The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay

Though the office of Grand Vizier was not so dangerous to its holders as under Selim I, it proved to be fatal to two of the nine men who held it during Solyman’s reign. One of the most remarkable incidents of Solyman’s life was his infatuation for Ibrahim, the second of his Grand Viziers. Ibrahim, a renegade Greek by birth, had been captured as a boy by corsairs and sold as a slave to a widow in Magnesia, who brought him up as a Mussulman. Recognizing his talents, this lady gave him an excellent education. Solyman, on a visit to that province, came across Ibrahim, and, attracted by his musical talent, took him into service, where he rose to be master of the pages and grand falconer. He soon acquired immense influence over his master, whose sister was given to him in marriage. He was rapidly promoted, and in 1523 was appointed Grand Vizier. The Sultan and his favourite became inseparable. They had their meals alone together. They concerted between them all the affairs of State. Ibrahim justified this preference, for he proved to be of great capacity, not inferior in any respect to his master, and his superior in education and knowledge of languages and history. He was appointed Seraskier, or Commander-in-Chief, when the Sultan was unable personally to command. In the earlier campaigns in Hungary and Persia, and in the siege of Vienna, he took a most active part, and was the main adviser to his master.

After thirteen years of implicit confidence in Ibrahim, suspicion arose in the mind of the Sultan and was fanned by the Sultana Ghowrem, who coveted the post of Grand Vizier for her son-in-law, Roostem Pasha. There does not appear to have been any ground for these suspicions, save that Ibrahim, intoxicated by his elevation, assumed the airs almost of an equal with the Sultan. A vizier suspected was very near to his doom. Entering the palace one day in 1536 to dine with the Sultan as usual, he was never seen alive again. The next morning his body was found in the palace. His immense wealth was confiscated to the State. It was said that Solyman in an adjoining room to that where this murder was perpetrated was smothered with kisses by Ghowrem so as to drown the cries of the dying Vizier.

In another case, the Grand Vizier Achmet was decapitated in the council chamber by order of Solyman, solely because he gave advice which displeased his master. Von Hammer gives a long list of other high officials who shared the same fate.

During the forty-six years of his reign Solyman added enormously to the Empire. Belgrade, Rhodes, nearly the whole of Hungary, the Crimea, the great provinces of Mossul, Bagdad, and Bassorah, and a part of Armenia taken from Persia, Yemen and Aden in Arabia, Algiers, Oran, and Tripoli, and an undefined extent of hinterland inhabited by Arabs in North Africa, and a wide extension of Egypt in the direction of Nubia, were the contributions which he transmitted to his successors. There were few years of his long reign in which he was not under arms. War with Hungary and Austria in the north alternated with war with Persia in the east and with Spain in the west. Solyman was often in command of his armies. He conducted personally thirteen campaigns, some of them, such as those against Persia, extending over two years. For the most part these wars were embarked on without any just or even plausible cause. They were stimulated by lust of conquest on the Sultan’s part, and by craving for active service and for loot on the part of the Janissaries. Religious fanaticism seems to have had little concern with the motives or results of them.

Solyman’s first campaign, in 1521, was directed against Belgrade, the city which had successfully defied Mahomet II. He marched against it at the head of an army of a hundred thousand men with three hundred guns. It was bravely defended by the Hungarians. But they had no guns. After seven days of bombardment the city was assaulted and captured. There was no massacre of the garrison or the inhabitants. Solyman converted the principal church into a mosque. The city was thenceforth garrisoned by a Turkish force. It constituted the principal stronghold of the Empire on the Danube, and was the gateway for many invasions of Hungary.

