He died on February 9, 1640, leaving behind him no child. Only his mother's craft had prevented the murder of his only brother, the last of the race of Osman. He left behind him an empire which seemed entirely subdued to the Sultan's will. But the terror which he had inspired could not endure; and while it lasted it could only paralyse the forces which should have given strength and permanence to the empire. Greedy, avaricious to an extent as enormous but not so ridiculous as Murad III., the supreme passion of his life was the lust of blood. It became an insanity; at night he would rush through the streets, cutting down all whom he met. Yet he died in his bed; the time had not come when Sultans were murdered as easily as Viziers. Ibrahim, his successor, had been imprisoned in the Kafess since he was a child of two. He had lived through the reigns of Mustafa, Osman and Murad. He had been allowed no offspring. He was utterly ignorant of politics and war. He cared for nothing but the pleasures of the harem. When the soldiers went in to announce his accession he would not believe that they desired anything but his death. He would not be convinced till the corpse of his brother was brought before him. Then he screamed with insane delight, "The empire is at last delivered from its butcher." His reign of nine years was a horrible mixture of tragedy and farce. In licentiousness he outdid the worst of his predecessors, in folly the silliest of them. The capture of the child of a favourite slave led to the war of Candia: the marriage by his orders of his baby daughter to a rich Pacha was used as an occasion to strangle the bridegroom and seize his treasures. At length the shameful crimes of the sovereign, of which murder seemed the least, caused an organised insurrection in the city. The chief Mufti, whose daughter had been shamefully used by the Sultan, assembled all the mollahs, and the officers of the Janissaries and the sipahis in the Orta djami (a mosque on the Etmeidan, the old quarter of the Janissaries, now destroyed). They first demanded the execution of the Vizier. When that was refused, the Janissaries secured the gates, surrounded the Seraglio, caught and slew the Vizier. In S. Sophia, the Mufti, the Sheik-ul-Islam, proclaimed to a vast multitude the iniquities of the Sultan, and demanded his deposition. Solemnly the Osmanlis declared Ibrahim, the padishah, the king of kings, the commander of the faithful, unworthy to reign. His little child, Mohammed, only seven years old, was fetched from the charge of his mother, the famous Valideh Sultan, and invested with the ensigns of sovereignty. Ibrahim was again carried to the Kafess. Ten days later appeared the mutes, with the Vizier and the Sheik-ul-Islam; and the bowstring ended the life of Ibrahim.