[198] We have “a precise Account of it, and all the Circumstances that attend it, without the least variation,” in Finch to Coventry, Dec. 15-25, 1677, Coventry Papers.
[199] Telescope.
CHAPTER XIV
KARA MUSTAFA AND THE ALEPPO DOLLARS
Sir John Finch, on second thoughts, did not hold the Ashby “accident” entirely responsible for the grievous dénouement at which we have assisted. That bit of ill-luck, he believed, had but precipitated a crisis which was bound to come anyway—any spark will set fire to a train already laid. If the Grand Vizir had not met with a ready-made pretext for “satisfying his passion upon him,” he would have manufactured one—perhaps even a worse one. For such a belief Sir John had ample warrant. We know how M. de Nointel had been made to purchase his peace. Sir John, who always measured his own fortunes and misfortunes by those of his French colleague, and with whom the wish generally was father to the thought, had by degrees convinced himself that the price paid by the Marquis was much higher than his own.[200] But, after all, Nointel had provoked Kara Mustafa. The Bailo of Venice, though he had tried to propitiate him by taking his seat below the Soffah without demur, was immediately afterwards forced by threats of imprisonment in the Seven Towers to pay 45,000 dollars in settlement of a claim which his predecessor had actually settled four years before, under Ahmed Kuprili, for 1500 dollars. The Resident of Holland had been driven out of his house, and was glad to take 2500 dollars for what had cost him 10,000. The Emperor’s Resident was made to disburse daily large sums of money on every idle plea that arose out of the chronic disturbances on the Hungarian frontier. The Ambassadors of Ragusa trembled under an “avania” which menaced their Republic with ruin; Kara Mustafa demanding no less than 1,600,000 dollars as compensation for the Customs-duties which Ragusa had levied on Turkish goods these forty years past, though in so doing the Republic had only exercised a legal right. Sir John ends his list of fellow-sufferers with a most sympathetic account of the plight of the Genoese Resident. How he spoke of Signor Spinola in bygone days, we have already seen. Now he refers to him as that “poor gentleman”; and, in truth, the tribulations of this diplomat were such as to touch a much harder heart than Sir John’s. Ever since his arrival he had been begging for an audience; and recently, on the very day before Kara Mustafa sent his ultimatum to Finch, he had been haled to the Porte by an Aga and a Chaoush, like a prisoner, and after being detained there all day without seeing the Vizir, was given the option to sign a promissory note for 7500 dollars or pass the night in the Seven Towers. “And what was his fault? They calld’ him Infidell, Dog, and Thief, because he durst keep so long by him the Gran Signor’s presents the Republick had sent. It being, they told him, his duty to have sent the presents, though he himselfe was not worthy to see the Gran Signor.” Spinola promised, but, on failing to pay up at the appointed time, the Vizir, to punish him for his unpunctuality, raised the sum to 20,000 dollars and, for security, seized a Genoese ship then in port. So prolific was Kara Mustafa in pretexts for extortion. His subordinates were not less ingenious:
“They have introducd’ a new Custome of giving no Commands to any Publick Minister without extravagant Demands: selling them as if they were in a Markett at the highest of their value. The French Ambassadour told me that finding himselfe dayly aggrievd’ with this innovation, he went in person to the Rais Affendi to expostulate the matter: he told the Ambassadour he askd’ no presents; but the Ambassadour sending the day following the very same Druggerman who had heard and interpreted the words, for some Commands, he had urgent occasion of, the Rais Affendi plainly told him that, if he brought no presents he should have no Commands. The Holland Resident payd’ beforehand thrice as much as ever yet he gave for a Command, and after a moneth was past urging the expedition of those Commands, he was told that they knew nothing of the matter, and denyd’ the having receivd’ any presents, so he was forcd’ to present again and has not yet his Commands out. The Venetian Bailo after the payment of his Avania, having gott a Nisanisheriffe for his discharge, though the Visir sent his Command to the Rais Affendi for it, he refusd’ to under-write it unlesse the Bailo would give him 500 Dollars, though his Fees were never above 30, or two vests, and he was so insolent that he bid the Venetian Druggerman goe and tell the Visir that he would not sett his hand to it under that summe: so the Bailo thought himselfe well usd’ when at last he gott him to take 300. Thus is the Turkish Proverb verifyd’: Goverment like Fish beginns to stink from the head.”[201]
Let it not be supposed that the Turks themselves escaped Kara Mustafa’s far-reaching shears. His appetite for money was both keen and catholic. He collected it wheresoever he could find it, making no invidious distinctions between True Believer and Infidel, between native and alien. It was enough that a man should have money to become at once an object of the Grand Vizir’s special attention. Not without reason did the Rais Effendi ask the Ragusan Ambassadors, when they pleaded for mercy, to consider “how many rich Musulmen the Visir had stript to their shirts.” And again, when some despoilt Beys heard the ambassadorial Dragomans murmur at the Porte, they cried out: “You Giaours: how can you wonder at being hardly dealt with, whenas we Musulmen, who for many generations have spent our blood in service of the Empire, are thus dealt withall?”