In the next year, 1523, Solyman followed up this success by an attack on the island of Rhodes, where Mahomet had also failed, and the capture of which had become more important since the conquest of Egypt, lying as it did on the direct route by sea from Constantinople. For this purpose Solyman sent a fleet of three hundred vessels with eight thousand Janissaries and a hundred siege guns. He marched at the head of a hundred thousand men through Asia Minor to the bay of Marmerice, opposite to Rhodes, whence they were conveyed to the island. The knights, six hundred in number, with only five thousand trained soldiers and a levée of peasants on the island, made a heroic defence under their Grand Master, de Lisle Adam. It was only after a siege of nine months that they were at last compelled to capitulate. It was the first occasion on which a great fortress was approached by sap and spade work, so as to avoid gun fire, and in which bombs were used by the attacking army. Solyman’s army is said to have lost fifty thousand men in casualties and as many more by disease. Under the terms of capitulation, the survivors of the garrison with all their personal property were to be conveyed to Crete, after twelve days, in their own galleys. After an interview with the Grand Master the Sultan is reported to have said, with great generosity, “It is not without regret that I force this brave man from his home in his old age.” The arms of the knights are still to be seen carved on the houses they occupied in Rhodes. The Turks have always respected them in memory of the gallant defence. The terms of surrender were faithfully observed by Solyman with the exception already referred to. The knights eventually settled at Malta, at that time a nearly desert island. They made it the seat of their order and fortified it. Its central position in the Mediterranean made it a stronghold of the utmost importance. Solyman, in the last year but one of his long reign, thought it necessary for the expansion of his Empire, in the North of Africa, to oust the knights from their new nest. He sent an army and a fleet under command of Piale Reis to besiege it. There commenced another celebrated siege in which the knights, under command of their Grand Master, Lavallette, covered themselves with glory. The Turks were defeated in many assaults on the fortress, and were ultimately compelled to withdraw with heavy losses.

The two years after the conquest of Rhodes were spent by Solyman in organizing his kingdom. His inaction was greatly resented by the Janissaries, who hated their dull life in barracks and longed for war and for loot. They broke out in revolt and pillaged the houses of Ibrahim and other great functionaries. The outbreak was quelled, Solyman killing with his own hand three of the rebels. Their Agha and other leaders were put to death. But Solyman found it expedient to appease the mercenaries by generous presents, and in the next year – mainly at their instigation – embarked on another war. He was urged to invade Hungary by Francis I, King of France, who hoped to create a diversion from the ambitious projects of the Emperor Charles V. This may be considered as the first entry of the Turks into the maze of European politics. Hungary and Bohemia were at that time united under the rule of Louis II, a very young and inexperienced man.

In April, 1526, Solyman and his Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, with a hundred thousand men and three hundred guns, marched to Belgrade, and thence invaded Hungary. On August 27th, five months after their departure from Constantinople, they met the Hungarian army at Mohacz, not far from the Danube, and about half-way from Belgrade to Buda, then, as now, the capital of Hungary. The battle was quickly decided. The Ottoman army had the advantage of an overwhelming superiority both of men and guns. The Hungarians were defeated. Their King, eight bishops, a great majority of the Hungarian nobles, and twenty-four thousand men were killed. This decided the fate of Hungary. Before marching onwards, Solyman ordered all the prisoners he had taken – four thousand in number – to be put to death. He reached Buda on September 10th. The city surrendered. Solyman received there the submission of a number of Hungarian nobles who had survived the disaster of Mohacz. At his instance, Count Zapolya, one of the magnates of Hungary and Voivode of Transylvania, was elected by them as King of Hungary in succession to Louis II, who had left no heir. Solyman shortly after this – influenced in part by news of civil disturbance in Asia Minor – left Buda and retreated to the Danube, and thence returned to his capital. The temporary occupation of part of Hungary had been attended with fearful devastation and with great loss of life to its population. It was estimated that two hundred thousand men were massacred. The retreating army carried off an immense booty and drove before them about a hundred thousand captives of both sexes, who were eventually sold as slaves at Constantinople. Garrisons were left by the Turks in some of the frontier fortresses of Hungary.

