On 8 August 1648, the Janissaries and the mob were so outraged by Ibrahim’s ineptitude that they lynched the new vizier, who was kebabbed and sold in the streets – he was known ever after as Thousand Pieces. Ibrahim, now rightly paranoid, had Mehmed, his little son with Turhan, thrown into a cistern. His selfishness was risking the very dynasty. Kösem rescued the boy.
The viziers approached Kösem, remarkably calling her Umm al-Muminin – Mother of Muslims, the title of Muhammad’s favourite wife – and hinting at the caliphal authority of the dynasty. ‘You’re not only the mother of the sultan; you’re the mother of all true believers. Put an end to this chaos.’ Eventually she agreed: ‘Ultimately he’ll kill you and me. We’ll lose control of the government. I’ll bring my grandson, Mehmed.’ She insisted that Ibrahim should not killed. The pashas arrested Ibrahim and girded Mehmed with the sword of Osman. Then they asked the Magnificent Mother to execute her son. Only a ruling by the empire’s religious authority – the
As the pashas and concubines watched from the windows of the Topkapı, the Tongueless came silently for Ibrahim.
‘Is there no one who’s eaten my bread who’ll take pity on me?’ cried Ibrahim. ‘These cruel men have come to kill me. Mercy!’ The bowstrings tightened.
As the Ottomans were executing a king so were the English.
In London, Oliver Cromwell, in his crablike way, was debating what to do with his captive, King Charles. If anyone had suggested trying the king, he claimed, he would have called him ‘the greatest traitor in the world’. The lord general Fairfax was uncomfortable with the idea, but the godly radicals in the army and probably his American chaplain, Hugh Peters, were proposing a trial. Cromwell looked to heaven: ‘Since providence and necessity hath cast them upon it, he should pray God to bless their councils.’ In other words, he believed it was time to try Charles. ‘I cannot but submit to providence.’
INCORRUPTIBLE CROWN AND THE MAGNIFICENT MOTHER
In January 1649, Cromwell got what he wanted: the rump of the Parliament voted to exclude the Lords from government, to declare a ‘Commonwealth and Free-State’ and to try Charles. The heavily guarded king, diminutive and elegant in black silk, was brought to Westminster Hall and accused of ‘a wicked design’ – treason. Lord Fairfax was chosen to head the court, but then absented himself. ‘I would know by what power I am called hither,’ Charles demanded. ‘Remember I am your king, your lawful king, think well upon it.’ He refused to cooperate, but Cromwell had no more doubts. ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘we’ll cut off his head with the crown upon it.’ As the sixty-eight commissioners of the High Court of Justice sat, Hugh Peter orchestrated a chant, ‘Execution! Justice!’, though there were also shouts of ‘God save the king.’ When Fairfax was mentioned, his wife Anne shouted from the gallery, ‘He had more wit than to be here,’ and when the judges claimed to act for ‘all the good people of England’, she declared, ‘No, nor the hundredth part of them,’ and was removed. The commissioners voted that the ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation’ should be ‘put to death by the severing of his head’.
‘I’ll have you hear a word, sir!’ said Charles.
‘No, sir!’ replied the judge. ‘Guard, withdraw your prisoner.’
When Cromwell became an advocate of his execution, his guidance was nothing less than divine: ‘we have not been without our share of remarkable providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been amongst us.’ Without consulting them beforehand, 135 ‘commissioners’ were named to try the king; forty-seven never turned up. At the end of the four-day trial, sixty-seven found him guilty but some resisted signing the death warrant. Cromwell signed third, then menaced the others: ‘These that are gone in shall set their hands; I will have their hands now.’ In one of his manic interludes, he roared with laughter as he and one of the commissioners splattered ink on each other’s faces. Fifty-nine ultimately signed.
