The Turkish Empire, Its Growth and Decay

by Baron G. Shaw-Lefevre Eversley

After a reign of twenty-seven years a mutiny broke out against Achmet among the turbulent Janissaries, headed by Patrona, an Albanian soldier in their ranks. It speedily spread among the whole body of soldiers, and was supported by the dregs of the population of the city and by a band of criminals whom they had released from prison. It was probably promoted by enemies of the Grand Vizier. There was much want of vigour in dealing with the outbreak at its early stage. Subsequent events under Achmet’s successor showed that it was not really of a formidable character and that it might easily have been put down at its inception by strong measures against its ringleaders. It was allowed, however, to gather head and to spread. It was said that the mutiny was due to the unpopularity of the Sultan, his profuse expenditure, and the great pomp he maintained. This scarcely seems to afford a sufficient explanation. It has also been suggested that among other causes was the discontent of the soldiers on account of the long peace and the lack of opportunity for loot, and perhaps also the expectation of the customary large presents on the accession of a new Sultan. When the rebels got the upper hand they made no substantial proposals for a new policy.

The Sultan, at an early stage, consulted his sister, the Sultana Khadidjé, who advised him to keep his ministers close at hand, so that he might save his own life at their expense, if the rebels would be satisfied by a concession of this kind. He appears to have followed this advice. He lost his head in the crisis, and quailed before the mutineers. He entered into parleys with them. They demanded the surrender to them of three of the principal ministers. Achmet asked whether they wished these ministers to be handed to them alive or dead. They unanimously agreed that they wished to have the dead bodies. The Sultan thereupon had the base and incredible meanness to order that his Grand Vizier—his lifelong friend, married to his daughter—the Capitan Pasha, and the Kiaya were to be strangled and their bodies given up to the mutineers. This did not content the Janissaries. They demanded the deposition of the Sultan. Achmet then offered to abdicate the throne on condition that his life and those of his children should be spared. They agreed to this. Achmet thereupon summoned before him his nephew, Mahmoud, whom he acclaimed as Padishah in place of himself and made obeisance. He then retired to the Cage from which Mahmoud had emerged, and there spent the remainder of his life in seclusion.

Mahmoud, the son of Mustapha II, succeeded at the age of thirty-four. Achmet had not treated him with the same generosity that he had himself experienced from Mustapha II, but had insisted on his seclusion in the Cage. After spending so many of his best years in this way, Mahmoud was unfitted for active duties as head of the State. He had a turn for literature, and was a generous patron of public libraries and schools; but as regards the direction of affairs of the Empire he was wholly incompetent. He fell completely under the influence of the Kislaraga, the chief eunuch of his harem, Bashir by name, who acted as his secretary. Bashir had been an Abyssinian slave, and was bought for the Sultan’s harem for 30 piastres. Little is known of the personality of this man, save that, from behind the curtain of the harem, he practically exercised supreme power for nearly thirty years, and died at a very advanced age, leaving a fortune of more than thirty millions of piastres and immense quantities of valuables. These included more than eight hundred watches, set with precious stones, which, it must be presumed, were the gifts of applicants for appointments. Bashir made and unmade Grand Viziers at his will, and if any one of them complained of Bashir’s interference with his duties, that was the more reason for his instant dismissal. In Mahmoud’s reign of twenty-four years there were sixteen Grand Viziers. In any case, it must be admitted that the success of Mahmoud’s reign, such as it was, and the continuity of policy, were mainly due to this aged eunuch.

In the first few weeks of the new Sultan’s reign the supreme power of the State was practically in the hands of the rebel Janissaries, under the leadership of Patrona and Massuli, who were soldiers in their ranks. These men soon made themselves intolerable by their insolence and bravado. Patrona installed his concubine in one of the Sultan’s palaces, and when she gave birth to a child there, insisted on the Sultana Validé treating her with all the courtesies due to royalty. He insisted also on the appointment as Hospodar of Moldavia of his personal friend, a Greek butcher named Yanaki, who had lent him money. The bolder men about the Sultan determined to get rid of these men. The Janissaries and other soldiers who had joined in the deposition of Achmet were brought to a better frame of mind by large distributions of money. They promised to obey their officers, on condition that no punishment should be awarded to them for their part in the rebellion. Patrona and Massuli and twenty-one of their leading adherents were then summoned to a meeting of ministers at the palace, and were massacred there in presence of the Sultan himself. Within three days seven thousand of the rebellious Janissaries were put to death.

Pacification having thus been effected at the capital, attention was turned to Persia, where, as has been pointed out, a partition treaty with Russia had assigned a large part of that kingdom to the Porte, but the possession of which had not yet been obtained. In the meantime a brigand chief, Nadir, later to become world-famous as the invader of India, had taken service under Tahmasp, the son of the dethroned Hussein. Nadir succeeded in driving the Afghans out of Persia and reinstating Tahmasp as Shah. He proceeded, however, to usurp the power of that feeble monarch, and eventually got himself accepted as Shah in place of Tahmasp. He declared war against the Turks in 1733-5 and, after defeating them in several engagements, compelled them to sue for terms of peace. The Porte was the more ready to accede to terms as war with Russia was imminent. A treaty of peace was therefore agreed to with Nadir in 1735, under which all the provinces which were the subject of the partition treaty with Russia were restored to Persia. Russia also, in prospect of war with Turkey, came to terms with Nadir, and surrendered nearly all the territory which had been acquired under the partition treaty with Turkey.

