Mustapha II defeated by Prince Eugène—The Peace of Carlowitz—Death of Mustapha II—Charles XII of Sweden—More Turkish provinces lost—Mahmoud I—Gazi Hassan—Selim III and the Janissaries—Mahmoud II ascends the throne—Ibrahim punishes the Janissaries—Changes in Europe—The battle of Navarino—Von Moltke and the Turkish Army—The steady loss of provinces—Recent changes in the Ottoman Empire—Independence of military governors—Revolt of the Pasha of Scutari—Influence of the telegraph—The reign of Abdul Hamid—The Turks and non-Islamic subjects—The Young Turk party—Revolution and reaction—Deposition of Abdul Hamid—Western opinion of the Young Turks—The result of reform—The invasion of Turkey by the Allies—Turkey at the outbreak of the war.
Mustapha II defeated by Prince Eugène—The Peace of Carlowitz—Death of Mustapha II—Charles XII of Sweden—More Turkish provinces lost—Mahmoud I—Gazi Hassan—Selim III and the Janissaries—Mahmoud II ascends the throne—Ibrahim punishes the Janissaries—Changes in Europe—The battle of Navarino—Von Moltke and the Turkish Army—The steady loss of provinces—Recent changes in the Ottoman Empire—Independence of military governors—Revolt of the Pasha of Scutari—Influence of the telegraph—The reign of Abdul Hamid—The Turks and non-Islamic subjects—The Young Turk party—Revolution and reaction—Deposition of Abdul Hamid—Western opinion of the Young Turks—The result of reform—The invasion of Turkey by the Allies—Turkey at the outbreak of the war.
THE power of the Ottoman Empire had been brought very low by the time Mustapha II, son of Mohammed IV, came to the throne in 1695. This Sultan was a man of greater capacity than any of his predecessors, and saw that only a return to the old ideals could bring the people back to the ways that lead to success in the field and prestige in the council of nations. He therefore issued a Hatti-Sherif, a manifesto of state, declaring that he would restore ancient usages, and in person lead his armies in the field. This he did with some initial success, marching from Belgrade to Temesvar, retaking several strong places, and defeating the Austrian general, Veterani, whose hiding-places were the caves which the traveller may see in the precipitous rocks that close in the Danube to northward on its way through the pass of Kazan to the Iron Gate. The campaign against Austria in 1696 also brought to the Sultan the victory over the Duke of Saxony and animperial army at Temesvar. But in the following year Mustapha had to meet Prince Eugène at Zenta, and being completely out-manœuvred, suffered defeat, aggravated by the conduct of the mutinous Janissaries, who thought fit to massacre their officers during the battle. By evening of September 11th, 1697, Prince Eugène saw his enemy in full flight, and was able to send the following message to his imperial master at Vienna: “The sun seemed to linger on the horizon to gild with his last rays the victorious standards of Austria.”
Sultan Mustapha fled from the field, where his Grand Vizier lay slain among thousands of his army, and never led his troops again in person. A treaty of peace for twenty-five years was signed at Carlowitz, on the Danube, after a vast amount of unnecessary trouble. The ambassadors of all the Powers, and there were many, represented at the conference, were each so jealous of their sovereign’s dignity that the order of precedence could not be agreed upon. So a special chapel was built, and provided with so many doors that all the ambassadors could enter at the same moment. The chapel still stands on a hill-side near Carlowitz, a witness to this scene of exquisite trifling.
Turkey was still strong at sea, and able to check Venetian aggressions, but on land Ottoman power had sunk below the level of the great nations of Western Europe, and so began that rôle of political rather than military importance, which has characterized the status of the Sublime Porte ever since.
Another Kiüprilü Grand Vizier, Hussein, assisted Mustapha with the family aptitude for affairs, and certainly managed to improve Turkey’s financial position. But the enemies of the Porte were all too powerful, not only Austria, but also Russia, for Peter the Great had been waging war with energy, and had added Turkish territory by the Seaof Azof to his Empire. Sick at heart, Mustapha II died in 1703, shortly after his Grand Vizier, Hussein Kiüprilü.
It was perhaps owing to Russian designs that the Porte looked with a friendly mien towards Great Britain, and we find Sir Robert Sutton establishing pleasant relations between his sovereign and Achmet III, brother of and successor to Mustapha III. In this monarch’s reign a romantic person roamed at large in Europe, fought battles, lost and won, and generally conducted himself more after the manner of the condottieri of other times than of a reigning sovereign of eighteenth-century Europe: Charles XII of Sweden was abroad, and though doing very much, effecting nothing. He drifted through Russia at variance with that country’s ruler, and being defeated by Peter the Great at Pultowa in 1709, sought refuge in the Sultan’s dominions. Another name well known to legend comes into history for a moment here—Hetman Mazeppa, who joined forces with Charles XII and, being considered a traitor by the Russians, met with the treatment his case required, according to their standard.
The Swedish King’s stay in Turkish territory did not improve the relations between the Porte and Russia; war was declared by the former in 1710, the method adopted being to incarcerate the Tsar’s ambassador in the stronghold of Yedi Koulé. It is true that Turkey gained some successes, defeating Peter the Great by the banks of the Pruth, and Ottoman arms won some small victories over in Austria; but the decline of Turkey was not arrested. Prince Eugène marched on Belgrade, Servia rose, and more and more possessions passed from the Ottoman Empire in Europe, till by the Peace of Passarowitz, in Servia, all Hungary became free of Turkey, who had also lost Belgrade, Semendria, several other cities, and the province of Wallachia.
Achmet abdicated in favour of his nephew, Mahmoud I,whose reign, from 1730-1754, showed a yet greater decline of Turkish power and prestige. Topal Osman, Mahmoud’s general, scored some successes over the raiding Persian armies, but was defeated and killed at Kerkoud, while Nadir, Shah of Persia, was beating other Turkish armies. Desultory wars with Austria led to no other result than that Turkey was passing out of the ranks of great Powers, through its inability to adapt itself to the spirit of the age, to adopt new methods in place of those which had proved useless, even harmful, in the day of trouble.
