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

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Ahmed Kuprili at first seemed to have inherited, together with his father’s power, his father’s recipe. The late Vizir’s dictatorship had raised up a multitude of malcontents who imagined that his successor’s youth offered them an opportunity for revenge: “every hour he has a new game to play for his life,” wrote our Ambassador.ssss1 But once rid of his enemies, the son presented a pleasing antithesis to his father. Mohammed had been an uncouth and illiterate warrior who cared for no laws that stood between him and his will, who valued no arguments that conflicted with his preconceived notions, who even in his dealings with foreign envoys employed methods only one degree less savage than those he applied to the treatment of domestic problems. Ahmed, on the other hand, was the first Grand Vizir with a political, instead of a martial, mind. He had been bred to the study of the Law and had actually practised as a judge in civil causes. By temperament and education alike he was averse to violence. It is true that he had already carried out two successful campaigns and was now engaged in a third. But to this he was impelled by necessity: the Ottoman Empire, having arisen out of war and being constituted for war, would perish in peace. Its rulers could only avoid rebellion at home by providing their turbulent subjects with constant and congenial occupation abroad—a bleeding operation intended to relieve the body politic of its “malignant humours”—and it was particularly necessary for Ahmed, in order to keep his place, to show that he could graft the soldier on the lawyer. But he never became a general. His successes were won in spite of his strategy. In his war against the Emperor he was defeated at St. Gothard (Aug. 1, N.S. 1664), yet immediately after, profiting by the Emperor’s difficulties, he secured a treaty (Peace of Vasvar, Aug. 10, 1664) as advantageous as if it had been the fruit of victory. In Crete his military operations against the Venetians (1666-69) were so clumsy that at one moment he seriously meditated abandoning the siege of Candia, “his ill success having given his enemies hopes of supplanting him.”ssss1 Yet he obtained by negotiation the surrender of a fortress which until then had been deemed impregnable, and brought a twenty-five years’ struggle to a glorious conclusion. The Polish war which he was now conducting was likewise a matter of diplomatic as much as of military manœuvring. There can be no doubt that, if he had the choice, Ahmed would never have striven to get by force what might be got by subtler means.