CHAPTER XII HALCYON DAYS

The Plague over, Sir John resumed his quiet life at Pera; and for the space of a twelvemonth we find him resting on his laurels and garnering the fruits of his labour complacently.

He had, indeed, much cause for complacency. Our Levant Trade flourished as never before, and the Constantinople Factors were guilty of no exaggeration when they told the Ambassador that it was twice, if not thrice, bigger than the trade of all other European nations put together. Sir John took the keenest interest in this progress and foresaw even greater development at the expense of our rivals, if only we would sell on credit, as they did, and if we could keep the privileges secured by the new Capitulations in force. As to the first point, the Ambassador’s exhortations fell on deaf ears. The Levant Company had a rooted objection to the credit system, being on the contrary persuaded that the growth of their business was due to the prohibition of “Trusting” which they had enacted a few years before.[173]

Nor did the home authorities sufficiently appreciate the Ambassador’s services with regard to the Capitulations. As so often happens, the giver and the recipient differed widely about the value of the gift. Indeed, the Levant Company’s attitude in this matter was so ungracious and ungrateful that Sir John, stung to the quick, wrote to the Secretary of State: “Lett them make the Service as mean as they please now they are in possession of it; were the new Articles I obtaind, to be again procurd’, I very well know at what rate they would be content to purchase them. Neither in the estimate of their advantage which I sent your Honour, did I write any thing more, then what fell from the Merchants mouths here, before I had obtaind them. But it may be tis esteemd’ by some a good Method, to depretiate that Merit, which being ownd’; would become an obligation, and begett the incumbence of an acknowledgment.”[174] Like others before him, and after him, Sir John had to learn the lesson that “He who serves a community must secure a reward by his own means, or expect it from God.”[175]

Particularly hurt was our Ambassador by the total lack of enthusiasm which both the Merchants and the King showed on the Article of the figs. The former made no haste to avail themselves of the concession, and their indifference filled Sir John with the fear lest the privilege should lapse through disuse. The latter did not, as he expected, write to the Grand Signor and Vizir to thank them for the favour conferred upon his kitchen. After waiting long and in vain, Sir John felt constrained to urge his Majesty to rectify the omission, though late, “as having tasted and bin pleasd’ with some of that fruit.” It was clear that people at home did not care a fig for Smyrna figs. They were wrong; for, under the “two ships lading” figment, the English were able as time went on to export vast quantities of dried fruit from Smyrna—and housewives yet unborn would have blessed the name of their benefactor, if they knew it.[176]

However, happily for his peace of mind, it was some time before Sir John heard of this ingratitude; and meanwhile he did everything to ensure the execution of the Articles he had obtained at the cost of so much hardship and hazard. The task presented some difficulties; for, though the Grand Vizir granted the Commands which the Ambassador asked readily enough, the local officials evinced the strongest disinclination to part with any profit to which they had been used. A test case was offered by the Chief Customer of Constantinople, who, on the arrival of the first English ship, detained five bales of cloth—the duty in kind which he had been in the habit of levying under the old Capitulations. Finch immediately sent his Dragoman with the new Capitulations and required Hussein Aga to restore the goods at his peril. The Customer complied, but, at the same time, got the Vizir’s Kehayah to write to the Ambassador complaining that the English merchants were trying to defraud the Grand Signor. Sir John’s reply was that his good friend the Kehayah was misinformed: the merchants were not to blame, for they acted by his own order. To the Customer also he declared that if any English merchants should dare, directly or indirectly, pay for any cloth one asper more than the sum specified in the new Capitulations, he would imprison them, adding that for what he did he had the Grand Signor’s oath and hand, and if the Customer engaged in a dispute on that point, either he or the Ambassador must sink. This peremptory message made Hussein Aga submit to the new dispensation. Sir John, however, did not rest satisfied with his victory: to prevent any “after claps,” he exacted from the Customer a letter to the Kehayah formally acknowledging the justice of our proceedings, and this letter he caused to be registered by the Cadi as well as in his own Cancellaria. The effect of his action appeared when, on the arrival at Constantinople of two more ships, the goods passed through the Custom-House without the least controversy. At Aleppo he met with similar opposition and overcame it with equal success. And all this without any bakshish, except a few judiciously distributed bottles of Canary, “which the Grandees at Court baptize by the name of English sherbett.” In the same way, every other question relating to commerce was settled as it arose by means of Imperial Commands, so that in a year’s time the New Articles were firmly established over the Empire.

