nued during several years, without any notable achievement
on either side, the war being unpopular with the Turkish soldiery; while
the civil dissensions of his kingdom, with his consequent inferiority of
numbers, kept Sobieski generally on the defensive. In his intrenched
camp at Zurawno, with only 15,000 men, he had for twenty days kept at
bay 100,000 Turks under the serasker Ibrahim, surnamed Shaitan or _the
devil_, when both sides, weary of the fruitless struggle, agreed upon a
conference, and peace was signed October 27, 1676. The humiliating
demand of tribute was no longer insisted upon; but Kaminiec, Podolia,
and great part of the Ukraine, were left in possession of the Turks,
whose stubborn perseverance thus succeeded, as on many occasions, in
gaining nearly every object for which the war had been undertaken.

Before the news, however, of the pacification with Poland had reached
Constantinople, Ahmed-Kiuprili had closed his glorious career. He had
long suffered from dropsy, the same disease which had proved fatal to
his father, and the effects of which were in his case, aggravated by too
free an indulgence in wine, to which, after his return from Candia, he
is said to have become greatly addicted. He had accompanied the sultan,
who had for many years remained absent from his capital, on a visit,
during the summer months, to Constantinople, but, on the return to
Adrianople, he was compelled, by increasing sickness, to halt on the
banks of the Erkench, between Chorlu and Demotika, where he breathed
his last in a _chitlik_, or farm-house, called Kara-Bovir, October 30,
at the age of forty-seven, after having administered the affairs of the
empire for a few days more than fifteen years. His corpse was carried
back to Constantinople, and laid without pomp in the mausoleum erected
by his father, amid the lamentations of the people, rarely poured forth
over the tomb of a deceased grand vizir. The character of this great
minister has been made the theme of unmeasured panegyrics by the Turkish
historians; and Von Hammer-Purgstall (in his _History of the Ottoman
Empire_) has given us a long and elaborate parallel between the life and
deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the
Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we
prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned portrait drawn by his
contemporary Rycaut:--"He was, in person, (for I have seen him often,
and knew him well,) of a