“How many men would that be?”
“Perhaps fifty thousand.”
“You would invade Austria with fifty thousand men?” Ibrahim snorted.
“We would pick up our garrisons as we advanced. I would say we should command eighty thousand by the time we reached Buda. They would be professional troops rather than bashis, and we would also have all our artillery.”
“Eighty thousand men,” Suleiman muttered. “Would that suffice? The Franks would no longer remain disunited once we threatened Vienna.”
“It is our business to keep them disunited, Padishah. Many years ago, when I was a boy, your grandfather sent me on an embassy to the West. I went to Paris and there spoke with the King, Louis XI. He hated and feared the Habsburgs, and wished to make an alliance with the Sultan so that, from each end of Europe, between them they could constrain Habsburg ambitions.
“Then King Louis died, and the government of France fell into lesser hands. But their present King, Francis I, has spent his entire life fighting the Habsburgs. I believe he would welcome an alliance with us. Once we have achieved that, we may be sure that the Christian princes can never unite against us.”
“If we could achieve that… Who would we send as ambassador to the French court, Hawk Pasha?”
“Who could be more suitable than my nephew, O Padishah?”
*
Aimée was overwhelmed with joy at the thought that her nephew would be returning to her homeland, and only wished that she could accompany him. For many an hour she told him what and who to look for, and where to go.
William Hawkwood told him what to do and what to avoid.
In the event, none of their advice was of much value: the France of 1528 was considerably different from that of 1483.
Harry took the same route as his uncle had done forty-five years previously, to avoid falling into the hands of either the Habsburgs or the Pope. He reached Paris after a journey of three months. Like his uncle, he found himself welcomed and fêted; the French knew a great deal of what was going on in the Muslim world, and the name of Hawk Pasha was a famous one.
He was astounded at the gaiety and extravagance of the French court, so unlike the description of it offered by either his uncle or his aunt — and by the openness of Francis’s personality, so unlike that of the Universal Spider.
Francis was handsome and courtly, a knight-errant at heart but embittered by a series of over-ambitious failures. Only a few years earlier his army had been shattered at Pavia, and he himself was taken prisoner by his arch-enemy, the Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain and the Indies, and rivalled the Sultan himself in the extent of his power.
To gain his freedom Francis had been forced to swear all manner of oaths, which he promptly broke on his return home, claiming that they had been extracted under duress.
The thought of Charles’s brother holding sway in central Europe all but curdled his blood.
Nor did he have very much love for England. Henry VIII was Charles’s kinsman by marriage, and a staunch supporter of Spain. He and Francis had met a few years previously outside the English enclave of Calais, for a conference designed to bury their differences. Instead it had multiplied them, for the assembly had evolved into escalating rivalry as to which monarch could put on the finer display of wealth and power and personal strength and vigour — a display of riches which had earned it the title of Field of the Cloth of Gold. And once again Francis had been bested.
“Had all the kings of Europe but a single head, I would strike it off,” he now told Harry. “I hate them all. But your Sultan…ah, let him march on Vienna and I will applaud him all the way.”
So Harry had got what he wanted, and was in a hurry to get home. The acquaintances of whom Aimée had spoken were no more, or not to be found. The climate was damp and depressing. The women who wished to flirt with the handsome renegade Englishman — for such he was still regarded — lacked the cleanliness and the allure of his own Yana.
He returned to Constantinople in April 1529 with the news of the treaty. On 10 May, the Sultan Suleiman, without divulging his purpose to anyone — least of all the many ambassadors and Christian traders who thronged the city — marched out of Constantinople with eighty thousand men.
*
This time Ibrahim remained behind, to continue raising troops who would follow the main army. And this time there were no harems; speed was the essence of Hawk Pasha’s plan.
Harry once again had to big farewell to Yana and his wives, to his mother and his aunt, before he had even a chance to tell them about his experiences in Paris.
