The Turkish Empire, Its Growth and Decay

by Baron G. Shaw-Lefevre Eversley

As a result of the murders of these two sons of Solyman, a third one, the son of Ghowrem, was the only heir to the throne. He succeeded Solyman and was known as “Selim the Sot.” It will be seen that this prince had none of the qualities of his race. He was the first of a long line of degenerates who eventually lost the greater part of the Empire which had been built up by Solyman and his predecessors.

Though the office of Grand Vizier was not so dangerous to its holders as under Selim I, it proved to be fatal to two of the nine men who held it during Solyman’s reign. One of the most remarkable incidents of Solyman’s life was his infatuation for Ibrahim, the second of his Grand Viziers. Ibrahim, a renegade Greek by birth, had been captured as a boy by corsairs and sold as a slave to a widow in Magnesia, who brought him up as a Mussulman. Recognizing his talents, this lady gave him an excellent education. Solyman, on a visit to that province, came across Ibrahim, and, attracted by his musical talent, took him into service, where he rose to be master of the pages and grand falconer. He soon acquired immense influence over his master, whose sister was given to him in marriage. He was rapidly promoted, and in 1523 was appointed Grand Vizier. The Sultan and his favourite became inseparable. They had their meals alone together. They concerted between them all the affairs of State. Ibrahim justified this preference, for he proved to be of great capacity, not inferior in any respect to his master, and his superior in education and knowledge of languages and history. He was appointed Seraskier, or Commander-in-Chief, when the Sultan was unable personally to command. In the earlier campaigns in Hungary and Persia, and in the siege of Vienna, he took a most active part, and was the main adviser to his master.

After thirteen years of implicit confidence in Ibrahim, suspicion arose in the mind of the Sultan and was fanned by the Sultana Ghowrem, who coveted the post of Grand Vizier for her son-in-law, Roostem Pasha. There does not appear to have been any ground for these suspicions, save that Ibrahim, intoxicated by his elevation, assumed the airs almost of an equal with the Sultan. A vizier suspected was very near to his doom. Entering the palace one day in 1536 to dine with the Sultan as usual, he was never seen alive again. The next morning his body was found in the palace. His immense wealth was confiscated to the State. It was said that Solyman in an adjoining room to that where this murder was perpetrated was smothered with kisses by Ghowrem so as to drown the cries of the dying Vizier.

In another case, the Grand Vizier Achmet was decapitated in the council chamber by order of Solyman, solely because he gave advice which displeased his master. Von Hammer gives a long list of other high officials who shared the same fate.

During the forty-six years of his reign Solyman added enormously to the Empire. Belgrade, Rhodes, nearly the whole of Hungary, the Crimea, the great provinces of Mossul, Bagdad, and Bassorah, and a part of Armenia taken from Persia, Yemen and Aden in Arabia, Algiers, Oran, and Tripoli, and an undefined extent of hinterland inhabited by Arabs in North Africa, and a wide extension of Egypt in the direction of Nubia, were the contributions which he transmitted to his successors. There were few years of his long reign in which he was not under arms. War with Hungary and Austria in the north alternated with war with Persia in the east and with Spain in the west. Solyman was often in command of his armies. He conducted personally thirteen campaigns, some of them, such as those against Persia, extending over two years. For the most part these wars were embarked on without any just or even plausible cause. They were stimulated by lust of conquest on the Sultan’s part, and by craving for active service and for loot on the part of the Janissaries. Religious fanaticism seems to have had little concern with the motives or results of them.

Solyman’s first campaign, in 1521, was directed against Belgrade, the city which had successfully defied Mahomet II. He marched against it at the head of an army of a hundred thousand men with three hundred guns. It was bravely defended by the Hungarians. But they had no guns. After seven days of bombardment the city was assaulted and captured. There was no massacre of the garrison or the inhabitants. Solyman converted the principal church into a mosque. The city was thenceforth garrisoned by a Turkish force. It constituted the principal stronghold of the Empire on the Danube, and was the gateway for many invasions of Hungary.

