Girai III, the khan of the Crimean Tartars (Vol. II, p. 181), destroyed the Turkish fleet; the Cossacks plundered Böjük-dere on the Bosphorus; Abasa, the Pasha of Erzeroum, revolted, and the advance of Wallenstein in 1626 against Mansfeld and Bethlen (Vol. VII, p. 292), forced the Turks to raise the siege of Neograd. In 1634 Georg I Rákóczy, the successor of Bethlen (died November 15, 1629), hesitated to join the Sultan in an attack upon the Poles. The Sultan then gave his support to one Székely and to Stephan Bethlen, the brother of Gabriel, whose claims were also urged by the ambassadors of France and Holland. Meanwhile the cruel Murad had conquered Täbris and Erivan in a vigorous campaign in 1634, had murdered his brothers Bajazet and Suleimân, and recaptured Bagdad in 1638.

Meanwhile the imperial Christian government pursued the task of resistance with remarkable energy, by the slow but sure creation of a military frontier, which was to secure their ultimate victory. Matthias Corvinus and Ferdinand I had already begun the work; but it was not until the time of Maximilian II that this line of fortresses, extending some two hundred German miles from Transylvania to Dalmatia, was definitely secured. The archduke Charles was appointed "permanent residential governor of the Croatian and Windish frontier lands." After the fall of Belgrade in 1521 the stream of "Uskokes," Servian and Bosnian fugitives, began to pour into Austrian territory. Ferdinand I had granted them numerous privileges and immunity from taxation in 1535, and had settled them in the Karst deserts of the Sichelburg district, the modern Uskoke mountains. They were followed by a steady stream of refugees, who were ready and willing to serve in the local levies as cavalry and infantry. From this material the Austrian rulers created that militia to guard the Danube and the Save which for two centuries acted as a bulwark against the Turkish assaults. The bravest of them and the scourge of Turkey were the Zengg Uskokes of the maritime frontier. For more than a century they were the terror of Adria, and inflicted the most serious loss both upon the maritime power of Venice and the continental power of Turkey. Piracy was carried on throughout the Mediterranean by the Barbary States, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, by the Maltese, the Sicilians, and Neapolitans. But the Zengg Uskokes were the pirate kings of Adria; from their impregnable fortress of Zengg (Sign, Senj) on the sheltering Quarnero, the home of the terrible Bora, their bold expeditions went forth even to the shores of Persia; the newspapers even reported a conflict between them and the Persians at Lacooson.

B. FROM IBRAHIM I TO MAHMUD I (1640–1754)

MURAD, the Osman Nero, who, like Nero, was passionately devoted to music, was succeeded by his brother Ibrahim I (1640-1648), the Osman Heliogabalus. His arrogance and threatening caprice drove the Ulemas, the scribes, and lawyers to contract an alliance with the Janissaries in their mosque of Ortajami. Ibrahim was the first Sultan to be deposed and murdered under an apparently constitutional form of procedure (August 18, 1648).

(a) Mohammed IV. His son, Mohammed IV (1648-1687), ascended the throne in the year in which Germany began to rise from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. It was fortunate for the Holy Roman Empire that during this dec

Turkey in Europe" and Armenia

ade a succession of feeble Sultans, wars with the Persians, and internal disturbances had weakened the strength that repeatedly threatened the destruction of Christendom. The struggle for the guardianship of the Sultan, who was but ten or perhaps even seven years of age, resulted in 1651 in the death of the mother of three Sultans, the beautiful Greek slave Tarkhan (Terkhan; great buildings in Stamboul preserve her memory), and brought the empire to the verge of dissolution. An attempt was made to relieve the hopeless financial embarrassment by tripling the State taxes and debasing the coinage. At the beginning of 1656 crowds of peasants appeared from Anatolia to complain of the unprecedented extortion practised by their governor. The name "Runjiber," that is, full of woe, clung to them henceforward as a memorial of the continuous oppression under which they groaned. Mutinies among the Janissaries and revolts of viziers increased; to appease the mutinous guards, who marched to the seraglio, Mohammed IV sacrificed thirty of his councillors, whose heads were suspended to the famous planetree on the Etmeidan. Francesco Morosini conquered Lemnos and Tenedos, while Lorenzo Marcello destroyed seventy Turkish sailing-vessels at the entrance to the Dardanelles.

