TWO YEARS
OF THE
EASTERN QUESTION
BY
A. GALLENGA,
AUTHOR OK "ITALY RE-VISITED,". ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
Bonbon :
SAMUEL TINSLEY,
10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND.
1877.
(All Rights Reserved.')
"PERCHE COSTANTINOPOLI E DEL HONDO
LA MIGLIOR PABTE OCCUPA IL TURCO IMMONDO ?
******
CACCIAL D EUROPA
* * *
Ariosto, ORLANDO FURIOSO, xvii. 75, 77.
A PROFESSION OF FAITH.
I WAS in the East the best part of the period
elapsing between the outbreak of the Herzegovinian
insurrection and the declaration of the Russian War-
I watched events under the impression that the
office of their recorder was not that of an advocate,
but that of a judge or juryman, and that however
difficult it might be for mere man to place himself
beyond the bias of sympathies and antipathies, his
duty would be fulfilled so long as his sentence
or verdict left him at peace with his conscience.
The highest compliment ever paid to a writer was
from a lady, who, having reacl an essay upon some
subject in which sectarian controversy was in-
evitable, declared she was " puzzled to make out
whether the author was Catholic or Protestant."
Writing on matters connected with the Ottoman
Empire and the Eastern question, I do not think it
likely that any doubt may arise as to my being
Christian or Mussulman, but I should certainly
object to the decision of those and there are many
2096927
iv A PROFESSION OF FAITH.
both East and West who seem to think it im-
perative on every man to be either Turk or Russian,
who, upon any word being written which may seem
to them disparaging to their "Dear Turks," are
ready to stigmatise the writer as "a Muscovite
Agent."
As a man and a Christian, born of a nation which
aspired to emancipation and achieved it, the cause of
the vanquished and the oppressed, naturally and in
the abstract, recommends itself to my feelings, but
even then Magis arnica Veritas.
THE AUTHOR.
LLA.NDOGO, MONMOUTHSHIRE,
July 31s;, 1877.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTEE I.
EASTWARD BOUND.
PAOK
ROME TO CONSTANTINOPLE. THE GATE TO THE EAST. ROME
TO BRINDISI. BRINDISI. ITS CONDITION AND PROSPECTS.
THE GREEK ISLANDS. SYRA. CONSTANTINOPLE. THE
EASTERN QUESTION. ITALIAN, PAPAL, AND AUSTRIAN VIEWS
OP THE SUBJECT 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN.
A FOG. CONTRABAND BOOKS. STAMBOUL AND PERA. GALATA.
THE STREETS OF PERA. GOD'S WORK AND MAN'S. A
TURKISH CROWD. TURKISH WOMEN. SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
OF CONSTANTINOPLE. PORTERS, HAWKERS, AND BEGGARS.
THE SULTAN AT MOSQUE. THE SULTAN . iN . . . .18
CHAPTER III.
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
THE DOGS. THEIR BREED. THEIR HABITS AND INSTINCTS.
THEIR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION. THE TURKS
AS RULERS OF DOGS AND MEN 42
CHAPTER IV.
STAMBOUL BY DAY.
SIGHT-SEEING IN CONSTANTINOPLE. MOSQUES. MINOR MOSQUES.
BYZANTINE CHURCHES. RUINS. WALLS. GATES. THE INS
AND OUTS OF STAMBOUL ... .... 55
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT.
PAGE
AN IMPROMPTU RIDE. A TUMBLE. OUR ROUTE. SILENCE AND
SOLITUDE. TWO DEAD CITIES. MOONSHINE. A NIGHT OF IT . 68
CHAPTEE VI.
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY.
LIFE IN PERA. OUT-DOOR LIFE. 1N-DOOR LIFE. AMBASSADORS
AT HOME. PAST AND PRESENT AMBASSADORS. AMBASSADORS
AND CONSULS. AMBASSADORS AND DRAGOMANS . . 80
CHAPTER VII.
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY.
DIPLOMATISTS AND JOURNALISTS. GENERAL IGNATIEFF. RUS-
SIAN VIEWS. SIR HENRY ELLIOT. THE ENGLISH AND THEIR
AMBASSADOR. ENGLISH POLICY AND DIPLOMACY . . 96
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS.
THE SITUATION OF THE EMPIRE. GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSI-
TION. THE GRAND VIZIER. MIDHAT PASHA. HUSSEIN AVNI.
GLIMPSES OF FORTHCOMING EVENTS. THE TURKS JUDGED
BY A TURK. SAID PASHA, THE WOOLWICH PUPIL . . .116
CHAPTER IX.
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK.
SULTAN ABD-UL-AZIZ. POPE AND SULTAN. THE SULTAN AND
HIS MINISTERS. THE SULTAN'S WEALTH. HIS SPECULATIONS.
HIS CHARACTER. PECULIARITIES OF THE SYSTEM OF THE
SULTAN'S GOVERNMENT 135
\
CHAPTER X.
TURKISH REFORMS.
OLD AND NEW FIRMANS. MAHMOUD NEDIM. MIDHAT* RE-
FORMS IN ITALY AND TURKEY. THE STATE AND THE NA-
TION. THE TURKISH CHARACTER. POLITICAL. COMMERCIAL
AND INDUSTRIAL. BAZAARS. CEMETERIES . . . .152
CONTENTS. vii
CHAPTER XI.
MUSSULMANS AND CHKISTIANS.
PAGE
THE TUKKISH GOVERNING CLASSES. TURKISH EDUCATION.
TURKISH HOMES. SCHOOLS, AND COLLEGES. HOME-KEEPING
AND TRAVELLED TURKS. THE ABYSS BETWEEN TURKS AND
CHRISTIANS CHRISTIAN EXEMPTION FROM MILITARY DUTY.
PROBABILITIES OP A GENERAL MILITARY CONSCRIPTION . .175
CHAPTER XII.
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS.
CHARACTER OF THE TURKS. OSMANLIS AND MUSSULMANS.
HIGH AND LOW TYPES OF TURKS. PEOPLE AND GOVERN-
MENT. OLD AND NEW TURKISH ATROCITIES. MR. BUTLER
JOHNSTONE ON TURKISH MANNERS. TEMENAH AND SHAKING
HANDS 198
CHAPTER XIII.
TURKISH FINANCES.
TURKISH BOND -HOLDERS. THEIR AGENTS. THE FIRMAN OF
OCTOBER. TURKISH BUDGETS. THE CIVIL LIST. TURKISH
AND EUROPEAN NEGOTIATIONS. THE SULTAN'S EXTRAVA-
GANCE. HIS ILLNESS. THE HARD-BOILED EGGS. ALL FOOLS'
DAY. EXEUNT THE BOND-HOLDERS* AGENTS. MR. HAMOND'S
FAMOUS SNUFF-BOX .' . .220
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS.
ENGLISH OPERATIVES. THE IMPERIAL OTTOMAN NAVAL ESTAB-
LISHMENT. AN ENGLISH COLONY. ENGLISH HOMES. COT-
TAGE-HOMES AND VILLA-HOMES. NEW CHALCEDON. THE
ISLANDS OF THE BLESSED. THE SULTAN'S PALACES. THE
BIBLE IN TURKEY 243
CHAPTER XV.
HERZEGOVINA.
POSITION OF THE PROVINCE. ITS POLITICAL AND ECONOMICAL
CONDITIONS. THE OUTBREAK. ITS IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCE.
viii CONTENTS.
PACK
TURKISH GOVERNORS AND GENERALS. SERVER. RAOUF.
MIKHTAR. THE FIGHTING ABOUT NIKSITCH. TURKISH
STRATEGY AND TACTICS 272
CHAPTER XVI.
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS.
DIPLOMACY IN THE EAST. THE ANDRASSY NOTE. DIPLOMATIC
ETIQUETTE. TURKEY AND THE POWERS. THE PORTE AND
THE OPPOSITION. THE PORTE AND THE INSURGENTS. THE
POLICY OF AUSTRIA. THE POLICY OF RUSSIA. THE GORTS-
CHAKOFF MEMORANDUM. THE POLICY OF ENGLAND . . 312
CHAPTER XVII.
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS.
DEALINGS OF THE PORTE WITH FOREIGN POWERS. WHITE AND
BLACK SLAVERY. HAREM LIFE. THE DOCTOR AND THE SLAVE-
MERCHANT. TAXES AND TAX-GATHERERS. TURKISH EQUA-
LITY. AT THK POLLS. IN THE COURTS OF JUSTICE. TURKISH
CRIMINALS AND TURKISH JUDGES. THE PERA MURDERS.
THE MURDER AT BROUSSA. THF. SALONICA MURDER . 345
TWO YEAES
OF THE
EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER I.
EASTWARD BOUND.
HOME TO CONSTANTINOPLE. THE GATE TO THE EAST. ROME TO
BRINDISI. BRIXDISI. ITS CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS. THE
GREEK ISLANDS. SYRA. CONSTANTINOPLE. THE EASTERN
QUESTION. ITALIAN, PAPAL, AND AUSTRIAN VIEWS OF THE SUBJECT.
IN the month of November, 1874, I had gone to
Rome to see the Pope die. This was not the first
nor yet the second time that I visited the Holy
City on the same fool's errand. My friends in the
Piazza di Spagna had become accustomed to my
presence and familiar with my business, and they
laughed at me, and asked if I did not know that
" Morto un Papa se ne fa un altro" and if I was
so ingenuous as to suppose that the death of a Pope
could ever involve the end of the Papacy ; they
suggested that one who had been made infallible
VOL. i. 1
2 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
might also be gifted with immortality, and that, at
all events, Pius IX. was no lion on whose dead hide
any man could reckon, and would be as likuly to
bury me and all the rest, as to gratify the curiosity
of those who speculated on the vacancy of the Holy
See and the issue of the next Conclave.
The Pope was ill ; the Pope got well ; November
day was dark and gray ; and the prospect before me
by no means cheerful. The Roman season began
under dull auspices ; Italian politics were flat, and I
had hired apartments where the sun only shone
when he was not wanted. I walked round the
Pincio till I was tired ; I read half the novels in
Piale's library, but vainly struggled against the
conclusion that even Rome could, in certain circum-
stances, be a tiresome place, and that time hung
rather heavily upon me.
One may imagine with what electric thrill I
received a letter which bade me shift my quarters
from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, to quit too well-
known scenes for a region which was to me terra
incognita, and where I was told I should witness
" the Agony and Death of a Sick Old Man older
and more sick than the Pope himself that I should
l)o present at the reading of his last will and testa-
ment, and report any squabbles which might arise
as to the settlement of hi.s inheritance."
I was going to watch some of the phases of the
solution of the great Eastern Question.
From Rome to Constantinople one travels now on
EASTWARD BOUND. 3
the long obliterated track followed by the first
Christian Emperor, when he removed his trium-
phant eagles from the old to the new capital of his
world-wide empire. After more than fifteen cen-
turies we tread per vias antiquas, and the great gate
opening from the Western to the Eastern world is
again that Brundusium, where one stay-at-Kome
Roman poet said good-bye to another Roman poet
Eastward bound.
The first stage of my journey took me from Home
to Caserta, on the way to Naples, whence I struck
across the Apennines by the line which goes through
Benevento to Foggia and Barletta, and there I met
the great maritime line, over which the Overland
Mail is conveyed from Turin and Bologna to Brin-
disi. I had left Rome at eleven o'clock in the
evening and reached Brindisi on the ensuing evening
at six, thus accomplishing in nineteen hours a dis-
tance which a good express could and ought to go
over in twelve.
The Italian coast on the Adriatic exhibits already,
both in the look of the country and in the features
of the people, a semi-Oriental character. We are
here in Magna Grecia, and the heel as well as the
toe of the Italian Boot Puglia as well as Calabria
bear the distinct marks of that ancient civilisation
which set in with the tide of Greek colonists, and
which the vicissitudes of after-times were in a great
measure powerless to affect. As the traveller breaks
through the Apennine gorges after Benevento, he
12
4 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
advances across the Tavoliere di Puglia, a granary
now as it was in ancient Roman times ; a vast,
wind-blown, perfectly flat surface, unlike any other
region in Italy, and for a parallel to which one must
go to the fertile but dreary and desolate districts of
Castile and Aragon. There is not a tree, not a
bush in sight nothing living or telling of life, save
here and there, at great distances, some huge farm-
house, with high fencing walls and turrets, the
tokens of former insecurity, and in the home-field
around it a shaggy herd grazing, tended by a herds-
man still shaggier. There is nothing to relieve that
even, ocean-like, monotonous vastness. The moun-
tains in your rear vanish in the autumn haze before
you are in sight of the ridge of the Gargano, a long,
smooth ridge dipping in the sea far away on your
left, and forming the clumsy spur above the heel of
the Boot. As the railway trends seawards from
Foggia to Barletta, the look of the country im-
proves. The land is still level, but it teems with
-the vine, the olive, and the mulberry. A few ever-
green oaks and stone-pines tower aloft over the
orchards ; the acacia lines the railway track, and
each station has its attempts at flower-beds and
shrubberies, as on the Rhine or in Switzerland.
Towns, villages, and isolated houses, however, as
you hurry past Barletta, Trani, Bari, etc. almost
invariably white-washed and flat- roofed prepare
you for the sight of Eastern habitations. One may
fancy what they must look like in the long summer
EASTWARD BOUND. >
days, glaring and grilling in the sun, unrelieved by
the shelter ot a tree or by the shade and freshness
of more sober hues.
The movement along the line and at the stations
was considerable ; the peasantry are in the main a
well-dressed and well-to-do-looking people, for Pug-
lia, unlike Calabria and Sicily, is an orderly, labo-
rious, law-abiding community. In my first class
carriage, however, I was alone till I picked up a
bevy of priests of high rank, in fine long robes,
purple stockings, and with large golden crosses on
their breasts : portly bishops and sleek Monsignors,
attended by their almoners, bearing witness to the
thriving condition of a part at least of the clergy
in Italy even after so many years of the squabble
between Church and State and explaining the
squalor and poverty of so large a mass of the lay
population.
It was night, but not dark, at Brindisi when I
arrived, for the moon, struggling to break through
the clouds, was still bright enough to light up
the port with its shipping and the surrounding
scenery.
I had all my life longed to see this spot which
played so important a part in the ancient world, and
for which I thought, and still think, the revival of
Italy may have a no less splendid future in store.
I was grieved to see the long faces with which the
people at the new Grand East India Hotel greeted
my solitary presence. The Overland Mail was ex-
6 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
pected that very evening, Thursday, at nine o'clock ;
and I thought the smoke of the Peninsular and
Oriental steamer would have been a sight to gladden
my landlord's heart ; but he shook his head and
looked seaward with blank dejection ; a state of
mind which was presently explained by the arrival
of the dark leviathan, which hardly loomed along
the quay for twenty minutes, landed the passengers
and their luggage in hot haste, and then steamed
away out of sight without delay, while the travellers
proceeded at once several omnibusfuls to the
station, leaving not a shilling or a rupee or a piastre
for mine host of the Indie Orientali, or for his
waiters, porters or boots, to bless themselves with !
Of the many illusions into which Italian patriots
dived during their struggle for emancipation, none,
apparently, led to a more prompt and woeful disap-
pointment than their expectation respecting the
leading part that would be assigned to Brindisi as
the great mart of Eastern trade. The hopes they
built on the untold millions they would make out of
the conveyance of the Overland Mail throughout
the whole length of the Peninsula were as senseless
as the fears entertained by Marseilles and the
French railway companies at the prospect of losing
it ; and both countries looked with breathless in-
terest to the completion of that Mont-Cenis Tunnel,
which, coinciding with the opening of the Suez
Canal, was to give the Italian Peninsula, thrown as
it is like a great Avharf athwart a large extent of the
EASTWARD BOUND. 7
Mediterranean, the monopoly of Levantine and
Asiatic navigation. Tunnels and canals, however,
are only the highways of commerce ; they are not
commerce ; highways are merely the channels of
produce, but are themselves unproductive. Before
the Italians abandoned themselves to their sanguine
anticipations, they should have considered what
goods they had to sell or to purchase ; or, otherwise,
what means they possessed for fetching and carrying
other people's goods. I was at Rome and bound
for Constantinople, and, on inquiring my way, was
told that I had a choice between the Austrian
Lloyd steamers that touch at Brindisi, and the
French Messageries steamers which rendezvous at
Naples. Strange to say, no one in the Italian
capital seemed to know anything of the Italian line
of La Trinacria, whose steamers, as I afterwards
learned, plied between the Sicilian and South-Italian
coasts and the East ; the company still surviving
now under the new name of Florio and Co. That
line, however, was struggling into existence under
difficulties ; it lost much time in commercial transac-
tions at the intermediate ports, and in fact could ill
withstand the competition with its French and
Austrian rivals in the conveyance of mails and
passengers. These French and Austrian and the
English Peninsular and Oriental steamers have
nearly the whole Eastern traffic in their hands, and
they naturally only resort to Italian ports in so far
as these suit their convenience. The English vessels
8 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
from Alexandria at first made Brindisi their ter-
minus ; they landed their mails and passengers and
a part of their merchandise ; and it is to this early
period that Brindisi refers as the date of her short-
lived prosperity ; but now the steamer only lands
the mails and such of her passengers as long for the
termination of their sea-voyage, most of whom drive
at once to the special or " International " train
which is waiting for them at the station ; and, for
the rest, she proceeds up the Adriatic to Ancona
and Venice, bringing, in sober fact, nothing to
Brindisi besides bustle and fuss, a week of tanta-
lising hope to be followed by a day of bitter disap-
pointment.
The fact is, national success has done all that
could be expected towards making Italy a great
trading community. It is now in the power of her
people to reap all the benefit of their splendid posi-
tion. Even at the moment I am writing, the
Russo-Turkish war, by interrupting the ordinary
traffic along the Danube, has given the companies
of Mediterranean steamers the monopoly of the
whole intercourse between the East and West. Of
that trade and traffic it is in the power of the Florio
or other Italian companies to have a large share.
All the rivalry of Marseilles, all the petty intrigues
of the French railway companies, cannot prevent
Genoa becoming the Queen of the Mediterranean ;
nor can Ancona or Venice, or even Trieste, deprive
Brindisi of the importance she has as the keeper of
EASTWARD BOUND. 9
the keys of the Adriatic. But in order that Italian
ports may hold their own against their neighbours,
they must, in the first place, become trading ports ;
they must establish their shipping and maritime
enterprise on a larger scale. Their steam navigation
companies, the Florio and Rubattino, must be con-
ducted with wider and more generous views ; and
they must have a striving, working, trading country,
as well as an intelligent and provident government,
to back them. The Italians must work out their
well-being by their own exertions, well knowing that
other people will not allow them a greater share of
their gains than they can help.
I had never before seen Brindisi, and could not
compare its present state with what it was fifteen
years before, when it was rescued from Bourbon
rule. But that there was progress in the place, and
that its inhabitants were doing tolerably well, one
might perceive at a glance. The harbour is not
larofe, but well sheltered and almost land-locked, and
O ' '
broad and handsome quays have been made with
sufficient depth of water to allow the largest
steamers to moor close to them, enabling pas-
sengers to walk on board a convenience scarcely
to be met with anywhere else in the Mediter-
ranean.
I walked in and about the town, and saw with
pleasure that the old well-paved and smooth, though
narrow, Strada Maestra and the more spacious Strada
Amena were swept clean cleaner than any week
10 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
I was to see for many months as I proceeded farther
East. In the Strada Amena and other quarters
large and handsome blocks of buildings with shops
were rising ; a proof, in spite of all the croaking of
my landlord, that the place had faith in its destinies,
and was decidedly looking up. In my opinion to
deprive such a place as Brindisi of her future as the
gate of the East would be impossible. It takes
time before the movement of commerce can find its
level, before trade can be diverted from the channels
it has long followed, before a race prostrated for
centuries like the Italian can make up its mind to
be up and doing. But it all will come to pass in
God's' own good time.
An Austrian Lloyd steamer took me up at
Brindisi, and wafted me across to Corfu ; from this
latter place another Austrian Lloyd steamer, two
days later, threaded its way through the Greek
Isles to Syra, and hence to the Dardanelles, and all
along the Sea of Marmora to the famous group of
the Three Cities at the southern entrance of the
Bosphorus. Owing to a loss of twelve or thirteen
hours at Syra, it took us three days and three nights
to go from Corfu to Constantinople.
All the time during the voyage which was not
taken up by the contemplation of the lovely scenery
through which I was borne, along the lofty coasts
and threading the maze of islands of the ^Egean
Sea, was employed by me in picking up whatever
knowledge came into my way respecting the subject
EASTWARD BOUND. 11
on which I had undertaken to enlighten other
people.
I had hitherto paid but little attention to the
Eastern Question, and only heard that the interest
the world felt about it had been recently awakened
by the report of an insurrection in some districts of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by an untoward reso-
lution of the Government of the Porte which de-
frauded the holders of Ottoman Bonds of one half
of the interest of their shares. Dissolution through
disaffection of her people, and bankruptcy through
mismanagement of her finances, we were given to
understand, threatened the Empire of the Sultan
with the speedy fulfilment of its long-impending
doom.
I need hardly say that in Italy men were heart
and soul for the insurgents ; for the Italians, and
especially the Venetians, among whom I had lately
lingered, had not forgotten how a few years ago the
Austrian eagles were still perched on every steeple
all over the pleasant land ; they had felt what it is
for a nation to have another nation's foot on its
neck, and, apart from religious antipathy, they could
not help feeling how far more unendurable masters
the Turks must be than their own lately departed
Tedeschi. Of the regions that stare at them from
o
the other side of the Adriatic, even of the clusters
of islands and peninsulas which they themselves sub-
jugated and colonised in old Venetian times, the
Italians know next to nothing ; but they reasoned
12 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
that, as it had been proved that Roumania, Servia,
and Montenegro could enjoy the blessings of self-
government, not without some credit to themselves,
and with absolutely no disturbance to their neigh-
bours, there could be no reason why the same
autonomy should not be extended to the Herze-
govina, to Bosnia, and so on from district to district,
till the Crescent should be driven to the minarets of
Constantinople, in proper time to be forced across
the Straits.
The Italians, it may be seen, had from the outset
adopted the " neck and crop" theory of Mr. Glad-
stone. The Italians themselves had achieved such
prodigies in their own country, that they could
dream of no problem of which time might not bring
an easy solution. They took little time to consider
where another Re Galantuomo and a minister with
a Cavour's brain were to come from to lay the basis of
that South-Slavonian Empire of which men talked
so glibly ; they lost no time inquiring into the
immediate or remote consequences of a disruption of
the Ottoman Empire, and of a collision between the
rival pretensions of Russia and Austria on the
Danube, or of the jealousies between Russia and
England as to the possession of the Bosphorus. All
they knew was that the Christian subjects of the
Porte were " men and brothers," and should not be
made to submit to the Turks, who were "brutes."
The question for Italian patriots was not on what
footing the Osmanlis should hold their own in
EASTWARD BOUND. 13
Europe, the first and most urgent necessity being
that they should take themselves off. The only
partisans the Ottomans had in Italy were the
priests, with the Pope at their head. The Herze-
govinians, in the opinion of the Vatican, were
" Freemasons and Garibaldians," and as such could
only be enemies of God whether they rose against
the Crescent or the Cross. This partiality of the
Pope to the Turks did not fail, of course, to
strengthen the Italian laity in their anti-Turkish
prepossessions, at the same time that it inclined
them to augur well for the progress of Turkey's
enemies ; for in the estimation of the Italians the
poor Pope has the evil eye, and is sure to ruin any
cause on which he bestows his blessings, as he
almost invariably brings good luck to those against
whom he hurls his curses.
When Italy was left behind, and as we were
steaming under Austrian colours, this unanimity in
favour of the Christian subjects of the Porte was no
longer apparent. I had been at Trieste a few
months before, almost upon the first outbreak
of those Herzegovinian disturbances, and what I
had then learnt, and what I now heard from the
captains and officers of the Lloyd steamers and from
the miscellaneous passengers bound to the same
goal with me, soon enabled me to perceive that
Austria's views on the Eastern Question were, and
must for ever be, as hopelessly divided and pointing
opposite ways as the two heads of the bird which
14 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
has almost prophetically been for so many years the
cognisance of the House of Hapsburg.
The insurrection of the Herzegovina ought, on a
first glance of the subject, to have caused the Kaiser
as bad a quarter of an hour as the S.ultan himself ;
for, if the Porte was threatened with the danger
of losing those districts, the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy ran the scarcely less evil chance of gain-
ing them. A man whose next-door neighbour's
house is on fire can enjoy no easy slumbers, and at
Vienna, and still more at Buda-Pesth, the prevailing
opinion seemed to be that it little mattered with
what amount of bloodshed the Herzegovinian insur-
rection was quenched/ so there might be peace on
the Dalmatian, Croatian, and Slavonian frontier.
For most of the statesmen in power in Austria the
integrity of the Sultan's Empire was a vital neces-
sity for the Kaiser's Monarchy : but there were
other men, possessing influence at court, in the
cabinet, in the army, and among a large part of the
people, who thought, on the contrary, that the
Kaiser's Monarchy could and should be made to
rise on the ruins of the Sultan's Empire ; that all
Turkey's loss should be Austria's gain, and that,
instead of attempting to uphold the Sultan, the
Kaiser should favour every movement which might
enable him to step into the Sultan's place.
It was not merely the Slavic party in some of
the Austrian provinces, it was not merely General
Rodich, the Governor of Dalmatia, or the Arch-
EASTWARD BOUND. 15
duke Albrecht, the conqueror at Custozza, and the
most popular man in the Austrian army, that were
supposed to look upon the aspirations of the Slavs
of Herzegovina with outspoken favour. The Em-
peror Francis Joseph himself was supposed to have
a leaning in that direction, and indeed it was openly
asserted at Trieste and Ragusa that it was owing
to the encouragement held out to them by the
Kaiser during his summer trip across the Julian and
Dinaric Alps that the Herzegovinians had ventured
on a revolt for the success of which they must needs
depend on other forces besides their own.
The conditions of the Austro- Hungarian Mon-
archy were so far improved by the events of 1866,
that, could the Eastern Question be for ever ad-
journed, the losses the Hapsburg-Lorraine dynasty
suffered at Sadowa might be accounted clear gain.
Austria at that juncture rid herself of Germany and
Italy, and satisfied Hungary. By her scheme of a
Dualism she put an equal amount of power into the
hands of her own Germans and of the Magyars.
Only in that arrangement she seemed to forget the
Slavs the most numerous of her subject races, and
the one to which in recent struggles she has been
indebted for her very existence. These Slavonians,
although split up into many distinct tribes, and
known under the various names of Dalmatians,
Croatians, Slovenes, etc., although hardly knowing
anything of each other, and understanding but little
of each other's language, had been lately plied with
16 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
flattering notions of their common origin, and made
to aspire to common destinies. These Southern
Slavs in themselves were almost more than Austro-
Hungary could manage ; but what would be the
case if they were to make common cause, and be-
come one people with their brethren of Herzegovina,
Bosnia, Servia, and other Turkish provinces, and give
full development to that idea of a South Slavonian
Empire, which might prove stronger than either the
Kaiser or the Sultan, and absorb all Southern
Europe from the Danube to the Bosphorus ?
It seemed easy to some of the people at Trieste,
and on board the Lloyd steamers, to suggest that
the Austrian Monarch could easily, however, lay the
storm which threatened him from the South Sla-
vonian movement by putting himself at its head ;
that, by extending his protection to the Bosnians,
Herzegovinians, or any other tribe attempting to
shake off the yoke of the Porte, he could extend
the limits as well as consolidate the foundation of
his empire. But his Germans and his Magyars
had found out that their master had already a great
many more Slavonian subjects than they considered
expedient, and Austria could only hope to become
a great South Slavonian Monarchy by risking the
loss of her German and of some of her Hungarian
provinces, and exchanging Vienna, not merely for
Pesth, as Prince Bismarck hinted, but for Constan-
tinople a consummation, whether or not desirable
in the end, the means for which were not at hand.
EASTWARD BOUND. 17
It is easy to see from what has been said how
troublesome and dangerous any insurrectionary
attempt in the Turkish provinces must appear to
those who direct the destinies of the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy. The House of Hapsburg-
Lorraine was standing on a pretty firm foundation
so long as the Eastern Question was left untouched.
But the moment that Question pressed forward for
solution Austria fell into a state of perplexity from
which she found it impossible to free herself, seeing
equally formidable dangers before her in any reso-
lution she might venture to take, and hardly any
greater safety in a policy of indecision and inaction.
This may explain the endless shifts and heroic tours
de force Count Andrassy was driven to at various
periods during these last two years. His contrivances
hitherto, far from ridding him of the difficulties of
his situation, have only involved him deeper and
deeper into the meshes of a vacillating policy, and
made his own position, that of his party, and that of
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy more hopelessly
entangled, indefinable, and untenable.
VOL. I.
o
18 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER II.
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN.
A FOG. CONTRABAND BOOKS. STAMBOUL AND PERA. GALATA.
THE STREETS OF PERA. GOD'S WORK AND MAN'S. A TURKISH
CROWD. TURKISH WOMEN". SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF CONSTAN-
TINOPLE. PORTERS, HAWKERS, AND BEGGARS. THE SULTAN AT
MOSQUE. THE SULTAN.
THE first impression a traveller receives on entering
Constantinople has been often described, and by
none so successfully as by one who had never seen
the place. To venture upon the subject otherwise
than by quoting the author of " Anastasius " would
seem sheer rashness ; to avoid it altogether might
be considered a dereliction of duty. In my own
case the horns of the dilemma had nothing formid-
able ; the task of conveying my first impression of
the place was rendered marvellously easy. Lovely
weather had been with us from Rome to Brindisi,
at Corfu, at Syra, in sight of " the fields Avhere Troy
was," and at both ends of the Dardanelles. There
was a blaze of stars and a bright waning moon as I
rose on a Friday, November 19th, 1875, at four
o'clock in the morning, and paced the deck of the
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 19
Austrian Lloyd steamer Vesta, which was slackening
speed as it neared the harbour. "Now then," I
thought, " for the glories of the Golden Horn, of
the domes and minarets of Stamboul, of the palaces
and groves of the Bosphorus 1" But, though the
sea and sky were clear, a slight haze was clinging to
the shore, which at break of day thickened into a
dense mist, and veritable palpable fog, till a heavy
curtain of clouds settled on the whole scene. Of
Constantinople itself, of Pera, Galata, and Scutari I
saw just as much as though at such an hour and
day I had been steaming up from Gravesend to
London Bridge, and of that an English reader
hardly needs a description.
As the capital was, so I found also, upon landing,
was the Government of the Sublime Porte under
a cloud. At the custom-house, where the boat
landed me and my luggage, I was not unmindful of
Murray's hint, and I instructed Spiro, the commis-
sionaire of the hotel, to bribe his way without stint ;
but the spell did not work : the hand that pocketed
my backsheesh was still held out for the keys of my
portmanteaus. I had to stand by, and bear and
grin, while dirty fingers rummaged into the deepest
recesses of those sorry trunks, turning everything
topsy-turvy, and fishing, not for tobacco, or cotton
prints, or any other contraband goods, but, of all
things in the world, for books 1 They took them all
out, nine in number, one by one, looked knowingly
and lovingly at the lettering and gilding, shook
22
20 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
them, raised them to their ears, and ended at last
by piling them up together, tying them up with
pack-thread, and in one word, seizing them, and
dismissing me with an intimation that I could call
for them when the official dragoman had satisfied
himself that they contained no treasonable or in-
cendiary matter "nothing," they said, " disrespect-
ful to the sacred person of the Sultan, nothing in
disparagement of the wisdom of his ministers." I sent
for the books twice the day after ; sent again twice
the next day ; part of them came up by driblets :
Ouida's "Signa," the "Dodds Family Abroad,"
were soon out of quarantine. Presently Murray's
"Handbook" and Theophile Gautier's "Constan-
tinople " were also released. There only remained
Conder's " Turkey," but that, I was told, " was for-
bidden, and I should never see it again." It was a
borrowed book, an odd, old little volume, a mere
patchwork of other people's impressions and remarks
about the country, chosen by the worthy compiler
with all the partiality of an ardent Turkophile, and
intended to paint the East and Eastern life as a
sublunar Paradise. That book T was " never to get
back." It was, and would for evermore remain, in
the hands of the deep-searching interpreter, ap-
parently busy in seeking in that cabalistic cento the
clue to the tangled skein of the Eastern Question.
" Shades of Omar and all the Khalifs !" I thought.
" Fancy what an advanced stage that Eastern
Question must have reached, how deeply faith in
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 21
the destinies of the Crescent must be shaken,
when the good Mussulman turns censor of books ;
when, like a very Duke of Modena, a Sultan stoops
to wage war against printed paper !"
I was unwilling to avow myself beaten. I called
upon Sir Philip Francis, her Majesty's Consul-
general and Supreme Judge of her Majesty's Court
in the Levant, only too glad of an opportunity of
making the acquaintance of one who became my
staunchest friend in Constantinople as long as he
lived. Sir Philip hardly allowed me time to state
my case ; he rang the bell for his smartest cavass,
or guard of the consulate, and bade him in his own
hot and hasty manner, " go down to the dragoman
at the custom-house with my curses, and tell him to
give up instantly the book So-and-So, taken from
Mr. So-and-So, instantly, on the spot, and see thou
comest not back without it" He then bade me be
seated, with a courtesy strangely contrasting with
the strong language which he reserved for his deal-
ings with the Turks, handed me one of his choicest
havannahs, and before the cigar was smoked to the
end, to be sure, old Josiah Conder's harmless rhap-
sody made its appearance, not much the worse for the
pawing and fingering of the jealous Ottoman official.
