y becoming, at least in name, son-in-law to his sovereign,
being affianced to the Sultana Khadidjeh, then only three years old. The
fetes of the betrothal, which were celebrated at the same time as those
for the circumcision of the heir-apparent, (afterwards Mustapha II.,)
were unrivalled for splendour in a reign distinguished for
magnificence:--and on the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili in the following year,
this fortunate adventurer found little difficulty in stepping, as we
have seen, into the vacated place.

The first cares of the new vizir were on the side of the newly acquired
frontier in the Ukraine; for, though all claim to that part of the
Cossack territory had been expressly resigned by Poland at the treaty of
Durawno, the Czar of Muscovy had never ceased to assert his pretensions
to the whole Ukraine, in virtue of the convention of 1656 with
Khmielnicki; and during the Polish campaign of 1674, his troops on the
border, under a general named Romanodoffski, had several times come into
collision with the Turks--an era deserving notice as the first hostile
encounter between these two great antagonist powers. The defection of
Doroszenko, who had gone over to the Russians at the end of 1676, and
surrendered to them the important fortress of Czehryn, the capital and
key of the Ukraine, and the repulse of the serasker Ibrahim before its
walls in the following year, showed the necessity of vigorous measures:
and, in 1678, the grand vizir in person appeared at the head of a
formidable force in the Ukraine, bringing with him George Khmielnicki,
son of the former ataman, who had long been confined as a state prisoner
in the Seven Towers, but was now released to counteract, by his
hereditary influence with the Cossacks, the adverse agency of
Doroszenko. Czehryn, after a close investment of a month, was carried by
storm, the garrison put to the sword, and the fortifications razed. But
though the war was continued through another campaign, it was obviously
not the interest of the Divan to prolong this remote and unprofitable
contest at a juncture when the state of parties in Hungary bid fair to
present such an opportunity as had never before occurred, for
definitively establishing the supremacy of the Porte over the whole of
that kingdom. Negotiations were accordingly opened on the Dniepr between
the Muscovite leaders and the Khan Mourad-Gherni; and a peace was signed
at Radzin, Feb. 12, 1681, by which the frontiers on both sides w