Baltagi, who was not fond of war, and who, nevertheless, had conducted this very well, thought that his expedition would be sufficiently successful, if he put his master in possession of the towns and harbours which made the subject of the war, stopt the progress of the victorious army under Renne, and obliged that general to quit the banks of the Danube, and return back into Russia, and for ever shut the entrance of the Palus Mæotis, the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, against an enterprising prince; and, lastly, if he avoided taking these certain advantages, on the hazard of a new battle (in which, after all, despair might have got the better of superiority of numbers). The preceding day only he had beheld his janissaries repulsed with loss; and there wanted not examples of many victories having been gained by the weaker over the strong. Such then were Mahomet's reasons for accepting the proposals of peace. His conduct, however, did not merit the approbation of Charles's officers, who served in the Turkish army, nor of the khan of Tartary. It was the interest of the latter, and his followers, to reject all terms of accommodation which would deprive them of the opportunity of ravaging the frontiers of Russia and Poland. Charles XII. desired to be revenged on his rival, the czar: but the general, and the first minister of the Ottoman empire, was neither influenced by the private thirst of revenge, which animated the Christian monarch, nor by the desire of booty, which actuated the Tartar chief.
As soon as the suspension of arms was agreed to, and signed, the Russians purchased of the Turks the provisions, of which they stood in need. The articles of the peace were not signed at that time, as is related by La Motraye, and which Norberg has copied from him. The vizier, among other conditions, demanded that the czar should promise not to interfere any more in the Polish affairs. This was a point particularly insisted upon by count Poniatowsky; but it was, in fact, the interest of the Ottoman crown, that the kingdom of Poland should continue in its then defenceless and divided state; accordingly this demand was reduced to that of the Russian troops evacuating the frontiers of Poland. The khan of Tartary, on his side, demanded a tribute of forty thousand sequins. This point, after being long debated, was at length given up.
The grand vizier insisted a long time, that prince Cantemir should be delivered up to him, as Patkul had been to the king of Sweden. Cantemir was exactly in the same situation as Mazeppa had been. The czar caused that hetman to be arraigned and tried for his defection, and afterwards to be executed in effigy. The Turks were not acquainted with the nature of such proceeding; they knew nothing of trials for contumacy, nor of public condemnations. The affixing a sentence on any person, and executing him in effigy, were the more unusual amongst them, as their law forbids the representation of any human likeness whatever. The vizier in vain insisted on Cantemir's being delivered up; Peter peremptorily refused to comply, and wrote the following letter with his own hand, to his vice-chancellor Shaffiroff.
'I can resign to the Turks all the country, as far as Curtzka, because I have hopes of being able to recover it again; but I will, by no means, violate my faith, which, once forfeited, can never be retrieved. I have nothing I can properly call my own, but my honour. If I give up that, I cease to be longer a king.'
At length the treaty was concluded, and signed, at a village called Falksen, on the river Pruth. Among other things, it was stipulated, that Azoph, and the territories belonging thereto, should be restored, together with all the ammunition and artillery that were in the place, before the czar made himself master thereof, in 1696. That the harbour of Taganroc, in the Zabach Sea, should be demolished, as also that of Samara, on the river of the same name; and several other fortresses. There was likewise another article added, respecting the king of Sweden, which article alone, sufficiently shews the little regard the vizier had for that prince; for it was therein stipulated, that the czar should not molest Charles, in his return to his dominions, and that afterwards the czar and he might make peace with the other, if they were so inclined.
It is pretty evident by the wording of this extraordinary article, that Baltagi Mahomet had not forgot the haughty manner in which Charles XII. had behaved to him a short time before, and it is not unlikely that this very behaviour of the king of Sweden might have been one inducement with Mahomet to comply so readily with his rival's proposals for peace. Charles's glory depended wholly on the ruin of the czar: but we are seldom inclinable to exalt those who express a contempt for us: however, this prince, who refused the vizier a visit in his camp, on his invitation, when it was certainly his interest to have been upon good terms with him, now came thither in haste and unasked, when the work which put an end to all his hopes was on the point of being concluded. The vizier did not go to meet him in person, but contented himself with sending two of his bashas, nor would he stir out of his tent, till Charles was within a few paces of him.
This interview passed, as every one knows, in mutual reproaches. Several historians have thought, that the answer which the vizier made to the king of Sweden, when that prince reproached him with not making the czar prisoner, when he might have done it so easily, was the reply of a weak man. 'If I had taken him prisoner,' said Mahomet, 'who would there be to govern his dominions?'
It is very easy, however, to comprehend, that this was the answer of a man who was piqued with resentment, and these words which he added—'For it is not proper that every crowned head should quit his dominions'—sufficiently shewed that he intended to mortify the refugee of Bender.
Charles gained nothing by his journey, but the pleasure of tearing the vizier's robe with his spurs; while that officer, who was in a condition to make him repent this splenetic insult, seemed not to notice it, in which he was certainly greatly superior to Charles. If any thing could have made that monarch sensible, in the midst of his life, how easily fortune can put greatness to the blush, it would have been the reflection, that at the battle of Pultowa, a pastry-cook's boy had obliged his whole army to surrender at discretion; and in this of Pruth a wood-cutter was the arbiter of his fate, and that of his rival the czar: for the vizier, Baltagi Mahomet, had been a cutter of wood in the grand seignior's seraglio, as his name implied; and, far from being ashamed of that title, he gloried in it: so much do the manners of the eastern people differ from ours.
When the news of this treaty reached Constantinople, the grand seignior was so well pleased, that he ordered public rejoicings to be made for a whole week, and Mahomet, the kiaia, or lieutenant-general, who brought the tidings to the divan, was instantly raised to the dignity of boujouk imraour, or master of the horse: a certain proof that the sultan did not think himself ill served by his vizier.