The poem shows that the Romans, like the English of those days, celebrated the season by betaking themselves to the woods throughout the night, where they kept a vigil in honour of Venus, to whose guardianship the month of April was assigned, as being the universal generating and producing power, and more especially to be adored as such by the Romans, from having been, through her son AEneas, the author of their race. The poem seems to have been composed with a view to its being sung by a choir of maidens in their nocturnal rambles beneath the soft light of an Italian moon. The delicious balm of that voluptuous climate breathes through every line of it, and vividly presents to the reader's imagination the scene of the festivity; but whether we can claim these celebrations for our own May-day, is a doubtful point; for Wernsdorf, who has included the Pervigilium Veneris in his edition of Poetae Latini Minores, vol. iii., maintains that it is to be referred to the Veneralia, or feast of Venus, on the 1st of April. The Kalendar of Constantius marks the 3d day of April as Natalis Quirini. If, then, the morrow spoken of in the poem is to be taken to mean this birthday of Romulus, we must suppose the vigil of three nights to have begun on the night of the last day of March. But perhaps our readers will agree with us, that there are quite as good grounds for attributing this vigil to the Floralia, which commenced on the 27th of April, and ended on the first of May. For although the rites of the Floralia were in honour of Flora, yet we may easily conceive the principle by which the worship of Venus, the spirit of beauty, and love, and production, would come to be intermingled with the homage paid to the flower-goddess. And then the three nights would denote the nights of the Floralia already past, if we suppose the hymn to have been sung on the night before the 1st of May. This seems more natural, as coinciding with the known length of the festival, than Wernsdorf's hypothesis, which makes the vigil commence before the month of Venus had opened. As regards the time of year, too, May is far more suited than April, even in Italy, for outwatching the Bear on woodland lawns.

The question regarding the author of the Pervigilium Veneris is still a lis sub judice. Aldus, Erasmus, and Meursius, attributed it to Catullus; but subsequent editors have, with much more probability, contended that its age is considerably later. We may notice a scholastic and philosophical spirit about it, which is ill-suited to the Bard of Verona. Lipsius claimed it for the Augustan age, in consequence of the mention of Caesar which is introduced. But we think we may safely assume, that the observance of this vigil grew into custom after the time of Ovid, otherwise it is difficult to account for the total absence of all allusion, in his Fasti, to a subject so perfectly adapted to his verse. But we will not enter any further into a discussion which Salmasius and Scaliger could not settle, but shall at once present our readers with the following translation of the Pervigilium Veneris:—

He that never loved before, Let him love to-morrow! He that hath loved o'er and o'er, Let him love to-morrow!

Spring, young Spring, with song and mirth, Spring is on the newborn earth. Spring is here, the time of love— The merry birds pair in the grove, And the green trees hang their tresses, Loosen'd by the rain's caresses. To-morrow sees the dawn of May, When Venus will her sceptre sway, Glorious, in her justice-hall: There where woodland shadows fall, On bowers of myrtle intertwined, Many a band of love she'll bind. He that never, &c.

To-morrow is the day when first From the foam-world of Ocean burst, Like one of his own waves, the bright Dione, queen of love and light, Amid the sea-gods' azure train, 'Mid the strange horses of the main. He that never, &c.

She it is that lends the Hours Their crimson glow, their jewel-flowers: At her command the buds are seen, Where the west-wind's breath hath been, To swell within their dwellings green. She abroad those dewdrops flings, Dew that night's cool softness brings; How the bright tears hang declining, And glisten with a tremulous shining, Almost of weight to drop away, And yet too light to leave the spray. Hence the tender plants are bold Their blushing petals to unfold: 'Tis that dew, which through the air Falls from heaven when night is fair, That unbinds the moist green vest From the floweret's maiden breast. 'Tis Venus' will, when morning glows, 'Twill be the bridal of each rose. Then the bride-flower shall reveal, What her veil cloth now conceal, The blush divinest, which of yore She caught from Venus' trickling gore, With Love's kisses mix'd, I trow, With blaze of fire, and rubies' glow, And with many a crimson ray Stolen from the birth of day. He that never, &c.

All the nymphs the Queen of Love Summons to the myrtle-grove; And see ye, how her wanton boy Comes with them to share our joy? Yet, if Love be arm'd, they say, Love can scarce keep holiday: Love without his bow is straying! Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying. His torch, his shafts, are laid aside— From them no harm shall you betide. Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, beware, For your foe is passing fair; Love is mighty, ye'll confess, Mighty e'en in nakedness; And most panoplied for fight When his charms are bared to sight. He that never, &c.

Dian, a petition we, By Venus sent, prefer to thee: Virgin envoys, it is meet, Should the Virgin huntress greet: Quit the grove, nor it profane With the blood of quarry slain. She would ask thee, might she dare Hope a maiden's thought to share— She would bid thee join us now, Might cold maids our sport allow. Now three nights thou may'st have seen, Wandering through thine alleys green, Troops of joyous friends, with flowers Crown'd, amidst their myrtle bowers. Ceres and Bacchus us attend, And great Apollo is our friend; All night we must our Vigil keep— Night by song redeem'd from sleep. Let Venus in the woods bear sway, Dian, quit the grove, we pray. He that never, &c.

Of Hybla's flowers, so Venus will'd, Venus' judgment-seat we build. She is judge supreme; the Graces, As assessors, take their places. Hybla, render all thy store All the season sheds thee o'er, Till a hill of bloom be found Wide as Enna's flowery ground. Attendant nymphs shall here be seen, Those who delight in forest green, Those who on mountain-top abide, And those whom sparkling fountains hide. All these the Queen of joy and sport Summons to attend her court, And bids them all of Love beware, Although the guise of peace he wear. He that never, &c.

Fresh be your coronals of flowers, And green your overarching bowers, To-morrow brings us the return Of Ether's primal marriage-morn. In amorous showers of rain he came T' embrace his bride's mysterious frame, To generate the blooming year, And all the produce Earth does bear. Venus still through vein and soul Bids the genial current roll; Still she guides its secret course With interpenetrating force, And breathes through heaven, and earth, and sea, A reproductive energy. He that never, &c.

She old Troy's extinguish'd glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the stock of high renown, The blood of Romulus, handed down Through many an age of glory pass'd, To blaze in Caesar's at last. He that never, &c.

All rural nature feels the glow Of quickening passion through it flow. Love, in rural scenes of yore, They say, his goddess-mother bore; Received on Earth's sustaining breast, Th' ambrosial infant sunk to rest; And him the wild-flowers, o'er his head Bending, with sweetest kisses fed. He that never, &c.

On yellow broom out yonder, see, The mighty bulls lie peacefully. Each animal of field or grove Owns faithfully the bond of love. The flocks of ewes, beneath the shade, Around their gallant rams are laid; And Venus bids the birds awake To pour their song through plain and brake. Hark! the noisy pools reply To the swan's hoarse harmony; And Philomel is vocal now, Perch'd upon a poplar-bough. Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall; Thou scarce would'st gather from her song The tale of brother's barbarous wrong. She sings, but I must silent be:— When will the spring-tide come for me? When, like the swallow, spring's own bird, Shall my faint twittering notes be heard? Alas! the muse, while silent I Remain'd, hath gone and pass'd me by, Nor Phoebus listens to my cry. And thus forgotten, I await, By silence lost, Amyclae's fate.

* * * * *



CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY—SIEGE OF CANDIA.

NO. IX.

