mounted a fresh horse for the purpose of leading a final charge, the sight of the one from which he had dismounted, escaped from the hands of the equerry, and flying riderless through the field, completed their dismay, and the rout became general and irretrievable. Abaza fled from the field with his cavalry and the military chest straight to Erzroom, leaving the infantry, which consisted principally of seghbans, to the mercy of the victors, who exacted from them unsparing vengeance for the massacres in which they had been the actors. All the wounded and prisoners were decapi tated by the janissaries, and their heads, the usual hideous trophies of an Oriental victory, piled in heaps before the tent of Cherkess Mohammed, who illuminated his camp and the town of Kaisariyeh, and celebrated with salvos of artillery, and all the pomp of military rejoicing, the blow which had fallen on the hitherto invincible Abaza.

But Abaza, though defeated in the field, was still far from being overpowered: his partisans throughout Anatolia adhered to him with desperate fidelity, as the only leader by whom they could hope to see the overbearing predominance of the janissaries reduced; his fortress of Erzroom also was well fortified and provisioned for a siege; his family had, however, fallen into the hands of the vizir after the battle of Kaisariyeh; and he offered terms of accommodation, which were readily accepted from the fear that, if driven to bay, he might deliver Erzroom to the Persians, whose progress demanded the undivided attention of the Ottoman manders. On the simple stipulation that he should resume his allegiance to the Porte, and admit into Erzroom ten companies of janissaries as part of the garrison, Abaza received a firman confirming him in his pashalik, and granting a full amnesty to himself and his followers for the events of the civil war;-conditions so favourable as to excite the murmurs of the janissaries, who thirsted for the downfal of their

com

mortal enemy, and loudly accused Cherkess Mohammed of being secretly inclined to his interests; but the exigency of the times left no alternative, and, for the first time, the Turkish empire saw an example of successful and pardoned rebellion.

The sword was sheathed for the time, and the majesty of the Commander of the Faithful was vindicated by the apparent submission of his refractory vassal; but the favourable terms granted to Abaza, and the partial restitution at the same time of the privileges of the seghbans, kept alive the spirits of the party opposed to the janissaries; and both sides looked forward to a speedy renewal of the struggle, which would decide the ascendency of one or other of these military factions. Abaza was universally regarded as the head of the popular party, and his active emissaries traversed the empire in all directions; while the young Sultan himself, though as yet too much in the power of the janissaries to give open expression to his sentiments, was currently believed to cherish in secret a deep and deadly longing for vengeance against the audacious troops who had, by the dethronement and murder of his brother, not only degraded the sanctity of the imperial line, but revealed to themselves and to the world the existence of a power independent of and superior to both the sovereign and the nation. For more than two years, however, after the convention with Abaza, the peace of the empire remained undisturbed, at least by overt civil war; the generals of the Porte, occupied in fruitless efforts to recover Bagdad from the Persians, cautiously abstained from provoking a revolt in flank, which would in an instant have cut them off from their supplies; and, on the other hand, the remembrance of recent discomfiture restrained the Anatolian malecontents from hazarding any demonstration. But at the end of the year 1626, (a year memorable in Constantinople for the triple scourge of famine, plague, and sedition,) the janissary tumults

broke out with fresh violence, both in the capital and the camp. Sultan Mourad, menaced with the fate of his brother, only saved himself and the Sultana-Walidah by delivering to the fury of the troops the KaimakamGourdji-Mohammed Pasha, an ancient and faithful servant of the state; and the grand vizir Hafez, after being compelled by an outrageous mutiny to retreat from before Bagdad when on the eve of success, was made, in the camp of Aleppo, the hopeless spectator of the massacre by the janissaries of their secretary and numerous other officers, to whom they attributed the ill success of the last campaign. The seghbans, taking courage from the disunion of their enemies, appear ed afresh in arms in several parts of Anatolia; and a firman of the Porte, directing Abaza to repress these disorders, was disobeyed or evaded. He still, however, continued to profess himself the devoted slave of the Sultan; and the government, conscious of its own weakness, endeavoured to confirm his wavering fidelity by depriving Hafez of the great seal, and conferring it, for the second time, on Khalil, who still maintained friendly communications with his quondam protége.

