Part 26

The next field of Souliman’s military enterprise was Persia, where 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.