The next sultan, Bajazet II, who reigned from 1481 to 1512, was neither a man of war nor a genius like his father. His wars were confined to winning a few points from the Venetians and making raids into Hungary and other Christian lands to the north, committing unspeakable atrocities which provoked retali ation on the part of the Christians. Under Selim I wars of conquest were waged against Mohammedan enemies. He drove the Persians to the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris. In 1517 he added Palestine, Syria and Egypt to his empire and took over the spiritual au thority of the caliphate from a fugitive line of caliphs settled in Egypt. From that time the sultans have combined in their persons the dual role of emperor and spiritual head of the Moslem world. Selim outdid his predecessors in systematic bloodthirstiness. When he pro posed to massacre all the Christians in his realm and to abolish the practice of the Christian re ligion, he was sternly opposed and turned from his project by the Mufti Djemali, an honest expounder of his own law and a righteous man. Remembering the humiliating defeat of his grandfather by the Knights of Rhodes, Selim made vast preparations to renew the campaign, when death cut him down, 22 Sept.. 1520. His son, Suleiman (or Solyman) the Magnificent, succeeded and reigned 46 years, the most glori ous period, according to historians, of the Ot toman dynasty. Allowing for some of those occasional crimes which seem inseparable from every Eastern despotism, Suleiman may be re garded as a good ruler according to his light. He took Rhodes (1522) from the Knights, who withdrew to Malta and became the Knights of Malta. He took Belgrade in 1521 and on the field of Mohacs (1526) subdued half of Hun gary. The Turkish armies were the terror of the world and the Conquering Turkp was a mighty power by land and sea. The north and south coasts of the Mediterranean had been conquered or laid waste; many of the countries of Europe had been conquered in whole or in part and all the rulers trembled. Germany was threatened, but the walls of Vienna (1529) checked the advance of Suleiman's army. The Christian nations suspended for a time their dissensions to marshal their forces against the Turks. The Ottoman Empire seemed strong, almost invincible, but its weakness lay in in ternal dissensions, for the conquered nations, although subdued, were 'perennially rebellious. Having settled affairs in Hungary and Wal lachia by treaties, Suleiman turned his atten tion to Persia, where, after some initial de feats, he found himself landed in a war that extended over a period of 20 years. During that time the sultan took large tracts of Armenia and Mesopotamia, together with the strong holds of Van, Mosul and Baghdad. The Turk ish navy swept the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the remote waters of the Indian Ocean. A one-time corsair, Barbarossa, was appointed Capitan-Pasha of the fleet. This celebrated warrior captured Algiers and installed his brother as sovereign; he next defeated the gal leys of the Genoese and devastated their coast. Turning to the Italian coast, he took several towns in Calabria, terrorized Naples and even Rome, and then sailed for Africa and made himself master of Tunis. Charles V formed an alliance with several Christian princes and set out for the African coast at the head of a powerful fleet to try conclusions with Bar barossa, who was severely defeated. Tunis was devastated as mercilessly as the Turks them selves could have done it. The Emperor Charles then laid siege to Algiers, lost great numbers of his troops by disease and 140 vessels in a tremendous storm off the Barbary coast. Sulei man now turned his , whole naval force under Barbarossa against the Venetian Republic. Af ter ravaging the Archipelago and capturing many of the islands, Barbarossa encountered the combined fleets of Spain, Italy and Venice off Previsa. In the battle that ensued the Turk ish admiral gained a decisive victory and Venice sued for peace. From the death of Suleiman I in 1566 the power of Turkey began to decline; the race of rulers degenerated as a whole, not even retaining the military courage and daring of their predecessors. From 1300 to 1566 Turkey was the first military power in Europe. Under Selim II, son of Suleiman, the Turks were first brought into armed conflict with the Russians, thus inaugurating an implacable an tagonism that extended down to the 20th cen tury. In August 1571 the Turks captured Cy prus from the Venetians, but two months later a maritime league of Austrians, Spaniards, Ve netians and the Knights of Malta crushed the Turkish fleet in. the battle of Lepanto (q.v.) and temporarily extinguished the fear of an exten sion of Mohammedan rule in the West.