The election of Count Zapolya as King of Hungary under the dictation of the Turks led to civil war in that country. Archduke Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, to whom the Emperor had transferred his Archduchy of Austria, claimed the throne of Hungary, by virtue of a treaty between the Emperor and the late King Louis. On the other hand, it was claimed by Zapolya and his adherents that, under an ancient law of Hungary, no one but a native could be elected as King. In spite of this, the nobles of Western Hungary met in Diet at Presburg and elected Ferdinand. Ferdinand appealed to arms, and was supported by the Austrians. He defeated his rival. Zapolya was driven from the country. He fled to Poland, and thence he appealed to the Sultan for aid in support of his claims in Hungary. Ferdinand, hearing of this, sent an envoy to the Sultan. Most unwisely, he not only claimed assistance in support of his claims to the throne of Hungary, but he demanded that Belgrade and other towns in Hungary in possession of the Sultan should be given up. Ibrahim, the Grand Vizier, who conducted the negotiations with the two rivals, was most arrogant. He claimed that every place where the hoofs of the Sultan’s horses had once trod became at once and for ever part of the Ottoman Empire. “We have slain,” he said, “King Louis of Hungary. His kingdom is now ours to hold or to give to whom we list. It is not the crown that makes the King, it is the sword. It is the sword that brings men into subjection; and what the sword has won the sword will keep.”

The Sultan decided against Ferdinand and said to Zapolya’s envoy, “I will be a true friend to thy master. I will march in person to aid him. I swear it by our Prophet Mahomet, the beloved of God, and by my sabre.” To the rival’s agent he said that he would speedily visit Ferdinand and drive him from the kingdom he had stolen. “Tell him that I will look for him on the field of Mohacz or even in Buda, and if he fail to meet me there, I will offer him battle beneath the walls of Vienna.”

In pursuance of these threats, Solyman, in 1529, at the head of two hundred and fifty thousand men and with three hundred guns, again invaded Hungary and laid siege to Buda. The city surrendered at the instance of traitors among its defenders. Under the terms of capitulation life and property were to be preserved to the garrison and the citizens. The Janissaries, furious at the loss of loot, refused to recognize the terms. They massacred all the garrison as they issued from the fortress, and they carried off for sale most of the young women of the town. Zapolya was reinstated as a vassal King of that part of Hungary. Solyman then marched on to Vienna. He arrived there on September 27, 1529, with over two hundred thousand men. There ensued the first of the two memorable sieges of Vienna by the Ottomans.

Charles V, Emperor of Germany, was at this time the greatest and most powerful sovereign in Europe. He had inherited the kingdoms of Spain, the Netherlands, Naples and Sicily, as well as his possessions in Germany. Born six years later than Solyman, he was elected Emperor of Germany a year before the accession of Solyman as Sultan. He abdicated his throne and retired to a monastery ten years before the death of Solyman. For thirty-six years, therefore, their reigns were synchronous. It would be hard to say which of the two sovereigns was the more valiant in arms, or the more astute statesman. Judged by the extent of conquests, Solyman far surpassed his rival. Charles did little more than maintain the integrity of his immense inherited possessions in Europe. But he acquired by conquest Tunis in Africa, and Mexico and Peru in America.

When Solyman, instigated by Francis I of France, was invading Austria, Charles was deeply engaged in war against France in Italy, and could not send an army to meet the Ottomans in the field. Vienna was left to stand the brunt of invasion without a protecting army. Its garrison consisted of only sixteen thousand soldiers under Count de Salms. Its fortifications were only a continuous wall 5 feet in thickness and without bastions. Its guns were only seventy-two in number. Such weak defences seemed to offer little hope against the overwhelming numbers of the Ottomans. The tents of the Sultan and his army whitened the whole plain round the city. Irregular cavalry, called Scorchers, depending on loot for their food and pay, ravaged the country for miles round the city with incredible cruelty and rapacity. A Turkish flotilla of four hundred small vessels found its way up the Danube, after destroying all bridges, and lent assistance to the siege. It was all in vain. The Austrian and Spanish troops under the Count de Salms defended the weak lines with the utmost courage and tenacity. The Viennese citizens constructed lines of earthworks within the walls, against which the lighter guns of the Turks had little effect. The powerful siege guns of the Ottomans had been left behind en route, owing to heavy rains and the badness of roads. Numerous assaults were made by the Turks. The soldiers were at last dispirited by failure. In vain their officers drove them on by sticks and sabres. The men said they preferred death from their officers to death from the long arquebuses of the Spaniards. Twenty ducats a head were given or promised to them. It was to no purpose. Solyman, after three weeks of fruitless assaults, found himself compelled to raise the siege and to retreat with his great army. His irregulars had so ravaged the country that he had the utmost difficulty in feeding his men.