In the next year, 1523, Solyman followed up this success by an attack on the island of Rhodes, where Mahomet had also failed, and the capture of which had become more important since the conquest of Egypt, lying as it did on the direct route by sea from Constantinople. For this purpose Solyman sent a fleet of three hundred vessels with eight thousand Janissaries and a hundred siege guns. He marched at the head of a hundred thousand men through Asia Minor to the bay of Marmerice, opposite to Rhodes, whence they were conveyed to the island. The knights, six hundred in number, with only five thousand trained soldiers and a levée of peasants on the island, made a heroic defence under their Grand Master, de Lisle Adam. It was only after a siege of nine months that they were at last compelled to capitulate. It was the first occasion on which a great fortress was approached by sap and spade work, so as to avoid gun fire, and in which bombs were used by the attacking army. Solyman’s army is said to have lost fifty thousand men in casualties and as many more by disease. Under the terms of capitulation, the survivors of the garrison with all their personal property were to be conveyed to Crete, after twelve days, in their own galleys. After an interview with the Grand Master the Sultan is reported to have said, with great generosity, “It is not without regret that I force this brave man from his home in his old age.” The arms of the knights are still to be seen carved on the houses they occupied in Rhodes. The Turks have always respected them in memory of the gallant defence. The terms of surrender were faithfully observed by Solyman with the exception already referred to. The knights eventually settled at Malta, at that time a nearly desert island. They made it the seat of their order and fortified it. Its central position in the Mediterranean made it a stronghold of the utmost importance. Solyman, in the last year but one of his long reign, thought it necessary for the expansion of his Empire, in the North of Africa, to oust the knights from their new nest. He sent an army and a fleet under command of Piale Reis to besiege it. There commenced another celebrated siege in which the knights, under command of their Grand Master, Lavallette, covered themselves with glory. The Turks were defeated in many assaults on the fortress, and were ultimately compelled to withdraw with heavy losses.

The two years after the conquest of Rhodes were spent by Solyman in organizing his kingdom. His inaction was greatly resented by the Janissaries, who hated their dull life in barracks and longed for war and for loot. They broke out in revolt and pillaged the houses of Ibrahim and other great functionaries. The outbreak was quelled, Solyman killing with his own hand three of the rebels. Their Agha and other leaders were put to death. But Solyman found it expedient to appease the mercenaries by generous presents, and in the next year—mainly at their instigation—embarked on another war. He was urged to invade Hungary by Francis I, King of France, who hoped to create a diversion from the ambitious projects of the Emperor Charles V. This may be considered as the first entry of the Turks into the maze of European politics. Hungary and Bohemia were at that time united under the rule of Louis II, a very young and inexperienced man.

In April, 1526, Solyman and his Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, with a hundred thousand men and three hundred guns, marched to Belgrade, and thence invaded Hungary. On August 27th, five months after their departure from Constantinople, they met the Hungarian army at Mohacz, not far from the Danube, and about half-way from Belgrade to Buda, then, as now, the capital of Hungary. The battle was quickly decided. The Ottoman army had the advantage of an overwhelming superiority both of men and guns. The Hungarians were defeated. Their King, eight bishops, a great majority of the Hungarian nobles, and twenty-four thousand men were killed. This decided the fate of Hungary. Before marching onwards, Solyman ordered all the prisoners he had taken—four thousand in number—to be put to death. He reached Buda on September 10th. The city surrendered. Solyman received there the submission of a number of Hungarian nobles who had survived the disaster of Mohacz. At his instance, Count Zapolya, one of the magnates of Hungary and Voivode of Transylvania, was elected by them as King of Hungary in succession to Louis II, who had left no heir. Solyman shortly after this—influenced in part by news of civil disturbance in Asia Minor—left Buda and retreated to the Danube, and thence returned to his capital. The temporary occupation of part of Hungary had been attended with fearful devastation and with great loss of life to its population. It was estimated that two hundred thousand men were massacred. The retreating army carried off an immense booty and drove before them about a hundred thousand captives of both sexes, who were eventually sold as slaves at Constantinople. Garrisons were left by the Turks in some of the frontier fortresses of Hungary.

The election of Count Zapolya as King of Hungary under the dictation of the Turks led to civil war in that country. Archduke Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, to whom the Emperor had transferred his Archduchy of Austria, claimed the throne of Hungary, by virtue of a treaty between the Emperor and the late King Louis. On the other hand, it was claimed by Zapolya and his adherents that, under an ancient law of Hungary, no one but a native could be elected as King. In spite of this, the nobles of Western Hungary met in Diet at Presburg and elected Ferdinand. Ferdinand appealed to arms, and was supported by the Austrians. He defeated his rival. Zapolya was driven from the country. He fled to Poland, and thence he appealed to the Sultan for aid in support of his claims in Hungary. Ferdinand, hearing of this, sent an envoy to the Sultan. Most unwisely, he not only claimed assistance in support of his claims to the throne of Hungary, but he demanded that Belgrade and other towns in Hungary in possession of the Sultan should be given up. Ibrahim, the Grand Vizier, who conducted the negotiations with the two rivals, was most arrogant. He claimed that every place where the hoofs of the Sultan’s horses had once trod became at once and for ever part of the Ottoman Empire. “We have slain,” he said, “King Louis of Hungary. His kingdom is now ours to hold or to give to whom we list. It is not the crown that makes the King, it is the sword. It is the sword that brings men into subjection; and what the sword has won the sword will keep.”