But Amurath broke the laws of the Prophet and drank wine. A story tells how the Sultan took the first step on the forbidden road. He was walking in the streets of his capital one night, when Mustapha, the drunkard, rolled up against him, and expressed no particular regret at bumping into his sovereign, in fact, was much too happy to dream of offering apologies to any monarch. He was summoned to the Court next day, and arrived there with his bottle: “Here is the liquid gold which outweighs all the treasures of the universe, which makes a beggar more glorious than a king, and turns the mendicant fakir into a horned Alexander.” So spake Mustapha, offering his flask to Amurath, who drained it on the spot, and thus became a total non-abstainer.
Mustapha remained about the palace as Amurath’s boon companion, and their convivial evenings may have hastened the Sultan’s end; he was only thirty-eight when sickness overtook him so suddenly that he had hardly time to order the execution of his brother Ibrahim, by way of settling up the affairs of state, and receive a message that the sentence had been carried out, before he died.
Nevertheless Ibrahim came to the throne, and reigned from 1640-1648, for the Sultana’s message to Amurath IV, bringing news of his brother’s execution, was strictly untrue, and by this conventional lie, as one might describe it considering the etiquette of the time, a Sultan, rapacious, mean, bloodthirsty, and a coward, rose to the dignity of the Caliphate, became God’s Shadow on Earth, and was girded with the sword of Othman. The harem was subject to Ibrahim’s most serious consideration, and therefore insisted too much on its power; so when Kara Mustapha, the Grand Vizier, forgot to order firewood on the requisition of the dear little ladies who made the Sultan’s life so bright and happy, he was arraigned on a capital charge. No matter that foreign politics engrossed the attention of the Grand Vizier, no matter that provinces won by the sword of Othman were drifting into other hands, no matter that the Treasury was empty—the ladies of the Seraglio had complained, and the Grand Vizier must suffer; so the executioner removed the only man who realized the needs of Turkey and strove to mend matters. To turn a dishonest penny for himself and his household expenses the Sultan sold high offices in the State, the Army, and the Navy, but when disaster attended Ottoman arms in their war against Venice, the Army became exasperated, deposed the Sultan, killed him, and set his infant son, Mohammed IV, a child of seven, upon the seat of the Cæsars and Sultans.
Fortunately the new Sultan’s mother had the great gift of finding the right man for the right place, the gift which enabled King William of Prussia, first German Emperor, to discover Bismarck, Moltke, and other great men who brought ruin to one Empire to give birth to another. The Sultana Validé called Mohammed Kiüprilü, then Governor of Jerusalem and Vizier of State, to be Grand Vizier, and thus started a dynasty of Grand Viziers which devoted great talents and energy to the saving of Ottoman power in the world. Mohammed, the new Grand Vizier, was grandson of an Albanian who had migrated to Asia Minor and settled at Kiüpri. He was probably a convert to Islam for purposes of advancement, a usual occurrence in those days. Mohammed Kiüprilü entered the service of the Grand Vizier Khosren as kitchen-boy, rose to be cook, then Steward of the Household, was promoted Master of the Horse, then became Governor of Damascus, Tripoli, and Jerusalem, when the Sultana discovered him to the saving of Turkey.
Mohammed Kiüprilü set about his new duties with vigour and impartiality. There was much clearing-up at home; the Greek Patriarch had written to the Voivode of Wallachia prophesying that Christianity would soon replace falling Islam in the Ottoman possessions in Europe. His Holiness was hanged over his own gateway. The Grand Vizier spared no creed, no race, and thirty-six thousand persons suffered death in various forms during the first five years of the new order; Soulfikar, Chief Executioner of Constantinople, accounted for at least four thousand, strangled by his own hand and thrown into the Bosphorus. By these measures order was restored, then the navy was rebuilt, the army refitted, and Ottoman prestige rose again with the reconquest of several lost provinces.
