Beyond the walls of Constantinople—The Valley of the Lycus—The siege of Constantinople in 1453—The life of the City at that time—The Genoese ships which fought their way through the blockade—Mohammed the Conqueror’s anger at his Admiral, Baltaoghli—The last of the Byzantine Emperors—The scenes outside the gates during the war—The Mosque of Mihrama—The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus and the legend of the Kerko Porta—Manuel Comnenus—The towers of Anemas and Isaac Angelus, and the Varangian Guard—Egri Kapoo and the master-weaver—Simeon, Tsar of all the Bulgarians, and Emperor Romanus Lecapenus—A walk in the country and the return to the City—A visit to the lines of Chatalja.
Beyond the walls of Constantinople—The Valley of the Lycus—The siege of Constantinople in 1453—The life of the City at that time—The Genoese ships which fought their way through the blockade—Mohammed the Conqueror’s anger at his Admiral, Baltaoghli—The last of the Byzantine Emperors—The scenes outside the gates during the war—The Mosque of Mihrama—The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus and the legend of the Kerko Porta—Manuel Comnenus—The towers of Anemas and Isaac Angelus, and the Varangian Guard—Egri Kapoo and the master-weaver—Simeon, Tsar of all the Bulgarians, and Emperor Romanus Lecapenus—A walk in the country and the return to the City—A visit to the lines of Chatalja.
The Burnt Column One of the most peculiar relics of old Byzantium; standing alone, apart from the everyday life of the city, a silent witness to many strange events; a monument so old that its history is lost in oblivion.The Burnt ColumnOne of the most peculiar relics of old Byzantium; standing alone, apart from the everyday life of the city, a silent witness to many strange events; a monument so old that its history is lost in oblivion.
IT was not in the City, in Stamboul itself, where signs of any unusual state of affairs struck the casual stranger; it was outside the gates, beyond the walls, that signs of stress and trouble crowded in upon the observer—soldiers, stragglers, refugees, filled the gateways through the walls of Theodosius. On the rising ground outside Top Kapoo dense groves of cypress trees, guarding the graves of men who had fallen in the repeated attempts to force an entry into Constantinople, threw their long shadows over the road beyond the old defences, as they stood out deep-toned against the golden sunset. Now these cypresses were rapidly falling before the axe of the Macedonian refugees, who had formed their camp of waggons outside Top Kapoo. They were camping on the spot where Mohammed the Conqueror pitched his tent in 1453, looking down into the Valley of the Lycus, where the assaults were made which brought down the enfeebled Empire of Byzant. This was a pleasant place, according to all accounts, when the world was young, andSt. Chrysostom baptized his three thousand white-robed catechumens in the waters of the Lycus. A few years later Theodosius II rode down from the heights outside to view the walls that he had built. He fell from his horse and died a few days later, from the injury caused to his spine. No doubt the Valley of the Lycus was a pleasant place in those far-off golden days of a golden Empire, which, here in this valley, received the death-wound from the forebears of the people who are now swarming in the groves of cypresses, refugees, destitute, landless and homeless, instinctively turning towards Asia, whence their race sprang. It came with giant strides, that race of the sons of Othman; they first became acquainted with the glories of Byzant through a mission sent from their chief to Emperor Justinian in the sixth century; they were not Moslems then, for it was not till the eighth century that the Arabs overran their country and forcibly converted them. They served the Arab Caliphs for a while, and in time rose above them and founded dynasties of their own folk. The young nation passed through many tribulations, but by the time that Othman, son of Erthogrul, came to the throne, the Greeks had already felt the keenness of the sword that carved possessions out of the Empire of the East, until nothing was left to Cæsar but his Imperial City. This Valley of the Lycus seethed with fighting men in those early days of 1453. Both sides had been making preparations for a year or so. Mohammed had collected his strong, well-disciplined army at Adrianople, his European capital, and here, under his supervision, were made preparations for the siege of Constantinople. He increased the number of guns, and in this was helped by a Hungarian, Urban, who had left the Greek service on account of some ill-usage by his factious masters. The prize achievement of Urban’s foundry at Adrianople was a monster cannon, of whichwonderful things were said: its bore was of twelve palms breadth; it could contain a charge that drove a stone ball of six hundred pounds weight a distance of a mile, to bury it in the ground to the depth of a furlong. In spite of its wonderful performance, it is doubtful whether the big gun cast by Urban did very much damage, although, to make sure, it was placed only a couple of hundred yards from the walls it was to bring down. At any rate, Mohammed made all necessary arrangements for the siege, and finally turned on the priests of Islam to rouse his warriors to the proper state of religious frenzy.
The preparations in the City were probably much less thoroughly undertaken. Emperor Constantine was a good man, and efficient, but it seems he was not strong enough to bring his people to the pitch of self-sacrifice necessary to those who have to sustain a siege. The citizens of Constantinople were as keen about religious controversy as ever, and the times provided food for violent discussions, for the ruler of the Empire realized the dangers that beset him and tried to make diplomacy a substitute for efficient military preparations. There was only one way by which help could come to Constantinople, and that was by union of the Orthodox Greek Church with the Church of Rome. The citizens of Constantinople were wildly agitated by the publication of the news of this agreement, and many swore to admit the Moslem rather than the Roman priest. But the latter came, nevertheless, Cardinal Isidore of Russia, as Legate of Pope Nicholas V, and with him came help, a body of trained soldiers, and the union of the Churches was solemnized at St. Sophia, amidst disorder and riots in the streets. The Greeks, though always ready to fight among themselves over some matter of dogma, had for many years ceased to bear arms in defence of their country. They had by degrees become too soft for the hard life ofa soldier, dropped one by one the heavier arms and accoutrements, which had to be carried about after them; it was hopeless to try and make any further use of them for military purposes. For this reason they were forbidden to take up the profession of arms, or even to form trained bands or bodies of volunteers; possibly another cause was the danger of an armed mob, violent, decadent, always dissatisfied. Yet they should have been content; their rulers relieved them from the responsibility of defending their country, which, by the way, is considered an honour by the citizens of those European nations which have universal military service; they were fed by the State, which also provided amusement for them—games, fights of wild beasts, drama, and music; in fact, they had even less responsibility and were offered more entertainment than the people of another great Empire of to-day. For defence the City of Constantinople relied solely upon foreign mercenaries.