Speed! Hawk Pasha drove his men hard. As they were professional soldiers, they responded eagerly, but soon the weaker fell out. Harry continued to watch his uncle with considerable misgivings, but Hawk Pasha never faltered.
This time the border was reached in three months rather than four. The Hungarian army fell away before them, and Buda was besieged on 3 September. It fell five days later, and Suleiman ordered a general massacre of the garrison while turning the city over to his men for looting.
This was a deliberate act of policy by the Sultan and Hawk Pasha; both wished the terror of the Turkish name to be spread abroad. Harry was less certain of its effectiveness, since he felt it might merely stiffen Austrian resistance.
But Suleiman persisted with his policy. His timariots were sent ranging across the Austrian countryside, burning and beheading, raping and looting. All the country east of Vienna was turned into a smoking desert. The invaders prospered, for Hawk Pasha had planned this ultimate campaign with the greatest care, and was using the Danube itself as a highway. The galleys plying to and fro brought food from Hungary and Serbia for the marching troops; no less important, the armed ships on the river formed a permanently defended right wing for the army, and prevented any risk of sudden attacks from that quarter.
Not that there was any risk of that, for Hawk Pasha’s entire manoeuvre had taken the Habsburgs by surprise, as he had intended. When, a fortnight after leaving burning Buda, the Sultan and his Pasha gazed at Vienna, and the Ottoman cavalry which entirely surrounded the city, they learned that there were no more than seventeen thousand men against them.
Surprised as they may have been, however, the commanders of the garrison, Philipp, Count Palatine of Austria, Nicolaus, Count of Salm, and Marshal Wilhelm von Roggendorf had placed the city in a state of defence with an efficiency as ruthless as that of the Turks themselves. The watchers could see that all the houses outside the walls had been levelled, to give a clear line of fire in every direction; additional gun emplacements had been built; and they could make out that any wooden roofs inside the city itself had been torn away so as to reduce the risk of fire from incendiary shells lobbed over the wall.
“These men mean to fight, Hawk Pasha,” Suleiman observed.
“We shall see how well they fight when the siege artillery arrives,” William said. For the Ottoman cavalry, with which rode the Sultan and his pashas, had far outstripped the infantry and the baggage train.
Harry Hawkwood looked at the sky, now a mass of dark cloud. If the siege artillery arrives at all, he brooded.
That night it began to rain. It rained steadily for a week. The river rose and the plain was turned into a morass. Yet the siege was pressed forward with all the vigour associated with the Ottoman name. The flotilla ascended the Danube above the beleaguered city, and finally cut off the defenders from any hope of supplies. When the infantry arrived, tramping through the rain and the mud, Hawk Pasha launched one or two probing attacks against the walls. As he had expected, they were met with firm resistance.
Eventually the cannon arrived, the horse teams nearly dead with the exhaustion of pulling them through slushy ground. Emplacing them proved nearly impossible, as with each discharge the huge bombards sank further into the mud. Hawk Pasha called on all his own experience and on everything he had ever been told by his father Anthony about the siege of Constantinople. He had his men start to
dig mines. Sometimes the walls caved in, and whole companies were engulfed in mud and suffocated. Others pressed on to reach beneath the walls, only to be met there by furious counter-attacks. So regularly was each Turkish tunnel met by counter-mining that William began to suspect some sort of treachery, although even the most determined investigations did not reveal how anyone in the Turkish ranks could communicate with the Viennese commanders. He never did discover the answer, but Harry in later years learned how the Viennese had placed bowls of water at regular intervals along their battlements, and whenever one of these bowls began to tremble they knew that men were digging underneath!
What William did understand was that he was making no progress, that the weather was getting steadily colder without the rain in any way abating, and that the Turkish habits of cleanliness and hygiene were of little avail in the midst of this sea of mud. Men began to die of disease.
Then, on 10 October, a messenger rode into the encampment with news which shocked both Suleiman and his pasha: King Francis of France had concluded an alliance with Charles the Emperor.
“It has been arranged by their respective mothers,” Suleiman added, reading the missive. “What influence women have in this world!”
“The Frenchman has betrayed us,” William growled. “He has betrayed me. Padishah, I have failed you. You have the right to strike off my head.”
“What, am I to strike off my right hand?” Suleiman inquired. “Tell me straight, Hawk Pasha, have we any hope of succeeding in this siege?”
William sighed, his shoulders hunched. “No, Padishah. In another month there will be snow on the ground. By next spring the Emperor will have concentrated all his resources in Austria, now that he no longer has to fear the French.”
“Can we ever take Vienna?”
“I believe so, Padishah. But my strategy this time was faulty. Even with all the haste we put forward, we cannot move the army from Constantinople to Buda in under three months. That leaves us with too little time before winter comes in. Our plan must be to concentrate an army on the Hungarian border in one year, and launch our assault as soon as the weather improves in the next.”
“But then all the world will know what we intend.”
“That is inevitable, Padishah.”
Suleiman nodded. “We will have to discuss this. But for the time being, Hawk Pasha, we have been defeated. Command the army to begin to withdraw. We must be away from here before the cold weather comes.”
*
“We have been defeated,” William Hawkwood said quietly as, wrapped in his cloak, he watched the Turks begin their retreat.
“It must happen sometimes,” Harry said. “Even the Conqueror failed to take Rhodes.”
“But I did take Rhodes,” William replied. He had never lost a battle until now.
The Viennese raised a great shout of derision as they watched the Turks withdraw. But the shout changed to one of anger and dismay when Suleiman commanded all his male captives to be beheaded before the walls.
With the failure of his crowning project, William Hawkwood’s mood seemed to deepen as the homeward march commenced, and daily it grew more destructive. By the end of the month the snow began, and the carts and wagons had to be abandoned; it became a matter of saving men rather than material.
Men and the guns. No descendant of the first John Hawkwood would ever risk losing a gun. As they could no longer be dragged over the soft ground, Hawk Pasha commanded them to be loaded on board the flotilla that still dominated the Danube. This was an immense task, carried out by exhausted and freezing men. But they endured it because of their devotion to Hawk Pasha.
Thus the guns were saved — but at the cost of many men. Amongst them was Hawk Pasha himself. Catching a cold from his incessant labour in the snow, he was determined to ignore it, but it soon developed into a fever. He was then forced to take to a litter, carried by his faithful artillerymen. Harry was riding beside Hawk Pasha when he died.
*
William Hawkwood was embalmed, and his body taken back to Constantinople, to be buried in the garden of his palace. Aimée, Giovanna and all their servants wept.
Afterwards the Sultan Suleiman sent for Harry.
“You are now Hawk Pasha,” he declared, handing him the horsehair wand with two knots.
“I have done nothing worthy of the honour, Padishah,” Harry protested.
“I have no doubt you will,” Suleiman said firmly. “Now tell me where you seek employment.”
“I will go wherever I am sent.”
“We have suffered a grievous defeat,” the Sultan remarked, “in the death of your uncle no less than in our repulse from Vienna. Now I return to news that the Persians are making war on my eastern provinces. This I cannot permit.”
“We will campaign again next year?” Harry asked eagerly.
“I will have to do so. But the Christians will say that I have turned away from them because I have been defeated, and because I now fear them. That, too, is intolerable. Yet I have not the men to wage two great wars at once.”
He paused, and Harry waited. He understood the Sultan’s dilemma but had no idea how the resolving of it could involve himself. He was surely too young to be given command of a campaign against the Empire.
“We must make them aware that their respite is but a temporary one,” Suleiman said at last. “That, when I have dealt with the more pressing matter of the Persians, I shall return and implement Hawk Pasha’s plan to take Vienna. We must keep them in a constant state of agitation and alarm. Above all, we must make that treacherous Frenchman regret his betrayal of our alliance. You will undertake this task for me, Hawk Pasha.”
“Willingly, Padishah, if you will tell me what force I will command, what strategy I must follow.”
Suleiman gazed at him. “Khair-ed-din is in the Golden Horn.”
Harry’s heart gave a great bound.
“He speaks of great fleets raiding the commerce of the West. More, raiding the coastal cities themselves and driving terror into the hearts of the infidels. I have heard you speak of such things, Hawk Pasha.”
Harry could now hardly contain his excitement.
“Khair-ed-din speaks of extending the Ottoman empire along the whole North African coast, and making it a base from which to attack the underbelly of Christendom. Do you believe that is practical, Hawk Pasha?”
“I believe it may well be, given sufficient resources.”
“Every Janissary I possess must march with me to the Taurus. Your resources you must create for yourself, but you may recruit here in Constantinople, and you may draw upon the royal treasury and indeed the royal armoury for whatever you require. I am placing you in overall command. You are a friend of Khair-ed-din’s. He is a great rogue, but a bold and resourceful man. He will command his own fleet of pirates, but you will command him in the name of the Sultan. I will make this clear to him, and you will remember it at all times.”
“You have given me a post of great honour, Padishah, and great responsibility. Be sure I will use it to bring honour to your name.”
“Make the infidels weep, Hawk Pasha. That is your business.”
*
Ibrahim Pasha looked down the list of stores and money presented to him.
“Our master sometimes appears to believe that I snap my fingers and dinars appear, hanging from trees,” he grumbled. “Cannon? You are going to take cannon to sea?”
“The Spaniards do so.”
“Hardly in their galleys.”
“If I am to attack their carracks, I need cannon.”
“And you intend to attack their carracks?” Ibrahim remarked. “Well, who am I to say you nay, young Hawk? My apologies, I meant Hawk Pasha. Yours has been a sudden elevation. Believe me, I grieve for the death of your uncle.”
“Thank you,” Harry said.
“As I envy you your removal from Constantinople — and perhaps grieve that also. Tell me your opinion of our Sultan.”
“It is not my business or yours
to make an opinion about the Sultan.”
“He is younger than you or I, Hawk Pasha, and now he lacks the guidance of the great Hawk on whom he leaned so heavily throughout his reign. There are troubled times in store until this Sultan finds his own feet.”
“You are close to speaking treason, Ibrahim,” Harry suggested.
“Only to you, Harry. And you will not betray me. But tell me this: how does your Russian charmer do? Does she speak Turkish yet?”
“A word or two.”
“Her sister is fluent.”
Harry frowned at him. “How do you know that?”
“Our master has told me. Our master is in love, Harry, with the cast-off concubine of another man. How can that be?”
“You should at least be pleased that the other man is you,” Harry said. “How can you possibly determine that he is in love?”
“Because, when in private with me, he wishes to speak only of Roxelana, of what can be bought for her and given to her as presents, of the alterations and extensions she wishes made to her quarters. Her quarters, Harry, not the harem! She has apartments of her own.”
Harry scratched his head. “What does Gulbehar think of this?”
“Whatever she thinks, she says nothing, so the eunuchs tell me. No doubt she hopes that Suleiman’s passion for Roxelana is a passing fancy.”
“And is that not likely so?”
“Not now,” Ibrahim said thoughtfully. “The Padishah has just informed me that Roxelana is pregnant, and he is like a dog with two tails. You understand that all this is confidential. Should you repeat it, you might well lose your head.”
“Then I shall not repeat it,” Harry said, “I cannot understand your concern. Roxelana is a concubine. Furthermore, she is a slave. Slaves from time to time give birth; it is of no great importance.”
“And suppose she gives birth to a boy?”
“Well, no doubt the Padishah will be very pleased. But Prince Mustafa is his first-born by several years, and Gulbehar will become Sultan Valideh in the course of time.”
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