CHAPTER II Constantinople under the Turks

Constantinople soon became Stambûl in the mouth of the Turks, a corruption it may be of the εἰς τὴν πόλιν which they had often heard in the mouth of the Greeks. The crescent of Byzantium became the symbol of the Ottoman power. A new city began to be raised on the ruins of the old.

IN THE CEMETERY AT SCUTARI

Some privileges were left to the Christians. Galata and Pera were from the first confirmed in their independence and freedom of trade; yet step by step the Turkish sway was established over them, and though the foreign liberties still exist, and are reinforced by the privileges, from time to time increased, of the ambassadors and their households and the colonies they protect, the Sultan's rule is complete on both sides of the Golden Horn. After three days of plunder, Mohammed set himself to make order. He declared that he would protect the Greek Church. A new patriarch, George Scholarios or Gennadios, was installed: his ecclesiastical jurisdiction was recognized. He was allowed to hallow new churches, and one little humble oratory remained undefiled by the infidel. On the hill above the Phanar, hidden away in a side street, by a high wall, stands the little white-washed sanctuary round which on the fatal day the fight had surged. The Turks still call it Kan Klissé, the church of blood. The Greeks know it as S. Mary Mouchliotissa (the Mongolian), in memory, not only of the B. V. M., but of Mary the daughter of Manuel Palæologus, who had married the Khan of the Mongols, and after his death returned to Constantinople and built or restored the little church. Mohammed gave it to the architect Christodoulos, and by special firman, preserved it to the Christians.

The patriarchal throne was moved first to the Church of the Apostles, soon destroyed to make the mosque of the conqueror; thence to the Pammakaristos (Fetîyeh Djami); thence to the Church of the Wallachian palace in the Phanar, now the monastery of the Jerusalem patriarchate. At last, in 1601, it was moved to the ancient Petrion, where it remains. The palace of the patriarch is close by: the walls still show remains of the ancient fortifications, and of the stones of the monastery where the Empress Theodora lived so long in retirement. The church has a beautiful iconostasis of dark olive wood, and a patriarchal throne and pulpit, all probably of the seventeenth century, but which the faithful delight to ascribe to much earlier days. The throne is called the throne of S. John Chrysostom, the pulpit his pulpit; but their only claim to the title is that they belong to his successors, in an unbroken line. In this sheltered spot, and in the district of Phanar, stretching between the inner bridge over the Golden Horn and the ultra-Moslem suburb of Eyûb, remain the last links of Constantinople with the ancient Christian city. Round the patriarchal church, with the Christian schools and colleges, in the houses that are still half fortresses, cluster ancient memories that survive to-day. Gautier wrote fancifully, "Hither ancient Byzantium has fled. Here in obscurity dwell the descendants of the Comneni, the Dukai, the Palaiologoi, princes with no lands, but whose ancestors wore the purple and in whose veins flows imperial blood." Still in these dark houses, dusty and begrimed without, there survives some of the ancient Greek society, that has passed through so many changes, and hopes at least to witness one more.

The conquest of Constantinople had less effect than might have been expected upon the position of the Greek Church. Gennadios whom Mohammed made Patriarch, had been the bitter opponent of the reunion of the churches, and he had even declared that the destruction of the Empire would be the certain result of the concessions to the Latins. Mohammed desired that the Church should retain its power. If he protected it there might grow up some general feeling of acceptance of the Moslem rule. Thus synods were still allowed to meet, the patriarch was allowed to hold courts Christian, and to enforce his sentences with excommunication. But none the less the Church had no means of resisting the absolute power of the Sultan. At any moment patriarch, bishop or priest could be deposed, banished, executed, by his sole will. The Church has never ceased to live in a position of danger, at the mercy of an alien lord, and amid an infidel people; and at any moment she is liable to an active persecution, and her members to martyrdom.

The earlier patriarchs after the conquest seem to have been disturbed in their office by scandals, intrigues, difficulties of every kind. Before long the Sultan demanded payment on each new election, and it is represented that it was only by bribes that the election proceeded at all. Simony appears to have been rife. It was but slowly and under persecution that the Church was purged from these sins and became again fully worthy of the reverence of the whole Greek people. The encouragement of learning in the present century, the high character of the patriarchs, the times of danger through which they have passed, have left the Church the true centre of the national life which still remains. Nor has the widespread influence of the patriarchate failed to preserve some relics of the power of the ancient Empire. During the seventeenth century, while the Morea was in the hands of the Venetians, the Patriarch of Constantinople still nominated the bishops, revenues still reached him from the monasteries; and his excommunications were still valid in the lands which did not own the Sultan as lord. The Patriarch still claims ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Balkan lands, though the Porte has appointed a Bulgarian exarch, in accord with the wishes of the government, to act as head of the Orthodox in that principality, and Roumania has also freed herself; Serbia still struggles to be free: but it can hardly be doubted that should the lands ever be reunited, they would all gladly return to the obedience of the Patriarchate.

But this by anticipation: Mohammed set himself to found a new city. Land was freely granted to rich families from other cities: it is said that five thousand families, Greeks and Turks, were soon induced to settle in what had been the richest city in the world. Four thousand Servians were planted outside the walls to recolonize the villages that the war had destroyed. As the conquest spread Greeks and Albanians were forcibly deported to the capital. The Christians of Constantinople alone were freed from the tribute of their children. Before he died Mohammed saw the city again populous and in prosperity. He founded a new city on the ruins of the old: the new population, half Christians, but predominantly Turks, gave new life; and the new life was made to centre round the new buildings which Christian art inspired the Moslems to build. Gradually the city became not only Oriental, but Mohammedan. It is thus we see it to-day. Of the buildings let us speak later. Now let us see the work that was done by Mohammed the Conqueror and his successors.

The Turkish power depended upon the characteristic institution of the Janissaries. From the time of Orchan it was the law of the Turks to require from all the Christian subjects of their power a tribute of their children. These were at once made Mussulmans, brought up very strictly in their faith, skilfully taught, and trained to hardness. As time showed their capacity, they were divided into two classes; those who had no special physical strength were set to work in the offices of State; the others underwent the strict discipline which produced the finest military corps in Europe, the Janissaries. Unmarried, without family ties, connected neither among themselves nor with the people, these soldiers, it was said by their founder, Khalil-Djendereli, would belong solely to their sovereign, from whom they would have their sole reward. It was an original and daring thought, to make each conquest the basis of future victories. "Let the Christians support the war; let themselves furnish the soldiers by whose means we shall fight."

The first batch of Christian captives thus set apart in 1328 were brought before a renowned dervish, Hadji Bektash. Thus he blessed them. "Let them be called Yeni-Tscheri (new soldiers): they shall be conquerors in every fight; let their countenance be ever white and shining, their arm strong, their sword sharp, their arrow swift."

No troops ever more powerfully affected the imagination of friends and foes. Among the Turks they were always the leaders, the forlorn hope. Among Christians the terror of their name spread over Europe. In every war they gained new laurels, and from the moment when they stormed the walls of Constantinople they began to be, slowly but certainly, the sole strength of the Ottoman power. At first the absolute servants of the Sultan, before two centuries were over they became his masters. Their numbers increased rapidly. Within a few years their numbers reached twelve thousand, and in the seventeenth century they were more than three times as numerous. The description of the English traveller Sandys shows perhaps better than any other record what impression they made upon Christians at the height of their power.

"The Janissaries," he says,[34] "are those that bear great sway in Constantinople: in so much that the Sultans themselves have been sometimes subject to their insolencies. They are divided into severall companies under severall Captaines; but all commanded by their Aga: a place of high trust, and the third in repute through the Empire: howbeit, their too much love is to him an assured destruction. These are the flower of the Turkish infantery, by whom such wonderfull victories have been atchieved. They call the Emperour father (for none other is there for them to depend on), to whose valour and faith in the time of warre he committeth his person: they having their stations about the royal pavillion. They serve with harquebushes, armed besides with cymiters and hatchets. They weare on their heads a bonnet of white felt, with a flap hanging downe behind to their shoulders; adorned about the browes with a wreathe of metall, gilt, and set with stones of small value; having a kind of sheathe or rocket of the same erected before, wherein such are suffered to sticke plumes of feathers as have behaved themselves extraordinarie bravely. They tucke up the skirts of their coates when they fight, or march: and carry certaine dayes provision of victuals about with them. Nor is it a cumber: it being no more than a small portion of rice, and a little sugar and hony. When the Emperor is not in the field, the most of them reside with him in the Citie: ever at hand upon any occasion to secure his person, and are as were the Pretorian cohorts with the Romanes. They are in number about forty thousand: whereof the greater part (I meane of those that attend on the Court) have their being in three large Serraglios; where the juniors do reverence their seniors, and all obey their severall commanders (as they their Aga) with much silence and humility. Many of them that are married (a breach of their first institution) have their private dwellings: and those that are busied in forreine employments, are for the most part placed in such garrison townes as do greatly concerne the safetie of the Empire. Some are appointed to attend on Embassadors; others to guard such particular Christians as will be at the charge, both about the City, and in their travels, from incivilities and violences, to whom they are in themselves most faithfull: wary and cruell, in preventing and revenging their dangers and injuries; and so patient in bearing abuses, that one of them of late being strucken by an Englishman (whose humorous swaggering would permit him never to review his countrey) as they travelled along through Morea, did not onely not revenge it, nor abandon him to the pillage and outrages of others, in so unknowne and savage a country; but conducted him unto Zant in safety, saying, God forbid that the villany of another should make him betray the charge that was committed to his trust. They are al of one trade or other. The pay that they have from the Grand Signior is but five aspers a day: yet their eldest sons as soone as borne are inrolled, and received into pension; but his bounty extendeth no further unto his progeny (the rest reputed as natural Turks), nor is a Janizary capable of other preferments than the command of ten, of twenty, or of an hundred. They have yeerly given them two gowns apiece, the one of violet cloth, and the other of stanmell, which they weare in the City: carrying in their hands a great tough reede, some seven feet long, and tipped with silver; the weight whereof is not seldome felt by such as displease them. Who are indeed so awefull, that Justice dare not proceed publikely against them (they being only to be judged by their Aga), but being privately attached, are as privately throwne into the sea in the night time. But then are they most tumultuous (whereto they do give the name of affection) upon the dangerous sicknesses of their Emperours; and upon their deaths commit many outrages. Which is the cause that the great Bassas as well as they can, do conceale it from them, untill all things be provided for the presentment of the next for them to salute. Whereupon (besides the present larges) they have an Asper a day increase of pension: so that the longer they live, and the more Emperours they outlive, the greater is their allowance. But it is to be considered, that all these beforenamed, are not onely of that tribute of children. For not a few of them are captives taken in their child-hood; with divers Renegados, that have most wickedly quitted their religion and countrey, to fight against both: who are to the Christians the most terrible adversaries. And withall they have of late infringed their ancient customes, by the admitting of those into these orders, that are neither the sons nor grandsons of Christians; a naturall Turke borne in Constantinople, before never knowne, being now a Barsa of the Port."

To the English traveller's record may be added information of the Venetian ambassador's relazioni, which speak of the severe military training which the lads underwent, the strict asceticism in food, drill, garb, and tell that at night they all lay in a long room, lighted, and patrolled all night by a watchman, who walked up and down that they might learn thus to sleep in the midst of alarms.

Children of every nation, Poles, Bohemians, Russians, Italians, Germans, as well as tribute slaves from Greece and the Balkan lands, they knew no home but that narrow court in the Seraglio, no master but the Sultan, no hope but the hope of plunder and the paradise of Islam. So great was the power of the training, the comradeship, the fanaticism, that but one of all the Christians forcibly made Moslem and brought up among the Janissaries is known to have taken the opportunity to escape and return to Christendom. The single hero was Scanderbeg, who alone arrested the triumphant progress of Mohammed II.

One of the most curious memorials of the old Turkish State is that which is preserved to-day in the museum at the end of the At-meidan. There a hundred and thirty-six figures, huge painted dolls, represent the terrible troops in their habits as they lived. On the stairs are figures in chain armour, in the hall above the representations of the different ranks, and the officers named after the kitchen duties they were supposed to perform. It was one great family, in idea, with the Sultan as father. He gave the food, and their great kettles in which it was cooked were also their drums, with spoons for drumsticks. A strange grotesque sight are these bright figures in their long robes, with here and there, for contrast, an example of the new uniform introduced by Mohammed II. The museum is almost deserted; but there is no more characteristic memorial of the great days of the Turks. Let the visitor not imagine that he may sketch or take notes or look at the book of drawings which he may find in the room. He will hear the familiar Turkish word Yasak! and the book will be snatched from his hands.