I had never before been at Constantinople, but,
like all travellers who have seen much, I had heard
and read enough about it to be able to fancy what
it was like. In many respects, indeed, the look of
22 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the place only too faithfully reproduced the picture
of ray life-dream. But on one point, at least, I was
strangely and grievously disappointed. I expected
to find Stamboul a Turkish pig-sty, and Pera a
Christian garden ; the reverse turned out to be the
case. Bad weather and the press of business com-
bined for a few days to shut me up in this diplomatic
and commercial semi-European suburb of Pera-
Galata, and I can freely declare that nothing my
experience of the worst Italian and Spanish towns
ever made me acquainted with comes up to the
horrors of this Oriental abode of the world's am-
bassadors. The Queen of the Bosphorus, as every
one knows, consists of three cities. Two of them,
Stamboul, or Constantinople proper, and Pera-
Galata rise on hills on the European the third,
Scutari, on the Asiatic side of the Strait. Stam-
boul and Pera-Galata are separated by the Golden
Horn, a long, broad, and winding inlet of the sea,
forming the harbour of Constantinople, and are
\joined by two long pontoon bridges, one at the
harbour's entrance called " Karakeui Bridge," and
the other a little more inland, being the " Old
Bridge." Between the two a new iron bridge has
been for a long time in progress of construction a
lofty, broad, and magnificent structure, which was
nearly finished long before my arrival at Constanti-
nople, and which remained " more unfinished than
ever" two years later when I left the place.
Stamboul spreads out to the south, between the
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 23
Strait, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmora,
in the shape of a triangle, with its base on what are
called the " Seven Hills," and its apex, the Seraglio
Point, guarding the mouth of the Strait, and facing
Scutari across it. To the north of Stamboul, across
the Golden Horn, rises the hill round the base of
which spreads the old Genoese suburb of Galata ;
and on' its top, where once were groves and gardens,
are now the palaces, the shops, the churches, the
barracks of Pera. The two towns, Pera and Galata,
are now to all intents and purposes one town ; the
old walls have almost everywhere disappeared, and
with them every line of distinction between the
lower or commercial and the upper or diplomatic
quarter. The little level ground on the top of this
steep hill is traversed throughout its length by what
is called the Grande Rue de Pera. At its two ends
there are thoroughfares practicable for carriages
leading either to the bridges or to the open country ;
and all along the same Grande Rue there slopes
down a labyrinth of narrow streets and hard steep
steps, leading to various points on the shore of
Galata and to several dingy Mohammedan quarters
on the base of the hill on the land side. The Grande
Rue or main street of Pera is in some points less
than half the width of the Corso at Rome ; the side
streets and steps are hardly as broad as those one
climbs in the most mountainous quarters of Genoa,
or in what the oldest inhabitant remembers of the
worst wynds in Auld Reekie. Round the base of
24 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the hill or cone on which rises Pera-Galata, there
runs a level street coasting the sea, and ending on one
side at Hasskeui, where lies Ters-haneh, the maritime
arsenal and naval dockyard, and at the other end,
leading to Top-haneh, or the artillery yard, and
farther off to the palaces of Dolmabacheh and
Cheraghan, recent edifices raised by the Sultans for
their town residences ; what remains of the old
Palace of Top-Capon, at the Seraglio Point at
Stamboul, being merely reserved for great state-
ceremonies. All along the lower Galata street, a
busy thoroughfare, a tramway has lately been laid,
and from the summit of Pera to the neighbourhood
of Karakeui Bridge there is a tunnel, dignified
under the name of Metropolitan Railway, by which
the fatigue of the steep ascent can be avoided, pro-
vided no accident occurs to interrupt the traffic, as
happens almost periodically every three months.
It rained in the evening and on the day after
my arrival, and, after making a trial of all the
pantoufles, gaiters, goloshes, patent overshoes and
Russian bottines, and other contrivances that sym-
pathising friends recommended, I came back
thoroughly beaten to my hotel (the Angleterre, or
Missirie's), convinced that walking, riding, driving,
or, indeed, locomotion by any other means than a
sedan-chair was out of the question. The pavement
of huge, uneven, cruelly sharp-pointed stones had
not, one would fancy, been ever taken up since the
Genoese laid it down in the Middle Ages. Attempts
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 25
at drains or even open gutters seemed never to have
been made ; sweeping was an unknown practice
the black, thick, greasy, slippery, sticky mud collects
in the huge holes everywhere yawning between the
loose stones ; and in every effort you make to pick
your steps you are baffled by the throng of men and
beasts the men more irrational than the beasts-
hurrying headlong on their errands, the carriages,
the laden mules and asses, jumbled together at a
dead-lock, threatening at every step to crush you
unless you are wary and nimble enough to dash for
a refuge into the open door of some of the quaint,
dark, poky shops.
This, of course, is the Grande Rue, the only
thoroughfare ; the other streets, Rue des Postes,
Rue de Pologne, etc., are streams in the rain, fetid
beds of muddy rivers for days and weeks after it.
Christians and Mussulmans are apt to call each
other " dogs ;" but one thinks with a shudder what
the Pera streets would be if one had not to thank
the loose dogs, which are here the only scavengers.
We had at last, fortunately, three and more days
of such glorious sunshine as were never seen in
o
November. The fresh, balmy air absorbed and
swept away the taint of the accumulated impurities,
and, with something of the feeling of Noah from the
Ark, I broke from confinement, stepped down to
the bridge, and across the harbour, walked up to
Stamboul, crossed over in a caique into Asia, to the
English cemetery at Haidar Pasha near Scutari,
26 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
stood on the deck of a steamer for a trip up and
down the Bosphorus as far as Therapia and Buyuk-
d ere, saw the Sultan going to Mosque in his gilt
bucentaur, and, in short, took in at a bird's-eye view
what " Eothen" calls the " splendour and havoc of
the East."
Would it be believed that I found at Stamboul
what I had vainly looked for in Pera ? broad and
comparatively well-swept streets only too few, alas !
with smooth footpaths ; large, fine open spaces
with extensive views at the Porte, round the
Se'raskierate or War Office, at the Hippodrome, and
in front of some of the Mosques ; and, on the whole,
practicable, habitable, hospitable quarters, with here
and there symptoms of modern improvement and
even refinement, setting forth to advantage the
Sultans' tombs, the fountains and other relics of old
Byzantine and Mohammedan art and civilisation.
Only let the barriers of religious animosities be fully
overthrown, only let a Christian have his choice of
a residence, and there can be no European so utterly
destitute of taste as not to prefer a sojourn in free-
breathing, whitewashed Stamboul to that of cramped,
stifled, dingy, and dreary Galata-Pera.
I was told that the miracle by which Stamboul
has been and is being transformed is all owing to
the blessing of its frequent fires ; and I could enter
with warm sympathy into the feelings of Nero, and
share in his exultation that Rome which must,
even after Augustus " had found it brick and made
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 27
it marble," have been just such a jumble of wood
and mud-hovels as nine-tenths of Constantinople are
now was being consumed by the flames before him ;
I could twang his guitar, and sing his pseans, and
bless with him the devouring element which con-
quers men's sloth, stubbornness, and improvidence,
strikes daylight into their foulest, plague-stricken
nests, and enables some Hausmannising genius to lay
his plans for those boulevards which are to give
them air and space to breathe in, in spite of them-
selves. But, alas ! the fire which has achieved but
little for Stamboul though equally busy at Pera,
Galata, or Scutari, has done next to nothing for
their improvement.
Into what delightful residences could not Pera
and Galata, and Stamboul, and Scutari, and Kadi-
Keui or Chalcedon be made by a simultaneous appli-
cation of the purifying process which they are, alas I
only periodically undergoing ? What combination
of Naples and Lisbon, of Genoa and Edinburgh
could make up so glorious an aggregate of human
habitation as the Bosphorus would present from end
to end, if the power, wealth, and intelligence of our
modern world could, as it should, be made to bear
upon it ! Even as it now is, there is something in it
that dazzles the eye with its quaintness and gorgeous -
ness, and will not allow the mind to dwell on its
meanness and squalor. What God has done, man,
be he even a Turk, cannot wholly undo. Architec-
ture is not and has, perhaps, never been at home in
28 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Constantinople ; it has only piled up huge ovens
under the name of mosques, and reared slender
white candlesticks and candles with black pointed
extinguishers called minarets ; it has lined the
shores of the Strait with Sultans' palaces, kiosques,
pavilions, Pasha's yalis or country mansions, long
rows of buildings, light not elegant, white not tidy,
with unmeaning arabesques and blank windows,
charming at a distance, disappointing on a near
approach, silent and lonely, splendid follies, many of
them hardly ornamental and worse than useless.
The Christian homes themselves, jas though
dreading the contrast that any attempt at a style of
their own might suggest, are rather stately and ele-
gant than really tasteful. The English, Russian,
and other ambassadorial palaces of Therapia and
Buyukdere, abodes of bliss, which make their tenants
loathe their not less sumptuous but dirt-beset, noisy,
and cramped mansions at Pera, are conspicuously
plain, when they are not baroque in their grandeur ;
nor has the gardener's art, except in a few spots,
attained any higher degree of excellence than the
builder's. Were it not for the cypresses of the
cemeteries, the lovely shores of the Bosphorus, all
except the lower fringe at the water-edge would be
nearly as bare as the Dardanelles ; and Pera-Galata
does not even boast the little spots of green which
dot here and there the irregular mass of buildings
of triangular Stamboul.
Altogether, whether you look at it from the out-
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 29
side, where huge unsightly barracks constitute its
framework, or venture into its dreary precincts
where every view is obstructed, the hill on which
Pera and Galata stand, in spite of its grand Em-
bassies, is, in my opinion, the eyesore of the Bos-
phorus ; and it is matter of great wonder and grief
to me to think that so many diplomatic magnates,
consuls, judges, and other European functionaries,
rich bankers and merchants, should have been living
here year after year, generation after generation,
century after century, and yet never have clubbed
together, never attempted joint action for improve-
ment, never laid their wise heads together at least for
a pavement that they should have done nothing to-
wards making the ground round their residences in any
respect better than when the Italians first colonised it.
The Italians have at no time been particular for
decency or cleanliness, and I have no sympathy with
those aesthetic professors who look upon " dirty" and
" picturesque " as synonymous ; but the Italians
were at least grand and daring and Titanic in their
conceptions. Witness the time-defying remains of
their battlemented houses and city walls here and
there still standing in Galata; witness especially
that Genoese tower, a structure of colossal and solid
dimensions, and not destitute of a certain character-
istic beauty, and which is sure to outlive all the
edifices which either Byzantines or Turks have
reared within reach of its vast panorama.
Yet improvement of some sort is going on at
30 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Constantinople, and it is chiefly, if not exclusively,
of European contrivance. I have already alluded
to the two or three steep carriage-drives, the tunnel
or underground railway, the tramways, the new still-
born bridge ; and I may now add the railway lines
running from the City of the Sultan across those
northern districts of Philippopolis and the Balkans,
which were soon to become so familiar a theme of
men's talk, and, on the other side, to Ismid or Nico-
media and Aidin, to be some day extended to
Smyrna and throughout Asia Minor.
The change in the look of the inhabitants must
needs keep pace with the alteration of the material
conditions of the city ; but it would not be easy to
say whether it be equally Tor the better. The
crowd at the approach of Karakeui Bridge on both
sides, but especially on the Galata side, is appalling
by its crush and confusion, but at the same time
attractive and amusing in its quaint, wild, and fan-
tastic variety. On no other spot in the world, per-
haps, are the costumes, features, and tongues of the
various tribes of the East and West blended and
crowded together in more equal proportions. No-
where else are the European cylinder, wide-awake,
and billy-cock, bonnet and chignon, the Turkish fez,
turban, and yashmak, the Persian barette, the Cir-
cassian kalpack, to be seen more densely swarming
together in the motley mass of heads. Islam is now
trousered and shod, and barring the hallowed fez,
there is little in the button ed-up, collarless, plum-
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 31
coloured frock, straight shirt-collar and black tie of
a young Turc de la Reforme to distinguish him from
the common attire of a shabby Parisian dandy.
The shoeblack brigade, an unknown institution I
should fancy twenty years ago, is now as numerous as
in Paris ; much more so than in London. Of the
Asiatic tribes, as a rule, only a mere rabble is to be
seen walking, and hardly ever a lady. The throng
of horsemen and carriages, hacks, or cabs, or
broughams, is incessant, all-pervading, bewildering ;
deafening, stunning, ear-piercing the shouts and
yells of the thousand sellers of water, oranges, nuts,
sweets, and other multitudinous wares. It is not
without much storming and thundering, not without
an immense amount of swearing by all the gods and
the prophets, not without the frequent crack, and
even the occasional cut of the whip, that sumptuous
equipages with prancing outriders, white or black,
can force their way through the shockingly unwashed,
unshaven, and prodigiously tattered multitude. Go
where you like about the main thoroughfares, visit
the bazaars, get in and out of the Kirket-i-Hairieh
steamers that ply along or across the Bosphorus,
you have the same pushing, jamming tide of human
beings setting in against, or ebbing away along with
you. How the gentler sex fare in that turmoil may
be easily imagined. The yashmak of Turkish wo-
men is nowadays a mere sham. It consists, as
every one knows, of a coarse linen fold swathing the
brow, with another gagging the mouth, the two
32 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
meeting on or about the bridge of the nose, and
allowing an opening of an inch or so for the eyes.
This only for the women of the people ; those of
higher rank substitute a thin veil of the thinness,
though not of the shape, of the "fall" of Euro-
pean ladies, and, like it, answering the purpose of
coquettishly exhibiting and enhancing the charms of
the face it pretends to conceal. All you can see in
the throng is an occasional pair of bold black eyes
shining out of dirty yellow, dusky brown or down-
right Negro complexion. Fair moony faces, large
dreamy orbs, and now and then an outline of
exquisite features, with a vacant, dreamy expression,
confront you from some of the carriage windows ;
but of the' female figure you can form no other idea
than that of a shapeless bundle of clothes, loosely
hid by the ferijeh, a long blanket-like cloak,
with broad sleeves or without sleeves, falling from
the shoulders to the heels, with its folds hugged to
the breast ; all of one colour, green, deep crimson,
or sickly yellow, and more rarely a white and red
check plaid, such as we would use for a covering to
a mattress or pillow-case. The care a Turkish
woman must bestow on her drapery gives her
enough to do as she waddles heavily and clumsily
along. I have seen her coming down the steps into
a steamer holding her skirts up to her garters, ap-
parently heeding the display of her stockings, when
she has any, much less than the 'chance of the yash-
mak slipping off her sacred nose.
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 33
Away from the shores of the Golden Horn, the
bazaars, and the markets, the traffic in Stamboul is
by no means considerable, and many of the upper
quarters have a silent desolate look, suggesting the
idea of a falling off in the population. It is not so
iii any of the streets of Pera or Galata, where the
crush and the din are incessant. On both sides of
the harbour, wherever the bustle is at its height, three
features of this strange Eastern life are painfully
striking the multitude and importunity of loath-
some beggars, the shouting and bawling of itinerant
vendors, and the hideous torture of the hamals or
street porters. Nowhere except at Genoa, where
men in that condition bear the Eastern name of
Camalli, is the human frame so dreadfully made to
resemble a beast of burden as along these horrible
thoroughfares. The hamal struggles and staggers
on his way, bent double under his enormous load,
his head on a level with his knees, black in the face,
and with the veins starting on his neck and forehead.
In a place where carriages are used, and where asses
and mules are legion, it seems strange that men
should make so little use of the truck or pack-saddle.
Everything is carried on men's back, or depending
on ropes between a pair of long poles resting on four
men's stout shoulders. The beggars are of all races
and religions ; and Eastern notions, hallowing even
the freaks of stark madness, sanction the exhibition
of festering sores, stunted or crippled limbs, positively
sickening even to a stranger accustomed to the most
VOL. i. 3
34 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
repulsive exhibition of Roman and Neapolitan men-
dicancy. The beggars at Constantinople have a
peculiarly insinuating way of appealing to the feel-
ings of charitable persons. The dirty hands of a
slovenly squaw, or of a stalwart and sturdy vagrant,
will, when you least expect it, pat you affectionately
and caressingly on the shoulder or back, and when
you turn with surprise and anger, frowning on the
loathsome object that thus claims your attention, you
are met with a grin of satisfaction by the wretch,
who, if he fails to move, enjoys at least the pleasure
of knowing that he annoys you. Judging from ap-
pearances, the misery in the city of the Sultan must
be as intense as it is all-pervading, and it can hardly
be otherwise where the dervish, or monk, walks
about so stout and sleek, and where mosques and
imperial palaces outnumber the churches, convents,
and princely mansions of what was once Papal
Home.
Another peculiarity of Constantinopolitan life are
its omnipresent loose dogs ; but there is so much to
be said about them that I think I must reserve this
part of the subject for another chapter.
To move among this unhappy Eastern crowd with-
out wishing oneself deaf and blind seems to me hardly
possible, or to catch any of the thousand glimpses of
the lovely surrounding scenery without longing to rid
the spot of the rascal- mob which is now in pos-
session, and imagining what it would be in the
hands of humanised beings. How long will it be
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 3.0
before the desire is fulfilled, before this ceases to be
the city of the Sultan, or before the Sultan's govern-
ment makes the first steps on the path of that im-
provement some feeble symptoms of which are
already perceptible in the material aspect of the
place, creeping in, not by Turkish exertions, but
rather in despite of the hindrances thrown every-
where in the way by its improvident rulers ?
I was curious, last Friday, to see the man on whom
depends any impulse that may be given to the pro-
gress of this long-stagnant community, the man in
whose hands, by the advice of the present Grand-
Vizier, the government has assumed the forms of the
most absolute, irresponsible personal sway. I went
down the road to Top-haneh, and stood on the bank
of the Bosphorus at Fondookli, waiting for his
Imperial Majesty, Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, who, from
his palace of Dolmabacheh, was to be rowed to
the mosque, close to the spot w r here I and a few pri-
vileged English among whom Sir Arnold and Lady
Kemball were gathered. In the open space between
us and the mosque, troops of all arms were drawn
up ; a considerable number of carriages with veiled
ladies, and a crowd, by no means dense, were in at-
tendance. It is a custom with the present Sultan
not to divulge the spot where he intends to repair
for his weekly devotions, till only a few hours, and
sometimes a few minutes previous to his leaving the
palace. The ministers and other high functionaries,
the troops which are to be mustered along the line
32
3G THE EASTERN QUESTION.
of march, the band, the Sultan's barges, horses and
carriages, and even carts laden with gravel to be
strewn on the path to guard against its slipperiness,
are all in readiness round the precincts of the palace,
ready to set out in any direction that may be ap-
pointed at the eleventh hour, the lateness and sud-
denness of the Padishah's pleasure not unfrequently
causing a great crush and helter-skelter before the
suite can fall into the proper order of march. In the
present instance the Sultan came to the mosque by
water, and returned to the palace by land. At
about half-past twelve, the appointed hour, some of
the caiques of the retinue hove in sight, the distance
between us and the palace hardly exceeding 300
yards. Presently the cannon from Top-haneh gave
the signal that his Imperial Majesty was stepping
into his barge, and the report was echoed bj^batteries
on both sides of the Bosphorus. The barges then
advanced, six of them the last a mass of golden
ornaments, lined with scarlet cloth, with a lofty
canopy, and under it a sofa on which the Sultan sat
in solitary greatness. The Sultan's barge and each
of the others were rowed by a score of tall, stout,
white-clad oarsmen, Albanians, I was told, picked
out for this especial service. The great men of
court and state landed in order of their rank, and
formed in a procession, the Sultan being the last to
alight. The band struck up a lively Oriental march;
the muezzin sang out from the minaret gallery ; the
artillery again thundered as the Sultan's foot touched
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 37
terra firma, and a cheer de riguewr rose from the
throats of the soldierly array, as the Sovereign and
suite walked across the space before the mosque, and
disappeared behind its portals.
Ten minutes elapsed ; the notes of a faint canticle
resounded from the open doors of the sacred
edifice ; and presently there was more cheering,
more firing of cannon, a fresh burst of lively music,
and it was understood that the Sultan had gone out
of the mosque on the land side, had with his suite
got into the court carriages, and taken a short drive
back to the palace. We lost no time in getting into
our own hackney-coach, and strove, but vainly, to
force our way through the throng of Turkish
equipages which stood in each other's way in the
broad yet encumbered thoroughfare. We were too
late for a sight of the Sultan, but indemnified our-
selves for our disappointment by peeping close under
the yashmaks of the beauties in the nearest equipages
regardless of the scowling looks and heavy horse-
whips of the eunuchs, the fair Moslem ladies in their
turn leaning out of their windows, staring at us with
all their might, some of them quietly taking stock of
our Christian lady's " last sweet thing from Paris,"
whilst others chattered away with rare fun at the
shape of our chimney-pots, and wondered what we
hid in the pockets of our coat-tails.
The Sultan looked aged, listless, and " bored ;"
considerably paler and flabbier than when I saw him
in London, his blank expression hardly conveying
38 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the idea of the wayward and wilful, impatient
character attributed to him by those who approached
him. Never addressed except with every show of
servile adoration, knowing no other law, human or
divine, than his will, this Sultan, Padishah, father of
all sovereigns, this Hunkiar or Man- slayer, arbiter
of life and death, Refuge of the World, and Shadow
of God, was not much disposed by nature or fitted
by education to comprehend or to brook the difficulties
by which his throne was beset. Waited upon by
ministers whom he browbeat, and mistrusted, and
changed at every quarter of the moon; and from
whom he expected not suggestion but submission, he
was not easily to be told that his household ex-
penditure, his ironclads, the scores of marble edifices,
gardens, and pleasaunces with which he lined both
shores of the Bosphorus, and the luxuries of the
inmates there immured, contributed in no small
degree to the disorder of his finance ; he could not
be made to understand that the high functionaries
whom his caprice invested with so brief a tenure of
office, or who obtained it by bribing the Sovereign's
minions and the Sovereign himself, must needs limit
their exertions to the long-established practice of
"making hay while the sun shines," and that the
administration, by passing from hand to hand with
such frequent vicissitude, could not fail, were even
those hands the ablest and cleanest, to fall into a
depth of corruption and confusion sure to exhaust
his resources, to crush the sinews of the public
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 39
prosperity, and to sap the foundation of his power
by land and sea. Unwilling to listen to domestic
advice Abd-ul-Aziz was only too apt to resent
foreign dictation. Remonstrance was seldom allowed
to reach his ears, and never welcome ; and if at any
time it gained forcible admission, it came through
the organ of that Power which brooked no denial,
and whose policy, questionable as to any good it
may ever have boded to the Ottoman Empire, was
now subservient to views at variance with its present
interests, and eventually fatal to its future prospects.
There was only one man, I was told, whose voice
was ever heard in the Sultan's council, and it was
he who, as he spoke, " never forgot that he had
the strength of eighty millions of people to back
him."
How it was that the representatives of all other
European States suffered Russian influence so long
and so irresistibly to sway the Sultan's will, is what
I shall in time endeavour to explain. The upsetting
of the balance of power, mutual rancours and
jealousies, and also want of personal energy, courage,
and character, combined to paralyse the action of
Western policy and diplomacy, precisely at a juncture
in which its compactness and unanimity, its firm and
resolute attitude, would not have been more than
sufficient to meet the exigencies of an extremely
difficult and perilous situation. There is a strange,
so to say, fatalistic prejudice in some minds respecting
any sudden and extraordinary aberration of a con-
40 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
firmed character, any cessation of the immutable
laws with which the very existence of an individual
or state seems to be bound up, departure from which
betokens approaching dissolution and death. A
man who has been all his life a miser, becomes
suddenly prodigal ; another, constantly persecuted
by fortune, comes into unexpected affluence and
prosperity such phenomena are held to be the
forerunners of the end. In an analogous manner
a pope, for the first time after eighteen centuries,
" lives to see the years of Peter ;" his infallibility is
voted by an oecumenical council. The fulness of
the time has come for a time-hallowed institution
when, lo ! the Italians break in at Porta Pia ; King
Victor Emmanuel is lodged at the Quirinal, and the
Sovereign Pontiff exchanges his throne for what he
calls his Vatican prison !
Apply now the rule to our present subject. The
Sultan doffs the turban of his predecessors. He
calls in French tailors, English grooms, architects,
and ship-builders. The world applauds. Islam is to
be Europeanised ; it has taken a new lease of life.
The cities of the West, for the first time in history,
receive the print of the Padishah's sacred foot :
wonders will never cease ! The Sick Man is healed ;
the decrepit empire is rejuvenised. Ay ; but look
at the result. Reform is but skin-deep. Improve-
ment is found not to go one inch below the surface.
Modern progress only brings in new luxuries ; refine-
ment merely promotes fresh extravagance. The
THE CITY OF THE SULTAN. 41
form of government is modified, but its old des-
potism is intensified. The Sick Man is worse
than ever ; the doctor is again called in, but with
him also, this time, the lawyer, the priest, the
undertaker.
42 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTEK III.
THE DOGS OP CONSTANTINOPLE.
THE DOGS. THEIR BREED. THEIR HABITS AND INSTINCTS. THEIR
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION. THE TURKS AS RULERS
OF DOGS AND MEN.
THE Ottoman Empire has a sublime contempt for
statistics. You can never get a Turk to tell you the
number of his wives, of his sheep, or other valuables ;
and, being himself, with all he has, included among
his lord the Sultan's chattels, he is content to re-
main and to leave the rest of the world in ignorance
of everything connected with the extent, the popula-
tion, the revenue, and above all things, the debt, of
the community of which he is a unit. Where even
the poll-tax is unavailing to tell you the men's
heads, who would keep an account of the dogs, of
those omnipresent, lawless, yet perfectly harmless
dogs which are both no man's and every man's pro-
perty ? And yet when I walk along the Pera or
Stamboul streets, and can hardly help treading
upon them, lying as they do everywhere in my way,
I am not quite sure that I do not deem them objects
of as great an interest as many of the turbaned
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 43
bipeds who shrink from the unclean animal as they
do from the Giaour. In the first place, it is to me a
matter of doubt whether the dogs are not here
indigenous to the soil ; older inhabitants than either
Byzantine, Frank, or Osmanli, all races which de-
signate each other as " dogs," and none of which are
as kindly disposed towards one another as they are
to the dogs, or these to them. I am told that a drop
of the jackal blood runs throughout all the breed of
the canine population of Turkey ; but whatever may
be their remote origin, these animals are here, with
few exceptions, no mongrels, In shape, in counte-
nance, in language, in their bandy legs, pointed noses,
prick-up ears, dirty yellow coats, and bushy tails,
they might almost be mistaken for foxes, and hunted
in the home counties or Gloucestershire. They ex-
hibit less variety than is observable in the crowd of
beings that here count as men. In the second place,
although they live by charity, they never beg ; they
never send their females to market as the Turks
do at Stamboul, nor offer them for sale, as, I am
ashamed to say, some degraded Christians do, both
night and day, in the streets of Pera. Perfectly in-
offensive as they are while living, the dogs do not
cumber the earth when dead ; their cemeteries do
not invade the abode of the living, nor are cypresses
planted at their head to usurp the place which would
be so much better filled by the olive or mulberry.
What may become of their carcases I cannot tell,
but although dead cats are an ordinary sight enough
44 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
in the Pera thoroughfares, I am convinced that it is
here as useless to look for a dead dog as for a dead
donkey in England.
And yet at certain hours of the day one would say
that there are none but dead dogs to be met with in
the place. These creatures lead, though a useful, yet
a dissipated life ; like the fashionable members of the
civilised world, inverting the order of nature. They
are up and doing from sunset to sunrise, and enjoy
the refreshment of well-earned, profound sleep almost
throughout the day. They are not only masterless
and homeless, but have also a sovereign contempt
for bed or shelter. There is a time, it would seem,
when sleep comes upon them all of them like
sudden death ; when all squat down, coil themselves
up, nose to tail, wherever they chance to be on the
footpath, in the carriage-way, in the gutter and
there lie in the sunshine, in the pelting rain, yellow
bundles hardly distinguishable from the mud. They
lie perversely in everybody's way, taxing the inge-
nuity of the passers-by, who have to pick their steps
over them ; and even when trodden by foot or threat-
ened by hoof or wheel, they hardly rise from their
lair, but instinctively crawl to right or left without
awaking, without complaining, perfectly heedless of
danger and indifferent to men's curses, which, they
know, no blows follow.
For between them and the human family among
whom, but not with whom, they live, if there is no
love lost, there is also no war. The Constantinople
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 45
dog never learns to wag his tail ; he seldom makes
up, seldom looks up to a human being, hardly ever
encourages or even notices men's advances. He is
not exactly sullen, or cowed, or mistrustful ; he is
simply cold and distant, as an Englishman is said to
be when not introduced. Like all men of Southern
blood, the Turk, unless roused by passion, is not
cruel or uncharitable. Your Mussulman never kills
small birds, either to eke out his scanty larder, or to
protect his orchard from depredations ; and, in Asia,
at least, he looks upon the stork which builds its
nest on his hospitable roof, as the harbinger of
Heaven's goodwill. Dogs and pigeons, though no
inmates of his house, are under his protection and
fostering care. Dogs that condescend to live by
man's bounty need be in no fear of starvation where
the Mussulman rules. They know that they are
welcome to the offal supplied by butcher's' shops, to
scraps from private houses, to waifs and strays from
the vessels in harbour. On Fridays, as we learn
from the handbooks, there are distributions of bread
and dogs' meat throughout Islam, and a dole of dogs'
bread and biscuit at the Bayezidyeh, or Bayazet's or
Doves' Mosque. But your Turkish dog has an in-
dependent spirit. He prefers catering for himself ;
he prowls about all night ; he picks up what he can
get out of the garbage which is laid out at every
street-door, and performs, as a scavenger, a service
of far greater benefit to the community than of emo-
lument to 'himself.
46 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
The dog's instinct, however, though dormant, is
by no means dead in the heart of these Con-
stantinopolitan canine rakes. Indifferent as they
seem to all mankind, they single out with ready
sympathy the hand of a benefactor, they linger with
gratitude at the door of a, house where they are
known as pensioners. They do not disdain a friend,
though they acknowledge no master. A snowstorm
or any stress of weather will break the ice of their
reserve. Maternal feelings, especially, will tame the
proudest spirits, and alms for her progeny will be
thankfully received by a young menagere, who in
her single state would have starved sooner than beg.
It was in this interesting situation that the mother of
three pups attached herself to an English young lady,
on whose timely relief the forlorn being depended
as she lay for weeks helpless in a hole she had
burrowed among the graves of the Petit Champ des
Morts. The love that sprang up between the giver
and the receiver of the bounty was intense, yet I
question whether any caress of the charitable fair
hand could ever have overcome the dog's shyness ;
whether any amount of kind treatment could have
coaxed the houseless vagrant within the door of her
benefactress's hotel.
Free from the cravings of hunger after his frugal
meal with Duke Humphrey, the Constantinople
dog becomes a social being, and attends to the affairs
of the commonwealth. At every street crossing,
utterly deserted by men after nine or ten o'clock at
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 47
night, you find a dogs' council. Much as a visitor to
Constantinople may have cause to lament his
ignorance of Turkish, Arabic, and Romaic Greek, he
ought to feel more put out by his inability to under-
stand these dogs' Latin. Had I the rudiments of
their language, could I acquire the means of com-
muning with these demure and apparently un-
sympathising animals, who knows what interesting
particulars I might learn respecting the laws and
institutions of their canine Republic ! Perfect
gravity and solemnity, what one might describe
as ominous silence, prevails sometimes for hours
in their busy assemblies. Knowing glances, con-
ventional signs, seem to suffice for their exchange
of ideas. The occasional looking in or pairing
off of honourable members adds importance or gives
new zest to the dumb discussion. Under the leader-
ship of some President, or on a motion from the
Right or Left, the meeting is, now and then,
adjourned ; in comes, now a message, now a
deputation from some Upper House, now a report
from some Select Committee. But, again, ah 1 at
once some unexplained commotion seems to rouse
the violent passions of the hitherto so calm, so deli-
berate, and orderly Parliament. There ensues a
general rush, a scamper down one street, up another,
a sharp yell, a ringing chorus of yells. Is it a mes-
sage of peace ? a shout of defiance ? a cry of distress?
No man can tell ; but there is immediate response.
From street to street, from ward to ward, from hill
48 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
to hill, the alarm spreads with the swiftness of the
Highland Cross of Fire. The uproar is as of myriads
of unchained hell-hounds scouring the town, in the
din of which dull, impassive man sleeps as he best
can. The savage bark, the dismal howl, swells and
subsides like the ocean-tide. It is jarring discord in
the immediate neighbourhood, heavenly music, as all
sound is, when mellowed by distance. Sometimes,
as at this very moment, nothing can be imagined
more overawing than the stillness of the midnight
air from my open window ; nothing more deathlike
than a vast abode of men when wrapt in universal
sleep. It is that "audible silence," that appalling
" voice of hushed-up life" which is all unlike the
natural repose of forest, sea, or desert, and strikes
us as a paralysis of our own sense of hearing. Sud-
denly across the deep, from the border of the vast ce-
metery at Scutari, or from the precincts of the Seven
Towers at Stamboul, the far-away dogs' concert, faint
and indistinct, is wafted to my ear ; faint and vague
and dream-like at first, yet multitudinous, as if the
Spectre Huntsman were driving his demon pack in
full cry, yap-yapping, from their kennel in the nether
regions. That faint wave of sound waxes and heaves
and fills the space as it rapidly advances, and in a
few seconds the empty haunts of men become the
scene of unappeasable wrath and strife.