(a) The Two Kuprili. The saviour was at hand. Mohammed Kuprili became Grand Vizier in September, 1656. An Albanian peasant boy, he had come to Stamboul, and though he could neither read nor write, his keen intelligence and his good will had raised him to the highest position in the empire. Kuprili crushed the revolt in the blood of thirty thousand victims; he took Murad IV as his model, the pupil of Machiavelli. He destroyed the Venetian fleet of Lazzaro Mocenigo, recaptured Lemnos and Tenedos in 1657, conquered the castles of the Dardanelles, in 1657-1658 defeated the troops of Georg II, Rákóczy, who had made himself independent, and appointed Achatius Bárcsay prince of the country with an increased tribute of forty thousand ducats. He drove the Cossacks across the Dnieper, caused thirty pashas of Asia Minor and Syria to be massacred in a treacherous ambush at Aleppo in the spring of 1659, and placed cartloads of heads on the seraglio walls as a warning. He even ventured to repress the insane extravagance of the seraglio and the harem (1659). His only failure was his enterprise against Crete, Cardinal Mazarin having sent relief to the Venetians who were hardpressed in that island. Kuprili retorted by immediately imprisoning the French ambassador Jacques de la Haye in 1658, and treated the threats of Louis XIV with contempt.

Kuprili died on November 1, 1661, at the age of eighty. Mohammed IV paid him a visit on his deathbed, and promised that his son Ahmed Kuprili should succeed him in the office of Grand Vizier, a measure unprecedented in the history of this high office. Ahmed was highly educated, and possessed a thorough knowledge of the Koran, the Sunna, and of Mohammedan science in general. His experience had been acquired as Pasha of Erzeroum and Damascus, and as Kaim-makam of Stamboul, and he became Grand Vizier at the age of twenty-seven. The Sultan was then twenty-three years old, absorbed in luxury, the chase, in youths and afterwards in women, and was resident in Adrianople. In 1662 Leopold's troops had seized Serimvár in Transylvania; Ahmed attacked them in the spring of 1663. In spite of the fact that the soldiers' pay was stinted by the avaricious Sultan, he succeeded in capturing Neuhäusel (September 27), Ujivár, Serimvár, and Gran.

VOL. V-11

However, on August 1, 1664, he was defeated at Sankt Gotthard, a monastery on the Raab (Vol. VII, p. 472). This battle marks a turning point in Turkish military history. The Austrians and Hungarians were co-operating with six thousand French under Count Jean Coligny and François d'Aubusson, Vicomte de la Feuillade, with the flower of the French nobility. The Grand Vizier regarded the powdered and perfumed Frenchmen with their bright uniforms as girls. The army was under the leadership of Raimund, Count Montecuccoli, the Austrian field-marshal. Before the battle, the cavalry general Johann von Sporck bared his head and prayed, "Almighty God, our General on high, if Thou wilt not help us, Thy Christian children, yet help not these Turkish dogs, and Thou shalt see somewhat to Thy delight." Coligny's French then charged the hostile ranks with the awful war-cry "Tue!" and the small-arm volley firing here secured its first triumph. The chapel of Sankt Gotthard, built in commemoration of the destruction of the Turkish army, is still to be seen. Jealousy and mistrust, as usual, made it impossible to reap the full advantage of the Christian victory. In the peace of Vasvár, on August 10, 1664, the Porte retained the fortresses of Serimvár and Ujvár. But a great moral effect was produced; the Sanjak-i-shereef (the banner of the prophet) which had been unfurled in vain on August 13, 1595 (p. 157), had suffered another overthrow.

Ahmed Kuprili was obliged to seek compensation in the conquest of Crete. At ten o'clock in the morning of September 27, 1669, the Proveditore Morosini (p. 161) handed to the Grand Vizier the keys of Candia, which the Venetians had held for four hundred and sixty-five years. The French relieving force under the duke Anne Jules de Noailles and François de Vendôme was as ineffective as the fleet of Pope Clement IX. Naintel, the French ambassador, renewed the capitulations of Francis I with the Porte (p. 152) on June 3, 1673. According to these, special rights were reserved or confirmed to the French ambassadors, French goods, the East India trade, the Catholics in Turkey, the ecclesiastical buildings, the French in Pera and Galata, and the Holy Places.

