XLII. I say the same, of all the other rules of practices of tyrannic
and deceitful policy. What ability or penetration does it require,
to invade with an armed force, the territories of a neighbouring
prince or republic, and surprize some of the fortified towns of those,
who thinking themselves secure, and relying upon the faith of an
established peace, are off their guard, and not prepared to resist
the attack? To accomplish this, requires nothing more, than for a man
to become compleatly callous to the fear of God, and to have lost all
sense of shame of the world. To find a plausible pretence for doing it,
is the most easy thing imaginable, for a child of ten years old, is
never at a loss for such a one, whenever he is disposed from motives
of interest, or through fickleness, to break a little friendship or
connexion he has engaged in.
XLIII. The barbarous maxim, of getting rid of brothers or relations,
to remove the most dangerous apprehensions of, or incitements to,
insurrections, does not require ingenuity to execute it, but cruelty
only. We see the Ottoman emperors have practised it in a variety of
ways; some have taken away the lives of their brothers and relations,
others have deprived them of sight, and others of liberty, by shutting
them up in close confinement. They were all equally apprized of the
importance of preventing the danger, but they were not all equally
fierce and cruel. Thus in proportion to the degrees of their barbarity,
or their fears, their rigour in the practice of the maxim, was
greater or less. Mahomed the third, when he mounted the throne, not
satisfied with putting to death his whole twenty-one brothers, ordered
ten Sultanas, likewise, who were then pregnant, to be thrown into
the sea and drowned; whereas others, have contented themselves with
confining those who were related to them in a prison, with reasonable
accommodations appertaining to it. This great difference in their
conduct, did not proceed from their distinct political ideas, but from
the diversity of their tempers and dispositions.
XLIV. As we are now treating on this subject, this seems a proper
occasion, for taking notice of a common error and opinion, which
prevails among many people with respect to the Ottoman emperors, viz.
that the bloody maxim of sacrificing their own brothers to their
safety, in order to their possessing the throne in security, is
peculiar to the Ottoman race. This barbarous and atrocious policy,
is much more ancient than the stock of Ottoman princes, and was more
generally practised by other royal families than by them. Plutarch,
speaking of those kings who were the successors of Alexander, and
among whom the vast conquests of that hero were divided, says, that
cruel maxim was so universally adopted by their descendants, that they
considered it as an invariable political axiom, and as a self-evident
first principle, indispensably necessary to be adhered to, and which
followed of course, with as much certainty as geometrical postulata.
_Fratrum parricidia, ut petitiones geometræ fumunt, sic concedebantur,
habitanturque, communis quædam petitio ad securitatem, & Regia._
Plutarch. in Demetrio.
XLV. I do not know whether the soil and climate of Asia is not more
naturally adapted for the production of these political monsters, than
that of Europe, for we have seen in all times, the princes of the
Asiatic regions, more addicted to pursue tyrannic and cruel maxims
than those of Europe. By confining one’s attention immediately to
the present times, what appears to me is, that the Europeans, who
for the most part have some knowledge of Machiavel, commonly found
their governments upon principles of justice and moderation; and that
the oriental people, who do not know that there ever was such a man
as Machiavel in the world, most frequently, practise the very same
perverse maxims, which this master of wickedness taught; and I think
the Chinese, are the only orientals who are an exception to this
general rule.