The Persians had opened the campaign of 1627 by the siege of Akhiskaan important fortress in the vicinity of Erzroom: and Dishleng-Hussein Pasha, the Anadoli- Valessy, or viceroy of Anatolia, was detached by Khalil to its relief, at the head of 5000 of the élite of the janissaries, and a powerful force of provincial troops, commanded by four pashas of three tails, with their dependent pashas and beys. With this corps d'armée the pasha of Erzroom was summoned to co-operate; but Abaza, who had received information that the grand vizir held private orders to send his head to Constantinople at the end of the campaign, and who had been still further put on his guard by the recent execution of the governor of Adana, one of his most devoted adherents, evasively replied, that "the mutual distrust which prevailed between the seghbans and the janissaries precluded all hope of their acting in concert with effect; but that, if the latter were recalled to the main army in Diarbekir, he would himself assume the command-in-chief of the timariot contingents, and march at

their head upon Akhiska." This insolent proposition was answered by a peremptory mandate from the vizir for his instant appearance in camp; and the Anadoli- Valessy, whose haughty impetuosity could ill brook opposition to his authority, fiercely exclaimed in the presence of the cou rier who brought the dispatch, "Who is this Abaza, a slave bought by Janpoulad for seventy piastres, that he dares to defer his obedience to the lieutenants of the Padishah? Go; and announce to your master, that the fate of former rebels will speedily be renewed in his own, if he hesitate to march wherever the service of the Sultan requires his presence!" These indications could leave no doubt in the mind of Abaza of the destruction which was prepared for him: but he still retained the semblance of submission, and, marching at the head of a large body of troops entirely devoted to him, established his camp at a short distance from Erzroom, but apart from that of Dishleng Hussein, while the gates and bazars of the town were thrown open by his order to the odas of janissaries quartered near the walls.

The vigilance of the Anadoli- Valessy was lulled by the apparent want of security shown by his intended victim, and he only awaited a favourable opportunity to possess himself of the person of Abaza; when, in the middle of a dark and stormy night, the sentinels of his camp were hailed by a horseman in the Koordish garb, who demanded instant admission to the tent of the serasker. The attendants hesitated to disturb the slumbers of their master; but the intruder, throwing off the Koordish cap and cloak which he had assumed in the place of his uniform, displayed the features of a well-known janissary officer, who had escaped by favour of this disguise from the general slaughter of his comrades in the city and its environs. Abaza had decamped under cover of the night, and falling with his faithful seghbans on the astonished janissaries, had cut them off almost to a man, and was now rapidly returning to surprise the camp of the seraskier, before the events of the night became known to him! An instant retreat was proclaimed, in the hope of effecting a junction with the main army under Khalil: the pasha of Marash, flying precipitately with the cavalry, escaped through the de

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files of the mountains: but the march of the main body was retarded by the paternal solicitude of the serasker, whose son was at the point of death : and, while the jaded and dispirited column halted at daybreak at the entrance of the passes, the rebel squadrons, flushed with prevous carnage, poured upon them. An instant panic and rout was followed by indiscriminate and unsparing massacre. leng-Hussein himself, in the act of remounting his horse, was transfixed by the lance of Abaza's treasurer, and fell mortally wounded:* and, of all the pashas and superior officers, the aga of the janissaries alone escaped, by the fleetness of his horse, from death or capture on the fatal field. The triumphant return of the victors to Erzroom was celebrated by the execution of all the prisoners, a series of whose severed heads and limbs decorated the battlements and ramparts of the town even the captive pashas were not saved by their rank from the general doom: a single janissary only was left alive, and sent to Constantinople to announce to his comrades that the avenger of the blood of Osman was again in arms.