Before striking the camp all the immense booty taken in the campaign was burnt. The prisoners, most of them the peasantry of the district round Vienna, were massacred. Only the fairest of the young women were carried off captives to be sold as slaves. The Sultan returned to Constantinople. There was no pursuit of his army. It came back intact. It was a slur on the fame of Solyman that he endeavoured to conceal his failure to capture Vienna by lying accounts of success, and by a popular celebration of triumph, on return to his capital. There was this much to be said for him, that he had flouted the Austrians, by invading their country and devastating it up to the walls of Vienna, without any attempt, on their part, to meet him in the field or to follow him up on his retreat.

Three years later, in 1532, Solyman, with another immense army, again invaded Hungary, with the avowed object of marching to Vienna and attacking the army of the Emperor. Charles V, on this occasion, took command of the Austrian army. It was expected that a trial of strength would take place between the two potentates, and would decide which of them was the stronger. But Solyman’s progress was delayed by the heroic defence for three weeks of the small fortress of Guns. After its capture Solyman made no further advance towards Vienna, but turned aside and devastated Styria, and then led his army homeward. The Emperor, on his part, made no effort to meet his foe and join conclusions with him. It was evident that both of them were anxious to avoid the issue of a great battle.

Though the Sultan had retreated and had returned to Constantinople, peace was not concluded, and a desultory war was continued for some years between Ferdinand and Zapolya. Peace was concluded in 1538, under which Zapolya was to retain the title of King of Eastern Hungary and Transylvania and Ferdinand was acknowledged ruler of the western half. In 1566 Solyman again invaded Hungary, on his thirteenth and last campaign, to which we will revert later.

We have thus described briefly the course of events between the Turks and the Hungarians, supported by Austria. Though the conquests of Solyman in this direction had been arrested by his failure to capture Vienna, he succeeded in securing virtual possession of the greater part of Hungary.

It is necessary to revert to Solyman’s feats in other directions. In 1534 he entered upon his sixth campaign, this time against Persia. Shah Ismail was no longer alive, and had been succeeded by Shah Talmasp, a very weak personage. Solyman, as a prelude to his attack, gave orders for the execution of all the Persian prisoners at Gallipoli. Ibrahim was sent on, in advance, by some months, with a large army. Instead of marching by Aleppo to Bagdad, he took the route direct to Tabriz, which he occupied without resistance on the part of the Persians. He wintered there, and the next spring he was joined by Solyman with another army, and together they marched to Mossul and Bagdad, through a most difficult country, where the climate entailed great losses on the army. Bagdad was ultimately reached. It was treacherously surrendered by its commander. In fact, the Shah made no attempt to repel the invasion of the Ottoman army, and the two great provinces of Mossul and Bagdad were added to the Ottoman Empire, without any pitched battle on the part of Persia.

There were other campaigns in Persia in 1548, 1553, and 1554, in which the Turks often suffered more from the climate and from the difficulty of obtaining supplies than from the guerrilla attacks of the Persians. But there was no pitched battle between the armies of the two Powers. The Turks maintained their conquests, and have done so to the present year (1917).

Not less remarkable during the long reign of Solyman than his conquests by his army were the exploits of his navy. It achieved victory in many hard-fought battles with Spain and Venice. There was no great disparity in naval force between the Turks and the Spaniards, but when the fleets of Venice and the Pope were combined with those of Spain, there was great superiority on their part in the number and size of vessels. In spite of this, in the two great battles where this combination was against them, the Turks were victorious, and generally, throughout Solyman’s reign, his fleets maintained a supremacy in the Mediterranean. This enabled him to add to his Empire the provinces of Algiers, Oran, and Tripoli, and numerous islands in the Ægean Sea, taken from Venice.

The Mussulman States of North Africa, at the commencement of Solyman’s reign, were in the hands of degenerate and incompetent Mahommedan rulers, who exercised little control over the Arabs of the hinterland. The cities on the coast were the haunts of pirates, who sometimes sailed under the flags of these States, but more often under no flag but their own. They preyed on the commerce of the Mediterranean, bringing their prizes into their ports and selling the captives as slaves, with the result that in Tunis alone there were twenty thousand Christian captives. These corsairs formed squadrons of ten or twenty galleys, under the command of admirals, chosen from the most daring and adventurous of them. They were called corsairs, but, in fact, they were mere pirates, knowing no law but their own, and that founded on robbery and murder. The sea-dogs in command of these pirates gained great experience in handling their ships and squadrons. They ravaged the coasts of Spain, Italy, and France, and even occasionally of England and Ireland, devastating the cities and villages and carrying away booty and captives.

