[229] Finch to Coventry, Aug. 19-29, 1679.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PILOT AT REST
For about ten months—that is, till the summer of 1680—Sir John Finch had no further opportunity of displaying his skill as a pilot. He was a mere passenger in the diplomatic vessel, and he availed himself of the privilege which belonged to his position by diligently noting the behaviour of his fellow-passengers. Sir John’s despatches have none of the verve of M. de Nointel’s descriptions of life and manners: he is never less entertaining than when he means to be so. Yet casual notices—occurrences mentioned as matters of course—sometimes creep in to relieve the formality of the narrative. “This Imperiall City,” he writes in June 1679, “is now filld’ with the whole Court; and the Gran Signor has filld’ all his Serraglio’s to the heigth of any former Precedent, with the choice Virgin beauty’s of his Empire, giving order for the providing of no lesse then five hundred at one time.” The writer, however, knows that this is not business: it has nothing to do with those “negotiations and practices” which it was his duty to keep an eye on. So he proceeds: “In the midst of all these enjoyments, there wants not the application of Christian Ministers in order either to the making or preserving peace.” There follows a record of these efforts for peace which, thanks to Kara Mustafa’s statesmanship, were to end in a war that brought the Ottoman Empire to the brink of the abyss. Little did Kara Mustafa dream that, in browbeating the representatives of Poland and Russia, of the German Empire and the Venetian Republic, he was digging his own grave. But that was still in the future. Meanwhile the Grand Vizir had all these Powers at, or rather under, his feet.
On the departure of the Palatine of Kulm, a Polish Resident was left at Constantinople. Nevertheless, King Sobieski now sent a special envoy charged to inform the Porte that the Poles had renewed their truce with the Muscovites for fifteen years longer. Poland thought it necessary to give this notice, lest the Turks should take umbrage: “Such is the awe which that halfe conquerd’ Kingdome hath of this Empire.”[230]
An envoy from Muscovy, at the same time, laboured for peace under conditions which anywhere outside Turkey would have been intolerable. Sixty Janissaries kept strict watch over him to prevent all access to his person; while Kara Mustafa sent the Capitan Pasha to fortify the Black Sea. By this move the Turks put “a Bridle into the Muscovites mouthes.” For the rest, it seemed unlikely that they had any desire to advance farther northwards, “their camels and horses not being able to endure the rigour of that climat.”[231]
The duped diplomat departed in disgust; but six months after another came to treat with the Porte and fared no better. Before admitting him to audience, the Grand Vizir obtained a translation of the letter he had brought: it was couched in the usual style of the Tsars, who loved to fill their letters with as high threats and as hyperbolical boasts and titles as the Sultans. The Vizir, incensed by so good an imitation of Turkish arrogance, when the envoy appeared in the Audience Room, asked him whether this was indeed his letter, and on the envoy replying “Yes,” he dismissed him with a “Chick Haslagiack—Be gone, you Rogue, you deserve to be hangd’!” One would think, says Sir John, that this “studyd’ affront” might give a stop to the negotiations. But such was not the case: “the Visir learnes dayly, that He looses nothing by the rough treatment of forreign Ministers; as the Ambassadour of Poland’s ill usage, as well as others have confirmd’ to him.”[232]
Take, for instance, that other great Empire, which, calling itself (Heaven only knows why) “Holy” and “Roman,” claimed to be the bulwark of the Christian West.
The Emperor’s Internuncio Hoffmann, since the previous summer when he arrived to renew the truce, had been accorded only one business audience and that was little to his satisfaction: a circumstance from which it might, Sir John thought, justly be suspected that the Grand Vizir meant to keep him in suspense till he drew the army to the Danube, and then suddenly to clap up a peace with the Muscovites and turn his course upon Hungary. Other circumstances pointed in the same direction. Before he could obtain a second interview, Hoffmann died, and was soon followed to the grave by his successor Terlingo. A little earlier, as we have seen, Kindsberg and Sattler had had their careers cut short by death. So that in fifteen months the Emperor had lost four Ministers. Sir John could not help regarding this mysterious mortality as “a presage of a warr, but,” he adds, “omens then worke upon me when they are accompanyd’ with naturall reasons, and a considerable one is this, that the Turke cannot live without a warr.”[233]