Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

by Voltaire

“You will be provided by my sublime Porte with all that is needed for your journey, both money, men, horses and wagons. But above all else we advise and exhort you to give the most express and detailed orders to the Swedes and other soldiers in your retinue not to commit any act of disorder, nor be guilty of any action which may either directly or indirectly tend to the breach of this peace. By that means you will preserve our good-will, of which we shall endeavour to give great and frequent proofs as we shall find opportunity. The troops to attend you shall receive orders to that effect, according to our Imperial will and pleasure.

“Given at our sublime Porte of Constantinople on the 14th of the month Rebyul Eureb, 1214. Which corresponds to the 19th April, 1712.”

This letter did not, however, entirely destroy the hopes of the King of Sweden. He wrote to the Sultan that he was ready to go, and would never forget the favour he had shown him; but he added that he believed the Sultan was too just to send him away with nothing but a flying camp through a country already overrun with the Czar’s troops. Indeed, the Emperor of Russia, in spite of the fact that the first article of the Treaty of Pruth obliged him to withdraw his forces from Poland, had sent recruits thither, and it seemed strange that the Sultan was ignorant of the fact. The bad policy and vanity of the Porte in suffering the Christian princes to maintain their ambassadors at Constantinople, and not keeping one single agent in any Christian court, gives the former an opportunity of probing and sometimes of directing the Sultan’s most secret resolutions, while the Divan is always ignorant of the most public transactions of Christendom. The Sultan, shut up in the seraglio among his women and his eunuchs, sees only through the Grand Vizir’s eyes; the latter is as inaccessible as his master, taken up with the intrigues of the seraglio, and without any communication with the world outside. He is therefore generally imposed on himself, or imposes on the Sultan, who deposes him or has him strangled for his first mistake, in order to choose another as ignorant or as treacherous as the former, who behaves in the same way as his predecessors and falls as soon as they.

Such is, for the most part, the negligence and profound security of this Court, that if the Christian princes leagued against the Porte their fleets would be at the Dardanelles and their army at the gates of Adrianople before the Turks could think of taking the defensive. But the different interests which divide Christendom will protect that people from a fate for which they at present seem ripe in their want of policy and their ignorance in war and naval matters.

Achmet was so little acquainted with what was happening in Poland that he sent an aga to see if the Czar’s forces were there or not. Two of the King of Sweden’s secretaries, who understood Turkish, went with him, to keep a check on him in the event of a false report. The aga saw the forces with his own eyes and gave the Sultan a true account of the matter. Achmet, in a rage, was going to strangle the Grand Vizir, but the favourite, who protected him, and thought he might prove useful, got him pardoned and kept him some time in the ministry.

The Russians were openly protected by the Vizir, and secretly by Ali-Coumourgi, who had changed sides; but the Sultan was so angry, the infraction of the Treaty was so palpable, and the janissaries, who often make the ministers, favourites and Sultans themselves tremble, clamoured so loudly for war that no one in the seraglio dare counsel moderation.

The Sultan at once put the Russian ambassadors, who were already as accustomed to go to prison as to a concert, in the seven towers. War was declared again against the Czar, the horse-tails hoisted, and orders issued to all the pashas to raise an army of 200,000 fighting men. The Sultan left Constantinople for Adrianople in order to be nearer the seat of war.

In the meantime a solemn embassy from Augustus and the republics of Poland to the Sultan was on the road to Adrianople. At the head of this embassy was the Prince of Massovia with a retinue of 300 persons. They were all seized and imprisoned in the suburbs of the city. Never was the Swedish party more hopeful than on this occasion; but these great preparations came to nothing, and all their hopes were dashed. If a minister of great wisdom and foresight, who was then living at Constantinople, is to be credited, young Coumourgi had other plans in his head than hazarding a war with the Czar to gain a desert. He wanted to take Peloponnesus, now called Morea, from the Venetians, and to make himself master of Hungary.

To carry out his great designs he wanted nothing but the office of Grand Vizir, for which he was thought too young. With this in view the friendship of the Czar was more important to him than his enmity. It was neither to his interest nor to his inclination to keep the King of Sweden any longer, much less to raise a Turkish army for him. He not only advocated sending the Prince away, but declared openly that henceforth no Christian minister ought to be tolerated at Constantinople; that the ordinary ambassadors were only honourable spies, who corrupted or betrayed the vizirs, and had too long interfered in the affairs of the seraglio; that the Franks settled at Pera, and in the commercial ports on the Levant, were merchants, who needed no ambassador, but only a consul. The Grand Vizir, who owed both his position and his life to the favourite, and who feared him besides, complied with his plans the more readily that he had sold himself to the Russians, and hoped to be avenged on the King of Sweden, who would have ruined him.

The Mufti, Ali-Coumourgi’s creature, was also completely under his thumb: he had given the vote for war against the Czar when the favourite was on that side, but he declared it to be unjust as soon as the youth had changed his mind. Thus the army was scarcely collected before they began to listen to proposals for a reconciliation. After several negotiations the vice-chancellor Shaffiroff and young Czeremetoff, the Czar’s plenipotentiaries and hostages at the Porte, promised that the troops should be withdrawn from Poland. The Grand Vizir, who knew that the Czar would not carry out this treaty, decided to sign it for all that; and the Sultan, content with the semblance of laying down the law to the Russians, remained at Adrianople. Thus, in less than six months, peace was made with the Czar, then war was declared, then peace was renewed.