The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay

This failure at Corfu, and that before Vienna, were the only reverses which Solyman personally encountered in his numerous campaigns. Barbarossa, however, in the course of the war with the Venetians, succeeded in capturing from them all the many islands which they possessed in the Ægean Sea, with the exception of Crete and the few fortified places they held in the Morea. These were his last exploits. He died at Constantinople in 1546.

Others, however, of the same brood of corsairs or pirates succeeded Barbarossa in the Turkish navy, and maintained its reputation for successful daring. The most distinguished of them were Dragut (or Torghut) and Piale, both of them renegade subjects of Turkey who had taken to piracy as a profession. Dragut, a Croatian by birth, closely resembled Barbarossa in his career, in his prowess at sea, and in the terror which he created on the coasts of Italy and Spain. He had little respect for the allies of the Sultan, and captured their vessels as readily as those of his enemies. When called to account by the Porte for the destruction of some Venetian merchant ships, and summoned to Constantinople, he declined to go there, well knowing the fate in store for him. He betook himself, with his pirate squadron, to Morocco, which he made the base for piracy for some years. Later, Solyman, finding the need of such a daring spirit, invited him again to take service under the Ottoman flag, and promised to make him Governor of Tripoli, if he could capture it. Tripoli then belonged to the Knights of St. John at Malta. Dragut attacked and captured it, and annexed it to the Turkish Empire. Eventually Dragut was appointed Governor of Tripoli and, in this capacity, led a fleet in aid of the attack on Malta in 1565. He lost his life in an assault on the city.

Another such corsair was Piale, who, in his turn, after a long spell of piracy, was taken into the Ottoman naval service by Solyman, and rose to be commander-in-chief. He defeated the combined fleet of Spain, Venice, and the Pope, under command of Andrea Doria, sent to recapture Tripoli. He attacked and annexed for the Turks the province of Oran, on the African coast, westward of Algiers. He commanded the Turkish fleet in the attack on Malta in 1565, the last naval enterprise in Solyman’s reign.

It was not only in the Mediterranean that Solyman’s navy was active. A fleet was fitted out at Suez, under command of Piri Pasha. It secured to Turkey the command of the Red Sea and enabled the capture of Aden and Yemen. It extended its operations thence to the Persian Gulf and the coast of India, where it came into conflict with the Portuguese, who beat off the Ottoman ships.

The failure of the expedition to Malta, though he was not in personal command, appears to have weighed heavily on the mind of Solyman. It was his ambition to finish his career by a success as signal and important as that against Belgrade, in the first year of his reign. He determined to take command himself of the army which was to make another invasion of Hungary in 1566, in spite of his seventy-two years and the feeble state of his health. He was not able to mount his horse. He was carried in a litter at the head of his army. It was his special wish to capture Szigeth and Erlau, which had successfully resisted Ottoman attack on the last invasion. He appears to have directed the march of his army in the minutest detail. One of his pashas accomplished a march in one day which he was instructed to effect in two days. Solyman was incensed and directed the execution of the over-zealous pasha, and with difficulty was dissuaded from this by his Grand Vizier.

The great Sultan died unexpectedly in his tent from apoplexy during the siege of Szigeth, before the capture of this city and while the guns of his army were thundering against its citadel, most bravely defended by Nicholas Zriny – a fitting end to the old warrior. His death was for long concealed from the army. The Grand Vizier directed the execution of the Sultan’s physician, lest he should divulge the secret. Solyman’s body was embalmed and was carried in the royal litter during the remainder of the short campaign in Hungary, and orders were still given to the army in the name of the defunct Sultan. It was not till news came that Selim had arrived at Belgrade from his government in Asia Minor that the army, on its homeward march, was informed of the death of the great Sultan.