The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the turbulence of the Janissaries,[1] vanished at his death; and for many years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without. The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government, he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed Mah-peiker, or the Moon-face,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I., and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding, kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene ensued almost without parallel in history—the deposition of an absolute sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and other panders to the vices of the sultan, were seized and put to death on the place of public execution; while an immense crowd of soldiers, citizens, and janissaries, assembling before the palace of the mufti early on the morning of August 8, 1648, received from him a fetwa, or decree, to the effect that the sultan (designated as "Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman Effendi") had, by his habitual immorality and disregard of law, forfeited all claim to be considered as a true believer, and was therefore incapable of reigning over the Faithful. The execution of this sentence was entrusted to the Aga of the Janissaries, the Silihdar or grand sword-bearer, and the Kadhi-asker or chief judge of Anatolia, who, repairing to the seraglio, attended by a multitude of military officers and the ulemah, proceeded without ceremony to announce to Ibrahim that his rule was at an end. His furious remonstrances were drowned by the rude voice of the Kadhi Abdul-Aziz Effendi,[2] who boldly reproached him with his vices. "Thou hast gone astray," said he, "from the paths in which thy glorious ancestors walked, and hast trampled under foot both law and religion, and thou art no longer the padishah of the Moslems!" He was at last conducted to the same apartment whence he had been taken to ascend the throne, and where, ten days later, his existence was terminated by the bowstring; while the Sultana-Walidah, (whose acquiescence in this extraordinary revolution had been previously secured,) led into the salamlik (hall of audience) her eldest grandson Mohammed,[3] an infant scarcely seven years old, who was forthwith seated on the imperial sofa, and received the homage of the dignitaries of the realm.

[1] See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.

[2] He was afterwards, in 1651, mufti for a few months; but is better known as an historian, (under the appellation of Kara-Tchelibi-Zadah,) and as having been tutor to Ahmed-Kiuprili.

[3] His name, according to Evliya, was originally Yusuf, but was changed to Mohammed on the entreaty of the ladies of the seraglio, who said that Yusuf was the name of a slave.

Sultan Mohammed IV., afterwards surnamed Avadji, or the Hunter, who was destined to fill the throne of the Ottoman Empire during one of the most eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form, and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a Zigano, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign, his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim, languished for want of troops and supplies; while the rival military factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained, Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.

The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs, within eight years from the deposition of Ibrahim, had successively held the reins of power for short periods; and not less than six had been raised to, and deposed from, that precarious dignity, within the last ten months, while the audacity of the troops, and the helplessness of the executive, had reached an unparalleled climax. In a memorable insurrection, arising from the depreciation of the coinage, which marked the spring of 1656, the revolters, not contented with their usual license of plunder and bloodshed, forced their way into the palace, and exacted from the young sultan the surrender of two of his favourite domestics, who were instantly slaughtered before his eyes; while various obnoxious public functionaries were dragged to the At-meidan, and summarily hanged on the branches of a large plane-tree;[4] and for several weeks this proscription was continued, till the cry of "Take him to the plane-tree!" became a watchword of as well-known and fearful import, as that of "A la lanterne!" in later times. In this emergency, when the fabric of government seemed on the verge of dissolution, an ancient Anatolian pasha, Mohammed-Kiuprili, who had lately repaired to the capital, was named by her confidential advisers to the Sultana-Walidah as a man whose eminent discernment and sagacity, not less than his fearless intrepidity, rendered him especially fitted for the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned; but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha, (surnamed Egri, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh change alone could prevent another convulsion. On the 15th September 1656, therefore, in a fortunate[5] hour for the distracted empire, Kiuprili was summoned to the presence of the sultan, who had now, nominally at least, assumed the direction of affairs, and received from his hands the seals of office.

[4] The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

[5] The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to noon prayers was resounding from the minarets—an evident token of the Divine protection extended to him!

Such were the circumstances of the elevation of this most celebrated of Ottoman ministers, whose name stands pre-eminent, not only from his own abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut[6] soldier, who had settled in Anatolia, on receiving a timar or fief in the district of Amasia, near the town of Kiupri, ('the bridge:') from which (since distinguished from other places of the same name as Vizir-Kiupri) his descendants derived the surname under which they are generally mentioned in history. He commenced his career as a page in the imperial seraglio; which he left for a post in the household of Khosroo, afterwards grand-vizir, who was then aga of janissaries. Passing through various gradations of rank, he held several governments in Syria, and was raised to the grade of pasha of three tails: till, at an advanced age, he obtained permission to exchange these honours for the post of sandjak of his native district, to which he accordingly withdrew. But his retirement was disturbed, in 1648, by the insurrection of Varvar-Ali, pasha of Siwas, who, rather than surrender a beautiful daughter, the affianced bride of his neighbour Ipshir, pasha of Tokat, to the panders of the imperial harem, had raised the standard of revolt, and had been joined by the pasha of Erzroom, Gourdji-Mohammed, (to whose suite the annalist Evliya was then attached,) and by many of the Turkman clans of Anatolia. The Sultana-Walidah herself, who was then at variance with her degenerate son, secretly encouraged the insurgents, who endeavoured to gain over Kiuprili to their party; but as they failed in all their efforts to shake his loyalty, Varvar suddenly marched against him, routed the troops which he had collected, and made him prisoner, with two beglerbegs whom he had summoned to his aid. "I saw these three pashas" (says Evliya, who had come to the rebel camp on a mission from Gourdji-Mohammed) "stripped of their robes and turbans, and fastened by chains round their necks to stakes in front of the tent of Varvar-Ali, while the seghbans, and even the surridjis" (irregular horse) "brandished their sabres before their faces, threatening them with instant death. Thus we see the changes of fortune, that those who were the drivers become in their turn the driven," (like cattle.)

[6] In a narrative by a writer named Chassipol, (Paris, 1676,) professing to be the biography of the two first Kiuprili vizirs, Mohammed is said to have been the son of a French emigrant, and this romance has been copied by most European authors. But the testimony of Evliya, Kara-Tchelibi, and all contemporary Turkish writers, is decisive on the point of his Albanian origin.

Evliya, who seems to feel a malicious pleasure in relating this mishap of the future grand-vizir, confesses to having himself received a horse and a slave out of his spoils; but even before his departure from the camp, the rebellion was crushed, and Kiuprili released, by the base treachery of Ipshir-Pasha,[7] for whose sake alone Varvar-Ali had taken up arms. Won by the emissaries of the Porte, by the promise of the rich pashalic of Aleppo, he suddenly assailed the troops of his father-in-law, and seizing his person, cut off his head, and sent it with those of his principal followers to Constantinople—an act of perfidious ingratitude, which, even among the frequent breaches of faith staining the Ottoman annals, has earned for its perpetrator the sobriquet of Khain, or the traitor, par excellence. After this unlucky adventure, we hear no more of Kiuprili in his Anatolian sandjak, till, in the spring of 1656, we find him accompanying Egri-Mohammed on his way to the Porte to assume the vizirat: from which, in less than four months, he was removed to make way for his quondam protege, in whose elevation he had thus been an involuntary instrument.

[7] Ipshir Mustapha Pasha was originally a Circassian slave, and said to have been a tribesman and near relation of the famous Abaza. During the revolutions which distracted the minority of Mohammed, he became grand-vizir for a few months, (Oct. 1654-May 1655,) but was cut off by an unanimous insurrection of the spahis and janissaries, who forgot their feuds for the sake of vengeance on the common enemy.

Mohamned Kiuprili was at this period nearly eighty years of age, and so wholly illiterate that he could neither read nor write; yet such was the general estimation of his wisdom and abilities, that the young sultan, on entrusting to him the ensigns of office, voluntarily pledged himself to leave entirely at his discretion the regulation of the foreign and domestic relations of the empire, as well as the disposal of all offices of state—thus virtually delegating to him the functions of sovereignty. The measures of Kiuprili soon showed that these extraordinary powers would not be suffered to remain dormant. The impatience of the troops at the strict discipline which he enforced, erelong announced the approach of a fresh tumult; and the ringleaders, in the confidence of long-continued impunity, openly boasted that "the plane-tree would soon bear another crop"—when on the night of Jan. 5, 1657, the grand-vizir, accompanied by the aga of the janissaries, and fortified by a fetwa from the mufti, legalizing whatever he might do, made the round of the barracks with his guards, and seized several hundreds of all ranks in the various corps, whose bodies, found floating the next day in the Bosphorus, revealed their fate to their dismayed accomplices. The Greek patriarch, on suspicion of having endeavoured to engage the Vaivode of Wallachia in a plot for a general rising of the Christians, was summoned to the Porte, and forthwith bowstrung in the presence of Kiuprili; and in the course of a few weeks, not fewer than 4000 of those who had been implicated in the previous disorders perished under the hands of the executioner: "for as in medicine," remarks a Turkish historian, "it is necessary to employ remedies which are analogous to the disease, so by bloodshed alone could the state be purified from these lawless shedders of blood!"

