CHAPTER XIII THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE

Early in March 1677 Mohammed IV. returned to Constantinople, followed three weeks later by his Vizir; and behold, all of a sudden, the government which hitherto had been a model of mildness took on a face such as “the Oldest Man here never saw.”[188] Of this metamorphosis the representatives of foreign States became aware when they asked to be permitted to offer the new Grand Vizir their felicitations.

Before this epoch Christian envoys had often been subject to contumely, violence, and outrage at the hands of the Grand Signor’s curious Ministers. But no attempt had ever been made to treat them systematically as pariahs. To Kara Mustafa—“an embitterd’ enemy to all Christians,” as Sir John calls him—belongs the credit of evolving out of those desultory essays in truculence a regular system of calculated indecency—a system which was to endure for more than a hundred years, becoming, in course of time, as established things do, respectable, consecrated, all but decent. He it was who collected every planless affront, threat of rage, artifice of greed—every caprice of a decrepit despotism,—and wove them all together into one net of humiliation out of which only force could liberate its victims.

The process was inaugurated with the representative of France, the excitable Marquis de Nointel, who, eager for precedence, hastened to seek the first audience, and after a month’s solicitations secured an appointment. His Dragomans then, according to custom, asked to have the number of kaftans which were to be bestowed upon the Ambassador fixed; but they were told that the Ambassador was to expect none. This was only a slight prelude to what was to follow: “where,” as Sir John sententiously remarks, “the Preface speaks innovations, the body of the discourse will have them at large.”

On arriving at the Porte on the appointed day (Sunday, April 22nd), Nointel had to wait three whole hours in the room of the Kehayah—a surly Turk—without conversation or any other entertainment; and when at last he was called in, he found the narrow corridor that led to the Audience Chamber crowded with chaoushes who jostled him most rudely. Truth to tell, this rudeness, at all events, was not premeditated. The poor chaoushes had come in the turbans of ceremony worn on such occasions, but had been ordered by the Vizir to go and exchange them for their ordinary headgear: hence their hurry to get back to their places before the Ambassador made his entry. Nointel, however, whose nerves were already on edge with the long waiting, saw in their behaviour a fresh insult, and he elbowed his way down the passage fiercely flinging the chaoushes to right and left against the walls. In this temper he entered the Audience Chamber, and there he observed something at which his resentment reached the height of exasperation: the stool destined for him was not upon the Soffah, but on the floor below! He ordered his Dragoman to set it where it should be; one of the Vizir’s pages brought it down again. Then the Ambassador, in a towering rage, seized the stool with his own hand, carried it to the Soffah, and sat upon it.

When this act was reported to the Vizir, who was in an adjoining apartment, he sent for the Ambassador’s Dragoman and commanded him to tell his master that he must move his seat back where he had found it. The trembling Dragoman delivered the message and was bidden by the angry Ambassador to hold his tongue. Next the Vizir sent his own Dragoman, Dr. Mavrocordato, with whom Nointel maintained the closest friendship. In vain did the Greek try to soothe the enraged Frenchman, imploring him to moderate his temper and yield gracefully to the inevitable. Nothing could prevail over M. de Nointel’s obstinacy: the pride of the wig was pitted against the pride of the turban, and it must be remembered that both wigs and turbans were then at their zenith. In the end, Mavrocordato, finding argument useless, changed his tone and said, in Italian: “The Grand Vizir commands the chair to be placed below.” Nointel replied: “The Grand Vizir can command his chair: he cannot command me.” At that moment the Chaoush-bashi burst into the room, roaring, “Calder, calder—Take it away, take it away!”—and before he knew what was happening, Nointel found the stool snatched from under him. In an access of fury, his Excellency dashed out of the room, sword on shoulder, pushed his way through the throng, and, ordering the presents which he had brought to follow him, mounted his horse and departed, exciting, as he boasted, by his firmness, “the astonishment of the Turks and the joy of the French.” Kara Mustafa alone remained calm. His comment, when he heard that the Ambassador was gone, was one word: “Gehennem” (Let him go to Hell).[189]

One barbarous word, that can be shown to be authentic, is worth volumes of descriptive writing.

Such was the beginning of the celebrated “Affaire du Sofa”—a quarrel which drew the attention of all Europe and nearly led to a rupture between France and Turkey. The question arises: was Nointel justified in resenting so violently Kara Mustafa’s innovation? Here, more fitly perhaps than afterwards, we may discuss this question, and try to obtain that true perspective of things, without which there can be no true understanding of our story, nor any appreciation of the agitations and mortifications which its chief character underwent from that day onward for about eight months to come.

Much ridicule has been poured by modern English writers upon the vanity of seventeenth-century French courtiers—a foible which made the most insignificant trifles swell in their minds to matters of the highest moment. What, indeed, could be more puerile than for the representative of a great monarch to quarrel with the head of the Government to which he was accredited about the position of a stool? But we, wise democrats of to-day, ought not to be surprised that frivolous nobles of the old régime displayed such childish folly and petulance: these are the natural characteristics of every monarchical régime, of every hereditary aristocracy, melancholy features of a state of things which has now happily passed away.

