But on this stage of sudden revolutions and unforeseen overthrows, supreme power was then nearly always followed by a profound fall, brought about most frequently by a laconic order from the seraglio, though at times the clamour of the irritated populace was sufficient to precipitate the favourites of a day from the pinnacle of power, and in these frequent catastrophes the axe of the executioner was never inactive. At the moment when Avedick appeared likely to enjoy for a long time the powerful support of the Mufti, a formidable revolution broke out at Constantinople. Two hundred thousand men in arms demanded the presence of the Grand Seignior, insisting upon the observance of the law according to which he was not permitted in times of peace to absent himself from the capital; all the troops uniting with the people and the men of law, the troops to complain of not having been paid, the people to attribute their misery to the residence of the Sultan at Adrianople, the men of law to protest against the cupidity of the Mufti.[256] The latter had his throat cut, the Sultan, Mustapha II., was deposed, and his brother, Achmet III., was drawn from the recesses of the seraglio and placed on the throne: such was the rapid revolution which all at once deprived Avedick of his protector and delivered him up to Ferriol’s resentment. Indeed, less than two months afterwards, the Armenian Patriarch was deposed and imprisoned in the fortress of the Seven Towers,[257] and then, on the repeated entreaties of the ambassador, exiled to Abratadas in Syria. The Armenians refused to obey the new Patriarch, Kaisac, and demanded in vain their beloved chief.[258] Ferriol’s influence was sufficiently great to allow him to indulge in the most minute and cruel precautions. Cast on a barren rock, far from Constantinople, the ex-Patriarch still seemed redoubtable. Ferriol, therefore, rendered his imprisonment as painful as possible, and with a barbarity the proofs of which one would hesitate to admit, if they did not emanate from him who was guilty of it, he considered it necessary to have his victim shut up “in a dungeon full of water, and from which one could not see the daylight.”[259] Ferriol mentions this refinement of cruelty in his despatches, without in the least appearing to regret it, and in his account, as well as in the replies of the King and the Ministers to whom he addresses himself, one seeks in vain, on the one hand, for an attempt at a justification, and, on the other, for a disavowal, or at least for an expression of surprise. In consequence of this silence the Government of Louis XIV. bears its share of responsibility for the barbarous conduct of its ambassador.