Ibrahim’s importance and influence are taken for granted by foreign rulers and envoys. In all his instructions to his ambassadors Ferdinand tells them to see Ibrahim first, and the queen regent of France wrote to him, when she wrote to the sultan. The collections of Gévay and Charrière contain a number of letters from Ferdinand and Francis to Ibrahim. The Venetian baillies transacted all their business with Ibrahim and sent many reports to the Signoria of his power in the state and his influence over the sultan. The envoys brought him valuable presents which he did not hesitate to accept.[137] He loved to receive jewels and there was a famous ruby once on the finger of Francis I which was sent by the first French envoy to the Porte, (the envoy who was killed in Bosnia) and which somehow came into Ibrahim’s possession when the Pasha of Bosnia was called to Constantinople to account for the murder.[138] But although Ibrahim took presents, and even resented it if they were not offered him, he refused bribes again and again. Ferdinand empowered his envoys in three missions to offer an annual pension to Suleiman (a tribute under a name less offensive to Ferdinand) and at the same time an annual pension to the grand vizir. When Juritschitz and Lamberg offered Ibrahim five to six thousand Hungarian ducats[139] annually for his aid in bringing about peace, he rejected it so indignantly that they apologized and withdrew their offer. He said that the previous ambassadors Hobordanacz and Weixelberger had offered him one hundred thousand florins to buy his protection, but that he said then and would now repeat that no sort of present could make him desert the interests of his master, and that he would prefer to aid in the conquest of the whole world than advise the Sultan to restore conquered territory.[140] The passage just quoted would seem sufficient to disprove the assertion made by contemporary European historians that Ibrahim Pasha had lifted the siege of Vienna because he had been bought by the gold of the ambassadors. Suleiman gave him everything that he could have asked and much more than lay in the power of any European monarch to bestow. Ibrahim acquired vast wealth, but there is no evidence that his loyalty to Suleiman could be purchased, and while the Turkish historians speak often of the avarice of his successor Rustem Pasha, they never ascribe that quality to Ibrahim. If he had a price, it was too high for Ferdinand to pay.