That the French nobility under Louis XIV. carried punctiliousness to the length of absurdity is well known to readers of contemporary French literature: the memoirs and letters of the men and women who composed the Court of Louis are full of serious, sometimes dangerous, disputes arising out of the most ludicrous points of etiquette, and narrated with a becoming sense of their importance. Nowhere was this triumph of Ceremonialism over common sense more notable than in the rules that governed diplomatic relations. But—a thing forgotten by modern critics—the French Republic of our time is hardly less tenacious of ceremonial forms in its international relations than the French Monarchy was. Nay, democratic America herself, as everybody acquainted with her State Department will bear witness, sets as much store by these trifles as any country of aristocratic Europe. The truth is that, when nations deal with one another, they have to stand on strict ceremony: forms have been invented to prevent friction; and States which wish to cultivate mutual friendship are therefore extremely wary of departing from established usages.

The extreme irritability of M. de Nointel may have been relative to the nation—a great nation, but a thin-skinned—to which he belonged. But its cause, however contemptible it may appear to us, to English diplomats of his time—men not wholly devoid of understanding—did not appear so.

Sir John Finch was at dinner with some of the merchants, when one of the Embassy Janissaries, whom Nointel had borrowed from him for the solemn function, returned home bringing the sensational news that the French Ambassador, after four hours’ stay at the Porte, had gone away without audience.

From all he had heard of Kara Mustafa Finch had foreseen that many strange things would befall; and for that reason, instead of competing with the Frenchman for precedence, as his habit was, he had deliberately let him have the first audience: much as the polite fox in the fable let the elephant try first the rickety plank that bridged a dangerous-looking stream. Nevertheless, he was greatly startled by the news. What had happened to Nointel might happen to him. So, dismissing his guests, he set at once to work to ascertain what had happened: there was not a moment to lose; and indeed, before he had completed his investigations, a messenger arrived from the Porte. Finch easily guessed the purport of his errand, and in order to gain time for further information and reflection, he decided to have an attack of diplomatic fever. To give his fiction verisimilitude, he retired hastily to his bedroom and received the messenger in his bed. The message was as he expected: “The Grand Vizir desired that His Excellency should come to audience on the following morning.” Sir John answered from his couch that it was a favour which he had sought for, but he was sorry that his “indisposition of body” would not permit him to accept it. He prayed the Grand Vizir to excuse him.

Kara Mustafa had no difficulty in diagnosing the “indisposition of body” which afflicted Sir John, but dissembling his wisdom, he promptly ordered that, since the Ambassador of England was indisposed, the Bailo of Venice should take his place next morning, and the Resident of Holland should come in the afternoon. Both these diplomats were content to receive their audiences on the Vizir’s terms, while the Resident of Genoa sought for audience on those same terms and could not obtain it. Such, then, was the position of the Diplomatic Corps on the Bosphorus in the spring of 1677: the French Ambassador in open defiance of the Porte; the Venetian Ambassador, the Dutch Resident, and the Genoese Resident in open compliance with it; the English Ambassador alone remained uncommitted, “as lying under the Maschera of indisposition of body.”

Sir John counted that by his clever strategy he had at least gained this: that he had not set the example of submission. Had he done so, the King would have received complaints from all Christendom that his envoy was the first to put on “the yoke of this high-minded Visir” and by his example had forced the other foreign Ministers to take up the same yoke: ay, the meanest of them would have said that, had he not established a precedent, they would have scorned to submit. As it was, Sir John had freed himself from any imputation, and left the others to answer for their own pusillanimity. “Neverthelesse,” he naïvely admits, “this Maschera of a distemper at the first seen clearly through both by Turk and Christian must not be wore long.”

Seven days he considered enough to get well. He spent this period of convalescence studying the situation and deliberating what “prudent and wary resolutions” it befitted him to take. Then he called his Dragomans to him and asked them whether they had ever known an English ambassador receive from a Grand Vizir audience with his stool below the Soffah? They answered with one voice No! such a thing had never been known; and their memories served them so readily that they went through eight or nine Vizirates by name, as if they were repeating a lesson they had by heart. Whereupon Sir John bade them deliver to the Vizir a Memorial which he had drawn up. In this document the Ambassador informed Kara Mustafa that the King his master was known to be equal to the greatest prince in Christendom, but he was even more widely renowned as surpassing all other princes in the sincerity and constancy of his friendship towards the Sublime Porte: his Majesty had at all times not only abstained from sending succours to any of Turkey’s enemies, but supplied her with whatsoever served for the convenience of peace or the necessity of war. After thus hinting at his claim to better treatment than his French colleague, Sir John pointed out that not only he himself in all his audiences of the deceased Vizir had his seat upon the Soffah, but that, as far as he could learn, there had never been an instance of a Vizir denying an English ambassador such a seat. Lastly, he declared that he was under rigorous instructions from his King to preserve intact the respect always rendered him in this Court; and his master might justly shed his blood, if he should do anything repugnant to his Majesty’s honour and commands.[190]

When the Dragomans came to the passage in which Finch, as his composition originally stood, told the Vizir that he had about him servants of so many years’ standing who knew what the practice had been under so many Vizirs, they said that they dared not deliver “such a Paper.”

