Sultan had amassed a large treasure during his reign; and he now sought to bribe his rebellious son back to obedience by an immediate donation of 300,000 ducats, and the promise of a yearly payment of 200,000 more. Selim regarded the offered treasure as an additional inducement to seize the throne, and refused all terms of compromise. Bajazet still occupied the royal palace, the Serail; but on the 25th of April, 1512, the Janissaries, the Spahis, and the turbulent population of Constantinople assembled before the palace-gates, and demanded to see the Sultan. The gates of the Serail were thrown open; and Bajazet received them, seated on his throne. He asked them what it was they desired, and the populace cried with one voice, “Our Padischah is old and sickly, and we will that Selim shall be the Sultan." Twelve thousand Janissaries followed up the popular demand by shouting their formidable battle-cry; and the old Sultan, seeing the people and the army against him, yielded, and uttered the words, "I abdicate in favour of my son Selim. May God grant him a prosperous reign!" Shouts of joy pealed round the palace and through the city at this announcement. Selim now came forward and kissed his father's hand with every semblance of respect. The old Sultan laid aside the emblems of sovereignty with the calm indifference of a philosopher, and asked his successor the favour of being allowed to retire to the city of Demotika, where he had been born. Selim escorted him to the gate of the capital, walking on foot by his father's litter, and listening with apparent deference to the counsels which the old man gave him.

But the dethroned Sultan never reached Demotika: he died at a little village on the road on the third day of his journey. His age, and his sufferings both of mind and body, sufficiently accounted for his death; but a rumour was widely spread that he had been poisoned by an emissary of his son. The savage character of Selim may be thought justly to have exposed him to suspicion; but there seems to have been no clear evidence of the horrible charge.

Bajazet's feeble and inglorious reign was clouded by insurrection and military mutiny at its commencement and at its close. Nor were these the only scenes in which the insolent power of the soldiery, and the infirmity of Bajazet's government were displayed. At one period during his reign the vice of drunkenness had become so common in Constantinople, that Bajazet published an edict threatening the punishment of death to all who were detected in using wine, and ordering all the public places, at which it had been sold, to be closed. But the Janissaries assembled, and breaking the taverns and wine stores open, forced their proprietors to resume their trade; and Bajazet, alarmed at the anger and threats of these perilous guardians of his throne, withdrew the obnoxious edict four days after it had been pronounced. Had Bajazet been succeeded on the Turkish throne by princes of a character like his own, there seems little doubt that the decline of the Ottoman power would have been accelerated by many years. But the stern energy of Selim I., and the imperial genius of the great Solyman, not only gave to the Turkish Empire half a century of further conquest

and augmented glory, but reinvigorated the whole system of government, so as long to delay the workings of corruption.

It is in the reign of Bajazet II. that the ominous name of Russia first appears in Turkish history. In 1492 the Czar, Ivan III., wrote a letter to Bajazet on the subject of certain exactions which had recently been practised on Russian merchants in Turkey, and proposing a diplomatic intercourse between the two empires. Three years afterwards, Michael Plettscheieff, the first Russian ambassador, appeared at Constantinople. He was strictly enjoined by his master not to bow the knee to the Sultan, and not to allow precedence to any other ambassador at the Ottoman court. Plettscheieff appears to have been a fit predecessor of Menschikoff, and to have displayed such arrogance as justly to offend the Sultan. Bajazet stated in a letter on the subject to the Khan of the Crimea (who had exerted himself to promote friendship between the empires), "that he was accustomed to receive respect from the powers of the East and the West, and blushed at the thought of submitting to such rudeness." Had Bajazet's father or son been on the Turkish throne, the haughty Muscovite would probably have received a sharper chastisement than the mild mark of offended dignity which Bajazet displayed, by sending no ambassador to Russia in return. No one at Bajazet's court could foresee, that in the rude power of the far North, whose emissaries then excited the contemptuous indignation of the proud and polished Osmanlis, was reared the deadliest foe that the House of Othman was ever to encounter.

CHAPTER VIII.

SELIM I.- HIS CHARACTER-MASSACRE OF THE SHIIS-WAR WITH PERSIA-CONQUESTS IN UPPER ASIA-WAR WITH THE MAMELUKES-CONQUEST OF SYRIA AND OF EGYPT-NAVAL PREPARATIONS DEATH OF SELIM-THE MUFTI DJEMALE'S INFLUENCE OVER HIM.*

SULTAN SELIM I. was forty-seven years of age when he dethroned his father. He reigned only eight years, and in that brief period he nearly doubled the extent of the Ottoman Empire. The splendour of his conquests, the high abilities which he displayed in literature and in politics, as well as in war, and the imperious vigour of his character, have found panegyrists among European as well as Asiatic writers; but his unsparing cruelty to those who served, as well as to those who opposed him, has justly brought down on his memory the indignant reprobation of mankind, as expressed by the general sentence of the great majority both of Oriental and Western historians. In his own reign the wish Mayst thou be the vizier of Sultan Selim," had become a common formula of cursing among the Ottomans. Selim's viziers seldom survived their promotion more than a month. They whom he raised to this perilous post, knew that they were destined for the executioner's

66

* See Von Hammer, books xxii., xxiii., xxiv.

sabre, and carried their last wills and testaments with them, whenever they entered the Sultan's presence. One of these officers, the grand vizier, Piri Pascha, ventured to say to Selim, in a tone half in earnest and half sportive, "My Padischah, I know that sooner or later thou wilt find some pretext for putting me, thy faithful slave, to death; vouchsafe me, therefore, a short interval, during which I may arrange my affairs in this world, and make ready for being sent by thee to the next." Selim laughed loud in savage glee at the frank request, and answered, "I have been thinking for some time of having thee killed; but I have at present no one fit to take thy place; otherwise I would willingly oblige thee."

Unsparing of the blood of his relations, his subjects, and his ablest servants, Selim was certain to be fond of war; and his reign was one of almost ceaseless carnage. Vigorous in body and mind, and indifferent to sensual pleasures, he pursued with keenness the martial pastime of the chace. He devoted all his days to military duties or to hunting. He slept but little; and employed the greater part of the night in literary studies. His favourite volumes were books of history, or of Persian poetry. He left a collection of odes written by himself in that language, for which he showed a marked preference. An Italian writer has asserted that Selim, like his grandfather, Mahomet II., loved to study the exploits of Cæsar and Alexander; but the classical histories of those conquerors were unknown in the East; and the Turkish Sultan only possessed the Oriental romances on their exploits, which are of the same