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UNDER THE TURK
IN CONSTANTINOPLE
[Illustration: (colophon)]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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TORONTO
[Illustration: SIR JOHN FINCH.
From the Portrait by Carlo Dolci at Burley-on-the-Hill.]
UNDER THE TURK IN
CONSTANTINOPLE
A RECORD OF
SIR JOHN FINCH’S EMBASSY
1674-1681
BY
G. F. ABBOTT
AUTHOR OF
“TURKEY IN TRANSITION,” “TURKEY, GREECE AND THE GREAT POWERS,” ETC.
WITH A FOREWORD BY
VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT
FOREWORD
BY LORD BRYCE
Whoever discovers a dark bypath of history and opens it up by
careful research renders a service to scholars. If he has also
the gift of presenting the results of his investigation in a form
agreeable to the general reader who has a taste for novelties
in other books as well as in novels, he earns a double meed of
thanks. Mr. Abbott has not only had the good fortune to find such
a bypath and the acuteness to note its interest, but is also the
possessor of a talent enabling him to make the best use of his
materials. To most Europeans and Americans, even among the class
which reads for instruction as well as for pleasure, the annals of
the Turkish Empire had remained almost a blank from the triumphant
days of Solyman the Magnificent through the long process of decay
down to the time when Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt and Syria and
thereafter the Greek War of Independence had drawn attention to
the long-forgotten Near Eastern countries. Just in the middle
of this period of two and a half centuries several intelligent
observers from England and France visited Constantinople and
described the singular phenomena of a semi-civilised Empire which,
despite its internal corruption and weakness, was still strong
enough to threaten its neighbours, maintain a long sea war against
Venice and besiege Vienna. One of these observers was Sir John
Finch, a man of learning and ability, who had begun his career by
studying medicine at the University of Padua, had held the chair
of anatomy in the University of Pisa, and had for five years been
King Charles II.’s Minister at Florence. In 1672 he was named
ambassador at Constantinople, and accepted, somewhat reluctantly,
the post, yielding to the counsels of the influential friends who
had procured it for him. There he remained till 1681, and his
experiences in the discharge of his functions there are recorded
in this volume. The letters on which it is based, and from which
many extracts are given, present a vivid picture of what Turkish
administration was, and of the way in which the long-suffering
representatives and merchants of civilised countries had to adjust
themselves to it. Mr. Abbott’s book is not only a contribution to
history, but a narrative lively enough and dramatic enough to be
worth reading as a study in human nature, and more particularly of
that Oriental human nature in which guile and folly, inconstancy
and obstinacy are so strangely combined.
PREFACE
The history of Anglo-Turkish relations as a whole still remains to
be written--a strange and not very creditable fact, considering
the part which the Ottoman Empire has played in our commercial and
political career since the age of Queen Elizabeth. This monograph
deals only with a fraction of a vast subject--the English Embassy
to Turkey from 1674 to 1681, though for the sake of intelligibility
it glances at the years which preceded and followed that septennium.
Critics, I hope, will not do my work the injustice of thinking that
it is not serious because, perhaps, it is not very dull. A piece
of historical narrative is a sort of superior novel: it has its
heroes and its villains, its vicissitudes, its catastrophes: all
of which are eminently capable of administering amusement even to
the most seriously minded. Only the amusement must be founded in
truth; and the discovery of truth requires painstaking industry.
This condition I have endeavoured to fulfil to the utmost of my
ability. Every bit of the story here related is the result of
careful research among original and, for the most part, hitherto
unexploited documents--chiefly the Manuscripts preserved at the
Public Record Office (Foreign Archives, _Turkey_ and _Levant
Company_) and the Coventry Papers in the possession of the Marquis
of Bath, by whose courtesy I was able to make use of them.
It is impossible to convey the impression given by
seventeenth-century despatches in any words but their own: nothing
can be more striking to modern eyes and ears than their language,
their spelling, their grammar and punctuation, or want of it.
The handwriting itself betrays not only the writer’s normal
character, but often the particular emotions which swayed him
at the moment of writing: as we peruse those ancient sheets of
paper--extraordinarily fresh most of them, with sometimes the
sand still clinging to the dry ink--we see the person who penned
those lines, the very way in which he held his quill. The same
facts, extracted, paraphrased, and printed, no longer arouse the
same sense of reality, nor grip the imagination in the same way as
they do when presented in their native garb. I have attempted to
reproduce something of this effect by transcribing as frequently
and fully as it is convenient the original utterances in all the
individuality and quaintness which belong to them.
In addition to this mass of manuscript, there exists for the
period a surprising amount of printed material, some of which,
though available for centuries, has not yet been exhausted, and
the rest was but recently made public. It so happened that,
besides our Ambassador, there resided at the time in Turkey three
other Englishmen who left behind them records of current events.
They were our Consul at Smyrna, Paul Rycaut; our Treasurer at
Constantinople, Dudley North; and the Chaplain, John Covel: all
three men of leading and light in their day. Their letters,
memoirs, and journals, written independently and from different
angles of vision, go a long way towards supplementing, confirming,
or correcting the Ambassador’s reports, as well as the information
handed down by several foreign contemporaries.[1] For, by another
rare coincidence, the representative of France, Nointel, whose
history blends with that of Finch, also had round him a number of
Frenchmen busy writing. Joseph von Hammer had access to some of
these sources and drew in some small measure upon them; but it was
left for a modern French writer to turn them to full account in a
book which I have consulted with much pleasure and some profit.[2]
Lastly, reference should be made to two new works bearing on the
subject. Although both publications deal with matters mostly
outside the scope of this book, they have furnished me with a
number of suggestive details.[3]
I may take this opportunity of mentioning that, in my dates, unless
otherwise stated, I follow the Old Style, which still was the style
of England, and, in the seventeenth century, lagged behind the
New by ten days; but I reckon the year from the first of January.
