THE Empire which Selim II inherited from his father extended from the Atlas to the Caucasus, from the Carpathians to the Nile, and among his subjects were counted Greeks and Armenians, Bulgars, Serbs, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Herzegovinians, Vlachs and Albanians, Romanies and the wandering Tsigani, Arabs, Kurds and Chaldeans, Turkomans and Magyars in the conquered provinces of Hungary, Germans in Transylvania, Copts of Egypt, and Jews of Palestine, or exiled from the Iberian peninsula. The corps of Janissaries had been raised to 20,000, the paid standing army numbered 48,000, with 200,000 irregular auxiliaries, and the fleet mustered 300 warships. The Ottoman Army was first in the world, and Christian monarchs of the West acknowledged the supremacy of the Caliph who sat in the seat of Constantine. The reign of Solyman marked the highest rise of Ottoman power; the decline began with Selim, his and Roxalana’s son.

Whereas the reign of every Sultan preceding Selim had been impressed with the ruler’s personality, the only quality to which a Turk is capable of responding, the rule of Selim showed no such strengthening influence. His mother, Roxalana, was all-powerful, but her bloody intrigues led to many dissensions in the harem, and these reacted on the life of the nation. In order to pursue a course of conquest in Asia, Selim called an armistice with Emperor Maximilian, and turned his attention towards Astrachan. Here he came into conflict with the Tsars of Muscovy, who, having freed themselves from Tartar domination, gave wing to their ambition, and even in those early days pretended to the throne of Constantine, for Ivan III had married Sophia, last Princess of the Greek imperial family, and had taken the two-headed eagle of Byzant as his cognizance. The Porte was powerless against Ivan the Terrible, who annexed Astrachan, and induced the Don Cossacks to join him, under their Hetman, Yermak, the man who added Siberia to the possessions of the Tsar.

The Sultan did not take the field in person, did not even concern himself with the government of his reign, so Sokoli, his Grand Vizier, guided the ship of state, and led campaigns which were by no means successful, for the Arabs prevented the execution of a plan to pierce a canal joining Mediterranean and Red Sea at Suez. The Turks were more fortunate at sea, where Sala Mustapha roved at large, reducing Cyprus with unheard-of cruelties. A similar spirit informed Russian conquest at this period. About this time Ivan the Cruel took Wittenstein, and had the captive Finns hewn in pieces, their leader roasted alive on a spear.

The horrors of the capture of Cyprus roused all the Christian rulers by the Mediterranean Sea to fury; a large fleet was collected by Don Juan of Austria, son of Charles V, and Margarete Blumberg, the frail, fair lady of Ratisbon. Marco Colonna brought a fleet found by the Pope; Spain, Malta, and Savoy sent their galleons, the Venetians joined with one hundred and eight galleys and six galliases, under Admiral Veniero, a naval crusade, as it were. There were great names among these crusaders, the Prince of Parma, Caraccioli, the Marquis of Santa Croce, Andrea Doria, and Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. The hostile fleets met off Lepanto and engaged in a furious battle, which resulted in a complete victory for the Christian Allies; thirty thousand Turks were slain, fifteen thousand of their Christian slaves rescued from the galleys, and of the stately Ottoman fleet only forty vessels, under OuloudjÉ, made good their escape. But the victory of Lepanto was wasted, was not followed up, for though the Western nations might win battles, yet were they not equal to the Turks in the long run.

Selim II died drunk, and was succeeded by Amurath III, who reigned from 1574-1595. A weak, dissolute ruler, he inaugurated his rule with customary fratricide; he had five brothers, whom he thought fit to remove out of the way of temptation to usurp the throne. The weakness of this Sultan affected the spirit of his armies, which fought with only partial success in Persia, while Amurath led a life of pleasure. He was swayed chiefly by his favourite Sultana, SafiyÉ, a Venetian lady of the noble House of Baffo, who had been captured by the Corsairs when young and presented to the Sultan. Yet, though the power of the Ottoman Empire was declining, it was still considered the most formidable in Europe, and Western monarchs did not hesitate to ask assistance of the Sultan.

Even from distant England came ambassadors on such missions, urging Amurath to aid Queen Elizabeth against Spain; but help was not forthcoming. The Porte gained further feeling with the West by entering into commercial relations with other countries, and, moreover, treated them in no illiberal spirit. But corruption had set in among the armed forces of the Empire; commands and places were sold, and even the Sultan took his share of the profits. Corruption led to all manner of abuses, and these caused discontent; the Janissaries mutinied, and brought about the fall of a Grand Vizier; garrisons whose pay was far in arrears revolted at Pesth and Tabriz, the Druses of Lebanon began a series of insurrections which continued into recent times, and trouble arose among the peoples of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia.

