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http://gutenberg.polytechnic.edu.na/4/6/4/8/46481/46481-h/46481-h.htm#Page_114
SOLYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT
1520-66
Selim was succeeded by his only son, Solyman, at the age of twenty-six, who reigned for forty-six years, a period of unexampled splendour in the history of the Ottoman Empire—its culminating era. This was mainly due to the personal qualities of the new Sultan. He surpassed all his predecessors, and still more his degenerate successors, in dignity and graciousness. He was not behind the best of them in military capacity, vigour of action, and personal courage. He combined with these qualities statesmanship of high order. With rare exceptions he stood by his engagements and did not follow the precept of the Koran that faith need not be kept with infidels. He was great as an administrator and legislator. Before he mounted the throne he had been employed by his father as governor of three very important provinces, and had gained a high reputation for his determination to secure justice to his subjects, whatever their race or creed. His private life was free from scandal. He was noted for his clemency and kindness of heart. If massacres took place after victories or after capture of fortresses when he was in command, it was because he could not restrain his turbulent and bloodthirsty Janissaries; but the occasions of such scenes were comparatively rare. He had, however, a blend of cruelty in his character, as had most of his predecessors. Being an only son, he had no occasion, on mounting the throne, to carry out the fratricidal law of Mahomet II. But he was determined that there should be no possible rival in his family, however remote. After the surrender of Rhodes, two years later, on the promise of life and property to its defenders, he singled out, in breach of his promise, a son115 of Prince Djem, who was one of those included in the amnesty, and directed the immediate execution of him and his four sons. Worse also than fratricide was the murder by Solyman of two of his own sons. The eldest of them, Mustapha, was a most promising prince. He had already shown his capacity as governor of a province. He was endowed with all his father’s best qualities. He was the idol of the army and the hope of his country.
Solyman was persuaded by his latest favourite concubine, a Russian lady, Ghowrem by name, who had unbounded influence over him and retained it till late in life, that Prince Mustapha was intriguing against him, and aimed at dethroning him, as Selim had done in the case of Bayezid. She hoped to secure the succession for her own son. Without a word of warning or any opportunity of defending himself, Mustapha, in the course of the second Persian campaign in 1553, on entering his father’s tent, was seized by the mutes and was strangled while Solyman looked on at the foul deed. There was more excuse for putting to death another son, Bayezid, who had been goaded by an intrigue in the Sultan’s harem into taking up arms, in 1561, against his brother Selim. He was defeated and fled to Persia, where he was at first received with great honour by Shah Talmasp, the successor to Ismail, with the distinct promise that he would not be given up. But Solyman obtained his extradition by threat of war and the promise of 400,000 pieces of gold. The unfortunate prince was treated with the greatest indignity. His hair and beard were shorn. He was handed over, together with his four sons, to an emissary of his brother Selim, who at once put to death the whole party.
As a result of the murders of these two sons of Solyman, a third one, the son of Ghowrem, was the only heir to the throne. He succeeded Solyman and was known as “Selim the Sot.” It will be seen that this prince had none of the qualities of his race. He was the first of a long line of degenerates who eventually lost the greater part of the Empire which had been built up by Solyman and his predecessors.
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 life116 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 added117 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 thousand118 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 urged119 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 of120 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. Zapolya121 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 of122 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 desultory123 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 battles124 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 and126 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.
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,127and 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.128 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 less129 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 select130ing 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 by131 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.132 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 Roostem133 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 their134 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, who135 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.”