But this by the way. When Mohammed II. took Constantinople and settled the Janissaries in the outer court of the Seraglio, once the Acropolis, they were only beginning to be the centre of power. Yet even then they were the most characteristic institution of the Osmanlis. While Constantinople was assuming the aspect which it was to bear for centuries, of an entirely eastern town, with minarets everywhere, khans, shrouded women, the strange solemn social life of the East, Mohammed the Conqueror was adding everywhere to his empire. Servia and Bosnia were annexed, Albania and Cyprus subdued; the whole of Asia Minor was under his rule. He died on May 2, 1481, and left the name of the greatest of the Turkish rulers. His laws, his organisation of the judicial and religious class of the Ulemas, the teachers of the people, were more permanent than his victories. But when he died the power that he had founded rested securely on the great maxim which his successors were, from his practice, to develop till it became a fixed theory of government—that the children of Christians were alone those who should enjoy the highest dignities of the empire.

The visitor to Constantinople remembers Mohammed most of all by the magnificent mosque which towers over the city and is seen in such striking effects of light from the heights of Pera. With the name of his successor is associated a mosque as beautiful and as famous. Bayezid succeeded his father in spite of a plot of the Grand Vizier to give the throne to his younger brother Djem, whose romantic adventures fill so large a space in the French and papal diplomacy of the end of the fifteenth century. His reign (1481-1512) was marked like his father's by great victories, and the once famous Turkish fleet owes its origin to him. In him first appears the contemplative lethargic character which was to become marked in some of the later Sultans. Eastern writers called him a philosopher; and when he had ceased even to pretend to be a warrior his troops insisted on his giving up the throne to his son Selim.

Three weeks after his resignation he died. Rarely has he who has once been Sultan lived long in retirement. Selim, with ferocious zest, carried out, though he did not inaugurate, another custom of the Ottoman monarchy. He swept away all possible claimants to his throne, strangling his two brothers and five of his nephews. He followed the victorious course of his predecessors; he fought in Persia, he seized Egypt and occupied Jerusalem, and Mecca, the centre of Mohammedan reverence, passed under his power. Savage and relentless as he was—it became a proverb of hatred, "Would that thou wast the Vizier of Sultan Selim"—he was yet, like so many of his race, a poet, and the friend and patron of learned men. He died near Adrianople on the 22nd of September 1520, and left the throne to his son Suleiman, one of the greatest of the Sultans.

Suleiman began with mercy. Justice and benevolence, he declared that he took for the principles of his government. He freed prisoners, he declared that he would rule in accordance with the precepts of the Koran. From the first his reign was a succession of victories. In 1521 Belgrade surrendered; in 1522 he conquered the isle of Rhodes, so long the gallantly defended outpost of Christendom in the Mediterranean. For a time after these great successes he turned to pleasure, but threatened insubordination among the Janissaries awoke the barbarity which was never far below the surface in the great Turkish Sovereigns, and Mustafa the aga with several of the officers paid for their independence with their lives.

It was necessary, Suleiman saw, to continue war, to find employment for his turbulent force; and in 1526 he marched against Hungary with a force of a hundred thousand men. At Mohacz the Christian army was utterly defeated after a gallant fight, in which Suleiman himself was for a time in great danger, and in which at the end the flower of Hungarian chivalry with their King at their head perished by the sword or in the river through which they tried to escape. Buda Pesth fell into the hands of the conqueror. All the prisoners taken at Mohacz were massacred, and over a hundred thousand slaves were led back to Turkey. The spoils were enormous. The library of the old Seraglio and the treasury still hold some of the choicest manuscripts of the famous library of Mathias Corvinus. Suleiman returned in triumph to Constantinople.

To the passage of armies on their way to victory the people of the great city had now become familiar as in the greatest days of the Empire. Thirteen times, it is said, did Suleiman pass through the gates on warlike expeditions and thirteen times did he return a conqueror. He led his forces to the walls of Vienna, and though he was at length compelled to withdraw, he inflicted a blow on the Empire which it took long to recover, and he showed to Europe that a new and terrible power had come to take part in the affairs of the West. In Persia, if he was not entirely successful, yet he added new territories to the Empire. A pirate fleet under his sanction swept the seas. He defeated the combined fleets of Spain, Italy, and Venice. During a reign of forty-six years he kept Europe and Asia at war. But his greatest triumphs were not those of the battlefield. He made the great Sovereigns of Christendom count him as their equal. Every prince of the time was anxious to enter into negotiation with him. Their envoys came to Constantinople, and were treated as suppliants. To every indignity they submitted for the sake of winning the alliance of "the grand Turk," the Sultan whom Europe came to call "the magnificent."

France was the first to make alliance with the infidel; and in spite of the papal curse the Mohammedan power was introduced as a prominent actor in the politics of Europe by the most Christian King, Francis I. The Sultan of sultans, King of kings, giver of crowns to the kings of the world, the shadow of God upon the earth, Suleiman, the ever victorious, assured the prostrate King of France that he need not fear, for that every hour his horse was saddled, his sword girt on, and he was ready to defend and to overthrow. A solemn treaty in February 1535 united France and Turkey in bonds of perpetual amity. It was renewed in 1553; and the alliance remained an important fact in the politics of Europe for more than two hundred years.

Renowned for his victories in diplomacy and war, Suleiman's fame was even greater as a patron of art and letters. It was through him first that the Christendom of the sixteenth century heard of the glories of Eastern literature, and that Europe began to imitate Asia. It was the great age of Turkish poets. The court of Suleiman was thronged by poets who vied with each other in celebrating the glories of their master. Every bazaar of the East rang with his praises: in far distant lands the ingenious verse-makers made his victories, his pleasures, his magnificence, the theme of their elaborate compositions. Trade poured into Stambûl. All the riches of the East, the wonderful carpets and embroideries, the exquisite metal-work, the dignified designs of the pen and the brush, fixed their natural home in the court of the magnificent Suleiman. Under him the architecture of the Moslems reached its culmination: the splendid mosque named after him, with the türbehs around it, represent the great work of his age, worthy of commemoration as lengthy as that which Procopius gave to the edifices of his sovereign. Great as conqueror, as builder, and as restorer of ancient work, Suleiman may well be called, in yet another aspect, the Turkish Justinian. He was great also as a legislator, and his work completed that of Mohammed II. He laid down the limits of the privileges of the Ulemas, the powers of the Sheikh-ul-Islam and the Grand Vizier. Financial organisation, so essential to the security of his conquests, was made under his rule into an elaborate system. The penal code was revised, simplified, and, on the whole, rendered less severe. Every change, every reform, showed the guiding genius of the great Sultan; arbitrary as the worst of his race, unrestrained always in the exercise of his authority, he yet showed an Eastern despotism at its best, animated by a zeal for justice, for regularity, for the welfare of the people.

Suleiman, whose name exercised so great a fascination over the imagination of the West, was the hero, Christian romancers thought, of a grand passion. The name of Roxelana became famous in the drama and poetry of Europe. Her story was indeed a striking one. Khurrem, "the joyous one," was a Russian captive, who, in the later years of the mighty Sultan, obtained an absolute control over him. From a slave, placed among hundreds of other captives in the harem, she rose to be herself Sultan,[35] the wife of the Commander of the Faithful.

It was contrary to all precedent that Suleiman deposed the mother of his eldest son from her rank and made Roxelana Sultan. The French Ambassador accounts for the elevation in this way. "Roxelana wished to found a mosque for the weal of her soul, but the mufti told her that the pious works of a slave turned only to the advantage of her lord: upon this special ground Suleiman declared her free. This was immediately followed by the second step. The free woman would no longer comply with those desires of Suleiman which the bondswoman had obeyed, for the fetwa of the mufti declared that this could not be without sin. Passion on the one side and obstinacy on the other at last brought it about that Suleiman made her his wife. A treaty of marriage was ratified, and Roxelana was secured an income of 5000 sultanins."[36]

The extraordinary influence which this remarkable woman exercised over the great Sultan was new, it seemed, to the Empire; it was not only new, but destructive to the military system of the Turks that any special attachment should be formed which should attract the Sultan to the home rather than the camp. The Sultans, with all their gross pleasures, had been ever warriors ready to desert everything for their military duties, and had ruled their Empire as well as their army solely by their own will. Suleiman seemed to open the way to influences which would be destructive to the Turkish power; and one of the greatest of the Viziers a century later said that all his successors were fools or tyrants.

Be this so or not, Suleiman and Roxelana were unique in Turkish history. Their devotion to each other appeared to be complete: and the passionate love which grew rather than diminished with years, marked the history of the court with the stains of sacrifice and crime. Mustafa, the Sultan's eldest son, stood in the way of the children of Khurrem. The Vizier Rustem Pacha was her devoted slave, owing to her his elevation to the dignity of the Sultan's vicegerent. He brought to Suleiman reports that Mustafa was allying with the Shah of Persia to dethrone him, and was winning the Janissaries to his side, a charge to which his valour and ability, and his great popularity with the soldiers, might seem to give some colour. Suleiman himself, on his Syrian campaign, ordered his son to appear before him. On September 21, 1553—the day was long remembered—the gallant Mustafa was brought with great pomp and ceremony to the tent of the Sultan. When he entered he found only the seven mutes armed with the fatal bowstring. He was seized, and before he could utter more than one cry, he was murdered. The thick tapestry at the back of the tent was drawn aside and Suleiman entered to gaze upon the body of his son.

Even then the vengeance was not complete. The child of the murdered Mustafa was stabbed at Brusa in his mother's arms. The horror that was felt at these crimes became evident when the Janissaries demanded the punishment of Rustem, and when Djihanghir, the son of Suleiman and Roxelana, died of grief for the brother to whom he was devoted. The new grand Vizier was sacrificed also: and not long afterwards the beautiful Roxelana, Khurrem, passed away. The great Sultan gave her the most beautiful of tombs. The art of the Mussulmans was centered in that last home which the love of Suleiman could bestow.

"Without, the scented roses twine,

The Suleymanieh tow'rs o'erhead,

The flagstones, flecked with shade and shine,

Re-echo to the pilgrim's tread,

And soft grey doves their wings outspread

In the blue vault above the shrine."

If Roxelana was the evil genius of Suleiman, his reign was not more happy after her death. Her two elder sons, Selim and Bayezid broke into open war. Bayezid attacked Selim, and, betrayed, it would seem by the basest of intrigues, he was defeated, and fled to Persia. Every letter that he wrote to his father was suppressed, and the Persians sold him to his brother by whom he and his four sons were put to death. A few months later his fifth son, a child of three, was strangled at Brusa by the Sultan's orders.

To the last, Suleiman led his troops to the field. He died on August 30, 1566, while he was conducting the siege of Szigeth, a small fortress in Hungary. The grand Vizier concealed his death from the army and sent messengers at once to Selim, who hastened to Constantinople.

Suleiman left behind him a name more famous than any of his predecessors save Mohammed the Conqueror. His lofty and enterprising genius, his heroic courage, his strict observance of the laws of Islam tempered at times by a wise tolerance, the order and economy which were combined with his magnificence and grandeur, his love of knowledge and the protection he extended to learned men, all mark him out, says the historian of the Ottomans, among the noblest of his race.

Selim II. began ill by not paying the largesse which the Janissaries expected from a new sovereign. They mutinied, and he was obliged to yield. His father had altered the ancient rule which required the Janissaries only to go to the war when the Sultan himself took the field. The Janissaries now compelled him to allow the enrolment of their children in their ranks. Selim was no warrior, and he was glad to send his troops without him. He preferred, the ambassadors say, "the society of eunuchs and of women, and the habits of the serai to the camp:" he "wore away his days in sensual enjoyments, in drunkenness and indolence." "Whoever beheld him and saw his face inflamed with Cyprus wine, and his short figure rendered corpulent by slothful indulgence, expected in him neither the warrior nor the leader of warriors. In fact, nature and habit unfitted him to be the supreme head, that is the life and soul, of that warlike State."[37]

He was the first of the Turkish Sovereigns who was unworthy of the throne that had been won by hard and incessant work. "I think not of the future," he himself said, "I live only to enjoy the pleasure of each day as it passes." A drunkard ruling over the Mussulmans, sworn to total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, was a grotesque and disgusting anomaly. The people mocked while they followed the example. "Where shall we get our wine to-day," they said, "from the Mufti (priest) or from the Kadi (judge)?"

