The great Feast of the Bairam, at which it was customary for all ambassadors to send presents to the Grand Vizir, drawing near, Sir John’s Dragoman went to the Porte to ask when he should bring his “Bairamlik,” and, incidentally, to see if he could not for once get access to Kara Mustafa, who, “beyond all the example of his predecessours had not yett sufferd’ any Publick Ministers Druggerman to speak with him.” A fruitless endeavour! Kara Mustafa is invisible, and his Kehayah coldly replies that there is no need of a Bairamlik from you, since your Ambassador has not yet paid his respects to the Vizir. The Dragoman protests that his Excellency has constantly pressed for audience and is ready to come either that night or next morning. “No,” answers the Kehayah; adding that perhaps the Ambassador thought the Vizir would be content with the ordinary first audience presents, but that was a delusion—“vests would not doe the buisenesse.” From the surly Kehayah our Dragoman goes to Dr. Mavrocordato: they talk the matter over, and it is agreed between them that we should give fifty vests of a much larger size than the usual; but when this agreement is propounded to the Vizir, he rejects it scornfully.
Alarmed by these symptoms of ill-humour, Sir John addressed to Kara Mustafa, through the Kehayah, a conciliatory message: he was very sorry to have incurred the Grand Vizir’s displeasure, and begged to know precisely what would restore him to his favour. He appealed to the Vizir’s equity by pointing out that he had been obliged to act as he had done by the exigencies of his position: “If I was in the same conjuncture again I could doe no lesse: in regard that if I had submitted to what the Ambassadour of another Christian Monarch had refusd’, the King my master might justly have cutt off my head.” He ended by expressing the hope that the Grand Vizir would not enjoin upon him “any thing exorbitant or dishonourable,” but that he would rather command his decapitation, “for that I had rather submitt to the latter, then the former.”
The message was delivered to Kara Mustafa immediately after his noon prayers, and “he seemd’ to be very much surprisd’” by it—as well he might. After passing a whole hour in profound meditation, he said to his Kehayah: “Methinkes the Ambassadour should not thinke much to send me four thousand zecchins”—say, £2000. The Kehayah added four hundred on his own account. As the result of much haggling, the demand fell to 6000 dollars, or £1500, which included the usual presents, amounting to 600 dollars.
This was Kara Mustafa’s prescription for Sir John’s diplomatic fever. It plunged the patient into gloom. What could he do? He could, no doubt, continue staying in his house, even in his bed. But that would have deprived the English of their protector and delivered them up to the tender mercies of every official robber in the Empire. There was already the wretched Ashby groaning in his chains. There was a claim on the Aleppo Factory for silk dues, and an accusation of buying Turkish goods from Christian pirates at Scanderoon. There was the charge, which Kara Mustafa had brushed aside when in a good temper, against the English factors of Smyrna of attempting to rescue Ashby by main force: now that Kara Mustafa was in an ugly mood that charge might be brought on the tapis again. Sir John considered these things, and also another thing that concerned him more directly—the old pretensions of the Pasha of Tunis, which, should a breach take place, were not likely to remain dormant long. Even as it was, Sir John had reasons to apprehend a revival of that nasty affair. The Pasha, it is true, was still in his distant province on the borders of Arabia, “where,” Sir John says, “I pray God detayn him”; but he had at Constantinople a Vekil or Procurator in the person of—the Grand Vizir’s Kehayah: an ominous connection. Lastly, Sir John had to consider the feelings of the English merchants about him. Their standard of values was the standard of the counting-house, not of the Court. They thought it worse than futile to resent affronts which we had not the means of resisting. Where the Turks knew that big words were empty bluster, where business men could be hurt without hope of redress—the only way to peace lay through bakshish.[196] The factors with one voice urged Sir John to pay up.
There was not much time for hesitation. The Vizir had presented his final demand in the form of an ultimatum: the Ambassador should give a “categoricall and positive answer,” Yes or No, not later than the day following. Sir John said “Yes.” He agreed to purchase his audience for 6000 Lion dollars, ready money; and tried to persuade himself that, all things considered, the price was not excessive: he would save on the size of the vests—one yard here, two there-so that “in time, though with length,” we should get our money back! But nothing could minimise the cost in self-respect. “I never in my life enterd’ upon a Resolution more unwillingly, nor more against my Genious,” complains the poor diplomat, and we may well believe him. No Englishman ever “sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” had a keener sense of honour (we use the term in its technical acceptation). As we have seen, not once or even twice, the “point of honour” was to him what his creed is to a monk, what his flag is to a soldier, what her virtue is to a maiden—and now he had parted with it.