Attempts were made from time to time at a new order of things. Amongst the reformers was Gazi Hassan, the hero of the battle of Shio, in 1770. A fierce sea-fight was raging, in which the Turks were being worsted, when Hassan brought his ship alongside the Russian Admiral’s and fought yard-arm to yard-arm until both vessels caught fire and went up. Hassan was the last to leave his ship, and then swam ashore, badly wounded. He rose to high office in the State, and endeavoured to introduce modern improvements, to equip the army with up-to-date weapons, and to restore some sort of discipline; but the army would have none of it, and even stout-hearted Hassan could not push his way through the inert mass of Turkish officialdom which crowded in to stifle all efforts at reform. Only the navy experienced any improvement, and that because Hassan insisted on the high-pooped, heavy Turkish ships being replaced by lighter, faster vessels, built on English lines. But fresh difficulties arose over the manning of these ships, as the Turks declined to do anything but act as gunners, so Greeks had to fill the ratings of the sailors. Gazi Hassan worked hard at this reform, and was surely entitled to the gratitude of his country; but such feelings existed not in those days, neither will any reformer find it in Turkey of to-day. Gazi Hassan was unsuccessful in war, during the latter years ofhis life, owing to the opposition offered to all his reforms, but this was not taken into consideration; it probably increased his unpopularity, till Selim III, on his accession in 1789, had to execute the old hero to appease a tumult among the populace of Constantinople.
Selim III did not gain anything by his complaisance to the unruly soldiery, for by the beginning of his reign the Janissaries had become quite unmanageable, at least to a weak man. Their numbers had increased considerably, and stood at one hundred and fifty thousand, at least on paper, but there was sufficient reason to suppose that many figured on paper only, and that high-placed officials pocketed the pay of the non-existent members of the corps. Another change which had crept into the corps was that members were not necessarily available for, or liable to, military service, so many being engaged in civil employment. They were, however, ever ready to take up arms in revolt, and proved their political power by deposing and murdering Sultan Achmet III. The Janissaries had lost theirraison d’être, and were no more than a public nuisance at a time when all Europe was seething with discontent, when old thrones were falling to the ground and new popular political institutions were teaching monarchs how a people prefers to be governed. Possibly the Janissaries were influenced by the spirit of revolt which informed so many peoples at this period, but I think it more likely that they acted out of selfishness only, and had no other desire than to hold the power of the State in their own hands, to their own advantage, allowing the Sultan to reign as long as he did not interfere with their rule. They were far too bigoted and jealous of their privileges to have taken to the idealistic notions which possessed so many patriots of the French Revolution. They deposed Selim III, and his successor reigned only a few months.
Then came Mahmoud II, and he was more like the Sultans of the days of conquests than any of his immediate predecessors had been. The Janissaries annoyed him, so he determined to get rid of them, and happily had heard of the method used by Murat for soothing the turbulent Madrileños. It was time for drastic measures, because the external situation was becoming very dangerous; the Greeks were in revolt, Kara George had risen in Servia, Christians were being massacred in the Ottoman dominions, and the fact was beginning to attract the notice of Europe, in spite of so many other preoccupations. So Mahmoud II saw to his artillery, and instructed his Master of the Ordnance, Ibrahim, commonly called Kara Gehennin, Black Hell, in the use he wished it put to. The Janissaries were ordered out to military exercises one day, and as this did not please them, they gave the usual signal of revolt, by upsetting their camp-kettles.
Mahmoud was ready for them; he unfurled the Sacred Standard of the Prophet, called on all true believers to rally round their Padishah and Caliph, and left Ibrahim to do the rest with his artillery. Those Janissaries who survived this treatment broke back to barracks, where they barricaded themselves, some six thousand. Ibrahim came up with his guns and knocked the buildings down about their ears; those who did not perish here were slain by irate citizens wherever they were caught, and so a great corps, whose earliest records were those of honourable battle, perished in a day. A new army of forty thousand was then raised, clothed, armed, and disciplined, according to European models.
The old order was changing, had changed, with startling quickness all over Europe, and all the known world was affected by the events that filled the times when Mahmoud II sat on the throne of Constantine. When this Sultan succeeded, France had already passed through the fire ofRepublican Government to the glory of a military Empire, had again accepted the principle of hereditary nobility while French arms were victorious over nearly all the continent of Europe. A new Republic had arisen out of muddle and misrule in Great Britain’s American colonies, and as compensation, perhaps, that country was laying the foundations of the Indian Empire, and paving the way to the possession of Egypt, on the battlefields of the Iberian Peninsula.
Mahmoud lived long enough to witness all these many changes. Before he died, in 1839, he saw the fleets of Great Britain, France, and Russia threatening him with punishment unless the bloodshed caused by the Hellenic effort after freedom ceased at once, saw his own fleet, despite its bravery and that of his Egyptian allies, destroyed at Navarino, and as consequence a Christian King appointed by the Powers to rule over his former subjects in Greece.
Even Turkey endeavoured to show some appreciation of the “Zeit Geist” by instituting reforms, and wisely began with the Army, calling in for the first time German instructors. One of these, a tall young officer with fair curly hair, some forty years later planned the campaign which laid the second French Empire in the dust, Field-Marshal Count von Moltke. Of the Turks, after the war with Russia, which followed shortly on Navarino, Moltke said: “The splendid appearance, the beautiful arms, the reckless bravery of the old Moslem horde had disappeared, yet this new army had one quality which placed it above the numerous host that in former times the Porte could summon to the field—it obeyed.”
Does the spirit of obedience still form one of the many good qualities of the Turkish soldier? It is hard to say, for this war has given instances of the old bravery and devotion, steadiness under fire, which means discipline, obedience; but against that you have evidence of thecontrary, of swarms of men straying away unarmed from their posts at the front, and hiding in the purlieus of Stamboul, while from Asia Minor come reports of whole divisions which had declined to take part in the Balkan War.