But whatever might be the character of the Sultan, it had become a fixed policy with the Turks that the Empire could only be carried on by aggressive war. Under Selim, though without his personal intervention, war was made with Russia, but without success: the conquests of Suleiman in Arabia were made complete, and Yemen fell into the hands of the Turks. Then it was determined to complete the conquest of the Mediterranean: war was declared against Venice, and Cyprus was captured in August 1571. But this capture, which Selim described to Barbaro as "cutting off one of the arms of the Republic" was avenged by the famous naval league against the Turks. On October 7, 1571, Don John of Austria utterly destroyed the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, capturing 130 galleys, 30,000 prisoners, and 15,000 Christian slaves. It was the first sign of the long decline of the Ottoman power. Europe awoke to the belief that the Turks were not invincible.

THE GOLDEN HORN FROM PERA, AFTER SUNSET

The news was received with consternation in Constantinople. An outbreak of Mohammedan fanaticism, as so often since, found its expression in the ferocity of the Sultan. Selim issued orders for the massacre of all the Christians in the city: happily his Vizier deferred the execution of the command, and it was revoked. The incident is characteristic. From 1453 the Christian inhabitants of the capital have held their lives simply at the pleasure of the Commander of the Faithful. At any moment the word may be spoken which the loyal Turk must obey

"For an order has come from the Padishah

I must go and kill the Giaour."

The butchery was countermanded in 1571, but little more than twenty years later it was again seriously proposed. When the Spaniards in 1595 sacked Patras, the extermination of the Christians in Constantinople "was discussed in the divan, but the result was confined to the publication of an order for the expulsion of all unmarried Greeks from Constantinople within three days."[38] This was in the reign of Murad III., and when he died, in the same year, "the Janissaries, in their wonted manner, fell to spoiling Christians and Jews, and were proceeding to further outrages, when their aga, to restrain their insolence, hung up a Janissary taken in the act of murdering a rayah."

The alarm of Mussulman Constantinople was ended by the speedy reconstruction of a fleet, and by the capture of Tunis. But with none of these triumphs was it possible to associate the name of Selim. He died on December 12, 1574, "the victim," in the phrase of the Vicomte A. de la Jonquière, "de sa passion pour le vin."

Murad III. his son and successor was not without good instincts. He was a striking contrast to his father. He loved study, he was temperate, he was a soldier. But the terrible custom, now become almost a law of state, laid its frightful burden of crime upon him at the moment of his succession. For eighteen hours he refused to be proclaimed, he argued with the Muftis and the Ministers, to save the lives of his brothers. But he yielded, willingly or unwillingly, and the chief of the mutes was summoned to his presence, shown the body of the dead Sultan, and given nine handkerchiefs for the nine princes in the Seraglio. Weeping, Murad gave the order, says the Venetian ambassador: and men thought when he began his reign that he would be sober, wise, and just. He did not long retain the reputation. He began a war with Persia and his troops were engaged on the Hungarian frontier. But he followed the example of his father. He did not himself lead his armies in the field. He rarely left the seraglio, where he gave himself up entirely to the pleasures which appealed so powerfully to the Moslem. The harem and the treasury became his sole delights. The ambassadors tell stories that sound fabulous of his insane desire for gold. He stripped ornaments from ancient works of art and coined them into money; he collected from every quarter; he pinched and starved everything but his private pleasures, and year after year he cast into the great marble well which he had made beneath his bed "two and a half millions of gold, all in sequins and sultanins." Under him the sale of offices, which was begun by Rustem, the vizier to whom Roxelana induced Suleiman to give his favour, became a settled and almost fundamental rule of the state. Even judicial and military offices were given for bribes, and the money was caressed by the insane Murad and cast into the pit over which he slept. The ambassadors describe in ludicrous language the impression which Murad made upon them. He sat in state to receive them, he received their presents, he listened to them with a stupid stare; then he "went back to his garden, where in deep sequestered spots his women played before him, danced and sang, or his dwarfs made sport for him, or his mutes, awkward and mounted on as awkward horses, engaged with him in ludicrous combats, in which he struck now at the rider now at the horse, or where certain Jews performed lascivious comedies before him." In fact the Sultans were becoming ridiculous, without ceasing to be terrible. As for government, Murad left it to his vizier, a Bosnian, Mohammed, who held his office in three reigns and far surpassed any European minister in riches and power. It was he who peacefully arranged the succession of both Selim and Murad, and so long as he lived there was order and firmness in the government. But after his death the chief office was passed from hand to hand, according to the Sultan's fancy, and always a large sum found its way, at each change of viziers, into the pit of gold. The elevation of Ferhat reads like a tale in the Arabian Nights. Murad would wander like Haroun al-Raschid through the bazaars. One day he heard a cook bewailing the misgovernment of the city. He questioned him, approved his replies, and next day summoned him to the palace and appointed him to the office whose holder he had criticised, from which he rose to be vizier. It was a perilous rise. Ferhat did not long retain his position, but at least he escaped with his life. It was different with others, and the precedent of handing over officers to the vengeance of the Janissaries was set in 1590, when the soldiers attacked the Seraglio and demanded the execution of the Beyler bey of Roumelia and another. The plane tree of the Janissaries began its deadly history.

Murad died on January 6, 1596. His eldest son and successor, whose mother was a Venetian, marked his accession by the most bloody of all the murders which inaugurated the reign of the Sultans. He had his nineteen brothers strangled in his presence, and then proceeded to govern as though he had no objects but those of the most exalted virtue. After a few weeks he left all the work to his ministers, and was himself ruled entirely by his mother. In 1596, however, the disasters of his army induced him to go himself to the war in Wallachia. The sacred standard of the Prophet, preserved at Eyûb, was unfurled, and on the field of Kereskte, Mohammed won a great victory over the Austrians. He returned in triumph to Constantinople, where the rest of his reign was marked by rebellions and misfortunes on all sides. The plague made fearful ravages in the crowded streets of Stambûl. It penetrated into the Seraglio, and it is said that seventeen princesses, sisters of Mohammed, died. The sipahis rose and demanded the heads of the eunuchs who ruled under favour of the Valideh Sultan. They were given up and strangled. But then the Sultan determined to take vengeance, he entrusted its execution to the Janissaries. The sipahis were ordered to lay down their arms; if they failed to do so they were threatened with the penalties of treason. The soldiers thereupon delivered up their officers, who were put to death. The Sultan himself died in 1603. His son Ahmed succeeded him, an elder son having been put to death on pretence of having shown independence of character which threatened the throne.

Ahmed I. was but fourteen when he came to the throne. Well served by a wise Grand Vizier, his reign was marked by some signs of activity, and, strange to say, by two years of peace. But the treaty of Sitvakorok (1606) with Austria was another step in the decline of the Ottomans.

Ahmed did something to redress the corruption that had infected the government. He administered justice like the chieftains of old; he received petitions, and saw that grievances were redressed. He began, as he grew up, to read of the exploits of Suleiman, and to promise himself that he would surpass them; but he had no stability of purpose, and his reign passed away in disasters, with the murder of the one eminent man, Nousouh Pacha, who might have saved the State, and with the introduction of usages which seemed to the Ulemas to strike at the very heart of Moslem law. Constantinople was almost abandoned to mob-rule because the muftis forbade the use of tobacco, which was introduced by the Dutch. It is impossible now to conceive a Turk without this solace; and it is strange that it needed the most ingenious arguments and the most stubborn defiance to procure the withdrawal of the edict which forbade it to the Moslem. The poets, we are told, called tobacco, coffee, opium, and wine the four elements in the world of happiness; the Ulemas replied that they were the four chief servants of the devil. The people settled the question for themselves.

With Ahmed the custom of butchering the brothers of the new Sultan had ceased. He not only spared the life of his brother Mustafa, but left directions that he should succeed him on the throne. But the custom which he began was even more fatal to the power of the Turks than that which he ended. The succession of the oldest male of the royal house might not itself have been a misfortune. But from the time when the princes ceased to be strangled they were kept in the Seraglio, with no knowledge of the work of government, trained only to a voluptuous and effeminate life. Mustafa had almost lost his wits when he became Sultan; he had been a prisoner for nearly forty years. Within three months his violence, his promotion of two pages to be Pashas of Cairo and of Damascus, his dislike of the female sex, convinced the ministers that he was incapable of governing; he was again removed to the Seraglio, and Osman II., the son of his brother Ahmed, was elevated to the throne.

Of the troubles which beset the ambassadors and how they were redressed more shall be said hereafter. Osman's six years of rule were disturbed by sterner men. The Janissaries again showed that their power was greater than that of the Sultan. Osman decimated them in war, and executed many who drank wine; but they were too strong for him, dragged the unhappy Mustafa again from prison, and again declared him to be the ruling Sultan. The Kafess (cage), the splendid building in the grounds of the old Seraglio, which even now may not be approached, which had so long held him prisoner, has memories of no stranger history than his. When he was dragged forth he trembled before his nephew, and threw himself at his feet. Osman taunted the Janissaries with the weakness of the ruler they preferred to himself; but it was not weakness that the Janissaries feared. Osman was dragged to the Seven Towers, and there, after a desperate struggle, he was strangled in a dungeon. Within a few months the idiot Mustafa was again deposed and sent back to the Kafess, where soon afterwards the bowstring ended his miserable life. For the few months of his nominal reign he was entirely in the hands of the soldiery; minister after minister was given up to them, and ended his life by the bowstring or on the fatal tree. The Janissaries held Constantinople in terror, and raised and deposed a Sultan as easily as a minister.

Murad IV., still a child, the surviving son of Ahmed, was made Sultan in 1623. In him the Turks had again a masterful and determined ruler. His mother the Valideh, and his Vizier Hafiz, made the first years of his reign distinguished if not glorious. Till 1632 he trained himself in all military exercises; he rode, he drew the bow with the best of the Janissaries. Then came the revolt of the Sipahis and Janissaries, which gave him his opportunity. Constantinople was for many days in the hands of the military mob, reinforced by disaffected troops who had returned from Persia. They assembled in the Atmeidan (the old Hippodrome); thence they went to the Seraglio and demanded the "seventeen heads" of the Sultan's chief advisers and friends. For some days Murad held out. He summoned the Vizier, Hafiz, who rode through the crowd, past the barracks of the Janissaries, in at the Orta Kapou, after dismounting, the stones of the mob falling round him as he disappeared. Murad ordered him to escape to Juntan. Within a few hours the Sultan was compelled to come forth to the people and hold Divan. They demanded the seventeen—the "vizier, the aga of the Janissaries, the deftarder, and even a boy, because he was liked by the Sultan." "Give us the heads," they cried. "Give the men up to us, or it shall be the worse for thee."

Murad summoned Hafiz to return to die. The Vizier came back, made the ablution of the Moslem law before death, went forth calmly to the mob, and was hewn in pieces outside the gate of the Seraglio. "Infamous assassins," cried Murad, "who fear neither Allah nor his prophet, some day if God wills you shall find your victims terribly avenged." "The sole remedy against abuses is the sword," one said to the Sultan; and the rest of his life showed how well he understood the lesson. One by one the leaders of the revolt were secretly assassinated; their bodies were found floating on the Bosporus. The Janissaries and the sipahis were ostensibly received into favour again, justice was promised, and the strict rule of law. But it was a reign of terror that Murad inaugurated. His first execution had given him a passion for blood. Sometimes he gratified it in the chase, when he slaughtered thousands of head, driven together by an army of beaters. More often it was displayed in the slaughter of men. In the year 1637 it was declared that he had executed 25,000 men, many of them with his own hand. "He was now terrific to behold. His savage black eyes glared threateningly in a countenance half hidden by his dark brown hair and long beard; but never was its aspect more peculiar than when it showed the wrinkles between the eyebrows. His skill with the javelin and the bow was then sure to deal death to some one. He was served with trembling awe. His mutes were no longer to be distinguished from the other slaves of the Serai, for all conversed by signs. While the plague was daily carrying off fifteen hundred victims in Constantinople, he had the largest cups brought from Pera, and drank half the night through, while the artillery was discharged by his orders."[39]

Drunken and brutal as he was he had still much of the terrible force of the early Ottomans. He led his own troops to battle, and when they flinched—for the old spirit seemed to have deserted even the Janissaries—he drove them forward with his own sword. He appears in history as the Conqueror of Bagdad (1638) a conquest marked, it is said, by a massacre of 25,000 people. He was the last Sultan whom the people of Constantinople saw return in triumph from a war of which he himself had been the leader.

