the Shah, by the defection of an Ottoman official, had recovered some
of the territory taken by Selim. Souliman, appearing with a large
force, received the submission of many of the Shah’s vassals, and,
after a long march to the East, during which his cannon had to be
abandoned, entered the ancient capital of the Khalifate, Bagdad, in
1535. But several other campaigns were required to establish definite
possession of the country. Finally, after many victories, peace was
signed at Amasia, on the 29th of May, 1555, a step which implied that
the Sunnite Turks acknowledged the legitimacy of a Shiite monarchy.
In the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan the extension of Ottoman
power encountered serious obstacles. Native chieftains and princes
followed their own caprices and their own interests in changing their
allegiance to Shah or Sultan. There was constant guerrilla warfare,
without any notable advantage to Turkish arms. In the southern regions
at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Ottoman power
was firmly established; Turkish vessels were to be seen now in the Red
Sea and the Persian Gulf. Aden was occupied and the control of Yemen
made effective. But the chief effort of Souliman was directed against
the King of Hungary and the Emperor Charles V. A curious and novel
development of European diplomacy was seen, when Francis I, the French
King, appealed to the Sultan in his difficulties, after his defeat
at the hands of Charles in Italy. Souliman sent a gracious message
assuring the imprisoned monarch of his support, and spoke of his own
throne as the refuge of the world; “night and day,” he added, “our
horse is saddled and our sword girded.” In 1526 the Sultan marched
from his capital to give battle to Charles, the “hated head of the
infidels,” with an army of 100,000 men and 300 cannon. There was a
great battle with the Hungarian troops at Mohacs (August 28, 1526).
After a hot engagement of two hours, the Christians left on the field
20,000 foot and 400 horse, and of the prisoners 400 were put to death.
A few days after the battle Buda surrendered to the Turks, and the
Hungarian kingdom was harried by the Turkish irregular forces.
Everywhere they went, their path was marked by massacre. Ten thousand
captives were taken, and the result of the campaign was almost the
disappearance of Hungary as an independent Christian kingdom, because,
after the taking of Buda, Souliman called to him the Hungarian nobles
and settled who should be their king. The kingdom was now rent by
factions, some of the nobles siding with the Sultan’s candidate, John
Zapolya, while others accepted Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V.
When Zapolya appeared at Constantinople, because of the failure of his
faction to support his claims, the Sultan, after securing from him a
formal engagement as vassal, undertook to place him on the Hungarian
throne. The promise was more than made good. In October, 1529, the
Turks appeared before the walls of Vienna with 250,000 men and 300
cannon. To defend the city there were only 16,000 men and 70 pieces
of artillery. But the defense was conducted with such spirit and
intelligence that the Turkish army was compelled to withdraw. When
winter approached, the extent of the ravages of the Turkish arms was
marked by attacks on Regensburg and Brunn. Later on, another expedition
was made into Styria, where the country suffered terrible devastations.
Under the stress of these alarms the powers of Western Europe,
irrespective of religious differences, banded together to resist the
enemy. Even Francis I was concerned at the rapidity of the success
of his ally, the Sultan, and sent an ambassador to Constantinople to
entreat Souliman to hold his hand. Finally, owing to the difficulties
with Persia, the Sultan agreed to sign a treaty of peace with Hungary
in 1533, by which Ferdinand was allowed to hold the land already
occupied by him. But the war with Charles V, and with his ally, Venice,
still went on, chiefly a contest at sea between the Turkish admiral,
Kheir-ed-Din, and his Venetian antagonist, Andrew Doria, without
decisive results, except the capture of many of the Venetian islands
in the Ægean. In 1541 steps were taken, when dissensions arose again
in Hungary between the heirs of Zapolya and Ferdinand, to make the
conquest of part of the country effective. A Turkish pasha-lik was
formed, with Buda as its capital, and for 147 years Buda remained an
Ottoman city. Further conquests were made of Van, or Stuhlweissenburg,
the city where the Hungarian kings were consecrated, and Vychegrad,
where the royal crown of Hungary was kept. Owing to the valor of the
people there were repeated efforts on the part of the Hungarians to
renew resistance to the Ottoman domination. A treaty was made in 1567,
when the aged Sultan, worn out by constant warfare, was willing to
concede to the Emperor Ferdinand an arrangement for the payment of an
annual tribute. Although peace was formally declared, disturbances on
the frontier still continued, and the seas were not free from acts of
piracy.
