distinguished for their
bravery; and though the Turkish fleet was defeated (July 17, 1657) at
the entrance of the straits, the Venetians sustained an irreparable loss
in their valiant admiral Mocenigo, who was blown up with his ship by a
well-aimed shot from one of the batteries on shore. But though the
janissaries were thus reduced to order and obedience, the flame of
disaffection was still smouldering among the spahis of Asia Minor, and
broke out, in the course of the ensuing year, into a formidable and
widely-organized rebellion. Not fewer than forty pashas and sandjaks
followed the banner of the insurgent leader Abaza-Hassan, pasha of
Aleppo, who advanced towards the Bosphorus at the head of 70,000 men,
assuming the state of a monarch, and demanding the heads of Kiuprili and
his principal adherents as the price of his submission. Morteza-Pasha,
governor of Diarbekr, who attempted to oppose him in the field, was
routed with the loss of nearly his whole army; and though the emissaries
who attempted to seduce the troops in Constantinople from their
allegiance were detected and put to death by the vigilance of Kiuprili,
the revolt spread throughout Anatolia and Syria, and the sultan was
preparing to take the field in person, when treachery succeeded in
accomplishing what force had failed to effect. It has been an uniform
maxim of the Ottoman domestic policy, which singularly contrasts with
their scrupulous observance of the treaties entered into with foreign
powers, that no faith is to be kept with _fermanlis_, or traitors to the
Padishah; and in the assured belief, confirmed by hostages and solemn
oaths, that the sultan was willing to accede to his demands,
Abaza-Hassan suffered himself to be drawn from his headquarters at
Aintab, with thirty of his officers, to a conference with Morteza at
Aleppo: but, in the midst of the banquet which followed this interview,
Abaza and his comrades found themselves in the grasp of the
executioners--while their followers, dispersed through the town, were
slaughtered without mercy on the signal of a gun fired from the castle;
and the army, panic-stricken at the fate of its leaders, quickly melted
away. But no sooner was the semblance of tranquillity restored, than the
Kaimakam Ismail Pasha, an unscrupulous agent of the merciless decrees of
the vizir, was sent into Asia under the new title of Moufetish, or
inquisitor; and an unsparing proscription almost utterly exterminated
all the rem