Poniatowski would never have succeeded, and the mere notion of his design would have cost him his life, had not a stronger power than those on his side given the last blow to the Grand Vizir Chourlouli’s fortune. The Sultan had a young favourite, who has since governed the Ottoman Empire and been killed in Hungary in 1716, at the battle of Petervaradin, gained over the Turks by Prince Eugene of Savoy. His name was Coumourgi-Ali-Pasha; his birth much the same as that of Chourlouli; he was the son of a coal-heaver--as the name signified--for Coumir is Turkish for coal. The Emperor Achmet II, uncle of Achmet III, meeting Coumourgi as a child in a wood near Adrianople, was so struck by his great beauty that he had him taken to the seraglio. Mustapha, Mahomet’s eldest son and successor, was taken with him, and Achmet III made him his favourite; he was then only selic-tar-aga, sword-bearer to the crown. His extreme youth did not allow him to stand for the office of Grand Vizir, but his ambition was to make it. The Swedish faction could never gain this favourite; he was never a friend of King Charles, or of any other Christian prince, or their ministers, but on this occasion he was unconsciously of service to the King. He united with the Sultana Valida, and the leading officer of the Porte, to bring about the fall of Chourlouli, whom they all hated. This old minister, who had served his master long and well, was the victim of the caprice of a boy and the intrigues of a stranger. He was deprived of his dignity and his wealth, his wife, daughter of the last Sultan, taken from him, and he himself banished to Cassa in Crimean-Tartary. The bul, i.e. the seal of the Empire, was given to Numan Couprougli, grandson of the great Couprougli who took Candia. This new Vizir was what misinformed Christians hardly believe a Turk can be, a man of incorruptible virtue and a scrupulous observer of the law, which he often set up in opposition to the will of the Sultan. He would not hear of a war against Russia, which he thought unjust and unnecessary, but the same respect for the law which prevented him from waging war against the Czar, made him punctilious in the duty of hospitality to the King of Sweden. “The law,” he said to his master, “forbids you to attack the Czar, who has done you no harm, but it commands you to help the King of Sweden, who is an unfortunate Prince in your dominions.”