To the uninitiated eye these dogs all look like
brethren, issued from one common stock, living
together in bonds of peace and unity; nomadic,
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 49
untied to any particular locality, wedded to the
Saint Simon ian theories about all the social cora-
munantes. But, with animals as with men, there
is danger in any attempt to overstep the barriers of
meum and tuum, and there are no more fierce and
inveterate feuds than those between nearest kins-
men. The dogs of Constantinople do not constitute
one State, or even, as far as one can understand, a
federation of States, but are divided into many petty
communities, as unfriendly to one another as were
the mediaeval Italian Municipalities, and they have
probably been so ever since the time they came into
the regions in the suite of the various wild Tartar
hordes who first encamped here, always in as close
a familiarity, yet as little domesticated, with every
new tribe of invaders as they are now. The whole
region of the Bosphorus, on both sides, is parcelled
out into districts, with nicely-defined limits, among
these canine tribes. Every dog of each, family
knows full well the length and width of his tether,
and is aware that he can only venture beyond it at
his peril. But, with dogs as with men, what con-
sideration of right and wrong, what apprehension
of severe punishment, can control the instinct of
curiosity and love of adventure, take the relish
from forbidden fruit or stolen interview, or blunt a
desire to diversify home monotony by a spell of
foreign intercourse ? Woe to the vagrant whom
hunger after alien dainties, or hankering after out-
side beauty, lures into his neighbour's territory !
VOL. i. 4
50 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
No Guelphs and Ghibellines ever stood up with
greater jealousy in defence of their respective land-
marks ; nowhere are trespassers more instantly
fallen upon, or punished with more ruthless
summary justice; nowhere is the injury, however
well deserved, inflicted upon an individual taken
up with greater esprit de corps, as a common cause,
by a whole clan. By day the sudden, sharp, long-
continued whine of agony of a luckless offender will
occasionally appeal to the sympathies of his whole
kindred, and a smart scuffle between his aggressors
and his defenders will give rise to a few minutes'
disturbance ; but the throng of lumbering men is
too much in the way of the combatants for the
melee to become general, or to extend to a large
neighbourhood. But at night the angry passions of
the hostile factions are allowed full play. Fresh
breaches of the peace are embraced as good op-
portunities for settling old scores. Every tribe
takes the field either in its own or in its ally's
quarrel. Every dog's fangs are against every dog ;
and the result may be seen in the morning in the
crippled limbs, lopped off tails, torn ears, large old
scars, sores, and new gashes with which every
champion's hide is scored, and which, added to the
traces of every variety of loathsome diseases, make
so many of the race so ragged, mangy, and unwhole-
some as to sicken the most inveterate dog-fancier.
The Turks, as I said, are not unfriendly to these
dogs, though they do not let them into their houses
THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 51
any more than they suffer Christians to pollute with
their presence the sanctity of their harems and
mosques. There were rows and riots in Con-
stantinople when a reforming Grand Vizier, yielding
to European suggestion, ordered the loose dogs to
be slaughtered, or transported to an island in the
Sea of Marmora, and there poisoned. The Turks, as
I said, would not let the poor animals starve, though
they shrink from their contaminating contact; but
they do not presume to govern them, preferring to
leave to them the responsibility of their autonomy
and the administration of their own municipal
justice, on the same principle as they have bestowed
the same boon on Roumans and Servians, and as
they must before long equally grant it to the
Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and Bulgarians. They
do not ill use them, nor will they allow them to be
worried by brutal strangers or plagued by thoughtless
children ; but they make no attempts to improve
their condition or soften their manners, to civilise
them, to win their ready affections, to utilise them
in any of the thousand ways by which Providence
seems to have intended the dog for man's trustiest
friend and companion.
The impression that this estrangement from our
race of that most sympathetic of living species makes
upon a traveller on his first arrival is painful in the
extreme. These dogs, as I have shown, are no man-
haters ; they are simply not on speaking terms with
man. There was no smile of welcome for me from
42
52 TlfE EASTERN QUESTION.
the dogs when I landed at Galata ; I have not made
a friend among them since I settled at Pera ; but
neither, on the other hand, has any difference arisen
between us. The dogs simply ignore my existence.
I was told that at Stamboul it is dangerous in the
night to venture among these dogs unprotected ; that
a lady's lap-dog, or strange dog of any breed, could
not show himself there without being at once beset
by a whole hostile pack and torn to pieces. But the
pack I have seen round a sailor's noble Newfoundland
inclines me to believe that even the dreaded Stam-
boul savages are more ready with their bark than
with their bite ; for when the Newfoundlander,
weary of all the clamour at his heels, stood suddenly
at bay, his Byzantine tormentors turned tail as curs
invariably do all over the world. There is no doubt,
also, that the unfriendliness with which an alien's
intrusion is violently resented at first is not in the
long-run an implacable feeling ; for exceptions to the
sameness of yellow or tan coats, pointed noses, and
other marks distinctive of the shaggy, semi-jackal
race occasionally occur a proof that a smooth-coated
stranger has now and then found favour with some
member of the tribe, and come in either by mesal-
liance or adoption. More inveterate unfriendliness is
shown by the dogs to the dancing bears which are
here an ordinary sight ; but, in reality, any strange,
however commonplace object, any sudden, however
familiar sound, is sufficient to create what the
Komans would call a lagnara. One dog barks, and
TUE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 53
a thousand dogs bark to ask what he is barking
about.
If there were any good in vague speculations about
the future, one would fain try to conjecture what is
to become of this immense generation of dogs any
day that fate should overtake the Osmanli and bring
in another race to rule in his stead. Constantinople
is the only corner in Europe in which an unowned
and uncared-for dog is allowed to live. Will the
reforms with which the Grand Vizier, Mahmood-
Nedim Pasha, is now busy, extend to the canine
family, or will the lawless condition of these vagrants
continue unaffected, their dreadful serenades never
allowing the Sultan himself peaceful slumbers even
in the inmost bower of his genial Dolmabacheh ?
Poor Padishah, Zil-ullah, or Shadow of God ! What
sad but wholesome lesson could these yelling night-
monitors teach him 1 What hope can he and his
Grand Vizier entertain of satisfying the world about
their ability to govern men, incompetent as they
egregiously prove themselves to keep order among
dogs ? How can they think that the Great Powers
will allow them to settle the quarrels of Bosnians,
Bulgarians, Circassians, or Armenians, so long as
their police is unavailing to tame the wildness of what
God created to be the most docile of man's subjects ?
With what front could they deny province after
province the inalienable right of self-government
when they allow mere noisy brutes the enjoyment of
the most unbridled, anarchic independence ? How
54 THE EASTERN Q UESTION.
can they undertake to levy taxes and administer
the people's substance before they show that they
have a better intelligence of their wants and a readier
sympathy with their sufferings than they evince to-
wards the unhappy dumb creatures which they
equally refuse to feed or kill ?] What chance is
there of their hearing their subjects' complaints, or
attending to the remonstrances of the Great Powers,
if they are deaf to the protests which legions of
maimed, torn, starving hounds are daily and nightly
barking under their windows ? " You, rulers of
Empires!" the Herzegovinians may say ; "first prove
yourselves worthy of being keepers of kennels."
STAMBOUL BY DAY. 55
CHAPTEE IV.
STAMBOUL BY DAY.
SIGHT-SEEING IN CONSTANTINOPLE. MOSQUES. MINOR MOSQUES.
BYZANTINE CHURCHES. RUINS. WALLS. GATES. THE INS AND
OUTS OF STAMBOUL.
NOTWITHSTANDING the bad weather, the short days,
and my natural indolence, I have not altogether neg-
lected my duties as a civilised being, and have been
about seeing some of the sights of Constantinople.
A tourist who will follow Murray's guidance, may
" do" the place in six days ; but my stay here has
already considerably exceeded that period, and half
the task is as yet scarcely accomplished. The fact
is, I am a perfect Goth of a traveller. I hate goloshes,
and to have to take them off and put them on at the
bidding of a dirty cavass, or still dirtier dervish,
seems to me the height of indignity. Besides, I do
not see things to enable myself to " say that I have
seen them," and it frets me to be trooped about with
a pack of unsympathising strangers, hurried from
room to room at stated hours and days, and plagued
out of my nil admiran composure by the lecture of a
r>r, THE EASTERN QUESTION.
prosy valet de place, or the raptures of an aesthetic
professor.
The Turks also have made a journey from Pera to
Stamboul a veritable corvee; and I never move
about day or night, in fair weather or foul, without
wondering what results can be expected from the
projected reforms of a government and people who
show so little disposition to " mend their ways," by
removing some of the nuisances and discomforts at-
tending any one who attempts locomotion along their
thoroughfares. They make every bone in your skin
ache if they drive you in their close hackney coaches,
and you risk your neck if you ride one of their
horses, many of whom, in spite of the excellence of
their breed, are broken-down screws, and, even \vhen
sound, are self-willed brutes, equally ignoring your
bridle, whip, or spur, and only obeying the shouts or
the switch of the bare-legged ragamuffin of an
atjee, or horse-driver, who scampers after you rather
like a footpad than a footman. The consequence is
that I have not crossed the bridge five or six times
O
since I came to the place, and even then my anxiety
to pick my way through the mud that horrid mud
which neither sun nor wind seems to dry and my
efforts to avoid collision with the well or ill- dressed,
but generally ill-washed, and often ill-mannered,
pushing and jostling crowd, have hardly allowed me
a chance to look about me. Constantinople is the
place in the world where a man, if he would be safe,
must go about with his soul in his feet.
STAMBOUL BY DAY, r>7
That I have seen mosques and kiosks, fountains
and tombs, khans and bazaars, the Museum, the
Sultan's treasure, and the Hall of Ancient Costumes,
the reader must take for granted for I did not come
here to write a guide-book and what interests me
is not so much the place itself as the race that has
governed it for above four centuries j not so much
its arts and antiquities as the extent to which the
monuments of another race and of a 'former age have
been preserved or injured under the influence of
rulers whom the fortune of arms placed in possession
of the grandest and finest spot on earth, and who
seem as yet so little inclined to quit it. There were,
I am told, at the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, as
many as 450 churches in the city and its suburbs.
Of these only three were allowed by the conquerors
to be used for Christian worship ; the rest were
either desecrated or turned into mosques. The Turks,
as good Mohammedans, abhorred the worship of
images ; but, as a thrifty people, they did not wish to
take the trouble of building so long as they had
available edifices at their discretion. Up to this
very day the old Byzantine Church of St. Sophia is
the Ottoman Cathedral; and the Sultan, as in duty
bound, proceeded to it in State the other day, on the
recurrence of the Courban-Bairam, or feast of the
lamb, as he is wont to do in all public solemnities.
That church rises still, a mountain of masonry, in its
primitive sublimity. Many of the alterations which
make it an incongruous and somewhat clumsy mass
58 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
on the outside, are anterior to the date of the Otto-
man Conquest ; and, inside, the face of the Saviour
and the faces of the angels and saints have been
slightly scratched from the old Mosaics, so slightly
in some instances as to leave the features still dis-
tinctly perceptible, so that by a little application of
the restorer's skill, and by the removal of the huge
scrolls bearing verses from the Koran, and of a few
bits of carpet, horse-tails, ostrich eggs, and other
plain Mohammedan ornaments and relics, mere trum-
pery and frippery, nothing would be easier than to
replace the Cross where now the Crescent rises, and
blot out every trace of the work of these last 423
years. The awe struck into the Osmanli's minds by
the achievements of the race among whom they
settled so strongly appealed to their pride and ambi-
tion as to prompt them to emulate what they could
not help admiring, and for the best part of a century,
while intercourse with the European nations and
especially with the Italians, then at the zenith of
their artistic glory was kept up, the Turks aspired
to what may be considered an architecture of their
own, and their endeavours culminated in that Mosque
of Soliman the Magnificent, which, though not at-
taining the grandeur, greatly surpassed the harmony
and elegance of St. Sophia, and is, indeed, to its
Byzantine rival what St. Paul's of London is to St.
Peter's in Rome. Turkish genius, however, seems
to have exhausted itself in that first effort. Nothing
that can at all come near to the glory of St. Sophia
STAMBO UL BY DA Y. 59
and the Suleymanieh is to be seen in Ahmet's Mosque
of the Six Minarets, or in any other of the hundreds
of temples with which the successors of Mohammed 1 1.
have crowned the seven hills of Stamboul. Nothing
original, nothing absolutely beautiful strikes the eye
in those long rows of gay and fantastic imperial
palaces and kiosks which line the Bosphorus. The
attempts made here and there to reproduce the
glories of the Alhambra of Granada and the Alcazar
of Seville turn out deplorable failures. There is
nothing like style to enhance the real value of the
gold and costly marble with which those buildings
are glittering, just as there is no workmanship in the
setting of the inestimable jewels accumulated in the
Sultan's treasure. That the solid and colossal Geno-
ese Tower of Galata should so little have influenced
the taste of the designers of the grotesque Seraskier's
Tower is indeed a marvel, or that even what still
remains of the "Palace of Belisarius" should not
have supplied a design for some of the staring bar-
racks and other public edifices which disfigure the
open spaces in the capital, and the bare hills in its
environs. If we except a few of the Turbehs, or
sepulchral monuments, and of the fountains which
exhibit some reminiscences of florid Arabic elegance,
art seems altogether beyond the power of the Turk's
creation or adoption.
Even his undoubted religious veneration fails to
interest the Mussulman in the preservation of the
buildings consecrated to his own worship. The
60 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
greatest mosques in Stamboul, not excepting St.
Sophia, bear an aspect of dinginess which is as
much the result of man's neglect as the work of
time. This is not the country in which one may
look for the well-washed marble floors, or the
plashing fountains of the mosques in the Arabian
Night's tales. The old worn-out stone or brick is,
as a rule, covered with tawdry rags of carpet, and
the noble simplicity of the walls and domes, which
constitutes the real beauty of the great sacred
edifices, is spoilt in minor buildings by such in
credibly stupid daubs of birds, stars and crescents,
flowers and vases, as to prove that the Mussulman's
brush is still, and will probably for ever remain, a
mere child's toy. A Greek but half- Anglicised
antiquary of note, Dr. Paspati, by a special Firman,
enabled me and a party of Englishmen to visit some
of the transformed old Byzantine churches, into
which " unbelieving dogs" are seldom admitted
little St. Sophia, the Church of the Pantocrator,
that of Pammakarista, that of Chora, and others-
structures, some of them, the date of which goes
back to the period between the first and the last
Constantine, and most of which, after the destructive
work by which they were disfigured, have been
suffered to sink into slow decay, without ever an
attempt to repair the ravages of storms and earth-
quakes. Owing to the very multitude of sacred
buildings which Islam usurped, the invader found
neither the means of keeping them from ruin nor
STAMBOUL BY DAY. 61
the purpose to which they might be turned. In
some of those minor mosques, as we entered, the
only living being seemed to be the muezzin on the
minaret calling to prayer a flock who never came.
In some others, under the portico, outside, we were
met by a gloomy and shaggy "saint" i.e. religious
lunatic, a ferocious-looking rascal who scowled at the
intruders till tamed by the spell of backsheesh ;
while, again, on the threshold of other mosques we
passed, on one side, the unconcerned, half-paralytic
old dervish telling his beads, and opposite the
inevitable, ubiquitous Constantinopolitan dog curled
up into a dirty yellow bundle, insensible to heat or
cold, wrapt in the sleep of the righteous.
I had read in guide-books that the noble Basilica
of San Vitale, the glory of Ravenna, had been built
by the Exarchs on the model of the Byzantine St.
Sophia. By this, I now learnt, was meant, not the
grand mosque of that name, but the minor church
of St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, otherwise called
Little St. Sophia. The lofty tribunes, supported
by columns on which rests the central dome in
octagonal form, and which has been imitated on a
larger scale and with more sumptuous material in
the Italian church, are blackened with age ; the
vault is seamed with fearful cracks ; the ancient
frescoes and mosaics, where they were not pur-
posely effaced, are outraged by contrast with the
quaint shapes and gaudy colours of the stupid
Mussulman artist, unimpressed by the gloomy
62 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
solemnity, unsubdued by the quiet simplicity of
the time-hallowed edifice.
In some instances, however, Oriental indolence
seems to have got the better of religious fanaticism.
Much of what is old remains, simply because no
one would take the trouble to remove it. Ancient
sarcophagi and baptismal fonts, hurled from their
places, lie often unbroken in the churchyards, more
than half-buried in the ground, or have been con-
verted into washing-troughs. The fallen mosaics
are picked up by the shabbier class of Ulemas,
and sold for a few coppers, the demand of silly
tourists conspiring with the zeal of the true believer
to hasten the work of demolition. But the greatest
wonder awaited us at the Church of the Monastery
of Chora, near the Edirne' or Adrianople gate, a
perfect museum of mosaics and frescoes, which
seems to have been spared during the many
centuries since it was made into the Mosque of
Karieh Jamisi, and was almost so intact at the time
of our visit that mass could have been said at its
altars without impropriety. That the anthem La-
ill-Allah, etc. "There is but one God" should
so long have been chanted between walls and under
cupolas peopled with so many St. Georges, St.
Helenas, and other orthodox gods and goddesses, is
a phenomenon which it seemed difficult to reconcile
with Mohammedan intolerance ; ye,t which it was not
easy to attribute to reverence for works of art on the
part of the Mussulmans, since the whole fabric had
STAMBOUL BY DAY. 63
been allowed to go so sadly to waste that at this very
time workmen have begun to scrape, and plaster, and
whitewash, after their ruthless notions of restoration.
Strange to say, however, even in this wholesale work
of destruction, two colossal fresco figures on either
side of one of the inner doors, representing two of
the Apostles or Evangelists, had, probably by virtue
of their bigness, found favour with the destroyers,
who had not only left them unhurt, but even pro-
tected them by wooden shutters revolving on hinges,
with all the loving care which might be bestowed
upon them in a museum of civilised Europe. For
the rest, in their so-called museum, where relics of
Greek and Roman times have been huddled together,
the Turks allow dust and rust freely to accumulate.
The palaces which go by the names of Belisarius or
Justinian are little more than heaps of rubbish ; nor
is any attempt made to avert the fall of that castle
of the Seven Towers which their own Mohammed II.
restored, and which is now a dilapidated yet hardly
a picturesque mass, only worth visiting on account
of the view of a broad expanse of land and sea which
may be enjoyed from the one tower still accessible
by arduous, tumble- down steps.
I walked the other day from those Seven Towers
all along the circuit of the walls on the land side
as far as Eyoub, where is the tomb of the Mo
hammedan warrior who fell at the first siege of
the city by the Arabs, 785 years before the Turks
took it, and where now the Sultans are inaugurated
Gt THE EASTERN QUESTION.
by being girded with the sword of Osman. It is, I
think, about a five or six miles' walk, and I went
alone from gate to gate, outside the town, following
the turnings of that triple wall and double row of
towers, close to the edge of the moat, a specimen of
castellated, mediaeval architecture hardly to be
matched even in Italy. Those lofty towers, square,
round, hexagonal, octagonal, exhibiting every variety
of shape and style, ivy- grown some of them, or
weed-choked, massive, colossal, are now in an ad-
vanced stage of dilapidation; utterly dismantled
here, cracked from end to end there, split, torn,
battered, and shattered everywhere, a mere wreck of
the giant achievement of a bygone age ; and they
svould, as we learn from the guide-book, have been
altogether pulled down by the present Sultan for the
mere value of the material, which he had made over
as a present to the Valideh, his mother, had it not
been for the interference of the British ambassador,
who, as he himself assured me, protested against
that deed of Vandalism, in 1869.
What a scene it was 1 The road of circumvalla-
tion was lonely, and I toiled wearily over the sharp
flints of the paved causeway that cruel, murderous
pavement, fit only for Turkish feet having on my
right the walls, on the other the ragged cypress
forest which shades the endless Mussulman City of
the Dead and its turbaned tomb-stones, death-like
silence and solitude on both sides, except at the
town gates, where long strings of camels, laden
STAMBOUL BY DAY. 65
mules, ox-carts, and pedestrians trudged sullenly on
their way, the same sense of dull sameness, of decay
and misery pervading all man and Nature's works,
unrelieved even by the sky, which at this season
was of a dun, leaden hue, unusual anywhere else in
these latitudes. There was no one to be met ; only
here and there, in the deep mud along the roadside,
there lay the sprawling carcases of the horses shot
down here from the knackers' carts, each carcase a
heap of torn flesh and blood ; and on those mangled
remains a whole pack of the dogs of Constantinople,
roused from their torpor by the scent of that dainty
prey, snarled and squabbled over the bare bones,
while some shy or timid member of the tribe looked
wistfully on at a distance at the banquet from which
he was ostracised, and a gorged epicure waddled
lazily away heavy with his too ample share of the
feast.
More interest lies in the memories than in the
monuments of Constantinople, for it is always easier
to make a desert of a once-famed spot than to ob-
literate its historical associations. Under so learned
a guide as Dr. Paspati, the city of Constantine lived
before us a substratum of the mere brick and wood
wilderness of the City of the Sultan. We were
shown old houses at Galata bearing evidence of
their having stood there ever since the time of the
foundation of the Genoese colony in 1216. The
quarters where Pisans, Venetians, and Amalfitans
had their settlements were pointed out to us, and
VOL. i. 5
66 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
also the very reaches in the Golden Horn whence
the Crusaders of Baldwin and Dandolo attacked the
city in 1204, the gate where the Turks effected their
entrance 149 years later, the tower upon which the
Conqueror's flag was hoisted, the other gate whence
the last of the Palaeologi went forth to meet his
heroic death, and last not least the blind or walled-
up gate through which, according to a well-estab-
lished prophecy, the Osmanlis are one day to pass,
when their days in the land shall be numbered, and
the Cross shall drive the Crescent back across the
Strait. With greater curiosity than that with which
we viewed the Aqueduct of Valens, Constantine's
cistern of the Thousand Columns, and the monu-
ments of the Hippodrome the Obelisk, the muti-
lated column of the Three Serpents, the Burnt
Column, the Historical Coli^mn, etc. we gazed on
the planetree called "of the Janissaries," a vener-
able patriarch of the vegetable kingdom, rising in
the middle of the open place before the old Sublime
Porte a tree under the shade of which Mohammed
II. may have rested, and which has witnessed all
the events following upon one another since his
remote times, down to that massacre of Sultan
Mahmoud's guards, which was thought to have
released Turkey from an insolent and turbulent
soldiery, but which, as it turns out, removed the
only check that public opinion, through those un-
ruly Praetorians, exercised over the arbitrary will
of a despotic Sovereign, and thus tore up the
STAMBOUL BY DAY. 67
only rough -and -ready charter of Ottoman liber-
ties.
Should we feel too ready to anathematise the
Turks for the barbarism with which they either
wilfully demolished or, from neglect, suffered the
monuments of past ages to go to decay, we should,
in justice to all parties, bear in mind that equal
and even more wanton vandalism was evinced by
the Latin warriors of 1204 who signalised their
conquest of the city by the destruction of many
masterpieces of ancient Greek statuary in which
they saw nothing but relics of Pagan idolatry.
52
68 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER V.
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT.
AN IMPROMPTU RIDE. A TUMBLE. OUR ROUTE. SILENCE AND
SOLITUDE. TWO DEAD CITIES. MOONSHINE. A NIGHT OP IT.
I HAD thus twice and three times been up and down
about Stamboul, and in spite of its unrivalled site, I
had come to the conclusion that it is one of those
places one likes best the least one sees of it. I fan-
cied if not darkness, at least " pale moonlight" would
suit the town and its neighbourhood better than the
garish blaze of day, but an excursion across the bridges
between sunset and sunrise was hardly a thing to be
thought of, for the Turks are an early- to -bed and
early-to-rise people, and ill brook disturbance in those
quarters which they reserve for their exclusive habi-
tation. There are no social entertainments, public
or private, in a country where woman is kept out of
sight, tih 1 you believe her a myth ; your polygarnist
Moslem goes to roost with the hens and rises with the
cock, and his city is like that spell-bound world in
which a child fancied " everything stood still in the
night, even the rain." It was easy for me to re-
nounce a pleasure which seemed to be beset with
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT. 09
difficulties, but chance brought me into contact with
men of a more stirring and enterprising disposition,
and it is thanks to them that I am now able to
describe the impression a stranger receives from a
view of Stamboul by night.
There had been rain on Monday last from morning
to evening, and we sat after dinner in the dense
smoke of the reading-room of Missirie's Hotel, when
one of the company, a lively young artist, happened
to look out of the window, and announced that the
clouds had cleared off, and " the Bosphorus was all
a sheet of moonlight."
" Moonlight I" was re-echoed : " Let us see it !
Let us go out into it I Let us have a walk nay,
why not a ride by moonlight T
It was done as soon as said ; so easy it is to over-
come obstacles when one looks them in the face. "A
ride by moonlight ! A ride to Stamboul I" A happy
thought. Two or three clapped their hands ; one
stood up, then another, then a whole brigade. Every
one was ready to go. The author of the scheme ran
out ; in half an hour he came back ; the steeds were at
the door. He had borrowed a cavass: he had thought of
everything. We buttoned up our coats ; we mounted :
good hardy nags, I found, well-bred, unweary and
spirited, were to be had for hire at all hours of the
clay, and till late at night, at every corner of the
Sultan's city and its suburbs. Better cattle to choose
from than what had been summoned for us from the
stand at Galata Serai or, at least, better suited to
70 THE EASTERN Q UESTION.
our purpose the very stables of Dolma-bacheh could
hardly have provided. Their saddles Avere hard,
their amble or jog-trot puzzling at first ; but their
canter was as easy as the motion of a grandmother's
rocking-chair, and there is hardly an instance of any
of these clever Arabs ever going down on their knees.
We were seven, and the leader of the company
and I, knee to knee, went first, as the youngest and
oldest ; two rising artists, one an Englishman and
the other a Dane, followed close at our horses' tails.
Next to them two Germans, one a doctor and school-
master, the other a broad-shouldered baron, one of
the glorious ubiquitous Uhlans of the Prussian cam-
paign in France. A cavass of the British Consulate,
Hadji Aali, a swarthy young Albanian, closed the
rear, his trusty scimitar clattering lustily at his
left heel.
Right before the door of our hotel, across the
famous Grand Rue de Pera, there is a narrow side
street Rue Timoni, Rue Dervish, or some such
name through which we went down to the Petit
Champ des Morts. We skirted this minor cemetery
along the winding carriage-road, our ponies prancing
and floundering deep in the mud, delighted with the
splash which soon flew up, pelting their ears and
noses, and making their coats as well as ours one
mass of clinging wet clay.
Almost at the outset a little mishap befell us.
The horse which Hadji Aali rode was a big, brave,
ambitious creature, who had seen better days as a
STAMBOUL B Y NIGHT. 7 1
Bey's charger in the wars, and resented the indignity
of having to follow when he felt himself born to lead.
At the first and second turning in the road he began
plunging and rearing ; at the third he fairly bolted,
and, heedless of the strong curb/ which almost shat-
tered his jaws, he came down thundering upon us,
his rider vainly tugging at the reins till he was black
in the face, and muttering something between his
teeth which, let us hope, Allah did not hear. In this
mad career the cavass's right knee came into rather
too strong a collision with the learned German's left
thigh, making the good Dominie roar like a bull of
Basan ; whereupon the doctor's friend, the ex-Uhlan,
dashed forth in pursuit of the helpless runaway,
overtook him, laid hold of the unruly horse's rein,
and, giving the man to understand that he was an
old hand at the iiianege, and had yet to find the
vicious brute he could not bring to his senses, he
bade the Albanian alight and exchange seats with
him.
To exchange seats in a sea of mud is as awkward
a feat as "to swap horses as you ford a river." The
cavass, vexed with his horse and ashamed of himself,
bewildered also by the wild pranks of his still fretting
charger, flung himself rather clumsily from his saddle,
and, catching his foot against sabre and stirrup, fell
flat on his face, rolling over and over, "looking," as the
German observed, " such an object when he fetched
himself up, with his fresh coating of dripping mud
about him. as you could only compare to a sausage
72 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
dipped in butter-sauce." The ex-Uhlan himself proved
to be no idle boaster. He vaulted into the empty
saddle, bestrode the rebel steed with a Jove-like ma-
jesty, put him through his paces with a masterly hand,
and seemed to cast so thorough a spell over the animal
that, after a few curvets and plunges, he was as tame
as a lamb, and fell into the ranks in front or rear of us,
the bridle in the German's hand chafing him as little as
a silken thread. The order of march was thus re-
sumed, and presently, without any further accident,
the cavalcade arrived at the Golden Horn, and paid
toll at the bridge.
There are, as the reader knows, two wooden bridges
across this harbour of Constantinople, without reckon-
ing a third and a more solid and elegant structure
which has long been ready for traffic, but which, as
I said, owing to some of those hitches in which all
things Turkish are apt to become entangled, is per-
haps destined to rot on the spot before it be turned
to any use. There is the Karakeui Bridge at the
harbour entrance, and there is the old bridge about
one mile further up towards the water-head. It was
at this latter that we crossed, leaving the Pera-Galata
suburb behind us, and entering Imperial Stamboul
at the gate facing us. We went up at random, in
zig-zag, through a mass of narrow streets, in single
file, always at the top of our horses' speed, barely
reining in as we stood before the Mosques of Moham-
med II. and Sultan Selim, and threading at last the
main thoroughfare the Rue d' Adrianople we
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT. 73
went out at Edirneh Capoussi, or Adrianople Gate.
Hence, after halting for a few minutes to gaze at the
village of Eyoob, and the Valley of the Sweet
Waters of Europe, at the upper end of the Golden
Horn, we turned to our left and cantered along the
city walls, passed the city gates, the Cannon Gate
or Top-Capou, where the Turks came in, the walled-
up gate, where the Turks expect to go out, and thus
on and on to the Golden Gate and the Ruined Mole,
where we had a boundless view of the Sea of Mar-
mora ; and thence riding round the whole circuit of
the Castle of the Seven Towers, we soon fell in with
the broad track of the City tramway, followed its
line to Bajazet's Mosque and the Seraskierat, past
St. Sophia, the Sublime Porte, and the Valideh
Mosque, till we came to and crossed the Karakeui
Bridge, clambered up the Galata steps, and ended
our journey in the Grand Rue de Pera, whence we
had started.
It was half-past nine when we left, and we reached
home at half-past two ; a ride of five hours without
any breathing time, except a few minutes at a shop
in Galata for a cup of coffee on starting, and a some-
what longer stay for an oyster and pale ale supper at
a Pera Restaurant after our arrival.
There was nothing along our progress that we had
not again and again seen and wondered at in our
rambles through the town and its neighbourhood.
The novelty lay in the witching silence of those
solemn late hours. Pera itself, so fussy and noisy
74 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
and shrill as it is in the day time, becomes com-
paratively hushed two or three hours after nightfall ;
and in spite of gas lights, glaring cafes, and hostelries,
its main street was already nearly deserted as we
turned our back upon it, and it gave absolutely no
sign of life when we came back to it. But at every
step we made in the outskirts of Galata, and on
through the mean hovels and shops, wharves and
warehouses, at the water's edge, every trace of out
or indoor existence had vanished ; no man's voice or
even whisper broke the stillness of the air ; and the
tramp of our horses' hoofs on the wooden bridge
sounded hollow and ominous, so ominous as to
strike us dumb as we advanced, and tone down our
buoyant spirits into something like harmony with
that blank solitude. Within the walls of Stamboul,
along those endless rows of jealously-closed windows,
past the recesses of those securely-fastened house-
doors, the universal quiet was still more appalling ;
for the town was not buried in deep darkness, as in
ordinary nights, but bathed in that hoar moonlight
and seen as distinctly as though basking in bright
sunshine ; and one wondered what gave the place that
weird forsaken look ; one wondered what had become
of the motley people who only four or five hours
before swarmed in those streets, lounged in those
shops, hustled one another in those bazaars. Now
and then, indeed, as our horses clattered on the
flinty pavement, a nightcapped head or yashmaked
face would darken the glass of a candle-lit casement,
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT. 75
but it was instantly withdrawn as soon as the head-
gear of the hated or despised shapkanus hove in
sight. Now and then, again, the portly figure of a
belated Greek or Armenian Caffejee in some lurking
corner would fill the space between the half-closed
shutters of his empty shop ; but long before midnight
even these last symptoms of animation had died off,
and nothing stirred. Here and there, as we neared
the barracks or stumbled on a guardhouse, a sentry
would suddenly emerge from the shade and make
a grab at the bridle of the foremost horse, for we
carried no lantern, and were, therefore, en con-
travention; but a word from our cavass made all
things straight. The soldier fell back without
further parley ; and we suffered also no molestation
from the weary old bekjee, or watchman whom we
met in his rounds from time to time, but who, after
scanning us, and satisfying himself at a glance as to
who and what we were, did nothing but strike twice
as fast, and thrice as loudly, his heavy, iron-hooped
staff on the pavement that staff by which he in-
timates to thieves and burglars that he is there, and
that he expects them to have the common decency
to keep out of his way. That night there was no
" yangen-var," or alarm of fire, to enliven the still-
life scene. Even the dissipated dogs of Con-
stantinople, whose active existence only begins when
human labours have a respite, prowled mutely in
their dark corners, shunning that to them unwelcome
glare, battening on their foul garbage, and hardly
76 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
starting up to signal our approach or to vent their
unfriendly feelings in a long, lingering howl at the
moon. Outside, round the walls, at the gates, and
as far as eye could reach down the sweep of the
broad country avenues, that same awful sense, that
dread of our own loneliness, struck us as even
more oppressive. Between those huge dismantled
mediaeval towers, that long triple line of tottering
bulwarks enclosing half a million of oblivious souls
on our left, and the zone of cypress forest shading
myriads of glaring tombstones on our right, we
should have been puzzled to decide on which side
was the dead and on which side the living city.