These terrible severities broke the spirit of insubordination in the capital; and the irregularity of their pay, which had been one of the chief grievances of the janissaries, was remedied by the good order which Kiuprili had from the first introduced in the finances. "He proportioned the expenditure of the empire," says Evliya, "to its revenues, which he also greatly enlarged, so that he gained the name of Sahib-Kharj," (master of finance.) The Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy reigning at Constantinople to occupy Tenedos and Lemnos, so as to blockade the Dardanelles, were dislodged by the activity of the vizir, who directed the sieges in person, bestowing honours and rewards on the soldiers most distinguished for their bravery; and though the Turkish fleet was defeated (July 17, 1657) at the entrance of the straits, the Venetians sustained an irreparable loss in their valiant admiral Mocenigo, who was blown up with his ship by a well-aimed shot from one of the batteries on shore. But though the janissaries were thus reduced to order and obedience, the flame of disaffection was still smouldering among the spahis of Asia Minor, and broke out, in the course of the ensuing year, into a formidable and widely-organized rebellion. Not fewer than forty pashas and sandjaks followed the banner of the insurgent leader Abaza-Hassan, pasha of Aleppo, who advanced towards the Bosphorus at the head of 70,000 men, assuming the state of a monarch, and demanding the heads of Kiuprili and his principal adherents as the price of his submission. Morteza-Pasha, governor of Diarbekr, who attempted to oppose him in the field, was routed with the loss of nearly his whole army; and though the emissaries who attempted to seduce the troops in Constantinople from their allegiance were detected and put to death by the vigilance of Kiuprili, the revolt spread throughout Anatolia and Syria, and the sultan was preparing to take the field in person, when treachery succeeded in accomplishing what force had failed to effect. It has been an uniform maxim of the Ottoman domestic policy, which singularly contrasts with their scrupulous observance of the treaties entered into with foreign powers, that no faith is to be kept with fermanlis, or traitors to the Padishah; and in the assured belief, confirmed by hostages and solemn oaths, that the sultan was willing to accede to his demands, Abaza-Hassan suffered himself to be drawn from his headquarters at Aintab, with thirty of his officers, to a conference with Morteza at Aleppo: but, in the midst of the banquet which followed this interview, Abaza and his comrades found themselves in the grasp of the executioners—while their followers, dispersed through the town, were slaughtered without mercy on the signal of a gun fired from the castle; and the army, panic-stricken at the fate of its leaders, quickly melted away. But no sooner was the semblance of tranquillity restored, than the Kaimakam Ismail Pasha, an unscrupulous agent of the merciless decrees of the vizir, was sent into Asia under the new title of Moufetish, or inquisitor; and an unsparing proscription almost utterly exterminated all the remaining partizans of Abaza-Hassan, without distinction of rank; while the suppression of numerous timars or fiefs, and the removal of the occupants of others from their ancient abodes to remote districts, so effectually loosened the bands which had hitherto united the spahis, like the janissaries, into a compact fraternity, that this once powerful body was divided and broken; and they no longer occupy, as a separate faction, their former conspicuous place in the troubled scene of Ottoman history.

The termination of this great revolt freed Kiuprili from the apprehension of military sedition, and left him in the enjoyment of more absolute and undivided authority than had ever been possessed by any of his predecessors in office. The sultan, from whose mind the impression of the bloody scenes witnessed in his youth had never been effaced, rarely visited Constantinople; devoting himself to the pleasures of the chase in the forests and hills of Roumelia, and repairing only at intervals to the ancient palace of his ancestors at Adrianople, whither his harem and household had been transferred from the capital. The uncontrolled administration of the state was left in the hands of the vizir, but his implacable severity towards all who failed in implicit devotion to his will, continued unabated. "He was unacquainted" (says his contemporary, Rycaut) "with mercy, and never pardoned any who were either guilty of a fault, or suspected for it;" and neither rank nor services afforded protection to those who had incurred his jealousy or resentment. Among the numerous victims of his suspicious cruelty, the fate of Delhi-Hussein-Pasha was long remembered in Constantinople. Originally a battadji or lictor in the seraglio, he had attracted the notice of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi by his strength and address in bending a bow sent as a challenge by the Shah of Persia, and which had baffled the efforts of all the pelhwans or champions of the Ottoman court. His first advancement to the post of equerry was only a prelude to the attainment of higher honours, and he became successively governor of Buda and of Egypt, capitan-pasha and serasker in Candia. His exploits in the latter capacity had endeared him to the troops, while his noble figure and frank bearing made him equally the idol of the citizens, but his unbounded popularity led Kiuprili to foresee a future rival in this favourite hero, and the fate of Delhi-Hussein was sealed. In an interview with the vizir, he was graciously received, and invested with a robe of honour; but as he quitted the Porte he was arrested and carried to the Seven Towers, where, two days after, (in spite of the intercession of the Sultana-Walidah, and the refusal of the mufti to ratify the unjust doom,) he was bowstrung in his cell, as the murmurs of the troops prevented the vizir from risking a public execution.

But though thus inexorable to all whose popularity or pretensions might interfere with his own supremacy, and haughty even beyond all former precedent in his intercourse with the representatives of the Christian powers,[8] Kiuprili deserved, by the merits of his domestic administration, the high place which has been assigned to him by the unanimous voice of the Ottoman historians. The exact regularity which he enforced both in the payment and disbursement of the revenue, relieved the people from the irregular imposts to which they had been subject, in order to make up the deficiencies arising from the interception, by the pashas, of the tributes of distant provinces, and the peculation which had long reigned unchecked at the seat of government—while the sums thus rendered disposable were laid out chiefly in improving the internal communications, and strengthening the defences, of the empire. The Dardanelles, hitherto guarded only by Mohammed II.'s two castles of Europe and Asia, was made almost impregnable by the construction of the formidable line of sea defences still existing; the necessity for which had been demonstrated by the recent attack of the Venetians; and fortified posts were established along the line of the Dnieper and Dniester, to keep in cheek the predatory Cossacks between these rivers, who were at this time engaged in a furious civil contest with the king of Poland, the ally of the Porte. The Hungarian fortresses were also repaired, and vast warlike preparations made along the Danube, as the peace which for fifty years had subsisted with the empire appeared on the verge of inevitable rupture. The succession to the principality of Transylvania, the suzerainte of which had long been a point of dispute between the Porte and Austria, was now contested between Kemeny and Michael Abaffi—the latter being the nominee of the sultan, while Kemeny was supported by the emperor, to whom the late Prince Racoczy had transferred his allegiance a short time before his death in battle against the Turks, in 1660. The Imperialists and Turks had more than once encountered each other as auxiliaries of the rival candidates, and Kiuprili was on the point of repairing in person to the scene of action, when he died at Adrianople of dropsy, (Oct. 31, 1661,) in the eighty-sixth year of his age, and was buried in a splendid mausoleum, which he had erected for himself, near the Tauk-bazar (poultry market) at Constantinople—the vault of which, during his life, he had daily filled with corn, which was then distributed to the poor to purchase their prayers! "Thus," says a Turkish annalist, "died Kiuprili-Mohammed, who was most zealous and active in the cause of the faith! Enjoying absolute power, and being anxious to purify the Ottoman empire, he slew in Anatolia 400,000[9] rebels, including seventeen vizirs or pashas of three tails, forty-one of two tails, seventy sandjak-beys, three mallahs, and a Moghrabiu sheikh. May God be merciful to him!"

[8] De la Haye, the French ambassador, was imprisoned in 1658, and his son bastinadoed in the presence of Kiuprili, for being unable or unwilling to give a key to some letters in cipher from the Venetians; and some years later, the envoy of the Czar, Alexis Mikhailowitz, was driven, with blows and violence, from the presence of the sultan, who was irritated by the incompetency of the interpreter to translate the Czar's letter! This latter outrage, however, was not till after the death of the elder Kiuprili.

[9] This monstrous exaggeration is reduced by Rycaut to the more credible, but still enormous number of 36,000 victims during the five years of his ministry.

