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of jewels, while the bon-bons distributed to the populace during the rejoicings cost no less than twice that sum. Siawush-Pasha, who, as neshanli-saghdedj, or bridegroom's man, escorted the bride to her husband's house, expended in gifts the sum of 60,000 sequins; and even the ornamented palm branches which were borne in the nuptial procession were valued at a thousand pieces of gold. The princess, on whose nuptials all this pomp was lavished, survived them only a few years; but Cicala is said, after her death, to have married her younger sister, a union forbidden by the strict interpretation of the Koran, (though some commentators expound the passage as forbidding only the marriage with two sisters at once,) and, as the appellation of sultan-zadah (descendant of a sultan) is applied by Turkish writers to both his sons, it is probable that he contracted no other alliances.

Since the peace of 1555, which terminated the long wars of Selim and Soliman against Persia, the relations of that monarchy with the Porte had continued friendly: and the splendid mission dispatched by Shah Tahmasp in 1576 to congratulate Mourad on his accession, was received at Constantinople with a degree of distinction never before accorded to the ambassadors of any Mohammedan, and far less of any Christian power. The capitanpasha, with thirty galleys, transported the envoy, Tokmah-Khan, from Scutari to Europe, amid the thunders of artillery from both shores. The beglerbeg of Roumelia, and Cicala, as aga of the janizaries, received him at the landing-place, and rode on his right and left to the palace prepared for his reception; while the rich gifts of which he was the bearer were displayed in long procession by his attendants, and the jewelled caparisons of his led horses (an important part of an Oriental pageant) at once dazzled the eyes of the Osmanlis by their gorgeous trappings of gems and gold, and seandalized their orthodoxy by the cm

broidered figures of men and animals which appeared on them; and which, by the Soonis (who consider the representation of all living things forbidden) were regarded as a sheah, abomination. The public presentation of Tokmah to the Sultan, nine days after his entry, was signalized by an equal profusion of magnificence; but, before the Persian ambassador had quitted Constantinople, the monarch from whom he was accredited had expired by poison, administered to him by one of his wives; and, amid the troubles and dissensions which ensued, the Porte easily found pretexts for attacking Persia afresh. War was accordingly declared the following year; and the Scraskier Mustapha, the hero of the Cypriote war, subdued in two campaigns the greater part of Georgia and Shirwan: but the intrigues of his enemies procured his recall; and, in 1580, the grand-vizirat and the command of the army were conferred at once on KhojaSinan, the conqueror of Tunis and Arabia, and the early patron of Cicala.

Cicala was at this juncture no longer aga of the janizaries-the loud complaint of the Christians of Constantinople, of whom he was a bigoted oppressor, had caused his removal for encouraging the outrages of the soldiery against their property; but he still retained the personal favour of the Sultan, and repairing with Sinan to the headquarters of the army in Armenia, gained such renown by his bravery and enterprise in the wild and irregular warfare which marked the ensuing campaign on the Caucasian border, that he was not only exempted from the disgrace which overtook his patron at its conclusion, but invested with the rank of pasha of two tails, and appointed governor of Erivan, the most recent conquest of the Turks, which had been fortified with extraordinary care by the Seraskier Ferhad-Pasha, for the defence of the new frontier. The fluctuating fortunes of the campaign which followed, afforded him ample opportunities of distinguishing himself under the eye

The mother of the heir-apparent alone bears the title of Sultana-Khassiki; and, after the accession of her son, Sultana- Walidah.

* The male offspring of both the daughters and granddaughters of a reigning sovereign were destroyed in their birth, as too near the throne. It was only in the fourth degree of descent that they were allowed to exist, and to these the title of Sultan-Zadah was appropriated,

of the new commander-in-chief, OsmanPasha, (surnamed Oz-demir, or "iron nerves,") one of the ablest and most indefatigable generals whose triumphs are recorded in the military annals of the Osmanlis. In the nocturnal victory called the Battle of the Torches, gained over the Persians in the spring of 1583, Cicala led the advanced guard with his usual fiery intrepidity; and Osman marked his confidence in him by intrusting to him the command of the main force left in Armenia, when he himself set out at the head of the elite on the remarkable expedition in which, after penetrating the hazardous defiles of the Caucasus, and crossing the frozen plains of the Kuban in the depth of winter, he anticipated and crushed by his sudden appearance the meditated revolt of the Krim Tartars, returning in triumph, with the head of the rebel khan Mohammed, to Constantinople. The honours with which his promptitude and energy were rewarded have no parallel in the range of Turkish history: after his interview with Mourad, he was invested, instead of an ordinary dress of honour, with robes similar to those worn on state occasions by the Sultan, who, with his own hands, fastened an imperial aigrette in his turban, and attached to his side his own jewelled ataghan :-he was escorted, on his return to his official residence, by the imperial guards; and the criers exacted from the multitude the homage ordinarily paid to the sovereign.* A few weeks later, the emblems of the grand-vizirat were conferred in full divan upon Osman, who returned with augmented powers to the Asiatic command; while Cicala, whose valour and capacity had been highly lauded by the new favourite, received the third horse-tail, with the important pashaliks of Wan and Bagdad, and the second rank in command of the army.

