Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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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.

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