The genius of the Ottoman institutions is so directly opposed to any thing like the perpetuation of offices in a family, which might tend to endanger the despotism of the throne by the creation of an hereditary aristocracy, that even in the inferior ranks, an instance had hitherto scarcely been known of a son succeeding his father. The immediate appointment, therefore, of Fazil-Ahmed, the eldest son of the deceased minister, to the vizirat, was so complete a departure from all established usages, as at once demonstrated to the expectant courtiers that the influence of the crafty old vizir had survived him, and that "the star of the house of Kiuprili" (in the words of a Turkish writer) "had only set in the west to rise again with fresh splendour in the east." Ahmed-Kiuprili was now thirty-two years of age, and joined to an intellect not less naturally vigorous than that of his father, those advantages of education in which the latter had been deficient. At an early age he had been placed under the historian, Abdul-Aziz Effendi, as a student of divinity and law, in the medressah or college attached to the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror, and had attained, in due course, the rank of muderris or fellow therein; but the elevation of his father to the vizirat transferred him from the cloister to the camp, and he held the governments successively of Erzroom and Damascus—in the latter of which he distinguished himself by his moderation and firmness in reducing to order the refractory chiefs of the Druses, of the two great rival houses of Shahab and Maan-Oghlu. Recalled, at length, to Constantinople to assume the office of kaimakam, he had scarcely entered on his new duties when he was summoned to Adrianople, to attend the deathbed of his father, and to succeed him in the uncontrolled administration of the empire.

The numerous executions which marked the accession of the new vizir, (in accordance, as was believed, with the dying injunctions of his father,) struck with terror the functionaries of government, who anticipated a continuance of the iron rule under which they had so long trembled; but the disposition of Ahmed-Kiuprili was not naturally sanguinary, and few measures of unnecessary severity characterized his subsequent sway. The war in Hungary, meanwhile, had assumed a serious aspect; for though Kemeny had perished in battle, the Imperialists still continued to oppose the claims of Abaffi to the crown of Transylvania; and their armies, guided by the valour and experience of Montecuculi, a general formed in the Thirty Years' War, were making rapid progress in the reduction of the principality. War was now openly declared between the two empires; and Kiuprili, assuming the command in person, opened the campaign of 1663, in Hungary, with 100,000 men—a force before which Montecuculi had no alternative but to retreat, as the rapidity with which the Turks had taken the field, had completely outstripped the dilatory preparations of the Aulic Council[10]. The exploits of the Ottomans, however, were confined to the capture of Ujvar, or Neuhausel, after a siege maintained on both sides with such extraordinary vigour, as to have given rise to a Hungarian proverb—"As fixed as a Turk before Neuhausel,"—after which both armies withdrew into winter-quarters. The campaign of 1664 opened also to the advantage of the Ottomans; but in attempting the passage of the Raab, (Aug. 1,) at the fords near St Gothard, the sudden swelling of the stream cut off the communication between one division of their army and the other; and being attacked at this juncture by Montecuculi, they sustained the most signal overthrow which the Osmanlis had ever yet received from a Christian power—17,000 of their best troops were slain or drowned, and the vizir, hastily drawing on the remains of his forces, sent proposals of peace to the Austrian headquarters. Yet such was the indefinite awe with which the prowess and resources of the Ottomans were at that time regarded, that the Imperialists made no further use of their victory than to conclude a truce for twenty years, the conditions of which, in effect, ceded all the points for which the war had been undertaken. Abaffi was recognised as Prince of Transylvania, and as a tributary of the Porte—the two important fortresses of Great-Waradin and Neuhausel, which the Turks had taken during the war, were left in their hands, and a breathing-time was thus afforded to the two empires for the mortal struggle which was to be decided, nineteen years later, under the walls of Vienna.

[10] "The Turk," says Montecuculi, "who is always armed, never finds time bald, but can always seize him by the forelock: the number of his victories, and the extent of territory which he has taken from the Christians, and which they have never been able to recover, sufficiently proves this, and shows the rashness and folly of those who pretend to make light of his power."

Notwithstanding the ill success of his arms, the vizir was received by the sultan, on his return with the army in the ensuing spring to Adrianople, with such extraordinary distinction, that those who had hoped to profit by his expected fall, could explain such continued favour only by the supposition that sorcery had been practised on the mind of the monarch by the mother of the all-powerful minister. Solicitous to retrieve his military reputation in the eyes of the soldiery, Kiuprili now determined to assume in person the conduct of the long-continued war in Crete, and to bring the struggle to a close by the capture of Candia, the siege of which had already reached near twice the duration of that of Troy. To supply the deficiencies of the Turkish marine, which had been almost ruined by the repeated naval victories of the Venetians, an overture was made to the English ambassador, Lord Winchilsea, for permission to hire the services of a number of British vessels; but this strange request being evaded, the expedition was postponed for a year, while every nerve was strained in the building and equipment of galleys; and at length, in the autumn of 1666, the fleet set sail from Monembasia in the Morea, under the command of the Capitan-pasha Mustafa, surnamed Kaplan, or the Tiger, the brother-in-law of Kiuprili, and anchored off Canea in the beginning of November. But before we proceed to narrate the closing scenes of the Cretan war, we must retrace our steps, to give some account of its origin and progress.

The dominions of the Venetian Signory in the Levant, which had at one time comprehended, besides the scattered isles of the Cyclades, the three subject kingdoms (as they were proudly called) of Candia,[11] Cyprus, and the Morea, were confined, in the middle of the seventeenth century, to the first-named island—the last relics of the Morea having been wrested from the republic by the arms of Soliman the Magnificent in 1540, and Cyprus having been subdued by the lieutenants of his son Selim, a few months before the destruction of the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto in 1571.[12] The sovereignty of Candia had been acquired by purchase from the Marquis of Montferrat, to whom it was assigned on the partition of the Greek empire, after the conquest of Constantinople, in 1204, by the Latins of the fourth crusade: but the four centuries and a half of Venetian rule present little more than an unvarying succession of revolts, oppression, and bloodshed. In pursuance of their usual system of colonial administration, which strangely contrasted with their domestic policy, they had introduced into the island a sort of modified feudal system, in order to rivet their ascendancy over this remote possession, by the interposition of a class of resident proprietors, whose interest it would be to maintain the dominion of the parent state: but the cavaliers, as the Venetian tenants of Cretan fiefs were termed, proved at times even more refractory than the candidates themselves, and made the island for many years a source of endless difficulties to the Signory. In 1363, complaining of their exclusion from the high dignities of the republic, the cavaliers openly threw off their allegiance, elected a doge from among themselves, and raised the banner of St Titus of Retimo in opposition to the standard of St Mark. As they were supported both by the native Candiotes and the Greeks of Constantinople, it was not till after a harassing warfare of two years that they were reduced, and their fortresses razed, by the Provveditori sent from Venice; a second effort at independence, a few years later, was not more successful. The Greek inhabitants were throughout subjected to a degree of merciless tyranny, in comparison of which the worst severities of Turkish rule must have appeared lenient. The Sphakiote tribes in particular, who were strong both from their arms and martial temperament, and from their habitations among the lofty ridges of the Aspro-Bouna, or White Mountains, in the south of the island, acknowledged at all times but an imperfect allegiance to their Venetian lords: and the acts of fiendish barbarity by which their frequent revolts were chastised, can scarcely find a parallel even in the worst horrors of the French Revolution. Unborn infants torn from the womb in pursuance of a judicial sentence solemnly pronounced—the head of the father exacted as the ransom for the life of the son—such were the methods by which the Provveditori of the Most Serene and Christian Republic enforced its authority, and which are related, not only without reprehension, but with manifest complacency and approval, by the chroniclers of the state.[13]

[11] The name of Candia, which is the Italianized form of Kandax, (now Megalo-Kastro,) is unknown at the present day to the Greek inhabitants of the island, which they call by its classic name of [Greek: Kraetae].—See PASHLEY'S Travels in Crete, i. chap. 11.

[12] A notable retort is on record from the vizir to the Venetian envoy, who, on repairing to Constantinople after the battle, expressed his astonishment at the progress already made in the equipment of a new fleet. "Know," (said the haughty Osmanli,) "that the loss of a fleet to the Padishah is as the shaving of his beard, which will grow again all the thicker; whereas the loss of Cyprus is to Venice as the amputation of an arm from the body, which will never be reproduced."

