When great European Ambassadors were presented to the Sultan at Constantinople, each one was taken separately, and, with a courtier holding him by the arm on each side, he was led like a prisoner into the great presence in awful silence.
There was the Sultan cross-legged on his divan, his turban and his robes blazing with jewels. He did not deign to speak nor even to look at the Ambassador, gazing away fixedly and with stony indifference as he was presented.
One of the first acts of a new Sultan was to kill all of his brothers, if he had any, or any one else who could possibly conspire to get his throne.
It was an effectual way of destroying conspiracies in the germ, as we do disease, and was a custom much honored.
An amiable English historian describes one of the Sultans as being an exalted character, pure, upright, and virtuous. He regrets that this admirable man did blind his only son and have three brothers bowstringed (strangled). But it was "the only blemish on his character"! Happy Turkey, to have such an historian!
When "Suleyman the Magnificent" was Sultan in 1550, the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith. Its eastern frontier was in the heart of Asia, it held Egypt and the Northern Coast of Africa, and its European frontier reached that of Austria and Russia. It included, with the exception of Rome, every city famous in biblical or classical history.
Europe was dismayed at this advancing and irresistible power.
But there is a moment in the history of empires when they reach a climax. Then comes a decline,—a time when conquest ceases, and they are content to defend what they already possess; and finally are glad if they be permitted to exist at all!
Such a moment of climax arrived to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. The three centuries which have followed have been a gradual and sure decline.