Not a little of this success was due to the happy termination of our Tripolitan enterprise, which “has given great reputation and terrour to His Majesty’s arms in this Court.” While Finch was negotiating at Adrianople, Narbrough had been capturing or destroying pirate galleys; and, on January 14th, 1676, the boats of his squadron had even forced their way into the port of Tripoli and there burnt four men-of-war. The upshot of these bold operations was a Peace by which the Dey agreed to release all English captives, to pay an indemnity, and to grant a number of commercial privileges. The Ambassador made the most of our triumph. As soon as he received from the Admiral the terms of the Treaty, he sent his Dragoman to inform the Kehayah, who said that he believed the Grand Vizir’s letters had helped to bring the Tripolines to reason. The Dragoman was far too polite and prudent to contradict a Turk, but he remarked that “the firing of their men-of-warr in port had much of perswasion in it.” “Wee know it, wee know it,” replied the Kehayah, with a laugh.[177]

Other circumstances helped Finch to strengthen his position at the Porte. In the spring of 1676 the Grand Signor, after ten years’ absence, surprised Constantinople by appearing in its environs: a step which was hailed as a sign that the sovereign’s distrust of his capital had vanished, and that henceforth he would refresh the eyes of its inhabitants with his presence and fill their purses by his extravagance. It is true that these expectations were not fulfilled. Instead of taking up his abode in the Seraglio which had been prepared for him, the Grand Signor encamped outside the city “like an enemy,” and only ventured to pay spasmodic visits to some of its mosques. Nevertheless, the vicinity of his camp, with all its pomp, created a welcome diversion for the Franks as well as for the Turks. The Rev. John Covel was once more in his element. With a roving, inquisitive eye, he prowled about the Imperial tents, comparing them with those he had seen at Adrianople and taking stock of every detail.[178] The Ambassador himself was not less excited. He reports to the Secretary of State the various theories current about the motives which had induced the Sultan to come so near and those which prevented him from coming any nearer; he describes his movements; and he relates how adroitly he managed to turn them to account. The Sultan often went by water from place to place. Finch noted this, and one day, “making inquisition when His Majesty would passe,” he ordered the two English ships in port to give him a salute; and that the performance might be more impressive he ordered the guns to be fired from the lower tier: so that they might speak louder than those of two Algerine men-of-war which were also then in port. His orders were carried out to the letter. As the Grand Signor passed by our ships, a fanfare from their trumpets entertained him: when he was a little past them, they began to fire: 31 guns from the Mary and Martha, and 21 from the Hunter. The Grand Signor stopped his barge to receive the salute, and till it was quite done rowed very slowly. The performance was repeated on his return; “which was very kindly taken.”[179] Presently, “by reason of dust in foule weather, dust in fayr weather, and want of water,” the Grand Signor pitched his camp in a new place—“just before my house, and I sitt at dinner in the Prospect of His own Tent and His Trayn about Him!”[180]

Then, suddenly, turning from the contemplation of externals, our Ambassador penetrates for a moment into the passions that seethed inside those stately pavilions.