He died on February 9, 1640, leaving behind him no child. Only his mother's craft had prevented the murder of his only brother, the last of the race of Osman. He left behind him an empire which seemed entirely subdued to the Sultan's will. But the terror which he had inspired could not endure; and while it lasted it could only paralyse the forces which should have given strength and permanence to the empire. Greedy, avaricious to an extent as enormous but not so ridiculous as Murad III., the supreme passion of his life was the lust of blood. It became an insanity; at night he would rush through the streets, cutting down all whom he met. Yet he died in his bed; the time had not come when Sultans were murdered as easily as Viziers. Ibrahim, his successor, had been imprisoned in the Kafess since he was a child of two. He had lived through the reigns of Mustafa, Osman and Murad. He had been allowed no offspring. He was utterly ignorant of politics and war. He cared for nothing but the pleasures of the harem. When the soldiers went in to announce his accession he would not believe that they desired anything but his death. He would not be convinced till the corpse of his brother was brought before him. Then he screamed with insane delight, "The empire is at last delivered from its butcher."

His reign of nine years was a horrible mixture of tragedy and farce. In licentiousness he outdid the worst of his predecessors, in folly the silliest of them. The capture of the child of a favourite slave led to the war of Candia: the marriage by his orders of his baby daughter to a rich Pacha was used as an occasion to strangle the bridegroom and seize his treasures. At length the shameful crimes of the sovereign, of which murder seemed the least, caused an organised insurrection in the city. The chief Mufti, whose daughter had been shamefully used by the Sultan, assembled all the mollahs, and the officers of the Janissaries and the sipahis in the Orta djami (a mosque on the Etmeidan, the old quarter of the Janissaries, now destroyed). They first demanded the execution of the Vizier. When that was refused, the Janissaries secured the gates, surrounded the Seraglio, caught and slew the Vizier. In S. Sophia, the Mufti, the Sheik-ul-Islam, proclaimed to a vast multitude the iniquities of the Sultan, and demanded his deposition. Solemnly the Osmanlis declared Ibrahim, the padishah, the king of kings, the commander of the faithful, unworthy to reign. His little child, Mohammed, only seven years old, was fetched from the charge of his mother, the famous Valideh Sultan, and invested with the ensigns of sovereignty. Ibrahim was again carried to the Kafess. Ten days later appeared the mutes, with the Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam; and the bowstring ended the life of Ibrahim.

Mohammed IV. reigned for nearly forty years, 1649-1687, and he filled a great space in the history of his time. Foreign observers—notably that most entertaining writer Paul Ricaut, Esquire, "late secretary to his Excellency the Earl of Winchelsea, Embassador Extraordinary for His Majesty Charles II., to Sultan Mahomet Han the Fourth Emperor of the Turks, now Consul of Smyrna, and Fellow of the Royal Society," in his "History of the present state of the Ottoman Empire," and a certain escaped slave (unless indeed it be an ingenious gentleman of Grub Street) who wrote in 1663 "A new survey of the Turkish Empire and Government"—made Europe well acquainted with the customs of the Turks, and the manners, especially the least pleasing manners, of their rulers. The Turk become better known, yet hardly less terrible; and our knowledge of the revolutions of Constantinople now comes to us, for the first time, largely from English observers. The story must be briefly sketched. In the first year of the child-Sultan's reign tragedies of the palace succeeded each other with fearful rapidity.

There was a contest between the Valideh, the mother, and Kiosem (as Ricaut calls her), the grandmother of Mohammed. The aga of the Janissaries took part against Sinan the Vizier, who, with the old queen, determined to put a young child, Suleiman, on the throne. Sinan took prompt measures. He entered the Seraglio, had the Valideh aroused and sent to the bedside of her son. The household was armed. Suspected traitors were slain before Mohammed's eyes, and their blood bespattered his dress as he sat on his throne. While within the Seraglio there was this confusion, without the whole city was in disturbance, and the people were all aroused to defend their Sultan.

Ricaut's description is worth quoting. He derived his knowledge from some persons intimately concerned, and the way he tells the tale, from which a short passage is here given, shows how Eastern doings struck the Westerns of his day.

"These preparations," he says,[40] "were not only in the Seraglio, but likewise without; for the Visier had given order to all the Pashaws and Beglerbegs, and other his Friends, that without delay they should repair to the Seraglio with all the force they could make, bringing with them three days Provision, obliging them under pain of Death to this Duty. In a short space so great was this concourse, that all the Gardens of the Seraglio, the outward Courts and all the adjoining Streets were filled with armed Men: from Galata and Tophana came boats and barges loaden with Powder and Ammunition and other necessaries; so that in the morning by break of day appeared such an Army of Horse and Foot in the Streets, and Ships and Gallies on the Sea, as administered no small terrour to the Janizaries; of which being advised, and seeing the concourse of the people run to the assistance of the King, they thought it high time to bestir themselves; and therefore armed a great company of Albaneses, Greeks and other Christians to whom they offered Money, and the Title and Priviledges of Janizaries, promising to free them from Harach, or Impositions paid by the Christians; which Arguments were so prevalent, that most taking Arms, you might see the Court and City divided, and ready to enter into a most dread confusion of a Civil War."

FOUNTAIN IN THE COURT OF THE MOSQUE OF VALIDEH

The end of the matter was that "the old queen" was dragged naked from the Seraglio, a horror unknown in Turkish history, and bowstrung outside the Orta Kapou. The banner of the Prophet was unfurled. The Janissaries rallied to it. Their aga was deserted and slain, with his accomplices, and (by retributive justice) the Vizier was stabbed in the streets. Tranquillity was re-established, and the government was carried on from the harem. From 1649 to 1656 six Viziers were deposed or strangled, Pacha after Pacha broke into open revolt, the Janissaries and sipahis fought against each other as if there had been no Christians to conquer, and in turn demanded from the Sultan the heads of those whom they chose to proscribe. The Valideh Sultan was wisely and carefully educating her son. In 1656 she gave him the best of teachers and viziers in Kuprili Mohammed. With him began the age of the great Viziers who for a time revived the glory of the Turks. He showed with severity that he intended to rule; and the Turks have always submitted to one who knows how to command. The sipahis were sent away from Constantinople and settled in the provinces. A rising was sternly checked, and four thousand corpses were thrown into the sea. Thus began the rule of the Kuprilian Viziers, which lasted from 1659 to 1702, a half century of varying fortunes, but never wholly unfavourable to the Turks. The interminable war with Candia went on, and the Austrian and Hungarian campaigns succeeded each other with undeviating regularity. The Turks met Montecuculi, and Sobieski, in the field; and when they were defeated they were at least not disgraced. In 1683 Kara Mustafa, the Vizier, was defeated before Vienna and the Turks were driven back to Belgrade. Though he was the Sultan's son-in-law an order was sent to the camp for him to die; he placed the cord with his own hands round his neck. In the year of continuous warfare, when the forces of the empire bore the Turkish banners against Venice, as well as the Empire, the vices and neglect of the Sultan passed for a time almost unheeded. But in 1687 the defeat of the army led to a demand for the punishment of the general, Suleiman Pacha. Mohammed saw that this was but a step towards his own deposition. He sacrificed his minister, and ordered the execution of his own brother Suleiman, that there might be no one to replace him. But it was too late. The army, in rebellion, marched on Constantinople, released Suleiman and invested him as Sultan. Mohammed was imprisoned till his death in 1693.

Suleiman II. reigned but four years, but he showed an unexpected ability. His accession was marked by what had now become a custom, an insurrection of the Janissaries. The house of the Grand Vizier was sacked, his harem was violated, and the most shameful atrocities were committed in the streets. Constantinople seemed to be given over to pillage; the bazaars were attacked, and some private houses were pillaged. The Sheik-ul-Islam was obliged to arouse the Ulemas and display the standard of the Prophet over the gate of the Seraglio, and when the Janissaries, like spoilt children, returned to their allegiance, their leaders were executed and peace was restored. In Suleiman the people had again a sovereign who lived according to the precepts of the Koran. His wisdom and impartiality, extended even to allowing the Christians of Constantinople to rebuild some of their ancient churches, were recognised even by fanatics and he was counted a saint. His wars were carried on by Kuprili Mustafa, to whom also his brother Ahmed II. (1691-1695) abandoned all the power of government, at the death of that wise statesman at the head of the defeated army of the Turks at Salankanem. Mustafa II. (1695-1703) was the son of Mohammed IV. His first proclamation to his people was a strange document to issue from the arbitrary sovereign of the Osmanlis. He attributed all the defeats and misfortunes of the last reigns to the vices of the Sultans. "While the Padishahs who have ruled since our sublime father Mohammed have heeded nought but their fondness for pleasure and for ease, the unbelievers, the unclean beings, have invaded with their armies the four quarters of Islam." In any other monarchy it would have been dangerous indeed to criticise after this fashion. At Constantinople neither the pen nor the voice was of much importance. It was the sword that ruled.

And the sword of the Sultan had ceased to be victorious. In 1697 Mustafa was utterly defeated by Prince Eugene at Zenta. Again a Kuprili was called to command, but by the treaty of Carlowitz, 1699, by which Hungary and Transylvania were given up, the dismemberment of the Empire had begun.

For the last two years of his reign Mustafa abandoned his capital and lived in a palace at Adrianople. An intrigue deposed him in 1703, and his brother Ahmed reigned in his stead. He began his reign by executing all those who had taken part in his elevation, an act which he followed by appointing another Kuprili Vizier. The next year was marked by the beginning of serious wars with Russia, the bizarre sojourn of Charles XII. at Bender, and the treaty of Passarowitz (1718). The wars in which Turkey was now year by year involved continued the slow process of the dismemberment of Turkey; but Constantinople hardly felt the blows which struck the Empire at its extremities. The description which English travellers give of the city shows that strangers passed freely about in it, and that in many respects it was superior to other European capitals as they were then, and particularly in the condition of its streets, to what it became a hundred years later, and remains to-day. A passage from Pococke's travels (published in 1745) is worth quoting here. His description of the four "royal" mosques he saw, those of Ahmed, Suleiman, Selim, and Mohammed the Conqueror, shows that they were much as they are to-day, but on the other hand S. Sophia and the Church of the Studium are manifestly worse now than then; the latter indeed, now a mere ruin, was then "the finest mosque next after Saint Sophia." Of the city he writes thus[41]:—

"Great part of the houses of Constantinople are built with wooden frames, mostly filled up with unburnt brick; and a great number of houses are made only of such frames covered with boards. They have notwithstanding very good rooms in them; and the streets are tolerable, with a raised footway on each side. The street of Adrianople is broad, and adorned with many public buildings; to the south of it there is a vale which is to the north of the seventh hill. The bazestans or shops of rich goods are such as have been described in other places; and many of the shops for other trades are adorned with pillars, and the streets in which they are, covered over in order to shelter from the sun and rain. There are also several large kanes, where many merchants live, and most of these have apartments in them, where they spend the day, and retire at night to their families in their houses. The bagnios also are to be reckoned another part of the magnificence of Constantinople, some of them being very finely adorned within. The fountains, likewise, are extremely magnificent, being buildings about twenty feet square, with pipes of water on every side; and within at each corner there is an apartment, with an iron gate before it, where cups of water are always ready for the people to drink, a person attending to fill them; these buildings are of marble, the fronts are carved with bas-reliefs of trees and flowers and the eaves projecting six or seven feet; the soffit of them is finely adorned with carved works of flowers, in alto relievo, gilt with gold in a very good taste, so that these buildings make a very fine appearance."

