Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (18 page)

Ostensibly, during the year 1533, the Franco-Turkish alliance hung fire. On December 24, 1532, the imperial ambassador at Venice wrote his master that he believed that Suleiman "considers himself hoaxed by the Most Christian King, and will place no confidence in him for the future." He also said that in his opinion "the Sultan did evacuate Hungary with much greater loss in men than was reported at the time, perhaps as much as one-third of his

pp.

, pp. 69-72; Hammer, V, 158-159. 26 Quoted in Hammer, V, 478.

21 July 23, 1532. Jean DuMont, Corps umversel diplomatique (Amsterdam, 1726-31), vol. TV", i, pp. 87-88.

army." 28 For the present at least, Suleiman had had enough of Austro-Hungarian campaigns. He made peace with Ferdinand, as we have already seen, in June, 1533; moreover in the autumn of that same year he sent Ibrahim on to prepare the way for an invasion of Persia, and followed himself in the summer of 1534. Clearly for the time being his chief attention was to be directed to the southeast. Francis on his side was still officially at peace with Charles, and was plotting further to strengthen his position in the West by negotiations with sundry Christian potentates. In October, 1532, he had made a treaty with Henry VIII, whom he was sporadically supporting in the matter of the latter's divorce. 29 The avowed purpose of this treaty was "to render abortive the damned conspiracies and machinations of the Turk, ancient enemy and adversary of our holy faith." This could be flaunted in the face of those who still entertained suspicions of Francis' relations with the Moslem, while its real object, of course, was a league against the Emperor. Just a year later, starting off on the opposite tack, he approached Pope Clement VII, who was induced by the prospect of a marriage between his niece Catharine and Francis' son Henry to desert the cause of the Hapsburgs. 30 The two policies were mutually exclusive, for by this rime the long of England had bidden the Papacy defiance; but Francis was determined to have a foot in every camp, and he even continued his negotiations with the German Lutherans. The only evidence in this period that Suleiman and the French king were still in touch was the Sultan's order to his piratical sea-captain Barbarossa to put his fleet at the disposal of his Most Christian ally in order to enable him

^Calendar of State Papers, Spanish) vol. IV, 2, no. 1036, pp. 572-575 (letter of Rodrigo Nino). 80 Charriere, I, 134-235* *>R.B.M., Ill, 262.

to reconquer Genoa and the Milanese. 31 This, however, was deeply significant. From Suleiman's standpoint it was an exceedingly shrewd move, for it was a bait to induce Francis to abandon his policy of duplicity and make open war on Charles. Alore important still, it presaged the transference of the most important part of the struggle against the Emperor from land to sea, from the plains of Hungary to the basin of the Mediterranean. It seems probable that the wily Rincon was primarily responsible for it, and it naturally was highly pleasing to Francis. Should the Sultan make good his word, the French king would henceforth have much more immediately effective aid against the Emperor, in case he should need it, than remote diversions in the Danubian lands.

In July, 1533, Francis received official representatives of Barbarossa in friendly fashion at Le Puy. 32 Six months later he sent Rincon back to visit the corsair in North Africa, and later to interview Ibrahim in Asia Minor, on his way to Persia. 33 This time the French king made no 'effort to conceal his relations with the Porte, which were now common knowledge to all the great powers of Western Europe, At the same time Barbarossa, who was then in his sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year, w T as commanded by the Sultan to go and consult with the Grand Vizir in Syria. Thence he returned to Constantinople in the late spring of 1534, where Suleiman, with Ibrahim's full approval, gave him formal command, as pasha and grand admiral, of the entire Turkish fleet, with over a hundred ships and 10,000 soldiers. 34 The Sultan had already agreed to the terms arranged between France and the Porte by Ringon and Ibrahim in Asia Minor. He defended his conduct to the imperial

p. 72. p. 77. pp. 79-80. S4 Gevay, vol. II, pt. 2, p. 35; R. B. M., HI, 305.

representative, Schepper, on the ground that "he could not possibly abandon the king of France, who was his brother." M On May 28, 1534, sixteen days before Suleiman departed for Persia, Barbarossa set out from Constantinople with all his fleet, and in the next few weeks he treated the Adriatic coasts of Italy to such a ravaging as they had seldom experienced before. 36 Henceforth the story of the Franco-Turkish alliance and that of the naval war in the Mediterranean and North Africa are almost inextricably fused; and we can postpone most of our consideration of the further development of the former until a later chapter.