All lengthy notes are relegated to an Appendix, so that matters
calculated to benefit the seeker after solid instruction may not
bore the reader who seeks only entertainment.
G. F. A.
CHELSEA, _March 1920_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] My references are to the following editions:--
_The Memoirs of Paul Rycaut, Esq._, London, 1679; _The Present
State of the Ottoman Empire_, by Sir Paul Ricaut, Sixth Edition,
London, 1686; _The Life of the Honourable Sir Dudley North, Knt._,
by the Honourable Roger North, Esq., London, 1744; _Extracts from
the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-1679_ (in _Early Voyages and
Travels in the Levant_), edited by J. Theodore Bent, The Hakluyt
Society, London, 1893; _Some Account of the Present Greek Church_,
by John Covel, D.D., Cambridge, 1722.
[2] _Les Voyages du Marquis de Nointel (1670-1680)_, par Albert
Vandal de l’Académie Française, Paris, 1900.
[3] _Report on the Manuscripts of Allen George Finch, Esq., of
Burley-on-the-Hill_, edited by Mrs. Lomas for the _Historical
Manuscripts Commission_, vol. i., London, 1913; _Finch and Baines_,
by Archibald Malloch, Cambridge, 1917.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
A DIPLOMAT IN SPITE OF HIMSELF 1
CHAPTER II
SIR JOHN’S PROGRAMME 24
CHAPTER III
LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE 33
CHAPTER IV
THE MEN ABOUT THE AMBASSADOR 46
CHAPTER V
STRENUA INERTIA 68
CHAPTER VI
SIR JOHN GOES TO COURT 89
CHAPTER VII
THE FESTIVITIES 105
CHAPTER VIII
DIPLOMACY--HIGH AND OTHERWISE 116
CHAPTER IX
THE SUBLIME THRESHOLD 136
CHAPTER X
HOPES DEFERRED 147
CHAPTER XI
FROM PURGATORY TO PERA 163
CHAPTER XII
HALCYON DAYS 178
CHAPTER XIII
THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE 196
CHAPTER XIV
KARA MUSTAFA AND THE ALEPPO DOLLARS 227
CHAPTER XV
INTERLUDE 246
CHAPTER XVI
THE CASE OF MRS. PENTLOW 266
CHAPTER XVII
THE PILOT AT REST 278
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRICE OF PARCHMENT 290
CHAPTER XIX
SIR JOHN’S “TICKLISH CONDITION” 301
CHAPTER XX
A LULL IN THE STORM 322
CHAPTER XXI
RELEASE 339
CONCLUSION 355
APPENDICES 377
INDEX 409
_The portraits of Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines are supplied
by the Cambridge University Press by permission of Dr. Malloch and
Mr. Wilfred Finch._
“_Under the Turk in Constantinople._”
ILLUSTRATIONS
Sir John Finch. From the Portrait by Carlo Dolci at
Burley-on-the-Hill _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Sir Thomas Baines. From the Portrait by Carlo Dolci at
Burley-on-the-Hill 42
Paul Rycaut. From the Engraving by R. White after the
Portrait by Sir Peter Lely 53
Sultan Mahomet the Fourth, Emperor of the Turks. From an
Engraving by F. H. van den Hove 106
Dr. John Covel. From the Portrait by Valentine Ritz at
Christ’s College, Cambridge 372
Sir Dudley North. From an Engraving by G. Vertue, 1743 376
CHAPTER I
A DIPLOMAT IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
It was apparently an invincible fatality that compelled Sir John
Finch to accept, in the month of November 1672, the appointment of
English Ambassador to the Porte, in place of Sir Daniel Harvey who
had died at his post some weeks before.
Finch sprang from a family which, under the Stuarts, had attained
to great eminence in the law and in politics. His father, Sir
Heneage Finch, had been Recorder of the City of London and Speaker
of the House of Commons in the reign of Charles I. During the
same reign his father’s first cousin, Sir John (afterwards Baron)
Finch, had been Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas
and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, as well as Speaker of the
House of Commons: in all these capacities he had shown himself so
ardent a Royalist that, in 1640, he was impeached together with
Lord Strafford and Archbishop Laud, and barely saved his head by
flying to Holland. His elder brother, the eloquent Sir Heneage
Finch, whose pleadings, in the years that immediately followed
the Restoration, were the delight of the Council Chamber and of
Westminster Hall,[4] after serving the Crown as Solicitor-General
and Attorney-General, was about to become Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal, and in due time Lord High Chancellor of England and Earl
of Nottingham. His nephew (another Heneage Finch), “a celebrated
orator in Chancery practice,”[5] was Solicitor-General in 1679, and
crowned a long and distinguished Parliamentary career under Charles
II. and James II. with a Barony from Queen Anne and an Earldom from
George I.