Dr Pococke was certainly a somewhat dull person, and as certainly a thorough Englishman. One feels that he never quite got over his surprise that S. Sophia was not like Westminster Abbey or the Golden Gate like Temple Bar. Happily we have a contrast to him in the literature of his time.

Certainly the most charming, perhaps the most characteristic, account of the city of the Sultan that the eighteenth century has left us, is that of the Lady Mary Wortley Montague.

INTERIOR OF MOSQUE OF AHMED I.

Her husband was appointed ambassador to the Sublime Porte in 1716, and she accompanied him. The letters which form the records of her journey out, of her life in Constantinople and of her return, serve to show, as the "Lady" who wrote a preface to them when they were published says she is 'malicious enough to desire,' "to how much better purpose the ladies travel than their lords." The skill and point with which she tells the most ordinary incidents of her travels, no less than fixes on the contrasts that are so striking between what she sees and what her correspondents are accustomed to, gives the letter an imperishable charm. But not a little also is due to the position of the writer. Merchants, and ordinary travellers, as she says, had told the world long before a great deal about the marvels of the Turkish Empire; but Lady Mary was a woman, a very clever woman, and an ambassador's wife. She had the entrée where few others could go, and she knew as very few others did how to describe what she had seen.

The position of an European ambassador's household in Pera in the eighteenth century, was by no means entirely pleasant, and indeed it was not wholly without risks, even for an ambassador's wife. Lady Mary, however, went everywhere and saw everything, and, in the midst of a good deal of domestic discomfort, accommodated herself amazingly to the cosmopolitan and polyglot life which she came to delight in. "I live," she wrote, "in a place that very well represents the tower of Babel, in Pera they speak Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Slavonian, Wallachian, German, Dutch, French, English, Italian, Hungarian, and what is worse, there are ten of these languages spoken in my own family." Children of three years old often speak five languages, she says, a statement that would be as nearly true now as it was then. This she professes to find annoying, it was really delightful, other things were not so pleasant.

Constantinople in earlier times had not been a pleasant resort for ambassadors. The Mémoires sur l'ambassade de France en Turquie, written by M. le Comte de Saint-Priest, at the end of the eighteenth century, show how difficult and dangerous had been the position of the envoys. They are a brilliant sketch of the work of the able French ambassadors who had endeavoured from the time of Francis I. and Suleiman the Magnificent, to confirm an alliance which should secure to France a flourishing trade in the Levant, and a powerful ally against the House of Hapsburg. Their success was considerable, but it was not infrequently interfered with by their own eccentricities. Savari de Lancosme (1585) was so rash that his cousin Savari de Brèves was sent out to supersede him, and he promptly induced the Turks to imprison him in the Seven Towers.

Achille de Harlay Sanay (1611-17) procured the escape of an imprisoned Pole, and was in consequence himself "outragé en sa personne et celle de ses gens" and made to pay 20,000 piastres. The Comte de Marcheville in 1639, found "le logis de l'ambassadeur si infâme, qu'on ne se pouvait imaginer qu'un ambassadeur effectif pût y demeurer." He built, among other additions, two chapels, "one public, the other interior." The Turks were furiously enraged, and after a good deal of acrimonious complaints, in which the people of Galata shared, the unhappy ambassador was expelled the country. De la Haye, a few years later, spent three months in the Seven Towers, and M. de Vautelec also had unpleasant experiences. M. de Ferriol, illuminating his house on the occasion of the birth of a French prince, found himself in danger of expulsion. As late as 1798, a French ambassador, on the declaration of war, was imprisoned as usual in the Seven Towers.

Lady Mary's friend the French ambassadress might tell her of some of these catastrophes, but she shows no fear that they would happen to herself. Her descriptions were evidently written with perfect freedom, day by day, and it is that which preserves their freshness after nearly two centuries. A passage or two will bring vividly before us what English folk then thought of the Turkish power, and of the sights of the capital.

Here she speaks of the Constitution, just as an orthodox English politician would wish to speak.

"The Grand Signior, with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as any of his subjects, and trembles at a Janizary's frown. Here is, indeed, a much greater appearance of subjection than amongst us; a minister of state is not spoke to, but upon the knee; should a reflection on his conduct be dropt in a coffee-house (for they have spies everywhere) the house would be raz'd to the ground, and perhaps the whole company put to torture. No huzzaing mobs, senseless pamphlets, and tavern disputes about politics;

A consequential ill that freedom draws;

A bad effect,—but from a noble cause.

None of our harmless calling names! but when a minister here displeases the people, in three hours time he is dragged even from his master's arms. They cut off his hands, head, and feet, and throw them before the palace gate, with all the respect in the world; while the Sultan (to whom they all profess an unlimited adoration) sits trembling in his apartment, and dares neither defend nor revenge his favourite. This is the blessed condition of the most absolute monarch upon earth, who owns no law but his will."

To live close to such scenes was an education in Oriental politics. Lady Mary lived still nearer to the outward show and pomp of the Oriental despots. The state of the Sultans was reflected on the ambassadors of powers with whom they desired to be friendly. When she travelled from Selivria, along the shore of the Marmora, Lady Mary and her husband had from the "Grand Signior" "thirty covered waggons for our baggage, and five coaches for the country for my women." Of the Sultan's own state she was most impressed, as travellers are to-day, by the Selamlik. Thus she describes it:

"I went yesterday, along with the French ambassadress, to see the Grand Signior in his passage to the mosque. He was preceded by a numerous guard of Janizaries, with vast white feathers on their heads, as also by the spahis and bostangees (these are foot and horse guards) and the royal gardeners, which are a very considerable body of men, dressed in different habits of fine lively colours, so that, at a distance, they appeared like a parterre of tulips. After them the Aga of the Janizaries, in a robe of purple velvet, lined with silver tissue, his horse led by two slaves richly dressed. Next him the kyzlier-aga (your ladyship knows this is the chief guardian of the Seraglio ladies) in a deep yellow cloth (which suited very well to his black face) lined with sables. Last came his Sublimity himself, arrayed in green, lined with the fur of a black Muscovite fox, which is supposed worth a thousand pounds sterling, and mounted on a fine horse, with furniture embroidered with jewels. Six more horses, richly caparisoned were led after him; and two of his principal courtiers bore, one his gold, and the other his silver coffee-pot, on a staff; another carried a silver stool on his head for him to sit on."

Her skill certainly lay chiefly in describing social functions or eccentricities, and her description of S. Sophia—indeed she makes an apology for her ignorance of architecture—shows a characteristic absence of feeling or artistic knowledge. What she says of the mosque of Suleiman however, is worth quoting.

"That of Sultan Solyman, is an exact square, with four fine towers in the angles; in the midst is a noble cupola, supported with beautiful marble pillars; two lesser at the ends, supported in the same manner; the pavement and gallery round the mosque, of marble; under the great cupola, is a fountain, adorned with such fine coloured pillars, that I can hardly think them natural marble; on one side is the pulpit of white marble, and on the other the little gallery for the Grand Signior. A fine stair-case leads to it, and it is built up with gilded latrices. At the upper end is a sort of altar, where the name of God is written; and, before it, stand two candlesticks, as high as a man, with wax candles as thick as three flambeaux. The pavement is spread with fine carpets, and the mosque illuminated with a vast number of lamps. The court leading to it, is very spacious, with galleries of marble, of green columns, covered with twenty-eight leaded cupolas on two sides, and a fine fountain of basons in the midst of it."

The liberality which allowed Christian ladies to see the mosques, and even permitted Lady Mary, in spite of the horror of her friends and the terrified protests of the French ambassadress, to go about in Stambûl much as she would have walked in S. James's, was especially the characteristic of the reign of Suleiman II., himself something of a savant, and of Ahmed II., who actually allowed a printing press to be established in the city. But none the less society and government were essentially barbarous. Ahmed III. was himself deposed in 1730 by an insurrection of the Janissaries. His nephew Mahmûd I., son of Mustafa II., was his successor. Again within three weeks the leaders of the revolution were executed before his face. "These executions," it is quaintly said, "when they became known, instead of exciting the slightest sedition, gave the greatest joy to the inhabitants of the capital." Step by step the Turks lost ground, by treaties with Persia (1732) and with Austria and Russia, by the mediation of France (Belgrade, 1739); and the new policy of governing the lands of Wallachia and Moldavia by "Fanariotes" (Greeks of the ancient families who still dwelt in the Phanar), was far from successful. In Constantinople itself there were émeutes if not insurrections, and incendiary fires which gave occasion for them. They were the usual means of expressing dissatisfaction with the government, and the usual means were taken to meet them, by the execution of the Sultan's ministers. Mahmûd died in 1754. He was thought at least to have done no harm; and his successor, Osman III., was regarded as equally blameless.

Mustafa III. (1757-1774) had been many years in the Kafess. He was the son of Ahmed III. His reign was a succession of misfortunes. The astute policy of Catherine II. and her agents in Serbia and Croatia, arousing the religious enthusiasm of the Christians against the Moslems, the utter neglect of the Turkish army and ordnance, the ignorance of the ministers, and the superstition of the people, seemed to invite a certain and immediate destruction of the Empire. Disaster after disaster at last awoke the Sultan and his ministers to the necessity of employing European aid, and the French ambassador Saint-Priest with the Baron de Tott was successful in reforming the army, introducing the bayonet, founding a school of mathematics, and infusing a new spirit into the Turks.

Mustafa died in 1774, at a time of unexpected success. He had seen at least the necessity of reform. Abdul Hamed I., his brother, who succeeded him, had been forty-four years a captive. He was not the prince to restore the power of his Empire: the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji (1774) further reduced its territory, and gave the cause for war eighty years afterwards by the clause allowing to Russia a right to represent to the Porte the grievances of the Christians in European Turkey. In 1788 the Crimea was captured by Russia; in 1789 Abdul Hamed died. His nephew Selim III. (1789-1807) had to deal with all the difficulties introduced into the East by the partition of Poland, the schemes of Napoleon, and the Mediterranean policy of Pitt. To follow these wars which resulted from the new political situation would be impossible. It need only be said that the French occupation of Egypt, and the decisive entrance of England into the Eastern question created as great a revolution in the position of Turkey as had occurred in any Monarchy of the West. The old alliance with France was broken. It became the interest of England to preserve the tottering power of Turkey as a counterpoise to Russia, and as a security for her own interests in the East.

Internally Turkey, under the energetic Selim, made a new start. A cannon foundry was begun at Galata, the Top-haneh so familiar to-day: new troops, drilled and armed after the European fashion were embodied; new taxes were levied, and a financial administration was organized which made some pretence of following Western ideas.

After what has been said so often, it may almost go without saying that there was an insurrection of the Janissaries to express the orthodox opinion of these reforms. The separation of the artillery from the Janissaries, and the creation of new regiments of infantry for Constantinople, to act as a counterpoise to the Janissaries, caused a serious revolt which was entirely successful, and the Sultan was obliged to receive the Aga as his chief minister. In the very midst of these troubles occurred the famous mission of Colonel Sébastiani, which led to the forcing of the Dardanelles by the English fleet under Admiral Duckworth. The fleet destroyed a small Turkish flotilla in the Marmora and cast anchor before the city. It was centuries since the people of Constantinople had seen a hostile fleet threatening their city. They worked night and day to repair the fortifications, to mount cannon, and to man the walls with an efficient force. In five days nine hundred cannon were placed upon the walls, and the English fleet had to retire. The Sultan was forced to declare war against Great Britain.

Within a few weeks he was deposed by another insurrection of the Janissaries, encouraged by the Sheik-ul-Islam. Again they assembled in the Atmeidan, again they overturned their kettles, their picturesque method of declaring that they would no longer eat the food of the Sultan,—attacked the Seraglio, murdered all the ministers, and deposed the Sultan. The ministers had gladly died that they might save their master. It was not sufficient. Can a Padishah, who by his conduct and his laws attacks the principles of the Koran, be allowed to reign? Impossible. And Selim retired to the Kafess.

Mustafa IV. was a mere name under which the rule of the successful revolutionaries was legitimated. Assassination and execution proceeded. The Grand Vizier, in command of the army in Bulgaria, was beheaded. He was the most conspicuous of a hundred victims.