Peter the Great had died in 1727, and in 1730 was succeeded by the Empress Anne, a clever and ambitious woman. She was incited to war with Turkey by Marshal Munnich, the ablest general whom Russia so far had produced. He promised to drive the Turks out of Europe. At Constantinople the eunuch Bashir was in favour of a policy of peace. He was over seventy years of age and wished to end his days in repose. He resisted as far as he could every attempt to draw the Sultan into war. The French Ambassador, under instructions from his Government, was most anxious to embroil Turkey with Austria. The two maritime Powers, however—Great Britain and Holland—pulled in the opposite direction, and peace was maintained as long as possible. But when, in 1735, the Russians, though nominally at peace with Turkey, captured two fortresses in the neighbourhood of Azoff and threatened that most important outpost of the Empire, the Porte declared war. A Russian army of fifty-four thousand men, under command of Marshal Munnich, then invaded the Crimea. They stormed and broke through the fortified lines of Perekop at the isthmus of that name, joining the Crimea to the mainland, hitherto thought to be impregnable. They captured the city of Perekop, and then overran the whole of the Crimea, devastating it and massacring its inhabitants by thousands. The Russian army, however, suffered greatly from exhaustion and disease in the campaign, and it eventually withdrew from the Crimea before the winter. Another Russian force, under General Leontiew, captured Kilburn, and a third, under General Lascy, an Irishman by birth, attacked and captured the city of Azoff.

Meanwhile the Russian diplomatists discovered that the Emperor of Austria, Charles VI, was quite as anxious as the Czarina Anne to possess himself of Turkish provinces, and was ready to enter into a coalition for the purpose. In the winter of 1736-7 a secret treaty for this purpose was entered into between the two potentates. But as it was not thought expedient by the Austrians to commence their attack until all their preparations for it were completed, a pretence was made of negotiations with the Porte, who had made overtures of peace to the Russians. For this purpose a Congress was held at Nimirof early in 1737. Later it became known that the negotiations on the part of the two allied Empires were illusory, and that there never was any intention to come to terms. The Porte, on its part, was extremely anxious for peace, and was ready to make large concessions, but the terms suggested on behalf of Russia were so extortionate that it was quite impossible for the Sultan and his ministers to entertain them. The Russians demanded the cession of the Crimea, the independence of Wallachia and Moldavia under a native prince, subject to the supremacy of Russia, the opening of the Black Sea and access to it through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles to Russian vessels of war, and the payment of fourteen millions of roubles. Austria, on its part, demanded the cession of the whole of Bosnia and Serbia. Such terms could only be assented to by the Porte after complete and disastrous defeat. They were indignantly rejected, and, much against the wish of the Porte, the Congress came to an end, and the Sultan was forced to take up arms in defence of his Empire.

A Russian army of seventy thousand men, under Marshal Munnich, opened the campaign of 1737 by an attack on Oczakoff, the most important of the Ottoman fortresses on the northern shores of the Black Sea, and General Lascy, with forty thousand men, again invaded the Crimea. Oczakoff was vigorously defended by twenty thousand Turks. After some days of siege the principal powder magazine in the fortress blew up, causing enormous destruction and loss of life. The Turkish general, dismayed by this, capitulated on favourable terms. But this did not prevent the massacre of the greater part of the garrison, and only three thousand of them survived. The losses of the Russians, chiefly by disease, were also very great, and nothing more was done by Munnich in this year’s campaign. Meanwhile Lascy in the Crimea had repeated the operation of Munnich of the previous year, and eventually retreated from it.

The Austrians, on their part, invaded Bosnia and Serbia with two armies. The principal one, under General Seckendorf, attacked and captured Nisch and, later, Widdin. But this exhausted their efforts for the year, and most of their army perished from disease in the marshes of the Danube.

The campaign of 1738 was little more decisive. The Ottomans, with revived courage, took the offensive, and, advancing into Hungary, under Grand Vizier Yegen Mahomet, captured Semendria and Orsova. The Austrians fell back on Belgrade. General Lascy again, for a third time, invaded the Crimea, but the country had been so devastated by the two previous invasions that he could find no means there of feeding his army, and he was soon compelled to withdraw. In the winter great efforts were made by the Porte to arrive at terms of peace, and it was willing to make great sacrifices. But Marshal Munnich vehemently opposed all peace proposals at the Russian Court. He was still inflamed with the desire to invade Turkey and to capture Constantinople. At his instance emissaries were sent into the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire to incite the Christian rayas to rise in arms against their masters and oppressors—the first instance of the kind.