Notwithstanding this remarkable family record, Sir John had evinced
no inclination for a public career. After a brief residence at
Balliol, he was obliged, when Oxford became the headquarters of
the Royalist troops, to migrate to Christ’s College, Cambridge,
and thence, in 1651, he pursued his studies at Padua, where he
took a medical degree. From that University, of which he was made
Pro-Rector and Syndic, he went, in 1659, to Pisa, to occupy the
Chair of Anatomy, having refused the post of English Consul at
Padua, ostensibly because it meant getting drunk “at least forty
times in the year,” more probably because he did not wish to
compromise himself by accepting office under the Usurper. Thus,
while Cromwell ruled in England, Finch led a severely private life
in Italy, and at the Restoration, like other Cavaliers, he came
home to reap the reward of his loyalty. Unlike most of them, he was
not disappointed. Honours of all kinds awaited him. In 1661 he was
elected an Extraordinary Fellow of the College of Physicians of
London, was created M.D. by the University of Cambridge, and was
knighted by the King.[6]
Such was the position in which, at the age of thirty-five, when
one might think enough of a man’s zest and freshness are left to
give an edge to ambition, Finch found himself. The embarrassments
which had overcast his earlier prospects were lifting; royal favour
seemed assured; the path to fortune lay open before his feet; and
there were his brother Heneage and Lord Conway, the husband of
his theosophical sister,[7] who wished for nothing better than to
smooth it for him. But Finch was a singularly unenterprising man.
With a natural propensity to solitude, increased by exile, and
with a desultory inclination to poetry and philosophy, he found
the boisterous Court of Charles little to his taste. After a very
short stay in England, he went back to Tuscany and Anatomy (1663).
His friends, amused rather than annoyed at such perversity, did not
cease to conspire for his good, and, next year, they prevailed on
him to return and let them make his fortune.
Not long afterwards (March 1665) Lord Arlington, then Secretary
of State, fulfilled a promise they had extracted from him by
appointing Sir John His Majesty’s Minister at Florence. If there
was any foreign country which Finch liked, it was Italy: he had,
since he came to manhood, resided principally there, had learned
its language, and had made himself thoroughly familiar with its
manners and customs. If there was any Italian State for which he
felt a preference, it was that of Tuscany, where he was highly
esteemed and beloved by the Great Duke, his brother Prince Leopold,
and every one whose love and esteem were worth having. Yet Finch
was not happy. He complained that the dignity of his employment
far exceeded the emolument: he would gladly have exchanged it for
something better paid at home. His friends agreed; but that ideal
something could not be found. The only alternative to Florence
was Constantinople. To that post the Finch family, since the
Restoration, seemed to have established a sort of prescriptive
right: Charles II.’s first representative at the Porte, the Earl
of Winchilsea (yet another Heneage Finch), was Sir John’s first
cousin, and the second, Sir Daniel Harvey, his elder brother’s
near relative by marriage. Sir John could have Constantinople for
the asking. But Sir John cherished a profound and, in the light
of subsequent events, one might well say, a prophetic aversion to
Constantinople: “Nay, though to be sent to Constantinople were a
charge of great gaine, yet I would not buy that charge with the
affliction so long a separation would create mee,” he wrote to
Lord Conway in 1667; and again, a little later: “I doe perfectly
abhorr the thoughts of goeing to Constantinople.” He would rather
“undertake anything then to be banished any longer from seeing
your Lordship and my sister.” But at the same time he admitted,
“any thing is better then my present condition, in which I neither
enjoy myselfe nor any thing else.”[8] His friends sympathised
and continued their efforts on his behalf with indefatigable
pertinacity.
There is still extant a letter in which Lord Conway describes
how, in 1668, he lingered in London after the adjournment of
Parliament on purpose to get an opportunity of speaking to Lord
Arlington about him. The Secretary of State hesitated: to attach
to himself, partly by services and partly by hopes, the greatest
possible number of adherents was Arlington’s constant aim; but what
if Mr. Solicitor-General should enlist his brother in the hostile
camp of the fallen Chancellor Clarendon? Conway overcame these
apprehensions by bringing about a personal interview between the
Secretary and the Solicitor, who assured his Lordship that Sir John
would be his Lordship’s faithful retainer. Arlington, satisfied,
promised to recall Sir John from Florence and to recommend him
to the King for preferment in connexion with foreign affairs.
This arrangement Conway thought much better than bargaining
for a reversion of some lucrative Court office--a boon perhaps
more tempting, but less certain. As to fitness, he assured his
brother-in-law that he would have no competition to fear: “You will
have the advantage of coming into a Court where there is not one
man of ability.” The King, “destitute of counsel, is jealous of all
men that speak to him of business.” All that was really needed was
a good word from Lord Arlington, “for though Lord Arlington labours
with all art imaginable not to be thought a Premier Minister, yet
he is either so, or a favourite, for he is the sole guide that the
King relies upon.”[9]
And so, after five years of eminently undistinguished and
discontented sojourn at Florence, Sir John returned home, in August
1670, served for two years on the “Councell for matters relating to
Our Forreigne Colonies and Plantations,” and then, the ideal office
still failing to present itself, he had, after all, to accept the
Embassy he abhorred.
He set out in May 1673. His frame of mind on leaving England can
be seen from the note by which he bade Lord Conway farewell: “This
is the third time I have left my Native Soyl,” he wrote. “If God
Almighty make me so happy as to return once more to your Lordship,
I shall then thinke it is time to fix at home and leave of (_sic_)
all thoughts of further wandering. But [if] my life by its period
abroad putts one to my Travell I beseech your Lordship to believe
that you have lost the most faythfull and zealous servant the World
yet was ever possessed of....”[10]
This letter brings into relief the writer’s characteristic
attachment to home and dislike of separation from dear relatives,
heightened by a vague anxiety not unnatural in the circumstances. A
man who had fretted for five years in Italy could not look forward
to an exile of at least six years in Turkey without some alarm.