A short time previously Bacon, Lord Verulam, and Hermann Conring had published suggestions for the solution of the Eastern question. These ideas were reopened by G. W. Leibnitz in 1670 and 1671 in his comprehensive memorial," De propositione Eyptiaca," which he presented in person to the most Christian king in Paris. His proposals involved nothing less than the conquest of Egypt and the cutting of the Suez Canal. A French diplomat ironically observed of the memoir, "Mais vous savez que les projets d'une guerre sainte ont cessé d'être à la mode depuis Saint Louis."

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The place of the powers hitherto predominant is now taken by two new States in hostility to the crescent, Poland and Russia. The Porte had confirmed the revolted Cossack Hetman of the Ukraine, Doroscenko, in the position of Sanjak Bey, or governor, as though he were dealing with a Turkish province. Poland raised a justifiable objection which ended in war. In the early autumn of 1672 Mohammed IV and Ahmed Kuprili ravaged Poland with one hundred and fifty thousand men as far as Kamenez', Lemberg, and Lublin, and forced the feeble king Michael Koribut Wisniowiecki to cede Podolia and the Ukraine in the peace of Budziak (Bucsacs) on September 18, 1672. But in the following year the crown field-marshal Johann Sobieski defeated the Grand Vizier and the Seraskier Hussein Pasha on the plain of Chotin (Chocim; November 10-11, 1673), and captured the green banner, which still hangs in St. Peter's at Rome. In 1674-1675 Sobieski, who was

now King Johann III, captured the towns of Hunan and Lemberg and utterly defeated Kara Mustafa, the brother-in-law of Kuprili. Doroscenko threw himself into the arms of the Russians. The Czar Feodor III of Moscow, against whom the holy war was declared, came off victorious in three successive campaigns, 1677-1679. Ahmed Kuprili had previously died at the beginning of November, 1676.

In the peace of Radyn (Radzyn), February 11, 1681, the Poles obtained portions of the Ukraine and Podolia (which had already been of necessity returned to them in the peace of Zuravna, concluded on October 27, 1676, between the Sobieski and Ibraham Sheitan); while the Russians again obtained access to a port on the Black Sea by the cession of the Laporog Cossacks. With this year begins the insidious influence of Russia upon the Turkish Empire.

(B) Vienna and Ofen. The pathway to this goal could only be engineered by the triumph and the blood of Austria. On August 10, 1683, the Porte at the instigation of Louis XIV had appointed the rebel Count Emerich Tököly (Vol. VII, p. 485), to whom the king of France had sent one De Ferriol as ambassador, as king of Hungary, with influence extending over territory belonging to Austria. War was thereby rendered inevitable. Prince Eugene of Savoy afterwards declared in his memoirs, "Had it not been for Louis XIV, the Moslems and the revolted Hungarians would never have reached the gates of Vienna."

The arrogant and ignorant Kara Mustafa, who acted as Seraskier and Sirdar, with unlimited power, had dreams of founding a second Turkish Empire, of which he was to be the ruler, with Vienna as his capital. The emperor Leopold I fled to Linz. On March 31, 1683, Pope Innocent II brought about an alliance between the emperor and Poland. Charles of Lorraine, with forty thousand men, had been enabled to prevent the Turks from crossing the Raab, and was waiting behind the Kahlenberg, anxiously expecting the help of the empire and of the Poles, while Count Rüdiger of Starhemberg established himself in Vienna with ten thousand men. On July 14 two hundred thousand Turks pitched their tents before the town, and surrounded the whole of the fortifications, in conjunction with the Tartars and Khan Selim Giray I. A siege of terrible ferocity began, which lasted for forty-five days; the Turks delivered eighteen assaults and the besieged made twentyfour sorties. Notwithstanding a brilliant defence the city was at the last gasp, when from the Kahlenberg and Leopoldberg rockets rose in the night of September 6 and 7 announcing the approach of the relieving army, which had gathered at Tulln, on the Danube. In conjunction with Charles of Lorraine, and Johann, Georg III of Saxony, Max Emanuel of Bavaria, Georg Friedrich of Waldeck, Johann III of Poland gathered his army of seventy thousand men, and made the Kahlenberg his base at the outset of the battle, which he concluded on September 12 with a total defeat of the Turks (cf. Vol. VII, p. 486). On September 13 he made his entry into Vienna, and was greeted as the liberator of the town. It was not until all danger was past that the emperor returned.