In the mean time the tidings of this fresh explosion had been carried by the fugitives to the camp of the grand vizir, and scarcely a week had elapsed from the death of the Anadoli- Valessy, when Abaza saw the grand army, commanded by his former master, covering the heights opposite the town. His refusal to surrender was followed by an instant investment, and the trenches were regularly opened: but the Ottomans, prepared only for a campaign against the Persians in the rugged country of Armenia, were unprovided with artillery of the calibre necessary for battering the strong walls of Erzroom, which defied the light field-pieces brought to bear on them. The furious sallies of the garrison, frequently directed by Abaza in person, occasioned heavy loss to the attacking army; and their hardships were augmented by the approach of

winter, which set in with unusual severity. The siege was, nevertheless, persevered in for ten weeks; till, at the end of November, a furious snow storm, which almost overwhelmed the camp, made a speedy retreat inevitable: but the mountain passes between Erzroom and Tokat were choked with snow: numbers of the soldiers perished with cold, and many were buried beneath the avalanches, which the concussion produced in the air by the noise attendant on a marching army, detached from the impending peaks. The partisans of Abazaf cut off the stragglers in all directions; and it was not till after twenty-five days of incessant suffering, that the shattered army of the vizir reached the sheltering walls of Tokat.

The disastrous issue of this campaign was attributed by the divan to the infirmities of Khalil; and the last days of that aged and meritorious minister were embittered by the loss of office. He died at Scutari in the spring of the following year, and was mourned by the people as the most upright and equitable of those who had held the helm of the state during the distracted period in which he lived. His successor, the Bosniaque Khosroo, had, four years previously, when aga of the janissaries, turned by his personal intrepidity the scale of victory at the battle of Kaisariyeh; and to him was intrusted the task of again humbling the pride of the triumphant rebel, whose agents during the past winter had penetrated even to Constantinople, where two of them, detected in excit. ing the populace to rise against the janissaries, were put to death by torture. The intelligence that Abaza had actually concluded a convention with the Shah, and that a Persian force, under Shamsi- Khan, was on its march to his aid, imparted additional activity to the operations of the vizir. The mutinous spirit of the troops was repressed by numerous executions, while a battering train was disembarked at Samsoon on the north coast of Anatolia, and the general rendez

vous appointed at Arzinjan. But the enterprise was facilitated by the inconsiderate rashness of Abaza himself, who, instead of concentrating his forces for resistance, continued to press the siege of the fortress of Hassan-Kalaat, the governor of which, aware that Abaza was ignorant of the close vicinity of the Ottoman army, contrived to convey to the vizir intelligence of his unguarded state. Khosroo instantly quitted his camp with the cavalry and light troops, and accomplishing in forty-eight hours a march which usually consumed five days, appeared before Erzroom (September 1628) before the news of his departure from Arzinjan had reached the garrison. The siege artillery, the commandant of which had been stimulated to exertion by the threat of decapitation, arrived three days later; and a vigorous cannonade was commenced against the walls from seven batteries of heavy guns.

The rapidity of the vizir's movements had anticipated Abaza, who, unable to throw himself into the beleaguered city, hovered with his cavalry about the camp of the assailants; but the defenders, taken by surprise and destitute of provisions, were unable to maintain a protracted resistance; and on the fourteenth day of the siege the sheikh of Kaisariyeh, (who had continued to be Abaza's most trusted adviser,) issuing from the town, enveloped in a shroud in token of submission, repaired to the tent of the vizir to implore his clemency; " and the oulemah and all the inhabitants came out soon after, and besought Khosroo to spare them, saying, Pardon is the choicest flower of victory.""-(Evliya.) Pardon was granted accordingly; and Abaza, whose last hopes of maintaining him self in the field were destroyed by a victory which the pasha of Kars gained over the Persian corps of Shamsi-Khan, made overtures for negotiation. The facility with which this was accorded, seems to imply that

the vizir acted in pursuance of secret instructions from the Sultan, who was well disposed to regard with lenity transgressions which had the abasement of the janissaries for their object. Abaza,* on repairing to the Ottoman camp, was received with high honours, invested with a robe of honour by the vizir, and suffered to retain his family and treasures; while six hundred of the élite of his troops, enrolled in the ranks of the army as djebedjis or armourers, were suffered to remain about his person as a guard.