This was the last of Solyman’s thirteen campaigns in which he led his armies personally on the field. There were others in which his generals commanded. It is to be observed of all of them that there was only one case in which a pitched battle of any great importance was fought on land. The single case was that of Mohacz, already referred to, where the Ottoman army greatly exceeded in number that of the Hungarians opposed to it, and was provided with a park of artillery, in which the enemy was wholly deficient. The result, therefore, was never in doubt. With that exception, there was no great battle either with the Hungarians, the Austrians, or the Persians. The campaigns consisted of invasions by great armies of the Ottomans, with heavy parks of artillery, and with large forces of irregular cavalry, who ravaged and devastated the invaded country. The generals opposed to them, not being able to meet the Turks in the field, spread their forces in numerous fortresses, more or less strong, and the campaigns consisted in besieging these fortresses. With rare exceptions, these sieges were successful. The Turks brought overwhelming forces to bear on them. Their siege guns completely overmatched the guns of the defence. It was a question of a few days or a few weeks how long these fortresses could resist. The wonder is that many of them resisted so long. The usual course of such campaigns was that the Turks, having captured the fortresses in the invaded districts, either annexed them to their Empire, as in the case of Eastern Hungary and Mesopotamia, or compelled the vanquished State to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Sultan and to pay tribute, as in the case of Western Hungary, or retired, leaving the ravaged country so destitute of supplies that the enemy could not follow up the retreating army.

Solyman was almost always successful in his campaigns – but they do not entitle him to a place in the first rank of great generals who have earned their laurels by defeating opponents not unequal in number in the open field. Practically, there was only one sovereign in Europe – namely the Emperor Charles V – and no one in Asia, who could hope to meet Solyman on equal terms on the battlefield, and the Emperor evidently did not care to measure swords with him in the open.

If these considerations detract from the military fame of Solyman, they do not lessen his reputation as an empire-builder and as an organizer of campaigns of invasion. Seldom has an Empire been extended to such an extent as that of the Ottomans under his efforts, with so little expenditure of life or of the resources of the State. Solyman evidently made it his task to run no risk of failure, but to use such overwhelming force as made resistance all but impossible.

To put in the field these enormous armies, supported by large masses of cavalry and great parks of artillery, to transport them from Constantinople to the centre of Hungary, or from Scutari to the frontiers of Persia, requiring many weeks or months, was to perform a work of organization of the first order. In the long course of his reign and the many expeditions led by himself and his generals, the only failure to supply his armies in the field with food and munitions of war was in the attack on Vienna. Solyman had also unerring judgment and success in selecting his generals and other agents in his many campaigns. The same may be said of his naval campaigns, in which he took no personal part, and where success turned upon the selection of competent admirals to command his fleets. What a stroke of genius it was to go outside the professional men of his naval service, and to put at the head of his fleets and of his naval administration, such men as Barbarossa, Dragut, Piale, and others, who had gained experience and had made their reputation as freebooters and pirates! It was due mainly to this that the Ottomans acquired a virtual supremacy in the Mediterranean, that Algiers, Oran, and Tripoli were brought under the Empire, and that a fleet fitted out at Suez enabled the conquest of Aden and Yemen.

It was not, however, only in military and naval successes and in the additions to his Empire that Solyman showed his greatness. His firm and resolute, yet sympathetic, policy made its mark in every department of the State. He insisted on impartial justice to every class throughout his Empire. Governors of provinces, or other high officials, who erred in this respect, and who were guilty of injustice and cruelty, or who were corrupt and incompetent, were at once dismissed, and not unfrequently paid the penalty of death for their crimes. His very first act on becoming Sultan was to order the dismissal of a batch of unjust and corrupt officials. Von Hammer’s pages are full of other instances of the same kind throughout Solyman’s reign. He made no exception for favoured persons, however near to the throne. Ferhad Pasha, who was married to one of the Sultan’s two daughters, was dismissed from the governorship of a province for gross acts of injustice, cruelty, and corruption. By the urgent entreaties of his wife, and of the Sultan’s mother, Ferhad obtained another appointment. But on the renewal of his misdeeds he was again dismissed, and, this time, was put to death by order of the Sultan.

The finance of the Empire under Solyman was most carefully husbanded. He fully recognized the strength given to his country by a well-filled treasury. In spite of his many wars, there were only two years in which he found it necessary to levy exceptional taxes. In other years the ordinary revenue sufficed. Taxation was comparatively light. His wars in part paid for themselves by levies and exactions on the invaded countries, and by the sale of captives. Janissaries and Spahis, numbering together about fifty thousand, formed the standing army, and were well paid. The holders of fiefs throughout the Empire were bound to military service in time of war, and to bring horses and arms. They numbered about eighty thousand, and received no pay. Neither did the horde of irregular cavalry, Tartars, and others who accompanied his armies, receive pay. They provided for themselves by ravaging the countries they passed through. Under these conditions, the wars of Solyman were not burdensome to the State.