Turkey was not then the accessible, comparatively debarbarised
country of our time: the Grand Signor’s dominions were two and a
half centuries ago regarded as an obscure and distant region of
disease and death. Sir John, in leaving England, felt like one
stepping into the unknown: melancholy filled his heart, and pious
prayer seemed the only refuge from despondency. Indeed, if he could
have foreseen what lay before him, it is a question whether any
earthly consideration could have induced him to quit his “native
soyl.” One of the many dubious blessings granted by the gods to men
is the inability to see into the future.
Meanwhile Sir John knew that, short as it fell of his aspirations,
the Constantinople post had not a few advantages. It was the only
English mission abroad that, under a King who had little money
to spare from his personal pleasures, rejoiced in the rank of
Embassy; it carried with it a salary of 10,000 dollars, or about
£2500, a year, not to mention perquisites of various kinds; and,
be it noted, this salary, not coming out of the reluctant purse of
a capricious and impecunious prince, but out of the Treasury of a
wealthy business corporation--the Company of “Merchants of England
Trading into the Levant Seas”--entailed no heart-breaking delays,
no wearisome solicitations of friends at Court, but could be
depended upon with as much certainty and regularity as any dividend
from a sound investment: all the more, because Finch’s kinsmen,
the Harveys, were leading members of that Company. Distinctly, a
diplomat might go farther and fare worse. As to the duties of the
post, Sir John was well equipped. Apart from ceremonial functions,
his time at Florence had been taken up by questions arising out of
the English trade in the Mediterranean; and both his correspondence
from that place and a report on commerce with Egypt which he had
drawn up lately[11] prove that he could do that sort of work easily
enough. Now, that was the sort of work he would be called upon to
do at Constantinople.
Owing its origin to the enterprise of merchants and maintained
entirely at their expense, the English Embassy on the Bosphorus
existed chiefly for their benefit; the principal part of the
Ambassador’s mission being to promote trade and to protect those
engaged therein both against the Turks and against each other.
Politics, it is true, were not altogether lost sight of. The
Ottoman Empire, though past its meridian, still weighed heavily
in the “Balance of Europe,” and the Grand Signor’s attitude was
an object of no small concern to the rival groups into which
Europe was divided. In the abstract, political writers continued
to echo, with unction, the admonitions which the celebrated
Imperial Ambassador Busbequius had addressed to Christendom a
hundred years before. But since no means had yet been devised
“to unite our Interests and compose our Dissensions,”[12] what
were we to do? Obviously, what everybody was doing. When occasion
arose, it was part, if only a subsidiary part, of an English
envoy’s business to intrigue for the good of his country and try
to defeat the intrigues of those wicked foreign diplomats who
intrigued for the good of theirs. Thus, in the time of Queen
Elizabeth, her representatives had exploited Turkey’s hatred of
Spain to some purpose; and again during the Thirty Years’ War the
representative of Charles I. made strenuous efforts, not of course
to set on the “common enemy of Christendom” against the Emperor
directly--that, as he recognised, would have been too great a
“scandal”--but to procure the Sultan’s indirect support for the
Prince of Transylvania who was fighting the Emperor. During the
earlier period of Charles II.’s reign, too, Lord Winchilsea had
exerted himself to prevent the establishment of friendly relations
between Stambul and Madrid, and both he and his successor Harvey
had endeavoured to bring about a cessation of hostilities between
Stambul and Venice. The former of these ambassadors, in fact, was
very eager to play a great political rôle, urging that, as, with
the acquisition of Tangier, English sea-power and possessions were
expanding Eastwards, the English envoy should no longer confine
himself exclusively to mercantile affairs.[13] But Charles had
neither funds nor thoughts for such ambitious schemes. So his
representative at the Porte had nothing more to do, as regards
State affairs, than “to be truly informed of all negotiations and
practices in that Court which may disturbe the peace of Christendom
in any part of it,”[14] and to transmit his information to London:
a passive rôle which suited Sir John’s temperament admirably. As
his _alter ego_ wrote to Lord Conway: “Your Lordship will say your
Brother here will have little to doe in State Affayrs, which my
Lord is very true and so much the more is his quiett.”[15]
This was only one of several happy auspices under which
Sir John Finch entered upon his new employment. As a rule,
the diplomatic seat on the Bosphorus bristled with thorny
peculiarities--peculiarities that had proved trying to most of his
predecessors and to some even fatal.
To begin with, our representatives at Constantinople, unlike their
colleagues at other capitals, had not one master, but two: the
Court from which they held their commission and the Company from
which they drew their pay. It is proverbially difficult to serve
two masters to the satisfaction of both, and in this case the
difficulties of the servant were often accentuated by differences
between his employers. With characteristic repugnance to clear
definition, our ancestors had left the question of appointment
open. There was neither fixed rule nor consistent precedent to show
with which of the two masters lay the choice of servant. Hence a
periodical feud between the Court and the Company, each claiming
a right which the other was loth to concede. Under James I. and
Charles I. the Court had more than once forced upon the Company its
own nominees, with disastrous results to all concerned. Sir John
Eyre, appointed in 1619 under pressure from the Duke of Buckingham,
after barely two years, which he spent making himself obnoxious to
the English residents and contemptible to the Turkish Ministers,
had to be recalled in disgrace. Sir Sackville Crow, similarly
appointed in 1638, rivalled Eyre in incompetence, surpassed him
in iniquity, and was at last brought home by force and cast into
the Tower (1648). At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Company,
having thrown in its lot with the Rebels, obtained from Parliament
a recognition of its claim to elect and remove the Ambassador,
and, much as Cromwell would have liked to follow the example of
the Stuarts, he had found it expedient to acquiesce. When the
Commonwealth collapsed, the Levant Merchants, who had joined in
acclaiming the Restoration as heartily as they had acclaimed the
Rebellion, got Charles II. to renew their Charter (April 2, 1661).