“Why,” asked the Ambassador, “is this part not true?”

“Yes,” they agreed, “but we dare not say it is so.”

His Excellency had the inconceivable fatuity to retort:

“Do I name you as the informers?”

“No,” was the obvious answer, “but the Vizir must know it can be none but us.”

It is amazing to find Sir John, in his report to the Secretary of State, while moralising on the terrors of Turkish tyranny, also complaining of the “timidity and cowardesse of Druggermen,” who refused to risk hanging and impaling in order to please him. However, in the end, finding it impossible to overcome the Dragomans’ perverse regard for their lives, he couched his Note in vaguer terms.

To this Note Sir John received no answer for three days, and on the fourth he had one which he did not know what to make of; it looked as if Kara Mustafa had been rather annoyed by his Memorial, though he did not tear it up. So next day he sent his Dragomans to sound the Rais Effendi. This Minister told them that he would be sorry to see an ambassador who enjoyed so good credit at the Porte forfeit it by opposing the Grand Vizir, who, if the Ambassador came to audience, was ready to embrace him. Encouraged by this message, Sir John wrote to the Rais Effendi, thanking him for his friendship, hinting at a more substantial reward for any good offices he might do him with “the Most Excellent Vizir,” and protesting his willingness to give his Excellency every possible satisfaction. His one passion was to maintain his ambassadorial character with due decorum, to preserve the peace and commerce according to the “Sacred and Sublime Capitulations,” and to render to the Imperial Majesty of the Grand Signor “all acts of obsequiousness and reverence.” His heart being thus disposed, he hoped that it would be clear “to the lucid understanding of the Most Excellent Supream Visir” that a first-class Ambassador from one of the greatest potentates in Christendom ought not to be treated in parity with a Resident of whatsoever prince, much less with the Residents of inferior Republics. Therefore he trusted that some expedient would be found to make a distinction between the highest and the lowest sorts of foreign Ministers; for he burned with a desire to do reverence in person to the Most Excellent Vizir Azem. Such was the tenor of his letter.[191] The Rais Effendi read it but said nothing.

We may observe here that the distinction between Ambassadors and Residents which meant so much to European envoys did not exist for the Turks. Whenever an Ambassador claimed precedence over a Resident upon the ground of superior rank, they used to say: “What, has he not a Commission? have you more?” For all diplomatic agents they had only one name, Elchi, and their attitude towards them all was equally contemptuous.[192] This, however, as we shall see in the sequel, did not prevent them from exploiting a prejudice which they did not share.

Having made such advances as he deemed compatible with his dignity to very little purpose, Sir John resolved to wait and see what Kara Mustafa’s next move would be. Meanwhile he ordered his Dragomans to frequent the Porte as usual, so that the other foreign Ministers might not think that he had either given or taken offence—M. de Nointel had withdrawn his Dragomans; but Sir John judged himself “to be in no way, nor in no condition, in his case.” How long the affair would last or how it would end he had no idea. He wished he were nearer home that he might have instructions from the King for his guidance. As it was, he was obliged to walk by his own lights, hoping that in all he had done hitherto and in all that he should do hereafter, if he did not deserve his Majesty’s approval, he might at least obtain his pardon. Of one thing he asked the Secretary of State to be sure: “I shall to the uttmost of my possibility keep my selfe off from any condescention.” “For if I should condescend and the French Ambassadour afterwards gain the Point, then for him to be receivd’ with a distinction of Honour from the Ambassadour of the King my Master would be an everlasting Blemish.” Of course, if he capitulated, Sir John would do his best to hinder his colleague from stealing a march upon him; but “the best may not be good enough.” Then, again, there was another thing to consider: suppose he yielded to the Porte on this point, no man knew what the Porte would exact next: all the present Ministers were “sower, ante Christian Turk’s, and very Covetous”; and of them all Kara Mustafa was the worst. Sir John was unaffectedly afraid of Kara Mustafa; “and what gives me to fear him the more,” he says, “is that he is like allway’s to continue Visir; for there was never no Visir yett that ever was the tenth part, nay the twentyeth, so free or rather profuse in his gifts to the Gran Signor as he is.”

Now, Kara Mustafa assuredly deserved all, or nearly all, that Sir John said about him. But it must not be supposed that, in this particular case, he had not something to say for himself. His self-justification, according to Sir John’s own report, was this: Though it might be an undeniable truth that no Vizir had ever received an ambassador but with his stool upon the Soffah, yet he, whilst only a Kaimakam, had never received any but with their stools below the Soffah. It was thus that he had received M. de Nointel himself, and, what troubled Sir John most, it was thus that he had received Sir John’s own predecessor Harvey. M. de Nointel might argue that he had paid Kara Mustafa then only a visit of courtesy, and that as Ahmed Kuprili, the then Vizir, received him on the Soffah, he had not thought it worth his while to make a fuss about a subordinate pasha’s manners. This argument was not open to Sir John, for when Harvey called on Kara Mustafa, Ahmed Kuprili being away in Candia, Kara Mustafa acted as his Deputy, nor was that a mere courtesy call, but a solemn audience. Therefore, Kara Mustafa reasoned, why should Sir John object to paying him now, when he was a full-blown Grand Vizir, the respect which his predecessor had paid him without the least reluctance, when he was but the Grand Vizir’s shadow?