Mohammed’s line of attack extended all along the walls, from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn, where it joined with the fleet he had brought across country; the main assault was directed against the Gate of St. Romanus, down in the valley. The siege continued from April till May. The Greek army was venturesome at first, and made sorties to destroy the earthworks, behind which the Turks were planning mines. But the serious losses caused by such enterprise, as also the dwindling store of gunpowder, put an end to these operations, and the courage of the defenders began to sink. Hope rose again for a while when a premature attack was beaten off, the assailants not yet having effected a negotiable breach, or again when a squadron of four Genoese and one Greek ship from Chios fought its way through the Turkish Fleet and came to anchor in the Golden Horn under thesea-walls of the Seraglio. A very gallant episode this, which happened in the middle of April. The stately ships sailed up from the Dardanelles, and bore down upon the numerous Turkish Fleet, while Greeks crowded on the walls, and the Turks, among them their Sultan, rushed down to the shore to watch. From their tall decks the Christian seamen hurled large stones and poured Greek fire upon the low-lying Turkish barques around them, and so they fought their way to the harbour’s mouth; the chain was lowered to receive them, and welcome reinforcement had come to Constantinople. Mohammed felt the humiliation so keenly that his wrath against Baltaoghli could only be appeased by that Admiral’s death—the order went that he was to be impaled on the spot. But the Janissaries demurred, and entreated the Sultan to spare the Admiral’s life, so the angry sovereign punished the offender, stretched on the ground, held by four slaves, by dealing him one hundred blows with his battle-mace; no doubt a dignified proceeding, though most painful to the Admiral.
The succour brought by the five ships was all that ever came to the distressed City; the siege was carried on relentlessly, and one by one the strong walls and towers went down before Mohammed’s artillery. On May 24th he sent in to demand surrender, but was refused, so orders were given for a general assault on the 29th. The hostile leaders spent the eve of battle in characteristic manner. Mohammed assembled his chiefs and issued final orders; he despatched crowds of dervishes to visit the tents of his troops to inflame their fanaticism and promise them great rewards—double pay, captives and spoil, gold and beauty, while to the first man who should ascend the walls the Sultan promised the government of the fairest province of his dominions.
A Byzantine Palace The ancient Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, where those “born in the Purple” were shown to the populace and proclaimed “Cæsar urbi, Cæsar orbis.”A Byzantine PalaceThe ancient Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, where those “born in the Purple” were shown to the populace and proclaimed “Cæsar urbi, Cæsar orbis.”
Emperor Constantine likewise assembled his nobles, andthe leaders of his allies, chief of whom was Giustiniani; he adjured them to make yet greater efforts in the defence, and to infuse new courage into the siege-worn troops by their example. Rewards he had none to offer them. Then each leader went his way to the post assigned to him, the Emperor himself to a solemn Mass in St. Sophia, the last time in the history of that sacred shrine the mysteries of the Christian faith were adored by any Christian worshipper. Constantine then returned to the palace and asked forgiveness of any of his servants whom he might have wronged; then he passed from his palace to his station at the great breach.
In the Ottoman camp all was ready for the great attempt, and at sunrise masses of assailants stood in their appointed places, waiting to hurl themselves against the tottering defences of the Eastern Empire. To the sound of drums and trumpets wave after wave of fierce fighting men surged across the filled-in fosse, over the broken walls, to be repulsed by the defenders. Time after time they were repulsed and followed by fresh swarms, trampling down the barrier of corpses in their eagerness for blood and booty. But the courage and numbers of the defenders were ebbing fast; Giustiniani, who, side by side with the Emperor, was conducting the defence of the great breach, fell severely wounded, and was borne away to die in his galley in the harbour. This took the heart out of the defence; the chief of the assailing Janissaries noticed it, and urged his men to yet greater endeavour. The Turks now numbered fifty to one as Hassan, the Giant of Ulubad, led thirty men as vanguard of the last attack into the breach. Hassan fell, and most of those who came with him, but the main body followed rapidly, and under the weight of this tremendous onslaught the Christian garrison was over-powered. The victorious Turks rushed in; others hadforced the gate of the Phanar on the Golden Horn, and Constantine’s fair City was given over to the sword.
Constantine XII (Palæologus) fell in the breach, defending the City of his great namesake against the Moslem; his body was found under a heap of slain, and with him fell the greater number of his Latin auxiliaries.
Refugees from Thrace and Macedonia are camping among the cypresses on the site from which Mohammed the Conqueror watched the fall of Constantinople’s last defences, while out at Chatalja another foe was dealing heavy blows at the last defences in Europe of that Empire founded here that day in May, 1453.
The Lycus, a dirty, insignificant stream, now swelled by constant rain and draining the quagmire which is called a road, outside the walls, flows through an arch underneath one of the towers into Stamboul. Just within, and leaning up against the walls, are huts built of wood, disused oil-tins, and other makeshifts. These harbour a colony of gipsies, who seemed as happy in the mud as they were when last I saw them, basking in the sunshine. This colony finds the expert horse-dealers (and stealers) of the neighbourhood. At present business is slack, for the war has demanded all there was in the way of horseflesh in the City, for in this respect, too, no adequate preparations had been made; the tramway companies had to give up their jades to carry the Sultan’s cavalry to victory and Sofia, as was fondly imagined by the hosts that streamed out through the gates of the City. I have seen some of the few survivors of those horses, led back by men who were in much the same condition as their mounts; it seemed as if their sinews alone kept their bones from falling apart.