The reigning sovereign of Persia, Sultan Mohammed Khoda-bandah, was incapacitated, both by weakness of character and an infirmity of sight almost amounting to blindness, from taking an active part either in the government of his dominions or the conduct of his armies; but the pro

gress of the Turks, which threatened the dismemberment of the northwestern Persia, required the presence of a prince of the blood; and Hamzah, the valiant son of Mohammed, accordingly appeared in 1585 at the head of the Persian forces. Reanimated by the presence of their gallant prince, the Persians attacked and overthrew the Ottoman advanced corps under Cicala, who was on the point of forming the siege of Tabreez; but the approach of the grand-vizir compelled Hamzah to retire before the numerical superiority of the Turks, who entered the capital of Azerbijan, and subjected the inhabitants, during three days and nights, to all the horrors of carnage and plunder. But no sooner had the Ottomans commenced the retreat, which the lateness of the season and the broken health of the grand vizir rendered inevitable, than Hamzah, resuming the offensive, harassed their exhausted columns with incessant and impetuous attacks. Ci. cala sustained a second defeat at ShamGhazan, and the Persians, penetrating between the Ottoman corps d'armée, nearly succeeded by a sudden onset in storming the fortified camp of the grand-vizir, who expired in his tent the same evening, (Oct. 29, 1585.)

The command now devolved on Cicala, who at once retrieved the lustre of the Turkish arms, and dispelled the shade which the defeat of Sham-Ghazan had cast on him, by gaining a victory over the hitherto invincible Hamzah ; after which, he led his troops into winter quarters, at Wan, and announced by Tartar couriers to the Sultan his late success, and the death of the grandvizir. The advantages gained over the Persians were celebrated at Constantinople by fêtes and rejoicings; but the confirmation of Cicala in the post of seraskier, or commander-in-chief, to which his services justly entitled him, and for which the deceased Osman, in the last despatches which he addressed to the Sultan, had earnestly recommended him, was opposed by a party in the seraglio, who advocated the claims of Ferhad-Pasha: and the weak Mourad, unable to decide between the two candidates, compromised the point

It is impossible to avoid noticing the striking coincidence of these details with the honours paid to Mordecai, by command of Ahasuerus. Such is the immutability, in matters of ceremony, of Oriental customs.

by appointing them both, in separate khatti-shereefs, conjointly to the command. This measure might have been productive of disastrous results, if the Persians had still been headed by the brave Hamzah : but that valiant prince had perished by the hand of a private assassin, and, after his death, the war was suffered to languish by both sides. The helpless king Mohammed sank into insignificance, when no longer supported by the prowess and counsels of Hamzah, and erelong abdicated, or was deposed by the nobles, in favour of the youthful prince Abbas, afterwards justly sur named the Great. But the auspices under which this brilliant reign commenced were far from favourable: Kazween, then the capital, was threatened by the progress of the Turks in the west:-in the opposite quarter, the Uzbeks were rapidly subduing Khorassan: and the efforts of the king were distracted by the turbulence of the nobles, in whose hands he was almost a prisoner; till under the pressure of these accumulated difficulties, a peace was concluded with the Porte in 1590, by which Persia ceded Tabreez with its dependencies, Georgia, Shirwan, and all the other conquests of the Turks.

On the appointment of Ferhad as his colleague, Cicala had retired in disgust from the grand army, to the districts more immediately under his own government; and his subsequent share in the operations of the war appears to have been confined to the subjugation of the frontier tribes of Khuzistan, and the reduction of the fortress of Nahavund, a place celebrated as the scene of the final victory which placed Persia under the dominion of the first caliphs. But the despatches which he addressed to the Porte, (several of which are preserved in Turkish historical collections,) attest the zeal with which he laboured during this period for the internal improvement of his pashalik, and more particularly for the establishment of communications which might facilitate the performance of the sacred duty of pilgrimage enjoined on all Moslems. He vehemently opposed, however, the

first proposals for peace, urging that a vigorously conducted invasion, directed against Kazween or Ardebil, might dissolve the fabric of the Persian monarchy, then assailed on all sides by foreign and domestic foes: but these bold counsels were rejected by the timid policy of Mourad; and the death of the capitan-pasha, in the year before the conclusion of the war, (1589,) afforded an opportunity of recalling him from the theatre of war to Constantinople, where he was installed in the vacant dignity, and made one of the six vizirs of the divan,* at the same time that the grand-vizirat was once more conferred on his adoptive father Sinan.