The Pasha of Rustchuk, Mustafa Baraicktar, led 40,000 men to Constantinople, to restore Selim. He had with him the standard of the Prophet, which had accompanied the late Grand Vizier to the field. Encamped outside the walls, he allowed Mustafa still to hold the palace: a few murders and a few depositions were all that marked the suspense. On July 28, 1808, Mustafa Baraicktar entered the city, declared the Sultan deposed, and advanced to the Seraglio to restore Selim III. While the troops were kept back at the gates, the Sultan determined to secure himself. Selim, after a desperate struggle, was murdered in the Kafess. "Take Sultan Selim to the Pasha of Rustchuk, since he demands him," said Mustafa, and the body wrapped in a carpet was thrown out. Mahmûd, the last surviving prince of the house of Osman, but narrowly escaped: the murderers sought him everywhere, but he was concealed under a heap of rugs. The avengers of blood burst in; he was rescued: Mustafa IV. was thrust into the Kafess, and Mahmûd II. at the age of twenty-three ascended the throne.

The reign of Mahmûd (1808-1839) witnessed the first real introduction of Turkey into the atmosphere of the West. He had been trained by the deposed Selim, to hate the Janissaries, to play the part, strange indeed, of a reforming Sultan. Baraicktar was at his side.

It seemed at first that only a new and more blood-thirsty tyrant had begun to reign. On the day of his accession, thirty-three heads were exposed on the outer gate of the Seraglio, the Bâb-i-Humayoun: many of the leaders of the Janissaries were strangled and thrown into the Bosporus: even the women who had shown joy at Selim's murder were sewn up in sacks and drowned at Seraglio point. Within a few months the government of the new Sultan and his Vizier was in danger of ending like those that had preceded it. On November 14, 1808, a new revolt of the Janissaries broke out. They surrounded the palace of the Porte and set fire to it. Baraicktar the Vizier escaped, but only a few days later to meet death by exploding a powder magazine rather than fall into the hands of his enemies. For four days the streets were abandoned to carnage, and to the horrors of blood were added those of fire. M. de Jucherau, a Frenchman then at Pera, has left a vivid description, which is supplemented by that of an English traveller.

"No one," says that eloquent author, "attempted to stay the conflagration, which in a short time made terrible progress. Soon the most populous quarter of Constantinople was covered with a sheet of fire. The cries, the groans of women, and old men and children, attracted no attention and excited no pity. In vain they raised their suppliant hands, in vain they begged for beams or planks to save themselves from their burning houses by their roofs: their supplications were vain: they were seen with indifference to fall and to disappear among the flames. The desire of destruction was the only feeling that then prevailed! Sultan Mahmood beheld the awful spectacle from one of the lofty towers of the Seraglio, but not 'like another Nero,' as some have unjustly asserted—the flames were not of his lighting, and he was anxious that they should cease. He ordered Cadi-Pasha to stop his carriage, and to retire with his troops within the walls of the Seraglio, and despatched a hatti-sheriff to the Janissary-agha, commanding him, as he valued his head, to exert himself to stay the conflagration. As Mahmood was Sultan, and from the pledge he had in his hands, was likely to continue so, even when the revolt should end, the Janissary-agha trembled at the imperial mandate and obeyed; but the fire was too intense and active to be subdued or arrested, even by throwing to the ground whole stacks of houses: it vaulted over the chasms thus made, and only found 'sufficient obstacles in the public squares and in the mosques, whose vast cupolas and massy stone walls have frequently preserved Constantinople from entire destruction.'"[42]

The fire raged from the Seraglio to the aqueduct of Valens, and a man-of-war in the harbour directed its cannon on the barracks of the Janissaries in the At Meidan. The troops of the barracks on the other side of the Horn, at the Arsenal and at Top-haneh, threw in their lot with the Janissaries. Mahmûd within the Seraglio took the precaution which he had so long refrained from: he ordered the murder of his brother Mustafa IV., and the body was thrown out to the Janissaries. In a few hours Mahmûd outwardly submitted. The new troops were disbanded; the barracks were destroyed; the military schools, the mathematical institution, the printing press, every sign of the dangerous introduction of Western ideas, entirely disappeared. Even the ladies of the Seraglio ceased to learn French, and Mahmûd abandoned the enervating amusements of the opera and the ballet. For sixteen years a curtain fell, raised only to show an occasional massacre. Constantinople returned to its condition as the most orthodox of Moslem cities. It was at this time that the greatest of all European ambassadors at Constantinople first made acquaintance with the power in whose fortunes he was to become so powerful a factor. Stratford Canning came to Stambûl in 1808, as secretary to a special mission. These were his first impressions of Turkey.

"The state[43] of Turkey itself was anything but satisfactory in view of those powers who did not wish the Porte to become the prey either of Russia or of France. The throne of the empire was filled by a young Sultan, who had recently succeeded to his brother Mustafa, whose immediate predecessor, their cousin Selim, had fallen a sacrifice to the mutinous spirit of the Janissaries. Mahmûd, the reigning sovereign, was for some time the last of his race. Young, ignorant, and inexperienced, he had everything to apprehend from the circumstances in which he was placed. Both morally and materially his empire was bordering on decrepitude. The old political system of Turkey had worn itself out. The population was not yet prepared for a new order of things. A depreciated currency, a disordered revenue, a mutinous militia, dilapidated fortresses, a decreasing population, a stagnant industry, and general misrule, were the monuments which time had left of Ottoman domination in the second capital of the Roman empire and throughout those extensive regions which had been the successive seats of civilisation, ever varying, generally advancing, from the earliest periods of social settlement and historical tradition. A continual and often a sanguinary antagonism of creeds, of races, of districts and authorities within the frontier, and frequent wars of little glory and much loss with the neighbouring powers, had formed of late the normal condition of the Porte's dominions."

Most European observers thought that the Ottoman power was doomed to almost immediate extinction; and the next few years increased the illusion. The Mussulman population was everywhere declining; a new Greek power was rising; and Ali Pasha at Janina seemed likely to establish a new Mussulman domination which should destroy the Turkish rule. Within a few years Greece secured her independence by rebellion. But Canning saw plainly enough that Turkey was still strong. As early as 1809 he wrote thus:—

"Very false notions are entertained in England of the Turkish nation. You know much better than I do the mighty resources and native wealth which this enormous empire possesses. I am myself a daily witness of the personal qualities of the inhabitants, qualities which if properly directed are capable of sustaining them against a world of enemies. But the government is radically bad, and its members, who are all alive to its defects, have neither the wisdom nor the courage to reform it. The few who have courage equal to the task know not how to reconcile reformation with the prejudices of the people. And without this nothing can be effected."[44]

From 1821 the tide turned. The defects of the Turkish government did not avail against the valour of the Sultan's army, and the dimensions of Europe. The tragedies of those days passed far from Constantinople. Missolonghi, Navarino, Athens, Janina, Adrianople, are names that bring each its memory; but within the city of the Cæsars and the Sultans a different tale was told. It was the great era of reform, when at last Mahmûd was able to use his strength, and re-establish the power of the Padishah.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the authority of the Commander of the Faithful had sunk, decade by decade, till the murder of a Sultan who showed an independent policy was as certain as the sunrise. The Janissaries were the real masters of the city, and of the Empire. The force which had been raised to carry out the absolute will of the Sultan had now entirely superseded him. Anarchy was substituted for the rule of an irresponsible despot. But Mahmûd had a character of strength unknown in any Sultan for two centuries. He had matured his plans, and in 1826 he was able to carry them into execution. But for an utterly unforeseen disaster he would doubtless have been able to secure his triumph earlier than he did. In 1823 the arsenal and cannon foundry at Top-haneh were entirely destroyed by fire. A vast quantity of military stores and ammunition was destroyed. Pera and Galata suffered severely. It is said that fifty mosques and six thousand houses were destroyed. Mahmûd attributed the fire to the Janissaries; and he became the more determined to destroy them.

Already he had dealt with another enemy. In 1821 the plots of the Hetairists, working for the liberation of Greece, became known. Mahmûd immediately ordered all Greeks not engaged in trade to be deported from Constantinople. Then he ordered the patriarch and Synod of Constantinople to excommunicate the leaders who had engaged in the massacre of Moslems. The act was issued; nor can the Church be regarded as having done anything but what was demanded by Christian charity.

Hardly was the excommunication issued before a number of rich Greeks escaped from the city, evidently with the intention of joining the revolutionary armies. On March 26 the city was filled with troops, and arms were issued to the citizens. Several Hetairists were executed; and when the news came of the murder of Moslems in Greece, Mahmûd, who had already imprisoned seven Greek bishops, ordered the public execution of a number of prominent Greeks, who were entirely innocent, solely for the purpose of alarming their compatriots. But this was not sufficient. On Easter Day, April 22, 1821, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios, was summoned, at dawn, when he had finished the offering of the Holy Eucharist in his Cathedral Church, into the hall of the Synod at the Phanar, by the officers of the Sultan. There, before the clergy and the heads of the chief Greek families, he was declared deposed by the authority of the State, and the trembling priests were required to elect a new Patriarch in his stead.

HOUSES IN THE PHANAR

Within a few hours Gregorios was hung from the gate of the patriarchate, with a document pinned to his breast, declaring him a traitor in that he knew of the Hetairist conspiracy, and did not reveal it. Of the charge there is no known proof; and the Greeks have always regarded him as a martyr. If he knew the details of the conspiracy at all it is more than probable that he knew them only in confession; nor is it at all probable that he knew anything but that the Greeks intended to strike for their freedom.

Three bishops were executed on the same day. It was not a day to be forgotten. When the body of the martyred Gregorios was taken down it was given to the Jews to be dragged through the streets and cast into the sea. It was recovered by night and taken by ship to Odessa, where it was interred with solemn ceremonial as the remains of a saint and martyr.

This horrible deed was followed by the outbreak of anarchy in Constantinople. The Janissaries called for a massacre of the Christians in the city to avenge the Moslems who had been killed in Greece. The Christian quarters were attacked, the Christian villages on the Bosphorus were robbed, and the patriarchate was sacked. Greek clergy and nobles were executed daily, and four bishops were among the slain. No Christians were allowed to leave the city without a passport or vengeance was exacted upon the family. The massacres that occurred in Constantinople were tolerated if they were not organised by the authorities; several subjects of Western nations were murdered. All that was done by Christian Europe was to protest. The Russian ambassador left Constantinople, having demanded that the massacres should cease and the churches be rebuilt that had been destroyed. Mahmûd replied that only traitors were ill-treated. But the massacres ended, at least for a time.

While all danger of a Christian rising in Constantinople was thus prevented, Mahmûd was maturing the plans which in 1825 made him at last an absolute ruler, at least in his own city.

For seventeen years Mahmûd prepared for this great stroke. First by gifts and offices he detached many of the supporters of the Janissaries and the Ulemas from the party which supported them. Some less important members of the body were arrested for infraction of the laws and were publicly executed. Others were secretly made away with. The Sultan was surrounding himself with an elaborate spy system and with agents who were capable of dealing in detail with those whom he wished to be put out of the way. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, in his "Memoirs," says: "I remember that in crossing the Golden Horn from time to time I had observed loose mats floating here and there upon the water, and that in answer to my enquiries I had been told in a mysterious manner that they had served for covering the bodies thrown after private executions into the harbour." All this was done slowly; the power of the Janissaries was gradually undermined; "almost unparalleled craft and cruelty," some observers called the process, but to Mahmûd it seemed absolutely necessary.