Groves of cypress trees used to cast long shadows over the many graves that mark the landscape to westward of the track that leads northward along the walls of Constantinople;to-day they are fast disappearing under the axe of the refugees, and what was once a scene of solemn beauty is now squalor and desecration, for right away to the Gate of Adrianople, Edirné, as the Turks call it, there were clusters of carts with their distressful burdens. Looking down on all this misery stands the Mosque of Mihrama, on the highest point of the old defences of Constantinople. A church dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of warriors and horsemen, stood here, until St. George’s mission of protecting Christian soldiers ended in the debacle down in the ruin-heaped valley below. To me, the crescent on the dome of Mihrama, the unfinished minaret amidst its scaffolding seemed to wear an air of detachment from the ghastly scenes below; around it dirt and disease, and abject misery within the courtyard of the mosque; but its growing minaret stands quite aloof, and points to the lowering sky, beyond which Allah decides the fate of mortals. So his worshippers, the followers of the Prophet, lie down in huddled heaps of wretchedness about his courts below—Kismet!
The Walls of Theodosius turn away from the road after the Gate of Adrianople, and end at an imposing ruin, once the home of Emperors—the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. It stands high, overlooking the City and the open country; on its walls are the remains of two balconies, from one of which the new-born Prince was shown the wide extent of rolling plain and proclaimed “Cæsar Orbi,” from the other, looking out upon the city, “Cæsar Urbis.” Owls and bats now haunt the scene of former greatness, and the voice of Echo, the “Daughter of the Arches,” no longer gives back the sounds of revelry, the chorus of applause, or murmurs of discontent, which made up the history of that ancient Empire which fell before the sword of Othman in the Valley of the Lycus. Close by is a little postern gate in the curtainconnecting the last two towers of the Walls of Theodosius; it was called the Kerko Porta, and legend lingered round it. During the last day of the siege, in May of 1453, a rumour ran along the lines of the defence that the Turks had gained admission by this gate. They did so, but were driven out again by the last Emperor’s bravery, which, however, only delayed the inevitable result of Mohammed’s fierce assault. Ever since then the Greeks believed that when the City should be recaptured by Christians, they would enter by this gate. The Turks heard of this tradition, and when the Slavs were pouring down the Valley of the Maritza, and approaching Stamboul, they pulled down the curtain so that the Russians might not enter by the Kerko Porta, and replaced it by a smaller wall.
Beyond the ruined palace the moat ends abruptly, but the walls continue higher and of greater strength. History clings round them; they recall names of famous men who lived their day, Manuel Comnenus, who was to old Byzant what Manoel O Fortunate was to mediæval Portugal. Anna Comnena, daughter of the first Alexius, who wrote the history of her father’s reign, a record of insincerity. Anne and her mother Irene conspired to poison John, her brother, who proved one of the worthiest of the latter Emperors of the East.
The last dynasty of Byzant, the Palæologi, is responsible for the high walls and towers that follow the walls of the Comneni towards the Golden Horn. John VII (Palæologus) had them repaired in 1441, for the last time probably, until Johannes Grant, a German engineer in the service of the Greeks, under cover of darkness, directed his workers to secure the portions of the wall that had suffered most heavily under the fire of Turkish ordnance.
In the plain below is yet another sombre mass of ancient masonry, peculiar in design, for it has the appearance oftwo towers joined together. They differ in structure, one built of carefully cut stone, with courses of brickwork, the other roughly put together, and from it marble pillars project like cannon. These are the towers of Anemas and Isaac Angelus, the former descendant of a Saracen Emir who was converted to Christianity when young and in captivity, and distinguished himself in several campaigns under John Zimisces; he was killed in a personal encounter with Swiatoslav, the Russian King.
The other tower is said to have been the quarters of the imperial bodyguard, the Varangians, whose conduct in the field shines out brightly against the records of cowardice and the treachery which inspired the policy of the later Greek Empire. The name Varangian is probably derived from the Teuton “Fortganger,” forthgoer, signifying men who had left their country in search of adventure. The first of these Varangians were probably Norsemen, who suddenly emerged from the darkness of their northern shores to prey as pirates upon the settled communities, and found their way through the Mediterranean Sea to Byzant. The fame of this warriors’ Eldorado reached other northern nations, so from England came big-limbed Saxons, impatient of the Norman Conqueror’s discipline. Danes, too, were to be found amongst the ranks of the Eastern Emperor’s bodyguard, their weighty battle-axes and stout hearts performing those deeds of valour which Anna Comnena was wont to ascribe to that vainglorious hypocrite, her father, Emperor Alexius I. Here, by these towers, the old defences of Constantinople end in heavy masses of ruined masonry.
One Sunday morning the sound of heavy firing coming from the west, from the present-day defences of Constantinople, the lines of Chatalja, drew me out into the open country. I left the City by the Egri Kapoo, theCrooked Gate, formerly the Gate of the Kaligari, the shoemakers, when the Court of Byzant lived here by the Palaces of Cæsar. Little wooden houses stand on the low ground beyond the gate, on the road down to a plain by the Golden Horn. In one of those houses lives Ali, the master-weaver. He was pursuing his vocation leisurely in his little workshop below the level of the road. “The war!” said Master Ali, “the war affects me not at all.” So I went on towards the sound of the guns, past the open space by the water where Simeon, Tsar of all the Bulgarians, after defeating the Greeks in battle, met the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus, and dictated harsh terms. Simeon knew the Greeks well; he and many of his followers had been educated at Byzant, and the culture he thus gained helped him to defeat his teachers. Bulgarians still come to Constantinople for education, at Robert College; among them was M. Gueshof, Tsar Ferdinand’s Prime Minister—and the Bulgarians were again outside Constantinople, hammering at its defences, the lines of Chatalja.