There lived in Stambul an unvenerable old Princess, popularly known as Sultana “Sporca,” or “the Dirty”—an epithet which she had earned by making it her profession to bring up young girls for the entertainment of the grandees. Among her troupe of nymphs she had “a Circassian slave that was extraordinaryly beautifull, and did dance, sing, and tumble in the height of perfection after the Turkish mode.” During the previous year the Grand Signor, hearing of this prodigy, had sent for her. But the old lady, unwilling to lose so lucrative a pupil, evaded the Imperial command by alleging that she had given the girl her freedom and therefore could not dispose of her. Now, however, the truth came out. One day, while the girl was exercising her arts for the amusement of some pashas, she attracted the attention of the Captain of the Grand Vizir’s Guard, who gave her 300 sequins and sent 1000 more to the Sultana on condition that she let the damsel and her companions perform in his house. The Sultana readily agreed to the bargain; but she reckoned without her client. After the performance the gallant Captain, while dismissing the other members of the troupe, kept the handsome slave. Next morning the Sultana petitioned the Grand Signor, confessing her former deception. The Grand Signor, enraged at his own disappointment, ordered the Sultana to be banished, the damsel to be annexed to his harem, and the Captain’s head to be exposed in his camp: “So true is that of Virgil:

“Quisquis amores

Aut metuet dulces, aut experietur amaros.”[181]

His Christian colleagues this year afforded our Ambassador as much food for self-satisfaction as the Ottoman Court. There had lately arrived at Constantinople two new Ministers: a Venetian Ambassador and a Genoese Resident. The former, Signor Morosini, who had already represented Venice at Paris and Vienna, was “an experiencd’ and dexterous” diplomat with whom one found it easy to maintain “good corrispondence.” The latter, Signor Spinola, “really acts such low and mean things that he exposes the dignity of a Publique Minister both to Turkes and Christians” and renders friendly intercourse with him impossible.

On Spinola’s arrival, which occurred during our absence at Adrianople, Finch had ordered the merchant left in charge of the Embassy to compliment him in his name. Yet when the Genoese sent his Dragoman to Adrianople, he gave him no orders to make any compliment to Finch. We magnanimously passed this slight by, attributing it to “his want of breeding and experience.” Some weeks later, finding himself embroiled with his predecessor, Spinola begged for our mediation—a request to which we acceded, only to hear suddenly, not from Spinola himself but from a third quarter, that a reconciliation had been effected through the good offices of the Bailo of Venice and the Resident of Holland. This discourtesy also we put up with patiently. But at last the Genoese did something we could not digest.

“The story is this. S: Spinola brought over with Him a pittifull fellow under the name of a Merchant, who sett up His onely Trade of Distilling strong waters (a thing in the highest degree forbidden by the Turkes). For secrecy He with Jewes that assisted Him make their Destillation in an upper Room where there was no chimney; This comes to the Notice of the Community of Pera, amongst whom three of my Druggermen are the chief; The Community reflecting upon the last firing of Galata by destilling of strong waters, Resolvd’ amongst themselves to goe to the Laboratory and complain of the danger Apprehended. My First Druggerman, being Prior or Chief Magistrate, accompanyd’ with others went to the House, and finding at the Door two Jew servants to this Distiller, tells them that the Community if they did not leave of (sic) their distilling of strong waters where there was no chimney nor hearth, they would complain to the Chimacam, who immediately would send those Jewes to the Gally’s. Their Master comming home the Jewes tell him what happend’, The small Merchant Recurrs to his Resident, His Resident sends him to me, He relates His story, I askd’ Him what He was, He told me He was a Merchant that came over with the Resident, I told Him that I usd’ not to receive messages from Publick Ministers but by Druggermen or their own Secretary’s, nor to other Informations would I give any credence. However having taken my Informations from my First Druggerman I sent my Third Druggerman to the Resident, first to tell him that either He knew not the Respect due to Publick Ministers Here, or else that He was very wanting in it towards me, in sending me a message neither by his Secretary nor his Druggerman, That the grounds of this complaint were so just, that must in my own name renew the complaint against this Destiller in order to the Preservation of my Merchants’ estates, as well as of my Druggermen’s Houses, That what my First Druggerman had sayd’ was to the Jewes and not to His Merchant and that they would certainly goe into the Gally’s if the Destillator continud’ His Trade there, That however he had never enterd’ into the House, but sayd’ this to them in the street. The Resident answerd’ That he knew Signor Giorgio Drapery’s very well, and knew as well that he was not within the House, For had he gon in, he should have mett with Bastonate.

