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Most are content just to note these and other contrasts; the sum of their opinion as regarded the people being: "If they be bad you shall nowhere meet with worse; if they be good you shall hardly find better."⁶⁷ Of experience of this, Captain Cuellar's narrative stands out as a quintessential example. It is equally handy for those who wish to prove the Irish the most charming, or the most abominable, nation that ever existed. He found them equally ready to strip him and to feed him, to wound and to heal, to betray and to shelter, to make him at home and to make him work. Compare with this the conclusions of an impartial Italian⁶⁸ seventy years earlier. The women he found very beautiful and white, but dirty; the people generally, very religious, yet do not consider stealing a sin. He was given to understand that Irish people looked down on such as were averse to share and share alike as regards the blessings of fortune, and certainly came across many on the road anxious to give effect to communistic theories; these he terms robbers.

Aliens of a philosophic turn of mind, after passing through the state of surprise, not so much, even, at their being this or that, as at their being content or able to continue to be both at once, turned to looking for reasons. The foreigner who brought to bear on this question as great an amount of knowledge, experience, and fair-mindedness as any was Sir John Davies, who, in his "Discovery," after referring to the Irishman's "contempt and scorn of all things necessary for the civil life of man," goes on, "for though the Irishry be a nation of great antiquity and wanted neither art nor valour and … were lovers of music and poetry, and all kinds of learning, and possessed a land abounding with all things necessary; yet … I dare say boldly that never any person did build any stone or brick house for his private habitation, but such as have lately obtained estates according to the course of the law of England. Neither did any of them in all this time plant any gardens or orchards, enclose or improve their lands, live together in settled villages or towns, nor make any provision for posterity; which being against all common sense and reason, must needs be imputed to those unreasonable customs which made their estates so uncertain and transitory in their possessions."

If Sir John Davies thought thus, it is not surprising that hastier foreigners who had less knowledge of the ancient Irish civilisation, thought so too. We have just seen how, with regard to Spain, a history made up of the imaginary glories of an imaginary past helped to give the foreigner so high an idea of the individuals of the nation that the reality came as a shock. Here in Ireland, in this matter as in others, was a similarity with a difference. However true it may be that the Irish suffered from a radical lack of adaptability to modern conditions, the defects of it were undoubtedly heightened in the eyes of strangers by the latter's ignorance of the conditions that the Irish could accept, the Brehon laws, for instance, and all that they imply, especially the check on their misuse by means of public opinion.

Two features, however, were almost invariably commended: Irish harping and Irish girls. And the latter were at no disadvantage among the foreigners, since even in the far west which Captain Cuellar visited, they spoke Latin fluently, although content with one garment, often with less. The only fault that could be found with them was that of growing older as years went on, for to see an old Irishwoman before breakfast was, says Moryson, enough to turn a man's stomach. The country, too, received unlimited praise, with one abatement here also: in respect of its wetness; greater then than now, it may be said with some certainty.⁶⁹ Lithgow, in particular, when he visited "this sequestrate and most auspicuous monarchy," in 1619, discovered there "more Rivers, Lakes, Brooks, Strands, Quagmires, Bogs, and Marshes than in all Christendom besides." In five months he ruined six horses and was himself more tired than any of them.

Great, however, were the fetiches, and they prevailed. The essentials of life, as they appeared to the Irishman, and as they appeared to most Europeans, differed so utterly, and the reasons underlying the differences were so unrealisable to each other, that Ireland remained comparatively unvisited on account of its lack of the kind of interest for which travellers felt themselves bound to look. So, at least, the balance of the evidence seems to show, but the evidence is as conflicting here as in relation to everything else to do with Ireland. While the Bollandist fathers affirm that fifteen hundred foreigners made the pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory during the "Counter-Reformation,"⁷⁰ the native contemporary Catholic, Phillip O'Sullivan, living at Madrid, had to go back beyond the memory of living man for the written account of such a pilgrimage with which he wished to preface his history of the struggle against England. Or again, the excellent knowledge the Irish leaders in this struggle received of foreign affairs presupposes a great deal of going to and fro; yet De Thou, in a letter dated 1605,⁷¹ by which date he had been working at his history of his own times for many years and was well known as a man worth helping to correspondents all over Europe, writes that he has not hitherto come across any one who has personal knowledge of Ireland nor even any one who has talked with some one who has been there.