I walked out far into the country that Sunday, over the rolling plains, up hill and down dale, drawn by the sound of gun-fire, which has a mighty attraction for me; it is a strong, invigorating sound. There were few indications of war, though fighting was in progress not many miles away; villagers sat on little stools outside the cafés, over the uneven roads the carts of refugees rolled, creaking towards Constantinople. Here and there I met a party of stragglers, weary soldiers, unarmed, their faces set towards the east where, over the domes of the mosques, the hills of Asia showed faintly, their outlines broken by tall minarets. When evening fell upon the desolate landscape I retraced my steps towards the City, where lights were twinkling and casting broken reflections upon the waters of the Golden Horn. Through the narrow streets of the Phanar, wheresilent figures flitted across my path, to vanish into some little wooden house or other, with its latticed windows, an air of unconcern prevailed, though men were dying out there, some fifty miles away. Through the crowded purlieus of Galata, up the steep, ill-paved streets to Pera, with its hotels, clubs, cafés, and vicious imitations of Parisian entertainments.
On the following day I went out towards the lines of Chatalja again, this time by sea. We were a party of five—a British consular official; a British naval officer, instructor to the Sultan’s war fleet; two Turks, one a naval officer, the other a captain of artillery; and I, a peripatetic author and artist. We sailed out from the Golden Horn as the sun was struggling to break through heavy banks of cloud; huge warships of different nations loomed large in the pale grey light of early morning, and here and there a twinkling light drew flickering response from the moving waters. As the daylight increased the ancient sea defences of Constantinople took definite form, above them the mosques and minarets of conquering Sultans. We sped past the Marble Tower, looking chill under a heavy grey sky; above it rose the broken towers of Yedi Koulé, past Makri Keui, and round the blunt promontory where San Stefano stands in all its misery of disease, to where the land rises west of Küjük Chekmedje. Here we anchored about half a mile from the shore, hauled in a duck-punt which had soared behind us all the way, and, rowed by an alleged sailor of the Sultan’s navy, made for the shore. There was some water rolling greasily in the duck-punt as we started, it increased in volume, and by the time we drew near the beach we had our feet well under water. The Turkish naval officer and the gunner sat in the bows, the other passengers astern; and the naval expert lent by our Admiralty directed the oarsman to pull us sideways on thebeach, as a quite noticeable sea was coming in on our starboard quarter, and our demands (if any) in that line were already fully satisfied. However, the Turkish A.B. (perhaps I flatter him, but flattery is an important item in Oriental colouring) thought fit to attempt a landing which would give us the full benefit of what sea there was. The British expert, when our crank craft first felt the shingle, ordered our Turkish friends to jump ashore. The sailor did so at once, the soldier required time, for he was wrapped in a long grey overcoat, carried a sword, and, moreover, wore boots ill-suited to such enterprise. The duck-punt thereupon began to behave with unseemly levity, and in rolling shipped a deal of water, so that we who sat astern indulged in the unasked-for luxury of a hipbath, alfresco, and, moreover, attired for quite another purpose. Alas! all my dear mother’s good precepts anent avoiding wet feet went by the board. However, we got ashore, so did the duck-punt too, in time; I hear she lies there still, her leaky bottom upwards, a silent witness to our undaunted bravery.
The Lines of Chatalja The south extremity of the lines by the Sea of Marmora. The road leads down to the village of Küjük Chekmedje, with its bridge across which the Bulgarians attempted an attack, but were checked by the fire of a Turkish warship in the bay.The Lines of ChataljaThe south extremity of the lines by the Sea of Marmora. The road leads down to the village of Küjük Chekmedje, with its bridge across which the Bulgarians attempted an attack, but were checked by the fire of a Turkish warship in the bay.
We made inland over the rising uplands till we could look down upon the Lake of Buyük Chekmedje, from the extreme left of the Turkish defence—the lines of Chatalja. A road leads over the several outflows of the lake by a bridge of many arches. Here the Bulgarians had attempted an assault some days before, and had been baffled by those that held the trenches searing the hill-side to the eastward, and by the guns of a Turkish warship lying off the coast. At our feet lay the lake, beyond it ridges of rising ground, melting away into a broken line to northward. It was a most peaceful scene, for the warship was hidden by a shoulder of land, and there were no Turkish troops in sight, nor any of their enemies. We had met only a few people on our way; a Turkish patrol, who seemed mildlyconcerned about us, and some shepherds with their flocks, all equally indifferent to the great doings that are filling the world’s daily papers with exciting copy, a credit to the inventive genius of the modern journalist. The shepherds stood out like statues on the skyline, and of rather quaint shape, which I discovered to be due to the strange fashion of their cloaks, the sleeves of which stick out in an acute angle, and are not used for their original purpose at all. We wandered still further inland, not in a compact body, for the Turkish gunner-man was a very deliberate walker and, like most of his race, not prone to undue haste. Nevertheless, we arrived in time at a Turkish camp of some fifteen hundred men, a camp which could be traced by scent as well as view. It stood below the skyline on some rising ground, which sloped steeply towards the enemy’s position, and gave evidence of a complete absence of any kind of sanitation. The Caimakam (Lieutenant-Colonel) commanding welcomed us politely, and after having ascertained that nothing whatever had happened that day, and that no one expected anything to happen, because rumours of a truce were afloat, we thought of making our way home. This meant walking back to Küjük Chekmedje, where we hoped to find some boat to take us out to our launch. The walking party tailed off on the way, the British element forging ahead, the Turkish lagging behind, to allow the former to cool down in the north wind while waiting for the rear-guard, until at last we found a boat and were rowed out to the launch. I heard a shot or two from the land, coming in our direction perhaps; possibly the Turkish patrols, finding no Bulgars to shoot at, thought fit to practise on us; however, like so much of the shooting done in modern warfare, even the best-conducted, it was perfectly harmless.