At the same time, we may ask (certain that Sir John will not mind our impertinence), was that solution really as inevitable as it was unpalatable? Was there no other way? On one hand, it is possible to argue as our merchants argued, and to reinforce the argument with such considerations as these: although the Law of Nations which prescribes respect for ambassadors—a law older than Homer—was not unknown to the Turks, no law is binding upon men unless it is backed by fear. This requisite was completely absent in the relations between the Western Powers and the Ottoman Empire. There were no Turkish ambassadors resident in foreign capitals upon whom to retaliate, and the Turks were at liberty to act as they pleased without fear of reprisals. For the rest, their brutality had been encouraged for generations by impunity. A whole series of European envoys had been treated by them in the most revolting manner, and their sovereigns had submitted with true Christian meekness. On the other hand, there is on record a case which suggests the existence of a more excellent way.
In the reign of James I., whilst the Elizabethan spirit still lingered among us, the great English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, fired with indignation at the contempt shown by the Sultan’s Ministers to the representatives of Christian Europe, took a strong line. He began by writing to the Grand Vizir that he had orders from his King either to obtain the respect due to English ambassadors or else to break off relations. The Vizir promised reform, but forgot to keep his promise. Roe did not waste any more time, but threw the Capitulations at the Vizir’s feet, and invited his colleagues to joint action. They all met and set out for the Seraglio, determined to procure from the Grand Signor either the Vizir’s head or leave to withdraw their subjects and their goods out of the country. It so happened that a superior power intervened. On the way the procession was met with the news that the Janissaries had risen, that the Vizir had fled, and that orders had been issued that he should be killed wherever found.[197]
Suppose Finch had taken a leaf out of Roe’s book? Was it not a fact that the impotence of the European envoys was essentially the result of their disunion? Finch himself confesses that “had Wee all united, the case had bin easily carryd’ against the Visir.” But he excuses himself to himself for making no attempt to unite them, partly on the ground that the Turks had forestalled him by inviting the Venetian and the Dutchman to audience the moment they got his refusal: “so diligent were they in using this pressure, least Wee Ministers should unite”; partly on the ground that his colleagues neglected to profit by his “indisposition of body”: they all knew it was an artifice, why then did they not copy it, or why did they not put off the Vizir by saying that the priority of audience belonged to the Ambassador of England? Thus by hastening to submit, they left him no alternative. It was not his fault: it was the fault of his colleagues, particularly of M. de Nointel: “The French Ambassadour’s example and desertion of me, together with the unadvisd’ deportment of the Factory (for neither of them alone could have done it),” compelled him to that ignominious surrender.
Thus Sir John bought his peace. He bought it upon assurances that he would be reinstated in the Grand Vizir’s good opinion, and have his audience at once. But what with the celebrations of the Bairam, the payment of the troops which began as soon as the Feasts ended, and several other excuses (whether real or pretended, Sir John could not say), the audience was deferred from day to day. In the meantime Mr. Ashby continued to groan in his chains; which grew, as such things are apt to do, heavier with every day that passed. The Ambassador, having some grounds to believe that the Vizir did not wish to see him till that disagreeable affair was settled, exerted himself to this end, with the result that the prisoner was first relieved of his collar and wristlets, then had the 5000 dollars to which he had been condemned reduced by one-fifth, and at last, after about twenty days’ incarceration, was set at liberty. Temporarily cured of his avarice, Mr. Ashby, besides paying Pizzamano 4000 dollars, also paid 500 to the Hasnadar, and, we may suppose, resolved not to prevaricate again.
The last obstacle having been removed, our Ambassador found the Porte open to him, and on the 12th of December (nearly eight months since that memorable Sunday when Nointel’s mishap had thrown him into a diplomatic distemper—a truly fatal illness) he had his audience. It went off without a hitch.[198]