As Spain had not been included in the treaty of 1562, a Spanish
flotilla of twenty-two ships was destroyed near the island of Djerba,
which had previously been seized by Spain. Not long afterwards a
Turkish armada of 191 vessels sailed against the island of Malta, with
the purpose of bringing to the home of the Knights Hospitalers the ruin
that had already been inflicted at Rhodes on their brethren. For four
months the siege lasted, costing the assailants nearly 20,000 men.
Dragut, the Turkish commander, was slain, and finally, on September
11, 1565, the undertaking was abandoned as hopeless, and the Turkish
armament withdrew.
Souliman’s days were brought to an end in the midst of the siege of a
Hungarian town, Sziget, one of the many events of the frontier warfare
carried on without intermission, irrespective of the treaty between the
heads of the two states. His death was carefully concealed from his men
for fear of discouraging them in their assaults on the citadel of the
town, which was being heroically defended by Zriny. Three days after
the Sultan’s death, on the 8th of September, 1566, only the central
tower of the fort was left in the hands of the Hungarian champion. He
loaded up his cannon to the muzzle, and in the smoke of the cannonade
rushed into the thick of the Turkish lines and perished. He had taken
care to arrange for the blowing up of the powder magazine at the time
he made his sortie. The great tower fell in ruins, burying in the
débris 3000 Turks. Souliman, in his life of seventy-one years, had
personally led sixteen campaigns against the Christians; despite gout
and physical weakness he would not hand over to a lieutenant the work
of wiping out on the battlefield the stigma inflicted on Turkish arms
by the failure at Malta.
VII THE DECLINE OF THE OTTOMANS
In the expansion of their empire the main characteristic of the
Ottomans had been fidelity to their tribal origin in Asia and to their
religion; they showed little elasticity in modifying their system of
government to new conditions, but they did recognize the necessity of
progress. After their conversion to Mohammedanism their supreme guide
was the “cheriat,” under which term is signified the religious law
of orthodox Moslems in the threefold division of Koran, Sunna, and
the Sentences. In addition to this, there were the various official
interpretations from the Sultan’s hand in the application of the law
called the Kanoun. So much importance had this aspect of the Sultan’s
functions that Souliman is remembered under his title of El Kanouni,
that is, as a Turkish Justinian, rather than as a great military leader.
As head of the Empire, the Sultan’s various titles are significant of
the progressive stages of Ottoman development from a tribe to a great
world power. The sovereign was still called Khan, as the head of a
Turkish nomadic horde. When the Turks were converted to Islam, there
was first added the title emir, an Arabic word, Chief of Believers;
then came the name sultan, king; after the conquest of Constantinople,
the Persian term padishah, king of kings, came into use. As we have
seen, the conquest of Syria, of Egypt, and Arabia, made the Sultan
defender of the holy cities and khalif.
After the conquest of the capital of the Cæsars, the influence of
Byzantine traditions introduced a rigid system of court ceremonial;
the days of patriarchal simplicity were closed; the person of the
Sultan was raised in dignity. The change is clearly indicated in an
edict by Mohammed: “It is not my will that anyone should eat with my
imperial majesty; our ancestors were wont to eat with their ministers,
but I have abolished it.” The influence of the Byzantine bureaucratic
hierarchy can be traced in the method of Ottoman administration; even
in small details the permanence of the Roman imperial tradition is
noteworthy. The sovereign’s documents were, like those of his Greek
predecessors, written in gold, purple, and azure. His letters of
victory are but a continuation of the “litterae laureatae,” while
the bakkchich given to the Janitschars is but a reminiscence of the
Imperial donation.
But actual assimilation between the Turks and their subject peoples
was prevented by difference of religion. Racial differences made no
distinction between Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Roumanians; they were
all orthodox Christians, while the same people, if they became converts
to Islam, were turned into Ottomans. The two types of religious
allegiance were mutually irreconcilable. The peculiarity of Ottoman
absolutism is to be found in the exclusion from governmental offices
both of the free Moslem and the free Christian subjects of the Empire.
The administration from top to bottom was in the hands of slaves, and
these slaves were largely recruited from the children of Christian
families of the subject races, who were constantly exposed to a
detestable and unnatural form of oppression. The conquered populations
were ruled despotically by men of Christian birth, who, during their
initiation into slavery, had become Moslems. The famous Admiral Dragut
was the son of a Christian of Asia Minor. Many of the famous generals
were taken from Christian Albanian, Bosnian, and Dalmatian families. Of
forty-eight grand viziers, only twelve were of Moslem birth.