Another thoroughly efficient Kiüprilü, Achmet, followed his father in the Grand Vizierate, and led an army of 120,000 men, 120 field-guns, 12 heavy siege-guns, 6000 camels, and 10,000 mules, to Hungary, while Sultan Mohammed stayed behind at Adrianople indulging in his only pastime, the chase. The Ottoman army overran all Hungary and Transylvania, spreading devastation, until it finally halted on the banks of the Raab. Here, near the Monastery of St. Gothardt, East and West met in battle again. Many years had passed since their last encounter; in the meantime the West had progressed slowly, surely. German pikemen and musketeers offered solid, organized resistance, and kept the fiery irregular Akindji at bay; the cuirassiers of the West, heavy, steel-clad cavalry, riding in serried ranks, knee to knee, ploughed through the masses of Turkish foot-folk, and then, unlike their knightly predecessors, were by discipline enabled to rally and move to further deeds of valour. Against this, the Turkish army of that day had lost some of its old enthusiasm and had learnt nothing new. So at St. Gothardt, as at Kirk Kilisse, we find the West, high-purposed, highly trained and disciplined, opposed to the East, trading on a military tradition, unprepared, corrupt, inefficient, ill-disciplined—and with the same results. The battle of St. Gothardt-on-Raab was the first great defeat inflicted on the East by the West; 10,000 Turks were slain, 15 guns, 40 standards captured. A discomfited army returned to Constantinople after a twenty years’ truce had been arranged with Austria, and sought relief, and possibly found it, in expeditions elsewhere; Candia was taken after a vain blockade and siege of twenty years.
The Sultan was induced to accompany his army on the campaign against Poland in 1672, and gained some victories: Kaminec and Lemberg were taken, Podolia and Ukraine added to Turkey, and a tribute of two hundred and twenty thousand ducats was imposed on the conquered territory. But Sobieski and his Polish nobles combined against the Turks, routing them with great slaughter at Lemberg in 1675, though leaving matters much as they had been.
On the death of Achmet Kiüprilü matters went from bad to worse, the Turks being defeated in the Ukraine by Russia; nevertheless a great effort was made to carry war into Austria, and an army of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men set out under Kara Mustapha, the new Grand Vizier, to besiege Vienna once more. Count Stahremberg and his garrison of eleven thousand men stoutly resisted the assaults delivered by the Turkish troops, who devoted all their energies to the attack, neglecting the defence of their own scattered encampments. This made Sobieski’s task the easier when his army swooped down from the heights around Vienna. The Turks were totally routed, and driven in headlong flight before the armies of the West. Kara Mustapha was executed at Belgrade to expiate the general inefficiency of the army, which was thereupon beaten again in a renewed attempt on Hungary, at Mohacz; this battle freed the Magyars from the domination of the Sublime Porte. Turkey’s misfortunes emboldened Venice to make reprisals on outlying posts of the Empire, and as Turkish naval power had declined in keeping with the efficiency of the land army, disaster after disaster exasperated the unruly soldiery, and they took to their favourite expedient of dethroning the Sultan.
During the reign of Mohammed IV the status of the Janissaries was altered; no more Christian children were added to the corps, only the offspring of former Janissaries, and an ever-increasing number of Turks and other Moslems, in quest of the many civil as well as military posts, often given to this body.
Another Solyman, second of the name, followed Mohammed IV, and he was followed by Achmet II (1691-1695). Both sovereigns enjoyed the services of a Kiüprilü as Grand Vizier, for Kiüprilü Zadé Mustapha held that high office during both reigns; but the Ottoman power had been much enfeebled by disastrous wars and inner dissensions; moreover, it had to contend against one of the world’s greatest soldiers, “Prinz Eugen, der Edle Ritter.” He scattered the Ottoman armies like chaff before the wind at Peterwardein and Belgrade, and again at Slankamen, in Achmet’s reign, at which place, where the Theiss and Danube meet in a broad expanse of water, the Turkish river fleet won a partial success, which was negatived by a sore defeat on land. Kiüprilü was killed, and the Turks were driven from Hungary. Transylvania, too, was lost when Tekeli was beaten by the Imperialists; but yet subtler, more insidious enemies preyed upon the nation, famine and pestilence, and to all these troubles Nature contributed a devastating earthquake. These things came upon Sultan Achmet during the four years of his reign, and sent him broken-hearted to the grave.