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 remaining partizans of Abaza-Hassan, without distinction of
rank; while the suppression of numerous _timars_ or fiefs, and the
removal of the occupants of others from their ancient abodes to remote
districts, so effectually loosened the bands which had hitherto united
the spahis, like the janissaries, into a compact fraternity, that this
once powerful body was divided and broken; and they no longer occupy, as
a separate faction, their former conspicuous place in the troubled scene
of Ottoman history.

The termination of this great revolt freed Kiuprili from the
apprehension of military sedition, and left him in the enjoyment of more
absolute and undivided authority than had ever been possessed by any of