| Transcript |
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE. XIX
7
apartments, the wily Kislar Aga, who was sent to visit her, was obliged to have recourse to
stratagem to separate them. He represented to the mother that Soliman was tortured
with remorse for the death of her eldest son, and wished to repair his fault by affection
for the younger. He was afraid his health would suffer by confinement, and it was his
wish that he and his mother should take air and exercise; and for this purpose a horse,
splendidly caparisoned, was sent for the boy, and an arrhuba for herself and her female
slaves. The credulous mother was persuaded, and they set out to visit a beautiful kiosk
on the shores of the Bosphorus. The boy rode on " in merry mood," with the Kislar
Aga, and she followed in the arrhuba. When arrived at a rough part of the road,
the carriage, which had been previously prepared, broke down, and the truth instantly
flashed upon the wretched mother's mind; she sprung out, and rushed after her son,
who had by this time entered the kiosk with his companion. She arrived breathless,
and found the door closed; she beat at it with frantic violence, and when at length
it was opened, the first object that presented itself, was her only remaining son, lying on
the ground, strangled, his limbs yet quivering in his last agonies, and the bowstring of
the eunuch yet unloosed from his throat.
The last years of the wretched old man were imbittered by the conduct of the
sons, for whose advancement he had suffered those foul murders to be committed. His
son Bajazet was a rebel to his father's authority; and Selim, who succeeded him, was the
most weak and wicked of the Mohammedan line. His noble mosque, and the tombs that
contain the ashes of himself and his wife Roxalana, are shown by the Turks to strangers
as the most splendid monuments left by their sultans.
Selim II. succeeded to the throne in 1566, ancPwas entirely devoted to the gratification of his appetites. His father was temperate in wine, and forbade its use under the
severest penalties. It is said he attributed the failure of the attack on Malta to the
violation of the law of Mohammed in this respect, and he caused caldrons of boiling oil to
be kept in the streets, ready to be poured down the throat of any person, Turk, Jew, or
Christian, who was found intoxicated. Selim, as if in contempt and mockery of his father,
indulged in wine to such excess, that he despatched an expedition to Cyprus,, and
annexed that island to the empire, for no other reason but because it produced good
wine. The loss of the sanguinary battle of Lepanto, in his reign, was another blow
following the defeat at Malta, which shook the mighty fabric of the Turkish empire.
Selim died after a reign of eight years and five months, a rigid observer of all the
Prophet's laws, except sobriety.
The people of the West had now begun to recover from the terror which the first
eruption of these terrible barbarians into Europe had excited, and to consider the many
commercial advantages to be derived from an intercourse with them. The French and
Venetians, in the reign of Selim, had already established this intercourse; and the
English were supplied with Oriental produce by the latter, who sent Argosies, or ships
of Ragusa, in the gulf of Venice, to England, freighted with the wealth of the East.
One of these rich vessels was wrecked on the Goodwin sands, and the Venetians were
afraid to send another. But the English having tasted of Asiatic luxuries, could not |