Neither are there nearly so many casual references to visitors as one chances on with regard to other countries. Two exceptions which suggest the likelihood of others are, however, to be found mentioned in the correspondence between the English Privy Council and the Deputy at Dublin.⁷² In 1572 the latter announces the arrival of three German earls with one Mr. Rogers, their guide, adding, to Lord Burghley, "according to your directions, they shall travel as little way into the country as I can manage." This is explained by the second reference, seven years later, when three more Germans come across with letters of introduction from the Privy Council, who half suspect them, young though they are, of being spies. But after the close of this period, in 1666, we find a Frenchman⁷³ noting that the Provost of Trinity College "seemed astonished that out of mere curiosity I should come to see Ireland, which is a country so retired and almost unknown to foreign travellers."

CHAPTER V
MOHAMMEDAN EUROPE

PART I
THE GRAND SIGNOR

"He who would behold these Times in their greatest glory, could not find a better scene than Turkey."

Sir Henry Blount, 1635.

From an historical point of view, a continent consists not only of land but also of the seas from which attacks on the land can be made at short notice. For this reason Mohammedan Europe used to be far wider in extent than the Turkish territory, although the latter, indeed, bordered the Adriatic and stopped but a few miles short of Vienna. The Mediterranean was under Mohammedan, rather than Christian, control. Independent, too, in varying degrees, as were the rulers of North Africa, a bond of union existed among them owing to the peoples of the opposite coasts professing a creed different from theirs; a bond which was not interfered with by jealousies, inasmuch as the Sultan, or as he was usually termed then, the "Grand Signor" (or the "Grand Turk"), was so infinitely superior that there was never any question as to who should take the lead. His fleet, in fact, resembled that of Queen Elizabeth, being made up of crews who pursued the same course of life in peace and in war – that of attacking wherever attacks seem likely to pay – with no more difference than this, that their behaviour was official in the second case and unofficial in the first. These corsairs, then, were all part of Mohammedan Europe, carrying out the foreign policy of the "Grand Signor" whether they had been previously adopted or were subsequently to be disowned.

For the tourist, it has already become evident that he was almost certain to be confronted with the subjects, or the agents, of the Ottoman Empire, sooner or later; and then was to be made aware that, if one of the two existed on sufferance, that one was himself. Here is the beginning of a prayer introduced into the English liturgy in 1565;⁷⁴– "O Almighty and Everlasting God, our Heavenly Father, we thy disobedient and rebellious children, now by thy just judgment sore afflicted, and in great danger to be oppressed, by thine and our sworn and most deadly enemies, the Turks…" Historians agree that it was in the third quarter of the sixteenth century that the Turks' power reached its height. Rarely, later than that, are they mentioned otherwise than incidentally in the books from which modern Christendom draws its information, and their earlier appearances are rather on account of sensational events and minor indirect influence than as one of the Powers of Europe. Yet throughout this period, that is, for three-quarters of a century after decline, according to historians, had begun, the Turks were not only one of the Powers, but the chief one, equal with any in diplomacy, superior to any by land and by sea.

At a date when our text-books represent England as wresting the supremacy on the water from Spain, contemporary opinion regarded Turkey as the first naval power. The chief of the sensational events just referred to, the battle of Lepanto, is made to stand out, as that of Agincourt in English history, not because it typifies the course of events, but because it is a bright spot for the Christian pupil's eye to rest on. Within one year afterwards the Turks were ready to meet the Christians again: within two years they had the biggest fleet in the world: within three the Venetians agreed to pay 300,000 ducats (worth now about £500,000) as indemnity; and the fifth year afterwards the Venetian Lippomano takes it for granted, in speaking before the Signory – in other words, a man representing the pick of the diplomatists of the day speaking, after full consideration, to the most critical of audiences – that without the joint help of the Muscovites and Poles Christendom can never hope really to get the upper hand of the Turks.⁷⁵

It must be remembered, too, that the Atlantic then was what the Pacific is now, the ocean of the future; "command of the sea" meant, to the average sixteenth-century man, command of the Mediterranean, from the basin of which had risen all the civilisations of which he had any knowledge, through which lay the most used trade-route, and round which lay the biggest cities known to him: Cairo, Constantinople, Aleppo, and Fez (all Mohammedan).