“Upon the return of this answer I sent him word, That both with the Ambassadour of France and Bailo of Venice, Persons of the same character with me, our meanest servants were mutually treated with greater respect then he showd’ to my First Druggerman, Knight of Jerusalem, and of the most Noble and Ancient family in this Country, and that therefore, unlesse that the Resident did make Him some Reparation or Satisfaction, I must be forcd’ to resent it: wondring both at His Passion and Indiscretion to say at the same time he knew him to be my First Druggerman, he should tell the other Druggerman the Jewes should have bastonadod’ him, had he said those words within the House.”

Thereupon Signor Spinola’s Secretary came to beg Sir John’s pardon, offering him all reparation in his master’s name, “even submitting himselfe to be bastonadod’.” Sir John, however, who felt that he had been wounded in his most tender point, was not yet satisfied: to appease him, it was necessary that the atonement should be as public as the injury: “the thing being Publick and making no passe to Sigr Giorgio I told him, till he had sent some message to him I could not admitt of any corrispondence.” Accordingly he cut off all relations with the Resident and declared to the Secretary of State that he would continue “so to doe till I have farther satisfaction.” The Secretary of State duly expressed his resentment to the Genoese Minister in London. But in the meantime Sir John had received Spinola’s submission as he desired, in the form of “a passe toward the personall satisfaction of my Druggerman done in Publique before my servants, and then after four moneths I returnd’ him his visit.”

Thus ended “this Storm in a Bason.”[182]

Not very long afterwards our Ambassador found himself involved in a difference with his French colleague.

Sir John’s religious activities at Adrianople had led to a little coolness between those hitherto firm friends. In five months Nointel had not paid Finch one visit, and now that he had to see him on a matter of business (a dispute between the English and French merchants of Aleppo referred to the adjudication of their respective ambassadors), he pretended that it was Finch’s turn to call. Hence a pretty quarrel. Finch declared that he had made the last visit. Nointel maintained that that visit was a return to one he had made and insisted that Finch should begin afresh. Finch protested that this was contrary to the diplomatic practice of Pera, and “a most dangerous point—to make two visits for one, it being the note of distinction between Ambassadours and Residents.” No doubt the noble Marquis’s amour-propre would be gratified by such a recognition of French superiority, but the honour of his Majesty did not permit Sir John to afford him that gratification on any account. Both by letters and by oral messages he assured Nointel, blandly but firmly, that, unless he made the first visit, all intercourse between them would cease. “And certainly,” he wrote to the Secretary of State, “I shall not give way to him one hair, without the orders of the King my Master.” Courteous as Sir John was, he could be very obstinate where his King’s honour was at stake.

For three weeks both ambassadors remained immovable; and then the Frenchman sent to inform the Englishman that he desired to call on him in the afternoon. But it so chanced that Finch had just engaged himself for that very afternoon to the Bailo of Venice. He was therefore forced to beg Nointel to excuse him for that day. It was a most unfortunate contretemps: Finch, on one hand, feared that Nointel might think he had put a slight upon him by feigning that engagement, and on the other he suspected that perhaps Nointel had heard of it and, knowing that it was impossible for him to receive his visit that day, imagined that the offering of it should serve for the having paid it and oblige Sir John to make one in return. Tormented by these doubts, he sent his own Dragoman to repeat his explanations and excuses. Great was his relief when Nointel appointed the day following for his visit, which accordingly he performed; and the day after Finch returned it. “So that all things were reducd’ to the ancient friendship and cheerfullnesse.”[183]

