The rigid justice of the Vizir, it was said, was the only cause of his fall; his predecessor had been accustomed to pay the janissaries, not out of the Imperial treasury, but from the money he got by extortion. Couprougli, on the other hand, paid them from the treasury. For this Achmet accused him of putting the subjects’ interest before that of the Emperor. “Your predecessor, Chourlouli,” he said, “managed to find other ways of paying my troops.” The Grand Vizir replied, “If he had the art of enriching your Highness by theft, it is an art of which I am proud to be ignorant.”
The great secrecy observed in the seraglio rarely lets such stories leak out, but this got known at the time of Couprougli’s fall. The Vizir’s courage did not cost him his head, because real goodness often forces even those whom it offends to respect. He had leave to retire to the island of Negropont.
After this the Sultan sent for Baltagi Mahomet Pasha of Syria, who had been Grand Vizir before Chourlouli. The Baltagis of the seraglio, so called from balta, meaning an axe, are slaves employed to cut wood for the use of princes of the blood and the Sultana. This Vizir had been baltagi in his youth, and had always retained the name, according to the custom of the Turks, who are not ashamed to bear the name of their first profession, their father, or their birthplace. While Baltagi was a servant in the seraglio he was fortunate enough to do Prince Achmet some trifling service, that Prince being then a prisoner of State in the reign of his brother Mustapha. Achmet gave one of his female slaves, of whom he had been very fond, to Baltagi Mahomet, when he became Sultan. This woman made her husband Grand Vizir by her intrigues; another intrigue deposed him, while a third made him Grand Vizir again. Baltagi had no sooner received the seal of the Turkish empire than he found the party of the King of Sweden dominant in the seraglio. The Sultana Valida, the Sultan’s favourite, the chief of the black eunuchs, and the aga of the janissaries, were all in favour of war against the Czar. The Sultan had decided on it, and the very first order he gave the Grand Vizir was to go and attack the Russians with 200,000 men. Baltagi had never been in the field, but was no idiot, as the Swedes, out of pure malice, have represented him to be. When he received from the Sultan a sabre set with precious stones, “Your Highness knows,” he said, “that I have been brought up to use an axe and fell wood, and not to wield a sword, or to command armies. I will do my best to serve you; but if I fail, remember that I have begged you not to lay it to my charge.” The Sultan assured him of his favour, and the Vizir prepared to carry out his orders. The Ottoman Porte’s first step was to imprison the Russian ambassador in the castle of seven towers.
It is the custom of the Turks to begin by seizing those ministers against whom they declare war. Strict observers of hospitality in every other respect, in this they violate the most sacred of international laws. They act thus unfairly under the pretext of fairness, persuading themselves and trying to persuade others that they never undertake any but a just war, because it is consecrated by the approbation of their Muphti. Thus they look upon themselves as armed to chastise the violation of treaties (which they often break themselves), and argue that the ambassadors of kings at variance with them are to be punished as accomplices of their masters’ treachery. Besides this, they affect a ridiculous contempt towards Christian princes and their ambassadors, whom they regard as only consuls and merchants.
The Kan of Crimean-Tartary had orders to be ready with 400,000 Tartars. This Prince rules over Nagai, Bulziac, part of Circassia and all the Crimean district called by the ancients the Tauric Chersonese, whither the Greeks carried their commerce and their arms, building large cities there; and whither the Genoese afterwards penetrated, when they were masters of the trade of Europe.
In this country there are the ruins of Grecian cities, and some Genoese monuments still subsisting in the midst of desolation and savagery. The Kan is called Emperor by his own subjects, but in spite of this grand title he is a mere slave to the Porte. The fact that they have Ottoman blood in their veins, and the right they have to the Turkish Empire on the extinction of the race of the Sultan, make their family respected and their persons formidable even to the Sultan himself: that is why the Sultan dare not destroy the race of the Kans of Tartary; but he hardly ever allows them to continue on the throne to an advanced age. The neighbouring pashas spy on their conduct, their territories are surrounded by janissaries, their wishes thwarted by the Grand Vizir, and their designs always suspected. If the Tartars complain of the Kan, this is an excuse for the Porte to depose him; if he is popular among them it is regarded as a crime, for which he will be even more readily punished. Thus all of them leave the throne for exile, and finish their days at Rhodes, which is generally both their place of exile and their grave.
The Tartars, their subjects, are the most dishonest folk in the world; yet, at the same time (inconceivable as it seems), the most hospitable. They go a fifty leagues’ journey to fall upon a caravan and to destroy towns, but if any stranger happens to pass through their country, he is not only received and lodged everywhere, and his expenses paid, but everywhere the inhabitants strive for the honour of having him as guest.
The master of the house, his wife and daughters vie with one another in his service. Their ancestors, the Scythians, transmitted to them this inviolable regard for hospitality; and they still retain it, because the scarcity of strangers in their country, and the cheapness of provisions, makes this duty in no way burdensome to them. When the Tartars go to war with the Ottoman army they are maintained by the Sultan, but receive no other pay but their booty; this makes them more ardent at pillage than at regular warfare.
The Kan, bribed by the presents and intrigues of the King of Sweden, got permission to have the general rendezvous of troops at Bender, under the King’s eye, that he might realize that the war was being made for him. The new vizir, Baltagi, not being bound in the same way, would not flatter a foreign prince so far. He countermanded the order, and the great army was collected at Adrianople.
The Turkish troops are not so formidable now as they were when they conquered so many kingdoms in Asia, Africa and Europe. Then they triumphed over enemies less strong and worse disciplined than themselves by physical strength, courage and the force of numbers. But now that Christians understand the art of war better, they seldom failed to beat the Turks in a drawn battle, even when their forces are inferior in number. If the Ottoman empire has lately gained some success, it is only in a contest with the Republic of Venice, reputed more wise than warlike, defended by strangers, and ill supported by Christian princes, who are always divided among themselves.