Part 18

This spectacle of the state appearance of the Sultan is, as may be seen, a poor affair enough, very different from what it once was. Formerly the sultans only showed themselves in public surrounded by great pomp and display, preceded and followed by a gorgeous retinue of horsemen, slaves, guards of the gardens, chamberlains, and eunuchs, which when seen from a distance resembled, to use the simile of the enthusiastic chroniclers of the day, “a vast bed of tulips.” In these days the sultans seem to rather avoid all such display, as though it would be a piece of theatrical ostentation, representing an order of things which no longer exists. I often asked myself what one of those early monarchs would say if, rising for a moment from his sepulchre in Brusa or türbeh in Stambul, he should behold one of his descendants of the nineteenth century pass by clad in a long black coat, without turban, sword, or jewels, and making his way through a crowd of insolent foreigners: probably he would grow red in the face with rage and shame, and, to show his utter disdain, would treat him as Suleiman I. did Hassan--seize him by his beard and cut it off with his cimeter, than which no more poignant insult can be offered to an Osman. And, indeed, between the sultans of to-day and those whose names resounded like claps of thunder throughout Europe from the twelfth to the sixteenth century there is as much difference as between the Ottoman empire of our times and that of the early centuries. To their lot fell the youth, beauty, and vigor of the race; and they were not only the living representatives of their people, glorious examples, precious pearls in the sword of Islamism, but they constituted a distinct force in themselves. The personal qualities of these powerful rulers formed one of the most potent factors in the marvellous growth of the Ottoman power during that period of its youth which covered the hundred and twenty-three years from Osman to Muhammad II. Truly, that was a succession of mighty princes, and, with a single exception, not only powerful, but, if you take into consideration the times in which they lived and conditions of their race, austere and wise as well, and deeply beloved by their people--frequently ferocious, but rarely unjust, and often kind and generous to their enemies. All of these, too, as princes of such a race should be, were handsome and imposing in appearance, veritable lions, as their mothers termed them, at whose roar the whole earth trembled. The Abdul-Mejids, Abdul-Azizs, and Murads are but pale shadows of padishahs in comparison with those formidable youths, sons of fathers and mothers of eighteen and fifteen respectively, offspring of the flower of Tartar blood and bloom of Greek, Caucasian, and Persian beauty. At fourteen they commanded armies, governed provinces, and were presented by their mothers with slaves as beautiful and ardent as themselves. Sons were born to them at sixteen as well as at seventy, and they retained their youthful vigor of mind and body to old age. Their spirit, said the poets, was of iron, their bodies were of steel. Certain features which they all possessed in common were lost later on by their degenerate descendants--high foreheads, with arched eyebrows meeting like those of the Persians; the blue eyes of the sons of the Steppes; a curved nose above crimson lips, “like the beak of a parrot over a cherry;” and very thick black beards, which exhausted the fertility of the Seraglio poets to find meet comparisons for. They had the piercing glance of the eagle of Mt. Taurus and the endurance of the king of the desert; bull necks, enormously wide shoulders, expanding chests, “capable of containing all the warlike ardor of their people;” very long arms, huge muscles, short bowed legs, under whose grip the most powerful Turkomanian chargers would neigh with pain; and great shaggy hands, which tossed the bronze maces and mighty bows of the soldiery about as though they had been reeds. And their surnames fitted them well--wrestler, champion, thunderbolt, bone-grinder, blood-shedder. After Allah, war occupied the chief place in their thoughts, and death the least. Although they did not possess the genius of great commanders, they were endowed with that power of prompt and quick action which almost takes its place, and a ferocious obstinacy which not infrequently accomplishes the same results. They swept like winged furies across the field of battle, the heron-quills fastened in their white turbans and the ample folds of their purple and gold-embroidered caftans showing from afar, as with savage cries they drove forward the decimated ranks of sciari whose ox-like nerves had at last given way under the demoralizing fire of Servian and German