A faint light glimmered here and there at some of
the open gates ; but of gate-keeper or guard no
trace was to be seen ; for what lonely wayfarer or
caravan, or, indeed, who else but a party of uneasy
dogs of demented Ferringees, would at that hour be
paddling in the mire in and out of Holy Stamboul,
startling either the snug bodies that snoozed in
peace under the Padishah's protection, or the
happy spirits, each at rest on the lap of a Houri of
Mohammed's Paradise ?
For a man Avho wishes to convince himself that
" things are not what they seem " commend me to a
companionless moonlight stroll. What a cloak of
silver those soft, soothing beams were to hide the
ragged beggary of the Sultan's city ! What glamour
of blended and blurred loveliness that glittering tide
threw on tawdry palaces, dingy hovels, squat,
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT. 77
clumsy mosques, shattered towers, and fire-ravaged
rubbish-heaps 1 What idealisation of the Arabian
Nights' tales were those ghostly minarets, those
plashing fountains, those studding rows of turbaned
sepulchral monuments I How one wished that
we could have scurried along at a less spanking
gaUop, that our horses' hoofs had been shod with
felt, that our progress could have been as noiseless
as the flitting of sheeted phantoms, that our joyous
fellow-scamperers had been more sober in their
mirth, less obstreperous in their laugh, less gushing
in their raptures ; how happy each of us would have
been had every one who preceded and every one
who followed been out of sight and hearing ! Now
and then, indeed, we came to a halt in spite of
ourselves, and tarried to take breath, to await those
who lagged behind, to consult Hadji Aali as to the
right or left turning. Once or twice we drew rein
in sight of a mosque, on the esplanade before the
Sublime Porte or the Seraskierat, to look round ;
and for a longer spell when we came in sight of the
Sweet Water Valley at the Adrianople Gate, or of
the Propontis at the Ruined Mole, close to the
Seven Towers, when we stopped as if by common
accord and stood still, our emotion too strong for
utterance ; that Valley of the Sweet Waters, with
the minarets of Eyoob's Mosque rising above a
labyrinth of villas and gardens at our feet, and far
away, the silver streak of its pure winding streamlet
with the Sultan's Peacock Kiosk embosomed in
78 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
its leafless wood, riveting our gaze as we took in
the homely rural scene, the range of bare, bleak,
breezy hills compassing it all round like a frame ;
that wide expanse of the Marmora waters, with
the line of town and sea-wall trending away on
our right, and the low European shore lying in deep
slumber on our left, and before us in the distance
the hazy cluster of the Prince's Islands, and the
masses of Asiatic mountains, over-topped by the
long snowy ridge of the Mysian Olympus.
But our impatience, our frenzy to get over the
ground, soon got the better of our sense of the
beautiful, and of our religion for the " Venerable
Night." We stood still, I said, to breathe our
panting steeds just one moment, and then with a
view halloo, one galloped, another galloped, we
galloped all seven. How we pelted on, slap-dash,
hurry-skurry, neck or nothing, up hill, down hill,
over rough pavements in town, across quagmires out
of town, I can even now, as I write, hardly think
over without shuddering. Our captain, the young
artist, who rode backwards and forwards, twice over
the ground, like a dog, all along the line, was teazing
now one, now another of the party to run races with
him. In one instance, on the tramway road, he was
out of sight altogether, either the horse running
away with him or he with the horse, and we began
to feel some anxiety when we came up with him
at a guard-house near the Seraskierat, his horse's
rein tight in the grasp of the sentry, who, as our
STAMBOUL BY NIGHT. 7<J
friend told us, had rushed suddenly upon him with an
" Oupp !" barring the rider's way with lowered
bayonet, and holding him in captivity, heedless of
all remonstrance or explanation, till tamed by the
cavass's voice, when the good Moslem released his
hold with some pious ejaculation about Inshallah !
or Mashallah ! which was altogether lost upon us.
On the whole, however, the run was a success,
and we came home whole and hearty, without
broken limb to man or horse, or any other harm
than the snapping of the rein of one of the bridles ;
and as we sat at our oyster feast at the end of the
sport, we looked back upon our feat in imagination
as if it had been all a pleasant dream, some of us not
feeling quite sure that we had not here and there
nodded in the saddle, and only our aching limbs or
smarting skin assuring us that we had not actually
slept throughout the excursion.
SO THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER VI.
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY.
LIFE IN PERA. OUT-DOOR LIFE. IN-DOOR LIFE. AMBASSADORS AT
HOME. PAST AND PRESENT AMBASSADORS. AMBASSADORS AND
CONSULS. AMBASSADORS AND DRAGOMANS.
FOR the finest town mansion in Pera and the
loveliest paradise on the Bosphorus, and even
with a Stationaire, or despatch -boat, a Mouche,
or steain-launch, a state-caique and 10,000 or
12,000 as salary into the bargain, I would not be
an Ambassador in Turkey. We have five of these
exalted personages in this place, and all of them are
amiable, estimable, hospitable gentlemen. I try to
put myself in their place with all my powers of
imagination, but warmly as I sympathise with
them, I confess that I see reason rather to pity
than to envy them. Not even the proud con-
sciousness of helping to wield ^ie destinies of
Empires would reconcile me to the sights, sounds
and smells of this execrable residence. Outside the
lofty gates of her Palace-home, the daintiest Lady
Ambassadress must needs find herself amid the
horrors of the Grande Hue de Pera. I saw one of
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY. 81
them the other day picking her way from stone to
stone as if she had been wading through the half-
drained bed of the foulest sewer. She was preceded
by her swarthy cavass, a formidable guard with thick
moustaches almost half-way down to his belt, a
Damascus scimitar dangling on his thigh, and in his
hand a long, heavy horsewhip, to awe the multitude
and clear the way before his mistress. But what
could even that brave man do to protect the lady's
silk-skirts unless he lifted her bodily out of the mire
and carried her the shortest way to the place she
came from ? How could even an escort of a
squadron of horse screen her from that jostling
throng of horrid men and beasts, who cross and
press upon each other with as helpless a struggle
as if they were all walking blindfolded ? Her
Excellency was brought face to face with one of
her sex, and of her own, or of a scarcely inferior
rank, when a desperate attempt at conversation
was made : " Comment, Madame la Comtesse, vous
sortez par le temps qu'il fait ?" " Que voulez-vous,
Miladi ? il faut bien prendre de 1'air." The words
were hardly spoken when, with uncouth shouts of
" Guarda, guarda 1" a string of laden mules with
huge panniers came tramping, splashing, ploughing
their way through the crowd, and ladies, ladies'-
maids, cavasses, Greek and Armenian priests, der-
vishes, street-porters, and beggars, all had to make,
pell-mell, for the refuge of the nearest shop a shop,
as it chanced, where there were many simmering
VOL. i. 6
82 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
brass pots on the fire, as in a patent kitchen, but in
which, instead of pillau or couscousou, the greasy
fezzes, or woollen skull-caps, of Mussulmans, Greeks,
and Albanians were being boiled or stewed into
brand-new scarlet purity. The poor ladies must
breathe the outer air ; carriages they have, and
sedan-chairs ; one or two of them ride ; but, to say
"nothing of danger to life or limb, nothing can save
them from such dead-locks as the swarming mass
of unwashed beings in the Grande Rue is every
moment brought to, nothing can drive from them,
as they go shopping, the loathsome hands thrust
into their coach- windows by the mendicants, who
have them at their discretion, and know that they
can extort by their contact the alms which are
denied to their whining voice.
Indoors, however, the life of the wives and fami-
lies of foreign representatives is not so much to be
deplored. They dwell in large, warm, well- aired,
sumptuously-furnished apartments, with servants of
all colours, with boudoirs, billiard and smoking-rooms,
and windows with views of the Bosphorus ; the ladies
have their books and music, their flowers " light
and sweetness" their Modes de Paris, their afternoon
tea and gossip ; the men their Clubs and cards ; and
all, dinner and dancing parties, with ices and after-
midnight suppers. Nothing could be easily imagined
more quaintly entertaining than European society in
a Levant Provincial city and Pera, be it remem-
bered, is only a suburb, only a Cranford or Krahwinkd
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY. 83
of a provincial place, as it has at night no inter-
course with metropolitan Stamboul. We have here,
besides the five Embassies, as many as twelve Lega-
tions, with Envoys-Extraordinary and Ministers-
Plenipotentiary or Ministers-Resident at their head,
without reckoning Roumanian, Servian, and other
agents of tributary States, and annexed to many of
them a legion of Councillors, first, second, and third
Secretaries, Attache's or Secretaires Adjoints, Oriental
Secretaries, first, second, and third dragomen or in-
terpreters, archivists, chaplains, physicians, with as
many Consuls-General and Judges, Vice-Consuls,
Assistant- Judges, etc., besides bankers, schoolmasters,
postmasters, etc., the whole or most of them with
wives and children, constituting a motley population
of above 500 souls entitled to meet for social purposes
on a footing of (/wasi-equality. I have lived before
in non-Christian countries with Frank communities
of the same description, and found them different
from the international gatherings among which one
mixes in the winter season in such gay, genial places
as Nice, Monaco, or Rome different in many re-
spects, and especially in this that in Mohammedan
places the Frank community have some ostensible
business ; they are most of them permanent residents,
and as such more intimately brought together and
more hardened in their likes and dislikes. They find
themselves, besides, isolated, connected by no social
ties with the native race among whom they are
housed, forming, as it were, a kind of oasis of Chris-
62
84 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
tian polish and luxury in the midst of a wilderness
of uncivilised heathenism, and obeying the necessity
for an intercourse based on solidarity of caste and
mutual dependence.
In a European circle of this nature the social pe-
culiarities of each nation are pretty equally repre-
sented ; each people produces its original types, each
family brings its special gifts to minister to the com-
mon enjoyment. I have known North African
Regencies where Consuls-General and Charge*
cV Affaires greeted each other by the names of the re-
spective States they represented, styling themselves
" England," " France," or " Austria," like the heroes
in Shakespeare's plays, and where we used to call on
" Denmark" in the morning, or arrange a picnic
party with " Holland" in the afternoon. The charm
of it was there, as it is here, that each house is per-
vaded by its own ethnical atmosphere, cherishes its
own home habits, and shapes its mode of living ac-
cording to its traditional instincts, the nationality
being perceptible in the pictures on the walls and the
nicknacks on the tables, as much as in the language
and countenances of the inmates. Let any of the
drawing-rooms be thrown open fora friendly reception,
and all these idiosyncrasies are at once blended to-
gether in pretty confusion. We have on New Year's
Eve all Europe in " Italy." After the Christmas
trees in "Germany" and " England," the same or ana-
logous festivities will be held in " Russia," " Greece,"
and other " old-style" keeping communities. Here
DIPL OMA CY IN TURKEY. 85
we shall have the best music ; there we shall admire
the most elegant costumes and toilettes ; somewhere
else the most lively or most improving conversation.
And we know to which race we are to look for the
most skilful dancers, in what salons we shall meet
the most thorough whist players. Unless it be at a
general Congress of Sovereigns, it is impossible to
combine a more curious medley, a more pleasing
variety, a more bewildering Babel of tongues, a more
desperate conspiracy to murder what is emphatically
called the "Diplomatic language." Moreover, as at
Rome a stray Cardinal, so at Pera an occasional
Pasha or two will drop in, his red fez and plum-
coloured Redingdte breaking the monotony of the
black-beetle-like male evening costume, the dignity
and gravity of his manners contrasting with the
free and easy style of European address, and his
emotions at the sight of bare shoulders, and faces
flushed with waltzing, struggling to break through
the reserve of his well-disciplined Oriental impertur-
bability.
Of these quaint and interesting reunions which
are got up for the pleasurable entertainment of us
minor mortals, the Magnates at the head of dip-
lomatic establishments not unfrequently take their
moderate share, and some of them know well how
to smooth their brow, wreath their countenance in
smiles, and glide from group to group with every
semblance of a mind at ease, ready with a courteous
repartee or a well-turned compliment for those they
86 THE EASTERN Q UESTION.
particularly wish to distinguish. But that care
weighs upon them, and that other objects besides
amusement bring them into the crush of a ball-room
is very evident, and it is difficult to resist a suspicion
that they are, almost involuntarily, watching each
other's movements when asunder and scanning each
other's countenances when they shake hands and
interchange their profound remarks on the weather.
The undoubted fact is that the office of a Diplo-
matist of the first rank in Pera at the present
moment is no light-hearted business. The condition
of Turkey since the outbreak in some of its Provinces
and the partial bankruptcy of its Treasury has
become a puzzle to the most consummate Statesmen,
and, despite the facility of communication afforded
by the ciphered telegram and the incessant travelling
of Queen's Messengers, the Ambassador is in a
great measure left in the dark as to the wishes of a
Minister who probably little know r s his own mind
and thro\vn back on his own resources, till he may
somewhat stagger under the weight of his responsi-
bilities. What course of action is open to a
Diplomatist in Turkey, or to what extent may he
be allowed to intrench himself behind a system of
masterly inaction ? What has been for many years
a chronic disease, a lingering agony, has now
become an acute and violent complaint. It is with
respect to. the absolute impossibility of avoiding a
crisis at this juncture that the minds of our envoys
are perplexed and their opinions divided ; but whether
DIPL OMA CY IN TURKEY. 87
any of them think that there is or that there is not
11 a good deal of life left in the old dog yet/' they are
all in duty bound by the nature of their office to
walk into the sick-room with a cheerful countenance,
to foster hopes which they know to be delusive, and
address the patient as if nothing were the matter, or
make light of the indisposition as if it were something
of a trifling and passing character, sure to yield to
commonplace, gentle treatment.
These are no longer the times in which a young,
gentle, and nervous Sultan Abdul Medjid used to
be "literally ambassadored to death," The visits
of foreign diplomatists to the Palace of Dolma-
bacheh are now few and far between; they are
arranged by a long beforehand notice, and announced
in the papers as an event. The present Padishah is
by no means intractable ; not deficient in sense, or
even, perhaps, in good intentions. But he is apt to
refer foreign visitors to his business-men ; to lay on
his Ministers the responsibilities of a Government
which, however, is nominally under his absolute
sway. To go to the Porte with generally un-
palatable advice is no pleasing task ; to abstain from
frequent visits to the Porte is to incur the charge of
indolence or incapacity. One Ambassador is supposed
to exercise so much influence as to be the actual lord
and master at Constantinople ; another is suspected
of shrinking so carefully from all interference as to
aggravate by his inaction the difficulties of the Power
to which he is accredited, compromising at the same
88 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
time the interests and dignity of the Power which
accredits him.
We live here in a region of keen observation
and almost impertinent criticism. Much of the state
and grandeur which hedged in the sacred person of
an Elchi has vanished. Ambassadors have, in their
good nature, in their facile communicativeness, un-
wittingly encouraged familiarity and tolerated dis-
cussion. On the evening after an interview at the
Sultan's Palace an Envoy is waited upon at his own
house and " interviewed" in his turn. Of course he
is not to be thrown off his guard ; he says what he
likes to say or says nothing; but the most adroit
among them make a display of great frankness and
openness, and their outspoken manner is evidently
so " taking" that it prescribes a similar conduct to
their colleagues in spite of themselves ; so that a
direct and reserved diplomatist gets nothing for his
pains but a patent for dulness, and is supposed to
hold his tongue solely because he has nothing to say.
This Pera is a theatre with great actors playing
for the entertainment of a small audience. The
multitude who enjoy the Ambassadors' hospitality
and presume to approve or censure their conduct are
a prey to political division. We have " Turks" or
Turkophiles, and "Anti-Turks," Miso-Turks or Turko-
phobes, here ; partisans who think the Porte has
everything to fear from Russia ; partisans who seem
sure the Porte has nothing to hope from England ;
partisans who blame an Ambassador for not pushing
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY. 89
beyond the limits of his personal or national as-
cendency ; partisans who praise him for not com-
promising his own and his country's dignity by any
attempt at mere blustering.
But it is not merely from the idle gossips of this
motley European colony, or from the Levantine
busybodies who swarm around it in a variety of
dependent capacities, that an Ambassador has to
apprehend factious opposition. There is often open
hostility between him and some of his subordinate
officials, especially those whose duty it is, under
him, to protect his countrymen from any abuse of
power they might otherwise endure at the hand of
the Porte. It is the Ambassador's mission to keep
the peace, to conciliate and make things smooth and
pleasant ; but it is the business of the Consul and
Judge to stand up for right, and he has to bear the
brunt of the war by which alone in too many in-
stances right has to be asserted. That there should
be great divergence in the views of two functionaries
placed in such different and almost opposite circum-
stances is only too natural, and it almost inevitably
follows that each of them should seek his own sup-
port among the divided public so as to render some
little bickering and scandal with occasional passes at
arms, matters of common occurrence. The Ambas-
sador's negotiations are with Pashas high in power,
men unmatched in the world for Oriental deference
and obsequiousness, the most consummate gentle-
men in their outward bearing, even if sometimes the
90 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
most arrant knaves in their underhand dealings. The
Consul has to contend with rough, though not less
roguish, subalterns, magistrates, policemen, customs
and revenue officers, from whom even bare justice is
not to be obtained without a vast amount of hector-
ing and bullying. No wonder two functionaries,
looking at things from points of view so widely
asunder, not unfrequently come to conflicting con-
clusions, and are apt to estimate each other's con-
duct with little favour. It ought to be the duty of
the minor satellite to give in to the lofty luminary
which is the centre of the whole system ; but sub-
mission is hard for a man who is convinced against his
will, and it is natural for one who has to obey under
protest to stand up for the independence of his
opinion and for his right to a last word in the
argument.
With another and a greater difficulty, with which
his previous official experience has never made him
familiar, an Ambassador in the East has to contend.
He is, to all intents and purposes, a dumb animal.
At any other court than that of Stamboul, the least
smattering of French fits him for a tete-a-tete with
kings and king's wives, king's ministers and king's
mattresses en titre ; the American Envoy being, as
a rule, the only one who has not a Gallic word to
throw at a dog, as he is the only one who can afford
no gold lace to his coat. But at the Porte every
European is equally destitute of the common organ
of speech. The Sultan has no French, the Ambas-
DIPL OMA CY IN TURKE Y. 9 1
sador no Turkish, and even in the rare instances in
which there exists between them a means of inter-
communication, etiquette imposes the presence, and
enforces the assistance of interpreters. Although
the Grand Vizier sometimes, and the Minister for
Foreign Affairs generally, can express such ideas as
they have in some of the European languages, an
Ambassador never trusts their linguistic powers or
his own, never attempts to transact business, never
ventures to pay a visit, without the inseparable
shadow of his dragoman. What diplomatic negotia-
tions may be those in which the high contracting
parties must always put up with the presence of
witnesses, and depend on those witnesses for the
interchange of their views and the correctness of
their statements, it is very easy to imagine. The
irksomeness of that translation and re-translation of
every sentence, in a country where so much is
usually spoken to so little purpose the conversa-
tion being generally taken up by vapid phrases
and unmeaning compliments, and in a language
hitherto in a great measure unfit for the convey-
ance of abstract thoughts as Turkish is soon, and
after a few attempts, indisposes a European Envoy
to any direct communion with the Ottoman Govern-
ment; so that, while limiting his intercourse with
them to mere visits of ceremony, he entrusts the
management of his affairs to the dragoman, who
thus becomes, in everything but the name, the real,
virtual and actual ambassador.
92 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Now as to what kind of state-servant, as a rule, a
dragoman is, and to what extent his allegiance and
devotion either to the person of the Ambassador or
to the Power which he represents, may be depended
upon, I can hardly venture to express an opinion.
With the exception of Russia, Austria, and France,
the interpreter's office is in every embassy or lega-
tion monopolised by Levantines. The " Oriental
Secretary," which was for some time an indis-
pensable member of the European staff of her
Majesty's Embassy the office being, in one in-
stance, filled up by so distinguished a scholar and
gentleman as the late Lord Strangford has alto-
gether disappeared within these last few years,
preference being given to the more supple, more
ingratiating, but certainly not equally intelligent,
or well-educated, or high-principled and trustworthy
native dragomans ; upon these devolves all the head
work, all the responsibility of the most delicate
affairs, while the European Councillor of Embassy,
the first, second, and third Secretaries, are paid as
mere show and pageantry, and in reality reduced
to the drudgery of copying clerks.
I shall not do the natives of the Levant the in-
justice of ascribing to them the character which they
so readily and too unanimously give of themselves.
Like many other Southern people the Levantines
may, on a close acquaintance, be found to be better
than their reputation ; but that the stigma for more
than Eastern cunning and duplicity, for absolute want
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY. 93
of principle, and impenetrability to shame, rests on
their name, is a fact which they are themselves at
all times too anxious to proclaim for any unprejudiced
person to attempt to deny it. Orientals by birth, or
sometimes by long residence, though of European ex-
traction, these men contract the habits and exaggerate
the faults of those Greeks, Armenians, and other indi-
genous races which they affect to mistrust and despise.
Men of no particular nationality, constituting a caste,
a tribe, a people of their own, bound together almost
in one family by incessant intermarriage, they apply
for protection and solicit employment, now of one,
now of another European State, the office of Drago-
man, of Consul, of Judge, of Chancellor, etc., fre-
quently becoming with them an hereditary monopoly ;
the various members of the same family usually
hoisting the flags of different Powers ; or the same
individual in some instances representing several
Powers at the same time, or passing from the service
of one Power into that of another.
Whatever opinion one may entertain of individuals,
there can be no doubt as to the objectionable nature
of a class of men who may thus be said to have no
country, and whose moral worth, if they have any,
has been from their birth put to the hardest test by
their contact with a society, and a Government
like that of Turkey, unequalled in its all-pervading
venality and corruption.
That a man may be honest in the worst circum-
stances, that he may find it worth his while to be
94 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
loyal and faithful to a State while he is in its pay,
one may willingly admit ; but the worst is that his
appointment to the service of that State is not neces-
sarily permanent, even during his lifetime ; he must
always consider it precarious; he may aspire to better
himself; he may be tempted by higher salary to seek
a new master as happened in the case of a drago-
man of the Spanish Legation, who passed over to the
British Embassy, to the great disgust of the Spanish
Minister or he may spontaneously doff, or be by
some mischance stripped of the livery of all the
European States, and sink to the condition of a
mere Levantine of the Levant, an unprotected rayah
subject to the law of what is, after all, his own coun-
try, the country to which he belongs by his family
ties, and by a variety of domestic and social in-
terests.
And it is to a man of this race of a race liable
to become baser and more corrupt at every new
generation, that the most important and sacred in-
ternational notes, protocols, and other documents
must needs be imparted ; it is by men of this temper
that State secrets must be bandied about, which
statesmen like Cavour or Bismarck would not confide
to their under-secretaries, to their private-secretaries,
or even to their colleagues in the Cabinet !
And it is on the faith of reports from these
sources, despatches from Ambassadors depending for
information on Levantine dragomans, or corre-
spondences from Levantine Consuls, Vice- Consuls,
DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY. 95
or Consular Agents, that Ministers of the Crown
will stand up in their place in the English Par-
liament, and venture on statements that the
assertions of disinterested persons, and even the
evidence of stubborn facts contradict; it is on
authority drawn from such materials that Blue
Books are compiled and printed, and Honourable
Members supplied with their ground for the dis-
cussion of the Eastern question !
Need we be surprised to hear that men of the
Levant thus honoured with the confidence of
Western Governments, have retired from business
with the reputation of vast accumulated wealth ; to
hear of ex-dragomen possessing whole streets of house
property in Pera, and of Consuls or Vice-Consuls,
through their brothers and cousins, owning the
largest share of the capital invested in the most
extensive mercantile or financial speculations ?
The State pays ten thousands of pounds to send
a gentleman charged with its business to a foreign
court; it little knows that its Envoy in the East
is a mere cipher, that for all practicable purposes
it is not the gentleman but the gentleman's gentle-
man not the Ambassador but the dragoman that
is charged with the diplomatic relations between
friendly states ; the dragoman on whose arbitration
depend the results of all negotiations, the issues of
peace and war.
OG TtfE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER VII.
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY.
DIPLOMATISTS AND JOURNALISTS. GENERAL 1GNATIEFF. RUSSIAN
VIEWS. SIR HENRY ELLIOT. THE ENGLISH AND THEIR AMBASSA-
DOR. ENGLISH POLICY AND DIPLOMACY.
BETWEEN diplomatists and journalists there can be
.no love lost. An Ambassador receives a newspaper
correspondent with feelings akin to those of the
laundress whose lodgings a charcoal-burner aspired
to share. " Whatever my soap may bleach, your
coal-dust is sure to blacken," said the woman ; and
whatever the Envoy is anxious to " keep snug," the
reporter loves to bring into open daylight. I have
never had much luck, never " got on well " with
diplomatic agents, but I hope to make it clear to
all impartial readers that the quarrels arising be-
tween me and any member of the Corps Diplo-
matique were none of my seeking.
On my first arrival at Constantinople, and within
an hour of landing, I called upon the Russian
Ambassador, General Ignatieff, for whom M. de
Keudell, the German Minister, now Ambassador
in Rome, had given me a letter of introduction.
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 97
In the course of the same day I saw Count Corti,
the Italian Minister, for many years a personal
friend of mine ; and, on the morrow, I went out
to Therapia, where, late in the year as it was,
her Majesty's Ambassador, Sir Henry Elliot, still
lingered. With these three I kept up an incessant
intercourse till August, 1876, when the last-named
gentleman intimated that " my visits to the Embassy
should discontinue."
General Ignatieff is a perfect study of a Russian
diplomate : a genial, versatile Protean spirit, never
at a loss for an answer to any question, incapable,
to all appearance, of reticence or reserve. He is an
early riser, though up sometimes till a late hour,
accessible to all persons almost at all hours, ready
with a courteous, a witty or a benevolent word to
anyone. He has a loud, ringing, merry laugh, con-
tagious, which discomposes the Turks' gravity, and
makes them chuckle, even though it be at their own
expense. Nothing can equal his fresh memory, and
the lucidity of his ideas, though at times he jumbles
them together in his too rapid utterance, possibly
when his object is to bewilder or mystify his inter-
locutor. He is a pupil of Bismarck's school out-
spoken to every one who approaches him, and thinks
that nothing deceives men so well as plain truth,
because nothing better ministers to their incorrigible
propensity to deceive themselves, and to believe, if
not the contrary of what they are told, at least
something quite different from it. It may have
VOL. j. 7
98 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
been obtuseness on my part, but I can freely say
that only in one or two instances I caught him
tripping, and even then I am not sure whether the
misstatement on his part was merely the result of
inattention or of deliberate equivocation. He was
described to me as " the very father of lies," and
I received endless warnings against his Mephisto-
phelian powers of fascination. Yet I could not
even detect in him any attempt at dissembling.
His hatred of Midhat Pasha, for instance, was
always boldly proclaimed ; and he was equally un-
compromising in his denunciations of any scheme
which could promise Turkey a prolongation of exist-
ence by social or political reforms. He hated the
Turks and conspired to their destruction, no doubt,
but never cloaked his designs under any hypocritical
mask of a desire for their well-being, or hope of
their improvement. " What inducement," he ob-
serves, " could he have to dissemble ? He never
forgot as he spoke that he had eighty millions of
men at his back to make good whatever he said."
I shall never forget the views he gave me of the
Eastern Question during the first interview I had
with him. The question was to him " clear as day-
light, and had always been so," even when grave
statesmen stubbornly denied its existence, or felt
confident that it Avas something in the clouds, some-
thing that could be indefinitely, eternally adjourned.
Here is a city, he said, as he pointed at the vast
view from his window, enthroned between two seas,
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICE. 99
on two continents, intended by nature and appointed
by man to be the seat of empire, of a vast, world-
wide empire, as it was thought at the time of its
foundation, when men's instincts tended to the estab-
lishment of universal monarchy. The Turks took
it in the high tide of their career, when they com-
passed the earth with their ambition, and it is now
supposed to be coveted by that Russian power
which has overrun so large a part of Europe and
Asia. That the Turks cannot long hold Constanti-
nople, that they have no firm footing in Europe, are
facts of which all men, and themselves first and
foremost, are thoroughly convinced. The Turks
came as an army, not as a nation ; they conquered,
ground, and crushed the subject races, but never
governed them. Their sway was based on martial
force, and it breaks down now wherever they find
themselves in a minority. Their energies have
been exhausted by sloth and gross self-indulgence ;
any attempt at refonn of their administration, even
in military matters, is, in the opinion of all sound -
minded men, utterly hopeless. They could stand no
shock from abroad, least of all such an onset as
Russia might at any moment make upon them.
Russia, however, M. IgnatieiF asserted from the
outset, and consistently maintained, meditated no
such attack. From beginning to end he showed the
utmost anxiety to demolish the argument which
is and has always been raised against Russia with
respect to her " traditional " ambition. It is not
72
100 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
true, he said, that the Czars at any time looked
forward to the conquest and annexation of the
European Provinces of Turkey or of her capital.
The so-called "testament" of Peter the Great
never had any existence except in the imagination
of French or English quidnuncs. That testament,
Ignatieff contended, is a pure myth ; no man has
ever seen it. Catherine II., he allowed, dreamt of
a Grecian or Christian State, with its centre at
Constantinople, which might be given as an appanage
to one of the Russian Grand Dukes ; but it was a
vague, baseless fancy, never seriously acted upon
till Nicholas, really uneasy for the peace of Europe
and for the security of his Southern frontier, ven-
tured upon those rash overtures which led to the
Crimean War, but which really had at first no other
object than that of concerting with the Western
Powers the means of breaking the fall of the
Ottoman Empire a fall which, in the Emperor's
judgment, could no longer be averted.
But, whatever might be the drift of Russian
policy in former ages, Ignatieff and the Russians
say, it is inconceivable that sound-minded politicians
should take no account of altered circumstances, and
should not see that, if the aggrandisement of their
Empire at the expense of Turkey was ever contem-
plated by their rulers, such a scheme has now neces-
sarily and irrevocably been abandoned. Turkey
may have been to Russia what Cuba was to the
United States of America. So long as the American
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 101
Union was a slave-holding community, Cuba, as the
only .slave market, would have been to the Washing-
ton Cabinet a priceless acquisition ; but since the
triumph of the cause of Abolitionism at the end of
the Civil War, that island with its half million of
slaves would be a burden and a cause of strife to
the Americans, who now would never take it were
it offered to them as a gift by Spain herself and with
the world's consent. Upon the same ground, the
Russians reason, the Government of St. Petersburg,
whatever may have been its former views, whatever
aspirations it may have cherished before instinct of
nationality and love of local self-government spread
even among the less advanced races, would now, for
its own sake, shrink from the responsibility of sub-
jecting to its sway twenty millions of subjects of
various race, creed, and language, discordant on
every subject except on the one of the antipathy
which all of them Roumans, Greeks, and Slavs-
cherish and openly evince towards Russia. Were she
bent on crossing the Danube and permanently hold-
ing the Balkan Peninsula, she would have to reckon
on the enmity not only of the Ottomans, but also of
those Principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia,
and Montenegro, which, " out of pure Christian and
humane zeal," she herself most powerfully contri-
buted to withdraw from the unbearable Mussulman
yoke ; and she has work enough in hand in her en-
deavour to achieve the subjugation of wild hordes
in Asia, without taking upon herself the govern-
102 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
ment of European tribes, bearing the brunt both of
their hostility and of that of their many and powerful
sympathisers. That Russia feels cramped and stifled
in her inland position, and that she might wish for
some better outlet than the Baltic, and for an access
to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus and
the Hellespont, no man would deny, but she feels
that the possession of Constantinople and the Straits
would involve a necessity for a conquest of the w r hole
of Rumelia and part of Anatolia, compelling her
thus to swallow much more than she could digest.
Moreover, granting even that Russia might have
both the wish and the power to occupy Constanti-
nople, when she had achieved so great a conquest,
what would she do with it"? Would she find the
organisation and administration of Provinces in-
habited by half- civilised and yet corrupt, discordant,
and seditious races as easy a task as their subjuga-
tion 1 Could Constantinople, and Pera, and Galata,
and the Fanariotes, and the Slavs, and the Arme-
nians, and the rest, be governed from St. Petersburg ?
Would not Russian colonisation become the neces-
sary consequence of Russian occupation? Or can
any sane man imagine that the Emperor Alexander
would follow the example of Constantine, and trans-
fer the seat of the Empire from the Neva to the
Bosphorus ? Can it be supposed that the Muscovite,
who is now awakening to a proud sense of his
nationality, would abandon the bracing climate, the
hardy yet fertile soil of " Holy Russia," wherein
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 103
lies the compact strength of his colossal State, to
expose himself to the enervating influence of South-
ern regions ? Would he not answer in the words of
Frederick Barbarossa, when the Romans tempted
him to exchange the deep flowing Rhine for the
creeping waters of the shallow Tiber ? The Russian
feels that his snow and ice are his proper element,
and that Byzantium would offer to the Northern
Eagle as unsafe a perch as it proved to the too
grasping Roman bird.