[13] "Thus were they annihilated, and all men who were faithful and devoted to God and their prince, were solaced and consoled."—MS. Chronicle by the notary Trivan, quoted by PASHLEY, chap. 33. These atrocities were perpetrated in the early part of the 16th century.

Though the coasts had often been ravaged in former wars by the Turkish fleet, particularly under Barbarossa in 1538, no attempt appears ever to have been made to effect the conquest of the island by the reduction of the fortified cities of the coast, in which the main strength of the Venetians lay: and since the treaty of 1573, Venice had remained more than seventy years at peace with the Porte. In 1645, however, a fresh rupture arose from the capture of a richly-laden Turkish vessel by the Maltese cruisers,[14] who were allowed, contrary to the existing conventions between the Porte and the Republic, to sell the horses which were on board their prize in one of the remote havens of Crete, beyond the surveillance of the Venetian authorities. Slight as was the ground of offence, it produced an instantaneous ferment at Constantinople: the janissaries, calling to mind similar omens said to have preceded the conquest of Rhodes and of Cyprus, exclaimed that the land whose soil had once been trodden by Moslem horse hoofs, was the predestined inheritance of the Faithful: and the flame was fanned by the capitan-pasha Yusuf, a Dalmatian renegade, who, independent of the hatred which from early associations he bore Venice, dreaded being sent on a bootless expedition against the impregnable defences of Malta—an enterprise which, since the memorable failure in the last years of Soliman, had never been attempted by the Osmanlis. Preparations for war, meanwhile, were carried on with unexampled activity, though the destination of the armament was kept profoundly secret; till, on April 30, 1545, the most formidable expedition which had ever been equipped in the Turkish ports, set sail from the Bosphorus. Eight thousand janissaries, 14,000 spahis, and upwards of 50,000 timariots or feudal militia, were embarked on board the fleet, which consisted of eighty galleys, and more than 300 transports, besides the auxiliary squadrons of the Barbary regencies, which joined the armada, May 7, at the general rendezvous at Scio.

[14] Among the captives was the ex-nurse of the heir-apparent, afterwards Mohammed IV., with her son, who was mistaken for a prince of the Imperial family; and being carried to Malta, was brought up there as a monk under the name of Padre Ottomanno! During the siege of Candia he was brought to the beleaguered fortress, in the hope that the presence of this supposed Turkish prince of the blood would shake the allegiance of the janissaries—but this notable scheme, as might have been foreseen, was wholly without success.

From Scio the united fleet sailed to Navarino—a course purposely adopted to spread the belief that Malta was the point of attack; but no sooner were they again at sea, than the capitan-pasha, summoning the principal officers on board his galley, read the khatt sheeref of the sultan, announcing that he had taken up arms for the conquest of Candia. War had, in the mean time, been formally declared against the Republic at Constantinople, and the Venetian envoy, Soranzo, imprisoned in the Seven Towers: but he had previously contrived to communicate to the Signory his suspicions of the impending storm; and supplies and reinforcements had been hastily dispatched from Venice to Andrea Cornaro, the inquisitore, or governor of Crete, in the event of its bursting in that quarter. Little serious apprehension seems, however, to have been entertained; and great was the consternation of the Candiote population, when, on the morning of June 24, the vast armament of the Ottomans was seen rounding Cape Spada, and disembarking the troops near Canea, on the same spot where, according to tradition, the standards of Islam had first been displayed, 820 years before, by the Saracens of Spain.

The strong ramparts of Canea opposed but an ineffectual resistance to the numbers and resolution of the Ottomans, who pressed the siege with all the ardour arising from the confidence of success; and after fifty days of open trenches, and the failure of two assaults, the second fortress of the island capitulated, August 17. The churches and the cathedral of St Nicholas were converted into mosques: and Delhi-Hussein (whose subsequent tragical fate has been already commemorated) was sent out to take the government of this new conquest. The brave Yusuf, returning to Constantinople at the end of the year, was at first received with the highest honours by Ibrahim, but soon after put to death in one of his fits of senseless cruelty; but the Ottomans in Crete, under the gallant leadership of Delhi-Hussein, who now became serdar or commander-in-chief, overran and occupied the inland districts almost without opposition from the Greek inhabitants, in whose eyes any alternative was preferable to the bloody tyranny under which they had so long groaned:[15] while the Venitian garrisons, shut up in the fortified towns along the northern shore, depended for supplies on the Christian fleet, which the Turks did not venture to bring to action. The campaign of 1646 was marked by the capture of the important city of Retimo, which surrendered Nov. 15, after a murderous siege of thirty-nine days, in which both the governor Cornaro and the provveditor Molino were slain: but though the Turks received reinforcements to the amount of 30,000 men, including 10,000 janissaries, in the course of the following year, it was not till May 1648 that the trenches were at length opened before Candia, the capital of the island, and the only fortress of importance still in the hands of the Venetians.

[15] Many of them adopted the faith of the invaders—and Tournefort, who visited Crete in 1700, says that "the greater part of the Turks on the island were either renegades, or sons of renegades." The Candiote Turks of the present day are popularly held to combine the vices of the nation from which they descend with those of their adopted countrymen.

The leaguer of Candia was pushed during several months by the Turks, animated by the courage and example of their general, with the same fanatic zeal which they had displayed before Canea and Retimo; but the besieged, whose tenure of Crete depended on this last stronghold, held out with equal pertinacity: and their efforts were aided by the presence of a large body of Maltese auxiliaries, as well as by the succours which the naval superiority of the Venetians enabled them continually to introduce by sea. In one sortie, a detachment of the garrison penetrated even to the tent of the serdar, who owed his safety to his personal prowess; while the outworks of the town were ruined by the constant explosion of mines, and the Ottoman standards were planted on the bastion of Martinengo, and on several of the redoubts which covered the interior defences. But in spite of their repeated assaults, the besiegers failed to make any impression on the body of the place; and the serdar was compelled to withdraw his diminished army into winter-quarters. The anarchy at Constantinople which followed the deposition of Ibrahim, combined with the blockade of the Dardanelles by the Venetians, prevented any reinforcements from reaching the seat of war—yet the siege was renewed in the ensuing summer, and carried on with such vigour, that the garrison, weakened by the loss of half its numbers, including the valiant governor, Colloredo, was reduced to the last extremity; when the arrival of the Maltese squadron, under Balbiani, baulked the Turks of their expected prize; and the janissaries, breaking out into furious mutiny, compelled Delhi-Hussein once more to abandon the hopeless enterprise. All the remainder of the island, however, had now peaceably submitted to the Ottoman rule, and had been organized into sandjaks and districts; so that the garrison of Candia were rather the occupants of a solitary post in a hostile country, than defenders of the soil against the invasion; and the Turkish commanders, ill supplied from Constantinople, during the troubled minority of Mohammed, with siege equipage and munitions of war, contented themselves with blockading the town by the erection of redoubts, and guarding the open country with their cavalry. While the war thus languished in Crete, the events of the maritime contest continued to justify the proverbial saying of the Turks, that "Allah had given the land to the true believers; but the sea to the infidels!" Not only was the blockade of the Dardanelles so strictly kept up, that it was only in winter, when the Venetian fleet was unable to remain on its station, that the Turks could convey reinforcements to their brethren who were waging the holy war in Crete, but repeated and disastrous defeats were sustained by the Ottoman navy, whenever it attempted to dispute the sovereignty of the sea with the Lion of St Mark. In July 1651, a formidable armament with supplies and troops for Crete was almost entirely destroyed off Naxos by Mocenigo: and on July 6, 1656, the same commander inflicted on the Turkish fleet, off the mouth of the Straits, the most decisive overthrow which it had sustained since the fatal day of Lepanto. Seventy sail of ships and galleys were sunk or taken; the Capitan-pasha escaped into the Bosphorus with only fourteen vessels; and the inhabitants of Constantinople, in the first access of consternation, expected the apparition of the Christian ensigns in the Golden Horn; but the victors contented themselves with the occupation of Tenedos and Lemnos, which they held till dislodged in the following year by Kiuprili.