During the remaining five years of the reign of Mourad, the Porte was a scene of constant intrigue between the partisans of Ferhad and those of Sinan: and the heads of the two factions were successively elevated to and deposed from the grand-vizirat: but the influence of Cicala's wife in the seraglio, and the personal partiality shown towards him by the Sultan, maintained him throughout in the capitan-pashalik: and he further secured himself by the magnificent gifts which, on the return of the fleet from its summer cruise, he annually presented at the foot of the throne as the spoils of vessels taken from the Christians in the Mediterranean. So high was his favour at this period, that he even presumed to solicit for his brother, the Viscount Charles de Cicala, (whom he had invited from Naples to Constantinople,) the dignity either of waiwode of Moldavia or duke of Naxos,† two of the highest posts tenable in the empire by Christians; but this daring petition was unsuccessful. In the plenitude of power, he extended his care to those of his relatives who still remained in Christendom; and appear. ing in 1594 with the fleet off Messina, where his mother and sister resided, demanded that they should be given up to him, revenging the refusal of the governor by ravaging the coasts of Sicily, and destroying, on the opposite coast, the town of Rheggio, which had been sacked, on a previous occa

* The command of the fleet, though usually held by a vizir, (pasha of three tails,) did not necessarily imply the rank of more than two.

† Naxos had been in the possession of the Turks since 1516; but the forms of government established there and in other Egean isles by the Venetians had never been altered.

sion, by the famous corsair Barba rossa. The grand-vizirat was now the only step wanting to crown his ambition; and it is probable that, on the death or resignation of the aged Sinan, (then holding the seals for the third time,) he would have been appointed to that exalted office, when the death of the Sultan Mourad III. (Jan. 1595) disconcerted for the time his schemes of aggrandizement.

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The accession of Mohammed III. wrought an immediate change in the interior politics of the seraglio: his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Saffiyah, (by birth a Venetian of the noble house of Baffo,) who, even during the life of Mourad, had not abstained from interference in public affairs, now as sumed over the mind of her son an ascendancy which the influence of his tutor Saad-ed-deen, who alone partook with her in his confidence, could not counteract: and the nomination of Ferhad as grand-vizir, by her advice, was followed by the dismissal of Sinan and Cicala, in spite of the remonstrances of Saad-ed-deen. But the administration of Ferhad was neither long nor prosperous: the Sultan was alarmed by incessant mutinies of the spahis and other troops in the capital, who mingled with their clamours for pay demands for the head of Ferhad; and though these disorders were quieted for the moment by the temporary exile of Sinan and Cicala, who were accused of fomenting them, they broke out with fresh violence after the departure of the grandvizir for the campaign in Hungary, (where a new war with the empire had broken out in 1593 :) and the treachery of Ibrahim-Pasha, the brotherin-law of the Sultan, who, under the mask of friendship for Ferhad, was a concealed adherent of the opposite party, proved fatal to the unfortunate minister. Scarcely had he reached the headquarters of the army at Rudshuk, when the messengers of death overtook him; and the wily Sinan, at the age of eighty, was replaced for the

fourth time in the vizirat; which, though again displaced for a few days inconsequence of the ill success of the campaign of 1595, he held, with that short interval, till his death; furnishing the only instance in the Ottoman annals of this dignity being five several times conferred on the same person.

Since the death of Soliman the Mag. nificent, his successors, almost stationary in the capital, had discontinued the practice, which had prevailed since the foundation of the monarchy, of heading their armies in person; and though, during the short reign of Selim II., the glory and prosperity of the empire had been preserved undiminished by the ministers and generals formed under the eye of his father, the mischievous effects of this impolitic negligence were soon made manifest by the continual mutinies of the troops, and revolts in the distant pro vinces, (now no longer curbed by the frequent presence of the sovereign,) which troubled the sway of Mourad III. But Mohammed III., (who, if he could not lay claim to the personal courage which had distinguished most of his warlike forefathers, had at least inherited a double portion of that sanguinary ferocity by which it was too often tarnished,) + declared at his accession his determination to check the growing evil, by resuming the martial habits, and emulating the glories of his predecessors. This resolution is said by the Turkish historian Naima, to have been mainly owing to the counsels of Khoja-Sinan, and the arguments ascribed to him are curious: "If," said he, "the command. inchief in the field be held by the grandvizir, the kaimakam will throw every impediment in his way, in hopes of succeeding to the vizirat on his disgrace: if by any other pasha, the grand- vizir will impede his exertions lest success should recommend him as his own successor: thus, no good will be effected in either case!" The execution of the Sultan's purpose

*This princess survived both her son and her grandson Ahmed I.; and died in 1618 in the old seraglio, where she had been confined on the accession of Ahmed. From this time, every new reign brought with it a fresh camarilla of women and eunuchs, who controlled the sultan and the ministers, and whose good graces were courted by vizirs and pashas expectant.