One final matter, however, remains to be mentioned here, if only to round off the diplomatic side of the story to the point to which we have brought it. A Franco-Turkish alliance having been made, it was fitting that the high contracting parties should exchange ambassadors, and in the winter of 1 5 34-3 5 Francis had determined to take the momentous step of sending his country's first resident representative to the Sultan's court. This time he selected one of his own secretaries, a cultured gentleman, named Jean de la Foret, to undertake the task. On Februarv 1 1, 1535, he gave him full instructions as to how to deal" with Barbarossa and with Suleiman. With the former his main duty was to ask for vigorous aid in the reconquest of Genoa. The latter was to be induced to consent to a "general peace," but only on condition that Charles should agree to all of the French king's just demands; in other words, the cession of Genoa, Milan, and Flanders, and the recognition of Zapolya as king of Hungary! If the Emperor should refuse, he must be made to yield by war, and if Francis were to bear an efficient part in it, the Sultan would have to grant him a subsidy of a

85 Gevay, vol. II, 2, p. 47. p. 85.

million ducats. If Suleiman could not afford this, it was hoped that at least he would begin to fight at once himself, and order Barbarossa to attack Sardinia and Sicily. ST Agreeably to his instructions La Foret first visited Tunis, where Barbarossa had established himself in the preceding year. Thence he passed on into Asia Minor, and finally caught up with the Sultan at Honan in Azerbaijan in the month of May. Thenceforth he kept close to Suleiman till the end of the Persian war, which lasted much longer than had been expected; they did not get back to Constantinople till the early weeks of 1536. On their arrival they found that the situation in the West had altered greatly to their disadvantage. The outstanding fact, of course, had been the capture of Tunis (July 21) from Barbarossa, by the naval and military forces of Charles V; 88 the Imperialists were once more dominant in the Mediterranean. Suleiman could not help feeling that the French king had failed to live up to his engagements. "How can I trust him/' he asked La Foret, "when he always promises more than he can perform?" 39 Nevertheless, when he learned that Francis had invaded Piedmont in the beginning of February, he made up his mind that the French long might be of some use to him after all, and promised to cooperate by launching an attack across the Straits of Otranto against the kingdom of Naples; Barbarossa also was expected to play a part. On the other hand, Francis was unwilling to advertise the full extent of the intimacy of his relations with the Moslem to the rest of the Christian world, and so instructed La Foret to try to obtain for public consumption a treaty of primarily commercial significance, whose main object was to veil the close political and military collaboration

87 Cfaarriere, I, 255-263; Ursa, pp. 88-92.

38 Cf. below, p. 217.

39 Ursu, p. 95; Gevay, vol. Ill, pt. i, pp. 18-19 (report of Francis, Baron

i Sprinzenstein, to Ferdinand I, probably early in October, 1537).

von

between the Commander of the Faithful and the Eldest Son of the Church. This the envoy succeeded in doing in February, 1536. It was the first official treaty between France and the Ottoman Porte, and has served as the model for many similar and subsequent conventions of Christian powers, not only with the Turks but also with other Asiatic nations. 40

Its main provisions, as we have already indicated, are concerned with the trading privileges of the French in the Ottoman Empire; they have gone down in history as the "capitulations," and they are but the logical consequence and fulfilment of the privileges granted by Se-lim the Terrible to the French merchants in Egypt when he conquered it from the Mamelukes in 1517. They gave the French the right to sail, buy, and sell throughout the Ottoman Empire on the same terms as did the Turks; they recognized the validity of the jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, of the resident French consuls over all Frenchmen there, and obliged the Turks to lend armed force, if necessary, for the execution of the consular judgments. The treaty also provided for complete religious liberty for the French in the Ottoman Empire; it gave them the right to keep guard over the Holy Places, and therewith a sort of protectorate over all Christians resident on Turkish soil; it permitted them to dispose of their property by will, and provided equitably for the cases of those who died intestate. Henceforth France began to enjoy a special and preponderant position in the Ottoman Empire. If other nations wished to send their ships there, they must sail under French colors, for the French king was the only Christian sovereign whom the Sultan would consent to treat as an equal. The "capitulations," in fact, really made Turkey into a sort of

^Charriere, I, 283-294, with note on the date of the treaty on pp. 283-

284.

French crown colony, whither she could export her goods; they were also a principal cause of the prosperity

of Marseilles.