The serdar, Delhi-Hussein, who had for eleven years gallantly upheld the renown of the Ottoman arms in Crete, withstanding with equal firmness the efforts of the enemy, and the mutinous spirit of his own soldiers, had been recalled early in 1656 to assume the vizirat; a fleeting glimpse of honour, which, though cancelled even before he reached Constantinople in favour of the Kaimakam Mustapha, subsequently (as already related) cost him his life from the jealousy of Mohammed Kiuprili. His successors possessed neither his energy nor his military skill; and the Venetians, taking courage from the change of commanders, sallied from Candia, and even ventured, though without success, to attempt the recovery of Canea. Negotiations for peace, meanwhile, had been kept on foot almost from the first; but as the Ottoman pride absolutely refused to listen to any propositions which did not include the total and unconditional surrender of Candia, no pacification could be effected; and the war continued to linger till Ahmed-Kiuprili, secured on the side of Hungary by the peace with Austria, collected all the forces of the empire, to crush this last fragment of Venetian dominion in the Levant.

The advanced season of the year when the vizir disembarked in Candia, and the disorganized state of the forces which he found there, prevented the immediate commencement of offensive operations; but in the course of the winter, the arrival of the contingents of Egypt and Africa, as well as of a squadron with fresh troops from Constantinople, raised his army to between 40,000 and 50,000 effective men; and on the 20th of May 1667, the trenches were once more opened in form on the western side of the city, while 300 pieces of cannon, thundering from the Ottoman lines, covered the approaches of the pioneers.[16] Of the seven[17] great bastions which formed the principal defences on the land side, those of Panigra, Bethlehem, and Martinengo, were the chief points of attack; the vizir himself taking post opposite the first, while the Beglerbeg of Anatolia and the Pasha of Egypt were stationed against the Bethlehem and the Martinengo. The assault, as on former occasions, was conducted chiefly by the slow process of sap and mine; but the superior skill of the Christian engineers, enabled them frequently to explore and countermine the works of the enemy; and the mining parties were thus surprised and blown into the air, while murderous combats took place under ground, from the accidental rencounters of the soldiers employed in these subterranean galleries. The garrison, which had at first numbered about 12,000, under the command of the Marchese di Villa, a Piedmontese officer of approved skill and courage, received, at the end of June, a reinforcement of 1000 veteran troops, brought by the Venetian Captain-General Morosini, who arrived with the fleet at the Isle of Standia, off the entrance of the port; and a concourse of volunteers, from all parts of Europe, hastened to share in the defence of this last bulwark of Christendom in the Grecian seas; while the Maltese, Papal, and Neapolitan galleys cruised in the offing, to intercept the supplies brought by sea to the Ottoman camp. The Turks, meanwhile, with their usual stubborn perseverance, continued to push their sap under the ravelin of Mocenigo, and the Panigra bastion which it covered; and though their progress was retarded, and their works often ruined, by the sallies of the defenders, the foundations were at length shaken, and the ramparts rent and shattered, by the explosion of innumerable mines; and the janissaries, fired with fanatic zeal, and stimulated by promises of reward, rushed again and again to the attack under the eye of the vizir. "Many and various," says Rycaut, in his quaint narrative, "were the valiant assaults and sallies, the traverses extraordinary, the rencounters bloody, the resistance vigorous, not known or recorded in any siege before;" and the struggle continued with unabated fury on both sides, till the approach of winter; while, after each unsuccessful assault, the Venetians, emulating the ferocity of their enemies, displayed the heads of the slain and prisoners (for no quarter was given or taken) in barbarous triumph from the wall. At length, after a desperate conflict on November 16, the janissaries effected a lodgement in the Mocenigo bastion and the Panigra; and the Ottoman banners, for the first time, were displayed from the summit of the works. But this valiant forlorn hope, in the moment of triumph, was hurled into the air by the explosion of a previously-prepared mine; and Kiuprili, dismayed at this last failure, drew off his troops into their lines, where they lay inactive, till the inundation of the camp by the winter rains compelled them to withdraw to a greater distance.

[16] The use of parallels is usually said to have been introduced at this time by Kiuprili; but they were certainly employed before Neuhausel, four years earlier.

[17] These were, the Sabionera, covered by the detached fort of St Demetrius, the Vetturi, Jesus, Martinengo, Bethlehem, Panigra, and St Andrew.

Great was the rejoicing throughout Europe at the tidings that the pride of the Ottoman battle had once more been driven back discomfited, for the best and bravest of nearly every nation in Christendom were now to be found in the ranks of the defenders:[18] and great, on the other hand, was the perplexity of the divan, and the chagrin of the Turkish population, at the apparently endless duration of an enterprise, a speedy and glorious termination of which had been expected from the presence of the vizir. The sultan even dispatched a confidential agent to the seat of war, to examine personally into the state of affairs; and finding from his report that the army was reduced, by the sword and the ravages of disease, to half its original effective strength, he issued peremptory firmans to the pashas of the empire to hasten the equipment of their contingents; and even announced his intention of repairing in person to Crete, to share the perils and glories of the holy war. Kiuprili, meanwhile, was indefatigable in his exertions to reorganize his army, and restore his artillery to efficiency, even casting new guns to fit the Venetian bullets, 30,000 of which are said to have been picked up in the Turkish lines during the preceding campaign! A strict blockade was kept up on the city, while the Venetian cruisers, and the Papal galleys under Rospigliosi, the nephew of Pope Clement IX., were equally vigilant in preventing supplies from reaching the besiegers by sea; and various maritime encounters took place, generally to the advantage of the flag of St Mark. The unworthy jealousy[19] entertained by Morosini of Di Villa, led, however, early in the spring of 1668, to the withdrawal of that gallant soldier from his command, in which he was succeeded by the Marquis Montbrun St Andre, a French volunteer, inferior neither in valour nor diligence to his predecessor.

[18] The majority of these volunteers were supplied by the fiery noblesse of France, among whom the crusading spirit of their ancestors seems to have been revived at this period. At the battle of St Gothard, a considerable body of French auxiliaries was present, under the Duc de la Feuillade, (whose name was travestied by the Turks into, Fouladi, man of steel;) and his subsequent expedition to Candia, as well as the more formidable armament under Noailles, seem to have received the direct sanction of Louis XIV. Yet the old treaties between France and the Porte were still in force; so that it was not without some reason that Kiuprili replied, a few years later, to the Marquis de Nointel's professions of amity on the part of France, "I know that the French are our friends, but I always happen to find them in the ranks of our enemies!"

[19] Villa is said to have produced before the senate of Venice a letter from Morosini to the vizir, offering to betray him into the hands of the Turks.

It was not till the beginning of June that the vizir recommenced active operations against Candia; but the plan of attack was now changed. In order to command the narrow entrance of the harbour,[20] and so cut off the constant reinforcements which reached the besieged by sea, the principal batteries were directed against the bastion of Sabionera, (called by the Turks the Kizil-Tabiyah, or Red Fort,) at the seaward extremity of the works on one side, and against that of St Andrew on the other; but the events of the siege during this year present nothing to distinguish them from the endless succession of mines, sorties, assaults, and countermines, which had marked the campaign of last year. The Venetian commanders at length, seeing the Turks preparing to pass the winter in their trenches, and sensible that (concentrated as the forces of the two contending powers were now for the attack and defence of a single fortress) they must eventually be overwhelmed by the ponderous strength of the Ottoman empire, once more made overtures for peace, offering an annual tribute for Candia, and the cession of the rest of the island to the Porte; but the vizir sternly rejected the proffered compromise; and his reply to the envoy, Molino—"The Sultan is not a merchant, nor does he need money—he has but one word, and that is—Candia,"—showed that the long dispute could only be decided by the sword. Elated by the hope of speedy triumph, the Turks now ran their approaches so close to the bastion of St Andrew, which was held by the Maltese knights and militia, that the muzzles of the muskets almost touched each other; and the vizir wrote to the Sultan, that they had only three yards more of ground to win, when, at this critical moment, the spirits of the besieged were revived by the arrival, early in December, of the Duc de la Feuillade and the Count de St Pol, with a gallant band of 600 volunteers, many of them of the best families of France. But the boiling valour of these fiery youths was equally difficult to restrain or direct; and, after losing two-thirds of their number in desperate, but irregular, sallies against the Turkish lines, the survivors of this piece of knight-errantry re-embarked for Christendom in January, leaving the heads of their fallen comrades ranged on pikes before the tent of Kiuprili. A stancher reinforcement was received in the spring of 1669, by the arrival of 3000 Lunenburghers, whose commander, Count Waldeck, fell a few days after, in repulsing an assault on the breach of St Andrew, as did also the former governor, Di Villa, whose thirst for glory had brought him back, as general of the Papal auxiliaries, to the scene of peril.