On the other hand, could Constantinople be re-
duced to the condition of a provincial town ? Or
would it be practicable to give the Russian Empire
two centres, and make experiments of that dualism
which answered so indifferently at Rome, and which
is as yet on its trial at Vienna.
Still, if Russia either does not covet Turkey or
looks upon it as " sour grapes," what projects does
she entertain with respect to the solution of the
Eastern Question, and in what sense is she exercising
the influence which she doubtless possesses over the
Porte, and upon which her adversaries put so sinister
a construction ? The policy of Russia in Turkey, if
we believe Ignatieff, is twofold. She endeavours to
keep the Ottoman Empire together as long as it will
hold, and she lays the basis of the new edifice which
may at some future time rise on its ruins. In
pursuit of the first object, she suggests to the Porte
such broad measures of reform as may establish a
modus vivendi suitable to the various races and
104 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
creeds subject to its sway. With a view to future
contingencies she sanctions, if she does not en-
courage, the development of self-government in
those Provinces which, like Roumania and Servia,
are no longer amenable to Ottoman rule, and whose
aspirations to independence can no longer be curbed.
Were the period for the dissolution of the Turkish
Empire, and for the expulsion of the Mussulman
from Europe to arrive, Russia's scheme would be, in
the opinion of the Russians, to establish a confede-
racy of States in the Balkan Peninsula, possibly
also including the Asiatic Provinces on the Straits
and the Propontis, which might have its centre
on the Bosphorus, where Stamboul, Galata, and
Scutari would be raised to the rank of a Free City,
or perhaps of three Free Cities, the whole com-
munity being erected with the sanction and placed
under the joint protection of all the European
Powers.
Specious and plausible as this apology of Russian
policy might sound, I never took upon myself to
vouch for its sincerity or to judge of its practi-
cability. Public opinion at the time was setting
in strongly against the Russian Ambassador, and
it required no little courage on the part of a neutral
to acknowledge himself a frequent visitor at his
residence, the alternative lying between being con-
sidered " IgnatiefTs dupe," and being denounced as
a "Russian hireling" or "Russian spy." Strange
to say, however, the animosity against Russia was
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 105
at that early stage stronger among the Christians,
at least among the European Christians, than among
the Turks, for the Government of the Porte, for-
saken by the Western Powers, was only bent on
propitiating a formidable enemy which it could not
resist, while the commercial world, whose interests
were wound up with the thread of life of the
Ottoman Empire, saw in Russian influence the de-
moniacal agency which encouraged it in its evil
courses and urged it to its destruction. On this
subject the contrast between the City of the Sultan
and the Diplomatic suburb rising opposite to it
across the Golden Horn was more apparent in the
moral character of the inhabitants than even in the
material aspect of the streets and buildings. Im-
perial Stamboul was almost wholly Oriental. The
majority were Mussulmans, and the few Armenians
and Greeks dwelling among them had caught some-
thing of that soothing resignation which imparts so
much calmness and dignity to the votary of Islam.
Your " true Believer " seldom thinks it his business
to look forward to the future. He has an infallible
Pontiff as well as an absolute Sovereign to rule his
conduct and to guide his destiny. His life in this
world is the Sultan's ; in the next it is God's ; and
he pays his taxes and joins the ranks of the army
with that heroic submission with which Viziers and
Pashas of old met their ,fate, and sipped the " cup of
coffee " handed to them by the Padishah's order,
bowing their heads, and repeating their sublime
106 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
"Allah akhbar!" (God is great), from the first symp-
tom of the working of the narcotic poison till they
fell asleep to wake again in the Prophet's bosom.
It is otherwise with the Frank of Pera and Ga-
lata. On the first settling of the bustling Genoese
on the skirts of this hill, the spot became the refuge
of the persecuted native Christian ; it monopolised
in a great measure the trade of the Ottoman capital;
it became a State within the State, with laws and a
jurisdiction of its own, and displayed the peculiarities
of that curious, crafty, supremely mendacious Levan-
tine nature which grafted every variety of South
European vice on the old stock of the indigenous
Byzantine. The incessant fluctuations of commercial
interests and the gossipping circulation of political
intelligence keep the mind of the Perote Frank in a
perpetual fidget. Coming events are here ever-
lastingly casting their shadows before. The subtlety
of Greek inventiveness supplies the theme for endless
speculation. Sanguine anticipations and ominous
bodings alternate from morning to night, and people
are distressing themselves about many things, with
that ingenious restlessness which a famous distich in
four words, attributed to the dwellers on the same
spot in olden times :
" Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani
Innumerabilibus solicitudinibus."
The subject which most persistently haunted the
Levantine's mind at this moment, and on which he
was apt to wax most eloquent, was the boundless
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 107
extent of the power of Russia, and her settled deter-
mination to use it to bring about the dissolution and
extinction of the Ottoman Empire. In the condition
to which the downfall of French predominance has
reduced the discordant European States, the long-
cherished project of Russia, these . people thought,
could easily be accomplished at once and by main
force. But even now, they said, it better suited the
policy of that wily Government to temporise ; and
for many years its agents had so adroitly hoodwinked,
bribed, and otherwise won over the advisers of the
Porte as to exercise an irresistible sway over its
Councils, to the total exclusion of all other extraneous
influence. That the Russian Ambassador was the
de facto Sovereign of Turkey was with these Levan-
tines an article of faith. They gave the Grand-
Vizier Mahmood Nedim Pasha the nickname of
Mahmoodoff, and by that same Muscovite termina-
tion of the names they equally designated all other
Turkish Statesmen who, in their opinion were mere
passive instruments in Russian hands. The only ex-
Grand Vizier who enjoyed the reputation of being
anti-Russian was Midhat Pasha, and it is remarkable
that in the address by which this ex-Minister of
Justice explained to the Sultan the motives which
determined his resignation a document which was
then circulating in manuscript Midhat ascribed all
the disorders of the Empire " aux tendences pernici-
euses, et aux insinuations de 1'etranger qui ne cesse
de faire miroiter aux yeux des sujets chretiens sa
108 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
protection et son appui," contrasting the influence
exercised by this Power with " le pen de sympathie
et de confiance que nous inspirons a la Puissance qui
avait etc 1'alliee la plussincere et la plus ancienne de
I'Empire." In those few words, which I quote liter-
ally, you have the beginning and end of the fixed
idea prevailing then throughout Pera and Galata,
and it amounts to this, that Russia was, by her
Machiavellian policy, slowly and surely compassing
the ruin of Turkey, while England, acting upon her
conviction of the incurable nature of the evils of
this Eastern Empire, was calmly and coldly abandon-
ing her to her fate.
It was under the impression of these complaints
that I usually repaired to Sir Henry Elliot. I had
had the honour of his Excellency's acquaintance
when he was her Majesty's Minister to King
Ferdinand in Naples, and later in Turin, when he
succeeded Sir James Hudson in the same capacity
at the court of King Victor Emmanuel, and I was
received by him and his family, both at Therapia
and Pera, with every mark of courtesy and hospi-
tality. There was nothing repellent in the Ambas-
sador's frigid address and unconquerable shyness, for
one felt that it was mere nature, and implied no
personal antipathy to oneself, but was equally ex-
tended to all who approached him, and might in
many instances be attributed to the severe head-
aches to which he was frequently a martyr. Sir
Henry was rather a listener than a talker ; he had
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 109
the unfortunate trick of looking away from his inter-
locutor, sat bending down to the chimney-grate, whe-
ther fire was burning in it or not, and had generally
a wearied, dull look in the rare moments in which he
lifted his head and turned his face to the light. He
was too well-bred to show impatience or fatigue, but
somehow one could not help feeling that a visit was
to him a visitation, and talk an infliction ; he looked
as if perpetually pressed for time and crushed by in-
cessant work ; politics, at least Turkish politics,
was to him a distasteful subject, and if he at all
brightened up and unbent, it was only when the con-
versation turned upon different topics, and especially
on Italy, a country towards which he entertained
warm friendly feelings, and on which therefore the
sympathy between us was unlimited. I observed,
also, that the constraint under which he appeared t
labour in a tete-a-tete, vanished when company was
present, and especially when he discharged his duties
as a host at the head of his table.
I went to him full of complaints, which all the
Christians, and especially the English colony, dinned
into my ears. They held him, Sir Henry, answer-
able, I said, for all the evils of Turkey ; they con-
tended that it was only his remissness, only the
peculiar mildness and non-combativeness of his dis-
position which kept him aloof from the divan, seldom
let his voice be heard, and allowed his Bussian col-
league to rule supreme above the Sultan, to exercise
his sway through a Grand- Vizier of his own appoint-
110 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
ment, boasting at the same 1 time that the accord
between himself and the diplomatic body fof
which he was the doyen, and especially with the
Envoy of Great Britain, was perfect ; or, in other
words, that all the Powers, and especially England,
were simply satellites in Russia's orbit.
And it is perfectly true that these charges against
Sir Henry, as they were what I heard on my coming
to Constantinople, so they continued to be repeated
to me throughout the first half-year of my stay, from
morning to evening. Nothing was more general,
nothing more deeply-rooted than this conviction that
England would have it in her power to propose and
enforce the remedy of all the disorders of Turkey,
were only her authority supported by an Ambassador
inheriting the temper of the Great Elchi, Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, were Sir Henry superseded
by Mr. Layard, by Lord Odo Russell, Lord Napier,
Lord Dufferin, or by any other man belonging or
not to the diplomatic service, who might be fitted by
sheer strength of character to break through the wiles
and snares of the ever-plotting Muscovite.
I answered these malcontents, and I repeated to
Sir Henry, with a view to soothe his wounded feel-
ings, that those who censured his conduct should,
before they condemned an Ambassador, ask what
were the instructions which he was bound to obey.
I suggested that, possibly, the Cabinet of St. James
had set upon its diplomatic representative the same
task which was imposed upon M. de Bourgoing by
USSIAN AND ENGLISH POLIC Y. Ill
the Government of the French Republic, which was
" de s' efface r," or to show himself as little as he could
manage. Indeed, at that time, all the Powers ex-
cept Russia and England, and perhaps Italy, had
chosen their Envoys to Constantinople among the
most effete and helpless men their Foreign Offices
could muster : Count Bourgoing was an old Ultra-
montane, whose sphere of action should have been
rather the Vatican than the Palace at Dolmabacheh ;
Baron Werther, the German, a veteran whose fate
it had been to be accredited to Courts upon which
ruin was impending that of the Bourbon at Naples,
in 1860, and that of the Bonaparte, at Paris, in 1870
was appointed by Bismarck to Constantinople, with
the understanding that he should have no political
initiative, but should in any emergency follow the
lead of his Russian colleague; and the Austrian
Count Zichy, a Grand Seigneur, who from sheer
weariness of life at his Chateau, had applied for and
obtained a diplomatic appointment from Andrassy
as something due to one of his rank and wealth, was
satisfied with such popularity as his sumptuous din-
ners and joyous balls won him, and merely worked
at one end of the telegraphic wire of which his chief
held the other end, limiting his part to the convey-
ance of messages, which, in the great perplexity and
division prevailing in the Austro-Hungarian Cabinet
were often sufficiently indefinite and puzzling.
The game was thus between the Russian and the
English envoy, and this latter was modest enough to
112 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
feel with all other men, and almost to acknowledge
that he was haud viribus congressus cequis, though
he seemed to think that the means by which his
adversary accomplished his ends were not those of a
fair and honest combatant ; that Ignatieff stooped to
intrigues unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,
and that he " lied black ancT blue," lied rather more
boldly and recklessly than an Ambassador should be
justified in doing even for the good of his country.
Sir Henry Elliot had not the inclination, and he had
not the power, to foil General Ignatieff with his own
weapons. The Government of St. Petersburg, it
was asserted, allowed its envoy a sum of 30,000
a-year, which, as the General disposed of considerable
wealth of his own or of his wife's, could only be em-
ployed in the furtherance of the intrigues, the agents
for which were supposed to be besetting the doors of
the Russian Embassy and Consulate night and day.
That Ignatieff conspired, that every Russian conspired,
is a matter about which no man could entertain the
least doubt, and, to satisfy us on that score, it was
hardly necessary that M. Giacometti should publish
his pamphlet " Les Responsabilites" containing the
secret correspondence between the Russian Cabinet
and its diplomatic and consular agents, and the mem-
bers of those Panslavic Committees which, whatever
might be their ultimate object, worked for the present,
and to all appearance, in Russia's interest.
No doubt Russia conspired, and was compassing
Turkey's ruin. General Ignatieff never made a
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 113
mystery about it. With a frankness amounting to
cynicism, while he pointed out the short-comings in
the administration of Turkey, and echoed the com-
plaints of her subjects, while he dwelt on the diffi-
culties and hinted at the dangers that beset her, and
blandly and benevolently suggested " Reform," no
one was, or expressed 'himself more intimately con-
vinced than he was, not only that Reform with the
Turks was out of the question, but that every attempt
at it would only aggravate disorder, and make con-
fusion worse confounded. He spoke like a man who
looks at a drowning wretch," and bids him strike out
and swim, knowing all the time that he cannot keep
afloat, and must needs sink deeper and deeper at
every stroke.
Whatever might be the ultimate and secret aim of
Russia's policy, there is no 'doubt that her avowed
and immediate programme was the championship of
the Christian cause in the East. It was quite right
that England should thwart Russia's hidden design
and unmask her hypocrisy ; but it was not wise on
the part of her Majesty's Government, or of their
Diplomatic Agent, to seem indiscriminately and in
all cases to side with the Turk in his contest with
his Christian subjects. " Every one here will tell
you that I am a Turk," said Sir Henry to me the
first time I saw him at Therapia, and I could hardly
make out whether he intended to repel the charges
or whether he gloried in it. But the fact is that his
policy, as well as that of the Government he repre-
VOL. i. 8
114 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
sented, tended to consider every Ottoman subject
rising against the authority of the Porte as a public
enemy, an accomplice and a tool of Russian am-
bition, and a disturber of European tranquillity. The
English Government forgot that the Crimean war
was undertaken on behalf of the Christian as well as
of the Mussulman subjects of the Porte ; that the
peace of Paris, at the same time that it maintained
the authority of the Sultan, was also intended to
guarantee the well-being of his people. The English
Government affected to be satisfied that both con-
ditions had been fulfilled. They chose to believe
that the Christians in Turkey were well treated
and had no just cause for complaint. Disaffection
among them, they asserted, was fostered by foreign
i.e. by Russian, intrigue ; revolt was stirred up by
Panslavic, i.e. by Muscovite, emissaries. Whoever
was not for Turkey was against England. In any
quarrel between Turk and Christian, England took
part with the Turk ; for her duty, as she thought, in
all events was to take part against Russia. Thus in
one of my first interviews with Sir Henry Elliot, in
which he wished to impress upon me the fact that
his influence over the Sublime Porte was not so in-
significant as it was described, he told me that at
the time of the Cretan insurrection of 1867, it was
to him, and to him alone, that was due the merit of
advising the Sultan's Government to send an ulti-
matum to the King of the Hellenes, intimating that
any further aid sent by Greece to the insurgents
RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH POLICY. 115
would be considered a casus belli. King George took
the hint ; aid from Greece ceased to be sent to the
island, and the insurrection, abandoned to its own
resources, soon collapsed. That may have been an
expedient, but it was hardly a generous policy. But
however well suited it might be to the English ideas
of ten years ago, Sir Henry Elliot was perhaps too
confident that it might and should be applied in all
analogous cases. Sir Henry deemed it his duty to
support the Turks through thick and thin in every
imaginable emergency. He made no allowance for
the changeable disposition of men's minds ; he con-
tinued to the last blind to the signs of the times.
But shall we have reason to wonder that he, away
from England, living a comparatively secluded life,
and frequently out of health, should go wrong in his
estimate of his countrymen's wishes, when we find
the men at the head of her Majesty's Government
equally incapable of interpreting the public mind,
unwilling to break with exploded traditions, and
persisting in an infatuation which very nearly com-
mitted them to hostilities in a cause which was
neither that of Christianity, nor of civilisation, nor
of England ?
I -2
116 7 HE EASTERN Q UESTION.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS.
THE SITUATION OF THE EMPIRE. GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION.
THE GRAXD VIZIER. MIDHAT PASHA. HUSSEIN AVNI. GLIMPSES
OF FORTHCOMING EVENTS. THE TURKS JUDGED BY A TURK. SAID
PASHA, THE WOOLWICH BOY.
THE main difficulties against which Turkey had to
contend in the autumn of 1875 were three; the
insurrection in her north-western provinces, the
embarrassment of her finances, and division in her
Council.
The Ottoman Cabinet, of which the Grand Vizier,
Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, was the head, had sus-
tained a serious loss in Midhat Pasha's retirement
from office. The reforms which the Grand Vizier
proposed to introduce into the judicial and finan-
cial administration of the country seemed to his
Minister of Justice, Midhat, inadequate to the
exigencies of the time ; and the scheme of a bond-
fide representative Government, which Midhat pre-
sented as a counter programme, appeared to the
Chief of the Cabinet fraught with danger to the
monarchy. The breach between the two ministers
proved incurable ; it became necessary for one of
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 117
them to withdraw, and Midhat Pasha took the un-
precedented step of laying both his resignation and
the reasons which led to it before the Sultan, who
naturally gave sentence against him. The intel-
ligence that two of Midhat's colleagues had also
renounced their portfolios was not confirmed, a proof
either that the reforms of the Minister of Justice
seemed too rash and impracticable to the whole
Council, or that its members were convinced that
the Grand Vizier was of all the Sultan's advisers
the most intimately acquainted with his Sovereign's
wishes. There seems, indeed, to be little doubt
that Mahrnoud Pasha, who maintained his influence
over Abd-ul- Aziz's mind by urging him to the
exercise of unbounded personal authority, repre-
sented all reforms tending to give the people any
important share in the management of their affairs
as an attempt to limit, and eventually to under-
mine, that authority. All men of progress, people
murmured, give way before the incorrigibly despotic
instincts of the head of the State. Essad Pasha
had just died at Smyrna ; Midhat and Mehemed
Rushdi, called "the Translator,"- to distinguish
him from Mehemed Rushdi Sirvanizade, who had
died four months before were not listened to, and
any prospect of material improvement in the Govern-
ment seemed so hopeless that some bold spirits might
be heard loudly proclaiming the futility of any re-
form not beginning with " the deposition of the
Sultan."
118 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
There was, however, also no lack of men of a less
gloomy disposition, a party I know not whether it
should be called "Old" or "Young Turkey," who
fretted at the bare mention of an " Eastern Question,"
and who asked when there would be an end of the idle
rumours about foreign intervention. " Why," they
said, " should not the Porte be competent to grapple
with its own difficulties ? What need is there of
the suggestions and schemes of foreign advisers '?"
Turkey, in their opinion, had got its " Great Na-
tional Charter." The Hatt-i-Humayoun of 1856
was designed " to place the Christian population
of the Empire on a footing of perfect equality
with its Mohammedan subjects." All that was re-
quired was " a faithful interpretation and application
of the principles established twenty years since,"
and the present Government were contemplating re-
forms which would satisfy " all legitimate aspirations
of the Christians."
The truth, perhaps, lay between the gloomy
bodings of the pessimists, and the sanguine antici-
pations of the optimists. Meanwhile, had Turkey
really been inclined to far da se, she would in all pro-
bability not have been disturbed in the enjoyment of
her expected millennium. Had she got the better of
internal disorders, she would have been thoroughly
safe from extraneous aggression. Look at the Eastern
Question from any point of view it may present, and
it would be manifest that no one could have an interest
in raising or discussing it except that Power which
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 119
had everything to gain by adjourning it. The
matter lay entirely between Turkey and her sub-
jects. The Mussulman came into the country as a
ruthless, fanatical invader; he established his sway
by massacre and spoliation ; he laid the basis of his
dominion on brute force. But the time came when
his strength was no longer irresistible, when the
aspirations of his subjects became irrepressible. By
a series of domestic insurrections, aided by foreign
complications, some of his provinces attained either
an absolute or an almost entire independence ; and
these by the success of their efforts became a focus
of discontent to the districts still subject to the direct
rule of the Porte, encouraging their hopes by their
example, and countenancing their attempts by their
sympathy. Insurrection in Turkey became a chronic
complaint ; it rendered every scheme of reform, had
any ever been seriously contemplated, utterly im-
practicable. Every, boon or concession to one race
was resented as an encroachment on the rights of
another; the breach between the antagonistic creeds
widened with every attempt to heal it, and matters
had now come to this, that Turkey, far from being
able to "grapple with her own difficulties," could only,
if at all, be saved from internal dissolution by ex-
traneous influence.
The population of the Turkish Empire in Europe,
Asia, and Africa was vaguely supposed for even an
approach to correct statistics was out of the question-
to amount to 36,000,000, little more than 27,000,000
120 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
being under the direct sovereignty of the Porte. That
of the European Provinces consisted of 15,000,000,
of whom between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 belonged
to the so-called vassal States of Roumania and Servia.
Besides these, who were all Christians, there were in
the provinces immediately subjected to the Porte-
Bosnia, Bulgaria, etc. about 4,000,000 of the same
denomination against only 2,500,000, or perhaps
3,000,000 Mussulmans. These Christians, although
divided into a variety of races and sects, had one
common bond of union in their hatred of the Turk,
in their longing to oust hini from Europe, and in
their vague hope to constitute among themselves a
Confederate State or a Federation of States, capable
of taking rank among the independent European
nations. Add to this that a large proportion, about
3,400,000, were Slavs, and these such of them, at
least, as were not Mussulmans besides the mutual
support they yielded to each other in their own ter-
ritory, relied on the sympathies of the Slavs, especially
of the Southern Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, that is, about 4,500,000 Dalmatians, Cro-
atians, etc., who dreamt of a South Slavish combina-
tion to be made out of the fragments both of the
Ottoman and of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Had even
Turkey been left to her own devices, left to settle her
quarrel with her subjects, had- not foreign, say Rus-
sian and Austrian, influence been at work to aid the
impulse of both the Government and people of her
tributary Principalities, and of the Volunteers from
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 121
the Austrian Slav Provinces, it is not easy to believe
that her unaided forces would have been equal to the
task of crushing the insurrection in Herzegovina, or of
preventing its spread to the hitherto undisturbed ad-
joining districts, and the general outbreak of an
internal feud between the antagonistic creeds and
o
races.
The Government of the Porte felt this, and in its
desperate struggle for existence it clung for support
to that Power which was supposed to have the most
dangerous designs against the integrity of the Otto-
man Empire. It clung to Russia, and obeyed pas-
sively and almost entirely the influence of the
Russian Ambassador, General Ignatieff, a man pow-
erful by the strength of his character, by his con-
summate adroitness, and also " by the 80,000,000 of
people prepared," to repeat his favourite expression,
"to back him." Whatever may be the ultimate
views of the descendants of Peter and Catherine, it
was evident that the Court of St. Petersburg had no
interest in hastening the catastrophe by which Turkey
was threatened, both because it dreaded the joint op-
position of all the Powers interested in the free navi-
gation of the Danube and of the Mediterranean i.e.,
of all Europe and also because it saw that the am-
bition of the Christians of Turkey, both of the Slavs
and the Greeks, to which it gave the first impulse, was
now turning against itself the discontented subjects
of the Porte being perfectly willing to accept as much
aid from Russia as might answer their own purposes,
122 THE EASTERN QUESTION'.
but by no means inclined to exchange a Turkish for
a Russian yoke. The fear of Russian absorption was
acting so powerfully on the Christian subjects of the
Porte that the Fanariotes, or Greeks of Constanti-
nople, were now said to be more Turks than the
Turks themselves the only Turks who were truly
patriotic, for the true Asian, or Osmanli, was pass-
ing away, and the Fanariote Greek was aiming at the
re-establishment of that ascendency which he exer-
cised in the Ottoman Empire before the Hellenic re-
volution. Russia did not yet see her way clear to
the fulfilment of her " manifest destinies," and people
thought that her influence was exercised by the sug-
gestion to the Porte of such measures as must needs
add to the confusion in its administration, exasperate
against it the hostile passions of its subjects, and
deepen among these the animosities of creed and
race.
I have not as bad an opinion of the Grand Vizier,
Mahmoud Nedim, as most people about me seemed to
entertain, though of course I could not make much
out of the short interview I had with him at his
office, where all I was told by him, through an inter-
preter, was, that if I wanted to know the real truth
of anything particularly interesting, I should always
go to him, who would be sure never to deceive me,
as " were he to tell me a lie to-day, it would be surely
found out to-morrow, and how should he be the
gainer by his falsehood ?" He had a dignified old
Osmanli countenance, with a high prominent fore-
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 123
head like that of a ram, expressive of determination
and character. He was old above sixty, I believe
and long dealing with men for he had filled his
present dignity more than once had given him some-
thing of the soreness of a workman disposed to
quarrel with his tools. He very openly complained
of his inability to find functionaries able to aid him
in his work, and remarked more than once to a
foreign Ambassador, with great naivete, " Que voulez-
vous ? Je nai afaire qua des dnes" More is the pity
that he could so ill brook the companionship of those
whom public opinion pointed out as able, and what is
more rare in Turkey, even honest ; for he had ma-
naged to rid himself of Mehemed Rushdi, of Midhat,
of Hussein Avni, and others who were destined to
play a conspicuous part among the dramatis persona
on which the curtain was then rising. We have
been told at full length how it was that the Grand
Vizier became aware that himself and Midhat could
no longer row in the same boat. At a Cabinet
Council, held November 28th, Midhat, we learn, ex-
pressed his opinion that the situation was one of
extreme gravity, that the evils of the country admit-
ted of no mere palliative remedies, and that the
reforms which were contemplated should in real
earnest be based on the equal treatment of all the
Sultan's subjects, irrespectively of any religious or
national differences. His speech was hardly likely
to carry conviction to the minds of his colleagues,
and it seems that the outspoken Minister had resorted
124 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
to the European and perfectly constitutional, but in
this country altogether unprecedented, measure of
sending in his resignation to the Sultan. The reso-
lution of the Sovereign on the subject could not long
be doubtful.
Widely and deeply as corruption had spread and
sunk among Turkish statesmen, it was believed by the
opponents of the present Government that the Sultan
would have found in such men as Midhat, Mehemed
Rushdi and others, worthy Ottomans having enough
of the old Mussulman truth and uprightness to point
out to their Sovereign the path of duty ; but preference
for less stern and more complacent advisers comes
natural to one accustomed to self-indulgence, and
the mere fact that Midhat as in a former instance
Mehemed Rushdi alluded to the necessity of cur-
tailing the expenditure entailed by the construction
and maintenance of those ironclads, which were then
thought to be of no other earthly use than as mere
toys for his Imperial Majesty, was almost certain to
win the Sultan's immediate consent to the Minister's
retirement from office.
Victorious as Mahmoud Nedim had been in his
contest with Midhat, he could hardly feel any reliance
on the firmness of his tenure of power. A breath
had made, and a breath could unmake him. And this
was, perhaps, one of the most grievous evils in the ad-
ministrative system of Turkey. A state in which
the Grand Vizier, the head of the Government, was as
a rule changed four times in the year, and subor-
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 125
dinate functionaries, both in the capital and in the
provinces, even more frequently, must needs be an edi-
fice too hopelessly rotten at the core to admit of such
a cure as the friendly and " officious " intervention of
one man could suggest. The fault lay not so much in
the general policy as in every branch of the adminis-
tration. It might be true, as the friends of the Turk
asserted, that there were in the " Great National
Charter " of 1856 the elements of a liberal and equi-
table Government ; but the causes which had been for
these last twenty years at work to make the Hatt-i-
Humayoun a dead letter, were not to be removed
by that " moral support " to which the intervention
of friendly Powers should, in the opinion of Turkey's
advocates, be limited. It was not easy to reason
with an absolute Sovereign as to the expediency
of curtailing his power, of checking his extravagance,
of husbanding the sums he squandered in the building
of endless palaces, superfluous mosques, and useless
ironclads. And had even Abd-ul- Aziz or another Sul-
tan been amenable to that amount of self-denial which
either his own sense of duty or the people's will im-
poses on a constitutional monarch ; were, in other
words, the scheme of a national representation and
ministerial responsibility at all practicable in Tur-
key, it was difficult to see where one could look
for an administrative class untainted with the ap-
palling corruption which had been the order of the
day for centuries. Let any one conjure up in his
imagination all the symptoms by which a clear-
126 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
headed traveller in the latter part of the eighteenth
century was enabled to foretell the approach of the
French Revolution ; let him multiply the disorders
of old monarchical France by hundreds and thou-
sands, and he would scarcely have an idea of the social
chaos into which Turkey had fallen. I can say with
perfect assurance that I nowhere met with one
person truly convinced of the practicability of any
imaginable reform in that country. " One may
modify institutions," every one told me, " but not
change men's nature. The Turks as a people will
never know any other base of Government than
force ; they will never be made to understand that
a Government official can have any other business
than to build his private fortune at the public ex-
pense. There may be very honourable exceptions
to the rule, it is true ; but these are too few to
leaven the mass, even if their honesty did not stand
in the way of their promotion and call down upon
them the displeasure of those to whom their in-
tegrity is a reproach."
Meanwhile, good or bad as the officials might be,
something could have been hoped from them if they
could at least have considered themselves safe from all
capricious and undeserved removal, and if time were
allowed to them to become acquainted with the duties
of their office, and with the wants and interests of the
people entrusted to their care ; but the deep-rooted
system by which almost every attendant at Court or
in the Cabinet, not excepting even the Grand Vizier or
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 127
the Sultan himself, looked forward to baksheesh from
a new candidate for place, prevented the grass grow-
ing under any employes feet.
Nine or ten new appointments of Governors-Gene-
ral, or transfers of such high functionaries from pro-
vince to province, appeared in the same Gazette under
the same date. Indeed, these worthy Pashas had
been of late so constantly accustomed to live in the
saddle, as they rode from one to the other of their
various destinations, that the Press, worn out by the
mere effort of recording their movements, had ceased
to accompany its announcements with its usual elo-
quent and somewhat fulsome praises of the Govern-
ment for " the excellent choice of their nominees,"
deeming it sheer mockery to congratulate each pro-
vince time after time on " its good fortune in being
entrusted to the care of a Pasha so universally known
for his wisdom, justice, and humanity," well aware
that on the morrow the same and even more sicken-
ing adulation would have to be bestowed on another
Pasha, by whom that paragon of all imaginable Go-
vernors would be superseded.
One of the servants of the State, for whom the
Grand Vizier seemed to find it more difficult to pro-
vide a place, was the ex-Grand Vizier and Minister
of War, Hussein Avni Pasha, a man destined to
fill more than one page with his name in the record
of the events which were rapidly maturing. To-
wards the middle of December, the Government of
the Porte was said to have given a proof of great
128 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
vigour by arresting this valiant but somewhat mutin-
ous and turbulent officer. Hussein Avni was, we
had heard, on the eve of embarking for the Govern-
ment of the Vilayet or Province of Salonica, to
which he was appointed, but he put off his departure
from day to day till it was understood that he had
given up his journey altogether. The explanation
was, first, that he tarried here to see what any change
in the Cabinet consequent on Midhat Pasha's re-
tirement might turn up for himself; then that he
acted upon orders of the Sultan, who did not know
how soon he might have occasion for his services.
On Monday evening, December 13th, at nine o'clock,
Hussein Pasha's Conak, mansion or palace, a vast
wooden edifice, took fire, and was almost entirely
consumed by the flames. The very considerable
wealth which was accumulated in the house perished.
The ladies and female slaves of the ex-Grand Vizier's
harem had a narrow escape with their lives, while,
with respect to Hussein Avni himself, some say he
was in his own private apartment rather unwell, and
rushed out precipitately, half clad, in his dressing-
gown, to see after the safety of his household, and
others assert that he was from home at the time the
fire was first discovered.
Could the ex- Grand Vizier have any reason for
setting his own house on fire ? And would his
arrest, if the intelligence turned out to be true, be
the consequence of some strong suspicion the Go-
vernment entertained as to his guilt as an incendiary,
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 129
or must' his imprisonment be ascribed to any other
cause ? These were questions one heard debated,
the only ascertained fact in the whole tale being the
conflagration of Hussein's house, and the destruction
of the upper part of one of the minarets of the ad-
joining Great Mosque of Solyman the Magnificent.
We were told, however, that cases in which Ottoman
Grandees burnt down their houses to the ground,
with a hope that their losses might win the Sultan's
sympathies and gain them access to his august
person, were by no means unfrequent, few people
ever obtaining admission to the Sovereign's presence
without substantially benefiting by the interview.
Hussein's arrest, however, if there had been any
truth in the report, might be owing to a variety of
other causes. He was known for his immense lately
gotten wealth. Trois fois millionaire ; and either
the Sultan or his Ministers might be glad of any
pretext to seize upon his property. Hussein was also
supposed to be obnoxious to the Valide, the Sultan's
mother, who, however fickle in her predilections, was
described as a good friend to the Grand Vizier,
Mahmood Nedim Pasha, It was natural to surmise
that the men now in power had taken some umbrage
at the presence in the capital of a man known for his
ambition, his resolute temper, and his popularity
with the army, and who once exercised so much
ascendancy over the Sultan's mind as to keep his
place as Grand Vizier and Seraskier, or War
VOL. i. 9
130 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Minister, for the lately unheard-of period of fourteen
months.