Many Christians also became renegades, since an easy road to fortune
was opened to them in this way. The hardy, adventurous, and less
scrupulous elements of the conquered races accepted the religion of
their conquerors; even a Paleologus, one of the last descendants
of the imperial line, became a Moslem. There were conversions on a
large scale, accomplished without special pressure among the landed
proprietors, who were warriors by tradition, and who refused to endure
the restrictions placed upon them by their religious profession.
The absolutism of the Sultan allowed no rival in any of the religious
dignitaries of Islam. Even the Cheikh-ul-Islam had no authority over
the Sultan; though the supreme ecclesiastical dignitary, he was only
an authoritative expert in the law, the head of the body of oulemas,
whose opinions could, if necessary, be passed over. At the same time
the Cheikh-ul-Islam’s advice carried weight, and we sometimes hear
of ambassadors being protected from the rage of the Sultan by his
intervention. Legally, the Sultan was altogether above the law, or,
rather, outside of it; he had the right to execute his brothers and
children “if the peace of the world required it.”
While women in the household of the Padishah played no conspicuous
rôle, there were exceptions to the rule. Under the institution of the
harem the Sultan’s wives were slaves, and frequently domestic discords
that had an influence on the destiny of the Empire were the result
of harem intrigues. Often the sons of the Sultan were children of
different parents. It was remarked in the time of Souliman that one of
his wives, Roxelane, perhaps a Russian, acquired great ascendency over
him. The Venetian ambassador reported that Souliman, contrary to the
custom of his ancestors, had taken her for his legitimate wife. She
became practically an empress, and was responsible for the Sultan’s
policy on several occasions. The war with Persia and the undermining of
the power of the grand vizier were due to her.
As to the army, it kept the basis marked out for it by Ala-ed-Din. The
élite body of the Janitschars still formed the chief protection of the
Sultan’s power. From the regular tribute of blood only Constantinople,
Athens, Rhodes, a few other islands, and the Mainotes, the Laconian
mountaineers, were exempted. Every five years the officers of the
Sultan passed through the villages where children of the peasants
were collected, and each fifth one was taken. Oftentimes Christian
families were glad to pay the exaction even before the tax collectors
appeared. Many of the members of the corps preserved traces of their
early faith, and so drank wine without scruple. The solidarity of the
body was maintained by exceptional privileges; their pay was large;
they had a special share of the booty, or regular donatives, and the
assurance of a pension for old age. The Janitschars were forbidden
to marry or to engage in any trade. They could be punished only by
their own officers, and even the grand vizier had no jurisdiction
over them. In the time of Souliman they numbered 12,000, and as their
numbers increased their turbulence grew. Selim attempted to meet this
difficulty by incorporating in their body 7000 of the palace servants,
and by dividing the command.
In the government of the subject peoples no uniformity was observed.
The inhabitants of mountain regions, the Albanians, the Montenegrins,
the Mainotes, the dwellers on Mt. Libanus, were protected from
tyrannical actions. Where the country was level, there were no bounds
to the barbarity of Turkish governmental methods. The vassal states,
such as Transylvania, Moldavia, Georgia, were still ruled by native
princes. But under Ottoman rule, in spite of the constant wars and the
attendant anarchic conditions, there was worked out a crude kind of
unity throughout the Empire. At least, with an Ottoman overlord, there
prevailed a condition of internal peace between the various portions of
the Empire, that gave stability to commercial relations and rendered
communication easy between distant parts. Religious persecution in
the sense in which it had existed in the Byzantine Empire, and in the
Eastern domains of the Italian municipalities, was now unknown. At
Rhodes the Greeks preferred the new régime to the rule of the Knights
Hospitalers, who, as Latins, had showed no sympathy with the Orthodox
Church. In Crete and Greece the Turks were more popular as masters than
the Venetians; and the Servians, Hungarians, and Roumanians preferred
Moslem control to that of Catholic Austria.