Like so many of his predecessors, Solyman had a strong bent to literary studies and poetry. His poems have a reputation among his countrymen for dignity. He compiled a daily journal of his campaigns which is of historical value. He was a liberal patron of science and art. His reign was the Augustan age of Turkey. He was generous in his expenditure on mosques, colleges, hospitals, aqueducts, and bridges, not only in Constantinople, but in all the principal cities of his Empire.

It is to be noted that the sobriquet ‘Magnificent’ was given to Solyman by contemporaries in Europe. In Turkey, he was known as ‘the Legislator.’ His reign was conspicuous for great reforms in every branch of the law – all aimed at justice. The land laws were overhauled. The feudal system of fiefs, which had been partially adopted on the model of other countries in Europe, was simplified and improved. The position of the ‘rayas,’ was ameliorated. Something like fixity of tenure was secured to them. The condition of the peasantry in Turkey was distinctly better than that of the serfs in Hungary and Russia. The Greek population of the Morea preferred Turkish rule to that of the Venetians. A certain number of Hungarian peasants voluntarily left their country and settled under the more humane government of Turkey in Roumelia. A further proof of the general contentment of the people through the great expanse of the Turkish Empire was that during the forty-six years of Solyman’s reign there was no outbreak among any one of the twenty different races which inhabited it – and this in spite of the fact that the country districts were denuded of troops for the many campaigns in Hungary and Persia. While giving Solyman full credit for all these great achievements of his reign, it is necessary to point out that impartial historians have detected defects in his system of government, which grew apace under his incompetent successors, and led inevitably to the decadence of the Ottoman Empire.

A Turkish historian, Kotchi Bey, who wrote on the decline of the Ottoman Empire in 1623, about sixty years after the death of Solyman, and who has been described by Von Hammer as the Turkish Montesquieu, attributed the decline in great part to the following causes: —

1. The cessation in Solyman’s time of the regular attendance of the Sultan at the meetings of the Divan, or great Council of State. Solyman had a window constructed in an adjoining room opening into the council chamber, where, hidden behind a veil, he could listen to the discussions of the Divan without taking a part in them. His successors ceased even to listen from behind the veil. This absence of the Sultan from his Council added to his arbitrary power and belittled the influence of his ministers. So long as a very competent man like Solyman was on the throne, this new practice may not have produced the worst results, but in the case of his incompetent successors it led to immense evils. The Sultan was finally swayed in his decisions not by his responsible ministers or his Grand Council, but by the inmates of his harem or by other irresponsible and corrupt outsiders.

2. The habit introduced by Solyman of appointing men to high office who had not passed through the grades of lower offices. The first and most conspicuous case of this kind was the promotion of Ibrahim, the favourite companion of Solyman, from the post of Master of the Pages in the Sultan’s household to that of Grand Vizier. Numerous other cases could be quoted of a less conspicuous character. Solyman, in fact, appointed outsiders to every kind of office, however important. Eunuchs and renegades of all kinds were elevated to the highest posts. Solyman himself appears to have been a very good judge of men, and rarely made mistakes in his appointments, but his successors had no such discernment, and appointments were conferred at the caprice, or under the influence of the harem or otherwise, on the most unfit persons.

3. The venality and corruption first practised by Roostem Pasha, who was Grand Vizier for fifteen years, and who was married to Solyman’s daughter. The principal merit of Roostem in the eyes of his master was his skill in replenishing the treasury. Among the means he adopted of raising money was the exaction of large payments from persons on their appointment to civil offices in the State. These payments in Solyman’s time were fixed in a definite proportion to the salaries. They were not adopted in the military and naval services. Under later Sultans they became arbitrary and exorbitant, and were extended to the army and navy. Practically appointments of all kinds were put up to auction and given to the highest bidder. In order to meet these payments on appointment, governors of provinces and all officials, down to the lowest, were induced to adopt corrupt practices of all kinds and the sense of public duty was destroyed.