[20] The harbour of Candia (now almost choked up) was at all times so small, and with so little depth of water, as to afford shelter only to galleys, the station of the larger vessels being at the isle of Standia, at some leagues' distance.

These repeated reinforcements, joined to the knowledge that the Pope was exerting himself to unite all the princes of Christendom in a league for the relief of their hardly-beset brethren, still encouraged the heroic defenders of Candia, though the Turks had by this time carried their mines at several points within the bastions and exterior defences, and compelled the garrison to shelter themselves behind an inner rampart, constructed during the winter in anticipation of this extremity:—"So that, in effect," says Rycaut, "this most impregnable fort of the world was forced and taken by the spade and shovel, and by a crew of unarmed labourers, who understood nothing more than the plough and harrow." The promised succours, however, were now at hand. On the 22d of June, a French fleet appeared off the port, having on board 7000 of the flower of the French troops and nobility, who were commanded by the Dukes de Noailles and Beaufort, and comprised in their ranks several princes of the sovereign houses of Lorrain and Bouillon, the Marshals Colbert and De la Motte-Fenelon, the Count of St Pol, and many other names of the noblest and bravest in France, who had crowded to embark as volunteers in this new and glorious crusade. These gallant auxiliaries landed amidst the acclamations of the Venetians; and, on the night of the 27th, a general sortie was made, in order to raise the siege by driving the Turks from their trenches. The janissaries were driven from their works by the impetuous onset of the assailants; but, in the tumult of the fight, a large powder-magazine, between the Sabionera and Fort St Demetrius, which had been occupied by the French, was accidentally blown up. The Duke de Beaufort, and many others, perished in the explosion, or were buried under the ruins; and the survivors, panic-stricken at the catastrophe, were driven within the walls with terrible slaughter by the Turks, who rallied and returned to the charge. The usual hideous trophies of Ottoman triumph—the heads of the slain, were laid at the feet of the vizir; but the body of the Duc de Beaufort, though anxiously sought for at the prayer of his comrades, who offered, through a flag of truce, to redeem it at its weight in gold, could never be discovered.

This dreadful blow not only threw a fatal gloom over the ardour of the French, but gave rise to an altercation between Morosini and De Noailles, each of whom threw on the other the blame of the failure; till, after a month thus unprofitably spent, the French commander re-embarked his troops, and sailed for Toulon, August 31, leaving the town to its fate. The Maltese and Papal galleys departed in his company;—"for thus did these accursed swine of Nazarenes" (says the Turkish historiographer, Rashid) "withdraw from the doom of hell, which awaited them at the hands of the Faithful." The condition of the remaining defenders, thus deserted by their allies, and separated from the Turks only by breastworks hastily thrown up in the interior of the town, was now utterly hopeless, as not more than 3600 men remained fit for duty, while the loss in slain and disabled averaged more than a hundred a-day. In these desperate circumstances, a council of war was summoned by Morosini, to consider whether it might not even yet be practicable to avoid the ignominy of a surrender, by evacuating the town, and escaping, with the inhabitants, by sea. Their deliberations were hastened by a furious assault from the Turks, who were impatient to seize their prey; and, though the enemy were repulsed for the time by the remains of the Lunenburghers, two officers were eventually dispatched to the vizir's headquarters, to announce the submission of the garrison, and arrange the terms of capitulation. They were courteously received by Kiuprili, who appointed an officer of his own household, with Panayoti,[21] the dragoman of the Porte, to confer with them; and the articles were settled without much difficulty. Peace was concluded between the Porte and the Republic. Candia and the whole of Crete was ceded to the Sultan, with the exception of the harbours of Grabusa, Suda, and Spinalonga, which the Venetians were allowed to retain for purposes of commerce; the garrison and inhabitants of Candia were to embark with their arms, baggage, and a certain proportion of artillery, and the Ottomans were not to enter the town till the embarkation was completed. These conditions were scrupulously observed by the victors; till the 27th of September, the evacuation being effected, the standard of the cross was at length lowered from the walls; and the vizir, standing on the breach of the St Andrew's bastion, (thence called by the Turks the Fort of Surrender,) in the midst of a crowd of pashas and generals, received the keys of the city in a silver basin. A body of Turkish troops immediately entered by the breaches, and mounted guard on the principal posts; but it was not till the 4th of October that the vizir made his triumphant entry at the head of his army, (now reduced to about 15,000 regular troops, and 11,000 pioneers and irregulars,) and proceeded, bearing in his hand the sacred standard of the Prophet, to the cathedral, which was purified from the dead bodies interred within its walls, and re-consecrated as a mosque. All the other churches underwent the same transformation, with the exception of two which Panayoti purchased for the use of the Greeks; for so completely was the town deserted, that there remained only, in the words of an anonymous eyewitness, "two Greeks, three Jews, and eight other strangers, whom the vizir would also have suffered to depart; but they chose rather to change their religion than their quarters."

[21] The appointment of the Greek Panayoti marks an important change in the system of Ottoman diplomacy; as previously the Porte had disdained to employ the rayahs in places of trust, depending wholly, in their intercourse with foreign ambassadors, on the interpreters attached to the suite of the latter.

Thus ended this famous siege, the longest, and one of the most memorable, recorded in history. During its continuance, the Venetians and their allies lost 30,000 men, and the Turks more than 100,000; fifty-six assaults were made on the town above ground, and the same number through the mines; and nearly an equal number of sorties was made by the garrison. 460 mines were sprung by the Turks, and no less than 1172 by the Venetians; and the quantity of missiles hurled into the town exceeded all calculation. The fortifications were, however, speedily repaired by the care of Kiuprili, who remained in the island nine months after the surrender, employed in the final organization of this new province, which was divided into the three pashaliks of Canea, Retimo, and Candia—the last being the residence of the beglerbeg, or supreme pasha. The arrangements being at length completed, he quitted Candia for Constantinople, whither the capitan-pasha had preceded him with the fleet; and, on the 3d of July 1670, he replaced in the hands of the Sultan, in his hunting-camp near Rodosto, the sandjak-sheeref, which had been committed to his charge for the war against the infidels. "In this manner," says Rycaut, writing not in a spirit of prophecy, three years only before the battle of Vienna, "expired the action of the year, fortunate in its success to the Turks; for though they gained but thirty acres of land, with expense inestimable of blood and treasure, yet the glory and fame which attended it, being the consummation of twenty-five years' war, and the theatre where the whole world were spectators, was of greater value to the Turks than any other consideration, and may with time prove a place of advantage to the further increase of their western empire, unless God Almighty, by his mercy and providence, give a stop to the progress of this grand oppressor."

* * * * *



A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF A MAITRE-D'ARMES

The excitement produced in St Petersburg on the occasion of a rash conspiracy which had broken out on the inauguration of the Emperor Nicholas, had ample time to die away before the sentence pronounced upon the conspirators became known. Six months elapsed, months of terrible suspense and anxiety to the friends of the unfortunate prisoners. At length, on the 14th of July, the decision of the high court of justice appeared in the St Petersburg Gazette. Six-and-thirty of the accused were condemned to death, the others to the mines and to exile. My friend and patron, Count Alexis W——, was included in the former list; but an act of clemency on the part of the Emperor tempered the severity of justice, and only five of the condemned were left for execution, while the remaining thirty-one had their sentence commuted to banishment. My friend's name was, God be thanked! among the latter.