In the meantime the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire continued. By 1811 Milosh Obrenoviç had forced the Porte to relinquish all claims on Servia, and in 1832 a Bavarian Prince became King of an independent Greece. Some thirty years later the Russo-Turkish War gave autonomy to Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austria, these events being followed by the independence of Roumania and Servia as kingdoms entirely free from any Turkish control. The last of Turkey’s conquered provinces became free when Tsar Ferdinand proclaimed himself ruler of all the Bulgarians. This last event synchronized with an expression of popular feeling engineered by a political association generally known as Young Turks.
It is a common saying that nothing changes in the East; it is also inaccurate, like most generalizations. Changes came, even to Turkey, through her contact with the West. Change comes very slowly to such a people as are the Turks, and when it does come it leaves behind more bewilderment among the bulk of the nation than is usually the case in Western races. Again, to the outside world the changes which have passed over the Ottoman Empire in recent years have seemed to come suddenly, because the effects had the appearance of precipitancy. Revolt, revolutionary changes, are nothing new in the Ottoman Empire, but till lately have passed more or less unnoticed, probably because their effects were not particularly striking.
Constantinople Seen from above Scutari; beyond it the Sea of Marmora and the distant coast where the lines of Chatalja end to southward.ConstantinopleSeen from above Scutari; beyond it the Sea of Marmora and the distant coast where the lines of Chatalja end to southward.
Such changes as have taken place occurred almost entirely in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and may be said to have begun during the last century.The European provinces of Turkey always contained factors making for the disruption of the Empire: subject races, alien in everything to their masters, centrifugal forces for a time controlled by military governors whose methods did not as a rule tend to bring about conciliation. The bonds that bound the provinces to the Central Government were none of the strongest before the days when an official’s every step was dictated to him by telegraph from the Porte, and local governors acted with great independence. Military pashas even made war on and concluded peace with each other, after the manner of mediæval dynasts. Some went even further, as did the Pasha of Janina. He started life as a brigand, and made himself pasha by the simple expedient of forging his commission. This trifling misdemeanour was overlooked by the Porte, as he was a strong man, and might be useful to the interests of the Empire, and, moreover, if it came to the worst, could always be disowned. As it happened, Ali Pasha was too strong, or the Central Government too weak, and so he went to lengths to which no other pasha had gone before him.
Ali Pasha’s lifetime fell into those days when Europe was big with revolution against ancient dynasties, and was tiring of time-honoured institutions. No doubt personal vanity, that strong incentive of revolutionaries, reformers, and others in search of notoriety, swayed Ali Pasha. He conducted a foreign policy quite independent of that pursued by the Porte, entered into negotiations with Napoleon or Pitt, as he deemed expedient, and generally acted with complete independence. Incidentally, Ali Pasha helped towards the dismemberment of his sovereign’s Empire by favouring the Greeks in their strivings after freedom; it was probably not his original intention. Ali Pasha very fittingly fell a victim to a conspiracy of those whom he had injured in one way or another.
Another pasha to raise the banner of revolt was Passvan Oglou of Vidin, who, when the Porte sought to depose him, prepared to march on Constantinople, and the Central Government was obliged to make peace with him.
Then, again, the Pasha of Scutari revolted, but the Porte contrived to settle him and the chief of his conspiracy by a breach of Turkish hospitality, by a massacre at a banquet.
The separation of Egypt from the complex of military governorships which constituted the Ottoman Empire, was another indication that the old order was not in keeping with the spirit of the age. The destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and the massacre of the Janissaries, by which the flower of the Turkish Army was lost, were further signs of the times, and prepared for changes even in Turkish administration, and finally, by the emancipation of Greece, that administration was deprived of some of its best brains, for since that event not even the meanest Greek would accept office under the Porte.
The telegraph wrought further changes; it brought the Central Government, restored to order by Reshid Pasha, into closer touch with the provinces, made greater control of officials possible, and finally robbed these of all initiative. Moreover, higher officials were no longer chosen from among the local magnates, but drawn from a lower class, less likely to act independently; by this a new bureaucracy was called into being and its ineptitude caused further trouble.
In the reign of Abdul Hamid all the vilayets of European Turkey were absolutely controlled from Yildiz Kiosk, and as that ruler was far above concerning himself with such trifling matters as racial distinctions among his subjects, unless they proved of value in sowing discord between the various nationalities under his sway, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and others met with little consideration at thehands of the Sultan’s deputies.Force majeureapplied by the Great Powers was the only argument to which Sultan Abdul Hamid answered, and the Russo-Turkish war brought about changes which we have already considered.
The great body of the Turkish nation lived quite contentedly under Abdul Hamid. He was Sultan, Caliph, God’s Shadow upon Earth, and ordered mundane matters from heights almost as remote as the high heavens. He was the head of a theocratic power, based on militarism, and his Turkish subjects were content that he should remain so. To them a ruler who declined to differentiate between dynamo and dynamite was well suited. Every village provided for its own security by appointing watchmen, and education was the concern of the churches. The Gendarmerie was not concerned with preventing crime or tracing criminals unless the State, not private property, were endangered.
That a State so raised, so maintained, should act as an organization for protecting and furthering the interests of its subjects, of whatever race or creed, is not to be expected, neither did the great body of the Turkish nation ever wish it to assume such functions. For the Turks were the dominant race, the conquerors, and to them any idea of their non-Islamic, non-Turk fellow-subjects as equals was inconceivable; their religion made such a state of affairs impossible. Thus for the ordinary Turk, as for the more enlightened ones, those in power had every interest in supporting the old order of things, for most of them must have known that once the non-Turk elements were placed on a level with the sons of Othman, the latter’slocus standiwould have gone, seeing his ineptitude for any modern thought, his incapacity for progress. Theraison d’êtreof the State was to perpetuate Osmanli ascendancy, and to this end Abdul Hamid worked, and he worked well for his own people.This ascendancy was jealously guarded; no Christian was ever allowed executive command over Moslems, and to this is due in great measure the failure of all attempted reforms in the naval and military services of the Ottoman Empire.