But submission to the Crown had become so much the fashion that
this Charter again left the question of the Ambassador’s election
open, thereby affording zealots for the royal prerogative a chance
of stirring up discord.[16]
In practice, however, a new spirit seemed to animate the rival
authorities now. Both sides had learned by suffering the wisdom of
compromise. Now the Merchants begged from the King, as an act of
grace proceeding solely from his goodness, leave to offer for his
Majesty’s approval such a person as they esteemed most competent to
manage their affairs at Constantinople, thus loyally acknowledging
the King’s right; while the King, on his part, graciously granted
their request, thus waiving the exercise of it. In this way the
dignity of the Crown was saved, and the interests of the Company
did not suffer. This sweet reasonableness breathes through the
petition by which, on Sir Daniel Harvey’s death, the Levant
Merchants approached the King for a successor: “They have,” so runs
the document, “at a General Meeting of their Company, presumed
to fix upon the Hon. Sir John Finch, as one they humbly desire
may undertake that affaire, if your Majestie will be graciously
pleased to afford your Royal assent; which they humbly beg, wholly
submitting the same to your Majestie’s pleasure.”[17] The King,
as was expected, readily assented; and thus Sir John set out with
the goodwill of both his employers. He travelled across France and
North Italy to Leghorn, and there met the _Centurion_, a frigate of
52 guns, which was to carry him to Turkey.
If we turn from those who sent the Ambassador to those to whom
he was sent, we shall see here also Finch greatly favoured by
circumstances. Most of his predecessors had found themselves
engaged in a Sisyphean labour. For the wrongs to which the English,
like other Frank dwellers in the Grand Signor’s dominions, were
constantly exposed at the hands of insolent and rapacious
officials they could only procure redress, if at all, by purchasing
the friendship of the Grand Vizir and of the two or three other
grandees who between them ruled the Empire. But, such had long been
the stability of the Ottoman Government, none of those personages
remained in power for more than a few months--a military mutiny,
a popular upheaval, or a palace intrigue was sure to hurl them
down the moment after they had reached the top; and our Ambassador
was obliged to seek new friends. This state of things had come to
an end. In 1656 Mohammed Kuprili assumed the Grand Vizirate with
a free hand to purge the body politic of its corruptions, and he
performed the task by cutting off all the parts that he could not
cure: a dreadful remedy, but not more dreadful than the condition
of the patient demanded. Turkey was so split up by factions that
it could not have survived, unless all rebellious spirits were
implacably extinguished. This great practitioner, who alone had
preserved the Empire from falling into as many fragments as there
were Pashaliks, died in 1661 of old age, and was succeeded by his
son Ahmed--a fact which, being utterly unprecedented in a country
where the hereditary principle, except in the royal family, was
unknown, amazed the Turks even more than the miracle of a Grand
Vizir maintaining himself in office for five whole years and then
dying peaceably in his bed.[18]
Ahmed Kuprili at first seemed to have inherited, together with his
father’s power, his father’s recipe. The late Vizir’s dictatorship
had raised up a multitude of malcontents who imagined that his
successor’s youth offered them an opportunity for revenge:
“every hour he has a new game to play for his life,” wrote our
Ambassador.[19] But once rid of his enemies, the son presented a
pleasing antithesis to his father. Mohammed had been an uncouth
and illiterate warrior who cared for no laws that stood between
him and his will, who valued no arguments that conflicted with
his preconceived notions, who even in his dealings with foreign
envoys employed methods only one degree less savage than those
he applied to the treatment of domestic problems. Ahmed, on the
other hand, was the first Grand Vizir with a political, instead
of a martial, mind. He had been bred to the study of the Law and
had actually practised as a judge in civil causes. By temperament
and education alike he was averse to violence. It is true that
he had already carried out two successful campaigns and was now
engaged in a third. But to this he was impelled by necessity: the
Ottoman Empire, having arisen out of war and being constituted for
war, would perish in peace. Its rulers could only avoid rebellion
at home by providing their turbulent subjects with constant and
congenial occupation abroad--a bleeding operation intended to
relieve the body politic of its “malignant humours”--and it was
particularly necessary for Ahmed, in order to keep his place, to
show that he could graft the soldier on the lawyer. But he never
became a general. His successes were won in spite of his strategy.
In his war against the Emperor he was defeated at St. Gothard (Aug.