An interesting point, but not worth dwelling upon. Whether right was on Kara Mustafa’s side or not, might certainly was; and he exercised it without pity. Leaving Finch for the moment in suspense, he turned his undivided attention to Nointel. After tearing up a Memorial of the French Ambassador’s and abusing the Dragoman who presented it, he confined the noble Marquis in his house and threatened to commit him to the Seven Towers—an old Byzantine fortress which served the purposes of an Ottoman Bastille.

M. de Nointel’s distress was indescribable. From his King he could expect no support. For some time past, owing to his consistent failures at the Porte, he had been under a cloud at Versailles—a cloud that not one ray of royal clemency or one livre from the royal exchequer came to pierce. An attempt to make both ends meet by fleecing French merchants with the help of Turkish soldiers had deepened his disgrace without relieving him permanently from his financial difficulties. Day after day his debts mounted; day after day his spirits sank. Creditors clamoured for payment at his door, and not daring to attack him directly as yet, attacked his secretaries. Any day he might find himself in the Seven Towers. At last, in despair, the miserable Marquis sued for peace on the Grand Vizir’s terms, and only procured it by agreeing to pay him an extraordinary present of 3000 dollars—in household stuff and plate, for of ready money he had none. In spite, or perhaps because, of his abject surrender, the representative of the great Louis was made to drink the cup of humiliation to its bitterest dregs. Twice Kara Mustafa summoned him to audience, and twice he sent him away without audience; and when the third time he did receive him, he declined to partake of coffee and sherbet, or to be perfumed with him, but let the Giaour have his refreshments alone.[193]

Sir John had not been ignorant of Nointel’s overtures to the Porte, nor was he unaware of the fact that, after the Frenchman’s capitulation, his own position would be much worse. Yet what could he do? To forestall Nointel by submitting first would have been too great a degradation, and would have afforded the French Ambassador a warrantable excuse for transferring the whole responsibility for his own submission upon Finch’s shoulders. In this dilemma, our Ambassador displayed his noted talent for expedients. He ordered his Dragomans to tell the Vizir’s Kehayah that he had received instructions from the King of England to thank the Grand Signor by the Vizir’s mouth for a favour (meaning the Smyrna figs, though he did not say so), and that he was ready at any time to wait upon his Excellency, if the Grand Vizir would be pleased to receive him “with any distinction from the lowest Minister of the meanest Prince.” But in vain: Nointel’s pliancy had stiffened Kara Mustafa’s back. So Sir John acquiesced in his destiny, and again let the Frenchman proceed first. The day after Nointel’s surrender, he applied for audience without reservations or conditions. He received a patronising reply, that his “Motion was very good”; but the Vizir was so taken up with the Polish Treaty that he could not at present appoint a day. Several times, during the next three months, Sir John repeated his “motion,” and every time he met with the same evasive answer.

For the first time since his strategic retreat to his bedroom Sir John doubted the wisdom of that step. Even now he did not regret the deed itself—that was worthily done. Any other conduct would have been inconsistent with punctilious care for the honour of the King his master. Sir John tried to fortify himself with these thoughts. But as week after week came and went, and still there was no invitation to audience, he could not but feel that a deed which is right in principle may be pernicious in its consequences. At length, beginning to grow seriously anxious, he begged his very good friend Hussein Aga to find out the real origin of these delays. The Chief Customer sent back word that there was not the least “disgusto” against him at Court: the Polish Treaty really took up all the Vizir’s time, and he would have his audience in due course and with due honour—that was the whole truth of the matter “upon his head.” This reassuring message allayed Sir John’s anxiety, till—let Sir John himself speak—“till an unpreventable accident disorderd’ and discomposd’ all things and incensd’ the Visir so much that He satisfyd’ his passion upon me.”[194]

The accident deserves to be related at some length; for, besides the effect it had upon our Ambassador’s fortunes, it illustrates very vividly, if not very pleasantly, the manners of the times and the morals of the men involved.

An English merchant of Smyrna had lent to a Venetian native of Candia, called Pizzamano, 3000 dollars, and received some goods as security. After the merchant’s death, his partner, Mr. John Ashby, who at the time of the deal was away, found this pledge among the assets of the deceased, and also found that, in the interval, Pizzamano had gone bankrupt and was hiding from his creditors. Although the term of the loan had not yet expired, Mr. Ashby, fearing no trouble from a man who was unable to show his face, proceeded to sell the goods at the Consul’s gate, in the usual Frank fashion, “by inch of candle.”[195] Besides being premature, the proceeding was irregular in other respects. Turkish law did not recognise a sale at the Consul’s gate by inch of candle, but ordained that all auctions should be held in the market-place, by leave of the Cadi, and after three days’ public notice. Further, it must be observed that Mr. Rycaut, in sanctioning the sale, had exceeded his powers: an English Consul’s jurisdiction was limited to persons of his own nation, and he had no right to settle an affair between an Englishman and a foreigner.