But when this period of their supposed decline had set in, the Mohammedans, for the first time, ceased to be content with the Mediterranean and began to practise —

 
Keeping in awe the bay of Portingale
And all the ocean by the British shore,
 

as Marlowe phrases it on behalf of Tamburlane. In 1616 Sir G. Carew writes to Sir T. Roe that the Turks are passing out of the Mediterranean now, had just carried off all the inhabitants of St. Marie, one of the Azores, and might be looked for round England soon.⁷⁶ In 1630 they took six ships near Bristol and had about forty of their vessels in British seas.⁷⁷ In the following year they sacked Baltimore in Ireland; but so far was the English government from being able to assert itself that Robert Boyle writes of his passage from Youghal to Bristol past Ilfracombe and Minehead in 1635, that he passed safely "though the Irish coasts were then sufficiently infested with Turkish galleys,"⁷⁸ while in 1645 they called at Fowey and carried off into slavery two hundred and forty persons, including some ladies.⁷⁹

Where the English were fortunate was in the raiders having made so late a start. Throughout the previous century the inhabitants of south-Europe coasts were always expecting the Turks. Philip II kept sixteen hundred coast-guardsmen always patrolling on the lookout for them: but then he was their chief enemy. More remarkable is the league⁸⁰ of the south of France maritime towns in 1585 to take steps to prevent their ruin from this cause; seeing that France had been the ally of the "Grand Turk" for half a century. In 1601 the Duke of Mantua and his sister, the Duchess of Ferrara, were captured close to the shore near Loreto by a Turkish galley.⁸¹ As for the tourists themselves, Moryson passed a village near Genoa destroyed by Turks just before his arrival, when the belle of the district had been carried off the day after her wedding; and had Montaigne been but a few miles nearer to the coast than he actually was on a certain date we should perhaps never have had the "Essais" – thanks to the Turks. This would have been no more than a parallel case to that of Padre Jeronimo Gracián, St. Teresa's confessor, who was captured between Messina and Rome in 1592, stripped naked, and made to row on the benches of a galley. He had with him his book "Armonía mistica," which he had just finished, and had to look on while the pirates cleaned their firearms with leaves from it.⁸²

Some preface of this kind is necessary to explain the view tourists habitually take of the Ottoman power, because the naval strength is less often alluded to than its achievements by land and its position as an Eastern conqueror. But even these latter call for a word or two to complete the picture.

While it is true that the phrase concerning "the empire on which the sun never sets" had been invented by this time, in reference to that of Spain, the Turkish was regarded as, to quote a traveller of 1612, "the greatest that is, or perhaps ever was from the beginning," just as the phrase "the sick man of Europe" had also been employed, but in reference not to Turkey, but to England (in 1558).⁸³ To these words may be added those of another level-headed, well-educated Englishman, Sir Henry Blount, "the only modern people great in action and whose empire hath so suddenly invaded the world and fixed itself on such firm foundations as no other ever did." Whereas, late as Blount's visit to Constantinople was, he found the wiser Turks considering the Christians not so strong as they used to be; not so strong as the Persians. Busbecq, too, in his earlier days, sums up the outlook in despair, concluding that the worst feature of it all is that the Turks are used to conquering, the Christians to being conquered; and confirms it later (when he was sixty-three and had had thirty-eight years' experience of European politics, mostly official, including eight years at Constantinople), by writing that the object of the Turks' war (1585) with the Persians is to leave themselves freer to extinguish Christendom, and that, the former war over, "they will fight us for existence and empire; and the chances are greatly in their favour." As late as a century after this the Turks were besieging Vienna with an army 200,000 strong.

