His Excellency had the inconceivable fatuity to retort:
“Do I name you as the informers?”
“No,” was the obvious answer, “but the Vizir must know it can be none but us.”
It is amazing to find Sir John, in his report to the Secretary of State, while moralising on the terrors of Turkish tyranny, also complaining of the “timidity and cowardesse of Druggermen,” who refused to risk hanging and impaling in order to please him. However, in the end, finding it impossible to overcome the Dragomans’ perverse regard for their lives, he couched his Note in vaguer terms.
To this Note Sir John received no answer for three days, and on the fourth he had one which he did not know what to make of; it looked as if Kara Mustafa had been rather annoyed by his Memorial, though he did not tear it up. So next day he sent his Dragomans to sound the Rais Effendi. This Minister told them that he would be sorry to see an ambassador who enjoyed so good credit at the Porte forfeit it by opposing the Grand Vizir, who, if the Ambassador came to audience, was ready to embrace him. Encouraged by this message, Sir John wrote to the Rais Effendi, thanking him for his friendship, hinting at a more substantial reward for any good offices he might do him with “the Most Excellent Vizir,” and protesting his willingness to give his Excellency every possible satisfaction. His one passion was to maintain his ambassadorial character with due decorum, to preserve the peace and commerce according to the “Sacred and Sublime Capitulations,” and to render to the Imperial Majesty of the Grand Signor “all acts of obsequiousness and reverence.” His heart being thus disposed, he hoped that it would be clear “to the lucid understanding of the Most Excellent Supream Visir” that a first-class Ambassador from one of the greatest potentates in Christendom ought not to be treated in parity with a Resident of whatsoever prince, much less with the Residents of inferior Republics. Therefore he trusted that some expedient would be found to make a distinction between the highest and the lowest sorts of foreign Ministers; for he burned with a desire to do reverence in person to the Most Excellent Vizir Azem. Such was the tenor of his letter.[191] The Rais Effendi read it but said nothing.
We may observe here that the distinction between Ambassadors and Residents which meant so much to European envoys did not exist for the Turks. Whenever an Ambassador claimed precedence over a Resident upon the ground of superior rank, they used to say: “What, has he not a Commission? have you more?” For all diplomatic agents they had only one name, Elchi, and their attitude towards them all was equally contemptuous.[192] This, however, as we shall see in the sequel, did not prevent them from exploiting a prejudice which they did not share.
Having made such advances as he deemed compatible with his dignity to very little purpose, Sir John resolved to wait and see what Kara Mustafa’s next move would be. Meanwhile he ordered his Dragomans to frequent the Porte as usual, so that the other foreign Ministers might not think that he had either given or taken offence—M. de Nointel had withdrawn his Dragomans; but Sir John judged himself “to be in no way, nor in no condition, in his case.” How long the affair would last or how it would end he had no idea. He wished he were nearer home that he might have instructions from the King for his guidance. As it was, he was obliged to walk by his own lights, hoping that in all he had done hitherto and in all that he should do hereafter, if he did not deserve his Majesty’s approval, he might at least obtain his pardon. Of one thing he asked the Secretary of State to be sure: “I shall to the uttmost of my possibility keep my selfe off from any condescention.” “For if I should condescend and the French Ambassadour afterwards gain the Point, then for him to be receivd’ with a distinction of Honour from the Ambassadour of the King my Master would be an everlasting Blemish.” Of course, if he capitulated, Sir John would do his best to hinder his colleague from stealing a march upon him; but “the best may not be good enough.” Then, again, there was another thing to consider: suppose he yielded to the Porte on this point, no man knew what the Porte would exact next: all the present Ministers were “sower, ante Christian Turk’s, and very Covetous”; and of them all Kara Mustafa was the worst. Sir John was unaffectedly afraid of Kara Mustafa; “and what gives me to fear him the more,” he says, “is that he is like allway’s to continue Visir; for there was never no Visir yett that ever was the tenth part, nay the twentyeth, so free or rather profuse in his gifts to the Gran Signor as he is.”
Now, Kara Mustafa assuredly deserved all, or nearly all, that Sir John said about him. But it must not be supposed that, in this particular case, he had not something to say for himself. His self-justification, according to Sir John’s own report, was this: Though it might be an undeniable truth that no Vizir had ever received an ambassador but with his stool upon the Soffah, yet he, whilst only a Kaimakam, had never received any but with their stools below the Soffah. It was thus that he had received M. de Nointel himself, and, what troubled Sir John most, it was thus that he had received Sir John’s own predecessor Harvey. M. de Nointel might argue that he had paid Kara Mustafa then only a visit of courtesy, and that as Ahmed Kuprili, the then Vizir, received him on the Soffah, he had not thought it worth his while to make a fuss about a subordinate pasha’s manners. This argument was not open to Sir John, for when Harvey called on Kara Mustafa, Ahmed Kuprili being away in Candia, Kara Mustafa acted as his Deputy, nor was that a mere courtesy call, but a solemn audience. Therefore, Kara Mustafa reasoned, why should Sir John object to paying him now, when he was a full-blown Grand Vizir, the respect which his predecessor had paid him without the least reluctance, when he was but the Grand Vizir’s shadow?
An interesting point, but not worth dwelling upon. Whether right was on Kara Mustafa’s side or not, might certainly was; and he exercised it without pity. Leaving Finch for the moment in suspense, he turned his undivided attention to Nointel. After tearing up a Memorial of the French Ambassador’s and abusing the Dragoman who presented it, he confined the noble Marquis in his house and threatened to commit him to the Seven Towers—an old Byzantine fortress which served the purposes of an Ottoman Bastille.
M. de Nointel’s distress was indescribable. From his King he could expect no support. For some time past, owing to his consistent failures at the Porte, he had been under a cloud at Versailles—a cloud that not one ray of royal clemency or one livre from the royal exchequer came to pierce. An attempt to make both ends meet by fleecing French merchants with the help of Turkish soldiers had deepened his disgrace without relieving him permanently from his financial difficulties. Day after day his debts mounted; day after day his spirits sank. Creditors clamoured for payment at his door, and not daring to attack him directly as yet, attacked his secretaries. Any day he might find himself in the Seven Towers. At last, in despair, the miserable Marquis sued for peace on the Grand Vizir’s terms, and only procured it by agreeing to pay him an extraordinary present of 3000 dollars—in household stuff and plate, for of ready money he had none. In spite, or perhaps because, of his abject surrender, the representative of the great Louis was made to drink the cup of humiliation to its bitterest dregs. Twice Kara Mustafa summoned him to audience, and twice he sent him away without audience; and when the third time he did receive him, he declined to partake of coffee and sherbet, or to be perfumed with him, but let the Giaour have his refreshments alone.[193]