That, indeed, was the opinion of the English merchants, too. So far from not being in the least concerned in the matter, they were terribly interested, and warned the Ambassador that, if the Vizir’s mouth was not stopped at once, they might have to pay very heavily in the end. Some even reproached him for driving the Company to a dangerous precipice. But the Ambassador, having been censured by the Company for his other adjustments, was this time determined to stand firm at all hazards and let Kara Mustafa do his worst.[261]
Some twenty-four days passed, and then the Vizir’s Jew came to inform Sir John “with many threats intermingled” of the resolution taken at the Porte—that he should enter into negotiations for an agreement. Sir John referred the emissary to his former declaration, adding that, far from seeing any reason to recede from it, he must confirm and ratify it again, “and the rather because since the writing I had receivd positive orders from England not to enter into any contract”—he could not make one step further: the Vizir “might doe what he pleasd.” “Thus,” he reported on September 29th, “stands this case, either victory or imprisonment of my person is like to be the result of it.”[262]
It is impossible to contemplate without admiration the intrepidity with which Finch faced the alternative before him. Happen what might, he had decided to hold out, and the only effect which the expostulations of the English and the threats of the Turks produced on his decision was to strengthen it. Courage, as we have seen, was by no means a conspicuous feature of Sir John’s character; yet on this occasion he displayed all the steadfastness of a hardened fighter. He would not let the Turks lure or intimidate him on to ground which no Ambassador could consent to occupy without grave detriment to the interests confided to him. The question was vital “not onely in regard of the Great Summe which under all the variety of demands is at the lowest very high: but in regard it is a Precedent of pernicious consequence to Our Commerce, so long as this Visir livs.”[263]
Kara Mustafa’s choler at this calm defiance is not inconceivable. It behoved him to teach the English, as he had taught other Giaours, what they got by defying his thunder. You refused all terms of peace? You shall have war.
On October 1st the Ambassador was once more summoned before the Grand Vizir’s tribunal—to plead the same cause for the third and last time. He went, accompanied by five of the leading English merchants and his Dragomans. What his emotions were as he went we know from his own mouth. Victory or imprisonment, he had said, with a certain glow of internal pride—like that of a resolute pilot amid the piled tempests. But Sir John was not either a hero or a martyr by nature: he was merely a man with a sense of duty—which does not exclude other senses. With perfect frankness he confesses that “When I went to the Tryall, accompanyd’ onely with five of the chief of the Factory, wee all, and our Druggermen too, had apprehensions of imprisonment.”
The manner in which the proceedings were conducted was not calculated to reassure the defendants. The Pasha’s claim had in the interval risen to the colossal figure of 1000 purses, that is, half-a-million dollars: so much for this, so much for that. He went on specifying the various items, until the Grand Vizir himself ordered him to stop—he had heard enough. Then turning to the Ambassador, he asked for his answer. Sir John’s answer was the same as before: a flat denial of responsibility, backed with the familiar arguments. But how poor is the eloquence of him who advocates a cause which we disapprove: how inadmissible his statements, how unconvincing his reasons! Kara Mustafa, who had put on his most thunderous look for the occasion, overruled everything that might be said for the defence with such truculence, that “when wee saw how prodigiously things were carry’d against us, wee thought imprisonment unavoidable”—we already saw ourselves in the cell of the condemned....
In this fearful emergency Sir John had an inspiration—one of those inspirations that panic sometimes begets. It occurred to him suddenly to beg for time to write home for instructions. Contrary to his own expectation, Kara Mustafa agreed to suspend proceedings till the end of February—five months being necessary for an interchange of communications between Constantinople and London. This prompt assent could easily be accounted for. In Turkey a request for time was commonly understood to be equivalent to a hint that the party had a mind to come to terms.[264] Certainly so the Grand Vizir understood it, though Sir John, far from suspecting the construction put upon his words, congratulated himself upon his strategy. “Had I not thus prevented the pronouncing of sentence,” he wrote next morning, “Wee had all not onely bin clapd’ up in prison, but the estates also of the Levant Company had bin violently seizd’ till I had complyd’ with the summe.” It was not, to be sure, an acquittal, but it was the next best thing—a respite. “Now I must say with the Italian, chi da tempo, da vita. I should think that, when the five moneths are expird’, it would not be hard to get three moneths more, though I doe not say that it is to be relyd’ upon for who knows this Visir.” Thus checking his own elation, he went on to press for his supersession. He had occupied that thorny seat on the Bosphorus long enough; it was time that somebody else had his turn. “I believe,” he told the Secretary of State, “most men will be of opinion that a new Ambassadour, accompanyd’ with particular orders and fresh Letters from His Majesty relating to this case, will, in so palpably a just cause, make the false pretensions of the Bassà of Tunis wholely vanish.”[265]
People at home entirely agreed that a new broom was needed to clear up the mess in Stambul, and steps had already been taken to provide one. After some discussion on the advisability of sending out an ambassador at all whilst Kara Mustafa raged in Turkey, the Levant Merchants, at a Court held on October 3rd, 1679, had decided to take the risk; six months later they petitioned the King to order Sir John Finch’s return, so that they might select a successor; and, having obtained the King’s permission so to do, they took a ballot on April 22nd, 1680.[266]
It is a very curious thing that, though the Constantinople Embassy was a byword for difficulty and even for danger in the diplomatic world, and though few of its tenants had not, sooner or later, begged for recall as for an inestimable boon, yet there never were wanting keen candidates: the pay and perquisites offered an irresistible attraction, and, apparently, each would-be ambassador flattered himself that Fortune would prove kinder to him than she had done to his predecessors. No fewer than eight individuals (some of whom ought to have known better) were eager to step into Sir John’s tight shoes. One of these was our friend Paul Rycaut. As soon as the recall of Finch was decided upon, the ex-Consul, encouraged by his former chief Lord Winchilsea with assurances that “neither his person nor endeavours towards this promotion would be displeasing to his Majesty,” hastened to put in a claim with the Crown, dwelling on his past services, his qualifications, and “the knowne loyaltie of his family.” At the same time he canvassed the Levant Company, which, on his return home, had acknowledged its obligations to him with a gratuity. Everything tended to make Rycaut think that “he stood as faire in the nomination as any person whatsoever.” But suddenly the Earl of Berkeley, Governor of the Company, put an end to Rycaut’s expectations by announcing that the King did not wish that any one who had lived in Turkey “under a lesse degree and qualitie then that of an Ambassadour” should be chosen.[267]
Another aspirant was the Hon. Dudley North. He also felt sure that, with all his experience of Turkey, he would be able to do the nation better service there than anyone else. But his aspirations never got beyond the stage of aspirations. Before leaving Constantinople he had sounded his brothers, and they laughed him out of the project by telling him that he knew “as little of London and interest at Court here, as they did of Constantinople and the Turkish Court there.”[268] This, in fact, was the one fatal objection to North, as it was to Rycaut. Either of these gentlemen would have made an ideal envoy at the Porte: no contemporary Englishman could be compared with either in all the essential qualifications for the post. But neither stood the slightest chance; for neither possessed the influence (or, as they said in those days, the “interest”) without which qualifications then, as now, were of little account.