These grave irregularities gave Pizzamano a chance, when he found that the sale of his goods had yielded not only less than they were worth, but even less than they had been pawned for, to denounce the transaction and to claim compensation. Armed with an authentic copy of the sale, which he had procured from the Cancellaria of the English Consulate, he went up to Constantinople; and there this bankrupt who was regarded as utterly helpless, by a singular piece of luck, found powerful friends in Court. It was one of those odd coincidences that seem to occur in order to show how much more romantic life can be than the wildest fiction. The Venetian, before setting up as a trader, had served as a purser on a French pirate ship which Kara Mustafa, whilst Capitan Pasha, had captured. Now it so happened that among the captives was a French cabin-boy who had found favour in Kara Mustafa’s eyes, turned Turk, and become his Hasnadar or Treasurer. For the sake of old times, the ex-cabin-boy espoused the cause of the ex-purser heartily; several influential Turks, creditors of Pizzamano’s, joined the crew in hopes of being repaid out of the loot; and thus supported, the Venetian appealed for redress to the Vizir as a Candiote and therefore now a subject of the Grand Signor.

The Vizir immediately sent a chaoush to fetch Mr. Ashby up to Constantinople, without notifying the Ambassador, who, according to the Capitulations, should have been informed in order to lend the defendant his assistance. This snub, however, did not prevent Sir John from making Ashby’s quarrel his own. Ashby had been exalted by the Smyrna factors into a popular hero: great numbers of them accompanied him to the capital, “with swords and pistolls”—quite a guard of honour; and he arrived bringing a petition to the Ambassador signed by the Consul and forty members of the Factory, that the expenses of the case should be defrayed out of public funds. To this request Sir John demurred on purely tactical grounds: “fearing that if I had declard’ my sense at first, wee should starve our cause, I told Ashby that it was time enough for my Answer when the thing was brought to a period.” With this reservation, which shows that a man can be at once indiscreet and cautious, Sir John made the defendant an object of his warmest solicitude: the merits of the case seem to have had as little weight with him as with the English colony in general.

At first everything went well. The Grand Vizir, when the litigants appeared before him at the Divan, treated Ashby and his supporters with the utmost indulgence, looking upon them, “as my Druggerman told me, with the same smiling countenance as when he was Chimacham,” and even declining to take notice of an aggravating circumstance brought forward by the plaintiff—namely, that the English factors who had accompanied Ashby to Constantinople had tried on the way to rescue him by force of arms and had actually come to blows with the Turks at Magnesia. Ignoring this charge—which, in itself, might have supplied material for very serious trouble—Kara Mustafa referred the case for trial to the Stamboli Effendi, or Chief Justice of Constantinople, precisely as we desired. On the eve of the trial an attempt was made to settle the dispute out of court. Our friend Hussein Aga undertook the part of arbiter and, after estimating the goods in question by the advice of Turkish and Jewish merchants, he condemned Ashby to pay the Venetian 1600 Lion dollars. But as Ashby would not abide by the arbitration, the matter went before the Judge.

And now, to all the other illegalities mentioned, our countrymen added an offence of a truly shocking nature. Ashby and his abettors, from the Ambassador down, had by this time come to see that a sale of pledged goods to which the owner’s consent could not be proved was indefensible in Turkish law. They, therefore, thought fit to deny the sale, and to affirm that the goods were in esse—an attitude to which they were prompted by the knowledge that the goods could easily be got back from those who had bought them. In vain did Pizzamano produce his copy of the sale, signed and sealed by the English Consul. Mr. Ashby, backed by the Ambassador’s Dragoman and all the Englishmen present, stoutly denied the authenticity of the document. Pizzamano then produced two Turkish witnesses who had assisted at the sale. But these witnesses, not being professional rogues, found themselves unable to answer some questions on matters of detail put to them by the Judge, and the bad impression which their inadequate replies produced was deepened by the vehemence and apparent sincerity with which the English persisted in affirming that the goods had not been sold and would be restored on payment of the debt. The Stamboli Effendi, confounded by this mendacious unanimity, departed from the ordinary Turkish maxim of considering the word of two True Believers worth more than that of a crowd of Infidels, and gave sentence that both litigants should return to Smyrna, the one to receive his money and the other his goods.