Suleiman's military record in 1536 was not so spotless as It had been ten years before. On the other hand, the Turks, under his leadership, had now definitely made their entry into the diplomatic society of Western Europe. They had begun to count, in international relations, as they had never done before, and the Sultan's reign was but a little more than one-third over! If he kept on at the present rate there was no telling where he would stop! But before we pursue the story of his subsequent treaties and campaigns, we must devote a couple of chapters to his internal government, his court, his private life and his favorites, and to the manners and customs of his subjects.

The Government

W e have already noticed the fact that though Suleiman has gone down in Christian annals as "the Great" or "the Magnificent," he was known to his own people as "El Kanuni" or "the Legislator"; his reign marks an epoch in the constitutional as well as in the military and imperial progress of the Turks. The constitutional side of the picture must not be overdrawn. Suleiman was primarily a warrior, and it has been well said of him that he was a legislator only by contrast to his immediate predecessors, who were even more men of the sword than of the pen than was he, and scarcely legislated at all. Moreover the laws which he drew up and which have come down to us aim rather to define the existing state of affairs than to introduce radical innovations. But for that very reason they provide one of our best sources of knowledge of the conditions prevalent in the vast and heterogeneous empire over which he ruled.

It will be worth while to spend a paragraph in discussing the background against which those conditions rested. The Turks were by nature a most conservative people, who often looked back with longing to primitive times, and who found it difficult to accommodate themselves to the changes which their incredibly rapid expansion since the days of Osman demanded. Originally they had been a pastoral, nomadic, pagan folk on the Asiatic steppes; their chieftain had called himself Khan; their lives had been regulated in accordance with the adet, or body of

145

unwritten tribal custom: primitive no doubt, yet never wholly forgotten. Then there had come the gradual conversion to Islam, with all the contacts with a vastly superior if somewhat decadent civilization which that implied. The sheri or sacred law of the orthodox Moslems took precedence over the adet; the rulers adopted first the Arab tide of Emir, or Commander, and later that of Sultan; on the other hand, they were constantly at pains to remind themselves that they also were still Khans. The next step was the capture of Constantinople, and the rich heritage of Graeco-Roman tradition and magnificence which came with it; Mohammed II was prompt to appropriate it all—except of course the Christianity. He took the additional titles of Kaisar-i-Rum, i.e. Roman Emperor, and Padishah (a word of Persian origin which means Vice-regent of God) 1 to impress men with the fact that he was the successor of Augustus and of Constantine; even the contemporaneous Byzantine chroniclers referred to him as "Basileus"—the tide that had been used by the Greeks for the Great King of ancient Persia and later for the Roman and Byzantine Emperors. He was no doubt a Turkish, a Moslem Basileus; but by no means all of his predecessors had been Greeks or orthodox; the main thing was that he was held worthy to continue the line; and, as we shall later see in more detail, the change from the Byzantine to the Ottoman regime was in many respects much less radical than is generally supposed. And then, finally, under Selim had come the conquest of Syria and of Egypt, and the assumption of the title of "Guardian and Protector of the Holy Cities."—Obviously the task of governing an empire which had expanded so rapidly and included such a great variety of peoples within its boundaries was going to be one of enormous difficulty, particularly as the

1 Originally 'lord who is a royalty"; cf. Encyclopedia of Islam, $.v< "Padishah. 9 *

Turks were by nature averse to change. Suleiman had little to guide him. The last important "law-book" at his disposal was the so-called Kanun-Nameh of his greatgrandfather Mohammed II, and that was now in large measure out of date.

According to Occidental definition, Suleiman was a despot, but he was by no means an absolute despot; on the contrary, there were numerous important limitations to his power. Of these the most definite and significant was unquestionably the sheri or Sacred Law of Islam, which he was powerless to abolish or even alter. He must regulate his life according to its precepts; it restricted his conduct in war and in peace; it limited his revenues; it even protected his Christian subjects who behaved themselves and paid the kharaj or land tax incident on non-Moslems, from any attempt at forcible conversion. Less specific, though scarcely less important, was the incubus of the long tradition and unchanging manners of a people who loved, above all things, to "go on in the same good old way." Suleiman might transgress the urf, or expressed will of previous Sultans, or even the ancient primitive customs or adet, but he must not lightly remove what he could not replace with something that was universally conceded to be better. It was in the nature of things impossible that he should be an innovator, or a "radical reformer." Over and above all this, there were the vast distances and lack of means of communication which prevented him from exercising effective personal control over the areas remote from Constantinople. Only in the regions adjacent to the capital was it possible for him to make his authority immediately and directly felt.