We may picture the noble Marquis once more adorning Sir John’s dinner-table. Nointel was a great table-talker, and he had varied experiences which he could narrate with all the vivacity of his race. But the conversation at our Ambassador’s board must have seemed to him painfully restrained in its tone and restricted in its range of subject. It turned persistently on religion, and was carried on under the unexhilarating auspices of Sir Thomas Baines. He was the conductor of the theological concert, and there was a deferential manner in the bearing of the host towards him which must have stifled in the guest all sense of freedom. What weighty dogmas Baines uttered, what profundities of erudition he disclosed, how he answered the arguments he provoked—all these things Finch noted down with the reverence of a disciple and the vicarious pride of a lover. In such an atmosphere thoughtless loquacity was obviously out of place, memories gained in wanton ways had to be kept under lock and key: the only proper demeanour was that of a prig or a prude. One day the Frenchman, who was neither, stirred by Florentine wine or by the spirit of mischief, kicked over the traces. After a discussion concerning the Crucifixion, he wandered off into some reminiscences of his early life in Paris. Sir Thomas listened scandalised but self-possessed: of the jarring sensations that ran along his spinal cord there was no sign upon his austere countenance; only when the raconteur had done, he leaned forward and remarked:

“Che dirà il Crucifisso?”

The reproof brought the errant Marquis back to his actual milieu and its proprieties. He was, Sir John tells us, “struck dumbfounded and was filled with astonishment at so unexpected a glosse, which he sayd was a more efficacious sermon then he had heard from the Capuchin Fryers.”[184] What he said to himself we do not know.

From these trivialities, which enveloped his mind like fine-spun cobwebs, Sir John was suddenly roused by a very serious event: nothing less than the death of the great Ahmed Kuprili.

At the approach of the autumnal equinox the Grand Signor broke up his camp and began his migration to Adrianople. The Vizir was then ill—so ill that he refused Sir John’s request for a farewell audience with these words: “If God pleasd’, wee should meet in the Spring, but then he was not in a state to receive my Visit.” Nevertheless, Ahmed followed his master in a galley as far as Selivria, where our Ambassador’s Dragoman, who had been sent to obtain some Commands, saw him, on his landing, carried by four persons to a litter, on which, too weak to sit upright, he stretched himself at full length. In this critical condition he went on another day’s journey, and at that point, his strength failing him, he had to be taken a mile off the road into a private house. Mindful of the public interest to the very last, he called his Kehayah and ordered him to march with the army to Adrianople. The Kehayah, with tears in his eyes, begged to be allowed to stay and wait upon him, saying that no man could serve him with so much care or so much affection. “No,” replied Ahmed, “the Gran Signor’s Army ought not to want a Head, and since I cannot, you must Head them.”

The Grand Signor at the moment was, as usual, hunting; but as soon as news of the Vizir’s state reached him, he hastened to his bedside—a signal proof of the sentiments which the master cherished towards his illustrious servant. Sir John was deeply impressed: “I must needs say,” he writes, “That I have read of the Privacy’s of many Great Ministers of State with their Prince, I have livd’ to be no stranger to the story’s of the Modern one’s. But Nothing in Christendome neither Card: Richlieu, Card: Mazarin, or Don Louis de Haro, or any other Christian favourite can parallell either the Power, Influence, or Intimacy, That this Gran Visir had with this Emperour.” Thus Ahmed lingered on till the 24th of October, when he succumbed to a dropsy inherited from his father but intensified by worries of government, hardships of war, and excessive indulgence in strong waters. He had ruled the Ottoman Empire for fifteen years, and at the time of his death he was not above forty-five.

