Mohammed Kiuprili appointed grand vizier, 1656.
From this fate it was preserved by the firmness of one man and the genius of a family. The Kiuprili were of Albanian blood, but had long been settled in Constantinople, where the head of the family, Mohammed, now an old man of seventy, was universally respected for the vigour of his mind and the strength of his character. The mother of the young Sultan, in whose hands the chief political power had fallen, turned to Mohammed Kiuprili in her despair, and begged him to accept the office of grand vizier in 1656. He consented on the condition that his authority should be uncontrolled. For twenty years he and his family were the real rulers of the empire, and to them is due the astonishing revival of the Ottoman power in the latter half of the seventeenth century. True to the genius of Oriental monarchies they sought for the sources of strength, not in adaptation to new demands, but in the resuscitation of the ancient spirit. They resolutely shut their eyes to the attractions of European civilisation. They refused as far as possible to have dealings with European powers. Treaties, concessions, arts were evidences of weakness, admissions of a brotherhood which could never exist between Christianity and Islam. The ideal of government ever present to their minds was that of Mohammed II. and the earlier Sultans. The relation of governors to governed was that of master and slave in a well-ordered household, where strict justice on the one hand expected and necessitated implicit obedience on the other. The mission of the Turks was to conquer opponents and to dictate terms to the vanquished. Wherever there yet remained an organised power, Christian in its principles and Western in its civilisation, there was the enemy.
Restoration of order and discipline, 1656–1661.
Success was instantaneous. The Turks at once felt that they had got a leader who understood them, who was actuated by principles which were their own. Obediently they fell in to the bugle call. Anarchy disappeared. Discipline re-established itself. The Greek Patriarch and 4000 Janizaries were the only victims required. In the very next year the Venetian fleet was forced to leave the Dardanelles, Mocenigo was killed, and Lemnos and Tenedos recovered. In 1659 the old alliance with France was broken by the imprisonment of the ambassador’s son, and the refusal of all compensation. The siege of Candia was pushed on with redoubled zeal, and preparations were made for the renewal of the war of European conquest. When Mohammed Kiuprili died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of seeing the Ottoman empire once more united from end to end of its vast extent, and its energies once more directed to a war of aggression against its hereditary enemy the Emperor.
The mantle of Mohammed fell upon his son Achmet, who succeeded him in his office, inherited his ability, and pursued his policy. Attack upon Hungary under Achmet Kiuprili, 1663. Placing himself at the head of 200,000 men he burst into Austrian Hungary in 1663, crossed the Danube at Gran, captured the fortress of Neuhäusel, and ravaged Moravia up to the walls of Olmütz. But Louis XIV., irritated at the insult offered to his ambassador by Mohammed Kiuprili, came to the aid of the Emperor. With the assistance of 30,000 men in French pay Montecuculli the imperialist general felt himself strong enough to threaten the Turkish flank by an advance from Vienna. Achmet at once retired south to cover Buda, and the two armies met at S. Gothard on the Raab, where Achmet and his army proved themselves no match for the talents of his opponent or the wild valour of the French cavalry. Leopold, however, saw only in this great victory the opportunity of making peace, and of ridding himself of any further obligations to France. Treaty of Vasvar, 1664. Ten days after the battle of S. Gothard he signed the treaty of Vasvar (10th August 1664), by which he recognised the suzerainty of the Sultan over Transylvania, and permitted him to retain the important fortress of Neuhäusel in Hungary. Elated with this success Achmet turned his attention to the war with Venice. He took personal charge of the siege operations before Candia, and in spite of all that European engineering skill could do, it soon became obvious that the end could not long be delayed. Morosini the heroic defender of the town made the capitulation the occasion of negotiating a general treaty. Capture of Candia, 1669. On the 17th September 1669 Crete passed into the hands of the Ottomans, and peace was restored between Venice and the Porte. It was the last conquest Islam has made from Christianity.
Condition of Poland.