In the midst of all these happenings weak Amurath sickened and died, having done nothing for his country but to leave behind him twenty sons and twenty-seven daughters of the hundred and three children he begat. This gave his eldest son and successor, Mohammed III, a great deal to do before he could gird on securely the sword of Othman; he killed all his brothers, and seven female slaves in the condition called “Guter Hoffnung” by the Germans were sewn into sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus. Mohammed was also the last of the Imperial Princes to be trusted with the governorship of a province; from his time on all scions of the House of Othman were kept in rigorous seclusion, leaving it for the grave or the throne as fate might decide. This Sultan also preferred a life of ease to the hardships of campaigning, and amidst the pleasures of the Seraglio, where his mother, SafiyÉ Sultana ValidÉ, reigned supreme, let the misfortunes that befell the Ottoman armies pass unheeded. Archduke Maximilian and Count Palffy, assisted by revolted Danube Princes, retook one strong place after another. Gran fell, and Visegrad, Ibrail (Braila), Rustchuk, and other cities on the Danube, till Grand Vizier Sead-ed-din insisted on the appearance of his imperial master in the field.

The Sultan was with difficulty persuaded, but at last he displayed the sacred standard of the Prophet before his troops, and rekindled their martial ardour. His first battle was fought at Cerestes, and lasted three days, which the Sultan considered too long, for when on the third day the Christian forces seemed victorious, Mohammed, who was watching the fray from the back of a camel, thought it time to retire, and prepared to lead a rapid retreat. However, at the critical moment Cicala Pasha brought up some fresh irregular cavalry, and their impetuous charge broke the thinned ranks of the Christians. Probably for the first time in the history of Ottoman arms a number of troops, some thirty thousand Asiatics, broke and fled during this battle. They were pursued, and those who were captured suffered severe punishment at the hands of Cicala. Others escaped to Asia Minor, where they raised the banner of revolt, which distressed the remaining years of Mohammed’s reign. In the meantime the war dragged on with varying success in Hungary, till both sides grew tired, and agreed to the Peace of Sitvatorok, by which Transylvania was practically lost to Turkey.

The prestige of Ottoman power had been steadily sinking under Mohammed III, and its decline would have been more marked but for the dissensions and disturbances all over Europe. The German States were taking up arms against each other in the name of religion, Spain was declining rapidly since Philip II died, and Russia was rent by revolts. So the ill-success of Turkish arms during the reign of Achmet I, an imbecile, the revolts in Asia Minor, and the constant military mutinies, passed unnoticed by those sovereigns who might have been advantaged by the weakness of the Porte. The only really important event in the reign of Achmet I was the introduction of tobacco, the natural concomitant to coffee, with which the Turks became acquainted under Solyman the Great.

On Mustapha’s short reign of three months followed the unhappy time of the second Othman, who lacked all the good qualities of his great namesake. His chief pastime was archery, using prisoners of war, even his own pages, as targets, but for actual warfare he cared nothing, and entered into a very disadvantageous peace with Persia. His Janissaries grumbled at their sovereign’s inertia, so to please them, and probably to bleed them a little, he engaged in war with Poland, which, proving disastrous, made the Sultan very unpopular. His disgusted soldiery therefore took him to Yedi KoulÉ, kept him there for some time a prisoner, and finally strangled him.

The Dardanelles Turkish warships, cleared for action, lying in wait for the Greek fleet.
The Dardanelles
Turkish warships, cleared for action, lying in wait for the Greek fleet.

Semendria A Roman stronghold in Servia on the Danube, for long a Turkish fortress.
Semendria
A Roman stronghold in Servia on the Danube, for long a Turkish fortress.

Palace and harem intrigues brought about such an impossible state of affairs in the country that even the army, generally ready to profit by confusion, became alarmed for the welfare of the Empire. The steps they took proved disastrous to themselves in the end. They placed Amurath, brother of Othman II, a child of eleven, on the throne, and then proceeded to govern the country under their own leaders and in their own interests. Western Europe was becoming more and more aware of the decline of Ottoman power in Europe, and there were not wanting prophets who foretold the speedy dissolution of the Turkish Empire, among these Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from James I, who bemoaned the misery, anarchy, and general decay, as evident in 1622. A wise woman, his mother, Sultana Mahpeiker, guided Amurath IV through the troubled days of his childhood, and brought up a Sultan endowed with vigour of body and mind to man’s estate. The first acts of his reign, the swift and secret killing of the rebel leaders, cowed the soldiery into submission. Amurath punished with death right and left, and even the Chief Mufti’s head went to the executioner for the bad state of the roads over which his sovereign chose to travel. Amurath led his armies to war as former Sultans had been wont to do, and brought them back victorious, for Persia had been badly beaten and Bagdad retaken. The story is told of how at the siege of that city a Persian giant threw down the gauntlet to the Turkish army, how Amurath took it up, and in single combat clove the giant’s skull to the chin with his sabre. The Persian garrison of thirty thousand was slaughtered, three hundred only making their escape. So Amurath returned to Constantinople, to enter the City in triumph at the head of his troops, and no Sultan has done so since that time.