The Turks fled from Germany for ever, abandoning inestimable treasure. Sobieski, with Charles of Lorraine, pursued and defeated them at Párkány and captured Gran. Kara Mustafa fled to Belgrade, where he was strangled by the Sultan's orders on December 25; his tragic end was illustrated by numerous contemporary pamphlets and pictures. In 1684 the imperial troops won a series

of victories at Wissegrad, Waitzen, Pesth, and Hamzsabég over Suleiman Pasha. Count Leslie made a victorious advance into Bosnia. The age of Osman triumphs had passed; on August 19 Neuhausel was stormed and captured. But the greatest event of this campaign was the siege and the fall of Ofen on September 2, 1686, an exploit which saved some portion of the library of the Corvini. The German emperor's field-marshal Charles of Lorraine, supported by the German elector Maximilian Emanuel, and by troops from all German provinces (Bavaria, Saxony, and Brandenburg), had wrested from the hands of the infidels the most important Turkish outpost, the capital city of the realm of St. Stephen, and also the remainder of those territories. Thus the freedom of the Magyars was by no means due to the bravery of that proud and warlike nation. On August 12, 1687, the indefatigable Charles defeated sixty thousand troops of Suleiman Pasha in the battle of Mohács (Vol. VII, p. 489), and thus avenged the victory which Suleiman II had gained there in 1526.

The high expectations which were excited by the Austrian victories and the simultaneous successes of the Venetians in the Morea are displayed in the pamphlet of the year 1687, "The Triumphant Imperial Eagle;" it was already reported that the Sultan would have to transfer his capital to Cairo, Damascus, or Aleppo. In 1688 Transylvania also gave in her submission to the emperor and king of Hungary, and secured full toleration for the four Christian religious communities that were recognised in the country. In this same year the Turkish Empire suffered severely from a famine and from conflagrations. In 1685 the Poles had advanced to Jassy and were defeated at Bojan. All the more meritorious were the victories of the Venetians in the Morea under the defender of Candia, the capable general Francesco Morosini. They drove the Turks out of Dalmatia, conquered Santa Maura, Prevéza, Arta, Corinth, Argos, Patras, Koron(i), Modon, Navarino, Napoli di Romania, and Malvasia. The banner of Saint Mark flew once again in Greece, and in the Palace of the Doges the grateful Senate erected a triumphal arch to "Morosini the Peloponnesian." It must be said that during the siege of Athens the Venetians inflicted great damage upon the immortal Parthenon. The powder explosion which was caused in the Parthenon by a shell from the batteries of the Venetian general Otto Wilhelm, Count of Königsmark, on September 26, 1687, at seven o'clock in the evening, completed the destruction of this ancient sanctuary of Pallas Athene, the Madonna, and the Panagia. The liberation of Greece, the unbroken dream of European Philhellenes, and the event for which the oppressed Greeks yearned, had never been so near realisation since the fall of Constantinople and Athens. For Athens, however, the interval of freedom lasted only until April 9, 1689, when Morosini, who had been appointed Doge, gave up the town which he found untenable. From Porto Lione (the Piræus) he carried off in safety the Athenian lions, which stand to-day before the Arsenal of Venice, as memorials of the abortive attempt at liberation, and of the pillaging of Athenian art treasures, and form a counter piece to the bronze horses upon the portal of San Marco, which were taken from the sack of Constantinople in 1204. For three years the town of Pallas was abandoned by its inhabitants, until the Sultan allowed the Athenians to return in 1690. Philipp Fallmereyer, misinterpreting the fragments of the Monastery of Anargyri, has extended this three years' desolation to a period of four hundred years, extending from the sixth to the tenth century (cf. p. 47).