Added to this is a certain distrust which the Turk has of all Christians, believing that a man who does not follow the law of the Koran cannot be absolutely loyal to the Sultan. In many instances the Turk’s suspicions were justified, but it was not religious sentiment alone which separated Moslem and non-Moslem in the Ottoman Empire, for those Jews who are the Sultan’s subjects are well content to remain so. Unlike other non-Moslem subjects of the Sultan, those Jews, mostly refugees from Spain’s and Portugal’s most Catholic Majesties, have no outside Powers to espouse their cause, nor have they any grievance, for, being isolated, the Porte has no reason to fear them. It is most unlikely that the Jews of Saloniki, for instance, would welcome the Slavs as masters, nor have the Greeks, since their occupation of that town, ingratiated themselves with the children of Israel.
Like the Jews, the Turks form a religious community rather than a State in its modern conception, and these two resemble each other inasmuch as neither understands the word “Fatherland” as applying to a country exclusively occupied by their co-nationals. The word “Vatan,” meaning Motherland, conveys no definite meaning to the Turks; it had to be interpreted to them by the self-appointed leaders of thought who formed the Young Turk Party. To those who have lived in India the word “Vatan” will be familiar in the sense that it defines a man’s place of origin rather than a sentimental idea, such as the words “Home,” “Patria,” “Heimat,” or “Vaterland.”
To this inarticulate mass of Moslems living contentedly under the Sultan’s sway, a body of Young Turks brought the Western conception of a State. The “Spirit of theEast,” so strong among the Turks, was disquieted by a movement which seemed to work outside the limits of the “Law,” as written by the Prophet. The work done by the new political power in Turkey appealed strongly to the great mass of the people in Western Europe, to those who had no experience of the East and its mysterious ways. The reformers, after years of strenuous effort, years spent in exile, broke in upon Abdul Hamid’s plans for maintaining Turkish ascendancy when Niazi Bey raised the standard of revolt in 1908, and threatened to march on Constantinople with the Second and Third Army Corps. Abdul Hamid yielded to pressure, and ordered the election of a Chamber of Deputies, at the same time encouraging a counter-revolution in his capital. This movement was led by Kiamil Pasha, the Grand Vizier then (as he is again at present), against the Committee of Union and Progress. The reformers proved too strong, and Kiamil Pasha was forced to resign; he was succeeded by Hilmi Pasha, formerly Commissioner of Macedonia. The acts of the Committee of Union and Progress began to bear fruit at once, and of a nature unexpected by those enthusiasts who had only the idea of a great Liberal Empire under a constitutional Sultan before their eyes, otherwise blind to side issues. But these side issues grew and crystallized into a segregation of the non-Islamic sections of the population, who felt more than ever justified in insisting on their own respective nationality. An early disagreement arose between the Committee of Union and Progress and the Liberal Union, a body called into being to represent the Christian electorate. The murder of Hussein Fehmi, an Albanian editor of the Union’s official organ, provoked his compatriots among the troops in Constantinople to action against the Committee of Union and Progress; mutinous soldiers seized the Parliament House and telegraph offices, while delegates from the Liberal Union suggestedentering into negotiations with the other party. In the meantime Abdul Hamid had pardoned the mutineers, and this gave the Committee sufficient excuse for considering the revolt as reactionary; the Committee were well aware that their new regime could not succeed while the Sultan seemed to favour reaction. An army under Mahmoud Shevket marched on Constantinople, invested the capital, occupied it after some fighting, and ordered the National Assembly to depose Abdul Hamid, electing his younger brother to succeed as Mohammed V.
In itself, the deposition of a Sultan by a revolted section of the Army was nothing new in the annals of Ottoman history; it had occurred frequently, but was generally understood to have been an expression of the “Will of Allah.” “The Will of the People” was made responsible for the effects of the last revolution, and none were more bewildered than the bulk of the Turkish people themselves when this reasoning was explained to them. The Effendi class, the gentry, as it were, many of them men of intelligence, were as a whole by no means enamoured of the Committee of Union and Progress and its ways, knowing well how little the Turkish people were prepared for violent reforms. The people themselves seem to have quite failed to enter into the spirit of the new era; they missed the religious note; no mention was made of Allah, in fact, the professed agnosticism of some less cautious reformers led them to suggest that Allah had nothing to do with the business.
Then again, Christians, even Armenians, were to be looked upon as equals, treated as such, whereas every one knew that they had to submit, as becomes the vanquished, thus duly acknowledging the Turk as their superiors. Then a new word, besides the unintelligible “Vatan,” was being used to describe the governing power, “Constitution,” “Meshrutiet,” which many took to be a new, strange name for the succeeding Sultan. The electionof delegates did not meet with thorough approval; some considered that it raised individuals above the mass of Moslems, who are all equal in the sight of the Prophet, others could not understand why an assembly was necessary to voice the Sultan’s “Irade” (in its original meaning, intention), and, again, there were those who thought of Parliament as a plaything of the Sultan’s, and justified for that reason only.
In the meantime enthusiastic Western nations, especially those who consider representative government the panacea for all social ills, because their own genius had evolved the system, loudly acclaimed the Young Turks as saviours of their country, as apostles of freedom, as heroes, and most members of the reform party gladly accepted this interpretation of their somewhat confused mentality. If you are called a hero you are very likely to believe it, even if it robs you of your proper sense of proportion. This happened to the Young Turks collectively. The promised reforms had never been demanded by the bulk of the Turkish people, who therefore had no standpoint from which to gauge the results of reforms; they supposed that everything was to be free, amongst others, railway travelling, and I have heard of Turks invading a first-class compartment, and not only declining to pay their fare, but objecting to Christians riding in the same coach.