From Murad III (reigned 1574-95) there follows for 300 years a train of 22 sultans of whom none can be described as noteworthy until the accession, in 1876, of Abdul Hamid II. Murad III began with having his five young brothers murdered. He raised a cook to the position of Grand Vizier, fought a moderately successful war with Persia and hastened his death by intemperance and debauchery. Mo hammed III (1595-1603) went even further than his father in causing his own 19 brothers to be strangled in his presence. He gained some military successes in the Balkans over the Archduke Maximilian and was himself carried off by the great plague in Constantinople a few months after he had put to death his eldest son, Mahmoud, a public favorite. Achmet I (1603-17) encountered revolutions and plague and was defeated by the Persians. Mustapha I
(1617) emerged from long captivity to ascend the throne, proved his utter incapacity and was incarcerated in a tower four months later. Othman II succeeded at the age of 14. He in troduced the death penalty for drinking wine and made an attempt to conquer Poland, which failed. A revolt of the Janissaries released Mustapha from the tower and replaced him on the throne, while Othman became a pris oner and was strangled in his cell after a brief reign of four years (1622). Within little over a year Mustapha was sent back to his prison as a lunatic. During, that . short reign the country fell into anarchy and desolation; revo lutions in Asia Minor and defeats by the Persians made a new ruler imperative. Murad IV (1623-40) was,13 years old when he stepped into his heritage and quickly gave evidence of a resolute and tyrannical disposition. Insur rections and disasters marked his reign; the Lebanon tribes revolted; the Tatars of the Crimea rose in arms, cut up a Turkish force, and ravaged the Black Sea and Bosporus shores; the Persians overran Turkish territory; the treasury at home was empty and the people starving; the soldiers mutinied in the capital and murdered the Grand Vizier; death reaped a bloody harvest throughout the country for months before order was restored. Murad led an army against Persia, reconquered Bagh dad and butchered some 25,000 persons of both sexes and all ages (1638). The sultan drank himself to death and was succeeded by his brother Ibrahim (1640-48), the sole surviving male representative of the house of Othman. The new sultan at once plunged into ferocious debauchery. He ordered wholesale executions and was finally strangled after a disgraceful reign of nine years. Mohammed IV (1648-87) was seven years old on his accession. The early part of his reign was marked by all the dis orders of a state without a head. Six viziers were deposed or strangled in a few years; the Janissaries and other troops murdered each other wholesale; the Turkish fleet was de feated several times by the Venetians, who took Lemnos and Tenedos, but soon lost those islands again. The pasha of Aleppo broke out in re bellion and was crushed; disturbances in Wal lachia led to a great European campaign in which the Turks were opposed by Germans, Austrians, Poles and Hungarians. In July 1664 it seemed that the road to Vienna lay open to the Osmanlis, when the allies inflicted a severe defeat on the river Raab. The city of Candia, in Crete, was again vigorously at tacked by the Turks, who had besieged or blockaded the place for nearly 20 years. It now occupied another two years' conflict to compel the Venetians to surrender, 6 Sept. 1669, and the island was added to Turkey. The war against Poland, conducted by the sultan in person, was at first a success for the Turks, who received Podolia and the Ukraine in ad dition to an annual tribute. In the second stage the tables were turned by the gallant Sobieski. For about 30 years the master minds directing the political and military destinies of Turkey were the Grand Viziers Mehemet and Achmet Kioprili, re spectively, father and son. On the death of the latter in 1678, his brother-in-law, Kara Mustapha, became Grand Vizier — a totally dif ferent character from his two brilliant prede cessors. His one ambition was the conquest of Vienna, which plan he proceeded to put into execution with an army of about 300,000 men composed of Hungarians (then in revolt against the emperor of Germany), Turks, Tatars, Mol davians and Wallachians. Kara Mustapha reached Vienna with but little opposition and laid siege to the city in the middle of July 1683. The Duke of Lorraine threw 10,000 men into the city just before the arrival of the Turks. The defense made a gallant stand under Count Riidiger von Stahremberg until the arrival of Sobieski (who was now king of Poland), with Polish, Saxon and Bavarian contingents num bering altogether some 70,000. With this army he attacked the Turks, and, aided by the Duke of Lorraine, fought a sanguinary engagement (12 Sept. 1683) lasting throughout the day. The Turkish host was routed with enormous loss and its camp given over to pillage. For his failure Kara Mustapha was officially doomed at Belgrade to strangulation; his severed head was carried to Constantinople and exhibited in public. The signal defeat of the Turks before Vienna was joyfully hailed throughout Chris tendom as presaging the downfall of the Mo hammedan power in Europe. The empire was attacked on all • side. The •Venetian Republic declared war and captured several Greek cities from the Turks; Sobieski scattered the Turkish forces and reduced Slavonia and Transylvania. The sultan's troops, overwhelmed with defeat and disaster, revolted against the government. Mohammed lost his throne and was shut up in the same prison from which his brother Suleiman was now released (1687) and girt with the sword of Othman. Suleiman II was 46 years old and had passed the greater part of his life in confinement. A fresh outbreak of the turbulent Janissaries carried riot and mur der through Constantinople. They attacked the Grand Vizier's palace, killed that dignitary and murdered the inmates of his harem, whose mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets. The Austrians and their allies harassed the Turks in Hungary, Bosnia and Serbia, re taking Erlau, Gradiska and Belgrade, while the Venetians conquered sections of Dalmatia.