But Amurath broke the laws of the Prophet and drank wine. A story tells how the Sultan took the first step on the forbidden road. He was walking in the streets of his capital one night, when Mustapha, the drunkard, rolled up against him, and expressed no particular regret at bumping into his sovereign, in fact, was much too happy to dream of offering apologies to any monarch. He was summoned to the Court next day, and arrived there with his bottle: “Here is the liquid gold which outweighs all the treasures of the universe, which makes a beggar more glorious than a king, and turns the mendicant fakir into a horned Alexander.” So spake Mustapha, offering his flask to Amurath, who drained it on the spot, and thus became a total non-abstainer.

Mustapha remained about the palace as Amurath’s boon companion, and their convivial evenings may have hastened the Sultan’s end; he was only thirty-eight when sickness overtook him so suddenly that he had hardly time to order the execution of his brother Ibrahim, by way of settling up the affairs of state, and receive a message that the sentence had been carried out, before he died.

Nevertheless Ibrahim came to the throne, and reigned from 1640-1648, for the Sultana’s message to Amurath IV, bringing news of his brother’s execution, was strictly untrue, and by this conventional lie, as one might describe it considering the etiquette of the time, a Sultan, rapacious, mean, bloodthirsty, and a coward, rose to the dignity of the Caliphate, became God’s Shadow on Earth, and was girded with the sword of Othman. The harem was subject to Ibrahim’s most serious consideration, and therefore insisted too much on its power; so when Kara Mustapha, the Grand Vizier, forgot to order firewood on the requisition of the dear little ladies who made the Sultan’s life so bright and happy, he was arraigned on a capital charge. No matter that foreign politics engrossed the attention of the Grand Vizier, no matter that provinces won by the sword of Othman were drifting into other hands, no matter that the Treasury was empty—the ladies of the Seraglio had complained, and the Grand Vizier must suffer; so the executioner removed the only man who realized the needs of Turkey and strove to mend matters. To turn a dishonest penny for himself and his household expenses the Sultan sold high offices in the State, the Army, and the Navy, but when disaster attended Ottoman arms in their war against Venice, the Army became exasperated, deposed the Sultan, killed him, and set his infant son, Mohammed IV, a child of seven, upon the seat of the CÆsars and Sultans.

Fortunately the new Sultan’s mother had the great gift of finding the right man for the right place, the gift which enabled King William of Prussia, first German Emperor, to discover Bismarck, Moltke, and other great men who brought ruin to one Empire to give birth to another. The Sultana ValidÉ called Mohammed KiÜprilÜ, then Governor of Jerusalem and Vizier of State, to be Grand Vizier, and thus started a dynasty of Grand Viziers which devoted great talents and energy to the saving of Ottoman power in the world. Mohammed, the new Grand Vizier, was grandson of an Albanian who had migrated to Asia Minor and settled at KiÜpri. He was probably a convert to Islam for purposes of advancement, a usual occurrence in those days. Mohammed KiÜprilÜ entered the service of the Grand Vizier Khosren as kitchen-boy, rose to be cook, then Steward of the Household, was promoted Master of the Horse, then became Governor of Damascus, Tripoli, and Jerusalem, when the Sultana discovered him to the saving of Turkey.

Mohammed KiÜprilÜ set about his new duties with vigour and impartiality. There was much clearing-up at home; the Greek Patriarch had written to the Voivode of Wallachia prophesying that Christianity would soon replace falling Islam in the Ottoman possessions in Europe. His Holiness was hanged over his own gateway. The Grand Vizier spared no creed, no race, and thirty-six thousand persons suffered death in various forms during the first five years of the new order; Soulfikar, Chief Executioner of Constantinople, accounted for at least four thousand, strangled by his own hand and thrown into the Bosphorus. By these measures order was restored, then the navy was rebuilt, the army refitted, and Ottoman prestige rose again with the reconquest of several lost provinces.