The Committee of Union and Progress showed the inherited genius of destruction, but failed when it came to construction. Western people said, “Give them time,” but time brought no betterment. The old order had been ruthlessly destroyed, the fear of authority had been dispelled, and nothing was created to fill the vacant places in the mind of the people. Public administration suffered, neglected because the reformers had no thought but for the maintenance of their own dignity, and this was entrusted to an esoteric militarism, to a political body whosemembers were not publicly known, and who were therefore removed from public responsibility. The worst effects of this clandestine body politic were felt in the army, and those whose business it was to maintain the efficiency of the Sultan’s forces were too much concerned with political machinations to attend to their primary duties. The disorder which resulted in all departments of public life led to an increase in the ever-present inertia of the Turk when not engaged in warfare, and acted as a further hindrance to reform.
In the Army the spirit of change brought from the West worked the greatest havoc. The Anatolian peasant, a simple-minded, strong, enduring child, when called for service with the colours, found no more of the old officers, who were content to lead without domineering, in a single-hearted effort for the Faith. In their stead he found men who assumed airs of superiority, who lived apart, and were not interested in the simple working of the soldier’s mind. These officers took as their models the men who train the German Army on German lines, suitable only to the German people, and appear to have disregarded the national peculiarities of their own kin. Some were even lax in matters of religious observance, and how could a war prove victorious when all due glory was not given to the God of battles? Again, there were Christians fighting, in the ranks only, side by side with Moslems—how could this be? Is not war a religious commandment, a sacred matter in which infidels can have no part? The Koran says: “Who dies for God’s sake receives the highest reward”; but how can a Christian be so blest, as he does not follow the law of the Prophet? Thus bewildered the Anatolian peasant marched to war, inspired by Islam, obedience, resignation, against the armed manhood of nations who breathed freedom.
The Porte, or the inexpert executive of the Ottoman Empire, had failed to realize that the Balkan States hadbeen strengthened by the weakening of Islam’s simple ideals, that hopes of liberty had risen high among the Christian subjects of the Sultan in Europe, and that a formidable alliance was in being, conceived with the sole idea of ending Turkish rule over European Christians.
With a thoroughness of which the Oriental mind is incapable, the great coup had been prepared by the Balkan States. A hard-and-fast Alliance which for the time overrode all political and religious differences confronted the Porte, and roused it suddenly to face a desperate emergency. The Kochana massacres brought matters to a head, while Turkey was still engaged in apathetic war with Italy. Bulgaria insisted in peremptory tones on reform in Macedonia, Servia raised its voice over the detention of munitions of war in transit from Saloniki, via Üsküb, to Nish; Montenegro found acasus belli, and was first to pour its armed sons down from the mountains into Turkey. They captured Detchich on October 9th, the day after the formal declaration of war; they seized Tuzi and Berane, and proceeded to invest Scutari. While thus engaged the Porte was forced to declare war on Bulgaria and Servia on October 17th, and on the same day Greece took a like step towards Turkey. An army under the Crown Prince at once invaded the southern provinces of the Empire.
The floods were out, and Western armies, highly trained, purposeful, each individual fighter inspired by love of liberty, full of zeal for the cause he had at heart, overflowed into Thrace, Thessaly, and Macedonia. The Ottoman Army had but recently been engaged in manœuvres, and these had shown many glaring defects of organization. When the Allied Armies marched, the Turks were more unready than ever; they had even sent their reservists home. Then began a scene of frantic disorder. Units were hurried to the front where the commanders of brigades, divisions, army corps, impatiently awaited them. Thecarefully arranged commands and sub-commands were entirely disregarded, and each brigadier or divisional commander seized on troops as they arrived, indiscriminately, and added them to his command. Thus the war, begun in confusion, invited defeat. And defeat came swiftly, mercilessly, while the unorganized masses of Ottoman troops, however bravely individuals might comport themselves, were swept away before the rising tide. Everybody failed, except perhaps the long-suffering Turkish soldier; ammunition reserves were not, food supplies gave out at once, and by the end of October all Thessaly, all Macedonia, the greater part of Thrace, were no longer Turkish possessions, and the Sultan’s armies, broken, starved, diseased, were driven behind the lines of Chatalja, the outer defences of the capital. On these lines the remnant of Ottoman military power guarded the last trace of Turkish dominion in Europe; shivering on the wind-swept heights, ill-equipped, underfed, regardless of elementary hygiene, they awaited Kismet, these ill-used, long-suffering sons of Islam, while in the Empire’s capital the mosques filled with sick and wounded, mingling with refugees from the former European vilayets. There were others yet in the City, or why should the War Office have issued an order to the imams, the priests, to render account of officers and men of the army who are hiding in the narrow streets of their respective parishes? The police were also instructed to demand of officers they saw in the streets some document to show that they were authorized to be in the town instead of at the front.
Seven short weeks and the Empire carved out of Europe by the sword of Othman has shrivelled up before the fierce blast of war like grass before a prairie fire. And in their need and sickness the soldiers of Islam turned to Allah, the god of battles, and sought refuge in the mosques built to commemorate the triumphs of departed Caliphs.
The Greeks, ancient and modern—Origin of the modern Greeks—Mohammed the Conqueror and the Greeks—The Greeks under Selim I—The rise of the Phanariot Greeks—The work of the Orthodox Church—The Greek literary revival—The trade of the Greeks—The revival of Hellenism—The first Pan-Hellenic rising—The revolt of the Islands—Ali Pasha’s assistance—Massacres—The battle of Navarino—The last war between Greece and Turkey—Joachim III—The story of the Patriarchate—The funeral of His Holiness Joachim III—The Greeks in the last war—A legend of Balukli.
