqueror of
Crete, Deli-Housseïn, recalled from Candia, where he had
shed his blood during so many years for the faith, was sacri-
ficed, not to the security of the empire, but to the suspicions
of Kiuperli. Deli-Housseïn had been elevated solely by his
exploits ; he was incapable of crime.
Bom at Jenyschyr, of a simple wood-cutter of that valley,
he had entered the seraglio as baltadji, in his boyhood, under
Amurath IV. The ambassador of Persia having made a
present to the Sultan of a bow which the most vivrons ath-
letes of the capital could not bend, Deli-Housseïn, m carrying
wood into the chamber of the kislar-aga, found, by chance,
this bow suspended on the wall. Alone in the apartment, he
tried his strength upon the bow, and succeeded easily in bend-
ing it, and tying the string to its two extremities ; then, hear-
ing the footsteps of the chief of the eunuchs, and fearing to
be surprbed in his indiscretion, he slid off, leaving the strung
bow in the chamber.
The kislar-aga, on entering, was astonished to find the
bow displaced and ready to receive the arrow. He interro*
HI8T0BY OF TUBKKY. 847
rd Housseïn, who avowed his fault, a fault which became
fortune and his glory. The Sultan Amurath lY., a
yigorous archer himself, admired an archer more robust still
than he, made trial of him in presence of his court, attached
him to his hunting-service, and ended with making him his
grand equerry. Instinct for war and hb good fortune did
ike rest The army knew but his name. He was thought
of in the extremity of the fortune» of the empire ; he had
been twice designed for the post of grand vizier. Kiuperli
dreaded that his military glory might eclipse his own political
power. He had appointed him capitan-pasha less through
personal favor than in deference to public opinion.
Some vague accusations of malversation in the manage-
ment of the funds of the marine, supplied a pretext for his
hatred. He communicated his hostility to the Sultan ; the
Sultan, docile, called Housseïn before him and overwhelmed
him with abuse. Imprisoned in the Seven Towers, Housseïn
expiated, two days a^r, his too conspicuous glory by an un-
grateful death. This death is the sole stain upon KiuperlL
Perhaps he thought it just and necessary to the security of
Mahomet IV., on whom the military factions, who were look-
ing for a chief, would have promptly imposed through Hous-
seïn the servitude from which he had delivered the empire.
Perhaps he sacrificed him to the longing of being alone ^reat
in public opinion afber this rival in influence. Conscience
and policy are so commingled in the soul of a statesman, in
despotic governments, that the historians sometimes attribute
to Grime what is duty, and to duty what is crime.
The poet Abdi, become afterwards the historian of his
age, was appointed governor of maritime Arabia, where the
rebels had propagated the agitation. Syria was purged by
Ali-Pasha, lieutenant of Kiuperli, of all the Drusian chief-
tains who were stirring up anew these mountsuns.
Upon ihe Danube, Michné, Greek by birth, who got him-
self crowned, by the monks, archduke of Wallachia, insur-
rected these provinces against the Turks. An army of Tar-
tars, of Poles and of Cossacks, allies of the empire, defeated
him at Yassy, killed fifteen thousand of his partisans in a
battle of three days, and forced him to take refuge in the
348 HI8T(»tT or TUBKXT.
imnks of Rmkooij, amongst the last defenders of ike
of this rebel
The asylum lent by Austria to the ambitious Rakociy
became, between Kiuperli and the Austrian ambasador, the
text of ffrievances which were to end in war. Fidelity to
the concutions of the truce had honored thus far the Ottoman
diplomacy. The excursions of Rakoczy into the Austrian
provinces had been energetically reproved and even repressed
by the Porte. It was one of Ûte causes of the insurrection
of the Transylvanians against the Turks. The German
generals availed themselves of it to take, in the name of this
vanquished and ousted prince, possession of the strongholds
and the fortresses of Hungary. The pasha of Ofen, indig-
nant, marched in his turn against the fortress of Grosswar-
dein, occupied by the imperialists. Housseïn-Pasha carried
the place reputed impregnable. ^^ Its ramparts are so high,"
says the Ottoman historiographer, witness of the siege, " that
a bird could scarce attain the summit, and its trenches are so
deep that thought itself could not dare to cross them."
The Russians took advantage of this diversion of the
Ckrmans to excite the Cossacks oi the Dniester to unite with
them against the Tartars. The Khan of the Tartars, in-
formed of those insinuations, raised forty thousand cavalry
to forestall the Russians. Firasch-Beg, his general, defeated
their vanguard on the banks of the AreL Seventy thousand
Russians approached to avenge this defeat. Mohammed-
Gheraî, Khan of the Tartars, enveloped them with a cloud of
Tartar and Cossack cavalry, at that time allies ; thirty thou-
sand Russians were left on the steppes of the field of battle ;
thirty thousand more were led captive into the Crimea.
The Poles sent ambassadors to congratulate the Porte on
this victory over the common enemy. The Russians sent
also to complain of the aggression of the Tartars. Kiuperli
temporized in his replies. The symptoms of approaching
war with Austria forbade him to divide his forces. He re-
called from Ofen Sidi- Ahmed-Pasha, one of the old rebels
of whom he had adjourned the punishment, and he ordered the
seraskier of Hungary, Ali-Pasha, to send him his head.
Sidi- Ahmed, drawn by treachery into the tent of the seras-
kier, received five balls in the body, from the hand of the
chiaoux. He made his way through them despite his wounds,
sabre in hand, and, leaping on his horse, was going to escape
from his murderers, when the chiaoux cut the houghs of his
HiœPOBT OF XtmKBT. 349
luH-ae. Sîdi- Ahmed in looking back, saw one of his own
servants taking aim a^ his head : ^' Traitor 1 ruffian !" ex-
claimed he ; then wrapping himself in his mantle to avoid
seeing so mnch ingratitude, he waited, like Caesar, without
movement, to be finally despatched before the tent of the
seraskier.
XI.
A campaign of the Poles and the Tartars against the
Russians, fomented by Kiuperli, but in which he did not
engage the Ottoman troops, annihilated, at Azof, twenty
thousand Cossacks, who had sold themselves this time to the
Russians. Kiuperli directed the construction of new for-
tresses to shut up the empire, too open on the north, one at
the ipouth of the Don, called Seddoul-Islam (barrier of
Islamism); another on the banks of the Dnieper, at the
foXcorC^ford ; a third in the middle of the steppes of Tar-
tary, between the Dnieper and the Don, to consolidate the
domination over the Tartars themselves, the most numerous,
the nearest in blood, but the most indisciplinable of his feuda-
tories ; a fourth between the Caspian and the Black Seas, in
those deserts which from time to time pour torrents of men
upon the north and upon the south.
^ The fortresses of the Dardanelles were multiplied and
re-armed, to serve as shoals not to be crossed by the new
fleets which Venice might try to send to the heart of the
empire. It was then he made this answer to the Austrian
ambassador, who complained of the assaults of Grosswardein,
and demanded reparation : ^^ The lion, my master, fears no
longer either fire or water, and if all the Christian powers
united by sea and by land wish to try his strength, let them
do it. I have lived long enough to re-establish, although old
when come to power, at once the throne of my padischah
and the religion of the Prophet."
XIL
His genius shed in flickering into extinction its brightest
fleams. Exhausted of days and glutted hi glory, he felt
Ufe retiring without afflicting himself at death. His work
survived him ; his name could not die. He sent to beg the
Sultan, who venerated him like a father^ to come to his bed-
3S0 amoBT or tubkbt.
side to hold a secret divan of deaiii. He beqaeathed him,
in this loDff interview, his policy :
'^ All 3ie misfortunes of jour infimcy," said he to him,
" are come of the infloence of women and their government.
Give up to them your heart, never your policy. Do not let
idleness corrupt your troops, and show yourself often at the
head of your armies, so that the factions may tremble at
home, and the giaours respect you abroad. As to the trea-
sury, never suffer it to remain empty, for misfortune may
at any moment come from the four points of the horiion
upon an empire so vast as yours ; but no misfortune is irrep-
arable with a full treasury and a faithful people."
He expired in peace, after having poured his experience
into the memory and into the heart of his youog sovereign.
Gome into power at seventy-two, he had governed but five
years ; but these five years nad resuscitated Turkey.
XIII.
Scarce had Mohammed-Koeprilu or Kiuperli, resigned
the last breath, than the Sultan called to Adrianople the
eldest of his sons, Ahmed KiuperlL This young man,
twenty-six years old, was then caïmakam or lieutenant of his
father, at Constantinople. Mahomet lY. gave him the seals
of the empire as a heritage ; it was the 1st November,166r.
Ahmed Kiuperli, was given by nature the character and
uncultivated genius of his father ; but he had beside, from
the good fortune of his birth, a literary and political educa-
tion which gave completeness to his natural endowments.
The history of this family, wherein the viziership was three
times inherited, is in some sort that of the empire for a pe-
riod of twenty-seven years. Ahmed was the greatest of
the three Kiuperlis. In this quality, nothing ti^at charac-
terizes this historic man can be indifferent to the recital:
the peoples pass away anonymous, they survive to posterity
but through a few great names.
XIV.
Among all the statesmen who by their works have in-
scribed their names as deeply in the correspondinj^ reigns as
the kings themselves, he with whom Ahmed KiuperB pre-
sents the closest analogy is the great English statesman Mr.
HI8T0BT OF JtTBMîT. 361
Pitt. Like him, he governed Bovereignlj under a prinoe
effaced from the throne ; like him, he suooeeded in the flower
of his youth to the functions and to the genius of a &ther who
had prepared a successor in his son ; like him, his genius was
different, but equal to that of his father ; like him, he lived
but to govern ; his sole personal passion was the passion of
authority over his nation, of defence of his country, of the
grandeur of the monarchy ; like him, in fine, he died young,
and at the work, without having known disgrace, leaving
after him a renown bitter to the enemies of his country, but
which is blended, in the mind of the English and of the
Ottomans, with the patriotism of the country itself.
Ahmed Kiuperli had had no boyhood. His father, to
provide against the vicissitudes of fortune and the spolia-
tions which assail in Turkey the public functionaries more
than others, wished to secure this cherished son against such
catastrophes and spoliations by attaching to a body more
humble, but less exposed, the oulemas. He designed him
for the civil functions of judge or of mufti His studies had
been by so much the more precocious and the more serious
that his father, who could neither read nor write, appreciated
at a higher value for his son the advantages of an education
of which he had been deprived himself. The admirable
aptitude of the young man had corresponded to his opportu-
nities. Religion, civil law, public law, politics, eloquence,
history, poetry, the Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Italian
tongues nourished his intellect and adorned his memory.
He had drawn from an immense and an assiduous -course of
reading the maturity of ideas and the elegance of style
which inspire firmness of thought and fluency of elocution.
These studies and these tastes for the severe pleasures of the
intellect had early impressed his attitude and his features
with a character of gentle reflection and gravity which do
not impose respect, but which inspire it
His exterior revealed a precocious maturity. He was
of tall and noble stature, a little drooped forward ; his fore*
head was spacious, his eyes frank, his complexion like that
of a man who has lived in the shade of libraries ; his address
was humble, becoming, gracious ; the rusticity and bluntness
of the father had disappeared in the son ; he seemed desir-
ous rather to have it forgotten than remembered that he was
the son of a grand viiier. Attached through the philosophy
which had been taught him, to real and permanent goocfs
352 HI8T0BT OF TITBKET.
mieh as rirtae and gl^y, rather than to perishable goods snch
as ambition, sensuality, riches, his disinterestedness was
exemplary, and the presents which he used to be offered
were to him offencea A supporter of law and of order by
duty, never by anger or by passion, he had a horror of the
tschaouschs, of the chiaouz, of the spahis, those instruments
of the massacres which dishonored, even under hb father,
the policy of the divan, and he was unwilling to seek from
diastisement what he could not obtain from the reason
and from the interest, well-understood, of the people. The
khodja of Kiuperli, Othman, a man consummate in wisdom
and science, had transmitted his virtue to his pupil.
Such was the man to whom Mahomet lY. was going to
confide his throne and his empire. Fatigued before having
lived by the storms that agitated his cradle, happy to
have found security and peace under the tutelage of a
minister, alone exposed to the vicissitudes of Mictions, while
he was enjoying the leisures, the loves, and the recreations
of youth, addicted to the chase like a son of the Turcomans,
this Sultan had resolved, as much through instinct as policy,
to never reign himself, in order to remove from his person
the terrible troubles and responsibilities of government ; but
upright and firm in his selections, he knew already how to
choose his ministers, and to sustain after having well chosen
them. The name of Kiuperli, independently of the merit
of him who bore it, appeared to him a celestial designation,
a name of happy omen for the empire and for hb house.
XV.
Ahmed-Bjiuperli disappointed none of those presages.
Although young, hb travels in all the provinces of the em-
pire, the government of Damascus, some campaigns against
the Kurds and the Druses, and, in fine, his recent exercise
of the functions of caimakam at Constantinople, as well as
the example and conversations of hb father, had prepared
him for public business. He commenced by showing him-
self severe, in order to afford to be indulgent with impunity.
He wbhed to relax insensibly the bloody M)rings of the gov-
ernment ; but he also wished his lenity should not be con-
strued into weakness, and that authority, in changing its
regimen, should abate nothing of the respect due it.
The grand chamberlain, Deli-Hafiz, enemy of Mohammed-
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 353
Kiuperli, his father, having testified an almost factious joy
at the moment when the shrouded body of the grand yizier
passed before his house, Ahmed exiled him to Cyprus. The
mufti having recriminated in the divan against some of the
executions of the late government : " Who has signed these
fetwas of death ? " he was asked. " I have," replied the
mufti ; " but I have signed them through intimidation, and
because I feared for my own life." " Effendi," said to him
severely the new grand vizier, " is it for thee, who art versed
in the law of the prophet, to fear a minister more than thou
fearestGod?"
The mufti, dismissed, went to expiate his cowardice to
Bhodes. The virtuous Sanizadé was appointed mufti in his
place.
XVI.
The order so completely re-established in the empire by
his father permitted him to turn his first attention to Ger-
many. The first of the Kiuperlis had prepared all in view
of an energetic repression of the court hostility of Austria.
The war was kindled of itself in the conterminous provinces
of the two empires, that is, in Hungary and in Transylvania.
The commanders of the strongholds of the imperialist party
and the pashas, governors of provinces on the side of the
Turks, made war or peace withont the warrant of their re-
rtive governments. The generals, almost all Italians, of
army of the Emperor Leopold, and the Lorrain and
French volunteers, brought to his armies by the fanaticism
of glory and of religion, made themselves, in the interest of
the Pope and of Venice, the champions of a holy war which
policy did not as yet avow. Hungarian and Transylvanian
partisans,, excited by the chivalry of Germany, of Italy, of
France, made war now under one pretext, then under another,
upon the Turkish garrisons of the Danube.
Ali, pasha of Ofen, having sent Housseïn-Pasha to Hutz
as negotiator, Housseïn was shot perfidiously by the com-
mander of Hutz. AU avenged the assassination of his
ambassador by an incursion into the Palatinate of Marma-
rosch. Transylvania was kindled; a Transylvanian noble
received the investiture. The Tartars of tie Crimea, an
innumerable cavalry, who were to the Turks what the Cos-
sacks were to the Bussians, having hastened to the call of
354 HiSTOBT or tubkst.
Ali-Pashsy reinforced him with forty thousand sabres. Her-
manstadt and Temeswar were redeemed from conflagration
but by a ransom of two hundred thousand ducats, an indemnity
for the expenses of the war made disloyally upon the Turks.
Kemeny, another pretender to the sovereignty of Tran-
sylvania, supported indirectly by the Imperialists, re-entered
with an army of partisans this province after the retreat of
Ali and of aie Tartars. Vanquished, as had been a year
before Bakocsy by Koutschouk-Pasha,- lieutenant of Ali,
Kemeny, thrown from his horse, perished in the route under
the feet of the pursuing horses of the pasha.
XVII.
All presaged an approaching, and, so to say, involuntary
conflict between the two empires, urged on by their popula-
tions. Kiuperli would have wished to adjourn the struggle
until the end of the war with Venice and of the slow con-
quest of Crete. The party of the harem, on whom his youth
and inexperience imposed less deference than they were wont
to pay the old Kiuperli, accused him of procrastination, and
complained of the too absolute authority which he pretended,
like bis father, to exercise over the Sultan. The Sultana
Validé Tarkhan, irritated that he should have removed the
defterdar Housseïn-Pasha, her creature, represented to her
son that if deference was laudable when paid to a man of ad-
vanced age, it was humiliating towards a youns; man who had
nothing great as yet but pride. She employed, to incite her
son to the desire of reigning by himself, the insinuations of the
favorites, and the exhortations even of the sheiks.
One day as the Sultan was passing on horseback before
the mosque " of Eoses,'' at Adrianople, whilst a celebrated
preacher was in the pulpit, Mahomet IV. dismounted, and
entered to listen to the sacred discourse. The preacher, on
perceiving the Sultan, changed of a sudden the text, and
addressing indirectly the padischah : ^' We have placed thee
upon the earth,'' cried he, citing a verse of the Koran, " to
be the successor of the Prophet ; judge then thyself with
justice the men whom we have confided to thee."
Mahomet IV., another time, by the advice of his mother,
abstained for some days from the chase, the sole occupation
of his life ; he placed himself behind the railing of the kiosk
'^ of Eeviews,'' whence he could see all who attended at the
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 355
audiences of the grand vizier, and punished, himself, severdy,
all the Christians who presented themselves in the costume
reserved by the laws for the Mussulmans. A young Arme-
nian, who, according to the custom tolerated practically, wore
upon his wedding-day yellow slippers, was torn, by the orders
of the Sultan, from tiie procession and his bride, and punished
with death.
An exercise of authority so puerile and so atrocious made
Adrianople murmur, and convinced the Sultan himself and
his mother that the government would be but the ^ap-hazard
of ignorance and despotism in such hands. The Sultana
Tarkhan became reconciled to Kiuperli, by means of some
adroit favors which the grand vizier accorded to the confidant
of that princess, Schamizadé. A political lea^e between
these three influences of the seraglio confirmed uie authority
of the grand vizier.
XVIII.
Venice, weary of a war which was exhausting its finances
and arsenals, commenced to negotiate an underhand arrange-
ment, through Ballarino, its secret agent at Adrianople.
Kiuperli, attentive to the dispositions of Germany, from
which he augured a continental war, showed himself disposed
to divide the possession of Crete with the republic, and to
adjourn one of those wars in order to turn the whole forces
of the empire against the Imperialists. A naval encounter
in the waters of Chio, between the Venetian and the Ottoman
fleets, broke off by accident these negotiations. Those of
the Porte with Austria, on the subject of Transylvania, re-
sulted, at the close of the year 1662, but in a complete
rupture of the long peace five times renewed under the name
of truce. The Porte refused definitively to renounce the
right of appointing the princes of Transylvania. The 16th
March, 1663, Kiuperli, after having appointed his brother-in-
law, Kara-Mustapha, caïmakam of Constantinople to answer
to him for the capital in his absence, set out from Adrianople
to take upon himself the command of the army.
The Sultan accompanied his vizier to the first station
outside Adrianople, and delivered to him with pomp the
banner of the Prophet and a sabre of which the hilt was
enriched with diamonds. The army was awaiting him at
Belgrade ; it received die all-powerfiu vizier as it w<Hild have
S56 HISTORY OP TURKEY.
received the Saltan. The two brothers of Kiaperli, Moos-
tapha-Beg and Ali-Beg, marched at his side ; the entire army
wheeled round after he passed to accompany him to his tent,
erected on the crest of the hillocks at the foot of which the
Danube is confounded with the Save, a river nearly as broad
as that in which it loses its waters.
The Baron de Gt>e8 and the Austrian resident at Adri-
anople, Reninger, plenipotentiaries of the Duke De Sagan,
minister of the empire, awaited Kiuperli at Belgrade to make
a last attftnpt at peace. The vizier received them with
politeness, but coldly ; he conducted them on horseback in
his train to an elevation from which the eye could take in his
entire army. It was composed of one hundred and twenty-
five thousand picked men, of one hundred and twenty-five
pieces of field artillery, of twelve enormous siege cannons,
of sixty thousand camels and twelve thousand mules, carrying
provisions and munitions. One hundred and twenty thou-
sand Tartars were on their march to swell this host with a
cloud of badly disciplined and devastating cavalry. Ahmed-
Oheraï, son of the khan of the Tartars, commanded it. Such
an army, in the hands of a young man whom the name of
Koeprilu or Kiuperli rendered formidable to the enemies of
the empire, was the most eloquent of diplomacies. The con-
ferences were opened under this impression.
Kiuperli, to withdraw, demanded only the conditions of
Soliman the Great, so long accepted by Austria, that is to
say, the recognition of the right of protection of the Porte
over Transylvania, the restitution of the Hungarian cities,
conquered against the faith of treaties by Austrian parti-
sans, in fine, the renewal of the annual tribute of three hun-
dred thousand ducats, paid formerly, and now fallen into
dissuetude by Austria. The plenipotentiaries promised sat-
isfaction on the two first heads ; as to the last, tbey declared
that they could not dare to submit to the Duke de Sagan
a proposition so compromising to the dignity of a great em*
pire ; they would purchase peace by justice, by deference,
never by the humiliation of vassalage.
XIX.