1, N.S. 1664), yet immediately after, profiting by the Emperor’s
difficulties, he secured a treaty (Peace of Vasvar, Aug. 10, 1664)
as advantageous as if it had been the fruit of victory. In Crete
his military operations against the Venetians (1666-69) were so
clumsy that at one moment he seriously meditated abandoning the
siege of Candia, “his ill success having given his enemies hopes of
supplanting him.”[20] Yet he obtained by negotiation the surrender
of a fortress which until then had been deemed impregnable, and
brought a twenty-five years’ struggle to a glorious conclusion. The
Polish war which he was now conducting was likewise a matter of
diplomatic as much as of military manœuvring. There can be no doubt
that, if he had the choice, Ahmed would never have striven to get
by force what might be got by subtler means.
To these traits, common among lawyers, he added a genuine love of
justice and a scrupulous integrity rare among lawyers everywhere,
and nowhere rarer than in the East. Endowed with such qualities,
Ahmed proved himself one of the most moderate, and, at the same
time, one of the least pliant Ministers that Turkey ever knew.
Under his firm and equitable administration the Ottoman Empire
recovered some of its prosperity, and, what is more pertinent
to note here, the Frank residents enjoyed a Sabbath of rest.
Tyranny, of course, could not be altogether avoided. But, on the
whole, the privileges conferred upon them by their Capitulations
were respected, extortions (_avanias_) were seldom indulged
in with impunity, and the foreign merchants were treated with
unexampled forbearance.[21] Towards the English the Grand Vizir was
particularly well disposed, and with good reason.
The main principle of Charles II.’s policy in foreign as in
domestic affairs was to avoid friction. Indolent, unambitious,
and a hater of everything likely to disturb the even flow of
his voluptuous existence, the Merry Monarch would sooner have
surrendered his rights than have taken the trouble to defend
them. No prince ever stood less upon his dignity; perhaps because
no prince ever had less dignity to stand upon. In the course of
their protracted struggle for the conquest of Candia, the Turks
repeatedly pressed English ships into their service. Cromwell
had opposed vigorously all encroachments of the sort; but the
representatives of Charles, after some feeble and ineffectual
protests, not only acquiesced tamely, but bitterly blamed those
captains who ventured to resist; and, while the Grand Signor
violated the neutrality of England, the English Secretary of State
overwhelmed him with assurances that his Majesty “does inviolably
observe his peace with the Grand Signior.”[22] Nor were these empty
assurances. Individual Englishmen might assist the Venetians in
what contemporary Christendom regarded as a holy war, but, unlike
the French, whose volunteers passed on in a steady stream from
Paris itself to reinforce the garrison of Candia, they did so at
their own risk and peril without the least countenance from their
Government. Indeed, such crusaders were so few and far between that
Ahmed Kuprili commented on the fact that he did not find “soe much
as an English seaman amongst his enemies att Candia.”[23]
To these general conditions which at the time rendered our Embassy
unusually comfortable for any tenant of average tact, must be
added an event that secured for Sir John Finch’s person special
consideration.
Soon after his appointment, an English ship, the _Mediterranean_,
on her passage from Tunis to Tripoli, had been met by the
redoubtable corsair Domenico Franceschi--a Genoese by birth, but
then domiciled at Leghorn and holding a privateering commission
from the Great Duke of Tuscany. Normally an English vessel had
nothing to fear from a Tuscan man-of-war; but the _Mediterranean_
happened to carry the retiring Pasha of Tunis, homeward bound with
his family and the spoils of his province, and, as the Duke was
at perpetual war with the Sultan, Domenico could not well forgo
such a chance of serving his sovereign and enriching himself.
The _Mediterranean_ managed, before the corsair could come up
with her, to set the Pasha with some of his belongings ashore at
Tripoli, but she was captured, taken to Malta, and pillaged of the
bulk of the Pasha’s treasure, including his women. The incident
was serious: it was one of those incidents which often strained
Turkey’s relations with Western Powers in those days; and with
no Western Power more often than with England. Not to dwell on
remoter instances,[24] only a year before some other Turkish
passengers on another English ship, the _Lyon_, whilst sailing
from Tunis to Smyrna, had been carried off with their goods by
the same pirate. At that time Sir Daniel Harvey addressed to the
home Government an energetic protest against “the insolence and
piracy” of a person in the service of a friendly prince, pointing
out that his exploit endangered the safety of the English colonies
in Turkey, and, if not taken notice of, might be an encouragement
to him and others to do likewise.[25] But nothing was done, and
the late Ambassador’s prediction had now come true even beyond
his anticipation. For in that case the victims were Turks of very
humble rank (a cap-maker with his two servants, and two old men
who had just been redeemed at Malta, one after 48, the other after
50 years’ captivity), and the booty a trifle--3 chests of caps,
3 bales of blankets, and 3 boxes of botargoes.[26] This time the
victim was a high functionary of the Porte, and the loot enormous.
The Turks’ wrath was proportionate. They threatened that, if the
property was not restored, the loss should be made good by the
English residents; the Porte’s position always being that a Frank
nation was collectively responsible for any Turkish passengers or
goods that fell into the hands of pirates whilst travelling under
that nation’s flag. Matters were not improved by the fact that the
_Mediterranean_ had offered no resistance, but was seen sailing
away in the corsair’s company with every appearance of being a
willing captive.
The directors of the Levant Company in London were not slow
to realise the gravity of the situation. As soon as official
reports from the Consuls at Leghorn and Tripoli reached them,
they petitioned the King to write to the Great Duke and to demand
complete restitution of the Pasha’s property and reparation for
damages, with due punishment of “so notorious an offender.”[27] The
King hastened to indite an epistle in that sense to the Duke,[28]
and, at the same time, instructed Sir John Finch, then on his way
out, to repair to Florence and make the necessary representations
to his Highness by word of mouth. These instructions found Finch
at Genoa; and he applied himself to the task with energy, anxiety
for his own future in Turkey lending a spur to his concern for the
public good.