But the test of the hold of a given idea on the minds of ordinary men, such as these tourists mostly were, is the frequency with which it recurs in the works of their favourite writers. Now, badly off indeed would the seventeenth-century novelist have been without the Turkish corsair to defer the wedding-day for a respectable number of pages; and the echo of the convention has attained immortality in the stock quotation from Molière, "Mais que diable allait-il dans cette galère?" There is a passage, too, in "Othello" which illustrates the above beliefs still better – Othello's last words: —

 
Set you down this —
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the State
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him, thus —
 

There are an infinite number of passages in Shakespeare, whose meaning in relation to the plot seems so obvious and so sufficient, that the further half-unconscious sub-meaning is never enquired into, and is, in fact, passed by until some special knowledge, like that of the author of the "Diary of Master William Silence," throws light on it. In this case, an acqaintance with sixteenth-century Christian travel in Mohammedan lands compels the idea that Othello's mind turns at the last to what he knows his hearers would unhesitatingly recognise as his greatest deed, the killing a Turk in Turkish territory; as the greatest possible claim to forgiveness and to fame. Moryson left his sword behind him at Venice, as a thing which it would be madness to use.

The state of mind, then, of the Christian of this period in face of the Turks may be compared to that of a Chinaman towards Europeans between the fall of Pekin and the victories of Japan. As for the reasons of the Turks' success, as noted by tourists, they refer primarily to the army, since it was on the army that the Turks were, and had been, dependent for their greatness. First, in regard to the soldiers' behaviour to their own people, discipline was so severe that the country people took no precautions against robbery, "whereas," says one (an Englishman), "we cannot raise two or three companies but they pilfer and rifle wheresoever they pass." Teetotalism, again, was prescribed by their religion, and although the prohibition was losing its force, the infractions were secret and not practicable in camp. The benefit of this lay not merely in the freedom from disorderly behaviour but in the fact that the carriage of wine was a serious item in the expenses of a Christian army. Then besides orderliness and sobriety and the absence from the camp of gambling and women, there was personal cleanliness and sanitation. On these two last points the "Franks," as Europeans were generally known in the East, had much said to them to which there was no effective reply, even on their own showing. It was common knowledge among Europeans who stayed at home that they were despised in the East for their carelessness about drainage, and a typical case concerning cleanliness is that recorded of one Englishman. One day he fell overboard: "Now God has washed you," said the Turks.

Another characteristic that rendered the army more efficient was the extent to which autocracy was in favour among them, a principle which, applied throughout all grades, caused discipline to be a matter of course. Among European armies there was nothing that could be termed discipline, only personal influence. In this respect, both the cause and the effect, the striking resemblance, in relation to the Europeans contemporary with them, of the sixteenth-century Turk with the modern Japanese, stands out. Other respects were courtesy, frugality, cleverness in handicraft and the fine arts, and, on the other side, lower ideas about women. It was only, likewise, where the copying of the human form was concerned that the Turk technique fell below Western achievement; Della Valle, who was used to the best that Europe could produce, further notes their relative excellence in cooking, bookbinding, tailoring, gardening, and, especially, all leather work.

From our point of view the Franks had also much to learn from the Turks as to kindness to animals, but that did not even appear a superfluous virtue to the former, who only mention it as a curiosity, except Busbecq, who remarks that Turks' horses lived the longer for it, were more useful, and were companions as well as useful.

It may be noted, further, that the Turks had acquired the use of pyjamas ("linen breeches and quilted waistcoats," says Fynes Moryson), while Western Europe was in process of being converted to night-dresses. Says the contemporary playwright, Middleton, in his "Mayor of Queenborough," "Books in women's hands are as much against the hair (i. e. against the grain), methinks, as to see men wear stomachers, or night-rails" (i. e. night-shirts). Even with ladies the process was not a short one. N. Brooke, in Southern Italy, late in the eighteenth century, discussed night-wear with a lady there; it was not the custom to wear anything, she explained, in the warmer months; for one thing, it was cooler so; and for another, so much easier to catch the fleas.