Kiuperli pushed the army forward as far as Essek, where
the conferences were renewed as vainly between the same
plenipotentiaries and Ali-Pasha, serdar of Hungary, com-
HISTOBT OF TUBKET. 357
mander of the van^axd of the Ottomans. Ali-Pasha and
Mohammed-Pasha, his colleague, did not wait for the re-
sponse from Vienna, to attack the Hungarian army of For-
gacs and of Palfy at Neuhoeusel. Thirty thousand Hunga-
rians perished either in the conflict or in the river. Forgacs
was shut up with the wrecks in Neuhoeusel. Palfy escaped
with but two hussars and an escort; thousands of heads
were thrown in heaps at the feet of the vizier, who had com-
manded himself the movements of the battle. The hundred
and twenty thousand Tartars arrived on the evening of the
victory ; the son of the Khan, Ahmed-Gheraï, armed with
a sabre, with a poniard, with a (quiver, dressed in a vest of
cloth of gold trimmed with ermine, coifed with a kalpak of
sable-fur, escorted by Tartars and by Cossacks of the Cri-
mea in the same costume and with the same Asiatic arms,
reminded of Timour-Lenk in the midst of his conquests.
Kiuperli partitioned this multitude into four vast camps
around the city, and directed himself the assaults. The Hun-
garians, despite the height and the thickness of their ramparts,
constrained by a cowardly revolt the Marquis Pio and For-
gacs, their generals, to capitulate. The victory of Neuhoeu-
sel, and above al), the fall of this fortress of Hungary
hitherto reputed impregnable, spread astonishment and con-
sternation throughout Germany. These triumphs gave to
Kiuperli the audacity of accomplishing in his own army
a coup d'etat of omnipotence which he deemed to be requi-
site for the consolidation of his still recent authority.
The intimate confidant of the Sultana Validé, Schami-
zade, who had attended the grand vizier with the army, less
as a friend than as a jealous inspector of his conduct, con-
spired with the Sultana the deposition of Kiuperli on the
first reverse, and wished to elevate in the stead of a minister
so imperious, his own father-in-law, Ibrahim-Pasha, one of
the lieutenants of the vizier then in the army with him.
Kiuperli, informed of this plot, wrote to the Sultan that if
this rumor of his approaching dismissal was not contradicted
by the immediate execution of the traitors who boasted of
succeeding him, his ascendant imdermined in the army would
ruin the campaign.
Mahomet IV., without consulting his mother, replied to
Kiuperli to take counsel but from the safety of the empire.
The day following this response the favorite of the Sultana
Validé, Schamizade and his accomplice Ibrahim, were decap-
3S8 msroBT ov mxxr.
iUted, to the stapefiM^n of tUe anny, befbre the tent of
Kiuperli, and their heads, sent to Adrianople, as the heads
of two traitors, attested the immovabilitj of the minister in
the favor of the Sultan. The Sultana Tarkhan trembled
for her own influence and had recourse to her title of
mother:
" My viiier," wrote the Sultan to her, " has earned well
the bread of my elayes in not having for carpet but the
stones, and for bod but the earth ; may my bread prcAt
himi"»
XX.
MeuLwhile, the prince elect of Transylrana, Apafy, was
oome with his principal partisans to tako shelter under the
protection of Uie Turkish army. A Transylvanian noble,
named Haller, suspected of seeking for himself the investi-
ture of the principality, followed him. Kiuperli gave Apafy
a disdainful reception, and had Haller beheaded and his body
east in the river.
All the fortresses acMacent to Lewens, Novigrad, Neu-
tra, Freystad, Schintau, fell by the counter-shock of Neu-
hoeuseL The Tartars, spread through Moravia and Silesia,
brought back troops of young girls enclosed in sacks on the
backs of their horses, or coupled two by two like dogs in a
leash. Their hordes, with torch and sword in hand, gfdloped
amid flames to within three miles of Olmuti. The domains
of the princes of Dietriohstein and of Liechtenstein were
ravaged ; twelve thousand of their vassals were carried into
slavery and sold in the market of Neuhoeusel. Presburg saw
burning from the height of its ramparts thirty-two of its
richest villages. Thirteen hundred wagons laden with women
and children, chased before them by Uie Cossacks and the
huzzars of the Khan of Tartary, and eighty thousand Hun-
garian slaves, marched in files towards Belgrade to peo-
ple the valleys of Europe or the steppes of the Crimea.
I^iuperli, without an army of the eaemj before him, and
calling back his own to Belgrade to winter, left the Tartars
* After all, the joung soyereign who could mii^rt againsfc sach in-
flnences, a public servant for his virtaes, was not himself an imbedle.
Mahomet lY. must have had something of that governmental instinct
which distingoishes the despots of his race &om all others in histozy. —
HS3T0BT 09 1*URKSY. 359
to inundate Hungary. The Poles having sent to him to ask
the aid of these Tartais against the Russians, he dismissed
them with the threat of turning his arms against themselves
if they continued to treat with the Imperialists while he
was at war with Germany.
The springof 1664 renewed the invasion of Hungary by
the army of l^iuperli, refireshed and recruited during the
wint^. The Sultan, from his harem and from the forests
of Adrianople, ccmtemplated the exploits of his vizier. He
had espoused, the year preceding, a young Greek, bom in
Crete, taken off by the Turks at the capture of Retimo.
The serdar of Crete, Housseïn, struck by her charms, judged
her worthy of his master, and offered her as a present to the
Sultana Yididé. Her name was Rebia Gulmïseh, that is to
say in Turkish, the bee that sips the vernal roses. The love
of Mahomet IV. for this black-haired slave soon counter-
balanced in his heart the authority of the yellow-haired
Validé, his mother.
Rebia Gulmïseh gave, in spring, a first son to the Sultan,
who was named Mustapha. This precocious fecundity con-
solidated her influence.
XXI.
Meanwhile, Germany, threatened with a deeper invasion,
armed within seven months all its defenders. Zriny, sur-
named Iron-Pale, had rallied the Hungarians and was ad-
vancing into Transylvania ; Count de Souches marched upon
Neutra. Hohenloe, Strozzi, generals of Austria, followed
by Italian and French cOrps, concerted a plan of campaign
before the walls of Kanischa, which they besieged. They
concentrated themselves at Serinwar in order to receive
there, in a situation solidly entrenched, the onset of Kiuperli.
Strozzi fell mortally wounded in the conflict.
Marshal^ MontecucuUi, the first warrior of Italy and
Germany, came to take the general command of the confed-
erate army. He established himself in a triangle forti-
fied by nature between the Mur, the Drave and the re-
trenched position of Serinwar. Kiuperli could not reach
him but after surmounting this position defended by the
city. The number and the impetuosity of the Turks tri-
umphed over the defenders of Serinwar; Count de Thum,
who commanded under MontecucuUi, perished on the breach
880 HmOBT 07 TUBKST.
with three thoraand Hnnguriuis, the flower of Im troops.
MonteoQCiilli and Count Golignj, who had bronriit nz thoii-
sand French yolnnteers, repassed the Mur and barred the
passage to KinperlL
The Turkish army, dispersed in detachments of thirty
to forty thousand men, contented themselves with observing
the Imperialists and the French, and with besieging one by
one the plaoes that resisted stilL Montecuculli, too feeUe
to engage with these divisions,, which would have smothered
by surrounding him, retired upon the Raab, a river that
covers Austria. Kiuperli followed closely and encamped
upon the left banL He was joined there at the village of
Saint-Gothard, by the plenipotentiaries of Austria, witnesses
of the oonflamtion of Hungary and of tiie enslavem^it of
a whole people.
The same fate which menaced their country, the disparity
of number between the army of MontecucuUi and that of
Kiuperli, had made the Emperor Leopold yield : the Duke
de Sagan, his minister, authorised them to submit, in a per-
manent treaty, to the necessities and humiliations of defeat.
Kiuperli, to constrain them to a more complete and a more
prompt surrender, wished to pass under their eyes the Raab
at Saint-Gothard, in the hce of the army of MontecucullL
This general, the hero of his age, surprised at first by the
impetuosity of the Ottomans, who had forded the river and
thrown back the Germans upon an amphitheatre of hills,
yielded a moment the village of Moggersdorf, the centre of
his position, to the Janissaries who had escaladed it. His
soldiers were flying, his officers dying at their post ; he him-
self, with coolness, that genius of character, collected and
reformed those wrecks.
When he had reanimated them with his soul, he deployed
daringly his two wings, one commanded by ike Duke Charles
of Lorrain, his pupil in the art of war, the other, composed
wholly of French nobles, under the orders of Count de
Coligny. These great captains rushing togeUièr upon the
foremost moiety of the Turkish army, which alone had
passed the river, threw back the Ottomans into the bed of
the Baab, half filled up with their dead. Twenty thousand
Janissaries, the sinew of the army, abandoned on the left
bank, and hemmed up in their conquest, perished, rather than
surrender, at the village of Moggersdorf. The three thou-
sand French cavalry of Coligny and of the Duke de la
HISTORY OF TUBKBT. 361
Feoillade, forced their horses into the riyer, at the heels
of the Turks, and sabred the spahis up to the battery of
Saint-Gothard.
" Who are those youDg girls ? " demanded sneeringly
Kiuperli -of the Hungarian renegades around him, at the
sight of the polished cuirasses, of the gaudy head-dresses, of
the flowing ribbons, and the powdered curls of the hair.
" They are the French," replied the Hungarians. But this
effeminate apparel covered Uons of war ; this young nobility
charged, even to the tents of the vizier, crying, *^ Allons !
aUons / itie / iue ! " This cry, 'retained by the Turks,
served, in the evening, to distinguish the French, compared
in the morning to women. La Feuillade, their colonel and
their model, received in this battle from the Janissaries and
the spahis, the name of Fovladi or the man of steel.
So much heroism and good fortune was lost; the glory
alone of Montecuculli was crowned by the victory without
pursuit of Saint-Gothard. It redeemed the honor of the
campaign ; it did not repair its disasters. Despite his loss
of twenty thousand Janissaries, Kiuperli retained still some
two hundred thousand soldiers, flushed with victory all over
Hungary. The village and the commemoration chapel of
Saint-Gothard was the only monument of the day. So much
bloodshed altered nothing in the conditions of peace agreed
to in advance by the Emperor Leopold. It was signed at
Eïsenbourg, the 10th August, such as Kiuperli had dictated
it at Belgrade.
Apafy, the client of the Turks, was recognized prince of
Transylvania, under their suzerainty; the Hungarian pala-
tinates returned to the Porte; the conquests of the cam-
paign became the permanent property of the Sultan ; he in-
terdicted Austria from rebuilding the fortress of Serinwar ;
the tribute disguised under the name of ambassador's present
was alleviated, but maintained. Such a peace after such a
reverse in a continuity of triumphs, might well resound as
the most splendid victory throughout the empire and in the
heart of the Sultan.
Kiuperli led back the army to Belgrade, dismissed with
a present worthy of his master the Khan of the Tartars,
followed by one hundred thousand slaves whom his cavalry
had taken off from Hungary and from Saxony. Kara-Mo-
hammed- Aga, beglerbeff of Eoumelia, was appointed ambas-
cuidor of the Porte to V ienna, to carry thiâier the ratifica-
VoL. III.— 16
362 HI8T0BT or TUmKKT.
turn of the treaty of peaoe by the Sultan. Escorted by an
Asiatic cortege of a hundred and fifty dignitaries of the
court, the presents which he was charged to present to Leo-
pold I. consisted of cockades of heron plumes, of aigrettes
of diamonds, of a vast tent, sustained at the centre by a
sinffle pillar, of a Persian carpet, of pieces of Indian silk
and muslin, of two pounds of ambergris, of fourteen riding-
horses of Arabian or Persian breed, covered with equip-
ments of gold and precious stones.
XXII.
Kiuperli found intact at Adrianople his omnipotence,
increased by the renown of conqueror and avenir of the
emperor. The Sultan, in his absence, had made but pacific
campaigns against the wild beasts, in the forests adjacent to
Adrianople. His historiographer, Abdi, was charged to
record in his annals, as historical events, all the accidents of
these imperial hunts. The favorite Sultana, Gulmïsch, and his
young confidant, Yousouf, accompanied him on those distant
excursions of pleasure. He set out ordinarily from his sta-
tions by moonlight, to the sound of trumpets and of tim-
brels, said a prayer in the mosques of the villages, adminis-
tered justice, like Saint-Louis, beneath the oaks of the forests,
was infle^^ble and often sanguinary towards the blasphemers
of the faith, and punished capitally doubt as a crime.
Abdi cites two victims of his fanaticism martyrized as
atiieists ; one, for having equalized Christ with the Prophet;
the other, for professing the cosmopolitan creed of the
Druses. He relates, the same day, the murder of a palfrey
groom who maltreated causelessly a horse, and the fortuitous
encounter, by the Sultan, of a cow delivered of a calf in
a meadow, and his dialogue with the Christian peasant,
owner of Ûie cow, whom he tried to convert to Islamism.
The Sultan, jealous of commemorating these puerilities,
used to come often to recount them familiarly to the histo-
rian, Abdi, when he was sick, and used to ask to see the
Annals, of which some pages are written in his own hand.
Eyery thing in these pa^es indicates in him one of those
cipher kings of the first dynastic race of France, regarding
as subaltern every other function than that of giving their
name to the reign, and leaving government and war, as ig-
mSTOBY or TUBKET. 363
noble trad^, to the majors of the palace. Prayer, hunting
and lounging, were with him the only royal works,
XXIII.
Kiuperli, free now to turn all his attention to the con-
quest of Crete, brought the Sultan back to Constantinople,
where the Sultana Validé Tarkhan complimented his return
by presents of the value of one million five hundred thousand
piasters. Mahomet lY. received there at the same time
presents from the court of Austria, birought to Constantinople
by the ambassador, Count Walter de Leslie. These presents
attest the industry and the arts of Austria at that epoch.
Mirrors of the height of a man, framed with chased silver
and turning on a pivot of the same metal, sculptured ewers
of silver and of gold, borne upon tripods of fluted colonettes ;
gilded and covered basins that threw out jets of perfumed
water ; candelabras of numerous branches ; a table service in
vermilion; gridirons of silver; fowling-pieces; poniards;
telescopes ; carpets of the Spanish Netherlands embroidered
in gold ; watches, clocks, an artificial ^otto with a dial-plate
of wliich a waterfall set going the hands and struck the
hours ; and similar presents, but of female use, for the Sul«
tanas, mother and favorite : such were the magnificences with
which Leopold covered his humiliation and purchased peace.
The cortege of German, Italian and English nobility, which
accompanied the ambassador, was worthy of the presents.
It counted the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Arundel, the princes
of Lichtenstein, Count Trautmannsdorf, the Florentine
Pecori, the Milanese Casanova, the Frenchman Chateauvieux.
One hundred and fifty nobles of all the nations of Europe,
except the subjects of Eome and of Venice, bedecked with
their presence the embassy of Leopold.
The ambassador of France, M de la Haye, on his return
to Constantinople, incurred the reproaches and the insults of
the ^and vizier for the indirect and volunteer succors which
the King of France allowed, in Crete and in Hungary, to
join the enemies of the Porte : " You French," said Kiuperli
to him, " you proclaim yourselves our best friends, and we
meet you every where amongst our enemies."
This tart and uprightly reproach was well founded at this
moment. . It would have been also legitimate at the epoch
when Napoleon debarked in Egypt to expel therefrom the
364 HISTOBY OF TUBKET.
Ottomans, our nmtaral allies. It would haye been so at
Nayarino, when our cannons, confonnded witii those of Russia
and of England, annihilated sottishlj the fleet of Mahmond.
It would haye been so, in fine, in recent times when we were
imposing upon Turkey concerning the holy places of Jeru-
salem, partialities toward Catholic monks and expropriations
towards eight millions, of her Greek subjects which she could
not consent to without exposing herself, on the part of Russia,
to the war, glorious but onerous, which we are witnesses of
to-day (AprU, 1866).
XXIV.
M. de la Haye, a proud and irritable man, rose and threw
oontemptuously the capitulations, which he held in his hand,
upon the carpet. Kiuperli got excited and addressed him
by the name, at that time iniralting, of Jew. His first cham-
berlain struck him with the stool; the ambassador 'drew his
sword ; the chiaoux rushed upon him to disarm him ; the
tumult threatened to become bloody. The grand yiiier re-
cognized, three days after, his wrong, conyoked the French
minister, made him reparations, and begged him to suppress
in silence, between his court and the Porte, a mutual yiolence
of words and gesture of which the publication might cost
the Porte and France their old friendship.
This old friendship, it is true, was ceaselessly compromised
on the part of France, by the coyert hostilities which ill-re-
sponded to the official declarations of alliance or of neutrality.
This double-dealing of France was not premeditated du-
plicity, but perpetual yiolence done by religion to policy.
We are going to find, in fact, the French nobility against the
Turks in Crete, as we haye just obseryed them to be in
Hungary. There were two peoples in France, and two men
in Louis XIY. If policy enjoined the king and the people
to always perseyere in tne sole alliance which could assist
them in counterbalancing the house of Austria, religion, the
popular prejudices dating from the crusades, the incitations
of Rome, and the last throbbings of the chiyalrous spirit,
reproached their honor and their conscience for not uniting
with the Christian leagues against the followers of the
prophet, reputed barbarous.
It is this double sentiment that set incessantly a seeming
conflict between the words and the acts of France, in relation
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 365
to the Ottomans. It was notperfidy in the court of France,
it was weakness.* Louis XI V. himself, then in all the vigor
of his youth and of his reign, did not escape it ; thus while
he was assuring Kiuperli of his well-disposed neutrality in
the war which the Porte sustained against Austria in Hun-
gary and against Venice in Crete, he was forced, by conde-
scension to the chivalrous spirit of his nobility, to authorize,
at least by silence, volunteer bodies of Frenchmen to join a
flag disavowed by France on the banks of the Danube and in
the sea of Candia. Despite himself, the knight prevailed
over the statesman, and the Christian over the king.
This is the explanation of all French diplomacy in the
East at that epoch, and it is still at this day the sole ex-
planation which history can give of the double diplomacy
of the present government of France— endangering Turkey
itself in 1852 by the untimely exigence of the holy
places, and lending its arms and its blood in 1864 to consoli-
date it : this diplomacy has compromised the State. Preju-
dice struggles still against reason. The Turks are our
friends, and the Mussulmans are the old antipathies of our
memories, t
* This is perfectly just as a secondary explanation, an explanation of
personal motives and of practical politics. But of the high historic reason
of the old alliance between France and Tnrkej, as also of the ancient
rivalry between Austria and France, the author evidentiy has no notion,
which is indeed the common case. — TranslcUor,
t This eternal incident of the "Holy places" seems nndaly dwelt
upon by the antiior, as if it were the only flaw which he can pick in the
diplomacy of a triumphant rival, both political and personal. Besides,
he mistakes, I venture to say, the motive. He wrongs his countrymen
in chargiDg them with religious hatreds at this day. The measure cen«
sured had no such origin, either popular or governmental ; it was merely
and even manifestly a political manœuvre to deprive the priests and the
Legitimists of their known war-cry of irreligion against a government
then in the infancy of its establishment Accordingly, no sooner was the
claim observed to operate the least exterior inconvenience than the French
government retracted it — a thing which governments and individuals
are much more apt to do with measures based on tentative tactics than
on religious prejudices. But in this quality of tactics the diplomacy was
quite excusable against an enemy so treacherous, and in a government
80 young. Moreover, in the third place, there are deeper reasons than
the author dreams of for tiie predominance which France instinctively
aspires to in the Holy places ; but the point belongs to the philosophy of
history just alluded to. — Translator,
366 HISTORT OP TUBKBT.
XXV.
Kiuperli tolerated, as finished statesman, a contradiction
of which the French ambassador gave him confidentially the
kej. He took good care not to constrain to an open rap-
ture a power of which he had an interest in managing the
ambignous part, and of which he comprehended the twofold
nature. The naval and the land forces which he was thence-
forth able to turn wholly aganist the Venetians in Crete, left
him easy on the score of the small number of volunteers,
adventurers of religion and of glory, which Louis XIV.
allowed to depart from his ports. This conquest of Candia
was to Kiuperli not only a necessity and a glory of Islamism,
it was also an adroit adulation to the young and beautiful
Sultana G-iilmisch, who was daily becoming more completely
a sovereign over the affectionate heart of Mahomet IV.
This favorite, Cretan by family and bom at Eetimo,
flattered herself after the conquest of her country by her
husband to be crowned queen of Crete, to possess as " slipper-
money " the rich revenues of this insular empire become the
apanage of a slave bom on its soil, and to govern at her will,
with the gentleness of a woman's yoke, those compatriots and
those Christians of whom she felt herself still the daughter
and the sister.
Giilmisch, intoxicated with these prospects with which
Kiuperli dazzled her in order to assure himself of her co-
operation, undertook in her turn to defend Kiuperli in the
mind of the Sultan, her husband, against the subaltern
rivalries of two young favorites, Yousouf and Mustapha,
who gave him severe umbrage. This league between a great
man and an adored woman to master a feeble prince, per-
mitted Kiuperli to concentrate at Adrianople treasures and
armaments equal to all that Soliman the Great had ever accu-
mulated in resources for his vastest expeditions. Kiuperli,
sure of Giilmisch, did not hesitate to take himself the com-
mand of a war which would remove him long, perhaps, from
the Sultan.
The army, accompanied by the Sultan as far as the sea,
was passed in review by Mahomet before its embarkation ;
he then returned to Adrianople by a march prolonged byhis
hunts which lasted some twenty-two days. He occupied his
leisure in the construction of a new seraglio, which cost
mSTORT OF TURKBT. 367
twelve hundred thousand gold ducats, and which the histoman
Abdi describes in terms as magnificent aa its architecinre.
XXVI.
A religious agitation fomented by a Jewish impostor of
Smyrna, named Sabathaï, who represented himself as a new
Messiah and a new prophet, and of whom the Jews and Mus-
sulmans adopted the sect, excited for a moment the empire;
Kiuperli had him shut up before his departure in the Seven
Towers. His partisans saw in that captivity only the verifica-
tion of one of his prophecies which announced this persecu-
tion. Sabathai was to come forth victorious, mounted on a
lion, of which he would direct the course with a bridle formed
of seven-headed serpents.