4. The evil practice introduced by Solyman of heaping favours on his favourite viziers, or of allowing them to amass wealth by selling their favours to those below them in the official hierarchy. Ibrahim, who was Grand Vizier for thirteen years, and Roostem for fifteen years, amassed enormous fortunes. They set up a standard of extravagant life, which was followed by other viziers and high officials. Roostem on his death was possessed of 815 farms in Anatolia and Roumelia, 476 watermills, 1,700 slaves, 2,900 coats of mail, 8,000 turbans, 760 sabres, 600 copies of the Koran, 5,000 books, and two millions of ducats. His example in gaining wealth was followed by others in a minor degree according to their opportunities. High office came to be regarded as a means and opportunity of acquiring great wealth, and this evil rapidly spread throughout the Empire and led to corruption and extortion.

There was a corrective, or perhaps it should be called a nemesis to this, in the fact that when an official was put to death, by order of the Sultan, his property was confiscated to the State. Ibrahim’s immense wealth was thus dealt with, and even in Solyman’s time, and much more so in those of his successors, the confiscated fortunes of viziers, governors, and other officials sentenced to death formed an important item in the annual income of the State. There can be little doubt that not a few pashas were put to death by the successors of Solyman in order that the State might benefit from the confiscation of their fortunes. It was perhaps thought that the mere fact of accumulation of wealth by an official was sufficient proof that it had been improperly acquired, and that the holder deserved to lose his life and fortune.

There may be added to these causes of ultimate decadence pointed out by the Turkish historian another which must occur to those who closely study the reign of Solyman – namely the growing influence in State affairs of the Sultan’s harem. The fall and death of Ibrahim, the murder of Prince Mustapha, and the rebellion and consequent death of Prince Bayezid were mainly due to intrigues of the harem. Great as Solyman was, he fell under the evil influence of his favourite Sultana, the Russian Ghowrem, better known in history as Roxelana. Ghowrem was not only a most seductive concubine; she was a very clever and witty woman, with a great gift of conversation. She retained her influence over Solyman when age had reduced her personal charms. By the entreaties of the Sultan’s mother, who perceived the malign influence of this woman over her son, she was for a time got rid of from the Seraglio. But Solyman could not forget her, and insisted on her recall. Ghowrem celebrated her triumph by getting the consent of the Sultan to many executions. Thenceforth till her death her influence was unbounded. “I live with the Sultan,” she said, “and make him do what I wish.” Appointments to the highest offices were made at her instance and abuses of all kinds arose. But worst of all was the precedent that was set for the interference of the harem in matters of State.

With Solyman’s successors the influence of the harem was continually a growing one, and was generally, though not always, as will be seen, a danger to the State. It became increasingly necessary for a minister who hoped to retain his post to secure personal support in the Sultan’s harem. The harem itself became the centre of intrigue and corruption, with fatal effect on the interests of the State. But worst of all dangers to the Empire was the possibility – nay, the probability – that the succession of the great man at the helm of State able to restrain the lawlessness of the Janissaries, the fanaticism of the mullahs, and the corruption of pashas might not be maintained. Solyman never did a worse deed for the future of the Empire than when he put to death his eldest son, who had proved himself to be in every way fit to succeed him as Sultan, and when later, at the instance of Ghowrem, he secured the succession of his son Selim. He knew that Selim was a worthless and dissolute drunkard. He is said to have remonstrated with his son and endeavoured to induce him to reform his conduct. It will be seen that it was in vain. The succession of Selim was a nemesis for the murder of Mustapha. He was the first of a long line of degenerates, who ruined the great work of Solyman and his predecessors.

In spite of this crime and of the base murder of his most intimate friend and servant, Ibrahim, in spite of the inception of the grave abuses we have referred to, it must be admitted, on an impartial review of Solyman’s reign, that Solyman was the greatest of the Othman race who created the Empire, and that in a generation of famous rulers in Europe, including Charles V, Francis I, Leo X, our own Henry VIII, Sigismund of Poland, and others, he excelled them all in the deeds and qualities which constitute the greatness and fame of a ruler. There is a Turkish proverb to the effect that “Happy is the man whose faults can be numbered, for then his merits cannot be counted.”

