The English await developments with tense interest: “Every day is like to produce great matters,” writes Sir John, and the writing, much larger and with wider spaces between the lines than usual, illustrates his excitement. “The result of these resolute orders of His Most Christian Majesty can end in nothing mean.” France, he thinks, has gone too far to draw back: she must either come to an absolute breach with the Porte, or “make the Proud Heads of this place to stoop”—in which case all Christendom will reap the benefit: “If the Turk once finds that things are not tamely putt up, transactions here will be more easy, and I hope My Lord Chandos will find the good effect of this passe.”[291]
The anticipation was abundantly verified. Chandos made the most of this fortunate conjuncture. During the weeks he remained incognito waiting for the Oxford, he prepared the ground, and in his audience with Kara Mustafa he delivered the sterner letter from the King: the Vizir read it through most carefully and bade the Ambassador welcome, without any allusion to its contents. But it was obvious that he had been deeply impressed; and the Ambassador did not fail to strike while the iron was hot. He struck so vigorously and skilfully that by the 5th of September he had obtained full satisfaction on the two main points: The money extorted from Finch for the Capitulations was refunded to the Treasurer of the Levant Company by Kara Mustafa’s Jew, who, to save the Grand Vizir’s face, pretended that it came out of the dead Kehayah’s hoard. This was a triumph of which Chandos might well be proud—restitution of money had never yet been procured from a Turk; and it was followed by another, not less pleasant: in his own words, “the false demand upon his Excellency for a prodigious sum of money by the Pasha of Tunis is also for ever damn’d by the most valid way in their Law we could desire without parting with one asper.” And even that was not all: “We are also now promised several other Articles of considerable benefit to trade in these parts and shall have them in our custody in a few days.” On one point only the Ambassador found the Vizir adamant and was forced by the haste which the Company’s interests required not to lose time in disputing it, but to accept his “parole of honour that if any prince in the world ever had the priviledge of the Suffra we should have it the first”—a promise which the Vizir had no difficulty in making, as he went on to add that “heaven should be earth and earth heaven before any such thing should be condescended to by them!”[292] That a man, while parting with solid cash, should cling so passionately to an empty form, is but another manifestation of the mysterious workings of the official mind. However, we were more than satisfied with a liberality which would have been more meritorious, but could not have been more welcome, had it been voluntary.
At the same time Lord Chandos obtained leave for Sir John to depart when he pleased. But alas! the boon which a little while ago would have filled Sir John with joy found him now unable to enjoy anything. On the 22nd of August his friend Baines had been seized with a malignant double tertian, of which he was very certain that he would die, in accordance with the method of Providence. “For,” he told Finch, “God had under many diseases preserved him so long as he could be any wayes usefull or serviceable to me, but that now, returning into England where my friends were all so well in their severall posts, he could no longer be of any use to me, and therefore God would putt a period to that life which he onely wished for my sake.”
His comrade’s condition, reacting upon Finch’s own system through the subtle laws of sympathy, “cutt off the thread of all my worldly happinesse and application to business,” so much so that he himself fell ill of a tertian. Then, on September 5th, the very day on which the leave to depart was brought to him, Baines died: the friend from whom during thirty-six years he had never been separated for more than a week or two at a time—“the best friend the world ever had, for prudence, learning, integrity of life and affection”—was taken away from him.
For this calamity Sir John’s mind ought to have been prepared. About a year before, while he and Sir Thomas were sitting in their gallery after supper, there came upon the table a “loud knocking.” Such was the first warning. The second was not less significant. A few days before Sir Thomas’s illness one of Sir John’s teeth dropped out of his head without any pain whilst they dined together: “which,” notes the ex-Professor of Anatomy, “seemes to confirm the interpretation of those who make the dreaming of the losse of a tooth to be the prediction of the losse of a friend.”[293]
These reflections, however, came to poor Sir John afterwards. At the moment he was not in a state for coherent thought of any kind. The blow fell upon him with all the stupefying force of an unforeseen catastrophe: it prostrated him: his tertian rose to a double continual tertian, which reduced him to such weakness that he was given over by his physician and all others. Thus he lay, forlorn, desolate, broken in mind and body, for about a fortnight. By September 22nd, however, he had recovered sufficiently to indite a lengthy despatch, in which, after touching upon his bereavement, he gives the sequel of the French Admiral’s exploit.