"When the news of these brilliant advantages," says Evliya, "reached the Sultan's ear, orders were given to bring Abaza before the imperial stirrup;" and the vizir, repairing to Constantinople, presented his formidable captive to Mourad in grand divan. Of the scene which ensued, Evliya was probably an eyewitness, and his account is so curious as to deserve some notice. The Sultan,

assuming a tone of severity, called on him for a defence of his manifold acts of insurrection, and the blood which he had shed without warrant or authority; "whereupon Abaza kissed the ground thrice, and said, 'My Emperor, for the sake of the holy prophet, and by the souls of thy illustrious ancestors, I beseech thee to show favour to me, and spare me while I lay before thee the grief of my heart."" In the presence of the whole court, and of the janissary officers who stood ranked on each side of the throne, he proceeded to recapitulate, in a strain of bitter invective, the atrocious offences of which that corps had been guilty, attributing to their misconduct alone the distracted and enfeebled state of the empire, and painting in vivid colours the indignities which had been heaped by this licentious and unbridled soldiery on the sacred person of the Sultan Osman, to whose ultimate fate he alluded in terms which "drew tears from the emperor, and from all present! was then,' continued he, that a zeal

It

to show that I was worthy of the bread and salt, took possession of your lala* Abaza, and I resolved to avenge the innocent blood of my Padishah.' He related and justified the measures which he had taken for the extermination of the janissaries; and concluded this extraordinary address by saying, 'Whatever I have done has been from pure zeal for the interests of the true faith and the Sublime Porte; and now the sword hangs over my neck, and I have come from Erzroom to suffer as a victim, if such be the will of my sultan:' so saying he knelt down with his face towards the kiblah (Mekka,) and began to recite his profession of faith;" but at this juncture the grand vizir Khosroo, and the other great officers of state, interceded, as had been probably arranged beforehand, for the life of the penitent. Mourad, appearing to yield to their solicita tions, ratified the pardon which Khosroo had granted in the camp of Erzroom; and the janissaries, with fruitless rage, saw their indomitable enemy issue from the presence of the Sultan in safety and honour.

During the stay of Abaza in Constantinople, he resorted daily to the At-meidan or Hippodrome, where his matchless horsemanship and dexterity in the use of the bow and the jereed attracted the admiration of the Sultan, who was himself equalled by few of his subjects in personal strength or skill in martial exercises; but in a short time (according to the policy then usual with the Porte, of conferring on pardoned rebels the govern ment of districts remote from the scenes of their former career) he received the pashalik of Bosnia — an appointment fully justified on the principle above referred to, by his utter ignorance of even the geographical position of his new sandjak, if credit is to be given to a story related by the imperial ambassador Küfstein, who describes Abaza as gravely enquiring of him whether Bohemia and Vienna

were not two fortresses on the confines of Bosnia and Hungary!† Even in this remote province, however, the mutual hatred of the janissaries and the avenger of Osman was not stilled; and the severity of the governor towards those quartered on the frontier provoked an attempt to assassinate him while hunting; but two of the assailants fell beneath the scimitar of the valiant pasha, and the third was transpierced in his flight by an arrow from his bow. The traitorous attempt was punished by the decimation of the oda to which the culprits belonged, and the execution of the chiefs of the family of Lob-oghlu, who were accused of connivance in the plot; and the Sultan applauded the rigid justice of his lieutenant.

The sway of Abaza in Bosnia continued nearly four years, and an autograph letter from his hand, addressed during this period to the imperial government on the subject of the frontier regulations, is still preserved in the archives of Vienna; but the com. plaints of the Venetians, whose territory he had attacked in the midst of peace, at length caused his removal; and after residing for some time at Belgrade, and in vain soliciting the important pashalik of Buda, he was transferred to Widdin, and invested with the command of the troops assembled, in the prospect of a rupture with Poland, in the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The Poles, threatened at the same time by the Swedes, the Russians, and the disaffected Cossacks, were anxious to avoid incurring the hostility of the Porte, and Alexander Trzebinski was directed to proceed to Constantinople for the purpose of conciliating the sultan; but Abaza, eager to acquire glory in a new field of action, detained the envoy on the borders of Moldavia, and, crossing the Dniester with his troops, effected a junction near Kaminiek with the Tartar Khan, and attacked, at the head of this combined