The Greeks, ancient and modern—Origin of the modern Greeks—Mohammed the Conqueror and the Greeks—The Greeks under Selim I—The rise of the Phanariot Greeks—The work of the Orthodox Church—The Greek literary revival—The trade of the Greeks—The revival of Hellenism—The first Pan-Hellenic rising—The revolt of the Islands—Ali Pasha’s assistance—Massacres—The battle of Navarino—The last war between Greece and Turkey—Joachim III—The story of the Patriarchate—The funeral of His Holiness Joachim III—The Greeks in the last war—A legend of Balukli.
WHEN Mohammed II completed the conquest of the Eastern Empire by the capture of Constantinople he made himself master of a large population, both in the City and the former Empire of old Byzantium, which had for some time been considered Greek, and which was subsequently called Greek. This classification was religious from the Turkish point of view, from that of the Greeks themselves it became racial as time went on. To the conquering Moslem all those were Greeks who belonged to the Orthodox Church; the Greeks, however, insisted on their descent from the historic people who had made their country famous before the days of the Romans even, the Hellenes, whose literature they adopted, whose art they basely imitated, and with whose high attributes they consider themselves endowed.
This people, the classic Greeks, the Hellenes, had inhabited the Peloponese Peninsula from those dark agesbefore recorded history, and even in prehistoric times had occupied the islands between Greece and Asia Minor. No doubt the Hellenes moved down from the plains of Central Europe, the cradle of the Aryan race, in successive waves, being urged forward by seething masses of young nations behind them. We have some indications as to what manner of men they were in the early works of art of the sixth century B.C., which tend to show that these ancient immigrants were large, blue-eyed, fair-haired men. Anthropologists maintain after studying the skulls of ancient Greeks that these were dolichocephalic, long-headed, which tends further to the conclusion that the first invaders of this peninsula were akin to the races of Northern Europe. The first immigrants were probably the Arcadians, who spread from the coasts to the islands and populated Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus. They were followed by the Doric tribe, kinsmen who came from Thrace, who probably brought the first immigrants to submission and gradually absorbed them, and such of the aboriginals, the Ionians, who did not migrate to Asia Minor. Within the range of history another people came down from the north to influence the Peloponese, the Macedonians. Their origin is uncertain, but what traces are left of their old language, a name here and there, suggests that they were akin to the Illyrians, had adopted Greek culture, and were ruled by princes who wished to be considered pure Greeks. It would seem, therefore, that the ancient Hellenes were a mixture of various northern Aryan races and aboriginal inhabitants, Illyrians, Ionians, whose origin forms a yet unsolved historical problem. The Peloponese was, as it were, a pier, standing out into the Mediterranean Sea, and from which northern ideas extended and spread southward to Africa, eastward over the Archipelago to Asia. The subtle attraction of an outlet must have actedon the subconsciousness of other northern races, in that the Hellenes, far from feeling secure in their peninsula, were constantly exposed to the visits of strange barbaric visitors whenever “Wanderlust” moved the tribes of Central Europe. Of course, Romans left their impress, and so did wandering Goths, but strongest of all was the influence of the Slavs, and they so seriously affected the Peloponese that at one time it was known as Slavinia.
To all this came an Albanian invasion in the thirteenth century, so that the Greeks of to-day cannot lay claim to anything more than spiritual descent from the ancient Hellenes. The type has changed completely from that of the traditional Greek: he was tall, fair-haired, and long-headed; the Greek of to-day is of medium height, they have not ten per cent of fair-haired people amongst them, and they are brachycephalic, like the Slavs. Other Slav influences may be traced in the language, in the names of places and rivers. The Hellenes of to-day may be spiritual children of Hellas, physically they are certainly the result of a mixing of races—Illyrian, Ionian, Hellenes, Latins, Goths, Slavs of various tribes, Vlachs, Albanians, and a dash contributed by the pious Crusaders of Western Europe. These Greeks are widely distributed over the Balkan Peninsula, throughout the Turkish Empire, and over the Archipelago, and are considered a nation on the basis of an assertion made by M. Kapodistrias, the first President of the new Hellenic State. When asked, Who are the Greeks? he answered: “The Greek nation consists of the people who, since the conquest of Constantinople, have never ceased to profess adherence to the Orthodox Church, to speak the language of their fathers, and who have remained under the jurisdiction, both spiritual and temporal, of their Church, wherever theymight live in the Turkish Empire.” This is, of course, a very inaccurate description, but at least serves to illustrate Greek pretensions.
The Greeks reckon the total of their nationals in the Balkan Peninsula at roughly eight millions, but I doubt whether they number more than five millions, for the Helenophils who have been making propaganda for years among the Slavs in Macedonia are much inclined to count in those converts, many of whose sons, by the way, have been won back by the Slavs and now call themselves Serbs or Bulgars, according to the nationality of their teachers. About two millions of these five make up the population of the Kingdom of Greece, the remainder are scattered about in the other Balkan States. The majority are to be found in Turkey and along the coasts from Saloniki to Varna, between two and three hundred thousand live in Constantinople and by the shores of the Bosphorus, in fact, they are to be found in all the important towns, not only of Turkey in Europe and Asia Minor, but also in Bulgaria and Russia. No doubt the preference for town life dates from the days of barbarian invasions. The Greeks are chiefly engaged in trade and business, though many are fishermen employed in the coasting trade.
Mohammed II, on his triumphal entry into Constantinople, found a smaller population than might have been expected from a large and important city. Many of the Greeks had fled, not a few had been massacred, and it took some skill and statecraft to induce the fugitives to return. This Mohammed succeeded in doing by reinstating the Greek Patriarch with great and solemn ceremony, and by promising perfect religious freedom to the Greek community. The Greeks had always devoted more attention to the affairs of their Church than to outside matters of state (which fact helped to ruin the Eastern Empire), andthe Sultan encouraged this spirit. He increased the importance of the Greek community in the capital by numerous concessions, such as ranking the Patriarch among the Viziers of State, giving him temporal control over his flock in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, management of schools, in which he was assisted by officials of the Church with such high-sounding names as Logothete, Grand Treasurer, Chatophylax. Mohammed could afford to strengthen the Greek element in Constantinople as it was always under his eyes; in the country he endeavoured to break what remained by importing fifteen thousand Greeks from the land to the capital as settlers. The Turks were not much interested in trade, a pursuit that does not appeal to warriors, so business was left to the Greeks, and both parties were sufficiently satisfied to get on very well together at first.