Another thoroughly efficient KiÜprilÜ, Achmet, followed his father in the Grand Vizierate, and led an army of 120,000 men, 120 field-guns, 12 heavy siege-guns, 6000 camels, and 10,000 mules, to Hungary, while Sultan Mohammed stayed behind at Adrianople indulging in his only pastime, the chase. The Ottoman army overran all Hungary and Transylvania, spreading devastation, until it finally halted on the banks of the Raab. Here, near the Monastery of St. Gothardt, East and West met in battle again. Many years had passed since their last encounter; in the meantime the West had progressed slowly, surely. German pikemen and musketeers offered solid, organized resistance, and kept the fiery irregular Akindji at bay; the cuirassiers of the West, heavy, steel-clad cavalry, riding in serried ranks, knee to knee, ploughed through the masses of Turkish foot-folk, and then, unlike their knightly predecessors, were by discipline enabled to rally and move to further deeds of valour. Against this, the Turkish army of that day had lost some of its old enthusiasm and had learnt nothing new. So at St. Gothardt, as at Kirk Kilisse, we find the West, high-purposed, highly trained and disciplined, opposed to the East, trading on a military tradition, unprepared, corrupt, inefficient, ill-disciplined—and with the same results. The battle of St. Gothardt-on-Raab was the first great defeat inflicted on the East by the West; 10,000 Turks were slain, 15 guns, 40 standards captured. A discomfited army returned to Constantinople after a twenty years’ truce had been arranged with Austria, and sought relief, and possibly found it, in expeditions elsewhere; Candia was taken after a vain blockade and siege of twenty years.

The Sultan was induced to accompany his army on the campaign against Poland in 1672, and gained some victories: Kaminec and Lemberg were taken, Podolia and Ukraine added to Turkey, and a tribute of two hundred and twenty thousand ducats was imposed on the conquered territory. But Sobieski and his Polish nobles combined against the Turks, routing them with great slaughter at Lemberg in 1675, though leaving matters much as they had been.

On the death of Achmet KiÜprilÜ matters went from bad to worse, the Turks being defeated in the Ukraine by Russia; nevertheless a great effort was made to carry war into Austria, and an army of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men set out under Kara Mustapha, the new Grand Vizier, to besiege Vienna once more. Count Stahremberg and his garrison of eleven thousand men stoutly resisted the assaults delivered by the Turkish troops, who devoted all their energies to the attack, neglecting the defence of their own scattered encampments. This made Sobieski’s task the easier when his army swooped down from the heights around Vienna. The Turks were totally routed, and driven in headlong flight before the armies of the West. Kara Mustapha was executed at Belgrade to expiate the general inefficiency of the army, which was thereupon beaten again in a renewed attempt on Hungary, at Mohacz; this battle freed the Magyars from the domination of the Sublime Porte. Turkey’s misfortunes emboldened Venice to make reprisals on outlying posts of the Empire, and as Turkish naval power had declined in keeping with the efficiency of the land army, disaster after disaster exasperated the unruly soldiery, and they took to their favourite expedient of dethroning the Sultan.

During the reign of Mohammed IV the status of the Janissaries was altered; no more Christian children were added to the corps, only the offspring of former Janissaries, and an ever-increasing number of Turks and other Moslems, in quest of the many civil as well as military posts, often given to this body.

Another Solyman, second of the name, followed Mohammed IV, and he was followed by Achmet II (1691-1695). Both sovereigns enjoyed the services of a KiÜprilÜ as Grand Vizier, for KiÜprilÜ ZadÉ Mustapha held that high office during both reigns; but the Ottoman power had been much enfeebled by disastrous wars and inner dissensions; moreover, it had to contend against one of the world’s greatest soldiers, “Prinz Eugen, der Edle Ritter.” He scattered the Ottoman armies like chaff before the wind at Peterwardein and Belgrade, and again at Slankamen, in Achmet’s reign, at which place, where the Theiss and Danube meet in a broad expanse of water, the Turkish river fleet won a partial success, which was negatived by a sore defeat on land. KiÜprilÜ was killed, and the Turks were driven from Hungary. Transylvania, too, was lost when Tekeli was beaten by the Imperialists; but yet subtler, more insidious enemies preyed upon the nation, famine and pestilence, and to all these troubles Nature contributed a devastating earthquake. These things came upon Sultan Achmet during the four years of his reign, and sent him broken-hearted to the grave.

The Western nations had emerged out of their sea of troubles when Achmet II died in 1695. The German Empire had entered on a lengthy period of peace after distracting wars, and the gentler arts of peace revived. But the wars had consolidated the military power of the Empire, the impetuous chivalry of knights took the ordered form of discipline without losing its martial spirit, and Western brains advanced rapidly along the path of progress in all directions.

In the meantime, Turkey had learnt nothing new, and was falling behind. The art of war was neglected, other arts there were none; and while in England immortal Milton’s pen added to the world’s literary treasures, while France was listening to Corneille’s sonorous verses, and Algernon Sidney was discoursing concerning government, the power of the Osmanli was sinking into the ruin of corruption, the Empire built up by warlike Sultans was passing out of the hands of those who could not add to the conquests of war by the arts of peace, into the hands of those who were inspired with the spirit of a new era.