So again I returned to Constantinople, and passed throughSunday crowds quite indifferent to the events in progress some fifty miles away, at those lines of Chatalja, planned by Valentine Baker Pasha, and since his time neglected till they became the only barrier between the Sublime Porte and ruin. It is strange, though enlightening, to reflect that while the Turkish Army was being driven back from the frontiers, while ill-equipped bodies of Turkish troops, leaderless, were being driven before a highly trained enemy, the lines of Chatalja, the last defence of Constantinople, were left unarmed, unguarded, but for a couple of elderly men whose duty it was to see that doors, shutters, and other bits of woodwork were not removed by the genial neighbours for firewood.
But this is Turkey, an Empire that has traded on its position as apple of discord for centuries, and has never been able to take thought for the morrow—nomads, here to-day and gone to-morrow.
Turkish literature—Turkish proverbs—The literature of other Tartars—Legend of Turkish descent—The origin of the Turks—The Turks and Giougen—The Turks with the Eastern Empire—Arab subjection of the Turks—The Turks and Western civilization—The Turkish Navy—The Sultan’s Army—The lines of Chatalja—The refugees—View from the Mosque of Mihrama—The Mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror—The care of the sick and wounded.
Turkish literature—Turkish proverbs—The literature of other Tartars—Legend of Turkish descent—The origin of the Turks—The Turks and Giougen—The Turks with the Eastern Empire—Arab subjection of the Turks—The Turks and Western civilization—The Turkish Navy—The Sultan’s Army—The lines of Chatalja—The refugees—View from the Mosque of Mihrama—The Mosque of Mohammed the Conqueror—The care of the sick and wounded.
THE history of the Turks has formed the subject of much scientific research, hampered considerably by a want of material, by a lack of information on the subject, handed down from earlier days. The Turks themselves have no liking for literature, have no bent in that direction, and all they have ever produced in that line are a series of stories relating the doings and sayings of Nasreddin Hodja, whose rôle is much like that of Till Eulenspiegel in Germany. These stories of Nasreddin Effendi are humorous in their way, but are to a great extent too indecent for the fastidious Western mind. The humour, too, is of the obvious order, from which the West is gradually, painfully emerging. I will give only one sample of Nasreddin’s wit. This worthy was awakened one night by a noise in his garden. He went to the open window, looked out, and saw something large and white moving about below. Nasreddin took down his bow, his quiver full of arrows, and sent one in the direction of the white object, then returned to bed and to sleep. The next morning he went out into his garden to ascertain the cause of the nocturnal disturbance, and discovered his shirt, hung out to dry, transfixed by the arrow. “How fortunateit is that I was not inside that shirt last night,” quoth Nasreddin.
Proverbs give some idea of the working of a people’s soul, but in this respect too the Turk is not very prolific, certainly not original. Herewith a few samples:
Ei abdal! Ei dervish! Aktché ilé biter beriche.Freely translated: Oh, monk! Oh, dervish! money will take you anywhere!
Ei abdal! Ei dervish! Aktché ilé biter beriche.Freely translated: Oh, monk! Oh, dervish! money will take you anywhere!
Ei abdal! Ei dervish! Aktché ilé biter beriche.Freely translated: Oh, monk! Oh, dervish! money will take you anywhere!
The sentiment has nothing to recommend it, and is certainly better expressed by La Fontaine:
Quelles affaires ne fait pointCe malheureux métal, l’argent maître du monde.
Quelles affaires ne fait pointCe malheureux métal, l’argent maître du monde.
Quelles affaires ne fait pointCe malheureux métal, l’argent maître du monde.
Or again:
Abdel Sekkédé, hadji Mekkédé.(The monk to the convent, the pilgrim to Mecca.)
Abdel Sekkédé, hadji Mekkédé.(The monk to the convent, the pilgrim to Mecca.)
Abdel Sekkédé, hadji Mekkédé.(The monk to the convent, the pilgrim to Mecca.)
Also to be found in other languages:
Chasseur dans les bois, voyageur sur la route,Les hommes, commes les mots n’out de prix qu’à leur place.(Pariset.)
Chasseur dans les bois, voyageur sur la route,Les hommes, commes les mots n’out de prix qu’à leur place.(Pariset.)
Chasseur dans les bois, voyageur sur la route,Les hommes, commes les mots n’out de prix qu’à leur place.(Pariset.)
Or the simpler German:
Schuster bleib’ bei deiner Leiste.
Schuster bleib’ bei deiner Leiste.
Schuster bleib’ bei deiner Leiste.
There are no epics in the Turkish language, yet their wanderings should have called forth some such ebullition had they ever had some slight tendency to rise out of their primordial inarticulateness. They have little songs which the Anatolian peasants sing when the day’s work is done, which sound through the latticed windows of the women’s secluded chambers. But these songs are generally of love or homely matter, and do not tend to inspire the listener with ambition to emulate the deeds of his fathers for the honour and glory of his race and country. Other races emerging from barbarism to this day sing of their national heroes. What traveller along the lower reaches of the Danube has not listened to those bands of wandering Tsigani?
Then again, the Highlands of Scotland ring still with the recital of some great clan leader’s doughty deeds. True, they are mostly tales of strife and bloodshed, but they hold the germs of history and record it in the mannermost likely to lead others to higher aims. Of all this the Turk knows nothing. No epic tells of those days when his wild forebears left the congeries of nomad tribes which haunted the hunting-grounds north of the Hwang-Ho, of Tibet, and the rolling plains beyond the Hindu-Kush. Mongol and Manchu, Tartar and Magyar, forming groups of nomad tribes, akin and possibly speaking the same primitive language, which, when history became articulate, only differed in vocabulary, hardly at all in structure, as it does so widely from Aryan and Chinese. Of these races Manchu and Tartar have risen to greatness; Manchu till recently reigned over China from Peking, while one Osmanli, descendant of a wandering Tartar tribe, sits in the seat of former Roman Emperors of the East. The Finns, belonging to the same race, have in the course of centuries developed a literature of a high order, and are among the most enlightened of the children of the Tsar of all the Russias; Hungary’s history lives in glowing epics and passionate song; and both these scions of the same stock are valuable factors in the æsthetic life of Europe. But the Manchus have fled from Peking after centuries of dark incompetence, and the Sultan, whose palace stands on the European banks of the Bosphorus, has during his short reign seen the provinces won by the sword of Othman torn from him by younger nations, whose soul has been nourished by stirring recital of their former greatness, whose heroes live in song and epic, which by these puts heart into the warrior and leads him on to victory.