It would be strange if among all these visitors some were not found noting signs of demoralisation. The chief of these is Moryson, who, without explaining what means he has of comparing past and present, finds the Emperors less warlike, their whole forces not available through fear of internal rebellion, the pick of the troops not equal to the pick of times gone by; a shortage of firearms; a decrease in religious zeal; an increase in extortion and oppression. This latter Della Valle notes, too, on his return-journey, when, at Cyprus, a governor had left, and while a successor was on the way out, orders came reinstating the former; which implied bribery and outbidding.

More general are the references to the increase of wine-drinking in defiance of the prohibition of it by their religion; a habit which was bound to be noticed by the traveller, since the ambassadors' houses were used for the purpose principally, at first solely. One old gentleman in Busbecq's time tried to evade his conscience, too; he gave a great shout before each drink, to warn his soul to stow itself away in some far corner of his body lest it should be defiled by the wine he was about to enjoy and have hereafter to answer for his sin. Towards the end of the next century concealment was abandoned, and at a Greek village outside Adrianople, whither an Englishman went during plague-time, he found the population living by the sale of wine to Turks, who came in troops to get drunk: the parson did the biggest trade because he had the biggest warehouse – his church.

It was frequently noticed, moreover, that their most capable workmen were mostly foreigners, and that two inventions which attracted everyone's notice – carrier-pigeons and incubation, both practised exclusively in Turkish territory and the latter on a scale which would qualify the proprietor for knighthood to-day – were not of Turkish origin. Nevertheless, the fact remained that many of the products of civilisation existed mainly, or at their best, in Turkish dominion alone; and this, and the prestige it implies, have to be recognised and remembered as two of the main facts in sixteenth-century history. It may be added that in no way can this be so satisfactorily ascertained as through travellers' narratives.

Yet the Turks were deemed barbarians by the Frank; he and they practically never spoke each other's language, which put out of the question those casual conversations which pave the way to mutual understanding. Their faith remained to him a "filthy error"; and to the Christians, whose chief bond of unity had just been riven by the Reformation, the remaining one, that of a common literature, was all the more to be prized. No Turk, as one observer remarks, would write history because no Turk would believe it; it being unsafe to record the truth, and impracticable to ascertain it. Accordingly, the complete Livy which the Grand Signor was reputed to have inherited from the Byzantine Emperors had only its selling value to Christians for him. He had refused one offer of 5000 piastres (about £6500 now) for it, thinking that the offer proved it was worth more. But Della Valle knew better than to make offers to the Grand Signor: the way to buy his books was to bribe his librarian, and he only missed securing it for 10,000 crowns (say £12,500) through the librarian at Constantinople not being able to trace it.

Constantinople – the change from Byzantine Emperors' days was striking. But the gloriousness of the position was unchangeable, and the sight of it from the sea was more glorious than ever, the finest city to see, then, that earth held. With its various levels, each one descending as it was the nearer to the shore, a marvellous proportion of the roofs, and even windows, came in view; and the waywardness of the designs, and the balconies with their lattice-work, were thrown into relief by the brilliance and the variety of the colouring; while the colouring itself stood out against the white of the walls, the green of innumerable cypresses, and the darkness of the leaden domes.

But once inside, and all was spoilt. The streets were very narrow and ill-kept; a raised foot-path each side took up two-thirds of the way, and the other third was barely practicable for asses; carcasses of animals, and even of men, were left lying there till they rotted. The only street which was a pleasure to pass was the long straight one which led from the gate of Adrianople to the Palace, and was used for all occasions of state, such as the entrances of ambassadors. Dignity was a thing that the Turks understood; it was characteristic that the most impressive procession to be seen ordinarily in Europe was that to the Grand Signor's Privy Council, more impressive even than the Cardinals going to Consistory at Rome. Yet the private houses, as seen from the streets, were no more attractive than the streets themselves: of wood mostly, or wood and mud. Some fine houses remained from pre-Mohammedan days, but besides those, only the mosques, and some other public buildings, were other than repulsive. The palace that was called Constantine's was already in ruins, abandoned but for one great room used as a tent-factory. Even the baths were not in all respects superior to those of dirty Christendom, but that was because the rich men had private ones. In Turkey none but the poor used the public baths; in Christendom few but Germans and the ailing rich used any. The reason the houses were so wretched was "that they might not be worth taking from the child when the father died"; for the property of a dead man was the Sultan's; the latter's palace was free from restrictions; only, few there were who saw it.

