[94] Here and elsewhere Busbecq calls Ferdinand ‘Cæsar.’ He was not Emperor till 1558, but the title of Cæsar belonged to him as King of the Romans; so also at the end of the Fourth Turkish Letter Maximilian is spoken of as ‘Cæsar’ on his election as King of the Romans.
[95] Busbecq’s miles are German Stunden, each equal to about 2-1/2 English miles.
[96] Busbecq’s explanation is correct. The word may possibly be a corruption of the Latin signum. It is now applied to the district which was formerly governed by a Sanjak-bey, i.e., Lord of the standard. Busbecq writes the word Singiaccus, Von Hammer uses the form Sandjak, while Creasy prefers Sanjak.
[97] See Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chap. ii.: ‘The name of Yeni Tscheri, which means “new troops,” and which European writers have turned into Janissaries, was given to Orchan’s young corps by the Dervish Hadji Beytarch. This Dervish was renowned for sanctity; and Orchan, soon after he had enrolled his first band of involuntary boyish proselytes, led them to the dwelling-place of the saint, and asked him to give them his blessing and a name. The Dervish drew the sleeve of his mantle over the head of one in the first rank, and then said to the Sultan, “The troops which thou hast created shall be called Yeni Tscheri. Their faces shall be white and shining, their right arms shall be strong, their sabres shall be keen, and their arrows sharp. They shall be fortunate in fight, and shall never leave the battle field save as conquerors.” In memory of that benediction the Janissaries ever wore as part of their uniform a cap of white felt like that of the Dervish, with a strip of woollen hanging down behind, to represent the sleeve of the holy man’s mantle, that had been laid on their comrade’s neck.’ See also Gibbon, chap. lxiv.
[98] At Mohacz, A.D. 1526. See Sketch of Hungarian History.
[99] The Princes of Servia were styled Despots in Greek, and Cral in their native idiom. See Gibbon, chap. lxiii. note.
[100] ‘A little below Orsova the Danube issues from the Iron Gate, and at a village called Severin, where it expands to a width of 1,300 yards, the foundations of the piers, corresponding in number with the statement of the historian, have been seen when the water was more than usually low. Here, then, as is now generally agreed, stood the bridge of Trajan’s architect, Apollodorus.’—Merivale, History of the Romans, chap. lxiii.
[101] Galen, the great physician, who flourished in the second century of our era. Busbecq’s allusion to him is quite in accordance with the fashion of his day. See Ranke’s Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, chap. xix. ‘Peter de la Ramée wished to forsake in all things the path hitherto trodden, to alter the entire system of doctors and professors in the university, and to make the works of the ancients the immediate text-books of the different branches of study,—the codex of the civil law in jurisprudence, Galen and Hippocrates in medicine, and in theology the Old and New Testaments.... Physicians arose who brought into practice once more the deserted rules of Hippocrates; and it soon went so far, as Ambrose Paré, the reformer of surgery, said, that people were not content with what they found in the ancients, but began to regard their writings as watch-towers, from which more might be discovered.’ For Busbecq’s application of these principles see the Life.
[102] An ‘aspre’ or ‘asper’ is still the lowest coin in Turkey. At the present rate of exchange a penny is worth nearly 100 aspres, but in Busbecq’s time the Turkish coinage had a considerably higher value.
[103] See Ranke’s Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, chap. xiv. ‘As he (the Prince of Condé) had distinguished himself by his bravery in the field, he now desired to shine through his versatility, by taking part in the knightly festivities of the court, in which it was the fashion to represent the heroic fables of the Greeks.’ It would seem that it was the fashion in high circles to appear on certain occasions in the dress and character of Greek heroes and heroines.