For instance, he had a large English mastiff which had worsted bears of the greatest size and savagery in single-fight. Aware of the Imperial Hunter’s tastes, he hastened to send him this ferocious dog as a present: “which,” the Rev. John tells us, “the Grand Signor took mightily kindly.”[126] This courtesy, let us hope, made the Avji more friendly towards us than a more important service would have done. His subordinates had to be wooed according to their own particular weaknesses.
Among these, sad to relate, none was more prevalent than a weakness for wine and spirits. The Sultan, himself an habitual abstainer, had twice (in 1661 and 1670) forbidden the use of intoxicants: the second time by a most drastic edict most drastically enforced: taverns pulled down, butts broken in pieces, wine spilt, and the making and selling of it banned “upon no less penalty than hanging, or being putt into the Gallies.”[127] Yet the cult of Bacchus flourished more luxuriantly than ever. Legislation had overreached itself. The abolition of the tax had lowered the price of the article, so that those who before could afford to drink only one bottle openly, now drank two in secret. During Sir John’s stay at Adrianople intoxication was common among Turks of all classes, and particularly rampant in Court circles. With the exception of the Grand Signor and the Mufti, there was hardly a sober grandee. Our Chaplain, whom nothing escaped, has much to say about this phase of Turkish life also: “I have seen,” he declares, “the Vizier himself mamur, that is, crop sick severall times.” Alas! it was only too true. Ahmed Kuprili, up to the end of the siege of Candia (1669), had never tasted a drop of anything stronger than sherbet. But on his return from that campaign he stopped at the fair isle of Chios to refresh himself from his toils. This holiday, the first he had ever had, proved his undoing. For a whole fortnight he refreshed himself among the mastic groves of Chios, allowing no public affairs, however urgent, to interrupt his potations. Ahmed was nothing if not thorough. From that date he seemed anxious to atone for his past temperance, and at such a rate that, by 1675, his stomach could no longer keep warm without the most fiery of liqueurs.[128]
It was with wine, therefore, that Sir John wooed those whom his Dragomans worried. He sent them, at short intervals, samples of his cellar, and anxiously inquired how they were appreciated. “My Florence wines,” he reports, “were not likd’ at the Court, the wines I had out of the Pope’s State well approved; but the sack that I brought with me mightily admird’, and none esteemd’ to come near it; so that I gave Him [the Vizir] all I had, save onely one double Bottle I kept to drink His Majesty’s Health for the day that I should receive my Capitulations.”[129]
This way of dealing with the Turks was so novel that it excited comment among Sir John’s colleagues; and one day Count Kindsberg, as the two were “talking merrily together,” ventured to say “that He understood I went on with this Court by fair and Courtly mean’s, which was not others, nor His practise.” Sir John readily answered, “that he did well, and very possibly I might doe so to, he immitating his Master who hath had allway’s Warr with the Gran Signor and I mine who had allwayes Peace.”[130]
In another matter, too, Sir John showed himself surprisingly careless of his neighbours’ opinion. There was at Adrianople a disreputable Italian renegade, Count Bocareschi. The Ambassador shared this highly undesirable acquaintance with—the Rev. John Covel. Our Chaplain had known the Count for years and cherished no illusions about him: “this Bocareschi,” he told one of his Cambridge correspondents, “was a very parasite as [ever] lived: an excellent wit, and some little learning, the Latin toung perfectly; but for his damned traiterous perfidious tricks, was kick’t out of all publick ministers’ companyes.”[131] Yet, though he knew the Italian well for “a damned rogue” and “a beast,” as he calls him elsewhere, he cultivated him because the adventurer, being a Muteferrika, or quartermaster, had access to many places which the Rev. John itched to explore. From a like opportunism, his Excellency now entertained the ignoble Count at dinner nearly ever day. Diplomacy, like Providence, is not very particular in its choice of instruments. The proud Lord Ambassadour must stoop to caress a Muteferrika; the representative of a monarch who styled himself Defender of the Faith must consort with a renegade.
Thus during the six weeks that the Festivities lasted Sir John utilised every means he could think of for making himself popular with everybody and anybody who might be of use to him in his mission: bakshishing and flattering the Turks up to the scratch. His methods, scandalous though they might seem to others, to him appeared successful. The officials who received his fine wines gave him in return fair words: the Capitulations, Sir John understood, had been read over to the Grand Vizir several times: article after article was considered and passed. Finally, one day, as his Dragomans went by the house of Hussein Aga, Director of Customs, or, as the English of that day styled him, Chief Customer, that officer called them up and told them that all the demands his Excellency had put forward were granted; but he wondered that they should think such boons were to be had for nothing! Whereupon the Dragomans went to the Rais Effendi, who corroborated the Customer’s statement, adding that he had reason to believe that the Kehayah’s sentiments were the same. When this was reported to Sir John, he sent the Dragomans to the Kehayah, promising him 1000 sequins (£500) for the Grand Vizir, 1000 dollars (£250) for himself, and a similar sum for the Rais Effendi.[132]
That Sir John was overjoyed at the near prospect of his release it would be superfluous to state. There is a satiety of all things, even of rats, mice, fleas, bugs, Jew-stenches and Turkish festivities. How ill-advised he had been to put off his journey till this season! But now it is only a question of days—he will soon have done now.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Even in touching upon such an open secret as the Turkish Ministers’ susceptibility to the charm of dollars, Finch dares not speak out: “the greatest arguments I cannot write to you without a Cipher, reflecting upon great Persons,” he tells Coventry: Sept. 9, 1675.
[107] Finch to Coventry, Feb. 24/March 6, 1674-75, Sept. 9, 1675; Covel’s Greek Church, Pref. pp. lii, liv; Rycaut’s Memoirs, pp. 315-7; Life of Dudley North, pp. 104-5; Vandal’s Nointel, pp. 136, 141-2; Hammer, vol. xi. pp. 362, 425.