So far the English had been guilty only of a crime which, as long as it remained undetected, could not hurt them. From this point they began to commit blunders which were to cost them dearly. Sir John congratulated Mr. Ashby on his victory, but at the same time, knowing its seamy side, strongly advised him to come to an adjustment with the Venetian, who offered to cry quits for 1000 dollars. Ashby, however, would not think of sacrificing an atom of his ill-gotten advantage. And that was not all. Blinded by a false sense of security and by cupidity, he did something that proved fatal. The Grand Vizir’s complaisance and his reference of the dispute to the Stamboli Effendi had been procured in the usual way. At the very outset of this unfortunate business, Sir John had got his friend Hussein Aga to buy off Kara Mustafa’s Hasnadar by a bribe of 500 dollars. This sum had been handed to Dudley North and Mr. Hyet, who deposited it by Hussein’s order in the Custom-House. Soon after obtaining his verdict, Ashby met in the street a servant of Hussein Aga’s who had charge of the 500 dollars, but did not know what they were for. “My master,” he said, “has not yet asked for that money. What am I to do with it?” The merchant’s avarice got the better of his prudence: “Give it back to me,” he said, and carried the dollars away. A day or two later Hussein Aga asked his servant for the money, and on hearing what had happened, sent to Ashby for it. Ashby refused to part with his dollars again. Thereupon the Customer, already piqued by the rejection of his arbitration, lost his temper completely. “He stormd’ like a madman, and swore he would be revengd’ of the whole Nation for this affront.” The Hasnadar was not less enraged at this breach of faith. And the two, seconded by all their friends, revealed to the Grand Vizir the whole plot, telling him how the English Ambassador had, through his Dragoman, deceived the Stamboli Effendi about the sale, and substantiating their damning statements with documentary and other evidence. In great fury Kara Mustafa summoned once more all parties concerned to the Divan, and there and then, without so much as waiting to hear one word in Ashby’s defence, shouted to the Chaoush-bashi: “Take that Giaour to prison, till he has satisfied Pizzamano.”

Let us now leave Mr. Ashby in his dungeon, with an iron collar round his neck and iron manacles on his hands, ruminating on the fruits of fraud aggravated by folly, and see how this “accident” affected his august protector.

The great Feast of the Bairam, at which it was customary for all ambassadors to send presents to the Grand Vizir, drawing near, Sir John’s Dragoman went to the Porte to ask when he should bring his “Bairamlik,” and, incidentally, to see if he could not for once get access to Kara Mustafa, who, “beyond all the example of his predecessours had not yett sufferd’ any Publick Ministers Druggerman to speak with him.” A fruitless endeavour! Kara Mustafa is invisible, and his Kehayah coldly replies that there is no need of a Bairamlik from you, since your Ambassador has not yet paid his respects to the Vizir. The Dragoman protests that his Excellency has constantly pressed for audience and is ready to come either that night or next morning. “No,” answers the Kehayah; adding that perhaps the Ambassador thought the Vizir would be content with the ordinary first audience presents, but that was a delusion—“vests would not doe the buisenesse.” From the surly Kehayah our Dragoman goes to Dr. Mavrocordato: they talk the matter over, and it is agreed between them that we should give fifty vests of a much larger size than the usual; but when this agreement is propounded to the Vizir, he rejects it scornfully.

Alarmed by these symptoms of ill-humour, Sir John addressed to Kara Mustafa, through the Kehayah, a conciliatory message: he was very sorry to have incurred the Grand Vizir’s displeasure, and begged to know precisely what would restore him to his favour. He appealed to the Vizir’s equity by pointing out that he had been obliged to act as he had done by the exigencies of his position: “If I was in the same conjuncture again I could doe no lesse: in regard that if I had submitted to what the Ambassadour of another Christian Monarch had refusd’, the King my master might justly have cutt off my head.” He ended by expressing the hope that the Grand Vizir would not enjoin upon him “any thing exorbitant or dishonourable,” but that he would rather command his decapitation, “for that I had rather submitt to the latter, then the former.”

The message was delivered to Kara Mustafa immediately after his noon prayers, and “he seemd’ to be very much surprisd’” by it—as well he might. After passing a whole hour in profound meditation, he said to his Kehayah: “Methinkes the Ambassadour should not thinke much to send me four thousand zecchins”—say, £2000. The Kehayah added four hundred on his own account. As the result of much haggling, the demand fell to 6000 dollars, or £1500, which included the usual presents, amounting to 600 dollars.

This was Kara Mustafa’s prescription for Sir John’s diplomatic fever. It plunged the patient into gloom. What could he do? He could, no doubt, continue staying in his house, even in his bed. But that would have deprived the English of their protector and delivered them up to the tender mercies of every official robber in the Empire. There was already the wretched Ashby groaning in his chains. There was a claim on the Aleppo Factory for silk dues, and an accusation of buying Turkish goods from Christian pirates at Scanderoon. There was the charge, which Kara Mustafa had brushed aside when in a good temper, against the English factors of Smyrna of attempting to rescue Ashby by main force: now that Kara Mustafa was in an ugly mood that charge might be brought on the tapis again. Sir John considered these things, and also another thing that concerned him more directly—the old pretensions of the Pasha of Tunis, which, should a breach take place, were not likely to remain dormant long. Even as it was, Sir John had reasons to apprehend a revival of that nasty affair. The Pasha, it is true, was still in his distant province on the borders of Arabia, “where,” Sir John says, “I pray God detayn him”; but he had at Constantinople a Vekil or Procurator in the person of—the Grand Vizir’s Kehayah: an ominous connection. Lastly, Sir John had to consider the feelings of the English merchants about him. Their standard of values was the standard of the counting-house, not of the Court. They thought it worse than futile to resent affronts which we had not the means of resisting. Where the Turks knew that big words were empty bluster, where business men could be hurt without hope of redress—the only way to peace lay through bakshish.[196] The factors with one voice urged Sir John to pay up.