In order to simplify matters, he procured, before leaving Genoa,
the banishment of the corsair from that State, and then proceeded
to Leghorn. There he found an Aga whom the Pasha of Tunis was
sending to England as his Procurator on that very business. When
he heard of Finch’s arrival, the Aga thought to save himself
the journey to London by laying his case before him. Finch made
the most of this lucky encounter. Concealing from the Aga his
instructions, he gave the affair a totally different turn. The
_Mediterranean_, he argued, was not an English ship. It is true
that her Master, Captain Chaplyn, was an Englishman; but he had
changed his religion, renounced his country, and, having for ten
years lived at Leghorn and married there, had become a Tuscan
subject, so that his Majesty of England was no longer concerned
in him. With these “and other motives” (a delicate euphemism for
the motive vulgarly known as bribery), the Ambassador prevailed on
the Aga to give him a declaration in writing, attested by public
notaries, that he had no claim upon Captain Chaplyn or any other
Englishman; only, as Finch was accredited to the Porte, it would be
taken very kindly of him if he would assist a Pasha in distress,
the more as he lay under no obligation to do so. Having had this
document signed and sealed, the resourceful diplomat approached the
Duke in another way--the way dictated by the facts of the case and
his instructions.
In that quarter also, Sir John’s efforts, thanks to his long
connection with the Tuscan Court, met with success. At Florence
itself he recovered 5000 dollars in ready money and a portion of
the stolen goods. Then, armed with letters from the Duke, and
accompanied by the Aga and Captain Chaplyn, he went on to Malta,
where he managed, though not without great difficulty, to obtain
the restitution of 75 more bales of goods and the redemption of
seven captives, among them the Pasha’s sister-in-law, whom the
Pasha afterwards made his wife. At Smyrna, where the Ambassador,
still accompanied by the Turkish Aga and the English Captain,
landed on the 1st of January 1674, he caused the former to give
him before the Cadi of that place an official receipt for all the
recovered goods--30,000 dollars--and a full discharge to Captain
Chaplyn.[29]
We are told that the Turks expressed boundless admiration at this
action--an action without a parallel in the annals of piracy: who
had ever heard of a corsair being made to disgorge? They applauded
the Ambassador’s skill and regarded his success as a manifest
proof of his sovereign’s influence over foreign Governments. They
were also impressed by his luck--no small recommendation to a
superstitious people in an astrologically-minded age. Had not his
landing on Turkish soil synchronised with the celebration of the
holiest of Moslem feasts--the Feast of the Bairam?[30] As to the
English Factory, its sixty members (merry young blades most of
them) manifested their joy at the sight of their long-expected
Ambassador after a fashion which must have made it a little
difficult for his Excellency to maintain the reserve and gravity
proper to his exalted station.
From Smyrna Sir John continued his journey to Constantinople,
arriving there about the end of March; and some two months after,
in the absence of the Grand Vizir, he had audience of the Vizir’s
Kaimakam, or Deputy. On this occasion the new Ambassador gave the
first evidence of that meticulous devotion to forms which made up
then an enormous, and still makes up a very considerable, part of
the complete diplomat’s mentality. Before going to audience he
took care to find out how many _kaftans_, or robes of honour, the
Kaimakam meant to present him and his suite with. “I was offerd’,”
he says, “But 15: no English Ambassadour ever having had more from
the Chimacam: But understanding the Venetian Bailo had 17, I would
abate nothing of what he had had.” After a tug of several weeks, he
wrested the two extra vests from the Turk.
One or two other features of that ceremony remain on record.
“I am,” said the envoy to the Kaimakam, “I am come Ambassadour from
Charles the Second, King of England, Scottland, France and Ireland;
sole and Soveraigne Lord of all the seas that environ His Kingdome:
Lord and Soveraigne of Vast Territory’s and Possessions in the
East and West Indy’s: Defender of the Christian Faith against all
those that Worship Idolls and Images, To the Most High and Mighty
Emperour Sultan Mahomet Ham, Cheif Lord and Commander of the
Mussulman Kingdome, Sole and Supream Monarch of the Eastern Empire,
To maintain that Peace which has bin so usefull and that Commerce
which has bin so profitable to this Empire; For the continuance and
encrease whereof I promise you in my station to contribute what I
can; And I promise to myselfe that you in yours will doe the like.”
Sir John had written this speech in Italian and given it to his two
chief Interpreters, with orders to study it carefully beforehand,
so that they might not omit one word in interpreting what he
should say. The Interpreters having fulfilled their function, some
conversation ensued, in the middle of which the Kaimakam, abruptly,
“as if he had much reflected on what his Lordship said,” asked
whether the King of England had any fortresses in the Indies. Finch
answered: “He had very many and not a few of those Inexpugnable.”
The Kaimakam did not carry his cross-questioning any further.
Presumably he understood that the English were imbued, like other
nations, with a very sincere opinion of their own greatness.