There was some discontent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Selim I had an idea that a massacre might do good; however, he was dissuaded by the Mufti. About this time it was decided to take no more Greek children for the ranks of the Janissaries; the method formerly used kept the provincial Greeks in order by means of their own progeny converted to Islam and unrelenting foes to Christianity, and no more Greeks joined the Army of Turkey because none others than Moslems were allowed to serve in it. Christians might, however, become Armatoles, a kind of mounted gendarmes which the communities raised and kept at their own expense, as the Turk has never seen the necessity of securing any one’s life or fortune, and used what police force there was to nose out conspiracies and such matters of interest. Brigandage, if committed by Moslems upon Christians, was not looked upon as a serious crime, and went unpunished until Western nations began to interfere in Turkish affairs.The Greeks in the country therefore kept their own gendarmerie, who, after the example of the Turkish zaptiehs, looked with no unfriendly eye on the reprisals committed by the Klephts, outlaws and brigands of their own race.
On the whole the Greeks had quite a bearable time under Turkish rule, especially in the capital, where their importance increased considerably. In the course of time a colony of patricians grew up around the Phanar, much in the same neighbourhood inhabited by those connected with the Byzantine Court before the conquest. These patricians were not descended from nobles of the former Empire, but came from families of merchants who had settled in Constantinople around the residency of the Patriarch.
When the military power of the Osmanli declined and they were obliged to use treaties where formerly threats had served their purpose, the Sublime Porte felt a need for trained intellects to carry on intricate negotiations, especially as the Turks were much too indolent to learn a foreign language. So Jews and renegades were called in as interpreters, and in course of time Greeks discovered a suitable field for their abilities in the welter of Turkish foreign affairs. The Turks were equally sensible to the uses of intellectual, though generally servile, Phanariots, and employed them in ever-increasing numbers and extended their responsibilities. A Greek, Panayoti, was made dragoman to the Porte by Achmet Kiüprilü; another Greek, Mavrocordato, signed the Treaty of Carlowitz as Turkish plenipotentiary; and so by degrees Greeks came into the public service of the Ottoman Empire. Phanariots rose to yet higher honours when at the beginning of the eighteenth century Turkey had reason to distrust the nationalist parties in Wallachia and Moldavia. Hospodarswere sent from Constantinople to those provinces, and many of these were of Greek Phanariot families, introducing into Roumania names well known there to-day: Mavrocordato, Soutza, Ypsilanti, Ghika.
The Orthodox Church was very active, especially in Macedonia, and it is thanks to her that the members of the Slav race in that province have not lost every trace of their nationality, every vestige of their faith during those long centuries when Servia groaned under the iron heel of Sultans passing through triumphant, and Bulgaria had ceased to be. That Christianity was kept alive in Servia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and that any culture remained in those countries after their conquest by the Turks, is due to the insistence with which the Patriarchate at Constantinople pursued its work of maintaining schools, distributing literature, etc., in those districts. True, their tendency and probably their aim was to Hellenize Serbs and Bulgarians. Moreover, they would have succeeded had not those nationalities, which the Orthodox Church had kept alive, felt their own strength and in their turn insisted on a line of their own. Certainly for many generations, and until within the memory of man, Bulgars and Serbs in Macedonia have described themselves as Greeks.
This propaganda continued unchecked so long as the Phanariots did not lay themselves open to the suspicion of Hellenism. Turkish rule was strict, often unjust, but the Turk had not come to realize that the subject races could make their way out of the mire into which Islam’s conquests had thrust them.
The literary spirit of the Greeks had been all but killed by the Moslem conquest of their capital, and when it revived at last spent its energies in theological controversy for several centuries. But by degrees colleges were started, theatres opened, and the world beyond the confines of theTurkish Empire was called in to witness the Greek revival by assiduous Pan-Hellenic agencies, clubs, and societies in Vienna, Bucharest, Corfu. This revival was strongest, at least in its literary efforts, in the middle of the eighteenth century, towards the end of that, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As no revival can hold its head up without a poet or two, the Pan-Hellenes raised two, Rhigas and Coreas, poets and patriots who found it convenient to sing their inspired song some distance from home, for exile is always the most suitable setting for genius of that order, and is, moreover, so much safer. Unhappily this did not apply to Rhigas, who had settled somewhere in Austria; the Government of that country handed him over to the Turkish authorities, who executed him at Belgrade. His death inspired other poets to further efforts of the patriotic order, so all was not yet lost.
The commercial genius of the Greeks ever stood them in good stead; they defied the competition of others, and left even Jews and Armenians far behind. This quality led to their being preferred for the consular service of the Ottoman Empire. They managed to make considerable profits out of the treaty between Russia and Turkey in 1774, and soon the carrying trade of the Levant was in their hands. This attracted numbers of the seafaring Greeks into the mercantile marine, and left the Turkish Navy in recruiting difficulties, for it had depended on the Greeks for seamen. The prosperity of the Greek merchants carried them further afield, and they started large business houses in Odessa, Trieste, Venice, and London, and it was largely owing to these merchants that the patriotic songs of Rhigas were revived, and by them the nationalist ambitions of the Pan-Hellenes. The French Revolution fanned the spirit of revolt into living flame, and by 1815 a strong political union called the Hetaireia was calledinto being, with the object of freeing Greece from Turkish rule by organized revolt. Four Greek merchants of Moscow started this union, and it was decorated with the usual accessories of conspiracy, symbols, ceremonies, a mysterious language, in fact, the whole outfit suitable to the occasion. Moreover, it flourished, and numbered two hundred thousand members by 1820. The Turks had taken the alarm meanwhile, and were preparing in characteristic fashion to meet all contingencies. Special officials, mostly Albanians, were appointed to keep a strict control over the mountain-passes from Macedonia and Epirus into Thessaly and Acarnania, and these officials managed their oppressive measures so well that by the middle of the eighteenth century they had removed all the little jealousies among the different Greek communities and led them all to coalesce; even the Klephts and Armatoles, official opponents as they were, became reconciled and united with the others against the Turks.