The report of Hussein Avni's arrest soon proved
to have had no foundation, but it is not uninteresting
to inquire into the causes which had given rise to
it. Soon after the fire which destroyed Hussein's
house on that Monday was put out, a number of
workmen were seen searching the ruins and piling
up a quantity of arms of every description which
had been found buried among the wreck. Not all
the passers-by were aware that Hussein, like many
other wealthy men here, had adorned his apartments
with trophies of ancient weapons, and the sight of
all that half consumed and calcined arsenal furnished
the subject of wild conjectures, some of which were
not altogether improbable. It was well known that
no good will existed between Hussein and the Grand
Vizier, Mahmood Pasha, the chief point at variance
being Hussein's opinion that the speediest and surest
way of ending the insurrection in Herzegovina would
be a direct and immediate attack on Montenegro, a
desperate measure from which Mahmood shrunk,
fearing the displeasure of Russia, whose influence, it
was supposed, powerfully swayed the Grand Vizier's
Council. It was under the apprehension that Hus-
sein, if lost sight of, might attempt to carry his views
into execution, regardless of the wishes of the Go-
vernment, that both he and his partisan, Husni
Pasha, late Minister of Police, had been forbidden
to leave the capital for their respective governorships
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS. 131
at Salonica and Yanina. The arms disinterred at
Hussein's burnt house were, therefore, supposed to
have been intended for some coup de main against
Montenegro; while by some more imaginative people
it was thought that they were destined for hatching
that plot of a " massacre of the Christians," the
anticipation of which haunted here diseased brains,
in which some of the Softas, Mollahs, Ulemas, and
other fanatical priests and army officers were sus-
pected of being implicated, thirty-four of whom were
said to have been arrested, and with whom Hussein
Avni Pasha was supposed to be conspiring. Sane
men, who " believe nothing," considered not only
Hussein's alleged guilt, but the whole conspiracy,
and even the imprisonment of the thirty-four, to be
" pure fabrications ;" the fact that the discovered
weapons were only the relics of Hussein's warlike
museum was fully established, and it was added that,
among the collection, the sword of honour given by
the Sultan to Hussein after the pacification of Crete
had been rescued from destruction, though, alas ! reft
of the jewels with which the hilt was studded. We
learned from the newpapers that Hussein was in
retirement at his country seat.
Nevertheless the conduct of Hussein Avni con-
tinued for a long time to be a puzzle upon which it
seemed impossible for the Grand Vizier to put a
favourable construction. All the efforts of the
Government to be rid of this formidable adversary
by sending him, first to Salonica, and later to
92
132 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Broussa, were for a long time unavailing. Hussein
Avni insisted on choosing both time and place for
what he well knew was meant as an honourable
banishment. He was loth to go on any terms, and
though he had been burnt out of his house at Stam-
boul, he could not be made to stir from his country
seat at Scutari. Little as the absolutist views of
this violent party leader had in common with those
of the Ultra-Liberal Midhat Pasha, those two were
now joined in an opposition league, in the hope by
their combined efforts to win the Sultan's ear ; a
point very easily gained with a Sovereign of so
wilful, and, at the same time, so fickle a disposition
as Abd-ul-Aziz. This alliance, as we shall see,
was productive of great events before the world was
many months older. The ground upon which these
two Pashas and their followers took their stand was
first, that the reforms announced in the last Fir-
man were moonshine, and that what the country
required was a bond fide reconstruction, based on a re-
striction of the Sultan's personal omnipotence and the
introduction of representative forms in the Govern-
ment ; secondly, that the Herzegovinian insurrec-
tion should be put down with the strong hand, the
campaign opening, if necessary, with the chastise-
ment of the disloyal vassals of Servia and Monte-
negro. In their designs to give the country a
constitution, and to subjugate the enemies of the
Empire, these valiant patriots did not rely upon
their own efforts. They were not persuaded of the
THE DRAMATIS PERSONS, 133
wisdom of that saying, "Aide toi et Dieu t'aidera"
they threw themselves helplessly and hopelessly on
the ground, complained of the apathy and inactivity
of the great European Powers, especially of Eng-
land, and of the lukewarmness of the friends whose
business it ought to have been to give them the
victory over all their enemies. It was a necessity
for Turkey, they reasoned, to attack Montenegro ;
but how could it be done if Russia put in her veto ?
and if Russia did so, why did not England veto
Russia's veto ? Little as they might expect that a
general war could settle their own affairs, the Turks
seemed to think they could bring it about whenever
they chose, and they threatened the world with it.
The war might not pay their debts, nor solve the
Eastern Question in any manner favourable to their
views and interests, but it would give them their
revenge on the Christian Powers and involve all
Europe in their ruin. As to any hope they might
have either of swaying the Sultan's Council or of
influencing the opinion of their fellow-countrymen,
so as to work out those measures which seemed to
them the only remedy for the country's evils, no-
thing could be expected of them. The boldness to
" bell the cat," to speak out to their Sovereign, was
not to be found in any of them. They feared for
their necks, for the lace on their coat-sleeves ; they
would not incur the charge of demagogues or revolu-
tionists. Every one in Turkey thinks it ought to be
for his neighbour to act, and for himself to look on
134 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
and profit by whatever good fortune may send. A
more abject prostration of all moral courage, a more
complete absence of real self-reliance than even
these few would-be patriots shamelessly exhibit
could not be found even in Spain. Long self-
indulgence among these Orientals has engendered
incapacity for self-sacrifice ; their religion has taught
them the resignation of fatalism, not the heroism of
martyrdom. ' ' Vincit qui patitur " is not the device
of the Crescent.
I was speaking in this sense to Said Pasha, the
director of the artillery department at Tophaneh,
a man who has long resided in England, and was
a pupil at Woolwich college, who speaks very good
English, and appeared altogether under the influence
of European ideas. I shall never forget how he closed
our conversation. " What would you have ?" he
said ; "I had lived abroad till I fancied I had
made myself a man, and when I came back to my
country, I saw about me merely brutes ; but I
have now been at home for a few years and I
begin to feel that I am becoming brutified like the
rest." Does this Said, I wonder, now that he is
Marshal ^of the Palace, and a constant attendant
on Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, still remember the words
he uttered when in opposition to the Government of
Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz ?
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK, 135
CHAPTER IX.
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK.
SULTAN ABD-UL-AZIZ. POPE AND SULTAN. THE SULTAN AND HIS
MINISTERS. THE SULTAN'S WEALTH. HIS SPECULATIONS. HIS
CHARACTER. PECULIARITIES OF THE SYSTEM OF THE SULTAN'S
GOVERNMENT.
To have been at Rome and to have missed seeing the
Pope used to be in the opinion of the Romans, the
most irrefragable evidence of a man's poverty of
spirit. It would be equally unpardonable in any
traveller visiting Constantinople to neglect all oppor-
tunities of having a peep at the Sultan. Indeed, the
more I think of it, the more I am struck with the
many points the " Shadow of God " has in common
with the " Vicar of God." The analogy is perceptible
not only in the place each of them fills at the head of
Church and State, but also in the influence their
peculiar situation exercises on the character of the
two men. Many, if not all, the evils of this world
may be traced to that fatal error which invested a
poor erring mortal with the attributes of omnipotence,
which made the successor of the Prophet and the
successor of the Apostle " infallible," and for that
136 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
very reason incorrigible. We have seen how miser-
ably the well-meaning but greatly puzzled Emperor
Napoleon III. wasted his time when he undertook to
make the Sovereign Pope a man. The efforts of six
or even of sixty Great Powers would be equally
unavailing to shape the Grand Signior into a respon-
sible being. The difficulty in both cases was and is,
how to get at your man. To see the Sultan on his
way to mosque is not more difficult than it used to
be to get into St. Peter's when the Pope officiated
at some of the Christmas or Easter solemnities ; but
to bring the light of the age to shine on the Padi-
shah's intellect would be as desperate an undertaking
as it was to talk sense to the " Servant of Servants,"
when a young American lady, anxious on a grand
state occasion to be allowed to kiss the Pope's
slipper, and being told that " only Princes of the
Blood were admitted to that honour," had to argue
that " her father, as an American citizen, was one of
the Sovereigns of the Great Transatlantic Republic,
and upon that ground she was entitled to all the
privileges of royalty."
I spoke at that time to a personage who by right of
his office was free to make his way into the State
apartments at Dolmabacheh, and who was kind
enough to give me some account of a recent interview
he had had with the exalted inmate of that Palace.
" The impression the Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz made upon
me," he said, " is that of a man consummately bored"
(profondement ennuye). All the slaves of the best-
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 137
stocked harem cannot save Empire from its sense of
unmitigated loneliness. Nothing, it seems, could equal
the inanity, triviality, and utter blank of the Sultan's
mind. He was not deficient in understanding ; he could
" gossip" on many subjects with glibness, refer to some
of the phases in his existence as, for instance, to his
memorable European tour of 1867 with languid
interest, and evince some curiosity about that bust-
ling outer world which, to use the words of Eothen's
Pasha, goes " whirr I whirr ! all by wheels I whiz 1
whiz I all by steam 1" But everything in his look
and speech betrayed the gloomy ignorance in which
his harem education had buried his mental faculties.
He appeared altogether destitute of all powers of
reasoning, incapable of any intellectual exertion, and
especially of any such effort of imagination as might
enable him to break through the magic circle of his
concentrated selfishness, and to feel or even show
sympathy with any living being. There was nothing
so deeply seated in his brain as the consciousness
that the whole world was made for himself alone.
The Popes of old carved out the earth among foreign
Potentates, and drew a meridian line, all to the West
of which was to be awarded to the Catholic and all
to the East to the Most Faithful King. The Sultan
Abd-ul-Aziz seemed equally to think that all the land,
the life, and freedom of the people of his vast Empire
were things to be disposed of by him at his own plea-
sure as his absolute and indisputable private property.
Some glimpse of an idea that he had duties to his
138 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
subjects, that the administration of justice and the
promotion of the common welfare ought to have
engrossed all his cares, did indeed now and then ab-
stractedly shine through his benighted understanding.
The fault, perhaps, lay not in his instincts or inten-
tions, but he took it for granted that for good or evil
he alone should be free to act ; all power should be
centred in his own hand ; he alone should have a
will. It was not that he deemed himself capable, or
that he would be at the trouble of governing. Had
he not got a Grand Vizier ? Where would be the
wisdom of " keeping a dog and barking himself ?"
And when he heard that the Imperial Treasury was
exhausted and the Civil List in arrears, he asked :
" What is the use of a blockhead of a Finance
Minister if he knows not where to find money ?"
The Sultan's scheme of government consisted in
bidding another to govern in his name ; his deputy
drew up a Firman or Irade', addressed to himself,
"A toi, mon Vizir " signed by himself, and laid
for approval before a Sovereign, the first and fore-
most title to whose favour was " never to plague
him about business." The decree which was to go
forth in the Sultan's name was presented, but not
read, and seldom explained at any length to his
Majesty, whose mere nod was accepted as his
approval and sanction, without any further need
of seal, or signature. It was the then Grand
Vizier, Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, who was at the
greatest pains to impress his Sovereign with the
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 139
notion of his unbounded power, insuring thus for
his own benefit a vicarious omnipotence, for the
exercise of which he was responsible to the Monarch
alone a Monarch who, when dissatisfied with his
Minister would not now send him the bow-string or
the cup of coffee which disposed of unprofitable
servants in the good old times, but would simply
intimate to him that the light of the Padishah's
countenance was withdrawn from him, and that he
must make room for a successor.
The main condition on which a Grand Vizier or any
other Minister could rely for his tenure of office was
that the Sultan's will was not to be disputed, that no
argument or remonstrance, no explanation or even
apology was ever to be ventured upon with him. No
observation, consequently, must be made, and, above
all, none on the Master's extravagance or self-indul-
gence. The "Shadow of God" was,after all,a man,and
had his own little fancies and weaknesses, his expen-
sive toys and wasteful luxuries. He had his horses and
carriages, his gilt barges, and lusty Albanian oars-
men, his slaves and eunuchs, his " follies " in those
long rows of empty kiosks and palaces, barracks,
mosques, and unemployed ironclads. Strange to say,
he combined with all this insane lavishness, with all
this staring magnificence, the most tight-fisted avar-
ice, the lowest instinct of saving and hoarding. He
had, it was said, three millions of gold hid away in his
cellar, and held eight millions worth of his own
precious Consols. Where a man's treasure is, as we
140 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
all know, there his soul lies buried ; and it is no
wonder if we heard that the Sultan was haunted by
incessant suspicions and terrors, and that he went so
far in his precautions as to endanger his health by a
diet of hard-boiled eggs.* His ostensible advisers,
and still more his secret favourites and sycophants,
flattered both these propensities, and encouraged
every whim which prompted their pampered lord to
make money or to spend it. Every public enterprise,
every financial operation to which the Sultan's con-
sent or patronage had to be won, was represented to
him as a scheme conducive as much to his personal
emolument as to the general well-being of his people.
Of every national loan by which the disorder of the
finances has been palliated for these last twenty
years the Head of the State had always had the first
share. Nothing could seem pleasanter to him than
to see dogs of Franks and Christians, not only ridding
him of his difficulties by taking his paper, but also
paying him gold in return for it. What other people
bought for hard cash the. Padishah accepted as a
present, and the Grand Vizier's act of October, 1875,
which bade other bondholders to whistle for half
their dividends, never affected the Sultan, who re-
* English readers are still laughing at the telegram announcing
that "His Ottoman Majesty was suffering from indigestion, caused by
eating eighteen hard-boiled eggs ;" but few, perhaps, reflected that the
disorder arose, not so much from gluttony as from a desire to
appease hunger by the only food with which, as the Sultan thought,
no poison could be mixed.
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 141
ceived his interest in full, as I stated at the time,
and as, in spite of all contradiction, every one in
Turkey could confirm. In the same manner, and
on the same principle, the Sultan became the first
shareholder in that commercial and maritime enter-
prise which bears the name of the " Azizieh Steam
Navigation Company." The Sultan was made to
feel that it was both a misfortune and a disgrace that
the Ottoman Empire should have no mercantile navy,
and that even the coasting trade of that favoured
region should be almost entirely in the hands of
Greek, French, Italian, Austrian, and other ship-
owners. His Majesty's ambition was fired, a nominal
company was instituted, and a certain amount of its
shares was, by way of a sample, tendered to his
acceptance. It turns out now that the stock-in-
trade of this so-called society consists of a number of
wretched vessels which would be doomed to lie idle
in port were they not too often taken up by the
Porte for the transport of troops and war material.
The boats are, in reality, owned by the Admiralty,
which appoints the directors of the supposititious com-
pany. The profits of the enterprise are as imaginary
as the company itself, but the dividend of the Sultan
was no less punctually and regularly paid, the under-
standing being that the higher the sum received by
His Majesty, the greater would be his satisfaction with
the present state and future prospects of the associa-
tion, and the safer would be the Minister of Marine's
tenure of office. It is more than notorious, however,
142 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
that this sham company sinks yearly a large sum of
money. The late Essad Pasha, a comparatively
wise and honourable ruler, when Grand Vizier looked
into its accounts, and proved that in eighteen months
these showed a deficit of 300,000. After such a
discovery was made public, no one could be surprised
to learn that Essad Pasha's premiership was brought
to an abrupt termination.* The Sultan's handsome
yearly dividend, as I said, was paid, no matter at what
cost. Some of the officials came in for some good
pickings, and the gross annual deficit of the " com-
pany's " balance-sheet was placed to the debit of the
Admiralty, and figured as wages or stores for the
Navy. Thus a serious subtraction of revenue was
periodically effected ; and money which ought to have
been applied to the purposes of the administration in
general, and to the payment of public creditors in
particular, was diverted or perverted to the support
of a fictitious mercantile marine enterprise, and, in
reality, to a flagitious scheme for putting money into
* The suddenness of the death of Essad Pasha and the symptoms
exhibited by his very short illness have given rise to strong
suspicions that he was poisoned. Immediately on reaching Smyrna,
where he was sent as Governor, he was seized with strong fits of
vomiting, and died within eight hours. People had not forgotten
the fate of Mehemet Eushdi Sirvanizadeh, who was carried off in
the same manner upon his appointment as Governor in Yemen two
months before, and whose death was ascribed to pernicious fever,
but the symptoms of whose complaint were identical with those
which preceded Essad's death. Could these alleged crimes be
proved, they would only show that Turkey has not yet broken with
her old traditions.
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 143
the private pocket of the Sultan and of some of the
men who ruled in his name.
In pursuance of this dishonest purpose, be it
observed, the Porte had always opposed itself effec-
tually to every bond fide attempt of private enter-
prise to create a steam company under the Ottoman
flag. Every step in this direction was invariably
frustrated by the onerous terms demanded by
the Government for the hire of these wretched boats,
and by the practice of the Admiralty in seizing on
them for transport purposes, without ever compensa-
ting the hirers. The Azizieh boats, from their known
deficiencies, could not, of course, compete with the
foreign companies on any of the great coasting lines ;
but on smaller lines, not frequented by the large
steam companies, they drove off private enterprise by
reducing the fares until they secured a monopoly.
From this single instance of the malversation of
the resources of the country by the Administration, it
seems easy to infer that the evils of Turkey admitted
of no cure which should not begin by the emancipa-
tion of the Head of the State from the general run
of his advisers, and by some contrivance which
should bring the force of public opinion to bear upon
him. So long as he was allowed his own way, the
Ministers who best kindled or fostered his passions,
humoured his caprices, and, above all things, most
plentifully supplied his purse, were always the most
acceptable to him. It is difficult to see by what
means truth might be made to find its -way to the
144 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
throne. The Sultan, though so conspicuously visible,
was, in reality, the least accessible of Sovereigns.
People approached him with as great an awe as if all
the thunders of Jupiter were ready to burst from his
footstool. The Ministers, and other high func-
tionaries admitted to his presence, bowed down to the
ground and shaded their eyes with their hands, as if
unable to bear the sun-like blaze radiating from the
Sovereign countenance. The Grand Vizier sum-
moned by the Padishah on business, early in the
morning, was often kept waiting in the ante-chamber
till late in the evening, when he received an uncere-
monious intimation, through some chamberlain or
eunuch, that His Majesty "would, for that day, dis-
pense with the Sadrazam's presence."
Every Ottoman subject, from the loftiest pasha to
the meanest hamal, seemed to labour under some
vague terror of the Sultan's power, as well as of his
ungovernable temper. Doubts were even enter-
tained as to Abd-ul- Aziz's sanity, and it was believed
there was hardly any excess to which a sudden out-
burst of his wrath might not carry him. Indeed
there are dark tales afloat of his having, in more than
one instance, abused the right that his title of Hun-
Jciar, or " Man-slayer," gave him over his subject's
lives. One of his besetting weaknesses was an almost
superstitious fear of fire, and it was said that he
would allow neither lamp nor candle to be carried
about in the palace after dark. One night as he was
groping along the corridors one of his favourite female
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 145
slaves came suddenly out of her apartment, taper in
hand, to light his way. He turned upon her in a
towering fury, felled her to the ground, trampled
upon her, and, as she was in Poppaea's interesting
condition, the poor officious girl succumbed to the
same fate that the Roman Empress met at
Nero's hands. Whatever may be thought of this
and other stories, which might well prepare us for
the tragic end of Abd-ul- Aziz's reign and life, there
were people about him who thought that all the
Padishah's frequent raging and storming were only a
desire to conceal his inborn timidity., and that, had a
man been found brave enough to beard the lion in his
den, he would, by the very flash of his steady eye and
resolute mien, have readily tamed the imperial brute.
A hero of that mettle was not, however, forthcoming.
The men who ought to have pointed to the Sultan
the way he should go, were either too much interested
to lead him wrong, or too much afraid to tell him
what was right.
From my first landing in Turkey I saw myself
beset by a crowd of pessimists, who looked upon any
imaginable step of the Ottoman Government towards
progress as an absolute impossibility. There has
never been, there is not, there can never be, they
said, a Government in Turkey. The Osmanlis came
into this country only to crush and plunder, not to
rule their Christian subjects. They never aspired to
organise a community, for the very rudiments of
government were unknown to them. They professed
VOL. i. 10
146 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
to allow, and in a certain measure allowed, their pro-
vinces the enjoyment of their own local institutions,
for the very good reason that they had nothing to
substitute for them. They simply deputed a Pasha
or Proconsul, whose business it was to make money
for the Sultan and for himself by whatever means
his own caprice could suggest, and to administer some
sort of rough-and-ready justice. For the rest, they
were only too glad to suffer their Christian subjects
to administer their local affairs as they deemed most
expedient, in obedience to the same necessity which
still compels them to give Christians the almost
entire monopoly of their diplomacy ; viz., from their
utter unfitness to take upon themselves duties for
which their exclusive military education had little
prepared them. They were a soldier caste, and dis-
dained every employment that did not entirely refer
to the art of war. With the downfall of their mili-
tary power, the business of the Turks was at an end.
They sank into inglorious repose, while their Christian
subjects, unable to uphold right against might, ac-
quired habits of abject submission and of habitual
cunning and duplicity which in a great measure dis-
qualify them for that self-government for which they
are so loudly clamouring.
I am not surprised at anybody's sympathy
with the Turks, for they and the Spaniards are
still, in manners, the first gentlemen of Europe,
But I do not think any one can entertain kindly
feelings towards their Government. I do not
7 HE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 147
believe any one, unless it be Lady Strangford, can
"love" the Sultan or his Ministers. One may pity
the Sultan, because, such as he is, he is only what
his education in the harem, his early dissipation, and
the flattery and abject prostration of all around him
have made him. Like the Pope, the Sultan is not
a person, but the result of a system a system which
one could never sufficiently abhor ; and it is difficult
to see how any scheme of reforms which should not
begin with the overthrow of that system can lead to
any satisfactory results. Such a sight as an eye-
witness described to me one of these days ought to
be held decisive on this point. He was standing on
the footpath of one of the Galata thoroughfares near
Tophaneh, towards evening, when a tramping of
horses preceded the arrival of a Court carriage,
conveying the Sultan's son, Izzedin Effendi. An
unfortunate Armenian carter was obstructing the
way, and although, on hearing the cavalcade, he did
his utmost to drive his restive horse aside, he was
unable to master the wretched animal so as to give
way in time. He was fallen upon by the outriders
with their whips and so belaboured by the zaptiehs,
or policemen, hastening to the spot, that when at
last they left him he was hardly able to move. The
young prince, whose carriage was thus unavoidably
detained half a minute, sat and looked on uncon-
cerned, and proceeded on his way to the palace,
apparently satisfied that the chastisement inflicted on
one of his father's inoffensive subjects was simply an
102
US THE EASTERN QUESTION.
act of homage due to his exalted rank. I remember
just such a scene in one of the streets of Naples in
the days of King Bomba, in 1834 ; but years have
passed since the Government of that King was stig-
matised as " the negation of God," and I wonder
how long it may be before the Sultan's Government
is made to understand that such a treatment of
human beings as I have now described is no longer
to be tolerated in Europe.
Reform, I repeat, must begin in the household of
Dolmabacheh, and I do not believe that the Grand
Vizier or any foreign Ambassador has conveyed a
hint to the Sultan to that effect. Lady Strangford,
I understand, in her interviews with the Grand
Vizier, insisted upon " the importance of devising
some scheme for the education of women of the
upper classes," and she was answered that " the sub-
ject had been taken into serious consideration by men
high in authority, and by no one with greater interest
than by the Grand Vizier himself." But I fear the
Grand Vizier, if he be in earnest, will find the re-
habilitation of the sex in a Mohammedan community
very hard uphill work. It no longer happens so
frequently as it used to do that European ladies
walking in the streets of Pera, in sight of the
Foreign Embassies, have their arms pinched by the
insolent Turkish soldiers ; but an unfortunate " hat-
wearer," who by an evil chance was sauntering along
the garden wall of a Turkish country-house, had a
brickbat thrown at him by one of the eunuchs, be-
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 149
cause he just glanced over the low fence. The brick-
bat was ill-aimed and did no harm, but on going
cautiously over the same ground on the following
day the Frank found that the wall had been raised
by a couple of yards, and he was thus safe from a
repetition of his involuntary offence and of its in-
tended punishment.
It is difficult to foresee how long walled-up ladies
and eunuch guards will continue to be the rule in
Turkey, and even more so to imagine what resist-
ance any attempt to strike the evil at the root may
meet on the part of the besotted and fanatical Mo-
hammedan population. Already, thanks to the in-
spiration of Softas, Ulemas, and men of that cloth,
the exasperation among the Moslems from the
very announcement of the alleged " Reforms" was
becoming dangerous, and their ill-will was turned,
not so much against the Christians, as against the
Government, whom they charged with abject weak-
ness for their proposal to introduce innovations in
the laws of the country at the Giaour's suggestion,
and with incapacity in dealing with an insurrection
stirred up at the Giaour's instigation. The Imperial
Firman of Reforms and the Civil War in Herzego-
vina were both, in the Moslem's estimation, the con-
sequence of the Forte's subserviency to the European
Fowers. The Moslems bore no goodwill to the
Powers, but they harboured something very like con-
tempt for the Porte. Already symptoms of the evil
mind of the people towards the Christians were
150 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
apparent in occasional breaches of the public peace,
reports of which found their way into the news-
papers, notwithstanding the gag imposed by a rigid
though stolid censorship on the public press. A
Christian, living under the protection of the French
flag, had taken up his quarters in the ward of Ainaly-
Tchesme, at Pera, inhabited by a mixed population of
Moslems and Christians. On a dark Thursday morn -
ing the day after his installation in his new abode,
a mob of Turkish women, children, and men of all
ages assembled before the house, smashed all its
windows, broke through the door and invaded the
house, crying " Get out, Giaours !" The Mukhtar,
or mayor, and the Imam, or priest of the district, led
the riot. Three of the zaptiehs, attracted by the
clamour and by the sight of the furniture, which the
rabble semV down flying from the windows, deemed
it their duty to interfere, but far from protecting the
Christians, they made common cause with the law-
breakers. They knocked the man down with the
butt-end of their carbines, and dragged him, his wife,
and children to the station-house, whence the poor
family were only released after four hours' durance.
The house, meanwhile, was gutted by the populace
from the basement to the garret. The humour of the
multitude, in short, is by no means reassuring. I
hear persons sneer at the idea that any real mischief
may be apprehended on the part of such wretched
hinds as the rabble of Stamboul consists of, and I
am told that " a whiff of grape-shot would be suffi-
THE TURKS AND THE GRAND TURK. 151
cient to clear the streets of whole legions of such beg-
gars." The question is, where are the men to fire
the grape-shot ? for, in the case I have quoted, the
local authorities and the public force were on the
side of the populace, and in any effervescence of
evil passions public order has no worse enemies to
fear than the very soldiers whose duty it ought to be
to maintain it.
152 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER X.
TURKISH REFORMS.
OLD AND NEW FIRMANS. MAHMOUD NEDIM. MIDHAT. REFORMS IN
ITALY AND TURKEY. THE STATE AND THE NATION. THE TURK-
ISH CHARACTER. POLITICAL. COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL.
BAZAARS. CEMETERIES.
IT was an understood thing reforms were to be
introduced in the Ottoman administration. The
appeal to arms of the Herzegovinians, the uproar of
the bond-holders of the Turkish debt defrauded of
the payment of half their coupons, had made the
Sultan, his advisers, and the whole world aware that
there was " something rotten in the state of Turkey,"
and the Grand Vizier, with all his Cabinet, were
determined that it should be made sound again.
Somehow, however, the anticipations of the people
were not very sanguine. The imperfections of the
administration had been noticed in many former in-
stances. Reform had been again and again the order
of the day. Hopes had been raised, invariably at-
tended by grievous disappointment. Men had not for-
gotten the Tanzimat, the Hatt-i-SheriffofGul-haneh,
the Hatt-i-Humayoun, and other Imperial charters
TURKISH REFORMS. 153
and decrees, Firmans and Trades, all intended as
sovereign remedies for the cure of the sick man, the
effect of which had been to bring him to the present
desperate condition.
There was little faith in the reforms themselves,
and still less in the men by whom they were to be
ushered in. Mahmoud Nedim, the Grand Vizier,
was by nature a despot, and had at all times encou-
raged his Sovereign's most despotic propensities, and
dismissed those members of the Cabinet who were
thought to be earnest in the cause of freedom.
" Mahmoudoff" was, besides, heart and soul a Rus-
sian, and the measures by which the Government
was to be modified were suspected of having been
adopted at the suggestion of that arch-enemy, General
Ignatieff, the Russian Ambassador. The Firman
of reforms had, however, to contend with something
worse than the scepticism and ill-will of those few of
the Sultan's subjects who took some interest in the
matter. It had to conquer the utter supineness and
apathy of the masses ; an indifference arising, on
the part of some of the populace, from a conceit
that " no reforms were needed ;" on the part of
others, from a conviction that "no reforms were
practicable."
Those who remember the wild enthusiasm with
which the mere announcement of a general amnesty
convulsed Rome and Italy at the beginning of the
Pontificate of Pius IX., were not a little taken
aback when witnessing the outward signs by which
154 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the people in Turkey manifested their sense of the
inestimable boon vouchsafed to them by that Fir-
mari of the Sultan, which, taken to the letter, might
be considered so decided a step in advance of the
many former " Hatts," which had in every instance
been described as " amply sufficient for all the w r ants
of the Ottoman subjects." Only a few days before
the publication of the Firman, in mid-December, the
Pera journals were denouncing the grievous error of
those foreign writers who ignored the existence of
a " Turkish patriotism," and who imagined that the
only bond of union of the empire lay in the attach-
ment of the Mussulmans to their creed. "There
is," they said, "a people of Turkey, true to its
national traditions, alive to national aspirations,
and prepared to follow its rulers in any step that
may lead to the development of national life." If
this be so, with what waving of flags, with what
illuminations or bonfires, did this Turkish patriotism
greet the edict by which the Sovereign gave a first
intimation of his readiness to come to terms with his
people ? Alas ! in Stamboul it can be safely asserted
that hardly one in a thousand of the Padishah's
'subjects, Mussulmans or Christians, ever heard or
read one syllable of the Imperial Firman ; and even
in Pera, those very same patriotic journals their
name is legion suffered three days to pass before
they found room in their columns for the precious
document, and even when they published it, they
either gave the text without one word of friendly or
TURKISH REFORMS. 155
hostile comment, or spoke of it with a coolness or
calmness which froze the blood in the reader's
veins.
Are we told that experience had taught them
what value might be put on the Sultan's bounties,
and that they looked upon the new, as on the old
national charters, as so much waste paper ? Did
they feel that they could address their Imperial
master in the words of the opera, Siete Turco, non
vl credo?" But with the Italians, also, belief in
any possible conciliation of Romanism with freedom
was very faint, and they knew what hopes could be
built on such a phenomenon as a " Liberal Pope."
But the Italians had faith in themselves. They
felt confident that with that papal " inch " that
was held out to them an "ell" would soon follow,
and they so worked on the vanity, helplessness, and
imbecility of that " Benevolent Pope " as to over-
throw seven States, build up a nation, and even-
tually to sap the foundation of the Papacy itself.
The Sultan's subjects, Christians and Mussul-
mans, even the very journals which professed to
look upon Turkey as a country, were well aware
that there was for their " nation " neither a past nor
a future ; that the present was chaos, and that utter
confusion and dissolution alone could lead to un-
known reorganisation and revival ; that Islamism
must continue as it is till it ceases to be, and that
no human foresight can imagine what may even-
tually take its place. Blind Oriental fatalism here
156 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
equally paralyses the Moslem and the Giaour. No
one dreams of a possibility of either political or
social reform, no one can harbour the least faith of
even a first step in the way of progress, no one can
anticipate a mitigation of the hideous, all-pervading
corruption. There is not a man in Turkey, not a
statesman, not a patriot, there are hardly the
elements even for a conspiracy or a popular riot.
The Christian journals in Pera seemed scarcely
to find words harsh enough to stigmatise the
disloyalty and presumption of the Herzegovinian
insurgents " What do these insane mountain boors
and brigands disturb the public peace for ?" they
said. " Have not the Turks their national charter ?
Is not the Sultan's the best of all possible Govern-
ments ?" And when the Sultan himself belied them
by his Firman, which promised equal justice, humane
taxation, wise administration, and economy as so
many desiderata, they had not one syllable either to
answer him that they had already got all that all
they wanted as they asserted, or else to tell him
that, whether or not they relied on his promises,
they must have all he engaged to give ; that they
would take him at his own word ; and they intended
that this time there should be no delusion. Most
decidedly, reform in Turkey would never have been
mentioned, never have been dreamt of, had not those
few shots of Herzegovinian rifles and the clamour of
the creditors of the Porte suggested the necessity of
a new mystification.
TURKISH REFORMS. 157
The reforms promulgated by the Firman of De-
cember, 1875, embraced various branches of judicial,
political, and financial administration. They tended
to emancipate the courts of law from Government
influence, and to ensure the perfect equality of all
the subjects before the law, without distinction of
race or creed. The Minister of Justice was to be
dispossessed of his judicial functions as President of
the Court of Cassation, and the commercial tribunals
would be detached from the Ministry of Commerce,
and made subordinate to the Supreme Court. The
judges would be permanently appointed, and not re-
movable without a " legitimate cause." Judges of
provincial courts were to spring from popular elec-
tion ; but the presidency of provincial and of district
courts was reserved for the Naib (the assessor of
the Cadi) or for some other officer of the Crown.