XI

GRAND VIZIER SOKOLLI

1566-78

Solyman was the last and greatest of the first ten Ottoman Sultans who, succeeding one another from father to son, in rather less than three hundred years, raised their Empire from nothing to one of the most extended in the world. They must have been a very virile race, for their reign averaged about twenty-eight years, far above the ordinary expectations of life. With one exception they were all able generals and habitually led their armies in the field. They were all statesmen, persistent in pursuing their ambitious aims. Many of them were addicted to literary pursuits, were students of history, and even had reputation as poets. In spite of these softening influences, there was in nearly all of them a fund of cruelty. It may be doubted whether, in the world’s history, any other dynasty has produced so long a succession of men with such eminent and persistent qualities.

Solyman was succeeded by his third son, Selim, commonly called ‘the Sot,’ a sobriquet which sufficiently describes him. He was the only son spared from the bow-string. Selim was followed by twenty-four other Sultans of the Othman dynasty down to the present time. With the rarest exception, they were men wholly wanting in capacity to rule a great Empire. Only one of them was capable of leading his army in the field. The others had neither the will nor the capacity, nor even the personal courage to do so. They fell under the influence either of their viziers, or of the women or even of the eunuchs of their harems.

If the persistency of type and of the high qualities of the first ten Sultans was remarkable, no less so was the break which occurred after Solyman, and the almost total absence of these qualities in their successors down to the present time. One is tempted to question whether the true blood of the Othman race flowed in the veins of these twenty-five degenerates. Von Hammer refers to a common rumour at Constantinople, though he does not affirm his own belief in it, that Selim was not really the son of Solyman but of a Jew, and that this accounted for his infatuation for a favourite Jew adventurer, who obtained a potent influence over his weak mind. Such a break in true descent might well have been possible in the vicious atmosphere of the harem, in spite of the precaution that no men but those deprived of virility were to be allowed to enter it.

Whatever may be the explanation, there can be no doubt that the degeneracy of the Othman dynasty dates from the accession of Selim the Sot. But this did not necessarily involve the immediate decadence of the Empire. The Ottoman Empire could not have been built up by the energy and ability of a single autocrat in each generation. There must have been many capable men, statesmen, generals, and administrators, of all ranks, who contributed in each generation to the achievements of their rulers. Many such men survived for some years the death of Solyman, and preserved the Empire from the ruin which threatened it. The Empire, in fact, did not begin to shrink in extent till some years later, and for about twelve years, as if from the momentum given to it by the powerful Sultans of the past, it actually continued to expand. Selim was the first of the new type of Sultans. He took no interest or part in the affairs of State. He was a debauchee and a drunkard. He gave an evil example to all others, high and low. Judges, cadis, and ulemas took to drink. Poets wrote in raptures about wine. Hafiz, the most in esteem of them, wrote that wine was sweeter than the kisses of young girls. The attention of the Mufti was called to this, and he was asked to censor the poem as contrary to the injunctions of the Koran. But the Mufti replied that “when a Sultan took to drink it was permissible for all to do the same and for poets to celebrate it.”

Selim fell completely under the influence of his Grand Vizier, who had held the post for two years under Solyman. Sokolli, who was a most capable man, was the virtual ruler of the Empire. He was a man of large views. He had two important and interesting schemes in his mind. The one to cut a canal across the Isthmus of Suez, so that the Turkish fleet might find its way into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, the other to make a junction by a canal between the rivers Don and Volga. These two great rivers, which have their sources in Russia, run a parallel course for a long distance, and at one point approach one another within thirty miles. They then diverge again, the one flowing into the Sea of Azoff, the other into the Caspian Sea. By joining these two rivers by a canal at the point where the distance between them is the least, it would be possible for a Turkish flotilla to ascend the Don, and then, after passing through the canal, descend the Volga into the Caspian Sea, whence it would be able to attack the Persian province of Tabriz with great advantage. The commercial possibilities of this junction of the two great water highways were also obvious. The scheme, however, necessitated taking Astrakan and other territory from Russia – a country which had of late years largely extended its possessions and power.