Now those young nations are without the gates of Constantinople; they have reduced the Turkish Empire in Europe to a narrow strip of land between the Bosphorus and a line of defences, stretching from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea, the lines of Chatalja.
The Turks themselves claim descent from Japheth, theson of Noah, as do the Armenians, by the way, and there is no reason to dispute with them about their traditional ancestor, who, by all accounts, was a most respectable person, and will serve as well as any other for genealogical mystification. Undoubtedly the Turks and their origin began to attract attention comparatively early in the history of Europe, and an English historian (Knolles) of the seventeenth century writes of them as follows: “The glorious empire of the Turks, the present terrour of the world, hath amongst other things nothing in it more wonderful or strange than the poor beginning of itself, so small and obscure as that it is not well knowne unto themselves, or agreed upon even among the best writers of their histories; from whence this barbarous nation that now so triumpheth over the best part of the world, first crept out and took their beginning. Some (after the manner of most nations) derive them from the Trojans, led thereunto by the affinity of the word Turci and Teucri; supposing (but with what probability I know not) the word Turci, or Turks, to have been made of the corruption of the word Teucri, the common name of the Trojans.”
Others have ingeniously endeavoured to identify the Turks with the lost “Ten Tribes”; these mysterious people have frequently been called upon to act as ancestors to modern nations. I remember well an English matron, mother of a promising family, who tried to foist this ancestry upon the people of Great Britain. However, she was advised to look at her domestic treasures, and the sight of her snub-nosed offspring seriously shook her strange belief.
Perhaps, though it seems no adequate reason, the constant infusion of fresh blood, the mixing by marriage with the women of conquered or conquerors, has prevented a national expression of sentiment based on historic facts, and the Turks, even before they emerged from distantAsia, had absorbed several other races not akin to them, or had been absorbed by some temporarily more powerful nation. There is sufficient reason to suppose that the Iranians, the original inhabitants of Bokhara, were the foundation and predominant note in the tribes which after a while became defined as Turks. The Chinese seem to have been the first to become acquainted with the Turks, and that so long ago as 1300B.C.Chinese records of 300B.C.mention a warlike race called Hiung-nu. Vigorous, active, restless, always on horseback, these savages hovered round the frontiers of the Celestial Empire. They were, it seems, divided into tribes, which when not acting in concert on some greater raid, probably behaved much as Scottish clans did not so long ago, and quarrelled and fought amongst each other. So it appears that a clan called the Asena sought the protection of a stronger one, which Gibbon called the Giougen, or Jwen-jwen. The Asena settled for a while in the district where now stands Shan-tan, in which district a hill called Dürkö (helmet), from its shape, is said to have originated the name “Turk.”
In course of time, about a century, the Asena began to feel their strength and tried it on their hosts, the result a massacre of Giougen and their disappearance from the pages of history. Again no epic tells us the stirring story of those days, and what is known is due to the researches of men like Chavannes and E. H. Parker. But the Turks from this time came into the field of history and into the purview of the West; they had gained in strength and importance with astounding rapidity, and were making their presence felt on the nations to westward of their former haunts. They still clung to their habits of nomadic hunters, but, it seems, engaged in trade as well, carrying goods for others in their caravans, connecting East and West with links of doubtful trustiness.
It was through this trading that they first came into contact with the Western world. Persia stood in the way of this young Turkey’s commercial development, and would insist on Turkish silks finding their outlet to the Persian Gulf rather than by the roads of the old Roman Empire of the East. Thus it came that Turkish envoys sought out Emperor Justin at Constantinople. The Emperor was somewhat chary of dealing with these strangers, but little more than half a century later Turkish warriors were assisting Heraclius against the Persians. As the Turks increased in number they felt the need of further expansion, so a section of them made its way north towards Lake Baikal and menaced China, but were subdued in 630. China then set about creating ill-feeling between the two sections of the Turkish people, the northern and the western tribes, and brought about a division which seems to have been final. In the meantime another force had arisen in Asia Minor which was destined to overrun that district, surge into Syria, conquer Egypt and the African countries washed by the Mediterranean Sea, and send its tide up against the barriers of the Pyrenees.
The Arabs had come from out of the desert and, fired by the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, had carried their green banner victorious over the ruins of former Empires. The Caliphate, the Arab Empire, grew as rapidly under the immediate successors of the Prophet as the Turkish State, if it could be so called, had done a century before. Persia went under before the furious onslaught of the Arabs in 639, and the conquerors overflowing into Transoxania had subjected the peoples living there by 714. The Arabs spread westward as well, and only forty-six years after the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, in the seventh century the Sea of Marmora was alive with the lateen sails of the swarthy marauders.They dashed out their souls against the strong defences of Constantinople, the Walls of Theodosius, in successive attempts to capture the City of fabulous wealth, but were forced to retire defeated. However, the Turks, who nearly ten centuries later broke down those stout defences, became subject to the Caliphate.
This applies to the Western Turks only; they vanished as a political entity and gradually became converted to a creed well suited to bring out the qualities of a high-spirited, martial race of nomads. It sanctified their lust of blood and conquest, and gave fuller force to this people’s fighting spirit by imposing the strict discipline of Islam, “obedience,” but made no mention of that broad tolerance breathed by the Founder of Christianity to which the West owes so much of its civilization. It is doubtful though whether those early Turkish tribes, if they had come under the influence of Christianity instead of Islam, would have advanced any further on the path of culture than they have arrived to-day. Though they have been in contact with the West since the seventh century, though they conquered the Empire of the East and made its Christian peoples their subjects, and from the City of Constantine overflowed Eastern Europe up to the gates of Vienna, yet the Turk has learnt nothing. This people, still nomad, has taken nothing from the West but a misunderstood, misapplied idea of representative Government which failed at its inception and has hastened the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. It has absorbed nothing but a dim idea of a military organization which when applied to a civilized, cultured nation makes for military perfection, when attempted on nomads leads to such debacles as the plains of Thessaly, the mountainous districts of Macedonia, and the stricken fields of Thrace have recently witnessed.
