The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq

The departure of my colleagues took place towards the end of August 1557. In the following winter the Sultan, according to his usual custom, removed to Adrianople, with the double object of making a demonstration against Hungary and of enjoying the good hawking and the bracing climate, which he thought were beneficial to his health. At the junction of the rivers near Adrianople are wide tracts of flooded lands, on which there are great quantities of wild ducks, geese, herons, eagles, cranes, and buzzards. To capture these he generally uses a small species of eagle; these birds are trained to seek their quarry in the clouds, and bring it down, or to seize it as it flies beneath them, and with one swoop dash it to the ground.[164] I hear he has falcons so well trained that they can bring down a crane, striking it under the wing in such a way as to keep clear of its beak, on which they would otherwise be impaled. Their boldness, however, is not always successful, for if they make the least mistake, they immediately suffer for it; the crane’s beak goes through them like an arrow, and they tumble lifeless to the ground.

For the reasons I have mentioned, the Sultan makes a practice every year of repairing to Adrianople at the beginning of the winter, and of not returning to Constantinople till the frogs drive him away with their croaking.

Shortly after the departure of the Court, I received a letter from Roostem ordering me to follow. Some horsemen were attached to me as an escort, and also sixteen Janissaries, either as a mark of honour or to prevent my escaping. As I was directed to come with all speed, at first we travelled by long stages, but we had scarcely commenced our third day’s journey when the Janissaries began to grumble. It was winter, and they had to trudge along muddy roads, so our long marches were not at all to their liking; they declared that when they were campaigning with the Sultan they did not march more than half the distance, and said they could not stand it. This troubled me, as I did not wish to be hard on them. At last, while I was considering with my attendants what to do for them, one of them suggested that they were very fond of a sort of omelette, which my cook compounded of wine and eggs with plenty of sugar and spices. ‘Possibly,’ said he, ‘if they were served with this for breakfast every day, they would make fewer complaints of fatigue and be more obliging.’ Queer as the suggestion was, I determined to try it, and the result was a most complete success, for they were so charmed with the omelette, and so merry with the wine with which I plied them, that they were ready to start before the order came, and volunteered to follow me to Buda if I would always treat them so.

Travelling thus, I arrived at Adrianople, where I was obliged to listen to the complaints, not to say abuse, of Roostem about the raids and robberies of the Hungarians. To these, however, the answer was not far to seek, for I was able to tell him of the numerous wrongs which our people daily received from Turkish soldiers. He could not be surprised, I added, if the Christians retaliated.

I was enabled to answer him thus by the arrival of a courier with despatches from the Emperor, in which he narrated the outrages perpetrated every day by the Turks in our territory, in violation of the armistice which we had made for a fixed period on the departure of my colleagues; how they harried the miserable peasantry with their ceaseless raids, plundered their property, and carried off into captivity themselves, their wives, and their children.

I must not omit to mention that on the day of the courier’s arrival at Adrianople there was a great earthquake, à propos of which he related, that he had felt an earthquake, which he considered to be the same, at Nisch and Sofia, and many other places through which he had journeyed, so that the air enclosed in the caverns of the earth seemed to have run a race with him and to have travelled almost as fast as he had ridden. In confirmation of this theory, I must tell you that a similar earthquake was felt four days later at Constantinople; here are the data and you can make your own deductions.

I may remark that Constantinople is very subject to earthquakes, and I remember that once, a little after midnight, our lodging began to shake so violently that we thought the house would fall. I had been sound asleep, but when it woke me and I could see by my night-light books and cups tumbling about, laths and stones falling from the wall, and the whole room shaking violently, for a moment I was dumbfoundered and knew not what to make of it. At last, when it occurred to me that it was an earthquake, I jumped up and ran out, for fear the house should tumble in upon me. The same earthquake continued for some days, though the shocks were not so violent. All through the city, and especially in our lodging and in St. Sophia, even where the walls are most solid, may be seen huge cracks caused by settlements from earthquakes.

I stayed at Adrianople about three months, and then, after concluding a seven months’ armistice, I was taken back to Constantinople in March. As I was tired of being confined in the same lodging, I had recourse to the cavasse who acted as my keeper (for among the various duties which, as I have already told you, are assigned to men of this profession amongst the Turks, is the custody of ambassadors), and asked him to allow me, like other ambassadors, to hire a house with a little bit of garden or pleasure-ground, at my own expense. The cavasse made no objection, as it would be a saving for his master of 400 gold ducats a year if I took a house for myself, this being the price which the Sultan paid for my present lodgings; so I hired a house, or rather block of buildings, with some land about it, where I intended to lay out a garden, hoping by this means to divert my mind from the cares and anxieties of my position.

When, however, my cavasse found it was impossible to watch me in a house, which was furnished with several means of egress and lay in its own ample grounds, as strictly as in a caravanserai (a word with which I think my former letters have made you familiar), where all the windows were closely barred, and to which there was only one entrance, he changed his mind, and induced the Pashas, who had now returned from Adrianople, to shut me up once more within the walls of our old lodging. Thankful, indeed, was I that I did not get worse treatment, for some of the Pashas held that, now that I was alone, it was a needless extravagance to give me such a roomy lodging. The majority, however, of the council were more considerate, and I was allowed to return to my old prison-house.