the troops prevented the vizir from risking a public execution.

But though thus inexorable to all whose popularity or pretensions might
interfere with his own supremacy, and haughty even beyond all former
precedent in his intercourse with the representatives of the Christian
powers,[8] Kiuprili deserved, by the merits of his domestic
administration, the high place which has been assigned to him by the
unanimous voice of the Ottoman historians. The exact regularity which he
enforced both in the payment and disbursement of the revenue, relieved
the people from the irregular imposts to which they had been subject, in
order to make up the deficiencies arising from the interception, by the
pashas, of the tributes of distant provinces, and the peculation which
had long reigned unchecked at the seat of government--while the sums
thus rendered disposable were laid out chiefly in improving the internal
communications, and strengthening the defences, of the empire. The
Dardanelles, hitherto guarded only by Mohammed II.'s two castles of
Europe and Asia, was made almost impregnable by the construction of the
formidable line of sea defences still existing; the necessity for which
had been demonstrated by the recent attack of the Venetians; and
fortified posts were established along the line of the Dnieper and
Dniester, to keep in cheek the predatory Cossacks between these rivers,
who were at this time engaged in a furious civil contest with the king
of Poland, the ally of the Porte. The Hungarian fortresses were also
repaired, and vast warlike preparations made along the Danube, as the
peace which for fifty years had subsisted with the empire appeared on
the verge of inevitable rupture. The succession to the principality of
Transylvania, the suzerainté of which had long been a point of dispute
between the Porte and Austria, was now contested between Kemény and
Michael Abaffi--the latter being the nominee of the sultan, while Kemény
was supported by the emperor, to whom the late Prince Racoczy had