Sir John reported this his début on the official stage of Turkey
to his patron with evident self-satisfaction.[31] He had every
reason to feel proud of the past and confident of the future. He
had shown himself possessed of energy, finesse, firmness, and,
though innocent of any acquaintance with the habits and prejudices
of the Turks, he was already _persona gratissima_ with them. The
flattering way in which he had been received on his arrival in
the Grand Signor’s dominions gave him not only the hope, but the
certainty of a residence agreeable to himself and profitable to
his country. Clearly, the Turks had been much maligned by common
report. These feelings are faithfully reflected in a letter which
Sir John’s _alter ego_ penned to Lord Conway, while Sir John
himself was penning his report to Lord Arlington:
“Give me leave to turne to ... your Brother my Lord Ambassadour’s
condition under this Embassy: He hath dealt with the crafty close
Genevese; with the wise and stayd Florentine; with the untameable
and rugged Maltese; with the faythlesse Greek and false Jew; and
lastly with the sober and stubborne Turk,”--then, leaving the
others to rejoice in their respective epithets, the writer fixes
his penetrating eye upon the Turks: “Under correction and with
modesty I will say that I find them a sober and ingenious people;
sober they are because they never drink wine, ingenious I call
them from the Bassa who came to visit my Lord at the galley, so
soon as he arrived at the port, for I seldom heard in Europe a
more dextrous, short, and courtly reply then what the Bassa made
to my Lord. I, over and above, find an Ambassadour here to have,
according to their customes, as much respect as they have in most
places in Europe. Certainly there is a mutuall and reciprocall
jealousy betwixt the Court and foreign publick Ministers, between
which there is neither religion nor custome of life, nor laws that
beget any confidence or publick tie, and to the captious it gives
many exceptions. But, setting these things apart, as yett I can
call nothing strange.” Thus wrote this acute judge of national
characters, after seeing only one Turk for a few moments; thus he
wrote, no doubt with my Lord Ambassador’s concurrence, and thus he
thought. Yet even in the midst of his rosy illusions, he had some
dim, subconscious perception of realities. For he adds: “But, my
most noble Lord, these are my first sentiments, perhaps when I have
stayed here longer, I may have as much reason to reclaime against
them as other men....”[32]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Evelyn’s _Diary_, Oct. 27, 1664; Pepys’s _Diary_, May 3, 1664,
April 21, 1669.
[5] Roger North’s _Life of Guilford_, p. 226.
[6] _Dictionary of National Biography_; Malloch’s _Finch and
Baines_.
[7] Anne, Viscountess Conway--a very learned lady and a very odd.
There is a notice of her in the _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, where her
father’s name is given wrongly as “Henry.”
[8] Malloch’s _Finch and Baines_, p. 54.
[9] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1667-68_, pp. 258-9.
[10] Malloch’s _Finch and Baines_, p. 59.
[11] Finch to Arlington, Dec. 23, 1672, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[12] Rycaut’s _Present State_, p. 404.
[13] Winchilsea to Secretary Nicholas, March 18-28, 1660-61, June
12, 1661, _S.P. Turkey_, 17.
[14] Instructions for Sir John Finch, Cl. 6. See Appendix I.
[15] Sir Thomas Baines, May 25, 1674, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[16] See Appendix III.
[17] _Register, 1668-1710_, p. 22; _S.P. Levant Company_, 145.
[18] Winchilsea to Nicholas, March 4, 1660-61, Nov. 11-21, 1661,
_S.P. Turkey_, 17; Rycaut’s _Memoirs_, p. 68; J. von Hammer’s
_Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman_, vol. xi. p. 111. Winchilsea
mentions only the “six thousand Bashaws and great men,” whom
Mohammed put to death “partly by his own hands and by his
commands.” Rycaut gives the total of the Vizir’s victims as
“thirty-six thousand persons.” Hammer, though he does not consider
this statement excessive, is content with an estimate of “trente
mille personnes,” or an average of 500 executions a month--figures
which, even if reduced by a nought, would still appear respectable.
[19] Winchilsea to Nicholas, May 20, 1662, _S.P. Turkey_, 17.
[20] Harvey to Arlington, Jan. 31, 1669 [-70], _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[21] See Appendix IV.
[22] For illustrations of this timorous attitude see Winchilsea
to Nicholas, March 4, 1660-61, Feb. 11, 1661-62; the Same to
Arlington, March 26, 1668; Rycaut to Arlington, July 18, 1668;
Letters from Messrs. Thomas Dethick & Co., Smyrna, Feb. 7, March 1,
1667-68; Harvey to Arlington, June 19, 1669, _S.P. Turkey_, 17 and
19.
[23] Harvey to Arlington, Aug. 18, 1669, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[24] See Appendix V.
[25] Harvey to Arlington, Jan. 24, March 15, 1671-72, _S.P.
Turkey_, 19.
[26] “A Relation of the Damage rec. by me, Thomas Parker, Master of
the _Lyon_ pinke from a Corsair near the Island of Delos. Smyrna, 9
Dec. 1671,” _ibid._
[27] _Register_, p. 39, _S.P. Levant Company_, 145.
[28] _Ibid._ pp. 40-41. This letter, written in Latin, is dated “ex
pallatio nostro Westmonasteriensi, Quarto die Augusti, Anno Doñi
1673, Regni nostri 25^o.”
[29] Sir John Finch’s own Narrative, Sept. 24, 1680, _S.P. Turkey_,
19.
[30] Rycaut’s _Memoirs_, p. 312.
[31] Finch to Arlington, May 25, 1674 (with Inclosure), _Coventry
Papers_.
[32] Sir Thomas Baines to Conway, May 25, 1674, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
The letter, though unsigned and unaddressed, carries within it
conclusive proof of its authorship and destination.