It has been shown that Selim paid great attention to his navy, and increased his ships in number and size. Solyman followed the same course. But his admirals and captains did not compare in skill and daring with those of the pirate squadrons. When Solyman became aware of this, he most astutely invited the ablest and most experienced of these pirates to take service under the Ottoman flag, and to bring with them their ships and men. He gave high appointments to them, raised them to the rank of admirals and commanders-in-chief of his navy, over the heads of the officers of his regular service.

The first and most distinguished of these corsairs to take naval service under Solyman was Kheireddin, better known in history as Barbarossa. He was one of four brothers, of Greek descent, born in Mytilene, three of whom in early life took to piracy as a profession, under the pretence of legitimate commerce at sea. Two of them eventually lost their lives in the venture, but the third survived, prospered, and made money. He collected a squadron under his command and became the terror of the whole Mediterranean, capturing merchant vessels and devastating the coasts in all directions. Gathering strength in number of ships and men, he made war on his own account. He attacked Algiers and made himself master of that city and its surrounding district. But finding himself unequal to the task of maintaining an independent rule there, he recognized the supremacy of the Sultan of Turkey. He carried on his ships seventy thousand fugitive Moors from Andalusia, in Spain, and settled them at Algiers. Later, he was employed by Solyman in an attack on Tunis, which was then under the rule of Muley-Hasan, the twenty-second representative of the dynasty of Boni Hafss – a degenerate reprobate, who had murdered all but one of his forty-four brothers on his accession to the throne, and who spent his energies in recruiting a harem of four hundred good-looking lads. On the pretext of putting an end to this infamy, Barbarossa attacked the city of Tunis, and had no difficulty in getting possession of it and expelling the contemptible Sultan. He did not, however, remain many months in possession of it. Muley-Hasan appealed to the Emperor Charles for aid.

The Emperor, in personal command of a fleet of five hundred vessels and an army of thirty thousand men, attacked and defeated Barbarossa in a battle before the walls of Tunis, captured his vessels lying there, and drove him into the interior of the country. Although he had come there at the invitation of the Sultan of Tunis, and the inhabitants of the city had given no assistance to Barbarossa in defending it against the Spanish attack, the Emperor allowed his soldiers to sack it after the capture. A scene of almost incredible cruelty and destruction took place. Thirty thousand of the innocent inhabitants were massacred, and ten thousand were sold into captivity. The mosques and all the principal buildings were burnt and destroyed. No worse deed was ever perpetrated by any victorious Moslem army in that age. It resulted that Tunis, for a time, was rescued from Barbarossa and from Ottoman rule. Muley-Hasan was reinstated there on terms of close dependence on Spain. It was not till 1574 that Tunis finally fell into the hands of the Turks.

Barbarossa had made a splendid defence of the city. His force was quite inadequate for the purpose. Solyman was at the time engaged in war with Persia and could not give adequate support. Shortly after this, when war broke out between the Ottomans and Spain, the Sultan invited Barbarossa to Constantinople, and made him Grand Admiral of the Turkish fleet. In this capacity he fought in 1538 a great naval battle off Prevesa against the combined fleets of Spain, Venice, and the Pope, under Admiral Andrea Doria, in which he achieved victory, in spite of great inferiority of numbers and size of vessels. He appears to have been the first to adopt the manœuvre of breaking the line of the enemy’s fleet, for which three centuries later Nelson was so famous. The Turkish fleet numbered a hundred and thirty vessels, and that of the combined Christian Powers a hundred and sixty-seven. Six of the latter were captured and destroyed. The main body of the combined fleet drew off, under cover of the night. Later, Barbarossa accompanied Solyman in the attack on Corfu, which was heroically defended by the Venetians. The Sultan was compelled to withdraw from the island.