All lawsuits between Mahommedans and Christians
or other non-Mussulmans must be referred ex-
clusively to the civil tribunals. There would be a
reduction and unification of taxes. These would no
longer be collected by the police, but by a tax-
gatherer elected by the people in each district. The
police would be chosen among the best inhabitants
of each district. The tax for exoneration from
military service of non-Mussulmans should only be
levied upon men between the ages of twenty and
forty. Exoneration from military service to Mussul-
mans would be granted on a charge reduced from
one hundred to fifty Turkish lire (the lira equal to
158 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
18s. Gd. There were other provisions for the abolition
of the corvees, or compulsory labour, for the commu-
tation of the prestation, or labour tax, for the re-
moval of all restrictions on the erection of places of
worship or schools, and of all hindrance to the pos-
session of real estate for the non-Mussulmans, and
finally for an equal admission to all offices in the
public service of all the Sultan's subjects, without
distinction of creed.
All these concessions, if taken to the letter and
fairly interpreted, would have amounted to a very
important popular Bill of Rights, and ought in a
great measure to have met the demands of that part
of the population which considered itself particularly
aggrieved. It is not certain that 'Midhat Pasha,
had he remained in the Cabinet, or had he been
placed at the head of a Ministry of his own choice,
would at the time have had any better scheme of
reform to propose. He left Mahmoud's Cabinet
because he thought that the remedies projected by
the Grand Vizier would be inefficient to put an end
to " the frightful disorder of the finance," to " the
lax discipline of the troops," to " the defective system
of provincial administration," and other crying evils
of the community, and because he was unable to
bring in his own scheme, which was to be based on
a perfect, absolute equality before the law of Mo-
hammedans and Christians ; on the institution of a
permanent Council, consisting of thirty-five unpaid
members, partly to be appointed by the Government,
TURKISH REFORMS. 159
and partly to be elected by the taxpayers, a Council
to be charged with the discussion and control of
the Budget ; on the extension of the provincial
system, with a view to the establishment of com-
munal rights, and the development of the electoral
principle ; and finally, on the independence and re-
sponsibility of the Ministers of the Crown.
The time came when Midhat was to make the ex-
periment of his full budget of constitutional liberties,
and we shall see how he acquitted himself of his
task, but, with respect to Mahmoud's reforms, those
who declared that they were " all moonshine," arid
that " nothing would come of them," could hardly
claim much credit for prophetic gifts ; for, whatever
might be the Grand Vizier's real intentions, he was
allowed neither the leisure, nor the ease of mind, nor
the pecuniary means by which the provisions of the
Firman could be carried into effect. Time would
have been required to establish the principles and prac-
tice of popular election, and it would have taken little
less than a miracle to supply the personnel for the
reformed tribunals, and for a less disreputable police,
unless the salaries of these officials had been so raised
as to place them in somewhat independent circum-
stances, an arrangement which would have imposed
new and heavy sacrifices on the State ; the alternative
lying between the necessity of healing the universal
corruption of the administration and the other no
less urgent necessity of effecting some reduction in
the public expenditure. What, besides, may be con-
160 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
sidered " legitimate causes" justifying the removal
of an " irremovable " magistrate, and within what
limits the abolition of corvees and other grivances of
the non-Mussulman population might be affected was
not and could not be clearly defined, because the
essentially arbitrary character of the Ottoman
Government was in no way to be affected by the
projected reforms. The question, as it soon became
evident, was one of "guarantees." Every reform
would be illusory which was not undertaken by a
minister bold enough to intimate to the Sultan
that the welfare of his subjects required a curtail-
ment of his despotic power, the creation of a de-
liberative Council and of a responsible Cabinet
something, in short, which should place the law
as emanating from the people above the caprice
of the Sovereign's rule. A sufficiently absurd re-
port was current at the time that the Sultan
intended to ensure to the then Grand Vizier,
Mahmoud Nedim, five years' tenure of office. But
the mischief lay not merely in the fickleness of his
Majesty in the choice of his advisers, but also, and
much more, in his preference of those who recom-
mended themselves to him by their abject sub-
serviency to all his wishes. There is a story current
at Dolmabacheh about Midhat's first appointment
to the Grand Vizierate, and it is to the effect that
the Sultan had received from Europe the model of a
new toy of a fire-engine, and was trying to work it
with the assistance of his Sadrazain (Essad, it was at
TURKISH REFORMS. 161
the time, I believe) who, either from sheer awkward-
ness or from distaste for the menial employment, so
managed as to turn the stream of water full on the
face and breast of the Padishah. The untoward
accident led to the immediate expulsion and dis-
missal of the clumsy Grand Vizier ; and, as Midhat
chanced to be at hand as a morning caller, and, upon
his being bidden, plied the pump with a will, and
showed his Sovereign how the " flow of his bounties
should be turned not upon himself, but upon his
people at large," he was then and there taken into
favour, and for three months guided as Grand
Vizier the destinies of the country.
The anecdote may be "true or well invented," but
the fact is that neither Turkey nor any other country
can be satisfactorily constituted, till the men at the
head of the State spring from the will of the ma-
jority of the people, and are responsible to it.
The Midhat constitution has not, as we shall see,
hitherto introduced the least modification in the
Turkish Government in that respect.
The truth of the matter is, however, that both
Mahmoud Nedim and Midhat, and all other pro-
jectors of reforms and constitutions for Turkey, have
overlooked the main obstacle rising against their
enterprise i.e. the absence in the Ottoman Empire
of what in all other countries constitutes a nation.
No efforts have been made, none are even now
seriously contemplated, to efface the traces of the
conquest of four centuries ago. The Turks, or
VOL. i. 11
102 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Osmanlis, still consider themselves the dominant race,
and resist all amalgamation or fusion, not only with
Christians, Jews, and other " unbelievers," but even
with the Arabs of Asia Minor and Syria, and with
the Pomacks of Bosnia and Bulgaria, the former of
whom professed the Koran long before it was ac-
knowledged by the Turks themselves, and the latter
who accepted it at the conqueror's hand at the time
of the invasion. We are told, but we must accept
cum grano salis, that the Turks are the most tolerant
people in the world, and it may, perhaps, be admitted
that in certain localities the condition of the Mussul-
mans is even worse than that of the Christians, inas-
much as these latter manage to place themselves under
the protection of some foreign Consular agent inte-
rested to see them righted, while the Mussulmans
have absolutely no person to whom they can apply
for redress. But that is not all that is wanted it
is by no means what is wanted as a basis of a fair
and equitable government. What has never been
done, or even attempted in Turkey, is to create the
Turk; to bring about that reconciliation between the
conqueror and the vanquished which have made of
the Frank and Gaul a Frenchman, of a Norman and
Saxon an Englishman.
Those of my English friends in Turkey who
profess to love the Turks, admit in many instances
whatever one may say in condemnation of the de-
testable Turkish government; but they should reflect
that, in Turkey as in all other countries, the govern-
TURKISH REFORMS. 163
ment is the immediate result of the people's character,
and, in the case of Turkey, of the character of that
conquering race, who, as long and as far as they
were able, jealously monopolised the government
and turned it to their exclusive advantage. The
Osmanlis came into this region as a warrior caste,
and even in their warlike enterprises they only
excelled in those virtues by which victory may be
secured, but not those by which it can be turned to
practical purposes. War was their only employment,
and they never developed any aptitude for other
pursuits. Their leaders seized upon the land, and
the multitude settled upon it, a mere set of shepherds
and clumsy husbandmen, out of whom the ranks of
their national host were recruited. For the whole
business of government, and even for their military
and naval organisation, they were dependent either
on the conquered population or on aliens, with whom
religion rendered any amalgamation impossible. The
family itself was based on principles of blind and jealous
despotism, subject to the rule of a eunuch, who was
only inferior in authority to the head of the establish-
ment. We buried, in the spring of 1876, Soulha
Agha, the First Eunuch of the Imperial Palace ; his
burial rites were celebrated in the Mosque of St.
Sophia, and his remains were laid in the Mausoleum
of Mahmoud II., by the side of those of the great
Sultan. Djever Agha, one of the twelve veteran
eunuchs the rank and file of the eunuchs at the
palace exceed one hundred was appointed his suc-
112
164 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
cessor, and we learnt that the titles by which his
office is designated are Devletu Mayetlu (tres fortune,
tres puissant, et tres misericordieux), and also that
all the State dignitaries hastened to congratulate
him on his promotion. His salary is T.600 monthly,
or T.7200 a year, and he takes precedence of all
State functionaries below the Grand Vizier and the
Sheik-ul-Islam, or Head of the Church, with whom
he ranks as an equal. The late Chief Eunuch had
accumulated a fortune of T. 220,000; which, as he
left no heir, reverted to the Sultan, his master.
The new Chief, on his appointment, was decorated
with the Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the
Osmanlie'.
In every family of distinction the eunuch is equally
the master's prime minister, and women and children
mere slaves brought up under his sway. The State,
which must everywhere be the aggregate of families,
depends for its development on eunuch education ;
its most exalted members, and the Sultan himself,
are doomed in early life to the idleness and seclusion
of the domestic harem. And as houses of ancient
descent have almost disappeared, and advancement
in the State, and even in the army, is matter of
sovereign favour, and Pashas and Viziers are, as a
rule, mere parvenus it follows that there is in the
country no such thing as a governing class, no set of
men qualified by tradition or by special training to
fill the most important places either in the civil or
in the military departments of the public service.
TURKISH REFORMS. 165
Were there no other men than Turks in Turkey,
even such wretched government as now exists could
not be carried on. In the Grand Vizier's Council,
in every Ministerial office,, in the War Department,
in the Admiralty, there is always the Mussulman
invested with the shadow as well as with the emolu-
ments, but the Christian, Armenian, Greek, or Euro-
pean in possession of the drudgery, and also of the
substance, of that power of which the Sultan is the
fountain-head. The Sultan's mere caprice appoints
the Mussulman Minister, but the Under-Secretary,
most of the clerks, and all the book-keepers, the
diplomatic or Consular agents, some of the Governors
of Provinces, and all their secretaries and councillors
are Christians ; the Mussulmans who occasionally fill
such places owing their appointment to some excep-
tional circumstances, either of birth or family con-
nections, which bestowed on them the advantages of
a European education.
In spite of all that has lately been done to esta-
blish Imperial Colleges, Lyceums, and even Univer-
sities for the benefit of Mussulman students, and of
the free access allowed them to flourishing Greek,
Armenian, and Frank institutions, the initiation of
Turkish children into such studies as might fit them
for useful public or private employment has hitherto
been attended by no very satisfactory results. In-
tellectual development is, after all, hereditary, and
the Turkish brain has for too many generations lain
fallow not to be distanced in the race with minds
166 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
with which a certain amount of at least practical
cultivation has never ceased. The Turks, like the
negroes, are not without some aptitude for the
mechanical and imitative pursuits which are merely
matter of the senses. They can be made to write
a fine hand ; they are instinctively good musicians ;
but in all sciences tasking the faculty of abstraction,
and especially in mathematics, or even arithmetic,
they break down at the very rudiments, and their
teachers' eiforts to overcome their innate obtuseness
are altogether hopeless. There is no ambition or even
avarice that can ever make a Turk a saraff, or a man
of business. There is no such thing as a Mussulman
banker or even money-changer in Constantinople.
Banking establishments, I believe, without an excep-
tion, have their quarters in Galata, and are exclu-
sively in the hands of Greeks, Armenians, and Jewish
or Christian Franks ; and the hundreds of exchange
offices, mere holes in some lurking corners to be
found at every step at the shop doors, or underneath
the shop windows of every crowded street on either
side of the Karakeui bridge, where men with greasy
red caps, or tattered black or yellow turbans, are
perpetually rattling their copper coins from hand to
hand to attract the attention of the passers-by, are
either kept by Jews on their own account or by low-
caste Turks, who only superintend the business,
leaving the actual transactions to smart Jewish or
Armenian accountants.
The glory of the famed bazaars of Stamboul has
TURKISH REFORMS. 107
departed from them. The trade in jewellery, silk,
embroidery, and all goods of high value is now car-
ried on in shops of some pretensions, opened on
either side of the Grande Rue of Pera, where the
Christians have the monopoly, and where the chairs
and carriages of Turkish ladies stop in the afternoon,
especially on Fridays, the shopkeeper or his assistant
standing with his goods at the carriage window, for
by an order of Abd-ul-Aziz Mussulman women
are not allowed to alight and walk in, the pretext of
shopping having in former times been made a screen
for intrigues, and the show-rooms upstairs or at the
back lending themselves to the purposes of stolen in-
terviews. The bazaars are still in existence, never-
theless, and they are an especial object of curiosity to
strangers who are either in quest of the few articles
of native manufacture and of such antiquities, heir-
looms, and nicknacks as the wreck of great Ori-
ental families brings into the markets, or simply
interested in the oddities and peculiarities of Eastern
life. A lounge in these bazaars, when a long drought
has made the mud of their slippery pavement at all
practicable, is not without its attractions, and it
epitomises not a few of the main features of the
Levantine character. What strikes the beholder on
a first view is the quaintness of the buildings, the
universal mass of dirt of all things and persons, and
the closeness and unwholesomeness of the air that
pervades them. The bazaars are a maze of long
narrow passages shut in on both sides by high and
168 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
massive walls, ending in arches overhead, open or not
open to the air and light, clumsy but lofty structures
in the semblance of the aisles of old cathedrals, some
of them evidently of great antiquity, crossing one
another in endless turnings and at all sorts of angles,
the arches of one gallery in some instances obstruct-
ing, intersecting, and dove-tailing into those of an-
other, as their construction was carried on at hap-
hazard at various epochs, and the exigencies of the
moment interfered with all ideas of order or design,
as well as with every consideration of comfort or even
safety.
How hard it is for anything like real trade to be
carried on in these cramped localities will be easily
imagined if we bear in mind that on Fridays the
faithful Moslem is away to his mosque, on Satur-
days the pious Jew is forbidden to touch money, and
on Sundays the acute Greek, the wily Armenian, and
the tricky Levantine observe the Lord's Day ; be-
sides which there are fast and feast days for all the
different sects, when every manner of work is at a
standstill, as all know to their cost who, like Sir
Henry Elliot, have to re-furnish an Embassy, or,
like Baron Werther, to raise a new palace from the
ground for the accommodation of their diplomatic
establishments. Add to this that the business hours
for the bazaars are very limited ; long before sunset
no living soul, save the watchman, is allowed to move
about in them ; stores and shops are shut up, and
any stranger who ventures to look in is awed by just
TURKISH REFORMS. 169
such haunting terrors as one who chances to be shut
in after dark among the sepulchral monuments of an
old Gothic minster, or in the labyrinth of the Roman
Catacombs.
During the short period of daylight, however, the
variety of shapes and colours of the motley crowd by
which those 'narrow passages are beset, and of the
endless wares laid out on counters or dangling at the
entrance of those interminable rows of shops and
booths, the picturesque though ragged costumes, the
uncouth cries, the wild gestures of the huckstering
rabble, constitute a scene of unequalled quaintness,
and bewilder as much of the senses of a newly-arrived
visitor as is left him by his efforts to withstand the
tide of the throng that sets in against him, or that
of the throng which jostles him along with it. Here
are carpets and rugs, embroidery from Broussa,
Cashmere shawls and Chinese silks, glittering
daggers and swords from Damascus, rose-water from
Adrianople, ermines, brocades, slippers, pipes and
amber mouth-pieces, every variety of Turkish and
Persian, mixed with every specimen of cheap
Nuremberg and Birmingham industry. The Mussul-
man merchant himself sits on his legs behind his
counter ; he smokes his chibouque, strokes his beard,
and' makes no sign. But he relies for custom on his
brisk Jew or Levantine assistant, a crowd of whom
fasten on the visitor and stick to him like leeches,
pestering him with their cry " Need not buy, sare I
Only come in, sare ! Just look in here, sare !" till
170 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the poor victim has bribed one of them to rid him of
the importunity of the rest. Venture into one of
the booths, and you will soon have a fair evidence of
the proverbial honesty and fair dealing of the com-
mercial Moslem. Nine out of ten articles of Persian
manufacture and of the antica, or old curiosities, are
shams, and the imitation is so clumsy as to be easily
detected by the initiated. Here is a casket with
Arabic inscriptions, the letters of which have been un-
wittingly reversed by the illiterate forger as it was
transferred from a genuine into a spurious article, so
that what was written from right to left is now to
be read from left to right. Here is an old Damascus
blade which had been inlaid with gold by the original
smith only a few inches from the hilt, but has subse-
quently been covered to the very point with the same
metal by the restorer, who thought the quantity and
not the quality of the ornament would enhance the
value of the weapon. Daggers are offered for sale,
the sheaths of which were lost or the hilts broken,
and to which odd hafts and scabbards have now been
fitted at haphazard, making them a jumble of incon-
gruous workmanship ; and modern unrivetted shirts
of mail, such as the Circassians still use, or lately
used as the mere bravery of warlike attire, are
palmed on blind customers as knightly chain-armour
of Crusading times.
As no scruple is felt by either the Turk or his
associates about putting off these flash articles
on the customer, so neither is there any compunc-
TURKISH REFORMS. 171
tion about the swindling price which is put upon
them. The author of "Eothen" justifies the prac-
tice of haggling and higgling which, common as it is
throughout the South of Europe, is nowhere carried
to such an extent as here, by "the necessity in which
" an ordinary tradesman in Constantinople is of find-
ing out the fair market value of his property." The
truth is, merchandise has no real value in the Stam-
boul bazaars, and the trader's skill consists in taking
advantage of a stranger's inexperience to make him
pay from twice to ten times the price he would be
able to extort from a less ignorant customer. It is
to little purpose that you try to escape imposition by
tendering half or even one-third of the sum asked as
the negotiation opens. " Done, Sare !" is the reply
to your offer, however modest it be, and you find, on
comparing notes with a travelling friend, that you
would equally have been "done" had you offered
one-fourth. Neither does it any longer avail to pre-
tend to leave the shop and go to a rival establish-
ment, for what used in other times to be competition
among the stall-holders in the bazaars is now com-
bination, and conspiracy, and Moslem traders, as
well as Jew brokers and touters, eagerly play hand
in hand, common interest leaguing all these Oriental
tribes against the unwary " hat- wearer " from the
West.
As in the bazaar, so in avery public or private
transaction, the Turk in our day exhibits all the
unscrupulousness, though he does not attain the
172 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
consummate cunning, of the Levantine Christian.
Among those beasts of prey the Mussulman may be
the lion, and the Giaour only the jackal, but it is not
alwaj^s to the stronger that the best share of the
prey falls. As useful, industrious, and punctual
mechanics, there is not one pin to choose between
men of different faith. They all eschew hard work,
and leave road-making, canal-digging, etc., to Aus-
trian and other Slav immigrants. Want of skill or
application makes the natives of this country awkward
and slovenly in any style of nice workmanship. No-
where is masonry or carpentry at so low an ebb ;
nowhere is the performance of the locksmith, the
window-frame maker, the plumber and glazier so
wretched ; nowhere have you to contend with more
stubborn doors, windows, or drawers. Away from
the country the laziness of the people is prodigious ;
idleness and its concomitant vices, desperate gambling,
debauchery of the worst description, and hideous
beggary, gnaw the very vitals of society. Neither
among Christians nor among Mussulmans is there
any attempt to make up by private enterprise for the
short-comings of the very worst of Governments.
Where the house falls or is burnt down there the
ruins are left to moulder ; where the refuse of the
dog's meat lies there it is allowed to fester. Were
volumes written on the subject no idea could be con-
veyed of the all pervading dirt and filth of the towns
and villages on the Bosphorus. The very cemeteries
for which Mussulmans are said to harbour a parti-
TURKISH REFORMS. 173
cular veneration, are suffered to fall into the most
inconceivable state of neglect and dilapidation ; the
fences, where there were any, all broken down, the
cypress trees stripped of boughs and bark, stray dogs
making kennels of the tombstones or even burrowing
holes for a troglodyte home among the graves. Any
spot more bleak and desolate than the Jewish burial-
ground on the heights, in the rear of Hasskeui, it
would be impossible to imagine ; with the mangy
turf of the hills, studded with stone slabs throughout
its vast extent, it suggests on a distant view the idea
of a field of battle, with the bones of the slain bleach-
ing upon it. There is not a bush, not the stalk of a
flower growing upon it; the brittle soil crumbles
down here and there in deep ravines, and many of
the tombstones, slipping from the spot where they
stood, have slid down into the stream beneath, and
lie there huddled in heaps embedded in the mud like
outcasts in Gehenna. A country neither to live nor
die in ! No pavement or drain seems ever to be re-
paired here, no fountain or cistern purified or mended,
no precaution taken against cholera or any other kind
of pestilence ; no real protection afforded to life or
property ; no criminal, if he has money and knows
the use of it, called to account. No other people in
the world, one cannot help thinking, would put up
with such a police and such magistrates as are here
charged with the execution of the laws. The Mus-
sulman monopolises the trade of arms. The Turks
are good soldiers; they are brave men, and their indif-
174 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
ference to hardship, and contempt of death, certainly
raise them, in point of physical courage, many de-
grees above their unwarlike Levantine fellow subjects.
But moral cowardice is equally the bane of the whole
population of the Empire. Except for the supineness
and abjectness of all its subject races, how could the
Sultan's Government be so incapable of good or so
powerful for evil 1 Mismanaged as the affairs of this
country have been at all times there has never been
a period in which blind absolutism, utter improvi-
dence, and rampant disorder have been so conspicuous.
The worse the rulers have grown the more debased
the subjects have become; the more pressing and
galling has been the tyranny, the more flagrant has
appeared the incapacity of the trampled people, not
only for resistance, but even for complaint or remon-
strance. Into this hopeless condition has this fine
country been thrown by four centuries of Turkish
supremacy.
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 175
CHAPTER XI.
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS.
THE TURKISH GOVERNING CLASSES. TURKISH EDUCATION. TURKISH
HOMES, SCHOOLS, AND COLLEGES. HOME-KEEPING AND TRAVELLED
TURKS. THE ABYSS BETWEEN TURKS AND CHRISTIANS. CHRISTIAN
EXEMPTION FROM MILITARY DUTY. PROBABILITIES OF A GENERAL
MILITARY CONSCRIPTION.
AN honourable gentleman, rather a TurJcomane than a
Turkophile, who has often edified the House of Com-
mons by his views of Turkish affairs, expressed his
regret at the abolition of the " Old Ottoman Consti-
tution." He might have been more correct if he had
lamented the disappearance of the Ottoman governing
classes. There never was what we should consider an
aristocracy in Mussulman countries ; but there were,
nevertheless, about the Sultan's person, families in
which a certain practice in the management of the
public business passed from father to son gentlemen
of Nature's own making, with whom wealth and rank
had become as hereditary as the martial bravery,
the high honour and truth, which characterised the
Osmanli of the early school. Such was the stuff of
which Viziers and Pashas were once made. There
176 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
was not much legislative knowledge or judicial dis-
cernment among them ; but they had upright and
generous instincts ; they were conscientious men,
and aspired to be as just as ignorance and prejudice
would allow them. In the Provinces, again, there
were the descendants of the conquerors and early
settlers, possessors of the land from generation to
generation, who under the name of Derebeys, in time
of war, led the labourers of the land to battle, and
in days of peace exercised a certain authority as a
sort of country magistrate. The Bashi-Bazook hero,
who distinguished himself in the first encounter with
the Russians near Batoum, at the outbreak of the
present war 1877 Tchuruk- Su Ali Pasha, be-
longed to this Derebey class. This class, however,
has greatly dwindled in numbers and wealth, and is
fast disappearing; it has been deprived of its former
local importance, and the Government, thus taken
from such men as had a stake in the country and
could exercise hereditary influence, has been invaded
by Caimacams, MutessarifFs, and other minor officials,
a low-born, needy, grasping, and utterly unprincipled
bureaucracy. Every branch of the administration is
filled up with four times as many employes as would
be required, most of them uneducated and useless,
drawing small pay, but jobbing and robbing to eke
out a livelihood, so that corruption, discontent, and
a low standard of character of public men are main-
tained throughout the Empire. Fitness is never
considered. The round peg is everywhere thrust
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 177
into the square hole. A soldier is put at the head
of the Navy ; he who takes the Portfolio of Finance
one day will be transferred to Public Instruction the
next ; a Master of Ceremonies is made General In-
spector of the Courts of Law ; and a man who is fit
for nothing else if he is at all in the way of the
ruling powers, and these have no other means of
ridding themselves of him is saddled upon a Pro-
vince as Governor-General. The Sultan is easily
made to think any man competent for any place, and
as to those about him, the best man is he who bribes
highest. As the heads of departments are, so are
their subordinates. The country is in the hands of
men without education, as proud and jealous as they
are ignorant, covetous, and incapable, with an un-
certain career and scanty patriotism; and it is under
such guidance that Turkey has to make and keep
her place among civilised nations.
It may seem rash to assert that the Osmanli are
in the mass an uneducated people. But such in-
struction as they usually receive can hardly fit the
best of them for governing purposes. As the mother
is, so will the child grow . up ; and it is the mis-
fortune of the Moslem of the better classes to be
brought up in the unwholesome atmosphere of a
harem, in the charge of an affectionate but untaught
mother, secluded from social intercourse, shut up
with slaves, and as deprived of all power to think
as of pure open air to breathe. A Turkish child is
a spoilt child from the beginning. From his first
VOL. i. 12
178 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
instincts of observation he has the example of idle-
ness, caprice, and self-indulgence before him ; decked
out in gaudy dresses, cloyed with sweetmeats, you
can see him any Friday afternoon in the Grande
Rue de Pera, sitting in his mother's lap, and staring
with all his eyes out of her carriage window, stunted
and bilious, but grave and wise-looking, bewildered
by the unusual sight of the outer world. Upon
issuing from infancy, the children, boys and girls
promiscuously, are, if they belong to a wealthy family,
placed under a Hodja, or tutor, a sort of Mohamme-
dan Ignorantin, half priest, half schoolmaster, who
makes them read and learn by heart the Koran and
prayers in Arabic to them a dead language and
perform the temenah and all those other social
" ritualistic " obeisances, genuflexions, and hand-
kissings, which to some zealous Philo-Turks seem
the utmost attainment of perfect courtesy and moral
refinement. This, till they reach the years of dis-
cretion, when they are put asunder the girl to learn
sewing and embroidery, perhaps a little playing on the
piano, and the boy admitted into some public office.
For the offspring of the lower orders the same in-
tellectual food is provided in the public school, by
an old Mohammedan institution attached to every
mosque, where the Arabic Koran is used as the
beginning and end of all knowledge.
Something like a new era for public instruc-
tion in Turkey was ushered in under Sultan
Abdul Medjid at the close of the Crimean
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 179
War, a score of years ago. Primary schools or
colleges were opened under the auspices of Fuad
and Aali Pashas, and even a university was
inaugurated in a large building opposite to the
Mosque of St. Sophia, called Dar-ul-Founum (the
House of Arts or of Knowledge), now the Chamber
of Deputies of the Ottoman Parliament. It was
intended for youths of all races and creeds, no diffi-
culty arising about the amalgamation even in bed
and board of Moslem and Rayah, and was supplied
with good teachers, chiefly French, under the in-
fluence of M. Bouree, the French ambassador, and
the direction of M. Salme. All the tuition was in
French, but the study of Oriental languages was also
attended to. The books were at first French, and
knowledge had to be imparted in that language ; but
some few elementary works for the primary schools
and for the younger classes in the Lyceum were
translated or edited by Ahmed Vefyk, the secluded
scholar of Roumeli Hissar, now President of the
House of Deputies. The Sultan Abdul Medjid
took great interest in the progress of the insti-
tution, and countenanced with his presence the
distribution of prizes and other academical solem-
nities. But the Sultan died, M. Bouree left the
country ; the new Padishah, in his distress for
money, laid hold of the funds of the endowment,
many of the French teachers were dismissed, many
of the Mussulmans withdrew their children, and the
institution languished ; the building was used for
122
180 . THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Ministerial offices, and the University was banished
to other localities.
The same fate awaited the Medical School, which
was erected for purely military purposes by Sultan
Mahmoud II. at an earlier epoch. The Medical
School, placed under the direction of Dr. Bernhard,
a German, and ten other able professors, all from
Vienna, was at first established at Galata-Serai, an
old government palace, in the spring of 1876, in
Pera, but was rusticated to make room for the
Lyceum, and removed to Kumbar-haneh near the
Sweet Waters of Europe. The Lyceum itself sub-
sequently passed over to Gul-haneh, in the old
seraglio, whence it was hastily sent back to Galata-
Serai, when it was expected that M. Bouree, as
representative of the French bondholders, would
revisit Pera, and might ask what had become of the
institution on which he had bestowed such fostering
care. In spite of all these wanderings, the Lyceum,
still designated as a College or University, was till
lately flourishing under the guidance of Savas Pasha,
an Albanian physician educated in Italy, whom
Midhat lately appointed Vali or Governor-General of
the Islands of the Archipelago. Savas's place as
Rector of the Lyceum was then filled by Ali
Suavi, a "young Turk," long a resident in Paris,
not soon to be forgotten there for many reasons,
and a friend and host of Mr. Butler Johnstone.
The Lyceum musters 640 pupils, Christians and
Mohammedans, the teaching creditable, and the re-
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 181
novated institution promising good results, though
want of funds, consequent upon the general dis-
tress of the Turkish finances, is now greatly
stunting its growth, and threatening it with ex-
tinction.
In not much better condition, it may be pre-
sumed, is the Medical School, where German in-
structors have been superseded by ignorant native
teachers, and the Anatomical and other Museums
have suffered from frequent migrations. The sur-
geons and physicians required even for the naval
and military services are still in a great measure
supplied by foreign schools, and what ideas of the
profession are entertained may be inferred from the
fact that merely for lancing the Sultan Abd-ul- Aziz's
boil, an operation for which' the meanest phleboto-
mist would be competent, Omer Pasha, the court
doctor, received a remuneration of T. 1,000, with
some jewellery, and the rank of a general of division.
The continuous and conscientious habit of study and
devotion to medical science does not recommend
itself to the Turkish student, and the population is
in the hands of quacks and wise women, sticking to
the old superstitious practices of sorcery and igno-
rant empiricism. Of the Military Academy at Pan-
kaldi, and of the Naval School at Halki the latter
till lately under the direction of Said Pasha, the
man educated at Woolwich, and of Captain Wood, an
English naval officer nothing need be said ; as any
good they may do must be seen in the officers they
182 THE EASTERN QUESTION,
send forth for employment in the army and navy.
The tree is known by its fruit.
Under such backward and precarious conditions,
and with so little encouragement, has knowledge to
make its way in this benighted community ; and one
cannot help asking, where are the legislators and
statesmen, the governors, the magistrates, the my-
riads of high and low functionaries to whom the
destinies of an empire are intrusted, to come from ?
In other countries, with a living language and a
flourishing literature, self-education is practicable at
all ages, and the diligence of the mature student can
make up for lost time in early life. But your Turk
does not care to read, and has no books to read, and
if he is untravelled, he has no access to foreign
thought, the Grand Vizier himself often knowing
not one word of any language besides his own. On
the other hand, the gentlemen who may be supposed
to have benefited by a foreign training or foreign
travel are looked upon as " Europeanised" i.e., they
are charged with having acquired European vices
while retaining in full vigour those of their own
country.
It is a fact which cannot be too often repeated
that, were there only Turks only Mussulmans in
Turkey, to carry on even such a Government as now
exists would be a sheer impossibility. The Turk, as
we have seen, does not trade ; he is no merchant ; he
is not a banker ; he cannot count or calculate ; he is
an absentee landlord ; he is no farmer, and knows
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 183
nothing about the management of his. estate ; he is
dependent for his subsistence on Government offices ;
but, even as a placeman, he is a mere incumbrance,
for all the useful work is done by the Greek, the
Armenian, or the Jew under him, the men of those
subject races who are as indispensable as they are
despised, and who, superior as they are in ability,
are only trusted with ill-requited subordinate offices.
That the ignorance of the Moslem could, if anything
like religious and political equality were established,
be tempered by the intelligence of the Rayah, is a
matter which admits of no doubt, for the Christians,
and especially the Greeks, have excellent schools
and colleges of their own, and the most promising
pupils frequent foreign Universities, either at their
own expense or helped by subsidies from their com-
munity.
In all institutions where Christians as students
fraternise with the Mussulmans, as in the Lyceum,
these latter are compelled to avow themselves
beaten at all points of scholastic proficiency. But
these intellectual advantages of the Giaour are,
In the Moslem's opinion, marred by the false and
cunning instinct which turns knowledge itself into an
instrument of treachery and deceit. Unless means
are found to cure the ruling race of its mistrust of
the subject people, or the subject people of its deep,
though not loud, contempt for the ruling race, little
hope either of harmony and goodwill between them,
or of instruction, civilisation, and enlightened go-
184 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
vernnient for -their common country, can be enter-
tained.
The longer I have looked at the conditions of the
Ottoman Empire, the stronger has grown in me the
conviction that no remedy can be found for its evils
save in such measures as might tend to obliterate
the differences and mitigate the inveterate hostility
of races. There can be no self-government in a
country where the law insists on distinguishing
between various categories of subjects. There can,
on such terms, only be the government of one caste
by another. The root of all injustice in this country
lies in the privilege of the Mussulmans as a military
caste. The Osmanlis came into the country as con-
querors ; they looked upon the land, the women and
children, the herds and flocks of the vanquished race
as their own property, to be held and enjoyed by the
Rayah at the Moslem's entire discretion. It was
only by paying the Harach, or poll-tax, that the
Giaour could hope to keep the head on his shoulders.
