tendants, who went before us, two-and-two, carrying the presents of silver plate and clocks. On arriving at the first gate of the palace we saw about 100 kapigi soldiers, whom they call doorkeepers, standing by it with weapons. These kapigi are like the halberdiers or lifeguards of the Roman emperor, and their officers are employed as commissaries, or rather as executioners. For when any change is to take place among the pashas at court, or if the Sultan commands any of the principal courtiers to be strangled, the sentence is usually executed through the agency of these kapigi,[1] who are therefore held in great honour among the Turks. Having been admitted into the first square, we saw handsome buildings everywhere at the sides, in which the court artizans have all kinds of shops and workshops, just as in front of the palace at Prague. When we got to the other side, there was a guard of similar soldiers standing at the gate, on reaching which we were all obliged to dismount; for into the third square, where the Sultan lives, no one, not even any of the pashas, is allowed to ride on horseback, but all dismount in the second square, and go to court on foot. In the second square stood many hundred very beautiful Turkish and Arabian horses, covered with embroidered housings and glittering with gold and precious stones, which were held by grooms, who, as at Prague, though in greater numbers, were in waiting in front of the palace. These grooms stand in a very cleanly and quiet manner, so that there is no shouting, laughing, and noise to be heard there; and if any horse makes a mess there are men appointed for the
- ↑ Thus Herod sent a speculator or lifeguard to behead John in the prison.