So far the only outcome of the debates held at the Porte had been an embargo imposed on French ships and men throughout the Empire. The Turks did not find themselves in a condition to express greater resentment; for Duquesne’s squadron, small as it was, was “more than doubly able to fight all the force the Ottoman Empire is able to make appear at sea. So that, contrary to the bilious and proud procedure of this Court, they go on with Spanish phlegm. The Porte are very sensible that France can doe them all manner of mischief, both by its power and its vicinity, and that they can take no other but the small, pitifull revenge of exercising their indignation upon the French Ambassadour and as many of the King’s subjects as reside in the Empire.” The Tripolines, left in the lurch, sued for peace. But “Mons. de Quesne refusd’ to treat with such a company of rascalls.” Some fruitless negotiations between the Admiral and the Capitan Pasha ensued. Then, Sir John adds three weeks later, a courier from the Capitan Pasha came with the news that the Admiral had blocked up his whole Fleet in the port of Chios. On receipt of this fresh instance of the Giaour’s temerity, “the heat of the Gran Signor was such that he ordred the Gran Visir to send for Mons. de Guilleragues and send him to the Seven Towers. The Visir sent for the Ambassadour using great threats towards him; but his Excellency carry’d himselfe with great courage, not onely refusing to sit below the Saffa, but being pressd’ to doe it, kickd’ his stool down with his feet, and then delivring the Letter from the King his master, which for more than 8 moneths the Visir had refusd’ to receive.” When Kara Mustafa urged reparation for the affront and damage done to the Grand Signor’s port of Chios, M. de Guilleragues retorted that the King of France had received none for the affront and damage done to his Consul and subjects at Cyprus, concluding that, “it was as lawfull for the King his Master to set upon his enemy’s in the Gran Signor’s ports, as for them to attack the French.” Thanks to his “dexterous and resolute prudence,” the French Ambassador was only detained in custody of the Chaoush-bashi for a while, and then, on signing a paper to acquaint his Most Christian Majesty with the Grand Signor’s desires, was released; and it was thought now that in the agreement the point of the Soffah would be included. “Certainly Mons. de Guilleragues has shown himselfe in this a Great Minister.”[294]
This is Sir John’s last official report from Pera. While penning it, he was busy with his preparations for leaving a spot to which he was now bound by nothing save memories of suffering. Every hour he passed in that house only accented his sense of desolation. With Sir Thomas Baines all that had made Turkey bearable had vanished. He was no longer there to support him. The hapless bachelor, physically and mentally worn out, and relieved of all public concerns, had now nothing to do but brood over his personal grief. He was like a shipwrecked mariner stranded on an alien and hostile shore. His one desire was to hasten home. It is much to his credit that of all this inner misery the only hint we have is contained in a paragraph of unwonted self-restraint: “I with some impatience attend the recovery of my health that I may be once freed from the commands of a Goverment so irregular that they are wholely irreconcilable to all methods of reason and honour and return into my native soyl.”[295]
It was with the same wish, expressed in the same words, that Sir John had left his “native soyl” in 1673. Eight years had passed—had he known what lay at the end of it all, would he have had the strength to persevere? And now, more than ever, he languishes for home: the longing grows, as the days go by. At last, in November 1681, he set sail in the Oxford, carrying with him the body of his friend embalmed. But he was destined to have one more experience of Kara Mustafa’s “irregular goverment” at Smyrna, where the Oxford put in that she might take under her escort four English merchantmen which lay there richly freighted. The convoy was ready for its homeward voyage, when a command from the Porte forbade it to sail. Why, oh why had he not departed two months ago? Why had he waited to recover: will accidents never cease to dog his steps? Without sharing Sir John’s superstition, no one that studies his life can help being struck by the continuity of his bad luck: everything seems to go wrong with him—not always through any wrong calculation of his own; and when something lucky happens, it is not he that reaps the gain and the glory, but his successor.
The causes of this latest check were as follows: