of age, and joined to an
intellect not less naturally vigorous than that of his father, those
advantages of education in which the latter had been deficient. At an
early age he had been placed under the historian, Abdul-Aziz Effendi, as
a student of divinity and law, in the _medressah_ or college attached to
the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror, and had attained, in due
course, the rank of _muderris_ or fellow therein; but the elevation of
his father to the vizirat transferred him from the cloister to the camp,
and he held the governments successively of Erzroom and Damascus--in the
latter of which he distinguished himself by his moderation and firmness
in reducing to order the refractory chiefs of the Druses, of the two
great rival houses of Shahab and Maan-Oghlu. Recalled, at length, to
Constantinople to assume the office of kaimakam, he had scarcely entered
on his new duties when he was summoned to Adrianople, to attend the
deathbed of his father, and to succeed him in the uncontrolled
administration of the empire.

The numerous executions which marked the accession of the new vizir, (in
accordance, as was believed, with the dying injunctions of his father,)
struck with terror the functionaries of government, who anticipated a
continuance of the iron rule under which they had so long trembled; but
the disposition of Ahmed-Kiuprili was not naturally sanguinary, and few
measures of unnecessary severity characterized his subsequent sway. The
war in Hungary, meanwhile, had assumed a serious aspect; for though
Kemeny had perished in battle, the Imperialists still continued to
oppose the claims of Abaffi to the crown of Transylvania; and their
armies, guided by the valour and experience of Montecuculi, a general
formed in the Thirty Years' War, were making rapid progress in the
reduction of the principality. War was now openly declared between the
two empires; and Kiuprili, assuming the command in person, opened the
campaign of 1663, in Hungary, with 100,000 men--a force before which
Montecuculi had no alternative but to retreat, as the rapidity with
which the Turks had taken the field, had completely outstripped the
dilatory preparations of the Aulic Council[10]. The exploits of the
Ottomans, however, were confined to the capture of Ujvar, or Neuhausel,
after a siege maintained on both sides with such extraordinary vigour,
as to have given rise to a Hungarian proverb--"As fixed as a Turk before
Neuhausel,"--after w