tection to industry or property, the empire seemed to be sinking into the mere state of a wilderness of beasts of prey. Nothing can exceed the strength of the expressions which an eye-witness, Sir Thomas Roe, employs in his correspondence with our King James I. and other persons in England, respecting the misery of the inhabitants of the Turkish dominions, and the symptoms of decay and ruin which he witnessed all around him.* And it is to be remembered, that there was no wish among Englishmen for the downfall of Turkey. This country sympathised strongly with James's son-in-law, the Prince Palatine, and the other Protestant antagonists of the House of Austria in Germany; and any prospect of the arms of Austria being disturbed by a Turkish war, would have been gladly hailed by our statesmen. But the graphic dispatches of Roe describe vividly and repeatedly a state of fallen grandeur, which he regarded as irretrievable. He employs almost the same metaphor which, in our time, has been applied to the Turkish power by one "whose wish was father to the thought," and who has spoken of it "as a sick man about to die upon one's hands." Roe says: "It has become, like an old body, crazed through many vices, which remain when the youth and strength is decayed." He gives in a letter, written in the year of Sultan Othman's death, some calculations as to the extent to which depopulation had lately taken place, which may possibly be exaggerated; but his testimony as to the general nature of what he actually beheld, is unimpeachable.

* Sir Thomas Roe's Embassy, p. 22

+ See note, suprà at p. 322.

He says, "The ruined houses in many places remain; but the injustice and cruelty of the government hath made all the people abandon them. All the territory of the Grand Seignior is dispeopled for want of justice, or rather, by reason of violent oppression; so much so, that in his best parts of Greece and Natolia, a man may ride three, four, and sometimes six days, and not find a village able to feed him and his horse: whereby the revenue is so lessened, that there is not wherewithal to pay the soldiers, and to maintain the court. It may be patched up for a while out of the treasury, and by exactions, which now are grievous upon the merchant and labouring man, to satisfy the harpies; but when those means fail, which cannot long endure, either the soldiery must want their pay, or the number must be reduced; neither of which will they suffer and whosoever shall attempt either remedy, shall follow Othman to his grave. This is the true estate of this so much feared greatness; and the wisest men in the country foresee it, and retyre their estates as fast as they can, fearing that no haste can prevent their danger."

These seemingly well-founded prognostications of the speedy dissolution of the Ottoman empire were written in 1622. Since then, that empire has endured already for 232 years. Our attention will now be directed to one of those rulers who have been mainly instrumental in falsifying these and other similar predictions.

* Sir T. Roe's Embassy, pp. 66, 67.

CHAPTER XIII.

MISERY OF THE EMPIRE AT THE ACCESSION OF AMURATH IV. -MILITARY REVOLTS-AMURATH TAKES POWER INTO HIS OWN HANDS AND RESTORES ORDER - HIS SEVERITY AND CRUELTY-RECONQUERS BAGDAD-HIS DEATH.*

AMURATH IV., at the time of his accession (10th September, 1623), was only twelve years of age. But even thus early, he gave indications of a resolute and vengeful character, and showed that a prince, animated by the spirit of the first Selim, was once more on the Ottoman throne. The Turkish historian, Evliya, relates of him: "When Sultan Amurath entered the treasury after his accession, my father, Dervish Mohammed, was with him. There were no gold or silver vessels remaining-only 30,000 piastres in money, and some coral and porcelain in chests. Inshallah' (please God) said the Sultan, after prostrating himself in prayer, 'I will replenish this treasury fifty-fold with the property of those who have plundered it.'" +

The young Sultan, during the first year of his reign, acted principally under the directions of his mother, the Sultana Mahpeiker, who, providentially, for the

* See Von Hammer, books 46-52.

+ Hulme.

Ottoman empire, was a woman of remarkable talent and energy, which were taxed to the uttermost to meet the dangers and disasters that clouded round the dawn of her child's sovereignty. From every part of the empire messengers arrived with evil tidings. The Persians were victorious on the frontiers. The rebel Abaza was lord and tyrant over Asia Minor. The tribes of the Lebanon were in open insurrection. The governors of Egypt and other provinces were wavering in their allegiance. The Barbaresque regencies assumed the station of independent powers, and made treaties with European nations on their own account. The fleets of the Cossack marauders not only continued their depredations along the Black Sea, but even appeared in the Bosphorus, and plundered the immediate vicinity of the capital. In Constantinople itself there was an empty treasury, a dismantled arsenal, a debased coinage, exhausted magazines, a starving population, and a licentious soldiery. Yet the semblance of authority was preserved, and by degrees some of its substance was recovered by those who ruled in the young prince's name; and, though amid tumult and bloodshed, and daily peril to both crown and life, young Amurath, observing all things, forgetting nothing and forgiving nothing, grew up towards man's

estate.

There is a wearisome monotony in the oft repeated tale of military insurrections; but the formidable mutiny of the Spahis, which convulsed Constantinople in the ninth year of Amurath's reign, deserves notice on account of the traits of the Turkish character, which its

chief hero and victim remarkably displayed; and also because it explains and partly palliates the hardheartedness which grew upon Amurath, and the almost wolfish appetite for bloodshed, which was shown by him in the remainder of his reign. In the beginning of that year, a large number of mutinous Spahis, who had disgraced themselves by gross misconduct in the late unsuccessful campaign against Bagdad, had straggled to Constantinople, and joined the European Spahis, already collected in that capital. They were secretly instigated by Redjib Pacha, who wished by their means to effect the ruin of the Grand Vizier Hafiz, a gallant though not fortunate general, to whom the young Sultan was much attached, and who had interchanged poetical communications* with his sovereign, when employed against the Persians. The Spahis gathered together in the Hippodrome, on three successive days (February, 1632), and called for the heads of the Grand Vizier Hafiz, the Mufti Jahia, the Defterdar Mustapha, and other favourites of the Sultan, seventeen in all. The shops were closed, and the city and the Serail were in terror. On the second day the mutineers came to the gate of the Palace, but withdrew on being promised that they should have redress on the morrow. On the third day, when the morning broke, the outer court of the Seraglio was filled with raging rebels. As the Grand Vizier Hafiz was on his way thither to attend the divan, he received a message from a friend,

* The poems or Gazelles of the Sultan and Vizier are given in German by Von Hammer in his note to his 47th book. They are full of fanciful imagery drawn from the game of chess.