Another impostor, a Pole, and inventor of some mystic
reveries by which he rivalled Sabathaï in the popular cre-
dulity, denounced the latter to the caimakam Moustapha as
exciting the people to revolt. The Sultan had him brought
to Adrianople and questioned him. Credulous as well as
orthodox, Mahomet IV. wished, however, to make trial of
the supernatural power of Sabathaï ; he had him tied naked
to a post to serve as a target for the darts of his archers, to see
if he was not invulnerable. The Jewish impostor eluded the
experiment and death by confessing his impostures and ab-
juring his divinity. He embraced Islamism, and became,
from Messiah, the official pawnbroker of the seraglio. His
shame annihilated his sect.
XXVII.
The army embarked the 14th May, 1666. After having
traversed the sea of Marmora it occupied four months in
traversing slowly Anatolia, and re-embarked at Isdin, in
front of Rhodes, for Crete. It landed the 16th November
of the same year, on the beach of Cydonia.
The Egyptian fleet of twenty-six sail which was bringing
the contingent from Cairo to Kiuperli, intercepted by the
Venetian squadron, was annihilated before the eyes of the
Turks.
A second fleet from Constantinople, with six thousand
Janissaries, brought in spring the army of the ^and vizier
up to eighty thousand oonU)atant8. The 20£ Mi^, he
368 mSTOBY OF tubkbt.
opened intrenchments before the walls of Candia, Uns lart
bulwark of the Venetians in Crete and of the Christians in
the East Morosini, the first warrior of Venice, recompensed
for his exploits by gratitude and by envy, had been recalled
from oblivion by the nobles of that oligarchy to save a
second time his country, appointed generalissimo of the
army and of the fleet, he debarked with two thousand men
in the city. Nine thousand others, already seasoned by their
long struggle against Housseïn, defended, behind impreg-
nable bastions, this last shoal of Ottoman power for so many
years. Four hundred pieces of cannon crowned the ramparts,
served by the first artillerymen of Christendom ; seven bas-
tions nearly solid, trenches like abysses excavated with
the chisel from the living rock ; in fine, subterraneous and
unknown mines bored underneath the soil and ready to in-
gulf the besiegers up to their trenches, rendered Candia the
terror of the Turks.
This city had already cost them two fleets and three
armies. Morosini, in order to be present at the point of dan-
fer, lodged under one of the casemated bastions of the place,
t was thence that he inspected unceasingly the trenches,
that he cleared his ditches of fascines with a machine of his
invention, that he directed the sallies, and received, like the
Turks themselves, the severed heads of enemies which
his soldiers brought to his feet before throwing them into
the sea.
Six hundred and eighteen explosions of mines and thirty-
two assaults covered the city with smoke, the sea with blood,
and the land with bodies, from the 22d May to the 18th
November. Egypt and Syria heard from their shores,
through the sea winds, the detonations of the city and the
camp, like those of a perpetual volcano. Four hundred
Christian officers, three thousand Venetians in the city, eight
thousand Ottomans, killed during the first months of the
siege, attested the animosity of the combatants.
One of the bastions, levelled by the monstrous guns of
Kiuperli, appeared to open at last the enclosure to the Janis-
saries. Morosini forestalled them by a sally of the whole
garrison, which reconquered the trenches from the Turks.
These succeeded in recovering them ; but a mine charged
with two hundred kegs of powder, which the besieged had
covered over with earth as they receded, ingulfed seven
thousand of the Turks. Kiuperli sent off by a single con-
HISTORY Oî TUEKEY. 369
Toy four thonsand of these mutilated soldiers into Asia. The
plague, fomented by the exhalations of so many corpses,
decimated his camp ; the storms kept off his reinforcements
from the coast; the winter rains inundated his works.
Morosini, as enterprising on sea as he was invincible on his
walls, put out with a squadron of twenty vessels, and grap*
pling with the second Egyptian fleet laden with troops,
burned or sunk it before the eyes of the grand vizier.
XXVIII.
Eighteen months were consumed without other result
than thousands of corpses. The Duke of Savoy, who had
hired some regiments to the Venetians, withdrew them at
the instigation of Kiuperli, in the spring of 1668. The
Marquis de Ville, who commanded them, obeyed with sorrow
his prince in vain chidden by the Pope. The Marquis de
Saint- Andre*Montbrun, general of the volunteers of France
in Crete, succeeded him in the command of the place. The
Venetians wished by this deference to court the pride of
Louis XIV., and to constrain him to succor his nobility
dying for the faith.
The king permitted the Duke de la Feuillade, as brave
on the field of battle as servile and adulatory in courts, to
enroll five hundred French officers of the armies of Condé
and of Turenne, and four thousand veterans for Candia.
A selection of French youths, the Fénelons, the Savignés,
sons of the women who immortalized this name, the V ille-
mors, the Chateau-Thiérys, the Saint-Pauls, had set out
with Beaufort ; they had been joined by five hundred Italian
Knights. These reinforcements filled up the void which
the Turkish cannon had made in the ranks of the Venetians;
but these youth, impatient to do miracles, adapted themselves
ill to the methodic and defensive war, which the experience
of Morosini imposed upon the garrison before an army six
times superior in number and in cavalry outside the wafls.
The 16th December, the six thousand French, against
orders, rushed with the impetuosity of their race upon the
Janissaries, broke their ranks, pursued them, conquered a
moment their camp, and, after having sabred two thousand
of them, defied the entire army of KiuperlL La Feuillade
and his principal officers affected such contempt for the
Turks, that they disdained to draw the sword upon this
Vol. in.— 16*
870 H19T0BT or TtTEKlT.
horde, and galloped like Miurat upon the Gossaeks, whip ifi
hand, upon the ^Mthis. Their ohatlenges, their Taunting «mL
their temeritj cost them some thonsands of hrayes in their
return to the eamp.
Kinperli, charing them at the head of the Topschis and
the Janissaries, killed four thousand of them between the
oamp and the eitj* Yillemor, Tayannes and forty friends
of La Feuillade were slain ; Fénelon saw his son fall at his
side without being able to rescue his body from the Janis-
saries ; d'Aubusson, SéFiçné, Montmorin, Créquj, La Feu*
illade, returned deoimated, covered with their own blood,
and almost alone, through the same sate which thej had
forced in the morning to make the Venetians ashamed of
their prudence» They got discouraged by a war of discipline
and constancy in opposition to their adyenturous genius;
they murmured against the timidity of Morosini, who mur-
mured in his turn at their bravado. They re^mbarked,
bringing off with them from their campaign but a vain glory»
the esteem of the Turks and the just answer of the Yenetians.
XXIX.
La Feuillade, cured of his wounds, did not despair how-
ever of Candia; he aided the envoys of Venice at Paris and
the legate of the Pope, to obtain from the king an assistance
of twenty regiments. The Duke de Beaufort, that hero and
tribune of the Fronde under Maiarin, who was fallen from
his popularity, but not from his courage, sought in war the
adventures which he had sought for in seditions. He em-
barked a short time after La Feuillade for Candia. He took
with him, the 19th June, 1669, a squadron of fourteen ves-
sels, laden with troops, under his orders and under those of
the Duke de Navailles. The musketeers of the guard of
Louis XIY. and five hundred French volunteers debarked
under the batteries of the Turks.
The city was now but a heap of rubbish, amid which
encamped a few thousand defenders. These noblemen,
scarcely landed, constrained Mororâni to let them brave the
fire of the Ottomans in open field ; they blushed at covering
their intrepidity with ditches, bastions and walls. The
Duke de Navailles, the Duke de Beaufort, Castellane, Ohoi-
seul, Dampierre, Colbert, their chiefs, remained deaf to the
representations of the Venetian genend. This baleful sortie,
marOBY OF TURKBT. 371
in whi<$h the French were promptly thrown back by the
Turks, brought on their tracks the victorious enemy up to
the gates of the city. Five hundred of them perished be-
tween thç ramparts and the camp of Kiuperli. The heads
out from a Count de Rauzan, a Lesdiguières, a Fabert, a Mar-
quis d'Uxelles, a Castellane and of sixty musketeers, were
thrown before the tent of the grand vizier.
The Duke de Beaufort reappeared no more. " He is yel-
low-haired and tall," wrote Morosini, to obtain him back liv-
ing or dead from the enemy. " If he be living, we will give
you for his ransom whatever you ask ; if he is dead, we will
pay you for his body its weight in gold."
He was sought in vain among the dead or among the
prisoners ; whether it was that he had been ingulfed in ilie
crater of some mine, or that, having been ashamed to re-en-
ter the city after a flight which humiliated his pride, he had
pushed his horse into the inaccessible solitudes of the island,
nothing more was ever heard of this brilliant hero of our
civil wars. The rumor ran for a long time that he was
turned hermit in the forests of Crete, and that he had ended,
in the desert and in penitence, a life predestined by its vicis-
situdes to the adventures of war, of revolutions, of love and
of religion.
XXX.
The Duke de Navailles, by an inexplicable versatility of
conduct, if it was not by a secret order of Louis XIV., aban-
doned the city to its dangers after having compromised it by
his rashness. The French re-embarked two months after
their landing. This defection, ruinous to the Venetians as
to their own honor, involved that of the Italian auxiliaries,
of the Knights of Malta and of the Germans of the garri-
son. Morosini implored them in vain to leave him three
thousand until winter ; nothing could retain these faithless
allies. The hero of Venice remained alone with a handful
of braves amid the ruins of the fortifications, in ûwe of two
hundred iliousand Ottomans
Kiuperli offered him, through policy as much as admira-
tion, a capitulation worthy of his character. It was signed
upon the ruins of the bastion of Morosini, and, the 26th
September, the cross gave place to the crescent upon the half-
crumbled domes of Candia. The blockade or the siege of
372 HI8T0BT OF TUBKBY.
this capital of Crete had lasted for twenty-fire years, and
cost three hundred thousand men to the yictor». Nerer
would ambition alone have given such perseverance to an
enemy, such pertinacitv to defenders; but -Oandia^was the
battle-field of two religions, and religions have antipathies
as long as centuries.
Kiuperli treated Morosini as an enemy worthy of him :
he accorded him for himself, hb soldiers, and the inhabitants
the liberty and the time to evacuate the island. There
remained in the city but two Greek priests, one woman and
three Jews. Kiuperli received from their hands on the
breach of the bastion Saint- Andrew, called now the basticm
of the Conquest, the eighty-three keys of the city on a silver
plate. Morosini embarked for Venice, where he found anew
but calumniators who accused him of having sold Crete, a
political law-suit and a prison. The obstinate ingratitude of
his country did not tire the patriotism of this great man,
whom the Turks were soon to meet again in the Morea as
the Hannibal of the Ottomans.
XXXI.
The evening of the capitulation, Kiuperli wrote for the
first time to the Sultan, to whom he had sworn to send no
other than a letter of victory. The following day, he ful-
filled with a tauching filial piety a duty more dear to his
heart : he went to deposit his victiMry at the feet of his
mother, in the village of Emadia adjacent to the camp.
This woman, superior in intellect, in virtue and in courage,
had wished to follow her son in his expedition, to comfort
him in his reverses or to rejoice in his triumphs. The grand
vizier used to listen with respect to her counsels, and glori-
fied himself in owing to his mother his most wise and gener-
ous inspirations* He placed with tears the keys of the city
at her feet, and embraced her as the venerated source of his
existence and of his glory.
More ea^r to consolidate the conquest of Candia for the
Ottomans than to parade its pride to Constantinople, Kiu-
perli sojourned still for nine months in Crete, to re-edify the
fortifications of the cities and to organize the administration
of the provinces. The numerous Greek population, re-
spected by him in its property^ and in its usages, continued
HI8T0BT OF TX7BBUET, 373
to make of the plains of Crete the garden of the Méditer^
ranean and the appendage of Egypt.
XXXII.
Nothing had troubled gravely either the empire or the
oonrt, governed from afar by the genius of Kiuperli, during
the years of his sojourn at the camp before Candia. The
vessel that brought him baok to Europe cast anchor at the
island of Cos ; the grand vizier reposed there for some days
with his mother amid the beautiful landscapes of the isle, on
the brink of fountains shaded with orange-trees, and between
the remembrances of his long campaign and the preoccupa-
tion of the affairs which were awaiting him at Adrianople.
Passion for nature, for contemplation and leisure, is the ori-
ginal and the indelible character of the Ottoman. It is
found in his most active heroes as in his most meditative sages.
Kiuperli consumed those days, too limited, of summer,
in philosophical conversations with the poets and historians
of his retinue, and with the books whose assiduous reading
furnished nutriment to his soul. He landed at length at
Bodosto, and met Mahomet at Timourtasch, whither this
prince was come, in hunting along the way, to receive his
viiier. Mahomet IV. was not jealous of a glory which ap-
peared to be his own. He placed anew the enlarged empire
m the hands of his minister. His fanaticism only constrained
Kiuperli to be severer than he would have wished towards
the violators of the Koran, and especially the drinkers of
Greek wine. The vizier, without scruples upon this religious
observance, had learned, in his campaigns of Crete and of
Hungary, to relish, with temperance, this drink which stimu-
lates the imagination of poets and the courage of warriors.
" During his sojourn of fifteen days under the orange-trees
of the island of Cos, on the brink of its fountains, and
crystal waters, where he would see but his intimate acquaint-
ances," says the Turkish historian of his life, "Kiuperli,
forgetting State affairs, had often set to cool the mellow
wine of Methymne in the spring of Homer, which mumured
by him."
XXXIIL
Louis XIY. sent his ambassador, M. de Nointel, to Con-
374 HI8T0BT or TTTBKXT.
Btantinople, with a acpiadroii of fire Teasels under the com-
mand of M. d'Apremont The caïmakam haying lefased the
salute of the batteries of the seraglio, through resentment
of the ambiguous conduct of France during the wars of
Crete and of Hungurj, the squadron passed befoie the se-
raglio without saluting the palace of the Sultan. The Sul-
tana Validé attended from the balcoi^ of the kiosk '< of the
Sea'' at the entry of the squadron. Offended at the silence
of the French guns, the Turks murmured on the shore. A
shot, fired from a Turkish yessel, wbunded a sailor of the
squadron; a naval combat was going to ensue in the harbor.
The Sultana, an admirer of the French, interposed ; she
sent to request d'Apremont to give her some salutes the fol-
lowing day when she would cross the Bosphorus to her
palace of Scutari. The French accorded to a woman, mother
of a sovereign, what they had refused to the representative
of the empire.
M. de Nointel, after this reconciliation, made his solemn
entry into Constantinople. Called from thence to Adriano-
ple, he was received coldly by Kiuperli and by the Sultan.
Having spoken in his conversation with the grand vizier of
the arms of Louis XIV., at that time still young : " Your pa-
disohah is the padischah of a great people," replied Eauperli ;
" but his sword is yet new." However, after long negotia-
tions, M. de Nointel obtained the signature of new capitula-
tions in sixty-one articles, favorable to French commerce and
the French right of protectorate over the holy places and the
liberty of pilgrimage.
M. de Nointel availed himself of his sojourn in Turkey
and of his privileges of ambassador to visit one of the first
ruins and sites of the Archipelago and of Greece. Attended
by five hundred persons, among whom were drawers, painters
and erudites, he explored the master- works of nature and
the vestiges of* Greek and Koman antiquity, on a scene to-
day denuded of the antique world. He discovered the mar-
vellous ffrotto of Antiparos, wherein chandeliers of resplen-
dent stalactites reflected the luslare of thousands of wax-
lights and of lamps during the birth night of Christ, c^
which he celebrated the commemoration in this natural
temple.
XXXIV.
The Austrian Hungarians sent, at the same period, one
HI&KSaBT OF TUBKBT. 375
of their magnates, Ooimt Zrinj, to Adrianople, to offer the
Porte an annual tribute of sixty thousand ducats, if Kiu*
perli would rescue them, in the expression of the envoy,
from the tyranny of the Germans and the Jesuits, who were
doing violence to their liberty and their conscience. Kiu-
perli, attentive to other sides of the empire, eluded, without
rejecting them, these offers of the nobles of Lower Hungary.
The Cossacks of the Don, a race perpetually floating
between the Russians, the Tartars, the Poles and the Turks,
were divided into two factions, of which the one had ap-
pointed for hetman, Brukoiki, é»voted to the Russians ; the
other, Doroeaenko, hetman of the Cossacks of '^ the Reed."
Dorosienko, attacked, against the wishes of the Porte, by the
Poles, at that moment allies of the Russians, claimed pro-
tection from the Porte, and received investiture and the
horse-tails, sign of his naturaliiation among the proteges
of the Ottomans. The alliance of the Cossacks, who occu-
pied a vast territory between the Dnieper and the Dniester,
gave a solid frontier to the Turks against inconstant Poland
and against hostile Russia.
Kiuperli marched with one hundred and fifty thousand
men against the Poles, who had just made an incursion upon
the lands of the Cossacks. The Sultan, weary this time of
an idleness which occasioned hb receiving the humiliating
surname of Avacyi (the hunstman), followed the army. This
army crossed the Danube, and advanced towards the Polish
fortress of Kaminiec, built upon a crag surrounded by the
Smotrix, which laves its walls. Its rapid fall brought with it
that of 1^ Podolia. Poland, vanquished and humUiated, im-
plored, through John Sobieski, her future hero, the adjourn-
ment of the tribute of three hundred thousand ducats with
which they had just purchased the peace.
Sobieski, the only man of his nation who did not despair
of his country, was appomted commander-in-chief of the
wrecks of the vanquished army. He awaited at Chociim
either a more honorable peace or a desperate battle with the
Turks. The Walkchians and the Moldavians of the army
of Kiuperli passed over in the midst of the battle to So-
bieski The Dniester ingulfed, by the rupture of a bridge
of boats, some thousands of Turks ; the rest, cut off by me
river from the centre of the army, perished by the cannon
of Choczim and by the sabre of the Poles. Sobieski con-
quered in this blood the esteem, the enthusiasm and the
376 HI0TOBT or TtJBKlT.
tlirone of his conntrj. His ffenios shone forth suddenly in
the retrieyed fortune of the Sarmatians. A man had resos*
citated a people.
Peace was negotiated upon a most equitable basis. The
Sultan, the yisier and the army returned to discuss it in
Adrianople.
XXXV.
The fetes of. the seraglio on the occasion of the circum*
oision of his son efiaced from the memory of Mahomet IV.
the reverse of Chocsim.
The three Sultanas, Tarkhan, Giilmisch and a new ono,
called the little favorite, to which history has given no other
name, attended, according to usage, at this magnificent cere-
mony, at once the baptism and the toga prmtexta of the
Mussulman princes. They shed all three, says Abdi, abun-
dance of tears at the cries of pain of young Mustapha, son
of the *' rosy-lipped " Gulmisch ; but these feminine tears
did not flow, says he again, from the same source, nor had
they the same û^nification. Gnlmisch wept with joy to see
her first-bom, only son of the Sultan, consecrated by so au-
gust a ceremony to the throne where she would reign with
him. The little favorite wept with grief and with jealousy ,
at her own sterility, which, despite the love of Mahomet
IV., refused to yield her in a son the pledge of a perpetuity
of favor. In fine, the Sultana Validé wept with anguish at
the sinister future of her other son, Souleïman, of whom the
life, useless and dangerous henceforth to Mahomet, his
brother, might be sacnfioed at any moment to the passion of
Ihe Sultan for the son of Gulmisch.
The Sultan, in fact, fearing to leare after him, in Souleï-
man, a c<Hnpetitor to his son Mustapha, premeditated^ a long
' time back a crime which was presented him by law, by tradi-
tion and example as a prudence and almost as a virtue of
public policy. It was not scruples, but the supplications
and the tears of the Sultana Validé, and the innocent graces
of the boy, that made him hesitate to accomplish it. Sev-
eral times he had issued and revoked the fatal order. Some
weeks before the circumcision of Mustapha, troubled even in
his dreams by the obsession of this thought of murder, he
woke up with a bound from his couch, and entered poniard
in hand the chamber of the Sultana Validé, to slay himself
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 377
in his sleep the in&nt towards whom he reproached himself
with entertaining pity ; but Souleïman slept, by a maternal
presentiment of his perils, in the bed-chamber and at the
bedside of the Validé.
Awakened by. the footsteps of Mahomet upon the carpet
and seized with affright at the sight of the dagger, she leaped
from the bed and covered Souleïman with her body. The
Sultan, moved by the sobs of his mother, alarmed by her
maledictions, let fall the weapon from his hand, and returned
to his apartments humiliated at his weakness.
Kiuperli dissuaded him with horror from a crime which
would dishonor humanity to confirm the throne. His con-
stant and effectual opposition to those coups d'etats by
political assassination, conciliated him the gratitude and the
support of the Sultana Validé. The little favorite, a recent
present of the Validé to her son, and devoted through rivalry
to her protectress, protected the life of Souleïman, and adopted
him in her heart in default of a son. In fine, Gulmisch,
notwithstanding her affection for her son Mustapha, did not
solicit a crime which would for ever have incurred the hatred
and the vengeance of her husband's mother. Grateful to
Kiuperli, who had conquered her the kingdom of Crete, she
continued to serve him with her influence almost absolute in
the harem : so that these three women, rivals in certain re-
spects to each other, all concurred by a particular interest
in protecting Souleïman, and in consolidating the fortune of
Kiuperli, which was in reality that of their ambition and of
the empire.
XXXVI.