British naval officers have for years been acting as instructors to the Turkish Navy, which from a collection of obsolete iron tanks has to outward appearance assumed the semblance of a war fleet; left to themselves, what has that fleet done to help Turkey in her present straits? The Greek Navy is afloat and preventing transhipment of Turkish troops from Asia Minor—but the Sultan’s fleet did not move out to help! Only some mines were laid and allowed to float about the southern entrance to the Dardanelles, endangering foreign commerce from which Turkish officials indirectly draw their means of livelihood. The “Hamidieh,” her officers warned time and again to take precautions against torpedo attack, was laid up in dock with a gaping rent in her bows caused by a Bulgarian torpedo, and only the “Khairreddin Barbarossa,” named after Turkey’s greatest sailor, lying at the southern end of the lines of Chatalja, has taken any part in a war in which naval power, properly applied, could have turned the fortunes of the day.[5]
[5]Since this was written the Turkish fleet has emerged from hiding once or twice, and shown some signs of activity. Both Turks and Greeks have laid claim to victories at sea.
[5]Since this was written the Turkish fleet has emerged from hiding once or twice, and shown some signs of activity. Both Turks and Greeks have laid claim to victories at sea.
The sea-coast of Bulgaria lay exposed; a strong naval force to escort transport would have made practicable a landing of Turkish troops behind the enemy’s lines and threatened his communications, thus checking his advance on Adrianople. But the Turkish Navy was content to throw a few shells into a harmless convent, or monastery, at Varna. Possibly there were no transports, probably there was no definite scheme, but certainly there was no navy commensurate with the power assumed by the Osmanli in the comity of European nations.
Money was spent on the Sultan’s navy, and it failed. Money, much money, was given for the Sultan’s army. The highly trained officers, carefully selected from Europe’s most efficient military organization, were acquired as instructors, and worked hard at what must have seemed the labours of Sisyphus. The Sultan’s army took the field, and all the work of years seemed as if thrown away. Instead of military organization there was chaos. Nominal army corps with staff and commanders figured on paper. In reality commanders of army corps, divisions, brigades waited for the troop trains at wayside stations, and as each tactical unit detrained and fell in on the platforms, these commanders without commands gathered together such units as they thus found and extemporized commands. Transport failed completely, and at Rodosto men landing from Asia Minor cried for bread, hundreds strayed starving in search of food for five and six days on end, and then were driven back by cavalry into the firing line—to fight!
Of all the costly engines of war ordered and paid for, field telegraphs, field telephones, not one was in evidence. Thousands of Anatolian peasants, greybeards and youths, swelled the ranks, untrained many of them, some only used to muzzle-loading rifles. Some two hundred thousand of these men, Turkish soldiers, clung on to the lines of Chatalja; others, in thousands, stragglers from the battlefield, collected from day to day in the purlieus of Stamboul and returned unwilling to the front. Among these were even officers—an official announcement ordered the imams, the priests, to render to the military police authorities lists of all officers living in the streets of their respective districts—officers here in the capital of an Empire, the existence of which in Europe is threatened as gravely as was ever any Empire of the world, and out in the West, but fifty miles away, is the front, the line of Chatalja’s defences, result of Valentine Baker Pasha’s military skill. Impregnable, they say, are those lines, and that they would be, and will remain, if all available sons of Othman put their backsinto the work. Yet there were officers and men of the Sultan’s army frittering away their time and wasting opportunities of at last doing something for the country they profess to love, here in the capital with the enemy hammering at the outer defences. And would it be believed, those lines of Chatalja, just before the debacle of Lüle Burgas, were left in charge of two men, whose function was to see that no thief removed doors, shutters, or any other portable trifles from the many Government buildings on the lines!
It is no wonder that the example set by many officers of the Sultan’s army had discouraged the troops, who, seeing everything going against them, starving, diseased, turned their weary eyes homeward to the East, to Asia, the Turk’s real home, and dragged their tired, wounded limbs over the incredibly bad roads till the soaring minarets and their rivals the cypresses, the domes of mosques built to commemorate the conquests of former warrior Osmanli, gladdened their sight. Beyond those imposing temples lay the sea, and across it, only a little way, Anatolia—Home.
The Mosque of Mohammed Built to commemorate the Conqueror of Constantinople. He lies buried under the shadow of this Mosque.The Mosque of MohammedBuilt to commemorate the Conqueror of Constantinople. He lies buried under the shadow of this Mosque.
Of the thousands of broken-spirited, ignorant peasant-soldiers who left their country’s colours, a term the inner meaning of which was incomprehensible to the majority of them, many fell by the way. Thousands clambered into railway trucks, on to the roofs, of any train starting for the base, and of these many died and their comrades threw them out by the way; corpses strewed the railway embankments. Many reached St. Stefano, where preliminary peace was signed after another Northern foe, Russia, had defeated the Osmanli in the field. Of these one-third, it is said, died of cholera, exposure, starvation, their festering bodies covering the pavements. Considerable numbers reached Stamboul and took refuge in the mosques, perhaps hoping that Allah might help them out of their affliction. St. Sophia was crowded with sick and despondenthumanity, the flotsam and jetsam of a war of East and West: one side all unprepared, purposeless, corrupt; the other in well-ordered array, conscious of power and of purpose, and using intelligently all the dread weapons of modern warfare.