In 1826 the Sultan perceived that the time limit had come. A meeting of all the chief functionaries of the Empire and chief officers of the Janissaries was held. They agreed to submit to the new military discipline and organisation which the Sultan designed. All signed their names. On June 12 the first exercises of the new order were begun. On the 16th the inferior officers and the soldiers declared that they would not submit. The revolt was proclaimed in the ancient manner. The kettles were overturned, and the whole force was called to arms. Mahmûd crossed from Bekistasch to the Seraglio; the standard of the Prophet was displayed; the city was filled with the troops upon whom the Sultan could rely; the Moslem population rallied round the green flag. The people assembled in the Atmeidan (the Hippodrome); Mahmûd went to the mosque of Ahmed. The Janissaries were summoned to submit to the new order. They in return demanded the destruction of the "subverters of the ancient usages of the Empire." Then their fate was sealed. They had advanced to the mosque of Bayezid; they were rapidly driven back and hemmed in in their quarters in the Etmeidan. Then from every side artillery was directed upon them. From his house in Pera Stratford Canning, at dinner, saw "two slender columns of smoke rising above the opposite horizon." What did they mean? The Sultan, he was answered, had fired the barracks of the Janissaries. The rest of the tragedy may best be told in Canning's own words:[45]

"The Sultan was determined to make the most of his victory. From the time of his cousin Selim's death he had lived in dread of the Janissaries. A strong impression must have been made upon his mind by the personal danger which he had encountered. It was said that he had escaped with his life by getting into an oven when the search for him was hottest. His duty as sovereign gave strength as well as dignity to his private resentment. That celebrated militia, which in earlier times had extended the bounds of the empire, and given the title of conqueror to so many of the Sultans, which had opened the walls of Constantinople itself to their triumphant leader, the second Mohammed, were now to be swept away with an unsparing hand and to make room for a new order of things, for a disciplined army and a charter of reform. From their high claims to honour and confidence they had sadly declined. They had become the masters of the government, the butchers of their sovereigns, and a source of terror to all but the enemies of their country. Whatever compassion might be felt for individual sufferers, including as they did the innocent with the guilty, it could hardly be said that their punishment as a body was untimely or undeserved.

The complaints of those who were doomed to destruction found no echo in the bosoms of their conquerors. They were mostly citizens having their wives, their children, or their parents, to witness the calamity which they had brought in thunder on their necks. Many had fallen under the Sultan's artillery; many were fugitives and outlaws. The mere name of Janissary, compromised or not by an overt act, operated like a sentence of death. A special commission sat for the trial, or rather for the condemnation of crowds. Every victim passed at once from the tribunal into the hands of the executioner. The bowstring and the scimitar were constantly in play. People could not stir from their houses without the risk of falling in with some terrible sight. The Sea of Marmora was mottled with dead bodies. Nor was the tragedy confined to Constantinople and its neighbourhood. Messengers were sent in haste to every provincial city where any considerable number of Janissaries existed, and the slightest tendency to insurrection was so promptly and effectually repressed, that no disquieting reports were conveyed to us from any quarter of the Empire. Not a day passed without my receiving a requisition from the Porte, calling upon me to send thither immediately the officer and soldiers comprising my official guard. I had no reason to suppose that any of them had been concerned in the revolt, and I was pretty sure that they could not repair to the Porte without imminent danger of being sacrificed. I ventured, therefore, to detain them day after day, first on one pretext, then on another, until, at the end of a week, the fever at headquarters had so far subsided as to open a door for reflection and mercy. Relying on this abatement of wrath, I complied, and the interpreter whom I directed to accompany them, gave every assurance on their behalf which I was entitled to offer. The men were banished from the capital, but their lives were spared, and many years later I was much pleased by a visit from their officer, who displayed his gratitude by coming from a distance on foot to regale me with a bunch of dried grapes and a pitcher of choice water. Let me add that this instance of good feeling on the part of a Turk towards a Christian is only one of many which have come to my knowledge."

On June 17, 1826, the Janissaries ceased to exist. The Sheik-ul-Islam formally proclaimed the extinction of the corps. A solemn divan was held within the Seraglio, and the victory of Mahmûd was ratified by the council. Then Canning writing on the 20th records the end of the revolution which re-established the authority of the Sultan in a position as absolute and despotic as it had been in the days of Mohammed II.

"The Sultan's ministers are still encamped in the outer court of the Seraglio, and I grieve to add that frequent executions continue to take place under their very eyes. This afternoon, when the person, to whom I have already alluded, was standing near the Reis Efendi's tent, his attention was suddenly caught by the sound of drums and fifes, and on turning round he saw, to his utter astonishment, a body of Turks in various dresses, but armed with muskets and bayonets, arranged in European order, and going through the new form of exercise. He supposes the number to have been about two thousand, but never before having seen troops in line he may have been deceived in this particular. He says that the men acted by word of command, both in marching and in handling their arms. The Sultan, who was at first stationed at the window within sight, descended after a time, and passed the men in review. His Highness was dressed in Egyptian fashion, armed with pistols and sabre, and on his head in place of the Imperial turban was a sort of Egyptian bonnet.

"Rank, poverty, age, and numbers are alike impotent to shelter those who are known as culprits or marked as victims. It is confidently asserted that a register has been kept of all persons who, since the accession of the Sultan, have in any way shown a disposition to favour the designs of the Janissaries, and that all such individuals are diligently sought out and cut off as soon as discovered. Respectable persons are seized in the street and hurried before the Seraskier or Grand Vizier for immediate judgment. There are instances of elderly men having pleaded a total ignorance of the late conspiracy, and being reminded of some petty incident which happened twenty years ago, in proof of their deserving condign punishment as abettors of the Janissaries. Whole companies of labouring men are seized and either executed or forcibly obliged to quit Constantinople.

"The entrance to the Seraglio, the shore under the Sultan's windows, and the sea itself, are crowded with dead bodies—many of them torn and in part devoured by the dogs."[46]

Théophile Gautier adds even more gruesome details. To the destruction of the Janissaries was added that of the Becktash derviches. Then the new army was formed, organized, drilled. For the rest of his reign, Mahmûd's chief thought was to perfect the reforms which he had inaugurated in blood. When in 1834 he struck coins bearing his own portrait, so grave a breach of the rules of the Koran caused another insurrection. It was suppressed with fearful severity, and added four thousand victims to the tale. But the coinage had to be called in. Fanatics, whom the people regarded as saints, coveted martyrdom by seizing the Sultan's bridle as he rode over the new bridge which he had made from Galata to Stambûl, calling him "Giaour Padishah" and paying Heaven's vengeance on his head. Nothing moved Mahmûd. Without, misfortunes befell his power on every side. He held steadfastly on, and when he died in 1839, he left behind him a strong government, and an appearance—it may have been little more—of approximation to the ways of Western Europe. The aim of Mahmûd, indeed, was not unlike that of Peter the Great: he wished to make his State an integral part of the European system. Hitherto, admitted though she was into European politics, coveted as ally and dreaded as a foe, Turkey had occupied no place among the permanent factors of European politics. Mahmûd thought to make Turkey, really and essentially, a European power. It was impossible.

The external events of the reign, the revolt of Mohammed Ali, the treaty of Adrianople, the creation of Greece as an independent State, important as they were in the history of the Ottoman power, hardly affected Constantinople.

In 1832, Stratford Canning returned on a special mission to Constantinople. He found the outer change extraordinary. Mahmûd received him as an European sovereign would receive. He began to think a real reform of Turkey possible. He secured the concession that he sought on behalf of Greece: "The new Hellas was lifted up to that great mountain ridge whence the eye of the traveller may range unchecked over the pastures of Thessaly." Canning, after renewed experience of the delays and intrigues of the Turkish ministers, bade farewell to the Sultan for the last time. His character of Mahmûd is too important to be omitted from our view. It may well conclude what we have to say of the most important reign in recent Turkish history.

"Resolution and energy were the foremost qualities of his mind. His natural abilities would hardly have distinguished him in private life. In personal courage, if not deficient, he was by no means superior. His morality, measured by the rules of the Koran, was anything but exemplary. He had no scruple of taking life at pleasure from motives of policy or interest. He was not inattentive to changes of circumstance, or insensible to the requirements of time. There was even from early days a vein of liberality in his views, but either from want of foresight, or owing to a certain rigidity of mind, he missed at critical times the precious opportunity and incurred thereby an aggravated loss. His reign of more than thirty years was marked by disastrous wars and compulsory cessions. Greece, Egypt, and Algiers escaped successively from his rule. He had to lament the destruction of his fleet at Navarino. On the other hand, he gathered up the reins of sovereign power, which had fallen from the hands of his immediate predecessors; he repressed rebellion in more than one of the provinces, and his just resentment crushed the mutinous Janissaries once and for ever. Checked no longer by them, he introduced a system of reforms which has tended greatly to renovate the Ottoman Empire, and to bring it into friendly communion with the Powers of Christendom. To him, moreover, is due the formation of a regular and disciplined army in place of a factious fanatical militia, more dangerous to the country than to its foes. Unfortunately his habits of self-indulgence kept pace with the revival of his authority, and the premature close of his life superseded for a while the progress of improvement. Mahmûd when young had rather an imposing countenance; his dark beard set off the paleness of his face, but time added to its expression. His stature was slightly below the average standard, his countenance was healthy, he wrote well, he rode well, and acquired a reputation for skill in archery. It may be said with truth that whatever merit he possessed was his own, and that much of what was wrong in his character and conduct resulted from circumstances beyond his control. Peace to his memory!"[47]

Abdul-Mejid (1839-1861), the son of Mahmûd II., had been brought up in the harem. He was only sixteen at his accession, and was utterly ignorant of politics. But he had some wise ministers, and the defeats of the earlier part of his reign were wisely utilised. In 1841 came the practical separation of Egypt, the family of Mohammed Ali being established there as perpetual pashas or deputies of the Sultan, paying tribute, but otherwise free and guaranteed in their position by the Powers.

Unquestionably the great figure in Constantinople during the reign of Abdul Mejid was Stratford Canning, who came in 1842 as British ambassador. He remained till 1852. He returned in 1853, and he left finally in 1858. During these years he devoted himself to the preservation of Turkey as a Power, but only with the hope, and on the condition, that she should become civilized. It may have been a hopeless task, but in the endeavour it is astounding to observe the high measure of success which came to the noble Englishman who gave the best years of his life to it. Kinglake has immortalised him as "the great Elchi." No greater ambassador ever lived; and his greatness lay in the fact that he passed entirely beyond the range of ordinary diplomatic functions, and made himself as really a part of the Empire to which he was accredited as he was essentially the representative of the British nation. Needless to tell again the tale that has been so well told, of his diplomatic triumphs, of his supreme honesty and loyalty, of his ceaseless energy, of his magnificent services to humanity and religion.

Throughout the whole of his life in Turkey he kept his one aim steadily before his eyes, and never deviated from it. If Turkey could be saved he would save her; but it could only be done by carrying out what had been the real intention of Mahmûd the reformer, and making an Oriental despotism resemble an European government with constitutional guarantees for personal and religious freedom. That in the long-run he utterly failed is now quite plain. What he wrote more than fifty years ago, in spite of superficial outward changes is really true to-day. "There is no such thing as system in Turkey. Every man according to his means and opportunities gets what he can, commands when he dares, and submits when he must." None the less Canning won real victories. He procured a declaration that the punishment of death should no longer be inflicted on those who gave up Islam for Christianity. "It was the first dagger," he wrote himself, "thrust into the side of the false prophet and his creed." And indeed so long as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe remained at Constantinople justice, toleration, good government made progress such as could hardly have been conceived before.

It is needless here to inquire how far the success of Turkey in the Crimean War led to the casting aside of all reforms, or whether the war was justified or how it was caused. Russia's declaration of her protectorate over the Orthodox Church; the belief of England and France that they were bound to protect Turkey against wanton aggression; the earnest desire of "the great Elchi" to avoid war: these things may be read in the Blue Books[48] and in Kinglake's great History. Constantinople saw the encampment of British troops at Gallipoli and at Skutari; and then came the sad days of the hospitals on the Asiatic shore and the English cemetery where sleep so many English dead. The Hatti-Humayun of February 21, 1856, seemed to embody all that the best friends of Turkey could have wished, in its abolition of all distinctions telling unfavourably against the exercise of any religion, its fine declarations of freedom and equality among all subjects of the Porte. But who could enforce it? The story is pitiful, and it shall not here be told. Rather let it be remembered when we sail into the harbour of Constantinople that the Crimean Memorial Church which stands boldly on the heights of Pera was the sign of the noble work for religion and freedom that had been done by the great Englishman whose last public act in the city it was to lay the foundation-stone, and whose noble life is simply commemorated on a tablet within its walls.