All was now prospering with the empire. Sobieski, its
sole enemy, after a new and glorious campaign at Zurawno
against Ibrahim-Pasha and the Tartars, where he had kept
in check two hundred thousand men with fifteen thousand
Sarmatians backed against the Dniester, had just concluded
a peace, modest but urgent to his nation, between the two
camps. Poland, despite her two victories, lost by this peace
Podolia and the Ukraine; but she had obtained a hero.
Kiuperli could have annihilated him with his two hundred
thousand soldiers, Turks, Tartars and Cossacks then united
against the Poles. But he was too much a statesman to
abuse his strength agaimst that people from which Turkey had
878 HMTORT 0» TUBKKT.
DOthiDg to fear, and whioh might, on the contrary, as at pre-
oeding periods, become its yangnard against the Rnssians,
the Hungarians or the (}erman&
The Sarmatians, according to Kinperli, were the braTCst
cavalry of Europe ; but their character was as fickle as the
sand of their steppes. Poland was alternately a camp and a
faction ; it was never an organised government, redoubtable
to its neighbors : it was then to be repressed, never to be
destroyed. He admired it without fearing it At bottom
those ideas were just, but the time was not remote when,
under the hand of Sobieski, this equestrian &ction, become an
invincible army, was going to avenge the Danube and to
save Germany.
The premature death of Kiuperli hastened this hour.
He succumbed gradually, like Mr Pitt, beneath the weight
of an empire of which he was alone the soul and the hand,
and which solicited unceasingly his intellect and his arm
from the confines of Ethiopia, from the Tigris, from the Eu-
phrates, from the Don, from the Adriatic to, the frontiers of
Austria. His moral courage led him to overlook the ex-
haustion of his physical strength. In bringing back the
Sultan from Constantinople to Adrianople, he expired at two
stations from the capital, in a hut of the village of Karabe-
ber, after an illness of twenty days.
Never had empire lost so much in a single man. His
virtue was such that no one had to rejoice at his death, and
hb life was so identified with the grandeur of his nation and
the empire that it shared his dissolution. To judge this
p'eat man, son of a great man, there is no need of panegyric ;
it is enough to remember at what degree of anarchy and
abasement the two Kiuperlis had taken up the throne and
the people, and to see to what degree of security and of
gandeur the father and the son had re-elevated the monarchy,
appy the men of whom the merits need no words, and
whose glory is inscribed in the frontiers and the institutions
of their country I But woe to the peoples who place their
destiny upon the head of a single statesman, even were he
as great, as virtuous and as fortunate as Kiuperli, and who
live or die in a single man ! they may have glorious reigns,
they have not long destinies. Time belongs to individuality
eternity to nations.*
* This paraphrase of Mirabeau seems scarce a logical conclosioa —
TramsUUor. *
mSTOBT ÛF TVBKBT. 379
BOOK TWENTY-EiaHTH.
The two great ministers whom destiny had given in the
same family to Mahomet IV., had so relieved the mind of
this prince from the cares of the throne, that, for him to
reign was confined to resuming for a moment the empire from
the hands of one grand vizier to deposit it forthwith into the
hands of another. The habit also of seeing the government
for so many years back pass successively in the family of the
Kiuperlis, interdicted, so to say, all ambition of the vizier-
ship, even to the favorites of the Sultan, and lefb no doubt
witn the Ottomans that the seals of the empire would pass
like an heirloom to Mustapha-Beg, the young brother of the
late minister.
Mustapha-Beg believed this himself : it* had been happy
for the empire if the Sultan had respected in him the
designation, so to say, dynastic to the government. Mus-
tapha-Beg, in following closely the traditions of his father
and of his brother, would have spared the monarchy the
calamities and the shame which were going to flow from a
change of policy. But the man who was to draw and to
shatter the Ottoman empire upon the shoal of its power was
bom: it was Kara-Mustapha, brother-in-law of the great
Kiuperli, and caïmakam of Constantinople.
IL
Kara-Mustapha was an Asiatic of the environs of Meni-
fbun ; his father, chieftain of a powerful warrior tribe of
Mesopotamia, had been slain in fighting for the Turks
acainst the Persians at the siege of Bagdad. The elder
Ejuperliy who commanded the Ottoman army in Mesopota*
380 HISTOBT or TUBKET.
vùhj had adopted the orphan child through gratitude toward
the father. He had hroaght him up in his house with his
own sons ; he had him promoted from grade to grade, to the
rank of equerry to the Sultan, of general, of capitan-pasha,
and in fine, of caïmakam of Constantinople — a sort of vice-
vizier who governed the capital in the absence of the principal.
To better incorporate him in his family, he had given him
his daughter in marriage. Kara-Mustapha then had con-
tracted in this family the combined kinships of adoption, of
consanguinity and of omnipotence ; but he had contracted
neither its genius nor its virtues. His character was that
of an Asiatic satrap, haughty, insatiable and ferocious.
Spoiled from his infancy by a complaisant fortune, he had
received by accident all the dignities of the empire, without
having conquered any of them by his own merits ; the habit
of commandiug was his sole capacity for command. Incalcu-
lable treasures, avidities still more insatiable, an oriental
luxury outstripping the decencies of a subject, a harem of
five hundred women devoted to pleasure or to ostentation,
slaves and horses without number, domains without limits,
equalized him with the kings of Asia.
This pride and this pomp were one of the motives that
induced the Sultan to invest him with the office of grand
vizier. This prince, still trembling at the remembrance of
the factions which in his childhood had carried sedition to
the throne itself, wished to set an immense distance between
his grand vizier and his other servants. The pride of Kara-
Mustapha pleased him, for if pride sometimes provokes, it
more often overawes. To crush the factions in their reviving
germ was the sole government of Mahomet lY.
III.
The first acts of Kara-Mustapha showed his political in-
capacity. Instead of following the traditions of his adoptive
father and brother, the two Kiuperlis, a policy which had
consisted in haviug never to combat but one enemy of the
empire at a time, and in pacifying some, while he was strug-
gling against the others, Kara-Mustapha seemed to take a
pleasure in provoking a coalition of all the enemies of the
empire against the Ottomans. He insulted gratuitously, in
open divan,' the ambassador of Louis XIV., M. de Npintel,
upon a silly question of etiquette, and abandoned him to the
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 381
brutalities of word and gesture of the cbiaouz, who expelled
him from the hall. He irritated, by his disdains and his
exactions, the Polish ambassador, who was entering Constan-
tinople with a retinue of gentlemen whose horses were shod
with silver ; the shoes of these horses, attached by a single
nail ill-riveted, were lost intentionally on the march, as if to
testify the profusion and the liberality of the Poles.
" These men must have heads of iron," said the grand
vizier, " to scatter in this manner their silver. Their
retinue is not numerous enough to invade Constantiople ; it
is too much so to come to kiss the threshold of the Sublime
Porte : I fear it may be soiled by the lips of so many infidel
Christians. At all events, the Sultan can afford to feed
three hundred Poles, he who has three thousand of them
rowing-slaves in his galleys."
The negotiations of the Poles to obtain from the grand
vizier restitution of a part of Podolia and the protection of
the Porte against the Tartars met with delays that chagrined
those volatile republicans, and threw them reluctantly into
alliance with the Russians. Kara-Mustapha, instead of re-
moving the interest of the Russians in his differences with
the Poles and with the Austrians, had them attacked upon
the Dniester by Ibrahim, pasha of Bosnia. Defeated by the
Russians and pursued by the Cossacks as far as Boug, the
Turks took shelter in Bender.
Ibrahim, in returning to Constantinople, met the Sultan
who was marching himself with his grand vizier towards
Silistria to avenge this reverse. At the sight of his van-
quished general, the Sultan, in whose eyes all defeat was
crime, gave orders to the executioner to behead him. Ibra-
him dismounted from his hoi*se and uncovered without a
murmur his throat to the headsman. His resignation affected
Mahomet lY. ; he commuted the penalty into imprisonment
in the Seven-Towers ; but he ordered him to go there on
foot, unworthy as he was, said he, to mount a horse after his
defeat. The chiaoux having represented to the Sultan that
the infirm old man was incapable of travelling on foot the
twelve leagues which separated him from the prison, Ma-
homet revoked again his order, and only exacted that the
serdar should crawl along a few paces to obey him. He was
left to pursue afterwards his route on horseback. The wife
of Ibrahim, who had been nurse to the Sultan, appeared at
this moment, threw herself at the feet of the Sultan's horse,
383 HI8TOBT OW TUBKXY.
and implored, with her forehead in the dost, the pardon of
her hoMMUid. Mahomet, incapable of refusing any thin^ to
her who had given him her milk, changed the prison mto
exile.
IV.
The army, slowly assembled at Silistria round the tents
of the Saltan, menaced the Russians to wrest from them the
Ukraine. The winter, which nf^ in this severe climate,
rendered the sojourn of Silistna disagreeable to the Sul-
tanas, accustomed to the delicious palaces of Constantinople
and of Adrianople. They beset Mahomet lY. with their c<Hn*
plaints and their regrets in terms and in songs preserved by
the Turkish annalists of the campaign.
V.
The ennuis of these women already wearied the volup-
tuous Mahomet of a campaign which was scarcely commenced ;
he turned unceasingly ms eyes towards Adrianople, scarcely
kept in the camp by the entreaties of Rara-Mustapha. The
Russian army, of a hundred thousand combatants, awaited
the Turks beyond the Dniester. The Khan of the Tartars,
called by the grand visier, joined the Ottomans before Oeh-
ryn. The city, taken by assault on a nieht of drunkenness
of the Russians, became a field of fire and of carnage. The
Russians, rallied in force at some distance, threatened to
avenge Oehryn in the blood of the Turks. Satisfied with
this incomplete triumph, Kara- Mustapha retired before them,
and the Sultan returned to triumph without glory to Con-
stantinople.
The grand vizier, remaining behind, pressed the princi-
palities of Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania, to the end
of swelling his personal treasures. He sold to a Cantacu-
lene the principality of Wallachia for gold. He ordered at
the same time itn inventory of the imperial treasures at Con-
stantinople to reintegrate the precious objects embezzled or
lost by ûiithless guardians.
" One of the most precious jewels of this treasure of the
Sultans,'' relates M. de Hammer, after the chroniclers of the
time, " the large diamond of twenty-four carats and of the
most beautiful water, which, upon days of parade, adorned
smce the aigrette of the imperial plume, had been found the
HISTOBY OF TUBKEY. 383
year before, by a poor man, upon a dunghill, near the gate of
Egrikapou. As he did not know the value, he exchanged it
for three spoons. The new acquirer of the stone sold it for
ten aspers to a goldsmith ; but afterwards suspecting that it
was worth a good deal more, he demanded an increase of
price from the purchaser. The dispute was brought to the
knowledge of the head of the guild of goldsmiths, who took
the diamond to himself for a purse of gold. The grand
vizier meant to take it by force from this person, when there
appeared an imperial edict adjudging it finally to the impe-
rial treasury. It was the second which was found in this
way. Without doubt they proceeded both from the treasu-
ries of the ancient Byzantium. The first, which was still
more beautiful and of superior weight, had been discovered
by a child, in the rei^ of Mahomet II., in the Haïwanseraï
or the Hehdomon. Perhaps it had belonged to the crown
of the Byzantine emperors, which, the twenty-second year
of the reign of Justinian, had been lost, by the fault of the
masters of the wardrobe, on the place of the Hebdomon,
during a triumphal march."
The thought of immolating his two young brothers, sons
oif Ibrahim, was besetting more urgently Mahomet IV. in pro-
portion as these princes were advancing in years. This obses-
sion was by so much the more atrocious that this prince, who
was not sanguinary by nature, served them as tutor and fa-
ther, and that they were sons as well as brothers of whom
an odious policy demanded the murder. Kara-Mustapha not
daring to oppose directly a resolution which horrified him,
of wMch Kiuperli, his master, had taught him to detest the
usage, persuaded the Sultan to consult the divan and the
mufti on the legitimacy of such an execution.
The divan and the mufti were unanimous in refusing him
the sanction legal or religious of the crime. Mahomet lY.
desisted before this reprobation of his counsel. He let his
brothers live, and married his sisters, Aische and Aatika, to
viziers.
A precarious peace suspended hostilities between the
Turks and tiie Bussians, who mutually interdicted each
other to erect fortresses in the neutralized territory between
the Boug and the Dneister.
384 HI8T0BY OF TURKXT.
VIL
Meanwhile, at the oommencement of 1682, the intestine
dissensions of Hungary, of which one moiety leaned to Aus-
tria, the other to Sie Turks, furnished Kara-Mustapha the
pretexts, the motiyes, and the occasion of accomplishing the
cherished project of the two Kiuperlis against Austria.
The pretexts were in &ct numerous, the motives well
founded, the occasion opportune ; but since the two ereat
ministers had passed away into the tomb, the head and hand
alike were wanting for the execution of so vast a plan. It
is rare in history that an idea conceived by a man of genius
does not prove abortive in the hands of a mediocre. Kara-
Mustapha had inherited an enterprise above his strength.
Let us turn back a moment to the left bank of the Dan-
ube.
VIH.
The emperor Leopold, the instrument of the religious
persecution against Protestant Germany, had added in Mora-
via and in Hungary the grievances of oppressed conscience
to the umbrages of outraged nationality. The blood of the
Hungarian aristocracy, devoted to country and to reform,
flowed unceasingly beneath the axe of the executioners ; the
Counts de Serin, de Nadasti, de Frangipani, de Trattembach,
decapitated by the headsmen of the Catholic emperor, in
1671, had left avengers in their children and in their com-
patriots.
One of these chiefs of the Hungarian reformers and
rebels. Count Tekeli, had fallen in battle, disputing his coun-
try with its oppressors; in him one half of Hungary saw
expire its Machabee, but it did not expire with him. That
heroic and constant race accepts no yoke, even that of vic-
tory; it believes more in right than in fortune; it never
yields alive what is sought to be wrested from it of its
liberty. It had tempered its forces in the blood of those
great martyrs of its cause ; it chose for chief the young son
of the patriot Tekeli ; it deemed that he who had his father
to avenge in defending his country would be more irrecon-
cilable with tyranny than any other of its great citizens.
Love, liberty, filial vengeance were combined in the heart of
young Tekeli to make him the hero of independence by
mSTGBY OT TTTBKBY. 385
nature as well as policy. He was, by his mother, a grandson
of Count de Nadasti, one of the most imposing names of the
Hungarian aristocracy ; he was since his adolescence taken
with the charms of the daughter of Count de Serin, of
whom Austria had sought the hand for its protégé the prince
of Transylvania. He wished to reconquer her at the cost
of his blood ; this passion was the second spring of his
glory. For Ood and for country was the motto of his
banners. For the Countess <^ Serin was the secret device
of his heart. There was nothing of venality in the heroism
of his troops ; they were paid only by the acclamations of
their country and by l^e spoils of âieir enemies.
Three times in three years, under the command of
.Tekeli, the Hungarians triumphed in pitched Wttle over the
armies of Leopold ; the imperial generals had but military
science, whereas Tekeli and his companions had the genius of
their free land which rose in insurrection beneath their steps.
The ministers of Leopold, unable to vanquish, attempted to
seduce him. Honorable truces were concluded between him
and the Imperialists ; he was called to Vienna to treat as an
equal of the conditions that might pacify Hungary, and of
the partition of the provinces between Leopold and him.
In these negotiations he detected a snare laid against his
liberty or against his life; he absconded from Vienna,
returned into his camps, invoked, like all the chiefs of civil
factions, the aid of the foreigner and of the iufidel against
his countrymen of another party than his. The Hungarians,
leagued anew by him with the Turks, formerly enemies, now
liberators, became the vanguard of the Ottomans in G-er-
many. Tekeli, flattered by Kara-Mustapha into the hope
of the crown of Hungary, was in fact proclaimed by the
divan king of Upper Hungary, by the title of King of
the Hungarians and the Transylvanians. He married and
crowned with his own hand his betrothed, the beautifiil
Helen de Serin, become widow of the Transylvanian prince,
vanquished and slain. Like all refugees he surpassed against
his own country the ferocity of the Ottomans, of whom he
directed the invasions into Germanic Hungary.
Thousands of his compatriots fell by the sabre of his
cavalry. Like the Spaniards of the new world, who asso-
ciated the very brutes in their extermination of the innocent
Indians of America, he had trained bloodhounds to scent, to
hunt and to tear, even to the caverns of the mountains of
Vol. III.— 17
386 HI8TOBT OF TUBKST.
Horaria, the purtisanB of imperial dommation. The terror
of his name ran from the Danube to the Rhine and from the
Yistala to the Alps.
He traced out, a long time before war was declared,
between Mahomet IV. and Leopold, a broad route of flame
and blood to the armies of the grand vizier; at the same
time he was far from encouraging, by his agento at Constan-
tinople, Kara-Mustapha in marching upon Vienna. He was,
if not too Christian, at least too poUtio to convert a civil war
of the reformers against the Catholics into a crusade of
western Europe against the Turks ; he only sought to wrest
by the sword of the Turks, Hungary and Tnunsylvania from
the talons of Austria, to make them, under his own sever-
ei^ty, a kingdom annexed to the Ottoman empire. Hia
crmies, in this enterprise, equalled his exploits. As intre-
pid, as cruel, but less patriotic than Scanderbeg, the Hunga*
rian adventurer had the fate of all the Coriolanuses whom
despair impels to the betrayal of their race : he received a
precarious empire from the hand of strangers, he lost it with
their withdrawal He ended his days in exile, at Nic(Hne-
dia, and his very ashes after him received a hospitable
resting-place only on the land of the enemies of his God and
of hia country.
IX.
But, at the moment when he was dreaming the accom-
Çlishment of the plans of the two Kiuperlis against Vienna,
!ekeli, already proclaimed king of the Hungarians and of
Transylvania, was flanking with an army of sixty thousand
cavalry the troops of the pashas of Ofen, ready to join the
Turks and the Tartars, to whom the Porte had assigned as
rendezvous the Danube in the plains of Pesth. The new
king of the Hungarians, Tekeli, under the name of the
Kruczes, the pashas of Eoumelia, of Temeswar, of Erlau,
the actual prince of Transylvania, Apafy, eighteen regiments
of Janissaries, hosts of spahis cavalry took together the for-
tress of Fulek, and piled thousands of prisoners in wells dug
in advance to serve as prisons or as tombs to the partisans
of Leopold.
Count Kohary, a Hungarian nobleman, condemned to
this punishment by Tekeli, -apostrophized him in descending
into it with the fortitude of a patriot and of a believer, who
HISTORY OF TUBKBT. 387
wonld not at any price, even that of liberty itself, betray his
religion and his country : "I prefer descending into those
pits," said he as he passed in chains before Tekeli, ^' to seeing
the crown of Hungary placed by the hand of those infidels
on the brow of a traitor who has made himself a slave to be
Similar acts of hostility before the declaration of war
were habitual, in Hungary, between the Ottomans and the
subjects of the German empire. Negotiations went on still
at Constantinople, fighting commenced already on the Dan-
ube. Count Caprara, ambassador of Leopold, followed by
a numerous cortege bearing rich presents, conferred for
form's sake with the reïs-effendi, minister of Foreign Affairs.
These conferenoes, envenomied on one side by the exigencies
of Kara-Mustapha, who reclaimed the ancient tributes and
inadmissible cessions of provinces and fortresses, on the
other side by the agents of Tekeli, of Apafy, and of the
Translyvanian envoys, 'interested in an irreconcilable war
which protected their independence, consumed their time in
vain. The immense preparations for this campaign were
finished at Constantinople, under the eyes of Caprara and
of his retinue. The ambassador, ceremoniously bowed off
by the grand vizier, delayed no longer to return to Vienna.
The army, two hundred thousand men strong, seasoned
in the campaigns of Candia, of Bagdad and of Persia, under
Kiuperli, were encamped already beneath their tents in the
plain of Daoud-Pasha — this campus martius of the Otto-
mans at the gates of Constantinople, on the side of Europe.
The Sultan was to accompany it as far as his re^dence of
Adrianople. Soliman the Grreat had not displayed more
royal and military pomp at the opening of his memorable
expeditions against Grermany or against Persia.
The récitais of Count Caprara, preserved in the archives
of Vienna, and collected by De Hammer, are pages of
history which resemble the poems of the East*
* Even for the reason of this resemblance — the " poems of the East **
being no more poetiy than they are history, being neither fish nor flesh
— I spare the reader the several pages which our author fills up with the
transcription. It is the same garish catalogue of gold and silver, of silks
and sugar-works, of furs and /an/ar», which I have given already two or
three times. To this extent, such things may be presented as curious,
and even as instructive, by history ; but beyond this, to keep repeating
them is inexpressibly nauseating. — Translator,
888 HIBTOBT OF TUBKST.
XI.
Mfthomot IV. stopped at Belgrade; he receired there
the homages and the tributes of the enToys of Tekeli and of
the allied republic of Ragusa; he* delivered to the grand
yizier the green banner of the Prophet, a war horse, a sabre, a
fur-mantle, a heron-plume, as enrmbol of his supreme authority
during the campaign. Tekeli himself, attended by a hun-
dred and twenty Hungarian knights on horseback, by a hun-
dred and fifty hussars wearing gold-embroidered vests, came
to render homage of his crown to the Sultan. He was
dressed with that warlike luxury which the Hungarians
borrowed from the Tartars and the Asiatics. Six heyducs
on foot, clad in tiger skins, went before him ; the green banner
of Hungary floated above his head ; the flag was torn into
two strips to image the severance of the country into two
adverse nations. A host of mounted heyducs and huziars,
whose caps were decked with snow-white plumes, caracoled
around their new king. He himself, covered with a short
pelisse of sable fur, and equipped in glittering armor, bore
the ensigns of the royalty cconquered by his sword. Kara-
Mustapha received him as a king, and leaving the Sultan at
Belgrade, advanced in the steps of Tekeli, across Hungary,
of which this ambitious refugee described the route. Half
through patriotism, half through terror, all bent before the
deluge of Ottomans. The presence of Tekeli and of the
magnates of his party put to silence the outraged natiour
ality.
