It will be seen from this brief narrative that the acquisitions of the Ottoman Empire during the twelve years when the Grand Vizier Sokolli was virtually its ruler were very great and important. They included the island of Cyprus, the province of Tunis, the kingdom of Georgia, the provinces taken from Persia, and the Yemen, in Arabia. These, with one exception, were the last acquisitions of the Ottoman Empire. The exception was that of the island of Crete, which was not attacked by the Turks till sixty-seven years later, in 1645, and was not finally conquered till 1668. But by this time the Ottoman Empire had begun to shrink at the hands of its enemies in other directions. It may be concluded, therefore, that the last year of the vizierate of Sokolli, 1578, and not the last year of Solyman’s reign, was the zenith of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was by this time extended from the centre of Hungary in the north to the Persian Gulf and the Soudan in the south, from the Caspian Sea and the borders of Persia in the east to the province of Oran in Africa in the west. It included nearly the whole of the southern shores of the Mediterranean, except that of Morocco, and all the shores of the Black Sea and the Red Sea. All the islands of the Ægean Sea except Crete belonged to it. These territories were inhabited by twenty different races. Their population has been variously estimated at thirty millions and upwards. Many of the Greek cities at that time existing in Asia Minor were still very populous, in spite of the massacres which had taken place when they were captured by the Turks. It is probable that the population of Asia Minor, of Syria, and of Mesopotamia was much larger than it is at the present time. That of Bulgaria, Greece, and Macedonia was also greater than it was in modern times before their emancipation from Turkish rule. After the death of Sokolli there ensued an era when misgovernment and corruption played havoc with the Empire, and a process of shrinkage began which extended over three centuries, the exact opposite to its growth in the previous three centuries.