guns. They swam their horses across rivers whose waters were reddened with blood from their dripping cimeters; they would seize cowardly or panicstricken pashas by their throats, dragging them from the saddle in their headlong flight; leap from their horses in a time of rout and plunge their jewelled daggers up to the hilt in the backs of the flying soldiers; and, mortally wounded, would conceal the hurt and mount upon some eminence on the battlefield that their janissaries might behold the countenance of their lord, pallid with death, but threatening and imperious to the last, until, finally sinking exhausted to the earth, they would roar with rage, maybe, but never with pain. What must the sensations have been of one of those gentle Persian or Circassian slaves, hardly more than a child, when on the evening of a day of battle she beheld for the first time, in the door of her purple tent, under the subdued lamplight, the terrific apparition of one of those all-powerful sultans, drunk with victory and blood. But he could be tender and winning as well, and, gently taking the trembling little fingers in his mighty hands, still cramped from wielding the cimeter, search his imagination for pretty figures of speech to reassure his frightened slave, comparing her beauty to the flowers in his gardens, the jewels in his dagger, the most gorgeous birds in the forests, the most exquisite tints of a sunrise in Anatolia or Mesopotamia, until at last, taking courage, she would reply in the same impassioned and fanciful language: “Crown of my head! glory of my life! my beloved and mighty lord! may thy countenance ever shine with splendor on the two worlds of Africa and Europe! may victory follow wherever thy horse shall bear thee! may thy shadow extend over the whole earth! Would I were a rose to exhale sweetness in the folds of thy turban! a butterfly beating its wings against thy forehead!” And then, as her all-powerful lover reposed his mighty head upon her breast, she would recount childish tales of emerald palaces and mountains of gold, while all around the wild and savage soldiers of the army lay extended fast asleep upon the dark, bloodstained earth. All weakness, however, was left within the tent, from which these sultans came forth more hardy and imperious than ever. They were tender in the harem, ferocious on the battlefield, humble in the mosque, and haughty on the throne. Their language was full of glowing hyperboles and appalling threats; any judgment once pronounced by them was irrevocable; the war was declared, the subject elevated to the pinnacle of greatness, the head of the victim rolled at the foot of the throne, or a tempest of fire and sword drove furiously across the face of a rebel province. Thus sweeping from Persia to the Danube, from Asia to Macedonia, in a continual succession of wars and triumphs, with intervals devoted to the pursuit of love and in hunting, to the flower of their youth there succeeded a maturity even more vigorous and ardent, followed by an old age of which their horses’ flanks, their sword-blades, or the hearts of their favorites could not have been conscious. And not in old age alone, but sometimes in the very flower and vigor of their youth, they would become overpowered with a sense of their position, dismayed in the very moment of victory and triumph by the tremendous responsibility resting upon them, and, seized with a sort of terror at the magnitude and loneliness of their own exalted state, would turn to God with all the force of their natures, passing days and nights in composing religious poetry in dim recesses of the palace-gardens, betaking themselves to the seashore to meditate by the hour upon the Koran, joining the frantic dances of the dervishes, or reducing themselves with fasting and sackcloth in the company of some devout old hermit. In death as in life they furnished their people with examples either of fortitude or of majesty--whether dying with the serenity of a saint, like the founder of the dynasty; or laden with years and glory and melancholy, like Orkhan; or by the hand of a traitor, like Murad I.; or in the misery of exile, like Bayezid; or calmly conversing with a circle of poets and scholars, like the first Muhammad; or from the mortification of defeat, like the second Murad. And one may safely assert that there is nothing upon the blood-red horizon of Ottoman history which can compare with the threatening phantoms of these formidable rulers.

END OF VOLUME I.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Several spurious commas were removed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 241: “wings of the loves” probably should be “doves”.

End of Project Gutenberg's Constantinople, Vol. I (of 2), by Edmondo de Amicis