Kara Mustafa, of course, was not tyrannical for the mere pleasure of being so; he had to think of his finances. No Grand Vizir was ever burdened with heavier domestic obligations. He kept a harem of more than fifteen hundred concubines with at least as many slaves to serve them and half as many eunuchs to guard them. His attendants, his horses, his dogs, his hawks were counted by the thousand. How could he meet all these pressing claims upon him without cash? Besides, all the cash Kara Mustafa collected did not flow into his own coffers: he had to let considerable rivers of it pass into the lap of the Grand Signor, who since Ahmed Kuprili’s death had been growing more and more dissolute, and squeezed his Vizir as hard as his Vizir squeezed others. Further, like most great collectors of cash, Kara Mustafa had a conscience; and conscience is an expensive luxury. It made Kara Mustafa devote no small part of his plunder to works of piety, charity, and public utility: mosques, schools, baths, fountains, bazaars.[202] Let us add that Kara Mustafa was as ambitious as he was ravenous. He cherished grandiose dreams of conquest. He saw in fancy the Ottoman Empire spreading to the West as far as it had spread in the East: swallowing up new kingdoms—fulfilling its Imperialist destiny. Thus, the poor man could not possibly dispense with rapacity—it was his one resource for humbling his enemies and the enemies of his country; for extending the dominion of Islam; for procuring for himself glory and power in this world and bliss in the next. He needed money: he must have it from any hand, on any pretext, by any means—except one. Sir John notes the exception: “hitherto the Visir has showd’ no inclinations to shed blood.” It is well to remember this virtue of Kara Mustafa’s; for it is his only one.
From this exposition of Kara Mustafa’s methods and motives it is evident that the case of Mr. Ashby had only served him as an excuse. For all that, the figure which we made in that case must have contributed not a little to our disgrace. Indeed, a better case could not well have been devised for extinguishing in the Grand Vizir every spark of respect he might have had for the English and their Ambassador. As we know from his own despatches, Sir John laboured under no illusions as to the merits of Ashby’s cause; yet he did not hesitate to defend in public—and by the most disreputable means—what he condemned in private as unjustifiable. In so doing, of course, he acted as any other ambassador would have done. A diplomat everywhere is essentially an advocate whose duty it is to make the worse case seem the better. And in Turkey, perhaps more than elsewhere, it has always been the tradition of European representatives to shield their nationals from punishment at all costs; imagining that thus they saved their nation’s “honour”—a whimsical conception not very closely related to honesty. What was the use of Sir John telling the Vizir, as he did at his audience, that he was “so great an enemy of dishonesty and injustice that I should begg protection for my merchants no further then they were honest and just”? The Vizir, in listening to him, must have only wondered at the Giaour’s effrontery. And how could he, after that shameful exhibition, ever believe an Englishman again? This is not a mere inference of the present writer’s. The Treasurer of the Levant Company, who participated in the whole performance, had the candour, after it was over, to acknowledge, without mincing words, that the part he and the rest had played was “impudent,” “base,” and such as “must needs make an ill impression on the Vizier against our Nation, not easily to be removed.”[203]