suffice it to say that, with custom and law as it was, the situation was untenable. First Mustapha, and later Roxelana’s own son Bayezid, became the victims of inexorable circumstances in which she undoubtedly played some part, though exactly what it was cannot be known.[498] In so far as she contributed to the fatal outcome, she hastened the fall of the empire. If ever a government demanded a strong man to keep it in operation, the Ottoman government needed one to maintain its Ruling Institution. From the beginning there had been as yet no failure; but after Suleiman the Magnificent, the Legislator, was to come Selim the Sot, the Debauché! Nor was the beloved and pious Mihrmah without her influence on the fate of the empire, if it be true that she urged her father on to the great expedition against Malta.[499] His reign had opened with two great triumphs: the fortresses that had defied the great Conqueror, Belgrade and Rhodes, had fallen before his troops. He had failed before Vienna, it is true; but in the thirty-five succeeding years he had made large conquests, he had strengthened his power, and his prestige had grown steadily. Now, near the close of his life, his mailed fist was broken upon a rocky isle in the Mediterranean. What but the confidence gained by that successful resistance gathered and nerved the Christian fleet that won the day at Lepanto? The influence of Roxelana and Mihrmah foreshadowed the power exerted in later reigns by far inferior and far worse women. The influence of Ibrahim, for whose promotion Suleiman violated the rules of advancement in the government service, and of Rustem, for whom he broke the rule of giving no high place to relatives of the imperial family, has been discussed already.[500] In his late years the Sultan came greatly under the influence of the _Ulema_, who had readier access to him than had any other outside force,[501] and whose power over him has been thought by some to have been unfavorable. Just what ills it brought about in his own time, however, are not easily to be discovered.