Cicala, as a reward for his successful charge, was immediately promoted to be Grand Vizier. It was a most unfortunate selection. He treated with great severity the Ottoman troops who had misbehaved at the battle of Ceresties. He accused them of cowardice. He inflicted summary punishment on their leaders. Thirty thousand of the soldiers, mostly belonging to Asia Minor, dispersed and returned to their homes, spreading disaffection and rebellion in their several districts. After this signal victory war of a desultory character was continued with Austria for some years, now one and now the other getting the better of it in the capture and recapture of fortresses. In 1606 peace was arrived at. A treaty was concluded between the two Powers at Silvatorok, which was, on the whole, unfavourable to the Ottomans. Transylvania was practically freed from their rule. They were confirmed in the possession of one-half of Hungary, but the other half was freed from tribute. The fortresses of Gran, Erlau, and Gradiscka were secured to Ottoman possession, Raab and Komorn to Austria. The annual payment of 30,000 ducats by Austria, which the Turks regarded as a tribute, was also to cease, but a lump sum of 200,000 ducats was to be paid to the Porte. By the surrender of its claims on Transylvania the Ottoman Empire in Europe entered upon a course of shrinkage, which thenceforth, up to the present time, has been the normal course of events. This decadence was soon to be illustrated in another direction. War had again broken out with Persia, and the Turks sustained a series of defeats. In 1618 peace was patched up for a time, by the terms of which all the provinces which had been captured under Murad III and Mahomet III were ceded again to Persia, and the boundaries between the two Empires were restored to what they had been under Selim II. Meanwhile, as a result of misgovernment, the Turkish Empire was going headlong to ruin. We have a very authoritative account of the deplorable condition into which it had fallen at this period in the reports of Sir Thomas Roe, who was sent as the first British Ambassador to the Porte by James I. Queen Elizabeth had already, a few years previously, entered into correspondence with the Porte, and had urged the Sultan to join in a naval alliance in the Mediterranean against Philip II, who was then threatening to invade England. The reply of the Porte was friendly, but nothing more.