From this fate it was preserved by the firmness of one man and the genius of a family. The Kiuprili were of Albanian blood, but had long been settled in Constantinople, where the head of the family, Mohammed, now an old man of seventy, was universally respected for the vigour of his mind and the strength of his character. The mother of the young Sultan, in whose hands the chief political power had fallen, turned to Mohammed Kiuprili in her despair, and begged him to accept the office of grand vizier in 1656. He consented on the condition that his authority should be uncontrolled. For twenty years he and his family were the real rulers of the empire, and to them is due the astonishing revival of the Ottoman power in the latter half of the seventeenth century. True to the genius of Oriental monarchies they sought for the sources of strength, not in adaptation to new demands, but in the resuscitation of the ancient spirit. They resolutely shut their eyes to the attractions of European civilisation. They refused as far as possible to have dealings with European powers. Treaties, concessions, arts were evidences of weakness, admissions of a brotherhood which could never exist between Christianity and Islam. The ideal of government ever present to their minds was that of Mohammed II. and the earlier Sultans. The relation of governors to governed was that of master and slave in a well-ordered household, where strict justice on the one hand expected and necessitated implicit obedience on the other. The mission of the Turks was to conquer opponents and to dictate terms to the vanquished. Wherever there yet remained an organised power, Christian in its principles and Western in its civilisation, there was the enemy. [Sidenote: =Restoration of order and discipline, 1656–1661.=] Success was instantaneous. The Turks at once felt that they had got a leader who understood them, who was actuated by principles which were their own. Obediently they fell in to the bugle call. Anarchy disappeared. Discipline re-established itself. The Greek Patriarch and 4000 Janizaries were the only victims required. In the very next year the Venetian fleet was forced to leave the Dardanelles, Mocenigo was killed, and Lemnos and Tenedos recovered. In 1659 the old alliance with France was broken by the imprisonment of the ambassador’s son, and the refusal of all compensation. The siege of Candia was pushed on with redoubled zeal, and preparations were made for the renewal of the war of European conquest. When Mohammed Kiuprili died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of seeing the Ottoman empire once more united from end to end of its vast extent, and its energies once more directed to a war of aggression against its hereditary enemy the Emperor.