There was not much time for hesitation. The Vizir had presented his final demand in the form of an ultimatum: the Ambassador should give a “categoricall and positive answer,” Yes or No, not later than the day following. Sir John said “Yes.” He agreed to purchase his audience for 6000 Lion dollars, ready money; and tried to persuade himself that, all things considered, the price was not excessive: he would save on the size of the vests—one yard here, two there-so that “in time, though with length,” we should get our money back! But nothing could minimise the cost in self-respect. “I never in my life enterd’ upon a Resolution more unwillingly, nor more against my Genious,” complains the poor diplomat, and we may well believe him. No Englishman ever “sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” had a keener sense of honour (we use the term in its technical acceptation). As we have seen, not once or even twice, the “point of honour” was to him what his creed is to a monk, what his flag is to a soldier, what her virtue is to a maiden—and now he had parted with it.

At the same time, we may ask (certain that Sir John will not mind our impertinence), was that solution really as inevitable as it was unpalatable? Was there no other way? On one hand, it is possible to argue as our merchants argued, and to reinforce the argument with such considerations as these: although the Law of Nations which prescribes respect for ambassadors—a law older than Homer—was not unknown to the Turks, no law is binding upon men unless it is backed by fear. This requisite was completely absent in the relations between the Western Powers and the Ottoman Empire. There were no Turkish ambassadors resident in foreign capitals upon whom to retaliate, and the Turks were at liberty to act as they pleased without fear of reprisals. For the rest, their brutality had been encouraged for generations by impunity. A whole series of European envoys had been treated by them in the most revolting manner, and their sovereigns had submitted with true Christian meekness. On the other hand, there is on record a case which suggests the existence of a more excellent way.

In the reign of James I., whilst the Elizabethan spirit still lingered among us, the great English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, fired with indignation at the contempt shown by the Sultan’s Ministers to the representatives of Christian Europe, took a strong line. He began by writing to the Grand Vizir that he had orders from his King either to obtain the respect due to English ambassadors or else to break off relations. The Vizir promised reform, but forgot to keep his promise. Roe did not waste any more time, but threw the Capitulations at the Vizir’s feet, and invited his colleagues to joint action. They all met and set out for the Seraglio, determined to procure from the Grand Signor either the Vizir’s head or leave to withdraw their subjects and their goods out of the country. It so happened that a superior power intervened. On the way the procession was met with the news that the Janissaries had risen, that the Vizir had fled, and that orders had been issued that he should be killed wherever found.[197]

Suppose Finch had taken a leaf out of Roe’s book? Was it not a fact that the impotence of the European envoys was essentially the result of their disunion? Finch himself confesses that “had Wee all united, the case had bin easily carryd’ against the Visir.” But he excuses himself to himself for making no attempt to unite them, partly on the ground that the Turks had forestalled him by inviting the Venetian and the Dutchman to audience the moment they got his refusal: “so diligent were they in using this pressure, least Wee Ministers should unite”; partly on the ground that his colleagues neglected to profit by his “indisposition of body”: they all knew it was an artifice, why then did they not copy it, or why did they not put off the Vizir by saying that the priority of audience belonged to the Ambassador of England? Thus by hastening to submit, they left him no alternative. It was not his fault: it was the fault of his colleagues, particularly of M. de Nointel: “The French Ambassadour’s example and desertion of me, together with the unadvisd’ deportment of the Factory (for neither of them alone could have done it),” compelled him to that ignominious surrender.

Thus Sir John bought his peace. He bought it upon assurances that he would be reinstated in the Grand Vizir’s good opinion, and have his audience at once. But what with the celebrations of the Bairam, the payment of the troops which began as soon as the Feasts ended, and several other excuses (whether real or pretended, Sir John could not say), the audience was deferred from day to day. In the meantime Mr. Ashby continued to groan in his chains; which grew, as such things are apt to do, heavier with every day that passed. The Ambassador, having some grounds to believe that the Vizir did not wish to see him till that disagreeable affair was settled, exerted himself to this end, with the result that the prisoner was first relieved of his collar and wristlets, then had the 5000 dollars to which he had been condemned reduced by one-fifth, and at last, after about twenty days’ incarceration, was set at liberty. Temporarily cured of his avarice, Mr. Ashby, besides paying Pizzamano 4000 dollars, also paid 500 to the Hasnadar, and, we may suppose, resolved not to prevaricate again.