The Austrian army, soon encountered by the vanguard
of the Turks, was thrown back by this mass as f&r as Kaab.
This fortress to be invested and carried, irritated Kara-
Mustapha, impatient to strike the empire at the heart, by
marching upon Vienna. He held a council of war in view
of Raab, to decide on the direction of the campai^. The
old warrior Ibrahim, victor of th^ Poles and of the Russians,
represented to him vainly the danger of advancing into a
hostile and unknown country, leaving behind him forts and
garrisons which might bar return in case of reverses.
" A king of Persia," said Ibrahim to him, to back his
counsel by a parable, " laid a treasure contained in a purse
upon a broad carpet, and calling his courtiers, he gave the
treasure to him who should find means to pick up the purse
without walking on the carpet. The muni&cence of tibe
HISTOBT OF TtîBKBY. 389
king appeared illasorj, when one of the attendants, folding
and rolling up the carpet by its margins, attained in this way
the purse wiâi the hand without haying trodden on the eloth.
Follow this example, O vizier," added Ibrahim, '' and fold
up Austria piece by piece, before touching the capital, which
will be then without the nation to defend it."
" Old dotard," said Mustapha brutally to the old man,
" thou reasonest like a head enfeebled by thy eighty years.
Thou wilt remain here as a man incapable of fighting, and
thou wilt take charge of provisioning from a distance the
troops."
" Vizier," replied with boldness the sage Housseïn, gov-
ernor of Syria, and whom the Arab manners had accustomed
to respect the wisdom of age, ^^ do not outrage so our father
the paisha, who gives thee the best counsel"
XIL
The sole counsellors of Mustapha were his temerity and
his ignorance. He left Ibrahim in reserve with a hand&l of
Tartars to guard the convoys, crossed the Leitha, carried the
fortresses, dispersed a second time the feeble army of Leo-
pold beyond Pesth, killed some five hundred of the bravest
of his cavalry, and wounded mortally prince Louis of Savoy,
volunteer in the army of the Imperialists. The two best
generals of Leopold, Caprara and MontecucuUi, unequal in
numbers to the Ottomans, sheltered themselves behind the
walls of Vienna, disseminating by their recitals the popular
terror of the Turks, of whom the immense columns re-
sembled the migration of a people rather than an army.
The timid Leopold himself augmented this public terror
by removing precipitately from the capital, the "night pre-
ceding, with his family, lus treasures, his court, and repairing
for security to the asylum of the Alps of Styria. The con-
flagration of cities and of villages, multitudes of men, of
women, of children, of flocks, flying from their burning
dwellings and filling all the routes with the waUings of an
entire nation, preceded the Turks.
At sunrise, the 14th of July, 1683, the Tartars, forminff
the vanguard of Kara-Mustapha, appeared to the consternated
inhabitants of the capital. The slaughter in a body, by the
Tartars, of three thousand five hundred suppliants dhut up
in a tower, come forth on the fiikitk of a eapitulation and pre«
890 HISTOBY OF TURKEY.
eêdëd by a beautifbl youug woman crowned with flowers, who
presented them the keys of the tower, re-echoed to Vienna
the cries of the yictims and the ferocious joy of the execu-
tioners. There were seen, from the hiffh walls, oonyoys of
forty thousand slaves chased like cattle before the horses of
the Tartars, and winding with their lugubrious files along
the pathways of Styria. Count Stahrembcrg, goyemor of
Vienna, resolying to bury himself with his garrison of ten
thousand men beneath the ruins of the capital, responded to
the first summons of Kara-Mustapha by burning himself
the vast suburbs of Vienna. The Turks, astoniiwed, com-
prehended that a capital which wrapt itself by its own hand
in a cincture of flame and of smoke, was determined to sacri-
fice itself for its religion and country.
XIII.
While this smoke was veiling Vienna from the eyes of
the Turks, the duke of Lorraine, generalissimo of the German
troops, issued from the city at tne head of thirty thousand
cavalry, Austrian, Croatian, Polish; and traversing the
Danube, marched to meet the reinforcements which Germany
and Poland . promised to send him to aid Vienna. The
Danube, over which the duke of Lorraine threw bridges
behind him, saved this nucleus of the army. Vienna, in
default of troops, rose and armed itself to a man ; laborers,
students, burghers, old men, all turned soldiers. The tongue
was removed from the monster bell of the tower of Saint-
Stephen, the cathedral and tomb of the empire, so that the
tolliDg of this belfry should not apprise the Turks of the
movements of the city. Small bells, carried through the
streets of the city by tlie hands of children, became the low
toned tocsin of the mute city. At the tinklings of this
confidential tocsin, the soldiers, the burghers, the students,
were to run each to* the post which had been assigned
them in advance.
During these preparations of distress, the three hundred
thousand Turks, Tartars, Hungarians, completing the in-
vestment of the city, and re-establishing the bridges of boats
on the Danube, dressed their tents and dug their trenches in
a vast circumvallation which engirded the river itself within
its lines. The Greek Cantacuzene, prince of Wallachia,
sumamed by the Tjirks themselves Scheïtanoghli, son of.
HISTORY OF TUBKBY. 391
Botany had fonned Ms lines and erected his batteries upon a
wooded eminence, separated from the Turks, his allies, near
Houzendorf on the borders of a forest, of which he cut
down the trees to build the bridges across the Danube. This
implacable enemy of the Christians had erected a cross in
stone of ten toises in height, upon an altar whence he had
his priests to celebrate him mass in sight of the crescent of
his masters; a perfidious seducer of the wife of his pre-
decessor on the throne of Wallachia, raised to the sover-
ei^tj by his trickery, adulation, versatility — ^the arms of
this Greek were a horror to the population of Vienna. His
piety contrasting with the cause which he served and with
his crimes, made of the name of Scheitanoghli, descendant
of the Byzantine emperors, Cantacuzenes, the symbol of
apostasy.
XIV.
The siege, as furious as that of Candia, had now been
prosecuted seventy days, with the alternations of eighteen
assaults made and repulsed, and the extremities of distress
and of famine, without the besieged, abandoned to themselves,
having received any indication of relief sent by Christendom
to the last of its defenders. Europe, indifferent to the
dangers of an empire of which the ambition had depopu-
larized the cause by its pretension to universal monarchy,
armed for Austria but some few volunteers. The inco- ^
herence and the distension of these ill-computed elements, *
of which was composed, and of which is still composed
to-day the German nationality, gave to the Germanic con-
federation the sloth and selfishness of members without a
head, more unsuited for defence than for attack. The Chris-
tian fanaticism of the crusades was as extinct as the
Mussulman fanaticism of conquest ; all was politics in this
war, wherein were seen Hungarkm Calvinists, Moldavian,
Wallachian, Transylvanian Catholics, Servian and Greek
Christians, celebrating their mysteries in the midst of
Mahometans on the hills around Vienna.
An intrepid Pole, former interpreter of the ambassadors
of his nation at Constantinople, was the first to deceive the
vigilance of the Turks, to bring to the defenders of Vienna
the hope that had begun to abandon them. This adven-
turer, named Koltschitzky, traversed the camp of Mustapha
393 HiaroBT or tuxkbt.
nDginff, in the garb of a street nrasioiaii, Tarkish sragB
which Drought the soldien «round him. Having got to the
brink of ^ Danube in front of the ramparts, he threw
himself into the river and escaped by swimming between
two waters, the ballets of the Turks. He brought to
Stahremberg the news of the approach of the duke of
Lorraine and of the king of Poland, Sobieski, at the head
of seventy thousand combatants. Rockets launched during
the following night from the tower oi Saint-Stephen i^rised
the generals of the imperial army, that Vienna was brealliing
still under the ruins of her bastions, and that their message
had rejoiced the hearts of its patriots.
XV.
Poland was the sole nation which the Oaiholicism of its
people, and the heroism of its king, John Sobieski, had
raised up to the succor of Austria. Her long resentments
for her old humiliations against the Turks and the recent
fflory of the victory of Choczim, which had taught her to
despise her enemy, had popularized the holy war against the
Ottomans in Poland. The inclination of her king had dona
the rest
We have above said that heroic Poland had been at all
times a faction rather than a nation. She had ended in 1832,
by givinff herself a constitution as anarchical as her ohsa-
acter. Louis d'Anjou, of the royal house of France, the
last of the hereditary kings of Poland, had left in dying
but two daughters.
The second and most beautiful of these dauglt^ters,
named Edwidge, was but fourteen years old at the death of
her father. The Poles, seduced by her precocious beauty
and by her virtues in expectancy, proclaimed her queen of
Poland, under condition that the nation would retain over
its young sovereign the paternal authority which would
lead her to mar^y a prince of its choice. But the heart of
Edwidge had chosen before the diet of Poland. One of her
cousins, William of Hapsburg, duke of Austria, brought* up
with her in the palace of her father, was the husband and
the king whom she designed herself. This young prince, by
his graces, by his education, by his valor, would have
attracted the eyes of any princess of his time; but an
a£fection, so to say fatal, assured to him the heart of Ed-
HISl^BY OF TtTBEBY. 393
Vfdge. ^ It seemed* to her," slie used to say to the Poles,
*^ that they had been brought up in the same cradle."
William of Hapsburg, cidled secretly by her to Cracow
to solicit her hand from the diet, &iled to bend the Polish
nobility, who dreaded in a prince of the house of Austria a
dominator rather than a king. Neither the anguish nor
the tears of Edwidge could avail to mollify her people. An
idolatrous barbarian, clothed in skins of wild beasts, of
manners as ferocious as his countenance, Jagellon, duke of
Lithuania, was imposed as husband on the grand-daughter
of Saint Louis, and as king upon the polished Smrmatians,
those Italians of the north.
The ambition of strengthening Poland against the Eus*
sians, the Tartars and the Cossacks, by the adjunction of
Lithuania, determined the diet to sacrifice to this barbarian
the daughter of their kings. Eesigned to her lot, and
ferrent in the zeal of converting the Lithuanians to the
Catholic faith, Edwid^ commenced by converting her bus*
band, and pursued with him in Lithuania, at one time by
the persuasion of her charms and her eloquence, at another
by force, the conversion of her new people to the God of her
infancy. History records, both with admiration and with
horror, the recital of this strange mission of Edwidge and
of Jagellon in Lithuania to substitute Chrbtianity for idol-
atry.
Whilst the beautiful and eloquent queen of Poland
preached to the multitudes attracted by astonishment and
interest upon her path, the barbarous Jagellon, attended by
priests no less implacable, constrained and martyrised the
obstinate adherents to the old faith. To the end of sparing
the time of the missionaries in the ceremonies of an indi-
vidual baptism, the king shoved, under, the sword of his
soldiers, entire multitudes into the current of the river and
had them thus baptized $n mass$y not giving often but a
nngle saintly denomination to a whole horde.
XVL
Since the extinction of the Jagellons, Poland, becoming
more and more republican, had elected in its diet an aris-
tocratic and military senate, kings more resembling
consuls than monarchs. Its tribunitian and prœtorian
constitution seemed to have combined all the vices of mon*
Vol. IIL— 17*
894. HI8T0BT 07 TtTBKET.
•réfaieal, of military, of feudal, and of republican goyem^
ment Its existence was but a standing candidature of its
turbulent nobles for the throne, and a perpetual ûiction
against the king which it had chosen.
The policy of the Poles abroad savored of those ever-*
lasting competitions at home; each party, alternately im-
perilling its country to remain faithful to its preferences or
antipathies, sought its support and its allies among foreigners»
In the midist of so many intestine agitations a single virtue
remained to the Polish nobility, herobm. They were the
first soldiers in the world. We have seen their perpetual
oscillation between Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Russia, Tur-
key, even Tartary : a people hitherto rather Oriental than
European, they had accepted for a long time the vassalage
of the Ottomans; but their nobility rendered them as
incapable of servitude as of liberty. Excess in all things
was their nature ; they had glorious days upon the field of
battle, but no security in their country.
XVII.
Such was Poland at the moment when it gave birth to
one of those men who save and immortalize their nations,
when nations can be saved. This man was Sobieski, pre-
destined one day to be the shield of Eucppe.
John Sobieski, according to his late historian, M. de
Salvandy, author of a justly valued publication on this hero,
was bom in 1624 in the Carpathian mountains, in the castk
of Olesko, during a memorable storm, wherein the thunder-
bolt, in menacing his cradle, seemed to announce to Poland
a man of brilliancy and report coming into the world. He
was of the blood of those Sarmatian heroes called l^e
nobles of the buckler , whose names were lost in the fabulous
origins of the country. He has related himself, in an histor-
ical notice, the exploits of his father, James Sobieski, the
vanquisher of the Turks in the battle of Ohoczim.
" The remembrance of James Sobieski, son of Mark,"
says he, '^ remains profoundly engraven in my heart : he was
my father. He commenced his military career under the
ereat Zolkiewski, in that former war of Muscovy which
delivered to young WladisLas the throne of the czars. In
liie following exp^ition, he was of the number of the chiefs
charged, on the refusal of Zolkiewski, to command the army
BIBSOBY OF TUBKSY. 396
«
Mid to present the prince to the people who had chosen him
for master. Wounded in the arm at the storming of
Moscow, mj father attended however all the subsequent
campaigns of those stormy times, always followed by his
hussars of ordinance whom he kept up at his own expense, and
whom from their conspicuous valor, as well as their rich uni-
form, occasioned to be named the golden troupe. It was he
who in the glorious campaign of Choczim, member of a com-
mission invested with full powers from the diet to conduct
the hostilities, succeeded in concluding peace with the em-
peror Othman II. Since this success, he was charged with
all the negotiations of the republic with the Swedes, the
Cossacks, the Tartars, the Muscovites, the Turks. Four
times the nuncios plac^ him at their head in the diets, by
electing him marshal, and he ended by attaining, from rank
to rank, to the post of first secular senator of Poland, under
the title of castellan* of Cracow."
His mother, Théophile Danilowiczowna-Sobieska, waa
the grand-àaughter of the illustrious grand hetman Zolki-
ewski, conqueror of Moscow. At the commencement of the
same summer in which she gave birth to her glorious son, a
band of Tartars had invaded her manor of Olesko, where
she was at the time with her mother Danilowiczowna and
her grandmother the widow of Zolkiewski. . These three
women, at the head of their domestic household, defended
valiantly their castle, their liberty, their honor, the hero who
was going to be bom, and whom die din of arms had come to
visit before the cradle.
John had an elder brother, of whom he says in the same
manuscrijTt note : ^^ My elder brother, named Mark, like my
grand-uncle, was to. arrive at the age of manhood but to be
murdered by the Tartars. All my family have thus met
death by the hands of the infidels in the defence of our holy
religion ; I alone was reserved for other destinies by the divine
will." That John Sobieski saw completely his mission
would appear from this single modest and pious expression.
His. father, James, vanquisher of Othman II. had given
his country the peace which is brought by victory. His boy-
hood elapsed during the prosperous years which this peace
had procured for Poland, and under the influence of the cur-
* A title of the first-class senators in the old constitution of Poland.
396 HZITO&Y OF TUBXMTi
rent of civUizatioii wbicb was readiiogat length 4àMe oonoe
trios, always trodden and devastated by the savage or the sol-
dier. His Vacation profited by this ; he spoke seven or eight
langoaffes, knew the foreign literatures, played on several
musical instruments, painted with facility, as he 'mounted
superiorly a horse, and handled all arms with an admiraUe
dexterity. Hb father, of whom the eloquence had often
swayed the diets, and who knew the influence of oratory in
republics, exercised him also in wielding this weapon of the
soul ; he made him more eloquent than himself He sent
him also to travel, first to Paris, to complete his education ;
then in Turkey to make him measure the proportions and
sound the strength of that formidable power, whom he had
designated in his policy and in his £ûth as the enemy which
must be combated and vanquished.
His mother had collected at Jolkiew, the centre of the
vast possessions of the family, all the remains of her kindred
fidlen by the hand of the Ottomans and of the Tartars.
James had even ransomed from Othman II. the head of the
great Zolkiewski, for a long time attached to the gates of
the seraglio after the fatal day of Kobilta, to bring it to
this rendezvous of death and heroism. A monastery of
Dominicans, erected by Théophile, received this deposit, and
it is related that she used to conduct, almost every day, her
children to those venerated relics. There she used to pray,
and inflame their imagination and their heart with all the
combats, with all the martyrdoms of the family. Often the
catastrophe of Kobilta used to recur in those reiterated
narratives between the tombs and an altar. The scene
always impressed the boy with deep emotion. There the
mother used to read him a letter of farewell, addressed to
King Sigismund by his grandfather, ihe grand hetman, and
dated from this last of h^ fields of battle, as a testimony of
policy and of war.
XVIII.
While his father was commanding the Polish troopis
upon the Boug and illustrating himself jn the diets, the
young. Sobieski, received and admired in France for his
martial beauty and his precocious genius, was dazzled with
the nascent splendor of the court of Louis XIV., enrolled
himself, to learn the profession of arms, in the musketeers
msTKmr of txtmckt* 387
{£ the king's guard, and was formed, in ^ intimacy of tiie
great Condé, at this school of heroism. Pursuing his travels
from Paris to Constantinople, he was recalled into his
country by a civil war between two armed factions, that of
King Wladislas and that of Chmielnicki, this Polish Oorio-
knus, who led the Cossacks into his country.
The inter-reign, after the death of Wladislas, in opening
the era of anarchies, united Poland to the barbarians. The
nobility, assembled at Warsaw, to tear each other's eyes out
in disputing for election to the throne, was on the verge of
being surrounded in its capital. Zamosc, already invested
by the Cossacks and by their Polish allies, was ready to give
up to the barbarians the last citadel of liberty. Sobieski
threw himself athwart the enemy, rallied the public courage,
sustained the siege, repulsed the barbarians. The new kii^
elected, John Casimir, obtained a precarious peace, soon
followed by a fresh confederation against him. Sobieski
triumphed over it in the victory at Beredesoo, which left «
breathing respite to the country. But dissensions were
perpetually prevalent among a people who recognized their
eountry but in camps. . The Bussians of Peter the Great
inundated the provinces^ of the north ; the partisans of the
king of Sweden, Charles Gustavus, delivered him in his
turn the thrcme of Poland ; the final word of the partition
of Poland was pronounced aloud by the Swedes and Bussians.
But the» hour of this Europeim crime, unfortunately
provoked by the turbulence of that aristocracy, had not y^
struck. There remained to Poland a great citizen in a hero.
The inspiration of supreme danger had him elected com-
mander-in-chief. Inundated by Cossacks, by Tartars, by
Bussians, by Hungarians, by Transylvanians, called by the
Poles into their provinces, the Sarmatians needed a soldier a
stranger to all these parties and dominating all by hit
superior impartiality.* Sobieski accepted the command a«
the post of danger, the breach of the country. He took in
hand the sword of Poland.
XIX.
But the extremity of the danger was not sufficient to fill
up the great heart of Sobieski; the noble passion which
* Here is, in two words, the secret of the success and genius of Louis
Map^eon. — Trtmsbtkr,
S98 BISfORT OV TUBKST.
bMt ftUies itaelf to heroiam in men of large natnral propor-
iionB, love devonred the hero. He adored the b^ntifnl
oountess Zamoyski, whom the death of her hnsband had
rendered free at the moment of the coronation of Sobieski.
The ooantees Zamoyski was a yonng French woman, taken
to Poland, as maid of honor, by the last qneen of the Poles,
the prinoess de Nepers. Her name was Marie-Oasimire
d'Arqnien ; her beauty and her wit had distingaished her to
the admiration of Warsaw.
Sobieski, less a king than lover, forgot for her the poUoy
which ooonselled him to seek an alliance with the great
funilies of his country ; he forgot even the decency which
interdicts a widow of only eight days to pass from mourning
to marriage; his impatience of felicity had driven him to
marry her before a week had dried the tears which she was
bound to pay a first husband. Eeady to enter on a cam-
paign against numerous and virulent enemies, he was unwil-
ling to die without having possessed a wife whom he
C'*»rred to an empire. We shall see by and by this woman,
me queen, form the delight and the torture of him who
had given her a throne with his heart.
XX.
A battle of twenty-sevoi days at Podhaïc against the
Poles, the Cossacks, the Tartars and the Turks comederated,
restored to him the soil of Poland ; a second battle agai^t
two hundred thousand Turks of Ibrahim- Pasha gave him an
European renown. Christendom rung with his name in all
its temples; he received the name of Buckler of Ghrisé,
this early surname of his fathers. He returned to attend
more closely with a handful of patriots to the turbulent diet^
where the nobUity, partitioned between the differmit powers
of Europe, were rending the country and preparing it a prey
for foreigners The entire nation is at length convoked to
rescue Poland from the nobles. Gratitude pronounces the
name of Sobieski. Entire Poland responds by an acclama-
tion which appoints him king. He refuses in vain; the
public safety constrains him to acc^t the crown. All the
parties are Bilent a moment before this name. He confirms
the aj^intment by the victory of Choczim against the
Turks, the first superiority of the Sarmatians Qver the
Ottomans. The Turks named him the Lion of the North.
mif ÛB7 07 TUBKST. ^9
It lia0 been teen that, far from abasing his success, Sobiedd
had sent ambassadors and presents to Constantinople to
confirm peace after victory. The rashness and ignorance of
Kara-Mustapha had embittered these negotiations. Sobi-
eski,' apprised of the preparations of tiie grand vizier, had in
Tain invited Europe to a defensive crusade against the
Ottomans. The emperor Leopold himself, the most menaced
of all the powers, had declined his offers. The Polish
nobles, always of the party opposed to their kings, had
refused Sobieski their consent to the war. France, adiied to
Turkey and hostile to Austria, fomented at Warsaw the
spirit of resistance to the plans of Sobie^ But the three
hundred thousand men of Kmra-Mustapha crossing thjB Dan-
ube to inundate Germany, the persbtence of Sobieski, the
disinterested and religious enthusiasm of the Polish people
for its faith, constrained at length the diet to ratify reluc-
tantly the alliance, of Poland and Germany.