No sooner was the war with Venice over than Achmet found himself involved with a very different Christian power in the extreme northern frontier of the empire. The kingdom of Poland, to which was joined the grand duchy of Lithuania, had discharged during the Middle Ages the office of the sentinel of Western civilisation on its northern frontier. But the civilisation to which it had itself attained was very inferior to that of its southern and western neighbours. Extending as it did, so late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, from Livonia and Courland on the Baltic to Podolia and the lower waters of the Dniester on the confines of the Black Sea, it could not fail to be subject to the dangers of disunion and disorganisation. Its interests were so varied, its territories so impassable and heterogeneous, its people so untameable and independent, that it was almost a hopeless task for even a great statesman to inspire the country with a sense of national unity, and to lead it along the path of national progress. Yet forces which under happier circumstances might have led to contralization were not wanting. Poland occupied geographically the centre of Europe. Until the rise of Russia on the north and Prussia to the west it was free from serious danger of conquest. Its people were Sclavonic by race and Catholic by religion. With the exception of a few years at the end of the sixteenth century it was untroubled by religious or racial discord. Brave and chivalrous by nature the Poles were distinguished for their personal loyalty and their affection for their country. Turbulence of the Poles. But all these promising elements of union and strength weighed as nothing in the balance, when compared with the evils of their political and social institutions. The Poles were absolutely deficient in the capacity for being governed. They never appreciated the advantages of the reign of law. They never understood that individuals must submit to some restrictions if the community is to prosper. Discipline was a virtue wholly unrecognised by them. This lawless and turbulent spirit was fostered instead of being checked by their social institutions. Their social and constitutional institutions. There were but two classes in Poland, the aristocracy in whose hands lay the whole of the wealth and the whole of the political power, and the serfs who were little better than slaves, and had no rights of life or property against their masters. As in all countries where one class is dominant, justice and patriotism shrank and withered before the claims of privilege and selfishness. The determination to use the power which it has got solely for its own purposes, is not the monopoly of one class more than another. It has been the characteristic of the petty democracy of Florence, as of the trading aristocracy of Amsterdam, or the militant democracy of modern France. The landlord aristocracy of Poland pushed it to excess. They mistook licence for liberty, and put personal power in the place of patriotism as unhesitatingly as a Robespierre or a Napoleon. Their great fear was to find that they had unwittingly given themselves a master, so they did all they could to divert the kingship of all real power, and wilfully deprived the country of the only possible centre of unity. During the Middle Ages the kingship, though always nominally elective, was in fact hereditary, but on the death of Sigismond Augustus in 1572 it became wholly elective, and on his election the king was obliged to sign a compact by which he practically divested himself of all the usual functions of royalty except the appointment of the officials and the command of the army. The government of the country was really vested in the senate, in which the bishops and the higher magistrates as well as the twelve great executive officials sat, and in the diet. Originally the whole adult nobility had the right of attending the diet, but since 1466 it had become merely a body of delegates, who received the mandate from the provincial assemblies of nobles, and were not permitted to vary it in the least. The diet sat for six weeks and all its decisions had to be unanimous, consequently it was in the power of every member of the diet to put a stop to all business whatever either by obstructing all progress for six weeks (drawing out the diet), or by voting against the proposal (the veto), or by simply withdrawing altogether, which of course rendered all decision impossible and so practically dissolved the assembly.
Poland the battle-ground of French and Austrian interests.
A constitution such as this might have been thought to have been the work of some cynical philosopher anxious to exhibit on a large scale the inconceivable folly of human nature. In reality it was dictated by the malignant spirit of fear and selfishness. In the hands of a quick-tempered and turbulent people it could not fail to lead to anarchy, and anarchy quickly proved itself the parent of corruption. France soon saw the advantages which the command of a great central warlike state like Poland would be to her in her duel with the house of Austria. The Emperor was alarmed by the prospect of seeing his hereditary dominions almost encircled by the vassal states of France, and strained every nerve to secure the election of a king opposed to French interests. But the purse of France was deeper, and the policy of France was more continuous than that of the embarrassed Emperor, and so it happened that except under the pressure of some special danger, the diplomacy and the gold of France could always maintain a close alliance between the two countries, and prevent the election of a strongly imperialist candidate. It thus became the interests of the greater powers of Europe to keep Poland in a state of anarchy, in order that they might the easier obtain a decisive voice in her destinies. Her neighbours were not slow to recognise the advantage thus offered to them. Poland was getting weaker and weaker through the increase of anarchy, as they were getting stronger and stronger through centralisation. The rise of Sweden to pre-eminence on the Baltic under Gustavus Adolphus, the restoration of peace to Russia after the ‘troublous times’ under the house of Romanoff, the successful war and cunning diplomacy of the Great Elector all had among their other results the effect of weakening Poland. By the treaty of Wehlau, 1657, Poland lost her suzerainty over east Prussia. By the peace of Oliva in 1660 she had to surrender Livonia to Sweden. By the treaty of Andrusoff in 1667 she was obliged to give up to Russia almost all her possessions east of the Dnieper, including the important towns of Smolensk and Kief, which she had gained from her earlier in the century, and the suzerainty over half the tribes of the Cossacks of the Ukraine.
War with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, 1648–1667.