It was in 1858 that this great embassy ended. Three years later Abdul Mejid died; and his brother Abdul Aziz was girt with the sword in the mosque of Eyûb. Under his rule outward reforms progressed gaily, but the reckless extravagance of the Sultan brought the country to financial ruin. Reforms, insurrections, the creation of Roumania, the insurrection of Crete, how did these affect Constantinople? Not at all. Only daily the financial disorder became more apparent. On May 10, 1876, the city witnessed a scene which might have seemed proof that Turkey was regenerated. The Sultan's son was stopped in the streets by crowds who demanded the dismissal of the Grand Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam. From the gorgeous new palace which he had built on the Bosporus came the reply of Abdul Aziz—"His Majesty is deeply touched with the proof of confidence you place in him. It is his pleasure in no way to resist the will of his faithful people." But it was merely one of those delusive pictures which remind one of the tricks of the genii in the Arabian Nights. There was no real change; and on May 29, again resort was had as in the old days to the Sheik-ul-Islam. A reformer, who had been but a few days elevated to the post, he declared the lawfulness of deposing a Sultan whose conduct was insensate, who had no political judgment, who spent on himself sums which the Empire could not afford. At dawn on May 30 the palace of Dolma Bagtché was surrounded by troops, the Sultan was declared a prisoner, and then was hurried across to the old Seraglio. A few days later he returned to the gorgeous palace of Tcheragan. On June 4, he was found dead. It was certified that he had opened his veins with a pair of scissors. Few Sultans have long survived deposition.

Murad V. the eldest son of Abdul Mejid was received at the Seraskierat with enthusiasm. Announcements were made which declared him a reformer. He was Sultan for only three months. Within the first few days a number of the ministers were murdered, as they sat in Council, by the brother of the wife of Abdul Aziz. A few weeks later it was declared that the Sultan was incapable of Government. He was deposed with as much ease as his predecessor, no one knows to-day whether he is alive or not, and Abdul Hamed II., his brother, reigned in his stead. Of his reign little need be said. It has seen the Bulgarian atrocities, the defeat of Turkey by Russia, the encampment of the Russian troops at San Stefano, the proclamation of a Constitution, a parliament with two houses opened by the Sultan himself. It has seen also the suppression of that Constitution; it has seen the liberty of Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Cyprus and Crete.

And Constantinople, what may be told here in brief is what cannot be forgotten. The Sultan no longer lives, like his predecessors, within earshot of his people. Yildiz-Kiosk high on the hills above the Bosphorus secludes him from the world. No longer does the Commander of the Faithful visit the mosques of Stambûl or ride through the streets with a gorgeous military display. The massacres for which precedent was set centuries ago have again given the city a ghastly fame. In October 1895 crowds of Softas—religious students—assembled in the Atmeidan and a massacre of Armenians began. The riots lasted for three days. The authorities declared that the cause was the revolutionary plots of the Armenians themselves, that they did their utmost to preserve order, and that they would punish all who were responsible. Ten months passed. Constantinople in the spring of 1896 was outwardly at peace, but arrests were constantly being made, and there was a general feeling of insecurity. On August 28, 1896, a band of Armenians seized the Ottoman Bank at Galata, killing the guard and imprisoning the officials. After some hours they were allowed to depart under a safe conduct. But for nearly two days the city was given up to massacre. Bands of Moslems rose simultaneously at different parts before the police or the military appeared, led or accompanied by Softas, by soldiers, by police officers. When the troops appeared they looked on. The scenes in the streets beggar description. Christians were butchered wherever they appeared, were chased into houses and over roofs, were shot in their houses by men who took the tiles from the roofs across the street, broke the windows, and then fired into the rooms where Armenians had crowded for refuge. The churches were filled with people who sought sanctuary, who had lost everything they possessed and dared not leave the security of the sacred walls. The churches of Pera and Galata, the buildings of the Patriarchate in the Psamatia quarter seemed the only safe places. Of the numbers killed no count can be given; two thousand certainly perished, but five thousand has been declared to have been the total of the victims. For days the dead-cart passed through the streets and the murdered Christians were carried off with indescribable brutality to be cast into huge pits or into the sea. It is impossible as yet to tell the full story. It seems still like a horrible dream, a reminiscence of the worst terrors of the Middle Age.

STREET IN GALATA

The two acts of tragedy by which it has been attempted to destroy a large, and that perhaps the richest and most progressive, part of the population of Constantinople, emphasise an important historical fact. Not only by the importations of Mohammed II., but gradually during the four centuries and a half that have elapsed since the Conquest, the population of Constantinople has changed its character. Pera and Galata are the home of a mixed race, of whom every writer says hard words, and of many nationalities still striving to preserve their separate life. Greeks, Italians, Germans, French, English, immigrants from the Balkan lands, are the most prominent, after the Jews and the wealthy Armenians. The divisions that are to be seen in the Orthodox Church, perpetuated by politicians for their own purposes, are the reflection of the national and political divisions that we pass through on our way to Constantinople and find there in full force. Every league nearer to the city walls, as the railway drags its tedious length, is a step nearer to barbarism; and Pera is indeed but a poor outpost of civilisation. It has over it a veneer of the West. As you walk through the streets you might think yourself in an inferior Italian city; when you descend to Galata, down steep streets, half stairways, you pass through the gate of the Middle Ages into a town like any cosmopolitan seaport, crowded with sailors and travellers of all nations.

The Galata bridge, the most wonderful pathway in Europe, with its thousands of passengers in every strange garb, its Parisian carriages, its Arab steeds bearing alert officers, its beggars, mollahs, white turbaned and white coated toll-takers, its ceaseless stream of life all day long, brings you to the harbour, the historic anchorage of great ships for fifteen hundred years or more. "Eothen" has said once for all what comes to mind as we gaze at that magnificent sight, life, ships, walls, domes, minarets.

"Even if we don't take a part in the chaunt about 'Mosques and Minarets,' we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chaunt about the harbour; we can say and sing that nowhere else does the sea come so home to a city; there are no pebble shores—no sand bars—no slimy river beds—no black canals—no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the place from the deep waters; if being in the noisiest part of Stamboul, you would stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those cypresses opposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus; if you would go from your hotel to the Bazaars, you must pass by the bright blue pathway of the Golden Horn, that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You are accustomed to the gondolas that glide among the palaces of St Mark, but here at Stamboul it is a hundred-and-twenty-gun-ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and in old times would send forth the chief of the state to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan—she comes to his feet with the treasures of the world—she bears him from palace to palace—by some unfailing witchcraft, she entices the breezes to follow her, and fan the pale cheek of her lord—she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his garden—she watches the walls of his serail—she stifles the intrigues of his Ministers—she quiets the scandals of his Court—she extinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives all one by one, so vast are the wonders of the deep!"[49]

But you cross the bridge, or you take a caique, and land under the old walls; you pass through some gateway, scarcely recognisable; and in a moment you are in a new life. It is the East. The hundreds of solemn figures climbing the hill to the daily afternoon prayers at the mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror; the busy market that goes on outside the walls, the stalls displaying everything that man needs to buy, the carpets, the great earthenware vessels, marked in white wax with delicate arabesques, the fresh fruits, the strange liquors, the stranger cates. A few yards off and you are among the streets that belong to particular trades, the workers in brass, the cobblers, the blacksmiths, the horse-dealers, the sellers of every conceivable object under the sun, all in their windowless shops, laughing, talking, selling, with that stately mien which makes a ceremonial of the simplest act. There is no vulgar European haste here, no chattering impatience to serve or to bargain; the ages as they have passed over the place seem to have left their solemn impress on the people. Let the story-teller come and amuse them; for themselves they will not hurry or fret or speed. All is dignified, stately, restrained. This is a Turkish quarter, but the Turks are rarely indeed of pure blood. Almost every Asiatic race, and many European nationalities, have gone to make the Turks of Stambûl—pilgrims from the far East, Christian slaves, converts to Islam from every quarter of the globe. Negroes are constantly to be met with, eunuchs, slaves, and free trading folk. Pass further on and you are among the Jews, who remain as large a proportion of the population as in the fifteenth century, when some forty thousand of them were to be found in Stambûl. It was they who first opened regular shops for the sale of manufactured goods, and the greatest shops in the Bazaar to-day are the property of Jews. In the great Bazaar with its intricate streets and quarters, a great desolation reigns. The Jews and the Europeans have invaded its recesses, and the pictures that the old books draw of the haggling and the humour and the riches, have no meaning to-day. In the enclosure of the Ahmediyeh you may see characteristic Eastern sights. There a man sits being shaved. There are stalls heaped with fruit. There are sellers pressing rich stuffs and linen on Turkish ladies as they pass. And indeed it is not all stateliness even among the Turks. Desert the streets of the leather-sellers and the brass-workers, come down to the markets by the mosques, and there is enough vigorous and vivacious life. In the harbour among the shipping, where the rowers of caiques clamour for employment, in the Greek quarter, or in the Psamatia among the poorer Armenians, there is plenty of stir and movement. For a succession of pictures, there is no city like Constantinople. Pilgrims from the far East, Mongolians, Persians, men of Bokhara and Khiva, negroes from the heart of Africa, armed many of them to the teeth, most with the strange wistful half frightened look of strangers and foreigners in a civilisation of which they have not dreamed; the groups at the fountains, the staid ancients smoking solemnly at the doors, the closed windows with the wooden lattices, through which sometimes comes a sound of soft music, the tramp of armed men, the clatter of cavalry as they trot up the street, the endless processions of donkeys and draught horses, and sometimes camels,—these sights and sounds are, in the sunlight by the old walls, in the narrow streets, or by the great domed mosques, never to be forgotten or to be rivalled in Europe to-day.

Constantinople remains, with all its changes, a city of the dark ages. At any moment the curtain may be lifted on a scene of tragic horror, and meanwhile there is the grotesque mimicry of Western civilisation, the parade of meaningless forms, justice, government, finance, which in a moment may be destroyed, which never have, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, any real meaning. How does the city fare? Even now, interviews with officials, walks through the streets of Stambûl, the sights of each day, remind one irresistibly of "a chapter in Gibbon or some tale of wonder in the Arabian Nights." Soberly and solemnly the Turks go about their business. Before the horrors of the last decade an observer who knew well the people and the history wrote these words.

"I have been present in the city during the deposition of two Sultans. The most striking characteristic in the circumstances attending these depositions was the utter indifference of the great body of the native, and especially of the Moslem, population to the change which was being made. There was a small but active party which took action, but beyond this there was comparatively very little excitement; no resistance, no rioting, no expression of dissatisfaction. When newspaper correspondents and foreigners generally were aware that a revolution was in preparation, it is impossible to believe that thousands of Turks and rayahs were in ignorance of the fact. The general feeling among the Sultan's subjects was one of indifference. If the conspirators failed it would go hardly with them. If they succeeded it would go hardly with the Sultan. That business only regarded the parties concerned. Beyond a vague belief that any change could hardly be followed by a worse condition of things than had existed, there was no public sentiment on the matter."[50]

The words would be as true to-day. Save only at moments of sudden and fanatic excitement, organised there can be no doubt at least under the impression that there is a religious duty, and a command which may not be disobeyed, the calm of the city is unbroken. We seem to be standing with Candide when he heard the news that "two viziers of the bench and the mufti had just been strangled at Constantinople, and several of their friends impaled," and when he heard the instructive comments of the old Turk who never knew the name of any vizier or mufti. "I presume," said that sage, "that in general such as are concerned in public affairs come to a miserable end, and that they deserve it; but I never enquire what is doing at Constantinople. I am content with sending thither the produce of my garden, which I cultivate with my own hands." To-day it would seem that the people of Constantinople are of the same mind with this philosopher. "Our country is rich, capable of prosperity, and of supporting in comfort twenty times its present population; but alas a gang of robbers has seized it," are the published words of a Turkish prince. Vice and luxury and despotism triumph. Eh bien! je sais qu'il faut cultiver notre jardin.

This at any rate may be said. It is idle to prophecy the future of the Ottoman power in Europe. Has the last Greek war really strengthened it? Does the approach of Russia foreshadow an occupation of Constantinople and the longed for return of S. Sophia to the worship of the Orthodox Church? Of all people the English are the least fitted to foresee the future. Nothing can be more ludicrous than the letters of Tom Hughes, an observer acute enough, written from Constantinople in 1862, in which he says that Islam is all but dead, and that what the Turks want is the English public-school system. The Turk hears such things with a smile; il faut cultiver notre jardin.