This happened sometimes when the court was away and the tourist could bribe the right man. Then, besides all that might be expected, he saw the best Zoo in Europe; and, in the middle of a wood, a certain pond, all lined with porphyry, wherein it was one "Grand Signor's" diversion to send the girls of the harem and shoot at them with bullets that stuck to their skins without doing harm; and he could regulate the depth of the water till they had to keep afloat to breathe; tiring of that, he let the water down and sent the eunuchs in to fetch them out – if alive.

The only recognised means, however, of seeing the inside was to accompany an ambassador on one of the two occasions when he saw the Grand Turk; when he came and when he left. This happened on a Sunday or a Tuesday, and could be but hurried glimpses while going to and from the audience chamber to kiss the robe of the great sovereign whose position was such that the ambassador was taken off his horse at the gate and searched and led to the audience by two men, each one holding a hand. When the English ambassador, in 1647, at his first audience, did not bow low enough, the men on either side of him thrust his head down to the required level.⁸⁴ He was further obliged to be lavish with his presents and content that they should be received as tribute, and that no present should be given in return but a garment. In the estimate for the cost of the embassy which the above-mentioned French league proposed to send to Constantinople 2000 écus d'or au soleil (over £4000), one twelfth of the total cost, is allotted for presents and tips. Neither did the Grand Signor ever speak to a Christian.

The interest of life in Constantinople was largely discounted by the ways of the natives, for courteous as the Turk was as a man, as a Mohammedan things were very different. While, on the one hand, incredible as it may sound, a Turkish sailor was always civil even if you got in his way on board ship, a Christian his nation "regard no more than a dog," and if the Christian wore green, which was reserved for Mohammed's kindred, he was lucky to escape injury. One stranger with a pair of green breeches had them taken away from him in the street. In any case, there was a likelihood of ill-usage. No one dared to refuse, or even hesitate, when a Turk commanded, without regretting it, except Della Valle, who carried a passport from the Grand Turk himself, and even then, upon his refusal to pay his respects to a certain governor in the customary way, which was both undignified and costly, the whole company were so proud of him that the Greek nuns could not refrain from kissing him in public. Typical experiences were those of Moryson, whose hat struck a Turk one day as so quaint that he borrowed it for a few minutes for his own use – not as a hat – and returned it to Moryson's head; and of one Manwaring⁸⁵ in Aleppo; – "we could not walk in the streets but they would buffet us and use us very vilely: … one day I met with a Turk … saluting me in this manner: … took me fast by one of the ears and so did lead me up and down the street; and if I did chance to look sour upon him he would give me such a wring that I did verily think he would have pulled off my ear and this he continued with me for the space of one hour, with much company following me, some throwing stones at me, and some spitting on me; and because I would not laugh at my departure from him, gave me such a blow with a staff that did strike me to the ground."

But that is not the end of the story. Manwaring went home and complained to the Janizary who acted as guardian to his party. The latter took a stick, found the Turk, who was of high enough position to go about in cloth of gold and crimson velvet, and thrashed him till he could not stand.

This was a form of protection open to all. The payment was low; the Janizary's standard of honour and honesty very high, their power practically unlimited. Moryson was one of a band of a hundred, who accidentally set fire to the grass while cooking their supper. Out came a Janizary from the local governor and compelled them to use their clothes to quench the flames; which done, he drove them all, priests and armed men included, before him to the governor, with no weapon but a stick, and whoever lagged behind he cried, "Wohowe Rooe," and hit him.