Economically, the substitution of Turkish for Byzantine rule was a
benefit to the Greek industrial population, who were better protected
against foreign competition than they had ever been. Customs duties
were arranged by an ad valorem scale, under which the Italian merchants
were taxed four and a half times as much as the native Christians,
although these, in turn, paid more than the Moslem traders who were
favored by the Ottoman government. The Greek parts of the Empire
entered upon an era of prosperity such as had not been seen since
before the Latin conquest of Constantinople. For example, a large
colony of Greeks established themselves at Ancona, where, in 1549, they
transacted business to the annual value of 500,000 ducats. Moreover,
the persecution of the Moors and Jews of Spain brought much capital
into Ottoman territory; soon there were numbered 30,000 Spanish Jews at
Constantinople, and 15,000 to 20,000 at Salonica. On this commercial
basis the national renascence of the Greek peoples was founded. The
landed proprietors of their own race mostly became Moslems, while their
scholars and literary men found a refuge in the Occident; but the
traders made and kept a place for themselves. Hence there was created a
new center in which the old ideals of an independent Greek nationality
could grow.
The Slav peoples were much worse off than the Greek population, because
over their provinces were scattered Turkish garrisons, and through them
passed the roads used by the Sultan for the interminable expeditions
into Hungary. They retained fewer traces of autonomous existence,
and their clergy were more ignorant than the Greek. The higher
ecclesiastical positions were never bestowed on Slavs, and their landed
gentry mostly became Moslem. The Roumanians, who were more remotely
situated, preserved, under the form of vassalage, a complete national
organization. They paid a moderate tribute, and were obliged to furnish
military contingents, but there were no Turks in their territory, and
no mosques were built among them. Wallachia and Moldavia, in the time
of Souliman, made more than one attempt to throw off Turkish rule, but
both principalities were compelled to submit before the middle of the
sixteenth century.
The Turkish conquest of North Africa begins, strictly speaking, with
the resistance of the Moslem Berber tribes and princes to the extension
of Spanish influence over the African Mediterranean coast towns. This
was a primary object of Charles V, who was bent on following up, by
his control of sea power, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. After
many vicissitudes, Kheir-ed-Din, who had a powerful rival supported by
the Spaniards, became King of Algiers. He turned to ask help from the
Sultan of Constantinople, Selim, and he offered, in return, to become
his vassal and to incorporate his small kingdom as an integral part of
the Ottoman Empire.
Selim sent to Kheir-ed-Din 2000 Janitschars, well realizing the
importance of using Algiers to block the progress of Charles V in his
North African ambitions. Four thousand men were also recruited in
Anatolia to defend the Moslem cause. It was a critical time, when the
Viceroy of Sicily (1519), at the head of an armada of forty ships,
appeared off Algiers. The Spaniards were beaten off, and many of the
ships were lost in a storm. An even greater success for Moslem arms
was the conquest, ten years later, of the citadel of Peñon, which
commanded the harbor of the city that had for long been in the hands
of the Spaniards. The island on which it stood was, by instructions
from Kheir-ed-Din, joined to the mainland, and so an impregnably
fortified harbor was constructed, which turned Algiers into the lasting
home of those Barbary pirates that were for so long the plague of the
Mediterranean commerce.
In 1535, Tunis was captured by Charles V in person, that monarch’s
great expedition of 400 ships and 30,000 men having proved too strong
for Kheir-ed-Din, who had hurried to save the place with only 9000
men. At Algiers, the Emperor’s next objective, Kheir-ed-Din could not
take part personally in the work of defense, since he was not kept in
command of the Turkish fleet. The government of Algiers was turned
over to Hassan Aka, no idle leader. The Christian Emperor’s armada was
calculated to inspire terror; when it gathered at Spezzia, in August,
1541, it numbered 65 galleys and 451 transports, ready to embark the
29,000 troops, German, Italian, and Spanish, and the members of the
Knights of Malta. In addition to the Emperor, who was in command, there
were a large number of high officers of the various arms, and members
of the nobility from Charles V’s wide domains.
To oppose this brilliant host, Hassan had only 800 Turks, 5000 Moors,
some Moriscos from Spain, and a few renegades from the Island of
Majorca. There were rumors of treachery on the part of Hassan, but when
the actual attack was made, nothing was left undone by him to keep up
an effective resistance. He was helped by a severe storm, which caused
much damage to the fleet; many ships were driven ashore, where the
crews were attacked and the cargoes seized. An attempt to attack one of
the forts by which the city was defended failed; the imperial troops
got near the walls, but no farther; even the heroism of the Knights
of Malta failed to save the day. The Spanish admiral, Doria, insisted
that the expedition should reimbark, as his ships could not hold their
anchorage. No other attempt on such a scale was made to arrest the
progress of the Turkish vassal powers in North Africa. Tripoli was
conquered in 1556, and there was incessant warfare with the Sherif of
Fez, and also with the Spaniards, who still continued to hold Oran.