His body was brought back to Constantinople in a plain coach drawn by six horses and attended by only half-a-dozen footmen. It was taken to a mosque where the Kaimakam and other dignitaries awaited it with the religious ministers, and was laid in the same sepulchre as his father’s. No pomp distinguished Ahmed’s funeral from that of an ordinary pasha. But the mourning was universal. Moslems and Christians, natives and aliens joined in paying tribute to the virtues of the departed statesman, to his moderation, his justice, his inflexible probity. He was a pasha free from greed; he was an autocrat who knew how to temper absolutism with gentleness: a memorable, and in some respects a unique exemplar of a beneficent despot. The English, in particular, remembered with gratitude Ahmed’s scrupulous observance of their Capitulations, and his readiness to punish any official who violated them. It was not probable that they would see his like again.

To Sir John Finch the death of Ahmed, “my Great and Good friend,” came as a severe shock, and it evoked from him a eulogy more eloquent in its unaffected simplicity than any elaborate panegyric: “Most certainly He was a Great Minister of State, and Master of Great Resolutions; For whatsoever He sett upon He allwayes went through. He was undoubtedly Just; and the freest from Corruption of any that ever held that charge, for He was no lover of mony.” How was the event likely to affect himself? This question, naturally, mingled itself with Sir John’s sorrow: “I hope things will not upon the change of the Ministers change their Face too; But the Truth is In the Visir I lost a True friend, and with Him all the Rest, For they will be Turnd’ out of their severall charges, so that I must begin my Interest anew.”[185]

Immediately on Ahmed’s death the Seal was carried by his brother to the Grand Signor and, according to general expectation, was conferred upon Mustafa Pasha—commonly called Kara Mustafa, or Black Mustafa, from the darkness of his complexion. He was a man of fifty-three. Having begun as a page in the household of old Mohammed Kuprili and married his daughter, he had risen under that Vizir to the position of Capiji-bashi. Ahmed had made him Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral, and, on going to Candia, left him as his Deputy with the Sultan. Mustafa had taken the utmost advantage of this proximity to the sovereign, pandering to all his passions and always accompanying him in his hunting. He was just about to marry one of the Grand Signor’s daughters—a damsel of six.

As soon as the appointment was announced, Sir John hastened to find out all about Kara Mustafa’s character and antecedents, so that he might from the past form a forecast of the future. Information was easy to obtain: a person who had for so many years been the second grandee in the Empire had naturally become an object of interested study to every one that came into contact with the Court. Had he access to the Foreign Office archives, Finch would have found a terse summary of the new Vizir’s character from the pen of Sir Daniel Harvey’s secretary: “well spoken, subtill, corrupt, and a great dissembler.”[186] As it was, he learnt that Kara Mustafa was reputed “a Great Souldyer, and a Great Courtier; and of a very Active Genious.” But these qualities were marred by two very pronounced vices: avarice and arrogance. The English merchants had suffered from his cupidity, and all the foreign envoys from his pride. These reports made Sir John uneasy: he saw the outlines of trouble in the future: he had a disquieting sense of uncertainty; but he hoped that the example of his famous predecessor and the responsibility of his present position might cure Kara Mustafa of his propensities.

The new Grand Vizir began his career after a fashion which justified Sir John’s best hopes. He removed no Minister from his post, except the Kehayah, a necessary measure, and he softened it by making him Master of the Horse to the Sultan: a place which, if less profitable, was not less honourable. Neither did he put any man to death, except a paymaster, and that was an act of justice rather than of severity, for the official had been convicted of paying out false money. In brief, Ahmed’s death did not seem to have produced any change at the Porte other than the change of the Vizir’s person. Sir John felt reassured: much as he missed the suave Kehayah, he was glad to know that he still occupied a position of influence; and that, apart from this alteration, he would not have “to begin his Interest anew.” As late as the first of March 1677 he was able to write: “Both with the Court it selfe and the Publick Ministers that reside Here, things passe with me so peaceably that I am in a perfect calme.” Indeed, the Government was so “regular,” that, in the dearth of “occurrences of remarque,” the Ambassador could scarcely find “materialls enough to furnish a Dispatch.”[187]

For the fact is that Kara Mustafa was to be six months a Grand Vizir before anything happened. But what then happened was in itself a drama.