The voice of Sobieski had roused Savoy, Italy, Spiun,
Portugal. Turin sent the emperor subsidies and volunteers ;
the king of Spain sold his gold and silver table service to
pay the defenders of his house and of his faith ; the con-
vents of Spain and of Italy made up collections to defray
the expenses of this universal war ; the cardinals of Borne,
by the example of Pope Clement XI., alienated ecclesi-
astical property to defend the Church endangered so near
the Alps; the Catholic provinces of the south were furrowed
with pilgrimages and processions to all the altars, to implore
the aid of miracles in &vor of SobieskL But Sobieski was
himself the true miracle.
The Turks advanced upon Pesth ; the duke Charies ^
Lorraine, generalissimo of Leopold, but generalissimo almost
witiiout an army, called immediately the Poles to a junction,^
which could alone supply his weakness. Leopold, exiled
from his capital, offered entire Hungary to the king of
Poland in lieu of his assistance. Sobieski, more chiva&ous
and more christian than ambitious, did not wish for other
reward than the victory ; he would have blushed to fight as
a mercenary for Christendom. Glory and heaven were the
sole pay for his heroism. After lumng visited on foot and
as pilgrim all the churches of Craeow, the day of the festi-
val of the Assumption, he rushed forthj with the dite of
the Polish armies, to the relief of Vienna. Germany hailed
him with a 017 of hope. Triumphal arches, erected at all
400 smoBT av tobkbt*
points upon hk pMsige, bore for motto tiie Latin wofAi,
aUoding to his ftitnre destiny : Salvaiorem êû^>êetamu$ (we
are expecting a savior).
It was in hct the safety of Vienna which approached
with him. Three days later the bulwark of the empire, of
Austria, of Italy, of Cbristoidom) would have crumbled.
The two armies of Charles of Lorraine and of Solneski, in
uniting within a march of Vienna, did not amount togeth^
to OYW sixty thousand combatants. These were all that
Christendom, cooled by the inanity of its old crusades, and
disaffected towards the house of Austria for its universal
amlHtion, had been able to rally against ^e three hundred
thousand Asiatics of Kara-Mustapha.
XXL
The hour was pressing. Vienna, crushed beneath the
mortars of the Ottoman artillery, was but a plain ploughed
by the continuous explosion of bombs; the churches, the
monasteries, the palace of the emperor, entire sections of the
capital, were smoking in ruins ; the trenches of the enemy
were but thirty paces from the counterscarp ; ihe batteries,
armed with the same monstrous cannons which had opened
the breaches of .Constantinople, of Rhodes, of Candia, were
preparing broad Inreaches for the last assaults. Count Stah-
lemberg, wounded hj^ the e^losion of a bomb, was now
commanding, but from a bed of pain ; the soldiers and the
inhabitants, in measuring each morning with the eye the
personal losses of the preceding day and the rapid diminu*
tion of their battalions, began to tidk of an inévitable and
approaching capitulation.
Two months had passed away in the most terrible per«
plexity, in c<»nbats of daily recurrence. Pestil^ice was
superadded to the bombardment. The munilâ^is were ex-
hausted, and a mournful despair was seizing on every soul.
In September, a half-mo<m fell into the power of ÛLe he-
negers, a part of the wall had fallen in. It was urgent to
throw up tarendies at the entrance of the streets : it was the
last effort. Stahremberg no longer hoped to hold out be-
yond three days, and each night the signals of distress
announced to Charles of Lorraine that the fall was becoming
inevitable. In the middle of the night preceding ihia third
md last day, a cry of joy rung of a sudden from the hig^
HI6T0BY 09 T9REST. 401
tower of Saint-Stephen. It was the sentinel who had just
descried a brilliant light upon the summits of the Calenberg,
and which signalized at the horizon the Polish army. The
Bun on rising broke upon a forest of lances and of streamers
which unfolded itself over the mountain. ^
The Turks were then seen to divide themselves into
three bodies : one to turn towards the new combatant who
was presenting himself, the other to prepare for the assault ;
the third, a symptom of deliverance, was but a disorderly
multitude who fled towards Hungary carrying off the booty.
The bishop of Neustadt, Gollonitz, who had fought as sol-
dier at Cuidia, and who now was shut up in Vienna, where
hb piety, his courage, his exhortation animated the defence,
where his example and his charity aided in supporting so
many sufferings, called forthwith Ùie women and children to
the churches, while Stahremberg took off the men to the
ramparta
XXIL
Already for some days back Charles of Lorraine had
run to join Sobieski, to learn, said he, the business of war
under so finished a master. The Imperialists wept with
joy in seeing the illustrious chief whose name alone was a
first victory. Discord, which always attends on reverses,
was paralyzing their last strength ; it was extinguished at the
feet of the hero of Choczim, who met in his new soldiers
an obedience which he had never experienced from his own
subjects.
Meanwhile Charles of Lorraine had succeeded in throw-
ing a triple bridge across the Danube, within six leagues of
Vienna, while me gnmd viiier had done nothing to hinder
him. ^^ You see plainly, that the general who, at the head
of three hundred thousand m&a, has let this bridge be
constructed under his nose, cannot fail to be beaten," cried
Sobieski, to draw across the Danube the Imperialists who
where hesitating to follow him.
The following day the Danube was crossed. The Poles
marched foremost j liie magnificence and the beauty of their
arms and of their horses astonished their allies. A single
regiment of infantry formed a blot by their tattered uniform.
'^ This," said Sobieski, ^^ is an invincible band who have vowed
never to array themselves but in the q[K>il8 of the enemy."
40i HIBTOBT OF TUlLKBT.
" If these words did not clothe them," says the abbé Coyer,
one of the biographers of Sobieski, " they caressed them."
Sobieski had not been before at the head of forces so'
oonsiderable. The steep chain of Calenberg, covered with
forests on its sides, furrowed with narrow gorges, easy to
cnard, separated him still from Kara-Mnstapha, who did not
dream of availing himself of a barrier so difficult to cross.
Nothing could alarm the confidence of the vizier. The
laborious march of the allies across the mountain lasted
three days ; they were obliged to abandon there their heavy
artillery. The foremost scouts, who from the last clifb
descried the formidable camp of the Ottomans, took forth-
with to flight and spread through the ranks the terror with
which they were stricken ; the Imperialists especially were
profoundly dismayed. Sobieski cheered their courage by
his martial gaiety and his assurance. He had enrolled in
his guard a troop of Janissaries whom he had formerly made
prisoners. On the eve of combating the«Turks, he proposed
to them to return to the baggages, or even to rejoin the
camp of Kara-Mustapha. AU responded, with moistened
eyes, that they would live and die but for him.
XXIII.
His letters to his wife, Casimhre d'Arquien, reveal
better than history the agitation of mind, the anguish of
heart, and the refuge for his thoughts, sought in love by
Sobieski, the eve of the dav when he was going to fight the
battle of Christianity agamst the three hundred thousand
Ottomans already before hb eyes. The heroes who write,
such as Caesar, Frederick and Sobieski, on the eve and the
morrow of battles, are the confidants of posterity.
" If occasionally I fail to write you at length, my dear
wife, is it not easy to explain my huny without the aid of
injurious suppositions? The combatants of two divisions
of the earth are now but a few miles dbtant from each
other : my thoughts must be every where; I must provide for
the smallest detail. * I implore you, my heart, for the love
you bear me, not to rise so early in the morning; what
health could withstand it, especially in retiring so late as
you are accustomed to do. You will afflict me if you do not
pay attenticm to my entreaty ; you will deprive me of rest,
you will deprive me of health, and what is worse, you will
HIBTORY OF TUBKBT. 403
damage yonr <wni, wMch is my sole comfort in this world.
As to our mutual affection, let us see which will cool thé
more. If my age be. not that of ardor, my heart and my
soul are still as young as ever. Were we not agreed, my
love, that it was now to be your turn, and that it was you
who was to make the advances ? Have you kept your word
to me, my heart ? Do not, therefore pretend to cast your
own wrong upon another."
XXIV.
Scarce had this letter of affection to his wife been
written, the night. of the 12th of September, 1683, than
Sobieski, coming forth at day break from his tent at the
booming of the canpon of the Ottoman army, saw on the
one side the columns of the Janissaries disposing themselves
in masses for a last assault before the breaches of the ram-
parts of Vienna, and on the other the aged Ibrahim-Pasha,
the octogenarian hero of the Turks, fall with the impetuosity
of fatalism upon the vanguards of the Polish army on the
flanks of the mountain. Ibrahim, traversing at a gallop
those advanced posts, dismounted with his sps3iis at the foot
of the intrenchments thrown up by the di^e of Lorraine.
Sobieski, without hastening thither, but seeking his support
and his inspiration in prayer, was at that moment hearing
mass in the open air, from a poor hermit, near a ruined
chapel, whence the eye could survey the whole field of battle.
The service over, Sc3[)ie8ki remounted his horse, and rushed
with his Polish cavalry upon the enemy.
The Christians, marching in five columns, carried one by
one, from ravine tq ravine, foom precipice to precipice, from
defile to defile, from wood to wood, thé positions from which
fell back step by step the squadrons, charged to arrest them.
From the breach the garrison of Vienna witnessed the
resistless course of their liberators ; it made itself some
heroic efforts against being crushed before the hour of
rescue. Thus far Kara-Mustapha kept motionless between
these two battles.
At eleven o'clock the allies were in the plain; it was
already a victory. Their adversaries beat back, left them
time to takebreatL At noon the Mussulmans were rallied
and swelled by powerful reinforcements; they sustained a
second struj^e more terrible still. But the skilfiil marshal-
4M HI0TOBT or TUBSET.
lings of Sobieskiy hki impetnoiiB and precise manoeuvres
preFailed, and the Christian armj appeared upon the glacis
of the camp. There recommenced a third and the last
battle. The whole Ottoman army pressed around the stand-
ard of the vizier; Kara-Mustapha commanded in person.
A deep ravine, intrenchments, a formidable artillery, covered
him on all sides. It was five o'clock in the afternoon ; the
king surveyed the obstacle, and did not hope to end the
struggle the same day. He was thinking therefore of pass-
ing the night in those new positions, when in running along
die lines of his troops, he found them more exhilarated than
fiktigued from their victorious march, through so many combats
and under the pressure of a stifling heat. The attitude of
the Ottomans, on the contrary, seemed downcast and discour-
aged. He perceived afur,. through clouds of dust, the long
mes of camels that thronged the routes of Hungary. The
attack was decided.
Meanwhile the confidence of the grand vizier was not
shaken.; he felt assured that the Christians would be dashed
to pieces upon his intrenchments. He was seen, shaded by
a tent of crimson silk from the rays of the sun, taking coffee
tranquilly between his two sons. Sobieski, furious at this
foolish and disdainful security, ordered the French officer
who commanded his infiintry to take possession of a redoubt
which commanded the quarters of Kara-Mustapha. This
order is executed with viçor. The enemy is disturbed by
it. At the same instant, Kara-Mustapha, who is ruffled at
kst, calls to his defence the infantry of the risht wing ; this
movement uncovers his army and deranges tne entire line.
It was the pivot of the victory. Sobieski seized it like a
master : he pushed at once the duke of Lorraine on thé half-
opened centre, while he hastened himself to the dense
masses that covered the tent of the grand vizier. The
Tartars and the spahis recognized him. His name flies along
the front of the Ottoman army. His presence is at length
believed. " By Allah ! " criea the Khan of the Tartars in
terror, " the king is with them."
The hussars of Sobieski have crossed, at full speed, the
ravine where the infantry had hesitated; they rush into
the enemy's ranks and cut in twain their battle array, while
the prince of Waldeok is turning the oamp. The day is de-
cided ; the grand vizier, fallen from the height of his arro-
gance, weeps like a woman. Meanwhile he tries to rally his
HIOPOBY OF TUBKBY. 405
troops^ who are running off. All is flight ; he flies himself
in the midst of this army in disorder, which is no longer
but a terrified multitude. It was the flood of the Ottoman
power that was receding for ever. Entire Europe saw a
miracle in this panic terror of the Turks. This last battle
had lasted but an hour ; it was therefore more decisive than
murderous. It does not appear that the army of the grand
vizier had lost more than 8 or 10,000 men. In his terror,
however, he stopped not till he reached the walls of Raab,
whilst the king, dreading an offensive return, took all the
cautions of an anxious, but now unnecessary prudence.
The following day Sobieski entered the delivered city,
through the breach which the enemy were preparing to
cross.
XXV.
Entire Vienna came forth from its walls in ruins to form
a cortege to the army of its liberator. The contrast of
Leopold absent, and of the king of Poland sacrificing his
blood and that of his people to rescue her, might at this
moment have made Sobieski the emperor of Austria and of
Hungary. ^^ There was a man who was sent from God
whose name was John," said the clergy of Vienna in apply-
ing to him the words of the gospel. But Sobieski wished
for his victory but the honor of having saved the West.
He avenged lumself of his desertion by all the powers of
Europe, only by announcing with his own hand, to the most
Christian king of France, the victory of the Christians won
without him and against him. Such were his sole reprisals.
His letter to his wife, written the night of the battle in
the tent of Kara-Mustapha, become his spoil, lets posterity
into the pure and tender soul of the hero : the only trace of
pride is in the date.
" In the tent of the grand vizier, the 13th September, at
night.
" Sole joy of my soul, charming and beloved Mariette,
• " God be for ever blessed ! He has given victory to our
nation ; he has given it a triumph such as past ages have
never seen the like. All the artillery, the whole camp of
the Ottomans, countless riches, have fallen into our hands.
The approaches of the city, the plains around are covered
with the dead of the infid^ army, the residue fled in conster*
406 HISTOBT or TUBKXT.
■mtioD. Our pe(H>le are bringing in momently camels, mnlefl,
oxen, sheep, which the enemy had with him, and also an
innamerable multitade of prisoners. Besides we receiFC a
larffe number of deserters, most of them converts, well clothed
and well mounted. The victory has been so sudden and so
extraordinary that in the city and in our camp all were still
in alarm ; the enemy was thought to be seen returning every
moment He has left behind m powder and munitions to
the value of a million of florins.
*^ I have witnessed this night a spectacle which I had
desired lor a long time. Our wagon drivers set fire to the
powder in several places; the explosion was like that of
the dav of.judrment, without however hurting any body.
I could see on that occasion how the clouds are formed in
the atmosphere; but it is a misadventure. It is over a
half million of loss.
" The vizier has abandoned every thing in hb flight ; he
has carried away only his clothes and his horse. It is I who
am established his heir ; for the greatest portion of hb riches
are fallen into my hands.
" Advancing with the first line, and driving the vizier
before me, I met one of the domestics who led me into the
tents of his private court ; these occupy to themselves alone
a space as large as the city of Warsaw or of Leopold. I
took possession of all the decorations and the banners that
are wont to be borne before the vizier. As to ihe great
banner of Mahomet, which hb sovereign had confided to
him for thb war, I have sent it to Saint-Peter by Talenti.
Besides, we have rich tents, superb equipages and a thou-
sand other toys very beautiM and very rich. I have not yet
seen all; but there b no comparison with what we saw
at Choczim. For instance, four or five quivers, mounted with
rubies and with sapphires, are alone worth some thousands
of ducats! You will not say to me then, my heart, as the
Tartar women do to their husbands when they return with-
out booty : Thou art no warrior, since thou hast brought me
nothing ; for it b only the man who pushes forward that can
pick up something.
" I have abo a horse of the vizier with the entire har-
ness. He has himself been pursued closely^ but escaped.
Hb kihag or first lieutenant bis been killed, as well as a
number of other principal officers. Our soldiers have taken
possession of a number of sabres mounted in gold. Night
HISTOSY or TUBKICT. 407
pat an end to the porsuit : and besides, although fleeing, the
Turks defended themselves sternly. In this respect they
executed a most beautiful retreat. However, the Janissaries
"were forgotten in the trenches, and at night they were all
cut to pieces. Such were the pride and the presumption of
the Turks, that while a portion of the army was giving
us battle, another part was storming the city. Accoraingly
they had wherewith to meet these various exigencies. I esti-
mate them, without the Tartars, at three hundred thousand ;
others have reckoned three hundred thousand tents, which
would imply a number of men beyond all known proportions.
For my part, I reckon nearly one hundred thousand tents, for
they occupied three immense camps. The Turks have left in
fleeing many captives of this country, especially women, but
often having massacred as many of them as they could.
There is then a large number of women killed ; but also a
great many are only wounded, and may still recover. I met
yesterday a child of three years old, a charming little boy,
whose head one of the cowards had cut hideously across the
mouth. The vizier had seized, in one of the psdaces of the
emperor, a beautiful ostrich ; but he has also cut ofl' its head
to prevent its return into the power of the Christians. It is
impossible to detail all the refinements of luxury that the
vizier had united in his tents. There were baths, small gar-
dens with jets of water, rabbit warrens, in fine a parrot
which our soldiers have given chase to without catching.
" To-day I have been to see the city ; it could not nave
held out beyond five days. The imperial palace is riddled
with bullets; those immense bastions, creviced and half
crumbled, have an awful aspect ; they look like masses of
rock.
" All the troops have done well their duty; they attrib-
ute to God and to me the victory. At the moment when
the enemy had begun to swerve ( and the most violent shock
took place where I was, by the grand vizier), all the cavalry
of the rest of the army pushed towards me on the right
wing, the centre and the left wing having already little to do ;
I then saw advancing M. de Bavière, the prince Waldeck and
others ; the generals kissed my hands and feet ; the soldiers
and the officers, foot and horse, exclaimed : Ah 1 unser brave
Konigl (Ah, our brave king!) All obey me still better
than my own troops.
'' The commandant of the city, Stahremberg, came also
408 HunoftT or tubxxt.
to see me to-dftj. All those people liare embraeed lae, and
hare giren me the Dame of sayior. I hare been in two
charc&s where the people have kiased mj handa, feet, clothes;
others, who could net get near enongh to touch me, cried, Ah!
give us to kiss your victorious hands ! Thej seemed to wish to
ory vivat ; but they were restrained by fear of the officers uid
the superiors. Howeyer, a mass of the people broke out into
a sort of vivat. I remarked that the superiors regarded
them with displeasure ; accordingly, after haviug dined widi
the commandant, I hastened to quit the city and return to
the camp. The multitude reconducted me to the gates. I
see that Stahremberg is on bad terms with the magistrates
of the city. In receiving me, he did not present any of the
civil authorities. The emperor has made known to me that
he is at a mile's distance. . . . But behold, the day-
begins to dawn ; I must close this letter. I am no longer
left the power of writing and of conversing with you in ^ia
manner.
*' Our loss has been heavy in the battle ; we have to
regret especially two persons, of whom Dupont will tell
vou. Among the foreigners, the prince De Groy has been
killed ; his rather is wounded, uid they have further lost
some other persons of distinction.
^^ Father Aviano has embraced me a million of times
with joy ; he pretends to have seen during the battle a white
dove hovering over our armies.
^^We put ourselves in motion to-day to pursue the
enemy into Hungary. The electors have told me they
would accompany me.
" It is really a grand benediction of God. Honor and
glory be rendered him now and for ever 1
"As soon as the vizier saw that he could keep his ground
no longer, he had his sons called by him, and set to weeping
like a child. He then said to Uie khan of the Tartars:
^Save mey if thou canst.^ The khan answered: 'We
know the king of Poland well ; it is impossible to resist
him; let* us rather bethink us of escaping.'
'^ I am at this moment mounting horse to march into
Hungary, and I hope, as I have said in leaving you, to see you
at ItryL Let Wyszynoki repair the fireplaces and prepare
the apartments.
'^ This letter is the best gazette, and you may use it to
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 409
that end, letting it be known that it is the letter of the king
to the queen.
" The princes of Bavaria and of Saxony are determined
to follow me to the*ends of the earth. We must double our
pace for the two first miles, on accouilt of the insupportable
infection of the corpses, as well of men as of horses and
camels.
** I have written to the king of France ; I have said to
him that it was more especially to him, as most Christian king,
that it was fitting to make my report of the battle won, and
of the salvation of Christendom.
*' The emperor is but a mile and a half from here. He
comes down the Danube in a boat ; I perceive that he has no
great desire to see me, perhaps on account of etiquette.
He is hastening to Vienna to get chanted the T$ Deum.
This is why I give place to hSn. I am well content to
avoid all these ceremonies ; we have been regaled only with
these to this day. Our son is brave to excess."*
This dol]^^stic bulletin, which ^ves us to read the happi-
ness of the lover and of the father m the heart of the hero, is
the most living recital of the battle that saved Europe.
Glory, usually ferocious or haughty, becomes there pathetic
like love ; the tone of sadness, which transpires beneath the
happiness in the letter of Sobieski, was the presentiment of
the indifference of Germany for so great a service, and the
persecutions that awaited him from his ungrateful and fac-
tious countrymen.
XXVI.