Another cause of unrest in Greece was the constant changing of the ruling power in Morea. Mohammed II took this province, all but a number of towns which Venice retained till 1540 and then handed over to the Turks. But the Venetians wanted them back, and re-annexed them about a century later, during the reign of a weak Sultan, and held them until they were again accorded to the Turks by the Peace of Passarowitz, in 1718.
As may be supposed, Russia and Greece entered into some kind of private understanding, and Peter the Great was by no means disinclined to assist in any revolt which would tend to weaken Ottoman power and make it easier for him to acquire those outlying bits of the Sultan’s Empire upon which he had set his heart. But no advantage came to Greece through Peter the Great’s policy, nor through the influence of Russia during the first rising ofthe Hellenes, in 1770. Greece built firmly on Russian support, for Orloff, the favourite, had drawn Catherine’s attention to the state of affairs in that country, described to him by one Papadopoulo. However, something went wrong; the Greeks accused the Russians of treachery, the Russians the Greeks of cowardice, and in the end Greece got nothing and Russia the Crimea, which was probably the sole object of the manœuvre as far as the Northern Empire was concerned. The Turks, by way of admonition, let loose Albanian troops, with permission to plunder and ravage; fifty thousand Greeks were massacred and the country given over to desolation. The Albanians went out of hand so completely that they were beyond the control of the Porte for nine years after this unsuccessful Greek rising, and were not reduced to a semblance of submission until defeated by a Turkish army at Tripolitza. Nevertheless, when next Russia declared war on Turkey the latter at once let loose the Albanians over Greece again. In the meantime Klephts and Armatoles, united as wild men of the mountains, had become a formidable asset for purposes of revolt.
A number of islands were the first to throw off the Turkish yoke: Corfu, Paso, Zante, Ithaka, Kephalonia, and two others. These islands had belonged to Venice from the fifteenth century till the end of the eighteenth, when they were ceded to France, and after several changes became the United Republic of the Seven Ionian Islands, under Great Britain’s protection, until incorporated, without their consent, in the Kingdom of Greece, in 1863.
Assistance came to Greece in her struggle for freedom from a very unlikely quarter, from Ali Pasha of Janina, who, to further his ambition of becoming an independent ruler, used the Greeks for his purposes by inducing them to unite with him against the Sultan. Ali Pasha diedbefore his plans could mature, but, what he probably did not intend, Greece remained united, and were urged on by patriotism to go to further lengths.
The first serious revolt of the Hellenes against the Turks was engineered by Alexander Ypsilanti, son of a Hospodar, in Moldavia and Wallachia, but met with little sympathy from the Roumanians; and as Russia disowned Ypsilanti, the movement was crushed by the Turks in a few months. The attempted rising provoked the Moslems to a general massacre of Christians; the sons of Islam were summoned to a jehad, and racial and religious passions were roused to frenzy. Massacres occurred on both sides, savage executions took place; for instance, the Patriarch was hanged at his own gate, and many bishops and nobles were executed the same day, simply because they were suspected of complicity in a fresh revolt in Morea.
While the Morean rebels were being exterminated, the Porte found time for organized massacres in Macedonia and Thrace; but still revolution held its own, even gained some successes, assisted largely by foreign gold. Revolt had been in full swing for three years, without any evidence of calming down, so the Sultan ordered Mehemet Ali of Egypt to despatch an army of invasion to Morea. This was done; the army of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mehemet Ali, had fairly easy work with the insurgents, stamping out the revolt in the usual, time-honoured manner, by exterminating the Greek population. Athens fell, Missilonghi was besieged, and Europe, sickening at the sights and sounds of devastation in Morea, determined to interfere. The combined squadrons of Great Britain, France, and Russia met at Navarino, to make what has since become quite a popular method of dealing with Turkey, a naval demonstration. Ibrahim misunderstood the situation, and fired on a British boat, instead of advisingthe Sultan to make a number of promises he never would keep, and thus rid himself of those who interfered with his methods of government. This, of course, was too much; a battle ensued, after which there was no more Turkish fleet. Greece thereupon became independent.
As was only natural, there were no more high offices in the Ottoman Empire filled by Phanariots after Greece became an independent kingdom, and many of those patricians emigrated. This and other matters had a serious effect on Greek commerce, especially the carrying trade in the Levant, which has since passed into other hands. But the Hellenic culture has not fallen off, and the Greeks are probably among the best educated and most intelligent of the Sultan’s subjects.
There were a number of Greeks admitted into the Army under the regime of the Young Turks, and many of these took part in this Balkan war. I have heard that all work requiring skill and intelligence was left to them, that they formed the best engineers, pioneers, and were trusted as gunners rather than the simple souls who were hurried to the front from their Anatolian farms.
The Greeks are full of music too; you may hear their quaint, pathetic songs of an evening by the shores of the Bosphorus. To my mind they have a strange but attractive cadence. Some say that they are taken from the Italians, others that the Italians came here for them. I do not believe either version, but consider that these songs, like those of any other nation, are the natural expression of the soul of the people.
My readers may judge for themselves, as I include some Greek songs in this work. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a setting of the most interesting song I have ever heard in these parts, a song with a wistful beauty of its own, entirely spoilt by a travesty of itmade by the Turks, who took it as their National Anthem or Hymn of Liberty—I forget which. All I know is that here, again, they had destroyed without rebuilding.
musical notation, THALASSA.
musical notation, THALASSA.