With the fugitive soldiery came columns of refugees, peasants of Thrace and Macedonia, Pomaks—Bulgarian converts to Islam; they came across the rolling plains with all their portable belongings, their trail marked by an occasional grave, by a dead horse or bullock by the roadside. These, too, sought shelter in the courtyards of the mosques; they streamed in at the City gates, chiefly Edirné Kapoo, as the Turks renamed the ancient Gate of Adrianople. I have seen them here herded without the gate awaiting admission, crowded in the courtyard of the Mosque of Mihrama, which occupies the site of a church once dedicated to St. George in the days of old Byzant.
St. George, the patron saint of warriors, was entrusted with the defence of Constantine’s City here where the Walls of Theodosius reach this highest point. A glorious view spreads at your feet from their height; past groves of solemn cypress trees, which cast their long shadows over the graves of faithful followers of the Prophet, thousands of whom in distant ages assailed the strong defences of the City, your eye travels along the hoary walls, over a ruined palace to where Galata arises beyond the Golden Horn. Forests of masts, smoke rising from the funnels of ocean-going steamers or busy ferry-boats speak of commercial activity contrasting with the Oriental repose of Stamboul at your feet. Little wooden houses, some of warm purply greys, others are painted with some bright colour; fig trees and cypresses on the rising ground towards the east, where many mosques, the only lasting monument a Turk builds, stand out above the clustering houses, their blue-grey domes crowned with gleaming crescent,light against the deep blue of the Anatolian mountains, attendant minarets a dazzling white against the southern sky. And then to southward another mosque or so with minaret and sentinel cypress, and over them the sparkling waters of the Sea of Marmora, where the Prince’s Islands seem floating in the fairy haze of a southern summer day. This was when I saw it a few short years ago; to-day the sky is grey and cloudy, the smoke hangs heavy over the leaden waters of the Golden Horn, mosques and minarets loom dark against the faint, watery outlines of the distant hills, the fig trees have shed their leaves and throw out writhing arms against winter’s inclemency, and sullen cypresses bend ungraciously before the north wind. Grey despondency is the keynote of the picture, for from the south-west and the west, and from the north-east, the foes have gathered in strength and hold Constantinople in bonds, and beyond those dark heights to westward an enemy, strong and purposeful, is demanding admission to Turkey’s last foothold in Europe.
The untidy street from Edirné Kapoo to the heart of Stamboul is punctuated here and there by mosques—there is the Mosque of Mihrama, already mentioned, where once stood a Christian church; there is the Mosque of Mohammed II the Conqueror, built on the site of a church dedicated to the Holy Apostles, for long the resting-place of those far-off Byzantine Emperors, the last of whom perished when the City fell before the sword of Othman. Around it stand the academies where are trained those destined to expound the teaching of the Prophet. Under a wintry sky, amidst the squalor of a people incapable of elementary hygiene, the glory of the Conqueror’s deeds is dimmed, and the vanquished, despondent sons of his fierce warriors huddle in groups about this monument to an epoch-making victory. The road leads for a while along an aqueduct attributed to Valens, the Emperor who waskilled in battle at Adrianople by the Goths. Bulgarians are this day holding the city of Emperor Hadrian in an iron vice. Along here are other ruins, more recent, the result of a fire probably; no rebuilding has been attempted, everywhere is dirt, squalor, and decay.
The street opens out on to a large square, one side of which is occupied by the Seraskierat, the War Office. From here came the order to the Sultan’s officers that they should pack up their full-dress uniforms for the triumphal entry of the Othman army into Sofia. To-day weary stragglers from the battlefields of Thrace lean against the walls of the Seraskierat, heavy-eyed, hungry, diseased, despondent. Surely there were some whose business is between these walls cognisant of the real state of affairs! It is said that of some eighteen German instructors sixteen declared the Turkish Army to be quite unfit to take the field; yet those holding office at the Seraskierat heeded not and sent hundreds of thousands in smaller tactical units, under-officered, to take what place they could in the fighting line; no scheme was ready, or if there was no one adhered to it, no adequate provision for commands and staff, for communications, for commissariat preceded the flood of miscellaneous soldiery which flowed out to meet the enemy’s advance and then ebbed back, carrying with it all the human wreckage thrown up on to the ill-kept pavements of the mosques of conquerors.
And while this mass of suffering Eastern humanity was but fitfully and quite inadequately cared for by the Turkish authorities, Western humanity was putting forth its finest efforts to alleviate this awful distress by all the means of Western civilization, against which the Turk is making his last stand. In the old Seraglio, at Galata and Pera hospitals have been opened to receive the sick and wounded soldiers of the Sultan, and they now readily make their way to where the Red Crescent flies by the side of theensigns of Great European Powers. I know fair English women, all unused to the sights and sounds, the aftermath and echo of glorious war, who are giving all their strength to works of mercy, Germans and Austrians, French and Italians, all moved by the spirit which informs Christianity. Do they expect gratitude in return, I wonder! I hope not, for they are likely to be disappointed. One gentle lady I know of, who has worked hard amongst all this misery, asked some of her patients whether in case of a massacre of Christians they would at least protect those who had nursed them back to life. After some deliberation the answer came: “No, not that. But we would kill you first, so that you may escape torture, and worse, from others.” Again, at a meeting where many ladies were busy preparing hospital necessaries, the talk turned to the question of a massacre of Christians. A Turkish lady, a lady of high degree, turned on her fellow-workers and declared that should her people be driven to the last extremity they would certainly wreak vengeance on the Christian population, and she herself would be the first to incite them, to goad them on to murder and rapine, until the streets should run with the blood of Christians, and Christian habitations became a howling wilderness, to show a horror-stricken world in what manner a race of warriors goes out of history.
Personally I do not think any such catastrophe will happen; the Turkish soldiers I saw daily straggling into hospital are too broken in spirit, too sick in mind and body, to carry out such atrocities as those with which they have from time to time sullied the pages of their history. Nevertheless, those two accounts I have given above, of the truth of which I am convinced, prove to me that when the Turk finally leaves Europe he will take with him nothing which the West has tried to teach him, least of all any conception of the divine quality of mercy.