This presentiment did not deceive him. Leopold, who
knew neiâier how to vanquish nor even to fight, jealous of
♦ Assuredly, if all his majesty's epistles wew of this proportion, the
queen must have been quite exacting in oompkdning of his brevity, even
fts a mere manœuvre of French coquetry. She could not, as a woman,
write more lengthily herself, and as a French woman, would not certainly
write so disorderly. Sobieski may, as a hero, be classed with Cesar, and
with Frederick ; but he had evidently nothing of either in the way of
wielding the pen. It is possible, that the two former have at the same
time been profane philosophers, and that the pious Pole said his prayers
before and after, and during his battles. The mental state which this
implies is in fact more favorable to heroism than that cool-headedness
which gives the power of ^stematic and succinct statement. But the
bulletin of Sobieski is puerile, and the tact of citing it in his applause ia
worse. — TraniUUor,
Vol. III.— 18
410 HI8T0BT or TUBKIT.
ofiended at, the glory of Sobieski, not pardoning him the
Bervioes which he had just received from him, astonished the
world by his ingratitude : it seems to have been at all times
the destiny of the imperial governmenf.
Whilst all the peoples of Europe uttered cries of enthu-
siasm like that of Vienna, and felt themselves delivered by
him ; whilst the Protestants as well as the Catholics cele-
brated* the victory of Sobieski, while all the pulpits were
resounding with his glorious name, while Innocent XI. fell
at the foot of the crucifix and burst into tears of joy, on
receiving the banner of the Prophet which was sent him by
the victor, Leopold, preoccupied with the prerogatives of
his rank, humiliated at himself, irritated at the transports of
hb subjects, thrown in the shade by his liberator, troubled
about the promises which he had made to determine his
alliance, instead of running to meet him, returned to Vienna
only to avoid him, and held council but to discuss the
question of precedence regarding him.
Sobieski cut short this puerile difficulty, a%he relates it
himself The interview had place on horseback.. Leopold
remained cold and was scarcely courteous ; he had not even
the hypocrisy of gratitude. The king, astonished at this
sordid ingratitude, could not refrain from saying to him : ^' I
am well pleased, sire, to have rendered you this small ser-
vice." It was his whole vengeance, but that of Leopold did
not stop there. Petty diffi^culties and intrigues surrounded
Sobieski and his army. Their trophies were disputed with
and filched from them. They were refused succor for their
wounded, Christian sepulture for their dead. They were
left exposed to die of hunger before the walls of Vienna.
" At present," wrote the king, " we are like persons with the
plague whom everybody shuns ; whilst before the battle, my
tents, which, thank God, are sufficiently spacious, could scarce
contain the crowd of arrivals." He wished to march for-
ward, to profit by the victory, but he was met by a thousand
obstacles.
Besides, this ingratitude of the emperor extended to
almost all those who had contributed to save him; it was
proportioned to the services. The allies, indignant, aban-
doned in crowds the imperial camp. Sobieski, s^ost alone,
despite his officers and the whole army, who pressed him to
withdraw at length from the outrage, remained faithful to
the cause which he had embraced.
HISTOBT OF TUBKIY. 411
" My destiny," said he, " is to oblige everybody and to
have nothing to expect but from God." He put himself
then in motion ; he wished to deal a second decisive blow, as
he wrote the queen. He was advancing already through the
plains of Hungary, still impelling the Turkish bands before
him, when the Imperialists were still deliberating under the
walls of Vienna.
XXVII.
The sloth of the Grermans in the pursuit of the grand
vizier saved the wrecks of the Ottoman army, and permitted
them to rally behind Gran. The emperor Leopold, as we
have said, had at last decided to elude the difficulty by
meeting Sobieski on horseback. This cold interview between
the herd and the fugitive restored to his capital, is traced
naïvely in the letter of Sobieski to his wife.
" The emperor,'' says he, " had in his train some fifty
courtiers and ministers. Trumpeters preceded him : body-
guards and a dozen valets walked behind him. I will not
describe the emperor, his portrait is known to you. He was
mounted on a bay horse of Spanish race ; he wore a tight
coat richly embroidered, a hat of French fashion, with an
agraffe and white and red plumes, a belt mounted with
sapphires and diamonds, the sword the same. We saluted
each other sufficiently politely ; I made him my compliments
in Latin and in few words ; he responded in the same tongue,
and in choice terms. Being thus face to face with one
another, I presented him my son, who approached and
saluted him. The emperor did not even put a hand to his
hat ; I was quite shocked at it He treated in the same
manner the senators and the hetmans, and even his ally, the
prince palatine of Belz. To avoid scandal and the comments
of the public, I again addressed some words to the emperor,
after which I turned my horse : we made a mutual salute,
and I returned to my camp. The palatine of Russia has
showed our army to the emperor, as he desired ; but our
people have been quite provoked, and complained loudly that
the emperor had not deigned to thank them, were it only by
touching his hat, for all their pains and privations. After this
separation, all was suddenly changed ; it is as if we were no
more known.
" We no longer get either provisions or forage ; it is re-
412 HI8T0BT.0F TITBKET.
fdaed us to buy our dead in the cemeteries of the city. I
myself have had the greatest trouble to obtain hospitality in
a conyent to repose my head. After so great a battle,
wherein we have lost so many men ' and so many sons of the
most illnstrions of our families, we are besides losing our
horses and our baggage, and we are exposed to the pity
and laughter of those whom we haye deliyered. Oh, my
Ood 1 it is enough to make one die ten times a day -to see
escaping, through their sloth, so many beautiful occasions of
annihilating the Turks, and so many glorious yictories. I
put myself in march tonlay to get away from the city
of Vienna, where fire-arms haye been discharged at my
soldiers." ♦
XXVilL
During these tergiyersations and these delays of the
troops of the Emperor, who seemed to fear to giye a second
yictory to Sobieski, Kara-Mustapha, under shelter behind
Baab, was casting upon his lieutenants the blame of his
disaster. Beproaching the aged and braye Ibrahim-Pasha,
ffoyemor of Ofen, for his thrM hundred cannons left in the
batteries before Vienna, his tents and his treasures become
the spoils of the enemy : '^ Thou old yisier,'' said he to him
in fuU diyan, '^ thou whose hairs are grown gray in the ser-
yice of the Forte, thou hast let Ihyself be yanquished, thou
hast turned to flight to gratify thy jealousy towards me, but
thou art going to bear the penalty of thy defeat."
He oniered the chief of the tschaouschs to cut ofiT the old
man's head before his tent The head of the brayest of the
Ottomans fell to eniate the route of an incapable yizier.
The execution rabed murmurs in the army, but, retempered
* What this letter, like the preceding, seems to me most strikingly
to rereal, is the moral and mental weakness of SobieskL Wonld any
soldier ik real energy or organizing faculfy, permit a city he had just
saved and which was absolutely in his power — nay the mere gover-
nors of the city, for the people were all favorable— to maltreat himself
and army in this manner ? The treatment was provoked no doubt by
the fear of the ooward Kmperor, that Sobieski might very naturally take
advantage of this situation ; and it must have been encouraged by a
special knowledge of the Poles. This people have never been able to
conduct any thing with system ; and to this is due the methodless and
madcap fervor of their intrepidity, which has dissembled, to the super-
ficial, the general weakness of the national character.— TVions^oft»*.
HISTOBT OF TUBKET. 413
by terror, the discipline of the troops rallied around Mus-
tapha.
Sobieski, become impatient of waiting the German aux-
iliaries, followed too rashly the two hundred thousand
Ottomans, picking up along the way the stragglers of the
grand vizier. His humanity spared the vanquished.
" My dear wife," writes he, " I had left Vienna, and was
maroiiing in the vanguard ; I perceived in a valley a large
castle in ruins. I asked what it might be ; upon the answer
that it was the place where lions were kept, I approached it
and heard some shots. I sent to ascertain what that meant,
and learned that it was some fifty Janissaries, escaped by
night from the trenches of Vienna, who had shut themselves
up in the tower, hoping that the vizier would rally and re-
turn to the charge. They refused all capitulation with the
German& In fact, they had killed a number of their assail-
ants, and they could scarce be dislodged but by the explosion
of a mine. I sent to say to them that I was there in person ;
they then surrendered, and were conducted safe and sound
into my camp. I also found in the tower a lioness almost
famished, wMch I ordered to be fed ; but what was better,
we have found biscuit enough to load some fifty thousand
wagons : for this was the provision store of the army of the
vizier.
" Hungary, which I am traversing," wrote he to his dear
Mary, "is a clump of earth which, if squeezed in the hand,
would give out but human blood. The emperor has set out
firom Vienna for Linz. I have sent him some beautiful
saddle horses, which he seemed to desire, equipped with
harness, covered with diamonds, rubies and emeralds ; I have
sent also to the prince of Anhault, my friend, a beautiful
horse caparisoned. As to myself, I will be reduced, perhaps,
to return to Poland with buffaloes and camels. The tent of
the grand vizier was full of perfumes, balms and jewels,
which one wearies not of admiring ; he has left us very fine
things ; especially all that pertained to his body were of the
rarest and most marvellous."
XXIX. .
A malady like the plague decimated his troops and at-
tacked himself upon the mardby banks of the Danube, near
Presburg. Even this scourge did not succeed in severing
414 HI8T0BT OF TUBEIT.
him from pursuit of the Turks. His wife, more ambitious
than he, did not cease to reproach him bitterly, for not
Mpropriating, as the meed of his victory, the kingdom of
Hungary. His loyalty shrunk from despoiling the emperor
whom he had come to assist The queen, an object of his
constant tenderness, joined hb enemies at Warsaw in scold-
ing him severely for not making peace with the Ottomans, at
the price of Hungary wrested from Austria and abandoned
by them to Poland.*
XXX.
Meanwhile the internal factions of Poland, with whom
his wife herself associated against the heroic policy of her
husband, resounding along to his camp, sowed insubordina-
tion in the army, and left him abandoned alternately by the
nobles of the opposite parties, volunteers almost independent,
whose defection took off their vassals ; he remained alone
with a handful of men before the recomposed army of the
grand vizier. Kejoined at last, on the banks of the Danube,
near Comom, by the duke of Lorraine, he had it resolved,
in a council of war, to pass the river with the combined
army.
Whilst ho was following the bank almost in front of the
Ottoman army, seeking a site favorable for this purpose, the
Turks, strengthened by Tekeli, debouching to the number
of one hundred and twenty thousand men by the bridge of
Parkan, enveloped him between the Danube and their
army. All fled before this deluge of Tartars, of Ottomans,
of Hungarians, resolved to avenge the shame of Vienna.
Sobieski persists alone to fight with a knot of six thousand
Polish hussars ; overrun upon the flanks, cut off from his
infantry, imprisoned in a whirlwind of steel and fire, cannon-
aded by the artillery of the grand vizier, assailed by the re-
peated charges of Tekeli and his uhlans, a Turkish trooper
raised his battle-axe upon his head. One of his staff, giving
his life for his master's, turns off the weapon of the spahis
* Here we see the weakness I have suggested in Sobieski, and which
could not have escaped the French good sense of his wife. Lamartine,
in trying to gloss it with the name of loyalty and heroism, is mnch less
trae to tibis good sense, than to poetic partialities. He mnst always have
his hero oi a piece, in good or eyil. — Translator,
HISTOBT OF TURKEY, 415
and receives the deadly blow ; his squadrons piled with their
horses and their bodies the marshy plain, through which they
sought their sole refuge from the Turks. The vigor of the
horse of Sobieski seemed to redouble by the knowledge of
the danger of his master ; he saved the king almost unknown
to him. Sobieski, scarce recovered from the illness which
had exhausted his vigor, enervated by long combats, covered
with blood, crushed with pain, had no longer the strength to
guide his horse ; upheld on his saddle by two pages, who sup-
ported him under the arms, his breast drooped forward, his
head tottering under the helmet, like a drunken man, he knew
not whither me gallop of his feeble escort was taking him,
and was aroused from his lethargy only to demand with
terror where was his dear child, separated from him in the
conflict.
Beaching the foot of an eminence whence his artillery
kept off the spahis, he was laid inanimate upon a bundle of
reeds ; his son, saved by a French gentleman who had shel-
tered him in a ruined chapel, aloof from the field of carnage,
fell into his arms ; the father and the child commingled their
tears. The duke of Lorraine arrived at last with the body
of the army, and generously relieved Sobieski from his de-
jection. The hero did not seek to palliate his defeat. " I
have been well beaten to-day," said he to the duke of Lor-
raine, " let us think about vanquishing to-morrow."
Three days after he bore off the last of his victories on the
same field that witnessed his disaster, and forced the Turks
to repass the river upon the bridge of Gran, broken down*
and submerged by his artillery. The Danube ingulfed thirty
thousand Ottomans, Tartars and Hungarians, who precipitated
themselves into the waves to escape the sabre of Sobieski's
cavalry. He himself directing the assault of his infantry
against the fortress of Gran, of which the battlements and •
palisades were crowned with heads cut off his soldiers re-
cently slain at the foot of the walls, five pashas and thou-
sands of Turks were there slaughtered by the Poles and the
French volunteers of the army of the kin^. A young page
of the queen, her relative, named La Mouilly, covered him-
self with glory and with blood in barring almost alone by
himself the drawbridge of the fortress by which the Turks
meant to precipitate themselves from out the place.
Tekeli, on horseback, with his wife, the beautiful Helen
de Serin, who used to follow him almost into the conflict
416 HISTOBT OP TUBKBT.
made his appearance with his anny too late to partake in the
battle. The Turks accused him, not without grounds, of
having missed the way designedly in order to leave victory
to SobieskL His importance in Hungary depended on the
balance which was maintained between the Turks and the
Poles ; he meant to thrive by the ruin of both one and the
other. In this view, he sent to compliment Sobieski on his
heroism, and offered himself as a mediator of pea>oe between
the Turks and the Poles
XXXI.
The letter of Sobieski to the queen, dated from the battle-
field of Gran, rehires gratitude to Qtoà and to his soldiers.
" When it was yesterday announced to my infantry that
I had fallen in the flight, they cried : * Why do we now
want to live, since we have lost our father ? lead us to the
enemy and let us die with him ! '
" At present, that I am recovered, I will avow to you,
my heart, that I have been so trodden upon and bruised by
the fugitives, that in many parts my body was as black as
coaL The poor palatine of Pomerania was found headless ;
almost all our pages have perished in the action ; our little
negro Joseph fell into the bands of the Turks, who cut off
hb head. I had also a young Hungarian, sp^iking several
languages, who has perished. But learn, my friend, the fate
of our Tittle Calmuck : you know his ability in hare hunting;
well, all his address on horseback was jiot able to save him ;
I know not by what lucky chance the Turks, who had cap-
tured, spared him. Yesterday, after the rout of the infidels,
he was found under one of their tents : our people at once
recognized him, as well as his horse tied to a post of the tent,
when a German ran and struck him a blow pf his sabre on
the face : despite the promises of the surgeons, it is doubtful
if he will recover.
" It is a strange thing," adds the hero, superstitious like
all men who play for great stakes against destiny, " it is
queer that, on Thursday, when we were marching to the
enemy, a black dog, without ears, was constantly before us
without the possibility of driving him away ; and that a black
eagle hovered, for some time, almost upon a level with our
heads, and then flew away behind us. Yesterday, on the
mSTOEY OF TTJBKBY. 417
eontrary, a wbite pi^^n alighted sereral times before oar
Bquadrons ; a very beautifttl eagle, also white, descended in
front of our lines, and skimming along the earth, seemed to
conduct us to the enemy.* . . . Kara-Mustapha lias
fled as far as Belgrade to anticipate the wrath and assus^e
the justice of his master. As he proposed an escort to the
Jew who carried his diamonds for fear he should be robbed
by his own soldiers on the route : " No,'' replied the treas-
urer, '* I will put on a German cap, and your whole army
will fly before me." " Alas I alas I " cried the vizier, " it is
but too true, and the Ottoman proverb is entirely right in
saving: ^^ Those whom Ood has put to flight would be
afraid of even a Hebrew.^^
" Fanfan, our young son, was well inured to fire on yes-
terday, for the artillery of the fortress on the other side of
the Danube cannonaded us incessantly. It cannot be denied
that the blood of the Polish nobility has flowed profusely for
the cause of Germany and of Christendom."
" Sole joy of my heart, charming and weU-beloved Mari-
ette," wrote he to her some days after, " I have forced five
thousand Turks and the Pasha of Aleppo to capitulate, in
the fortress of Stri^nia, possessed for one hundred and fifty
years back by the Ottomans. To what changes of fortune
is not this world subject ! God and . glory are our only re-
compense ! "
XXXIL
In the midst of these triumphs, he was galled at the
cruel abandonment of his country, and the jealous opposition
of his nobility and of his own blood.
'^ If Poland," Wrote he to Mariette, an accomplice of this
conspiracy a^inst the continuation of his glory, " if Poland
was an island in the midst of the ocean, it would be to me at
present like those of which historians tell us, that thev were
seen floating above the billows, sometimes visible, and anon
submerged. For five weeks back I do not know if there be
a Poland in the world ; it b not so much from this silence
upon things political that I suffer, as the privation of news
* Another trait which gives us the mental measure of the Polish
hero, which suggests also the natural origin of divination in ancient war-
fare, and which illustrâtes the compatahSity of mere military genins with
an infancy of intellect in either the age or ue individiuJ*— 'TVoiMtator.
Vol. ni.— 18*
418 msftOBY or tubket.
abont yonr health, on which depend my happiness and mj
life.'»
Before retaining to the Ottomans, it is a pleasure to
mursne this hero on the field of victory along to the tomb.
Retained fdrcibly in Poland by the constraint of his nobles,
of his diet and of his wife, leagued against his glory, he
entered Warsaw in triomph the day whereon Kara- Mustapha,
returned to Belgrade, received from his master the order to
die.
Mahomet lY. did not believe him culpable, but the
nation thought him unlucky ; his execution was a sacrifice
to fatality. The aga of the Janissaries, sent from Adrian-
ople to bring back his head, left him through favor the priv-
ilege of having himself strangled by his own servants.
Before dying, Kara-Mustapha, who foresaw his doom, had
made a secret journey to Constantinople to secure to his
heirs his immense wealth. The Albanian workmen, whom
he had employed in secreting his treasure in a repository
known to him alone and to Us children, h&d been Ûlled by
his order, upon the ground.
Returned to Belgrade, one dajr as he was exploring with
the eye the country from the height of his palace, he per-
oeived a group of cavalry descending the hill ; he turned
pale, foreseeing the sword or the bowstring brought from
Adrianople. He sent one of his pages to meet them, intro-
duced them with distinction, made them sit, and drawing
himself the seal of the empire from his breast, he kissed it
in sign of gratitude to the master from whom he had received
it, said prayer and made ablutions ; then kneeling, he re-
ceived the cord from the hands of his servants, knotted it
himself around his neck and expired in blessing, not the
justice, but the will of the master who made him expiate the
reverses of Islamism.
XXXIII.
The punishmnet of Sobieski was more tedious and per-
haps more cruel. The jealousy of the great, the popularity
of the demagogues, the turbulence of the diets, the dissen-
sions of the republic, the ingratitude of the nation which he
* Evidentlj Sobieski was no hero to his pretty oonsort, but on the
ooDtnuy was fallen into her contempt. But no one is so, sajs the pro-
verb, to his valet, and still less his wife.— 7Vansfo(or.
HISTOBT OF TURKBT. 419
had elerated to the summit of glory and of power, without
being able to maintain it there, the refusal of subsidies by
the Poles, the intrigues of his wife, old age, in fine, which
rusts all things, even genius, the anticipative competition for
the throne which he still occupied, and the impatient plots
against his life in his own court impoisoned his long life.
Never did nation less appreciate the great man whom Prov-
idence had pointed out as the regenerator of its liberty.
This Mariette, whom he had so much loved, did but
aggravate the chagrins which were going to afflict and
shorten the remainder of this great life.
" Marie Casimire," says her historian, M. de Salvandy^
" was the pest of the hero who had crowned her. Shall we
exhibit her filling the palace, as well as the republic, with
her plots and her intrigues ; putting a hand in all public or
famày affairs, and doing so to carry every where disorder and
corruption; disturbing by her restlessness of mind the
household of the king, when it was not by her ambition and
her avarice ; more abandoned in her caprices without num-
ber, according as age, which seemed to respect her, made her
dread an approaching decline ; jealous of the confidence of
her husband, as another might be of his affection ; exiling
from the court her own sister and all persons agreeable to
the king, and giving up the power which she in this way
retained, to two chambermaids who reigned over her, as she
did over the king. A single trait wUl show the slavery
wherein the love of domestic peace, that first of blessings,
in the eyes of John, plunged the unfortunate monarch. He
had promised the seals to Zaluski. On a vacancy, he pre^
sented them to him. " But, my friend," said he to him, " if
you accept them I am, undone. I will be obliged to fly my
house. I do not see where I could go to die in peace." *
The royal family was, like the palace, a prey to hatreds
and to anarchy. There, as in the state, Sobieski labored
vainly to restore concord, disturbed every where by the
wild passions of the queen. Still alive, his family, Poland
and Europe were disputing his heritage. Himself, his eye
fixed upon the void which he was leaving in his unfortunate
country, was occupied but with repleniâiing it. From the
* This I think completes the proof of what I haye suggested of So-
bieski, and which M. de Salvandy also glosses over without poetic rant.
It needed not a maid of honor, and especially a French one, to take ad-
vantage of such moral imbecility and old age. — TrantlaUn',
420 HI8I0BT OF TTTBKBT.
nûdit of hifl domcstio troubles, his mmd wandered orer the
fdtore of Poland ; and of all the solioitudes that beset his
sool, as he has said a thousand times, these were after all the
most bitter.
The public lamentation which he gave rent to in re-
proaches to the senate of Poland, -& little time before his end,
IS a most eloquent and most pathetic accusation by the
patriotism of this hero against the turbulence of his
countrymen.