On reading this announcement, I rushed into the street, and ran, without once stopping, until I reached the house of his beloved Louise. Of her, for the present, it will be sufficient to say, that she was a young, lovely, and intelligent Frenchwoman, whose sister I had known in Paris, and to whose patronage, from her position as a first-rate modiste in St Petersburg, I was much indebted. Between this truly amiable woman and the Count had for some years existed an attachment, not hallowed, indeed, by the church, but so long and deeply-rooted in the hearts of both, and so dignified by their mutual constancy and worth, as to have won the sympathies even of the Count's mother and sisters. To return, however, to Louise, whom I found with a copy of the Gazette in her hand, and bathed in tears, but they were tears of joy—

"He is saved!" cried she, on seeing me enter; "thank God and the Emperor!"

The first moment of joy over, Louise's thoughts turned to the mother and sisters of her lover. She calculated that the Gazette would only leave St Petersburg by the post of that night, and that by sending off an express immediately the news might reach Moscow twelve hours sooner. She asked me if I knew a trusty messenger, who could start without delay to bear the glad tidings to the Count's family. I had a Russian servant, an intelligent active fellow, and I offered his services, which she accepted with delight. The only difficulty was the passport, and through the kindness of the ex-chief of police, Monsieur de Gorgoli, it was procured in half an hour. At the expiration of that time the courier set off, with a thousand rubles in his pocket for travelling expenses.

He arrived at Moscow fourteen hours before the post; fourteen hours of mortal anxiety saved to the Count's mother and sisters.

The letter he brought back, was one of those that seem written with a feather plucked from an angel's wing. The old Countess called Louise her daughter, and the young girls named her their sister. They entreated that, when the day was known on which the prisoners were to set off for their banishment, a courier might be despatched to Moscow with the news. I accordingly told my servant to hold himself in readiness to start, to his no small satisfaction; for the Count's mother had given him a thousand rubles for his first trip, and he trusted the second might be equally well rewarded.

There had not been an execution in St Petersburg for sixty years, and the curiosity and excitement caused by the anticipation of this one, were proportionably great. The day was not fixed beforehand, and the inhabitants of the capital got up each morning, expecting to hear that the bloody tragedy had been enacted. I had requested a young Frenchman attached to Marshal Marmont's special mission, and who was on that account likely to have early information, to let me know when it was to take place; and on the evening of the 23d of July, he sent me word that the marshal and his suite had been invited to repair by four o'clock the following morning to the hotel of the French embassy, the windows of which commanded the place of execution.

I hastened to communicate this intelligence to Louise. All her fears returned. Was it certain that Alexis was pardoned? Might not the commutation of punishment announced in the Gazette be a ruse to conceal the truth from the people? These, and a thousand other doubts, arose in her mind; but I at last succeeded in tranquillizing her, and returned home to take some repose till the hour of the execution. Before doing so, however, my servant was sent off to Moscow, to inform the Countess W—— that the following day her son would leave St Petersburg for his place of exile.

At half-past three, I left my house and hastened in the direction of the citadel. A grey tinge in the east announced the approach of day, and a thin white fog hung like a veil over the Neva. As I passed the corner of the French embassy, Marmont and his suite entered the house, and a minute afterwards they appeared upon the balcony.

A few persons were standing upon the quay, not in expectation, or because they were informed of what was going to take place, but because the bridge of the Trinity was occupied by troops, and they were thereby prevented from proceeding whither their affairs called them. They seemed uneasy, and uncertain whether it might not be dangerous to remain there.

Some minutes before four, a large fire was lighted on the platform of the fortress. My attention being drawn to that point, I perceived, by the now increasing daylight, a wooden scaffolding, on which were erected five black and ominous looking gibbets.

Four o'clock struck, and the prisoners whose punishment had been commuted to banishment appeared upon the platform, and ranged themselves round the scaffold. They were all in full uniform, wearing their epaulettes, and the stars and ribands of their different orders. Their swords were carried by soldiers. I tried to distinguish the Count, but the distance, and still imperfect light, rendered the attempt fruitless.

The five who were to suffer death now ascended the scaffold, dressed in coarse linen frocks, and with a sort of white hood over their heads. They doubtless arrived from separate dungeons, for, as they met, they were allowed to embrace one another. Immediately afterwards, a man went up to them and said something, which was followed by a cheer from the soldiers and others attending the execution. It was afterwards reported, I know not with what truth, that this man was sent to offer them their lives if they chose to beg them; but that they replied to the offer by cries of Russia and Liberty!—cries that were rendered inaudible by the hurras of the guards and attendants.

The executioners stepped forward, passed the halters round the necks of the condemned, and pulled the hoods over their eyes. A neighbouring clock struck the first quarter after four, and simultaneously with the sound, a trap-door gave way under the feet of the culprits. There was a great cry and much confusion, and a number of soldiers jumped upon the scaffold.

Two of the ropes had snapped, and the unhappy men round whose necks they had been fastened, had fallen through the scaffolding to the platform; one of them had broken his thigh, and the other his arm. Ladders were brought, and the sufferers carried up to the scaffold and laid upon their backs, for they were unable to stand. In a few minutes new halters were ready, and with the help of the executioners, the victims managed to drag themselves under the gibbets. Their last words were, Russia and Liberty! This time the ropes did their duty.

It was said, that when the Emperor was afterwards informed of this incident, he was much vexed at its not having been immediately reported to him; but nobody had dared take upon himself the responsibility of suspending the execution.

It was now the turn of the exiles. Their sentence was read, declaring them to have forfeited every thing, rank, possessions, orders, family, all that bound them to the world, and the executioners then tore off their epaulettes and decorations, which they threw into the fire. Then taking the prisoners' swords from the soldiers who held them, they seized them by the hilt and point, and broke them over their owners' heads, exclaiming, as each snapped in two, "This is the sword of a traitor!" This ceremony over, they were stripped of their uniforms, which were replaced by coarse grey smock-frocks, and they were then led back to prison. The evening of the same day they set out for Siberia.

I returned to Louise, whom I found on her knees, praying and weeping. She looked at me as I entered the room as though afraid to interrogate me; but I relieved her anxiety by informing her that all had passed as announced in the Gazette. She raised her eyes to heaven with an expression of pious gratitude.

After a pause, "How far is it from here to Tobolsk?" she enquired.

"About eight hundred leagues."

"It is not so far as I thought," was her observation. I looked at her for a moment in silence. I began to suspect her intentions.

"Why do you ask the question?" enquired I.

"Can you not guess?"

"But, Louise, it is impossible, at least at this moment."

"Do not be uneasy, my friend. I know my duty to my child, and my affection for its father shall not make me forget it. I will wait."

It was not without a motive that the Count's mother and sisters had been anxious to obtain the earliest possible intelligence of his departure from St Petersburg. The road from that capital to Tobolsk ran through Iroslaw, a town about sixty leagues from Moscow, and they entertained hopes of being able to see their son and brother as he passed. Their passports were ready, and arrangements made; and as soon as they received from my servant the news of the departure of the prisoners, they got into a kubiltka, and without saying a word to any body of their intentions, set out for Iroslaw.

Travelling is rapid in Russia; in less than twenty-four hours they reached their destination, and learned with delight that the prisoners had not yet passed. As their stay at Iroslaw might have excited suspicion, they left that town, and took up their quarters in a small village on the road, at a solitary cottage, near which the carriages containing the exiles were to change horses. In all such cases in Russia, the persons in charge of criminals are forbidden to stop or to change horses in towns, or even in villages.

After waiting two days, a servant whom the Countess had stationed upon the road to watch for the convoy, hastened to her with the news that the first division of the prisoners had just arrived in five carriages, and that the corporal in charge had sent men to fetch horses from the village. The ladies got into their carriage, and set off at full gallop for the cottage at which the convoy had halted. They stopped upon the high-road opposite the hut, and gazed eagerly through the half-open door of its only room. It was crowded with prisoners; but Alexis was not amongst them.

In a quarter of an hour horses were brought; the prisoners re-entered the carriage, which immediately set off.

Half an hour later the second division of the convoy arrived; but the Count was not with it. The third, fourth, and fifth passed, each being obliged to wait longer than the preceeding one for horses, those at the post-house and in the immediate neighbourhood having all been taken.

It was some time after nightfall when the sixth and last division was heard approaching. The poor women clasped their trembling hands together. The much wished-for moment had arrived, yet their greatest difficulty was to come. It was more than uncertain whether they would be permitted to embrace their son and brother.