After the death of Hassan, the Turkish Beglerbeg at Algiers was
Euldj-Ali, the son of a Calabrian fisherman. He had given up his faith
and become one of the most dreaded Corsairs in the Mediterranean.
He promoted the revolt of the Spanish Moriscos, afterwards winning
a great success at Tunis, where, in 1573, Don John of Austria had
brought 27,000 men to defend the Spanish citadel in the harbor. Euldj
gathered an overwhelming force, took Goletta, and massacred the Spanish
garrison. By this decisive victory Tunis became the seat of a Turkish
pashalik. His next step was to make the throne of Morocco dependent on
the Sultan.
The government of these African provinces was strictly centralized;
over the whole was a Beglerbeg, who transmitted to his subordinates
the directions which he received from Stamboul. The military strength
of the provinces was remarkable, notwithstanding the unimportant part
played by the regular Turkish soldiers. In their place there were
regiments of renegades, Kabyles, and mercenaries of many nationalities.
The navy was made up of corsairs, organized in a kind of guild, whose
members made a life business of hazardous expeditions on the sea for
the purpose of plundering vessels or harrying coast towns. No effort
was made to interfere with the local customs of the tribes in the
interior. All that was asked by the Beglerbeg was free passage for
military expeditions and the payment of a large tribute.
Turkish rule was maintained with a very small display of military
power. The whole country was controlled by little more than 15,000 men,
most of them in a small number of garrison towns. Scattered through the
country were small divisions of soldiers, whose chief business was the
collection of the tribute. For the purposes of local government there
were artificial tribes made up of natives, placed under the authority
of a sheik or religious personage. The government of Algiers gave these
groups certain landed concessions, and they paid some small dues to
the sheik. They were expected to support soldiers or travelers when
these appeared in their territory. They lived in tents or huts along
a highway and the principal group was called a konak. In addition
there were the real tribes, of warlike temper, that had once been
independent; they paid no tax on their land or herds, but they had the
function of collecting the tribute from inferior tribes called raias.
This recognized position was enough to secure their loyalty.
The Algerian corsairs became famous for their ravages in the narrow
seas, for their ships were models for speed and lightness, and their
crews worked under the strictest discipline. Each vessel carried
soldiers, cannon, and artillerymen. The merchant vessels they seized
were brought back to Algiers, where the passengers, crews, and cargoes
were sold at auction. These undertakings proved most profitable to
the captains, “Reis,” who built themselves a quarter of the town,
where they lived in houses resembling fortresses, since their captives
were kept in these buildings (bagni) until they could be sold. So was
formed a Barbary aristocracy, which ended by winning its independence
from Turkish rule. Among the corsairs were many renegades, especially
Italians.
Algiers developed from a small town to a city of 100,000 souls. Many
of the captives gave up Christianity and won their freedom. With
such elements it is not surprising that the hold of the Turks on the
inhabitants became weakened, until finally, not long after Greece won
its freedom, Algiers was conquered by the French in the reign of Louis
Philippe.
After the death of Souliman the Ottoman Sultanate underwent an eclipse.
The succession of strong rulers was broken, and the empire was largely
under the direction of the women of the harem and slaves. Of the eight
successors of Souliman, one only can be called a military leader; many
were mere children when they were called to the throne. Even Murad IV
(1623-40), the most active of all, took the title of Sultan when he
was twelve years old, and his career ended when he was twenty-eight.
But even under such unfavorable conditions the progress of Turkish
conquests was not arrested.
Of the western powers, the chief rival of the Ottoman Empire, during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was Venice. At the cost of
a yearly tribute of 236,000 ducats, she enjoyed great commercial
privileges, was mistress of possessions in the Levant and on the
Dalmatian coast, and blocked the way to complete Ottoman domination.
Though Rhodes had been taken from the Knights, as we have seen, the
large islands of Cyprus and Crete were still in the hands of the
republic of the Adriatic, and her possessions in the Ægean Sea were a
constant source of annoyance to the Turkish lords of the Morea. Piracy
flourished in these ports, which became centers of retaliation for the
excesses of the Barbary corsairs.