" Alas ! '' said Sobieski to the senators unceasingly re-
Tolting agamst him and the country, <**he best knew the
pangs of me soul, who has said that slight grie& love to com-
plain, but that the deep ones are mute. The universe itself
will remain mute, in contemplating us and our councils. It
seems as if nature should be seized with astonishment : this
beneficent mother has endowed every thing that has life with
the instinct of self-coDservation, and given to the meanest
creatures arms for their defence ; we alone in the world turn
ours against ourselves. This instinct has been extinguished
in us, not by some superior force, an inevitable destiny,
but by a voluntary delirium, by our passions, by the yearning
to injure ourselves. Oh ! what will be one day the sad sur-
prise of posterity, to see that, from the pinnacle of so much
fflory, when the name of Poland filled the universe, we have
let our country fall into ruin, fall into it, alas 1 for ever ! For,
as for me, I have been able to gain here and there some
battles ; but I acknowledge myself destitute of all means of
safety. There remains to me but to resign myself, not to
destiny, for I am a Christian, but to the great and powerful
God, as to the future of my cherished country.
^^ It is true that, addressinff me, it has been said that I
had a remedy for the ills of the republic ; it would be that
the king should not divorce himself from liberty and that hé
should restore it. . . . Has it then been suppressed,
senators, that sacred liberty in which I have been bom, in
which I have grown up, which reposed on the faith of my
oath ? and I am not a perjurer. I have devoted to it my
life from my early you<li : the blood of all my kindred has
tau^t me to found my glory upon this devotedness. Let
him who doubts it go visit the tombs of my ancestors ; let
him follow the route which has been opened me by them
towards immortality. He will recognize, by the trace of
their blood, the way to the country of the Tartars and to
HKTOBT Oy TXTRKET. 421
the deserts of Wallachia. He will hear to issue, from- iàe
womb of the earth and from underneath the icy marble,
voices crying : Learn from me that it is fair andpUasani
to die for one^s country. I might invoke the reminiscences
of my father, the glory which he enjoyed of being called
four times to preside over the assemblies in this sanctuary
of our laws, and the name of bucJder of liberty, which he
merited. . . . Trust me, all this tribunitian eloquence
were better employed against those who, by their disorders,
call upon our country the cry of the prophet, which I fancy,
alas ! hearing already ring above our heads : Forty days
more, and Nineveh will be destroyed.
" Your mightinesses, illustrious senators, know that I do
not believe in auguries ; I do not seek for oracles, I put no
faith in dreams. It is not at all oracles, but faith that in-
forms me that the decrees of Providence cannot fail to be
accomplished. The power and the justice of him who rules
the universe, regulate the destiny of states ; and there
where there is impunity in daring all, with the prince still
living, in elevating altar against altar, in seeking foreign
gods under the eye of the true one, there booms already the
coming vengeance of the Most High.
" Senators, in the presence of God, of the world, and of
the whole Eepublic, I protest my respect for liberty; I
promise to maintain it such as I have received it. Nothing
will ever detach me from this sacred deposit, not even
in^atitude, that monster of nature. I will continue to
devote my life to the interests of religion and of the renub-
lie, hoping that Gtod will not refuse his mercies to him who
never refused to give up his life for his people."
The irretrievable loss of Poland was to be the penalty
of its anarchy and its in^titude. Sobieski, who did not
bdieve in augurs, was himc^lf, unknown to him, in those
magnificent reproaches, the living oracle of the ruin of his
country.
XXXIV.
As the climax of reverses, his two sons, fired with a fra-
tricidal ambition, were menacing each other, arms in hand,
under his eyes, and rent in advance the nation into two
(^posite actions. Whilst the faction of the prince Sapieha
enaangoined the diet and overshadowed the very throne in
423 HI8T0BT OF TUSKST.
its oaitttal, SoUeski nw rising in Bossia, under the hand of
Peter the Great, the power iiniieh was one day to devour his
loved Poland. Sickness was devouring himself, aggravated
bj domestic chagrin in the country solitude where he fled
vainly the sight of the .anarchy of aie diet : the queen tor-
tured him on his deathbed by the means of her priests to
wrest from him a designation to the throne of one of her
sons.
*^ This great man," says the bishop who carried to him
the insinuations of the queen, " described to me with sobs
the sufferings of hb body and of his soul ; then, like a man
overcome by grief : * WUl there be no one then,' cried he,
'willing to avenge my death ! You see the overflow of vices,
the contagion of madness in this nation; and can I, who am
not listened to alive, believe that such a people would execute
my posthumous wishes ? '
In fine, resuscitated a moment from a swoon which had
suspended his pains with his consciousness : '^ Alas," said he,
" I was so well in this annihilation of myself ! Wherefore re-
vive to suffering and to life ?" A second swoon was mor-
tal ; he expired as he was bom, in the midst of a storm, the
image of the everlasting storm of his country, bowed, like its
hero, to the convulsions of anarchy.
His widow leagued with the faction of the nobles to op-
pose the election to the throne of his sons, offering her hand to
the more ambitious of them against her own chUdren. 7he
throne escaped at the same time the widow and the sons ;
four thousand electors on horseback, in the plain of Yola,
put in nomination, sabre in hand, two kin^ at the same
time, one the protégé of Austria, the other me candidate of
France, neither of the two a patriot.
The number of the squadrons at last decided the election
in favor of a foreigner, prince Augustus of Saxony, candidate
of Austria and of the Pope. During these tumults, the
body of Sobieski awaited thirty-six years fbr a tomb.
Let us return to Adrianople.
XXXV.
The Sultan, returned to the seraglio of Adrianople, ap-
pointed, after the execution of Kara-Mustapha, Ibrahim-
Pasha grand vizier. The post of caîmakam, which he occu-
pied since the commencement of the war, had prepared him
HI8T0BT OF TUBKEY. 423
for this position. He was a man of integrity and fidelity,
without other ambition than the service of the state, and
matured in administration and in war. The traditions of the
two Kiuperlis revived in him without their genius. Jealousy
towards the enemies of his who were favorites of the Sultan
and of Kara-Mustapha, was his sole vice. He removed all
by either exile or execution. Mahomet IV., who dreaded
above all things the return of anarchy, that scourge of his
early years, left complete power to his grand viziers, even
over his affections. Unity of power was his maxim ; the re-
sponsibility for this power was execution. All the creatures
of Kara-Mustapha fell with him.
XXXVI.
Meanwhile Hungary, left to itself, succumbed, city after
city, to the cannon of the duke of Lorraine and of the
Poles ; Pesth, its capital, capitulated without siege ; Ofen
(Bude) sustained numerous assaults under the command of
the intrepid governor, Kara-Mohammed; hb hand mutilated
by a bullet, at the head of his artillerymen, he did not cease
to command the defenders of Ofen. Reclined upon a hand-
cart at the gate of his seraglio, he was directing the defence,
when a bomb bursting near him, tore away his bowels. He
convoked around his dying bed all the generals, and bequeathed
in their presence with a Srm. voice, before expiring, the com-
mand to the most worthy, Ibrahim-Pasha.
" Ibrahim," according to the historian Raschid, " animated
with such fanaticism his ten thousand warriors, that they
decapitated thousands of Christians, suspended their gleam-
ing sabres to the stars of heaven, and that the an^ls who
sustain the throne of the Eternal applauded from the height
of the firmament the exploits of the garrison of Ofen."
This fortress proved the shoal of the Imperialists. They
raised the siege of Ofen, while Sobieski himself was con-
strained, after sixty days' enthralment, to raise the siege of
Kaminieok before the army of Souleïman-Pasha, vanquisher
of the Poles at BabataghL
XXXVII.
The Venetians, immovable hitherto durinç the undecided
oampaign of Vienna, availed themselves at last of the vio-
42^ HI0TOBT OF TUBKST.
tories of Sobioski to declare war agûnst Turkey. It was
Turkey that had attacked the r^ablic. The hour of reprisal
a{^[>eared propitious to the senate of Venice. Their squad*
rons took possession of the seren islands of the Adnatio,
effected deWkations on the continent o( Albania, and
menaced the Archipehuro.
A favorite of we Saltan, Mustapha, become captain-
pasha, confined himself to keeping the sea before the Vene'
tian fleet between Rhodes and Chio, and carrying off two of
its galleys. Eighty thousand men were collected at the
Mme time at Selgrade to succor the cities of Hungary,
which Tekeli was still defending against the Grermans.
Three Ottoman armies were thus K>rmed at once under the
energetic impulse of the new yisier, one destined to drive
back the Venetians in Dalmatia, another to reconquer Hun-
gary from the duke of Lorraine, the third to meet the Poles,
should the negotiations opened for peace at Warsaw not re-
sult in disarming the king of Poland.
XXXVIII.
Peter Valiero, general of the troops of the republic, had
easily insurreoted against the Turks the descendants of the
ancient Spartans, the heroic populations of Maina and of the
mountains of Chimera : those Christian communities of the
Morea, of Albania and of Dalmatia, were always condemned
to change of masters. The almost civil wars of those moun«
tains, between divided populations, were confined to sieges of
castles and surprises of places, wherein no one could attribute
to himself the victory.
In Hungary the Imperialists, tardily embodied to the
number of seventy-five thousand comlwtants, under the
duke of Lorraine, under count de Leslie and under mar-
shal SchuelK, enveloped, by deploying, the whole Hungarian
territory, as if to sweep away in a single campaign the last
remnants of the Turkiâi armie&
'^ I see that there is no more luck to be ezp^ted against
the Christians,'^ cried in consoling, himself with death the
ferocious Hassan, begler-beg and governor of Newhoesel.
This city was laid siege to by the duke of Lorraine while
Ibrahim-Pasha was besieging with eighty thousand men
the city of Gran, the pivot of the Ottomans in Hungary,
c<mquered the year precedii^ by SobieskL Atta^ed in lus
mSTOBT OF TITBKST. 425
camp, before Gran, by tbe troops of tbe dnke of Jjorraine,
Ibrahim abandoned the siege and retired, leaving behind a
thousand six-ox wagons laden with prorisions and muni-
tions.
The duke of Lorraine, returning after this triumph to
Neuhoesel, carried the place by storm the 19th August,
1685. Without perceiving the white flag hoisted by the
Turks upon the towers in token of surrender, the Germans
slaughtered them to the number of four thousand, and
planted the head of the pasha on the gate of Vienna. The
Mahometan women and children were sold as slaves to the
officers of the Christian army. Count Leslie subdued,
burned and massacred in like manner Croatia.
These disasters, attributed by the grand vizier to the in-
fidelity and remissness of Tekeli, tributary king of upper
Hungary, determined him to punish in thb adventurer the
blunders of the Ottoman generals. Tekeli, invited to a
conference by the pasha of Wardein, was abducted in the
interview from the seven thousand cavalry with- which he
took care to have himself accompanied, and led in chains to
Constantinople. The rest of his life was but an alternation
of hopes ana of deceptions, of liberty and of servitude. He
ended his days in a farm of the environs of Nicomedia,
where the Turks his allies gave him bread instead of a
kingdom.
XXXIX,
The change of vizier made no change of fortune. Bude,
the queen of the Danube, returned for ever, in 1686, under
the dominion of Austria ; Siklos was carried by storm, Es-
sek burned with its bridge of five miles on the Drave,
which had so ofbenpoured Asia upon Europe. Szegedin was
the last city of Hungary recovered by the Germans. A
triple alliance of the Germanic empire, of Poland and of
Kussia, raised against the Turks, on the north and on the
west, a barrier which was soon after to be narrowed upon
them. The Russian prince, Basil Galitzin, invaded the
Crimea while Sobieski was ravaging Moldavia. Perecop
alone, defended valiantly by the Tartars, saved this time the
Crimea from the invasion of tiie Kussians.
The murmurs of the empire, which felt itself dying, pur-
sued Mahomet lY. to the depths of the forests of Adrian-
426 moroBT or tubkst.
ople and of Macedon^ wWe his growing passion for the chase
made hjm forget Hungary and the Crimea. Religion pro*
tested no leas than national honor against reverses ascribed
by the oolemas to the remissness of aie head of the faithfnL
A patriotic revolution was nimbling in the barracks, in the
oafés, and above all in the mosqnes of Constantinople. The
mnfti, questioned bj the oulemas, rendered of himself a fetwa,
wherein the religious liberty of reproach but ill concealed the
seditious spirit.
Mahomet, attentive to those first symptoms of returning
revolt, hastened at last back to Constantinople, deposed the
mufbi, and charged him with reason of having been the first
mover of the campaign of Yienna, which he now condemned
to gratify the multitude. He appointed caïamakam the
son of the last of the Kiuperlis, a man worthy of the name
by both his talents and his virtues. The wisdom of this
third Kiuperli appeased for a moment, by energetic and
judicious measures, the public discontent
The temerity of the grand viiier, Souleïman-Pasha, who
had just crossed the Danube with his discouraged soldiers, and
conducted them to a new defeat and to a fresh flight, destroyed
in a day all the effect of the measures of Kiuperli. Hun-
gary, renouncing for ever the Turkish alliance, had just, in the
congress of Presburg, declared the kingdom hereditary in
the house of Austria. This vast dismemberment of a state
which the Turks regarded for two centuries back as an in-
tegral portion of their own monarchy, struck the people with
consternation, the army with fury. The grand vizier, Souleï-
man, assailed by the Janissaries in his tents, was obliged to
escape by night from the camp to avoid death. Siawousch-
Pasha, hitherto subaltern, was proclaimed, the next day,
grand vizier by the revolted soldiers.
XL.
Mahomet IV., incapable of opposing to them another
army and a people who on the contrary called them its
avengers, hastened to send Siawousch the seals of the empire,
borrowing thus from sedition, the sole resource of the weak,
the means of suppressing sedition. Siawousch-Pasha re-
ceived the title of grand vizier at Adrianople ; flattered with
the title and satisfied with his fortune, he wished to check
at Adrianople the movement which he favored at Belgrade.
HISTOBT OF TURKEY. 42*7
Their insubordination submerged him, the clamors of the
army compelled him to march upon the capital The Sul-
tan awaited him as a savior. Siawousch tried, in fact, to
change his part, and to save the throne to a sovereign of
whom he had sapped the authority.
The people and the oulemas did not ratify this usual
pact between revolt and ambition. A spontaneous assembly
of the clergy, of the heads of the army, of the oulemas, the
sheiks and the most popular magistrates, convened of itself
in the mosque of the Janissaries, to deliberate on the safety
of the monarchy. The caïmakam Kiuperli dared to appear
there, shielded by the respect which his patriotism and his
popularity added to the name. He pleaded eloquently for
the life and the misfortune of Mahomet IV. : " He deserved
to descend from the throne for his weakness and his re-
verses," said he ; " but you would dishonor yourselves for
ever in condemning to death the sovereign whom God alone
has the right to judge."
Before entering the mosque to protect the life of his
master, the prudent Kiuperli, foreseeing the murder of the
brothers and the sons of the Sultan by this prince, so often
tempted to accomplish it, had gone to the seradio and taken
off the brothers and the sons from the eunuchs, to confide
them, in his own palace, to the care of upright Mussulmans.
This prudence of the caïmakam alone preserved, in fact, those
princes from death. Mahomet lY. had them searched for
vainly to make them hostages or victims of his safety.
Mahomet lY., on receiving the sentence of his deposition
from the lips of the delegates of the people, bowed without
a murmur to fetality. " May my head alone," said he,
" bear the burthen of the divine wrath so justly excited by
the infidelities of the Mussulmans. Go, say to Souleïman,
my brother, that God declares his will through the cry of the
people, and that it is his to govern henceforth the empire."
After these words he buried himself for ever in the
secluded apartments of the seraglio, to languish there until
death, and to dream in the dark of one of those sudden re-
turns of popular versatility of which he had been a witness
in his boyhood, which plunge from the throne into the prison,
and hoist firom the prison to the throne.
428 HI8T0BT OF TUBKXT.
XLI.
The enyojs of the mosque presented themselyes, followed
by the mnltitade, in the retreat where Kiuperli had hid the
princes from death.
" What do you want with me, and why come to trouble
my repose ? " said to them the brother of Mahomet lY.,
Souletman, of whom the prison had for so many years
tamed all the thoughts to heaven ; " nature has given to my
brother the right to govern you, and to me she has given
birth but to meditate in the shade and in silence eternal
truths."
" The cry of the people is the oracle of heaven, prince,"
replied one of the orators ; " it would be a crime against the
wul of God not to submit yourself to the will of the Otto-
mans."
Accustomed to the ascetic privations of the life of a der-
vish, Soulelman or Soliman III. mounted tremblingly the
throne which was prepared for him. But scarcely was he
seated than he instantly descended, as if he had been sullied
by the contact of a thing forbidden, and threw himself on
his knees to make ablutions and prayers. Reassured a little
by the throng of dignitaries, of chiefs and of soldiers, all
prostrated with the people at the foot of the throne whereon
they forced him to resume his seat, he looked with anxiety
on all sides of the hall to see if the unexpected coronation
was not a snare, and if his brother was not coming to punish
him for having yielded to the acclamations of the seditious.
XLn.
The army present at Constantinople commanded to give
forthwith the seals of the empire to Siawousch-Pasha, the.
chief of the revolts. Siawousch, to conciliate the civil mag-
istrates of the capital, tried to refuse the Janissaries and the
troops the presents usual at the accession of new Sultans,
and to remove successively from the capital the accomplices
of the military sedition; but he who owed the supreme
power to their indiscipline, had no right to refuse any thing
to the avidity of the soldiers. Besieged in his palace by the
Janissaries, he defended himself vainly like a lion ; pursued
from chamber to chamber by the frantic hordes of assassins,
HI^OBY OF TUBKBT. 429
sixteen Janissaries fell dead at his feet before ho died him-
self upon this heap of corpses.
For the first time since the great émeutes of the Prae-
torians of Constantinople, the soldiers, violating the sacred
threshold of the harem of the grand vizier, outraged the
wife of their victim ; they stripped her of her clothes, and
exposed her naked to the sacrilegious eyes of their com-
panions ; they cut the ears off the eldest of her two daughters
to get the diamond rings, and sold the youn^r in the slave
market for six piasters. Kudiing thence, with their hands
covered with blood and full of plunder through the city,
they sacked the houses and massacred the servants of all the
functionaries of Siawousch.
Constantinople resembled for some hours a city stormed
by a horde of barbarians. The oulemas alarmed rallied in
body around the caïmakam Kiuperli, before the gate of the
seraglio, where the new Sultan, without a vizier and without
an army, was trembling at the noise of the tumult, and
unfolding the standard of the Prophet, they called from
the top M the minaret all good Mussulmans to the aid of the
country, the throne and the laws. The Janissaries, intimi-
dated by this reprobation of their crime, disavowed the
assassins of Siawousch, and came to range themselves before
the palace of their new master. Their aga, Ismael-Pasha, was
elevated, for some days, to the rank of grand vizier ; he made
himself without transition the executioner of his accomplices,
and his nocturnal executions covered with bodies, drowned
by his orders, the beach of the Bosphorus.
XLHI.
The disasters of the frontiers responded like so many
echoes to the convulsions of the capital: Belgrade itself
capitulated after a long siege, and delivered to the duke of
Bavaria this bulwark of eastern Turkey. The Venetians, un-
der Morisini, conquered Dalmatia and besieged Negropont;
the court of Vienna was calculating on the acquisition of all the
dismemberments of the Turkish empire; it demanded nothing
less, as the price of peace, than entire Hungary, Sclavonia,
Croatia, Bosnia, Servia, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia,
half of Tartary, devolved by victory to the Poles, in fine
Greece with its dependencies for Venice, already mistress ci
the Peloponnesus. This empire seemed thus to crumble as
430 HI8T0BT or TtJBKST.
n^idl J as it was founded France alone remained an all j
to the Porte, and raised one hundred thousand men to fight
in Oermanj the enemies of Soliman III.
XLIV.
Mourning and tears besloomed no less the harem than
the empire. The sons and the &yorites of Mahomet lY.,
dethroned, were either exiled into the depths of Egypt and of
Arahia or confined in the " Birds' Cage," a sepulchral kiosk
of the gardens of the seraglio. The mvorite Sultana, Behia
OulmiSi, the absolute mistress of the heart and the senses
of Mahomet, was for ever separated from him, and shut up
in the old seraglio, the abcKle of dismces and of tears.
This Greek girl of the island of Crete had preserved all the
beauty, all the energy, and all the attractions which had
made her, from her childhood, the arbiter of the reign.
The delicacy of her lineaments, the brilliancy of her com-
plexion, the ocean aiure of her eyes, the ffolden auburn of
her hair, the caressing tone of her voice and the witihery of
her wit, made her be dreaded still as the «prison companion
of a fallen monarch, of whom she might arouse the languor
and re-establish the intrigues from the depth of his captiv-
ity.
The new Sultan, Spliman III., brother of Mahomet lY.,
of whom she had contributed to save the life during the
preceding rei^, had no injury to avenge upon her. or her
sons. Pious in spirit, humble of heart, clement by char-
acter, he himself lamented the political rigors which the
Janissaries imposed upon him. Come to the age of forty-five
without having seen the world otherwise than through the
bars of a kiosk, his severe and meditative exterior, his tawny
complexion, his ascetic meagreness, his simple and chaste
manners, his habits of meditation and prayer, his devotion to
the faith, announced in him an austere and reformatory
sovereign, who would retemper in religion the corrupted
patriotism of the empire, and who needed but a great min-
ister to reproduce a great reign.
Placed on the throne by a military revolution which he
detested while enduring it, he felt secretly, like his people,
that generous indignation against the tyranny of the army,
which is the ordinary and fatal punishment of conquering
nations: they expiate by their own enslavement to the
HISTORY OF TURKEY. 431
caprices of a soldiery the servitude wbicli they imposed by
means of that soldiery on the conquered nations. It is the
retaliation of nations. The army, an instrument of their
injustice, becomes, with justice, the instrument, of their
servitude ; logic is the vengeance of God.
END OF THB THIBD YOLUMB.
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