Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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If we turn from those who sent the Ambassador to those to whom he was sent, we shall see here also Finch greatly favoured by circumstances. Most of his predecessors had found themselves engaged in a Sisyphean labour. For the wrongs to which the English, like other Frank dwellers in the Grand Signor’s dominions, were constantly exposed at the hands of insolent and rapacious officials they could only procure redress, if at all, by purchasing the friendship of the Grand Vizir and of the two or three other grandees who between them ruled the Empire. But, such had long been the stability of the Ottoman Government, none of those personages remained in power for more than a few months—a military mutiny, a popular upheaval, or a palace intrigue was sure to hurl them down the moment after they had reached the top; and our Ambassador was obliged to seek new friends. This state of things had come to an end. In 1656 Mohammed Kuprili assumed the Grand Vizirate with a free hand to purge the body politic of its corruptions, and he performed the task by cutting off all the parts that he could not cure: a dreadful remedy, but not more dreadful than the condition of the patient demanded. Turkey was so split up by factions that it could not have survived, unless all rebellious spirits were implacably extinguished. This great practitioner, who alone had preserved the Empire from falling into as many fragments as there were Pashaliks, died in 1661 of old age, and was succeeded by his son Ahmed—a fact which, being utterly unprecedented in a country where the hereditary principle, except in the royal family, was unknown, amazed the Turks even more than the miracle of a Grand Vizir maintaining himself in office for five whole years and then dying peaceably in his bed.ssss1