†The day of his accession was commemorated by the execution of his nineteen brothers, and of all the oudalisques to whom any suspicion of pregnancy could attach; and his subsequent career was worthy of this commencement.

was hastened by the death, early in 1596, of the "craftie old foxe" (as Knolles quaintly terms Sinan) who had suggested it, as the army in Hungary was thereby left without a general: the Sandjak-shereef, which, in the last reign had been transferred from Damascus to Constantinople, was accordingly displayed for the first time as the imperial standard, and Mohammed, quitting the capital in all the splendour of Oriental state, repaired, with a numerous cortège of pashas and generals, to the headquarters of the army.

Cicala, whose fiery yet subtle temperament, was entirely congenial to that of his old patron, had been recommended by him as his successor: but the influence of the Sultana- Walidah prevented his attaining the envied dignity, and the seals were delivered to Ibrahim- Pasha, who had conciliated the queen-mother by separating himself from the interests of the other party. Cicala, however, accompanied the Sultan into Hungary, and so far gained his good graces that he was appointed to an important command in the army. The interval of confusion between the death of Sinan and the appearance of the Sultan in the field, had been actively employed by the Imperialists in the reduction of several frontier fortresses in Turkish Hungary. Gran and Viszegrad had fallen; and Cicala was ordered to hasten with the advanced corps to the relief of Hatwan, then closely beleaguered by the Archduke Maximilian. But piqued, as it is said, by the rejection in a council of war of the plan which he had drawn up for the campaign, he executed those orders so dilatorily that the town was taken by assault before he appeared, and the garrison and inhabitants slaughtered without mercy by the Walloons and Germans. Yet so well was his favour already established with Mohammed, that this misconduct passed even without reproof "a circumstance," says Naima, "so marvellous as to confound the under. standing;" and he speedily retrieved his military reputation by his services at the siege of Agria, which surrendered, on capitulation, after a despe

rate resistance; but the Turkish commanders were unable to protect the remnant of the garrison from the fury of the janizaries, who, inflamed by the recent massacre at Hatwan, rushed upon them as they issued from the shattered fortress. Ten officers alone, who sought refuge in the tent of the Tefterdar, escaped with their lives: the rest were literally hewn limb from limb, and their mangled remains strewn along the glacis of the citadel.

The Archduke, who had retreated before the overwhelming numbers of the Ottomans, again advanced, after effecting a junction with the Hungarians between Teuffenbach and Palfi, for the deliverance of Agria; but the tragical fate of that city anticipated his movements, and he found himself (Oct. 24, 1596) in front of the whole Turkish force on the marshy plain of Keresztes. The following day was consumed in indecisive skirmishing; but on the morning of the 26th, a movement of the Turks, to cross a small river intersecting the plain, brought on a general engagement. Ten thousand Turks and Tartars, who had gained the opposite bank, were enveloped and cut to pieces before they had time to form: and the Imperialists, passing the stream with the fugitives, attacked the Ottomans in flank, and captured the whole of their field artillery in position. Panic and confusion now spread rapidly through the Turkish ranks, the Asiatic timariots fled from the field, and the janizaries, left unsupported, were driven from their position; while the Germans, pressing on in the confidence of unexpected victory, fell headlong on the camp of the enemy, and dispersed themselves to plunder the vast riches which it contained. But the Sultan,* who witnessed the engagement from a canopied seat, raised on the back of a camel, was restrained from flight by the exhortations of Saad-ed-deen, who stood at his side with the Koran in his hand: the bostandjis and the pages of the seraglio defended with desperate valour the entrance to the imperial tents: when at this critical juncture Cicala, who had held, with a large body of cavalry a position in advance of the line, and remote from the scene

Istuanfi (De Rebus Hungaricis, xxx. 701) asserts that Mohammed himself fled from the field, attended only by the spahis of his guard, and accompanied by the English ambassador (Burton); but the Turkish historians are unanimous in stating that he held his ground; and their candid acknowledgement of his cowardly trepidation entitles them to some belief on this point.

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