The last obstacle having been removed, our Ambassador found the Porte open to him, and on the 12th of December (nearly eight months since that memorable Sunday when Nointel’s mishap had thrown him into a diplomatic distemper—a truly fatal illness) he had his audience. It went off without a hitch.[198]

Kara Mustafa, at close quarters, appeared somewhat less terrible than Sir John had pictured him at a distance; and, although he did not honour the visitor with any vests, he accorded to him several marks of (shall we say?) respect, which he had denied to the other foreign Ministers. Instead of three hours, he kept him waiting only a quarter of an hour; he permitted all the members of his suite to enter the Audience Chamber; he deigned to drink coffee and sherbet with him; and (greatest condescension of all!), while he had let no ambassador talk for more than seven minutes, and then only about news, he suffered Sir John to go on for over three-quarters of an hour, and (“bating the first Ceremony of Congratulation,” and a few words “of how things passd’ in England”) all about solid business.

Sir John took full advantage of this unexpected amiability. Very adroitly he began with the Smyrna figs and currants: the King his master was infinitely grateful for the favour conferred upon his kitchen; but the benefit was mutual: the Grand Signor’s subjects had already made 130 walled vineyards where there was nothing but stones before, and, if the Vizir was pleased to encourage the trade by enlarging the concession, “gold would grow instead of pebbles”—a million of dollars a year which we now spent in Christendom for fruit would then most probably come to Turkey. The topic was eminently calculated to capture Kara Mustafa’s attention. He asked with interest whether this concession was in the Capitulations; and, on hearing that it was, he said that it would be punctually observed together with the rest of our privileges.

Following up this propitious opening, Finch broached a number of kindred subjects, begging, among other things, that in future no Englishman might be dragged to the Divan by a chaoush for debt, until after his creditors had applied to the Ambassador for satisfaction. He implored the Grand Vizir to consider that the calling of a merchant from his business upon any frivolous or false claim often spelt ruin for the merchant. The Grand Vizir replied that, so long as the English merchants acted with sincerity, they should be protected; but if they acted unjustly and dishonourably, they must answer for their bad actions like other men.

Impartial justice, however, was not quite what the Ambassador wanted. He dwelt on the fact—a fact which, he said, must be well known to “a great captain in warr and a great Minister of State in peace,” such as Kara Mustafa was—that the Porte had never encountered at sea any English ships nor on land any English troops operating against it: a proof positive of the reality of the King’s friendship for the Grand Signor. After all this, it must surely be a subject of great joy to the enemies of the Porte, and a great discouragement to its well-wishers, to see no distinction made between friend and foe, but its best friends treated, if anything, worse than “those that exercise acts of hostility against it.” To this tender appeal, with its covert hit at the French, Kara Mustafa made a suitable answer: “He very well knew our friendship and he had a very great value for it.”

Towards the close of the interview Sir John expressed a hope that he was now entirely in the Grand Vizir’s good graces and that he might henceforth count on his favour and protection, declaring, upon the word of an Ambassador, that, unless assured of it, he was so unwilling to see the ancient friendship between England and Turkey grow cold on his account, that he would immediately write and ask the King his master to recall him and send some other person who might be more acceptable to his Excellency. “There is no occasion for any such thing,” replied the Vizir, looking very kindly upon the Ambassador: He had both esteem and kindness for him, and the Ambassador would find it so in all his business.

Then Sir John, besides the presents which he had delivered already, presented to Kara Mustafa “an incomparable perspective glasse[199] of 4 feet made by Campana, and a pockett one, also of Campana’s, and one of ten feet made in England,” and took his leave with a bow which the Grand Vizir was good enough to return.

Such, in substance, is Sir John’s own version of this historic interview. His feelings after it may be described as a mixture of relief and doubt, in which doubt predominated. “The misunderstandings between the Visir and me have, like the breaking of a Bone well sett, made our friendship the stronger,” he reported to the Secretary of State; and immediately, as if fearing the Nemesis which pursues boastfulness, he hastened to add: “But who can promise himself any thing in these times out of a certain prospect, or who can say that any thing is well done?”

Who, indeed! Turkey was no longer the Turkey to which Sir John had come, in which he had dwelt for three uneventful years so happily—the Turkey “of the two famous Visirs, Kuperli the father and Achmett his sonne; whose Justice, Detestation of Avarice, and Accesse renderd’ their Administration and all Buisenesse under it easy.” Gone was that golden age, and all men who during that twenty years’ interlude of righteousness had forgotten the normal rigour of Turkish rule, protested that “the Violence of this Goverment, as to Pride and Rapine is beyond all Memory and example.” Only a man like Dudley North saw that Kara Mustafa’s régime was not a departure from, but a return to normality. Finch, like the rest, stood aghast at a “barefacd’” arbitrariness utterly new to his experience: “I would,” he wrote, “all the Mutineers in England against their too much happinesse were exild’ for two yeares onely to be under this present Goverment!” and made no attempt to conceal his apprehensions for the future; “I shall count it a wonder, as well as a blessing,” he says, “if I scape thus.”

Prophetic words!