The flagstones, flecked with shade and shine,
Re-echo to the pilgrim's tread,
And soft grey doves their wings outspread
In the blue vault above the shrine."
If Roxelana was the evil genius of Suleiman, his reign was not more happy after her death. Her two elder sons, Selim and Bayezid broke into open war. Bayezid attacked Selim, and, betrayed, it would seem by the basest of intrigues, he was defeated, and fled to Persia. Every letter that he wrote to his father was suppressed, and the Persians sold him to his brother by whom he and his four sons were put to death. A few months later his fifth son, a child of three, was strangled at Brusa by the Sultan's orders.
To the last, Suleiman led his troops to the field. He died on August 30, 1566, while he was conducting the siege of Szigeth, a small fortress in Hungary. The grand Vizier concealed his death from the army and sent messengers at once to Selim, who hastened to Constantinople.
Suleiman left behind him a name more famous than any of his predecessors save Mohammed the Conqueror. His lofty and enterprising genius, his heroic courage, his strict observance of the laws of Islam tempered at times by a wise tolerance, the order and economy which were combined with his magnificence and grandeur, his love of knowledge and the protection he extended to learned men, all mark him out, says the historian of the Ottomans, among the noblest of his race.
Selim II. began ill by not paying the largesse which the Janissaries expected from a new sovereign. They mutinied, and he was obliged to yield. His father had altered the ancient rule which required the Janissaries only to go to the war when the Sultan himself took the field. The Janissaries now compelled him to allow the enrolment of their children in their ranks. Selim was no warrior, and he was glad to send his troops without him. He preferred, the ambassadors say, "the society of eunuchs and of women, and the habits of the serai to the camp:" he "wore away his days in sensual enjoyments, in drunkenness and indolence." "Whoever beheld him and saw his face inflamed with Cyprus wine, and his short figure rendered corpulent by slothful indulgence, expected in him neither the warrior nor the leader of warriors. In fact, nature and habit unfitted him to be the supreme head, that is the life and soul, of that warlike State."[37]
He was the first of the Turkish Sovereigns who was unworthy of the throne that had been won by hard and incessant work. "I think not of the future," he himself said, "I live only to enjoy the pleasure of each day as it passes." A drunkard ruling over the Mussulmans, sworn to total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, was a grotesque and disgusting anomaly. The people mocked while they followed the example. "Where shall we get our wine to-day," they said, "from the Mufti (priest) or from the Kadi (judge)?"
But whatever might be the character of the Sultan, it had become a fixed policy with the Turks that the Empire could only be carried on by aggressive war. Under Selim, though without his personal intervention, war was made with Russia, but without success: the conquests of Suleiman in Arabia were made complete, and Yemen fell into the hands of the Turks. Then it was determined to complete the conquest of the Mediterranean: war was declared against Venice, and Cyprus was captured in August 1571. But this capture, which Selim described to Barbaro as "cutting off one of the arms of the Republic" was avenged by the famous naval league against the Turks. On October 7, 1571, Don John of Austria utterly destroyed the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, capturing 130 galleys, 30,000 prisoners, and 15,000 Christian slaves. It was the first sign of the long decline of the Ottoman power. Europe awoke to the belief that the Turks were not invincible.