MAHMOUD II. 



aries obtained by force tlie discharge and execution 

 of the coiiiinaniiers and ministers who undertook to 

 establish order and discipline. Mahmoud tliought 

 only i if securing himself upon the throne, stained 

 with the blood of his uncle Selim and of his brother 

 Mu>tapha. He therefore, according to Pouqueville, 

 murdered the son of Mustapha IV., an infant three 

 months old, and ordered four pregnant sultanas to 

 he sewed up in sacks, and thrown into the. Bosphorus. 

 Tims he remained the last and only descendant of 

 the family of the prophet. His will was now made 

 known by the severest orders. Without advisers, 

 without resources, and almost without an army, he 

 continued the war with Russia, and against the Ser- 

 vians. At length, when he was totally exhausted, 

 his divan concluded a treaty at Bucharest, with 

 Russia, May 28, 1812. This measure was advised 

 by Britain, but disappointed the expectations of Na- 

 poleon, who, in connexion with Austria and Prussia 

 had pronounced die integrity of the Porte. (See Ot- 

 toman Empire.) Having been educated in the sera- 

 glio, where the val/de, or sultana mother, according to 

 ancient custom, never calls her son otherwise than, 

 My lion, my tiger ! the grand seignior knows no law, 

 but some forms of custom, and has no regard for any 

 constraints but those of necessity. The circum- 

 stances of horror, under which he ascended the throne, 

 and the dangers which perpetually surrounded it, 

 hardened his heart and blinded his judgment. As 

 every sultan is directed to learn some art, he chose 

 calligraphy. Vain of his skill, Mahmoud resolved 

 to write with his own hand all the kiat-sheriffs, or 

 orders, in his own name, and to keep a journal of his 

 thoughts. His papers soon accumulated to such a 

 degree upon his sofa, that he looked around for a 

 private keeper of the archives. He found a suitable 

 person for this office in his barber (Berber Baschi), 

 who was doubly worthy of his confidence, because he 

 could neither read nor write. Khalet Effendi, a cour- 

 tier, who amused and ruled the sultan by his buffoon- 

 ery, also occupied a high place in his favour. Berber 

 Baschi introduced this Khalet to Mahmoud; he had 

 once been his companion in the coffee-houses of Galata, 

 a clerk of the corporation of butchers in Constanti- 

 nople. He was afterwards, in 1806, the ambas- 

 sador of Selim III. to the court of Napoleon. These 

 men were the centre of all the intrigues which 

 spread from the seraglio to the provinces. Khalet 

 soon amassed great wealth by means of presents, 

 and his influence became so important, that he com- 

 pletely governed the sultan and the submissive divan. 

 But he was unable to persuade the mufti to admit 

 him among the ulemas. (See Ottoman Empire, at 

 the end of the article.) This privileged caste 

 scorned to receive the universal favourite, because 

 he was the son of a man who sold livers, and, more- 

 over, a child of the world, who drank wine. Khalet 

 punished the mufti with banishment. The new 

 mufti, therefore, and Ali, the new grand vizier, 

 were eager to employ every means to conciliate 

 the favour of Berber Baschi and Khalet Effendi. 

 The latter, however, avoided receiving any impor- 

 tant office, lest he should be held responsible for the 

 ill success of any measure which he advised. But 

 he divided the spoil with the governors, who plun- 

 dered the provinces, and who bribed the principal 

 members of the divan ; and was careful that no 

 complaint should reach the sultan's ears. Pouque- 

 ville maintains, that the grand seignior himself 

 shared with his favourite the sums extorted from 

 the rich. Mahmoud exhibited, however, a proud 

 and inflexible disposition towards Christian princes. 

 The speedy execution of justice in the capital, 

 united with the severe and bloody police, over 

 which Mahmoud, who not (infrequently walked 



about incognito, kept watch, shows that he was 

 not deficient in energy or talents. But the great 

 and the powerful always remained the slaves of his 

 humour, his avarice, and his suspicion. No high 

 officer, whether guilty or innocent, was secure of 

 his property or his life ; hence the universal dis- 

 position for a revolution, and the intriguing policy 

 of the divan, to make the satraps instruments of 

 their mutual destruction, and thus to obtain the 

 treasures of both parties. The reign of Mahmoud 

 has therefore been a continued scene of treasons and 

 rebellions. The Servians succeeded in shaking off 

 the yoke of the pacha of Belgrade ; Mohammed Ali 

 Pacha, conqueror of the Mameluke beys and of the 

 Wechabites, became almost absolute sovereign of 

 Egypt ; by means of bloody insurrections, Rumelia, 

 Widdin, Damascus, Trebisoud, St Jean-d'Acre, 

 Aleppo, Bagdad, Lattakia (anciently Laodicea), 

 and other pachalics, changed their masters ; the 

 bold and crafty Ali, in Janina, raised himself to the 

 throne of Epirus. To make himself master of the 

 treasures of this pacha, Mahmoud, by the advice of 

 Khalet Effendi, accused him of high treason. This 

 policy involved the Porte in a civil war, which 

 betrayed its weakness, drove the Greeks to despair, 

 and brought on their revolution. A foreign em- 

 bassy informed the Porte of the plans of the 

 Greeks,* and Khalet Effendi resolved to extirpate 

 them. In the name of Mahmoud, he gave the fol- 

 lowing commission to the seraskier Ismael and 

 Khurschid Pacha "Every Christian capable of 

 bearing arms must die ; the boys shall be circum- 

 cised and educated in the military discipline of 

 Europe ; not to offend the ulemas, they shall be 

 styled janizaries."^ All the decrees which roused 

 the fanaticism of the Mussulmans in the capital and 

 in the provinces, the equipment of the faithful for 

 war, favourable prophecies in the name of the 

 prophet, the proscriptions and executions of the 

 rich, the profanation of Christian churches, &c., 

 all these, Pouqueville says, proceeded from the 

 seraglio, and were the work of Khalet. Cruelty 

 and avarice led the sultan and his favourite to these 

 measures of terror, while, by letters extorted from 

 the patriarch, and promises of amnesty, made only 

 to be violated, they strove to persuade the Greeks 

 to lay down their arms. The grand seignior himself 

 was present when the innocent prince Constantine 

 Morousi was beheaded. He beheld from a kiosk of 

 the seraglio the bodies of the patriarch Gregory, and 

 of the murdered members of the Grecian synod, 

 dragged by Jews, and thrown into the sea ; and 

 witnessed the execution of the princes Mavrocorrlato 

 and Chantzerys, with a multitude of rich merchants 

 and bankers of the Porte. When Mahmoud had, at 

 last, succeeded in destroying his enemies in the 

 capital and in the two principalities where the 

 rebellion originated, while the disaffected governors 

 in the provinces had been subdued by ambitious 

 pachas, and the head of the formidable Ali lay at 

 his feet ; when he had happily concluded the war 

 with Persia by the peace of 1823, brought about by 

 the mediation of Britain, and had no more to fear 

 from the Wechabites, then it was, after so many 

 perils, that, intoxicated with apparent success, he 

 every day grew more cruel and more intolerable. 

 The children and grand-children of Ali, who had 

 surrendered themselves on the faith of the sultan, 

 were put to death. Inflexible in that design of 



* See Pouqueville's Histoire de la Regeneration de la Grtce 

 (History of the Regeneration of Greece), ii. 171. 



t After the fall of Ali. Khnrschid was ordered by the grand 

 seigni"; to massacre the whole Greek population of Epirns, 

 showing no compassion even to women and children ; to 

 exterminate the Moreots, and to lay waste the whole Morea. 

 Poufliieville, iii. 385. 



