On the broad square around the Sultan’s court, which in luxury and wealth reminded the faithful of paradise, stood courts less splendid, but equal to those of kings—those of the vizir, the ulema, the pasha of Anatolia, and of Kara Mustafa, the young kaimakan, on whom the eyes of the Sultan and all were turned as upon the coming “sun of war.”
Before the tents of the Padishah were to be seen the sacred guard of infantry, with turbans so lofty that the men wearing them seemed giants, They were armed with javelins fixed on long staffs, and short crooked swords. Their linen dwellings touched the dwellings of the Sultan. Farther on were the camps of the formidable janissaries armed with muskets and lances, forming the kernel of the Turkish power. Neither the German emperor nor the French king could boast of infantry equal in number and military accuracy. In wars with the Commonwealth the nations of the Sultan, more enervated in general, could not measure strength with cavalry in equal numbers, and only through an immense numerical preponderance did they crush and conquer. But the janissaries dared to meet even regular squadrons of cavalry. They roused terror in the whole Christian world, and even in Tsargrad itself. Frequently the Sultan trembled before such pretorians, and the chief aga of those “lambs” was one of the most important dignitaries in the Divan.
After the janissaries came the spahis; after them the regular troops of the pashas, and farther on the common throng. All this camp had been for a number of months near Constantinople, waiting till its power should be completed by legions coming from the remotest parts of the Turkish dominions until the sun of spring should lighten the march to Lehistan by sucking out dampness from the earth.
The sun, as if subject to the will of the Sultan, had shone brightly. From the beginning of April until May barely a few warm rains had moistened the meadows of Kuchunkaury; for the rest, the blue tent of God hung without a cloud over the tent of the Sultan. The gleams of day played on the white linen, on the turbans, on the many-colored caps, on the points of the helmets and banners and javelins, on the camp and the tents and the people and the herds, drowning all in a sea of bright light. In the evening on a clear sky shone the moon, unhidden by fog, and guarded quietly those thousands who under its emblem were marching to win more and more new lands; then it rose higher in the heaven, and grew pale before the light of the fires. But when the fires were gleaming in the whole immeasurable expanse, when the Arab infantry from Damascus and Aleppo, called “massala djilari,” lighted green, red, yellow, and blue lamps at the tents of the Sultan and the vizir, it might seem that a tract of heaven had fallen to the earth, and that those were stars glittering and twinkling on the plain.
Exemplary order and discipline reigned among those legions. The pashas bent to the will of the Sultan, like a reed in a storm; the army bent before them. Food was not wanting for men and herds. Everything was furnished in superabundance, everything in season. In exemplary order also were passed the hours of military exercise, of refreshment, of devotion. When the muezzins called to prayer from wooden towers, built in haste, the whole army turned to the East, each man stretched before himself a skin or a mat, and the entire army fell on its knees, like one man. At sight of that order and those restraints the hearts rose in the throngs, and their souls were filled with sure hope of victory.
The Sultan, coming to the camp at the end of April, did not move at once on the march. He waited more than a month, so that the waters might dry; during that time he trained the army to camp life, exercised it, arranged it, received envoys, and dispensed justice under a purple canopy. The kasseka, his chief wife, accompanied him on this expedition, and with her too went a court resembling a dream of paradise.
A gilded chariot bore the lady under a covering of purple silk; after it came other wagons and white Syrian camels, also covered with purple, bearing packs; houris and bayaderes sang songs to her on the road. When, wearied with the road, she was closing the silky lashes of her eyes, the sweet tones of soft instruments were heard at once, and they lulled her to sleep. During the heat of the day fans of peacock and ostrich feathers waved above her; priceless perfumes of the East burned before her tents in bowls from Hindostan. She was accompanied by all the treasures, wonders, and wealth that the Orient and the power of the Sultan could furnish—houris, bayaderes, black eunuchs, pages beautiful as angels, Syrian camels, horses from the desert of Arabia; in a word, a whole retinue was glittering with brocade, cloth of silver and gold; it was gleaming like a rainbow from diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. Nations fell prostrate before it, not daring to look at that face, which the Padishah alone had the right to see; and that retinue seemed to be either a supernatural vision or a reality, transferred by Allah himself from the world of visions and dream-illusions to the earth.
But the sun warmed the world more and more, and at last days of heat came. On a certain evening, therefore, the banner was raised on a lofty pole before the Sultan’s tent, and a cannon-shot informed the army and the people of the march to Lehistan. The great sacred drum sounded; all the others sounded; the shrill voices of pipes were heard; the pious, half-naked dervishes began to howl, and the river of people moved on in the night, to avoid the heat of the sun during daylight.