That tax was levied indistinctly on every individual
of the male population of the non-Mussulmans till
the days of Fuad Pasha, when its name was changed
into that of Bedelieh, or exemption, and was exacted
from the Rayahs in consideration of their freedom
from military service. The Imperial Firman of Re-
forms of December, 1875, has in so far modified that
poll-tax that it is now no longer to be levied, as it
used to be, on every Rayah from his infancy to his
extreme old age, but only between his twentieth and
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 185
his fortieth year, the time of life corresponding to the
period during which the Moslem is liable to service-
in the army. With respect to the Moslem himself,
the tax of exemption is to be reduced from a hundred
to fifty Turkish lire.
What is, therefore, henceforth to be the condition
of the various subjects of the Empire ? To the
Mussulman the option is given to bear arms for his
country, or to buy himself off. The non-Mussulman
has no such alternative. He must pay for an ex-
emption which is forced upon him, whether or not
he can muster the ransom money ; and this because
he is still a pariah, a despised being, not to be
allowed to carry a musket, as he was till lately
deemed only fit to ride a mule or a donkey, the
horse being much too noble an animal to be ridden
by the like of him.
By this improvident adherence to the present
exclusive organisation of their military establish-
ment, the Government of the Porte, in the first
place, seriously damages and cripples the resources
of the empire by causing its conscription for an
army amounting on the war footing to 586,100
men, to fall upon less than one-half of the popula-
tion, and, as a rule, on that stout Mussulman
peasantry wherein lie the thews and sinews of the
nation ; in the second place, it wounds the feelings
of the other half of its people by maintaining dis-
abilities which rankle in their hearts as reminiscences
of the abject servitude to which the right of the
186 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
strongest reduced them. It is easy to say that the
Jews, the Greeks, the Armenians, and other non-
Mussulmans are an unwarlike race, only too glad to
escape a soldier's duty, and perfectly willing to com-
pound for their exemption. But clearly the means
of escape from the draught would be equally open
to them by simply placing them on the same footing
with their Mohammedan fellow-subjects ; while, as it
is, the military law confers on the Moslem a right
as well as a duty, on the Rayah it simply inflicts a
fiscal burden, aggravated by a sense of deliberate
social indignity.
There was, I am told, no point on which Sir Henry
Bulwer, when he was ambassador at Constantinople
after the Crimean war, dwelt with greater insistence
than on this necessity of saving the Ottoman empire
by creating an Ottoman people. There is no school,
he thought, in which the various elements of a mixed
race may be better blended together and moulded
into a common national standard than a military
training ; no medium in which sectarian prejudices
may sooner be made to yield to less unbrotherly
feelings than the camaraderie of barrack-life ; no
surer way of crushing rancours and jealousies than
an equal rule of stern discipline. Let the subjects
of the Porte be made into real soldiers, and they
will soon forget whether they be Mussulmans or
Christians. This was Sir Henry Bulwer's opinion,
and it was so forcibly conveyed to the ministers of
the Sultan at the time that the enrolment of the
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 187
Christians in the ranks of the army was taken into
serious consideration. The subject was dropped
soon after the death of Fuad Pasha, and by the time
it began to be evident that the Hatt-i-Humayoun of
1856 would remain a dead letter. But it is greatly
to be regretted that no thought of a return to the
ideas of that epoch occurred to those at whose
suggestion Mahmoud Nedim's Imperial Firman of
Reforms was drawn up. The great point at issue in
everything connected with the existence of the Otto-
man empire is the religious question. You must
either make one people out of Mussulmans and
Christians, or one of the two races will eventually
destroy the other.
It was owing to the difficulty of devising any pacific
solution of the question that most people thought
that the knot could only be cut, not solved, and were
disposed to look upon any hope grounded upon the
reforms contemplated by the Sultan's Firman as
absolutely illusory. M. Renan said : " Si aujourd'hui
la Turquie fait de vains efforts pour constituer une
societ^ fondee sur 1'egalite des droits, c'est qu'elle
lutte centre un principe seculaire et fatal. Heritier
des Khalifes, c'est a dire Vice-Prophete, le Sultan
ne peut plus presider un Etat mixte, ou croyants
et infideles auraient les memes droits, que le
Pape ne pourrait, si la moitie de ses sujets etaient
Juifs ou Protestants, leur faire une part dans
les Congregations Romaines on le Sacre College."
And as the Pope had, according to this clear-
188 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
sighted French writer, become " impossible " ten
years ago,, and all the anxious endeavours of the
Emperor Napoleon III. to "rejuvenise the old
Chimsera " foundered against the stubborn will of the
Roman people, so must the half theocratic system on
which the Sultan's authority is founded break down,
and at no very distant period, unless, as a first step
towards a reformed administration, a means is
found of bringing the people of different race and
creed to meet together as on a common ground in
the army, that institution in which a uniform
organisation is most practicable, and in which men
may most easily be broken and made amenable to
rule. We were always told, it is true, that no gentle
or harsh means can be contrived to induce the
Moslem to associate in the same ranks with the
Rayah ; that, owing to the abominable habits of the
Turks, Christian youths in barracks would be ex-
posed to nameless outrages, and that, on the other
hand, if attempts were made to enlist Mussulmans
and Christians in separate battalions or squadrons,
collision between the different corps whenever they
might be brought together would be inevitable.
And the argument was further made to rest on
the fact that even in the prisons Mussulmans and
Christians have to be kept asunder in separate wards
and courtyards, lest they should fall upon and tear
each other to pieces, a statement which, so far as my
experience of the present state of Stamboul prisons
went, is not correct; but which, if true, could
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 189
only prove that all hope of saving Turkey from ruin
must be abandoned. For, be it remembered, accord
between the two hostile races is not more hopeless
than the continuation of the present oppression of
one race by the other. But one may, after all, be
allowed to question whether the animosities between
the various races are, indeed, so implacable as it is
asserted, whether the ill-blood is not the result of
misgovernment, and whether it is not rather from
want of goodwill than of power that the Sublime
Porte is at a loss for a remedy to the evil.
Mussulmans and Christians, we are told, could
not be made to serve together in the army ; yet by
the terms of every new Firman they are to work to-
gether as police ; they will be chosen by popular
election to be organised into a gendarmerie, which
in well-regulated Continental countries is a corps
d'elite, not only belonging to the army, but having
precedence over all the rest of the army. And the
Hungarian Count Szechenyi has found it perfectly
practicable, not only to organise a fire brigade, con-
sisting indifferently, I believe, of Christians and Mus-
sulmans, but has even made these latter doff the fez
and put on a helmet i.e., a hat that badge of West-
ern civilisation which was an abomination to all
Islam. It is my firm conviction that the Govern-
ment here, beginning with the Sultan, are not unable,
but obstinately unwilling to remove the barrier which
keeps one-half of their subjects asunder from the
other. To bring about a reconciliation everything
190 ' THE EASTERN QUESTION,
should be studied to tame the arrogance of the Mos-
lem and to raise the Rayah from his abjection ; and
it is not at the polls, not in an electoral assembly,
not in Courts or Councils, or even in the Cabinet,
that the two races will ever be made to feel equally
at ease. The first necessity is to secularise the
Government ; to substitute the law for the Koran ;
to separate the King from the Pope, now combined
in the person of the Sultan. It is perfectly absurd
to say that the thing is impossible. It seemed by
no means difficult to such men as Sir Henry Bulwer
or Fuad Pasha eighteen years ago. But if it be
indeed impracticable then the re-establishment of
peace, the restoration of the finance, and the reform
in the administration in one word, the existence of
Turkey are also impossibilities. If the Padishah
intrenches himself behind his barrier of a Pontifical
Non possumus, then an ignominious downfall, like
that of the Pope, awaits him.
Meanwhile, upon the first intimation of contem-
plated reforms, in February, 1875, the Bulgarians of
the Commune of Tirnovo, Province of the Danube,
backed by the population of twenty-three villages,
addressed a petition to the Grand Vizier, praying
that his majesty the Sultan " would deign to admit
them to military service." They felt humbled and
grieved, they said, when they saw their Mussulman
fellow-subjects alone intrusted with the defence of
the common Father-land, while they must, " to their
shame, and in spite of their well-tried devotion to
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 191
the Sovereign, purchase exemption from their
sacred duty. The principle of equality set forth in
the recent Imperial Firman of Reforms, on the
strength of which men of all races and creeds were
invited to contribute to the well-being of the empire,
they argued, " would never be established till they
were allowed to accompany their Mussulman brethren
to the battle-field. And the conviction of the
Mussulmans with respect to the inferiority of the
Christians could never be uprooted as long as they
enjoyed the proud exclusive privilege of shedding
their blood for their country."
This view of the subject is not new in Turkey,
and it has found utterance through other than
Christian lips. Kybrizli Mehmed Pasha, one of
the wisest and most honourable Osmanlis who ever
filled the Grand Vizier's place, said, almost in the
very words of the Bulgarian petitioners, " Nous ne
pouvons considerer les Chretiens comme nos egaux tant
qiiils ne porteroni pas les armes comme nous pour la
defense du pays." It is not true that either mistrust
or contempt at any time prevented the Mussulmans
from employing their Christian subjects for military
purposes. The Janizzaries, formerly the nerve of
the Ottoman forces, were to a great extent recruited
among the Christian population. Brave and hardy
as the Turks, like all other Southern people, can
be made by drill and discipline, they saw in their
subject races, and especially in the Servians, Wal-
lachians, and Bulgarians of the provinces lying north
192 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
of the Balkan, stalwart men by whom the very best
stuff out of which to make soldiers could be supplied.
They laid hold, not of the adult men, but of the
growing male generation, placed the boys under
military and religious instruction, and trained them
for service in that Imperial Guard which became a
political as well as a warlike institution, tempering
by its sudden instincts of rough and ready justice
the worst abuses of arbitrary rule. The newly-
adopted enfans de troupe were easily persuaded, or,
perhaps, compelled to embrace the Mohammedan
faith, but adherence to the creed of his fathers did
not altogether disqualify from the service a'Christian
recruit otherwise satisfactory, and as their connex-
ions with their families did not altogether cease, and
they were not quite inaccessible to the seductions of
a bribe, the Janizzaries were often found among the
most zealous advocates of Christian interests, and
counteracted the unjust predilections the Govern-
ment evinced in favour of the Mohammedans.
Mahmoud II., in his first attempt to Europeanise
his State, rid himself by a massacre of his turbulent
Prsetorian Guard, and reorganised his forces into
a regular army nizam on the plan of a general
draught, from which the Rayahs, or non-Mussulman
subjects were excluded, their exemption being pur-
chased by the payment of a yearly poll-tax, which
took the name of Bedelataskerieh (impot pour I' ex-
oneration du service militaire). This tax of twenty-
seven piastres a head (a piastre equal to two-pence)
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 193
was levied indiscriminately upon all the males of non-
Mussulman families, all the Mussulman males being
bound to serve unless they paid a sum of eighty
Turkish lire for their exemption. By the Firman
of Reforms of Abd-ul-Aziz, it was decreed that the
exemption tax on the Christians should fall, not on
all the males, but only on those between the ages of
twenty and forty, the period of service in the army ;
and, at the same time, that the ransom for Mussul-
mans who wished for exemption should be only
forty instead of eighty Turkish lire. By these
provisions, had they been carried out, the public
revenue would have suffered a considerable re-
duction ; and, as the Ottoman treasury was at
the time, as at all times, greatly distressed for
money, the Grand Vizier explained to the spiritual
chiefs of the various non-Mussulman communities
that it was not meant that the exemption tax should
yield one farthing less than it heretofore did, but
that the deficit arising from the emancipation of the
males under twenty or above forty years of age,
and of those whom infirmity might unfit for service,
should be made up either by their families or by the
districts to which they belonged ; " a community,
which, for example, used to pay 1000 piastres per
annum on this score being still required to contribute
the same sum " a very good earnest of the extent
to which the government of the Porte, in December
1875, considered itself bound to carry out the pro-
mised reforms.
VOL. i. 13
194 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
The first answer by which the objectors to this
inequality among the subjects of the same State are
met is, as I said before, that the Christians enjoy, in
fact, a privilege, and that they would be very sorry
if their exemption from that " tribute of blood" which
is the curse of all the Continental States in Europe
were to come to an end. Many of them, however,
entertain a different opinion. A meeting of members
of the different non-Mussulman communities was
held lately to discuss the subject, and their delegates
had subsequently an interview with the Grand Vizier,
The result was that the Greeks and Armenians, who
were represented by men belonging to the mercantile
class, seemed to accept the conditions imposed by
the Firman, and preferred to pay the tax ; but the
Bulgarians, speaking in the name of an agricultural
population of three millions, were unanimously ready
to vote for admission to military service. The
spiritual chiefs of all Churches and sects, Patriarchs,
Exarchs, etc., have officially conveyed the same
opinion to the Grand Vizier. Indeed, it is clear
that the Christians would lose nothing by being put
on a footing of equality with the Mussulmans, whe-
ther they chose to serve or not. For, however
trifling the tax of twenty-seven piastres, or four
shillings and sixpence, which falls on every male for
twenty years, may seem, it amounts to four pounds
six shillings at the end of that period, and the family
or community has to be charged at least four
times the amount for the exemption of the whole
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 105
male generation under or above that period, and of
those whom deformity or infirmity would render
unfit for duty. By accepting the lot of the Mus-
sulmans the Christians would have the option be-
tween serving and paying the ransom of forty lire.
The same difference in favour of the wealthy classes
would exist here as existed in all Continental coun-
tries under the old conscription laws, and it would
most assuredly be in favour of the Christians, and
especially of those Greek and Armenian commercial
classes with whom money is most plentiful.
The real difficulty, therefore, lies in the repug-
nance the Mussulmans are said to evince to the ad-
mission of the despised Rayahs into their ranks, but
there are among them many on whom the privilege
they enjoy as a military caste weighs almost intoler-
ably, and to whom the condition of their Christian
fellow-subjects appears most enviable. " I and my
village neighbour," said an old Mohammedan peasant
of the neighbourhood of Bourgas, in Bulgaria, " were
equally blessed with four gallant sons. My neigh-
bour, as a Christian, paid his twenty-five piastres tax
for each of them. My boys, as Mussulmans, were
all pressed for the army, it being impossible for me
to muster the 240 lire for their exemption. The
consequence is that I in my old age, all alone,
must whistle at the plough, and can hardly get
bread out of my half-tilled farm, while my Christian
neighbour has his four stalwart pair of arms to work
for him. Their fields are in the best trim ; the
132
196 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
family thrive, the old man goes with his boys to the
village wakes, where they sing and dance the gayest
of the gay." Extend this pathetic picture to the
whole empire. The burden of its military establish-
ment falls with its crushing weight on less than half
the population. Turkey takes the field like a man
fighting with his right arm tied behind his back.
The rapid decrease and impoverishment of the Mus-
sulman race, who, when not in the ranks, are nothing
if not husbandmen, are felt as grievous evils for
which, in spite of all bigotry and prejudice, only one
remedy that of the admission of the Christians into
the ranks can be suggested.
The question of the admission of non-Mussulmans
into the army has often cropped up during the war-
like phases through which the Ottoman Empire had
to pass in the course of these last eighteen months.
It seemed to be set at rest by the Midhat Constitu-
tion which declared all Ottoman subjects without
distinction of nationality or religion to be in posses-
sion of the same rights, and bound to the discharge
of the same duties. Christian and Jewish volun-
teers besides were, in fact, during the Servian war,
allowed to enlist as volunteers, and even to form into
battalions, which were in some instances to take the
field under a standard bearing the Cross and the
Crescent on the same ground ; and, at the time, Sir
Henry Elliot in his despatches, and Mr. Disraeli in
his place in Parliament, believed, or seemed to be-
lieve, in the reality of that novel phenomenon, and
MUSSULMANS AND CHRISTIANS. 197
augured from it a happy era, a kind of millenium for
Turkey. I shall have occasion to state how that
delusion, which only took in those who wished to be
deceived, was immediately dispelled by stubborn
reality. More lately, the Russian war looming in
prospect, the government of the Porte entertained
the idea of a levy en masse of 200,000 men to be
taken from Constantinople and its adjoining territory,
a district which had hitherto been altogether exempt
from military service, the conscripts to be drafted
from the whole population, Mussulmans as well as
non-Mussulmans ; and the understanding was that
the same system of universal conscription, equally
applicable to all the Sultan's subjects, was to be ex-
tended to all the provinces of the empire ; but, as we
shall see, although the government of Abd-ul-Hamid
sees the necessity of some such measure, as it was
seen the year before last by the government of Abd-
ul-Aziz, and by that of Abd-ul-Medjid eighteen'years
before, it is very questionable indeed whether the
idea will ever be carried into effect, as it is rejected
by the prejudice strongly rooted in the Mussulman
mind, that the Christian is too ignoble a being to be
honoured with the use of the soldier's weapons, and
by the, perhaps, more reasonable apprehension that
he is too dangerous to be trusted with them.
198 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS.
CHARACTER OF THE TURKS. OSMANLIS AND MUSSULMANS. HIGH
AND LOW TYPES OP TURKS. PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT. OLD
AND NEW TURKISH ATROCITIES. MR. BUTLER JOHNSTONE ON-
TURKISH MANNERS. TEMENAH AND SHAKING HANDS.
IN the course of a residence of nearly two years in
Constantinople, I became aware of a great change in
the disposition of mind of the European, and especi-
ally of the English colony in that place, with respect
to the Turkish Government and people. When I
arrived, scarcely anything that could be said against
them seemed to be hard enough. Business men at
the Galata banking-houses were still smarting under
the heavy losses with which Mahmoud Nedim's
Irade, of the 6th October, 1875, reducing the in-
terest of the Ottoman Debt fifty per cent., threatened
them, and they did not know how far this first
calamity might be aggravated by the results of that
Herzegoviniari insurrection, which, happen what
might, could hardly fail to continue through the
winter. The G overnment had at that time very few
friends among the Pera Bond-holders ; all the Em-
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 199
bassies, and especially the English, being jealous of
the ascendancy exercised on the Grand Vizier and
his Cabinet by General Ignatieff, who was thus
thought to be at the bottom of all Turkey's troubles.
But as matters went from bad to worse, and the ruin
of the Empire began to appear inevitable, the men
whose interests were indissolubly bound up with its
existence, forgot the very worst things they had
ever spoken against the people among whom their
lot was cast, and they never mentioned them by any
other appellation than the " poor Turks/' the " dear
Turks." They pitied both the rulers and their sub-
jects as men more sinned against than sinning, they
emptied the vials of their wrath against those "cursed
Russians," and contended that "there was no insurrec-
tion in Bosnia or Herzegovina, but merely an inroad
of brigands instigated and paid by spies and agents
of Russian and Austrian Panslavist committees, the
ranks of the combatants -being mainly, and indeed
wholly, filled by volunteers from the semi-indepen-
dent Principalities of Servia and Montenegro."
With respect to the non-payment of one-half of the
coupons, these advocates of the Turkish Govern-
ment also insisted that there had been "no re-
pudiation, either total or partial, of the public debt,
as the Porte had never been unwilling but only
unable to pay, and would be sure to meet its liabi-
lities to the full amount whenever payment might be
in its power."
Apology for the Government was naturally fol-
200 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
lowed by loud flourishes in praise of the people.
" The Turks," it was said, " are a brave, simple,
sober, race of men. True bravery is incompatible
with cruelty ; their simplicity and sobriety tend to
limit their wants and to banish from them all envy
or covetousness of other people's goods ; they are
naturally honest and truthful ; their early habits,
plain diet, cleanliness, chastity, insensibility to plea-
sure, and pain, give them that peculiar soundness of
mind and body which supplies their army with the
healthiest and hardiest recruits to be seen anywhere
in the world." All this was said, and it is, in the
main, perfectly true of the lower classes in the coun-
try, in rural districts, where the panegyrists of the
Turks have few opportunities to visit them. In
some of the provinces of Asia Minor, in out-of-the-
way villages, not only are the people of Osmanli
race and creed an inoffensive, respectable, patriarchal
set of men, irreproachable in their conduct and
primitive in their manners, but they live together
with the Christians, Greeks, and Armenians, either
in the same or in neighbouring villages, in peace and
charity with them, seldom interfering with them,
though they love them little and esteem them less ;
and without absolutely shunning them, they cer-
tainly seek not their intercourse.
This, however, does not with equal justice apply
to the population of the cities, nor to some of the
Mussulman races to which both the native Christians
and indiscriminating strangers apply the general
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 201
appellation of Turks ; not, for instance, to the Cir-
cassian immigrants in Bulgaria and other European
provinces, nor to the Kurds of Armenia, and other
parts of Asia Minor, all lawless, thieving, murderous
tribes, mischievous in themselves and abetted and
encouraged in their evil propensities by the Govern-
ment, in obedience to a policy which tends to en-
force by terror an authority which it has become
almost impossible to establish on wisdom. The
praises due to the Turks are, above all things, inap-
plicable to the upper classes of Mussulmans, among
whom the prevalence of all home and foreign vices,
the absence of all religious conviction or moral re-
straint, and the corruption sown broadcast by the
vile government have extinguished almost every
sense of honour, truth, and justice.
When, therefore, a zealous Turkophile tells us
that " in charity we should take, not the part of
the Eastern Christians, but rather that of the poor
uncomplaining Moslem who is robbed and starved in
silence, we may agree with him in so far as to allow
that misgovernment weighs equally hard on all
classes of the Sultan's subjects ; but it so happens
that the Sultan is the head of Mussulman believers,
the head of a Mussulman Government, and if any
fault is to be found with that Government the blame
must be imputed partly to the bad elements among
the Mussulman population who wield the power,
and partly also to the good elements which allow
the bad ones so to exercise it. Some few of the
202 THE EASTERN QUESTION,
Christians, and not always the best among them,
have, as we have seen, a share in the adminis-
tration in a subordinate capacity ; but, as a mass,
the non-Mussulmans have hitherto had no voice in
the Government, they were possibly not the only
sufferers from its wrong-doings, but they were cer-
tainly not in any manner the accomplices of its
iniquity. The Christians are a conquered race, and
can, perhaps, hardly ever hope for a redress of their
grievances except by an appeal to arms which
should reverse the fortune of war, and give them
the victory in their turn.
Leaving, however, the Turkophiles to uphold the
cause of the Turks as they can, I shall give a few
particulars with respect to the sufferings which the
Christians have to endure at the Turks' hands,
whether by the word " Turks" we are to understand
the bad elements of the Mussulman population, or
whether we refer all the evil to the Government
which, in the main, springs from those elements,
and seeks its strength in them. For that purpose I
shall look into my recollections of the first winter I
spent in Constantinople, and shall find there ample
proofs that the disorders which came to a head in
some of the provinces, and especially in Bulgaria,
in May, 1876, are of ancient date, that a state of
violence and oppression was there hot the exception
but the rule, and that, to use the expression of a
recent writer, in those districts which have lately
startled us by the atrocities there perpetrated, "a
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 203
stream of atrocities has at all times been flow-
ing."
I found on my arrival, what I little suspected, a
public press, both in the capital and in the provinces
of Turkey, and, though it was grievously fettered,
and subject to Avertissemens, Communiques, and
other vexations aping the pedantries of French
censorship, it managed, thanks to the gross igno-
rance or careless oversight of the so-called Bureau
o
de la Presse, to print authentic accounts of startling
facts. A. series of these interesting documents was
collected and made public as an appendix to a
pamphlet by M. Benoit Brunswik, entitled " La
Turquie, ses Creanciers et la Diplomatic," at that
time for sale in every bookshop in Pera, and to be
seen lying on the tables of every club-room or inn-
parlour. Had there been any exaggeration in these
recitals, or had they been sheer inventions, it is dif-
ficult to conceive how the self-interest of an absolute
Government or the zeal of its friends and champions
could consent to their free publication and circula-
tion without at least some attempt at meeting them
with a positive denial. I can, however, con-
scientiously assert that paragraphs of the same
nature as I here subjoin in a condensed form, were
daily suffered to appear in all journals in the French,
English, Greek, Turkish, Armenian and other lan-
guages perfectly unchallenged.
Take, in the first instance, the large, industrious,
and comparatively inoffensive province of Bulgaria.
204 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
A letter from Eski-Zaghra, printed in the Istoclmo
Vreme, and reproduced in the Courrierd' Orient, tells
us that at Sulmuchli, a village of that district :
" The Turks have broken into the houses of the
Bulgarians, where they violated half a score of young
girls and three young married women. They killed
twelve Bulgarians and wounded eight; then, as they
withdrew, they took away with them the corn, the
lighter furniture, and all the portable property of the
Christian inhabitants.
" In the village of Casanka, three hours and a
half distant from Eski-Zaghra, the rural guard, with
two zaptiehs, or policemen, and other Turks arrested
fifteen Bulgarians, shut them up in a hut, and putting
knives to their throats, extorted forty-six Turkish
lire. In the district of Kezanlick, Koustchi Osman
Agha, at the head of a band of Mussulmans, travelled
from village to village, demanding money from the
inhabitants and threatening them with arrest in case
of refusal. He thus succeeded in securing a plunder
of 560 lire. At Gurutche, while the villagers were
away conveying goods to the station, the Mussul-
mans robbed their houses and ill-treated their de-
fenceless women and children. At Koshidja, the
Turks broke at night into the house of Hadji Todoro,
a Bulgarian, tortured him with red-hot irons, and,
after plundering him of 20,000 piastres, stabbed him
with their knives. His son-in-law was cudgelled
severely by them as they were leaving the house
with the plunder.
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 205
" Robberies and murders are matters of frequent
occurrence in the village of Terfikli. One of the
inhabitants has been robbed of more than one hun-
dred lire by the Kozaks. Two young peasants have
been slain by Mussulman assassins. A priest has
been robbed on the road between Souhlari and
Kavakli ; his wife has been violated in his presence,
and himself stripped to the skin, his very beard being
cut off from his face. The priests of the village of
Kara-Tueikli were tied to a country-cart and dragged
about all night, beaten and wounded, and were only
released upon payment of twelve and a half lire each.
The Bulgarian Bishop of Sliven was attacked in the
town of Yamboli by thirty or forty Mussulmans,
and though he was himself rescued by the police, his
servants were subjected to the most severe ill-treat-
ment. A boy of Kadikeui, fifteen years old, on his
way to Sliven was stopped by some Turkish soldiers,
who hewed him down with their knives; he was
brought to the governor's house bleeding from the
throat, and by him sent back to his village in a dying
state without further inquiry. At Elkovo, five pea-
sants going home from market, were attacked by the
Turks, who demanded their money. One of them
tried to escape, but was shot dead on the spot. The
others saved their lives by delivering their purses."
The tortures by which money was extorted mainly
consisted in burning the victims with red-hot irons,
piercing their tongues with sharp daggers, compelling
them to tread barefoot on heaps of thorns, etc.
206 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
11 Sadick Bey, with some others, went from village
to village violating Bulgarian girls. More than one
hundred have been ravished."
I need not dwell at greater length on this painful
subject. This misconduct of a large part of the
Turkish population rests on the irrefragable evi-
dence of many correspondents of the local journals,
all stating the same incidents in different language,
but with the same circumstantial accuracy, without
eliciting the slightest answer or contradiction from
the Government organs. The pretext for this out-
break of savage passions on the part of the Mussul-
mans during the months of October and November,
1875 that is, more than eight months before that
abortive movement which led to what are emphati-
cally called the " Atrocities in Bulgaria," and
which may be said to have only been the paroxysm
of a permanent, though chronic and only half-
latent, disease was an alleged conspiracy of the
Christian peasantry, and the suspected existence of
a revolutionary committee bent on favouring the
Herzegovinian revolt. Thus at Deirmen-Dere " the
Mussulmans were besieging the village church,
where the scared population had taken refuge from
their outrages. A company of one hundred soldiers
was sent to the rescue, and on the officer asking the
rioters what they were doing there, they gave
answer, ' We are waiting for the revolutionary com-
mittee who are shut up there.' The officer then
ordered the church door to be thrown open and the
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 207
peasants to come forth. A crowd of terrified women
and children filed out. ' Are these your committee-
men V asked the officer ; and for once the rioters
were balked of their prey." It was not often, how-
ever, that timely aid was afforded to the persecuted
Bulgarians. The governors in many instances de-
clared that they could do nothing for their protection.
Not unfrequently the minor authorities, the troops,
and their officers, and especially the police, were the
worst persecutors, and did their utmost to kindle the
fanaticism of the native Mussulmans, and of Kozack,
Circassian, and other savage immigrants, goading
them on to the destruction of their Christian fellow-
subjects.
" The Caimakan of Seni Zagra, with his 200
soldiers, refuses to move to the rescue of the plun-
dered villages. The Cadi of Eski-Zagra is the
abettor of the worst offenders. Two of the wealthy
Mussulmans of this district, Emine-Bey and Hadji-
Tahir-Agha, are the terror of the Christians, and
the Caimakan says ' he can do nothing against
such personages.' Those two worthies have an
object in scaring away the defenceless peasantry,
as in their absence they seize upon the land and
establish their right of possession both to the fields
and the crops."
The alleged impotence of the Caimakan against
those two overbearing villains reminds me of the
answer given by the Minister of Justice to a foreign
Diplomatist of high rank. The latter asked that
208 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
justice should be done to a Frank under his protec-
tion to whom a Pasha owed several hundred lire.
" What means have I," said the Minister, " to
compel a Pasha to payment ?" " Why," answered
the foreign Envoy, " in my country such a man
would either be imprisoned or his property would be
seized, no matter what his rank might be." Where-
upon the Minister observed with a quiet smile,
" Ah I civilisation has not yet reached so far in
this country."
In very many cases, however, the men in autho-
rity, not only through want of power or goodwill,
wink at the deeds of violence and bloodshed of
which the Christians are the victims, but they are
themselves zealous instigators of the worst out-
rages.
" The Caimakan of Matschin arrested some pea-
sants of Tcherna because they refused to execute
some compulsory work he exacted from them. The
poor peasants proved that they had done their own
share of the corvee ; but he insisted they should also
do the share of their Mussulman fellow-subjects, and
fined them severely for what he called their resist-
ance to the authorities. And the Caimakan of
Babadag endeavoured to appeal to the evil passions
of the people of the Turkish village of Akkadine,
telling them the Giaour was coming to submit them
to slavery ; and, as he made no impression on those
poor boors, he enlisted some Circassians, organising
seventy of them into a squadron of cavalry and
THE GOOD AND SAD OF THE TURKS. 209
bidding them get their horses from the Christians,
killing any one who might refuse to give them up on
the first summons."
But the worst agents of the Government are the
Zaptiehs, or policemen, who quarter themselves on
the Christian population, and abandon themselves to
the worst excesses, compelling the women to hide
themselves from their persecution.
Your thorough -going Philo-Turk will contend
that Christians can sit as magistrates and governors,
and command fleets and armies : witness Hobart
Pasha, Captain Wood, and others. No doubt the
Ottoman Government has had and has occasion for
the services of " men of energy and knowledge," and
must take them wherever it finds them, just as it
employs English engineers for its steamers and rail-
way locomotives. No doubt, also, the experiment of
Christians as governors of provinces or magistrates
has been tried ; but that the trial has not succeeded,
or not been persevered in, one might gather from
the Imperial Firman of Reforms of December, 1875,
as well as by all other preceding and following acts,
all of which equally proclaim la carriere ouverte aux
talents the opening of all public offices to deserving
subjects, whatever may be their religion or nation-
ality. And with a naivete which is quite charac-
teristic of him, the Sultan in a long interview he had
with an Ambassador, stated that he was ignorant of
the extent to which the provisions of the Hatt-i-
Humayoun had been disregarded, and that he was
VOL. i. 14
210 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
not aware that the Christians suffered from any
disabilities, or were subjected to ill-treatment. He
ascribed all these disorders to the administration,
just as he charged his Finance Minister with all the
shortcomings of the Imperial Treasury !
The same complaints that came to us from Bulgaria
in that same autumn of 1875, reached us equally from
Thessaly, where the authorities crushed the people by
their endless requisitions for the army ; and also from
Armenia, where the extortions of the tax-gatherers
ground the people with unprecedented severity.
." The tithes in some districts," we were told, " have
risen to 20 per cent., and where the Mussulmans are
unable or unwilling to pay, the rest of the commu-
nity i.e. the non-Mussulmans are called upon to
make up for the defaulters." In the Government's
anxiety to scrape up the money for the half-coupon
due in January, the tax-gatherers had been suffered
or directed to set aside the Imperial Firman which
abolished the additional fourth imposed upon the
tithes, and which some instances remitted the arrears
of taxes. Twenty years' arrears, long since remitted,
were demanded in some localities in Armenia. A
letter from Erzeroum of the 10th of December 1875,
printed in the Turquie of the same month, informed
us that " the villagers come to town with flour, wood,
hay, and all the produce which they hoped to turn into
money, by which they may meet the tax-gatherer's
incessant demands, and no sooner are their country
carts empty than the zaptiehs pounce upon them and.
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 211
take possession in the name of the Government,
driving the owners away with their cudgels. In less
miserable districts the taxes are collected in advance.
A gentleman of French extraction, well known and
respected here, who owns a country-seat at Kandilli,
on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, " has been
made to pay the land-tax two years in advance, the
local authorities refusing him the necessary permission
to repair a fencing wall that had fallen till he had
paid to the uttermost farthing."
Even in the provinces of Asia Minor, which were
stricken by that famine of 1873-4, the accounts of
which shocked all Europe and appealed to the charity
both of English and Americans, the wretched people
were made to pay a tithe of 12-J per cent., as well
as the arrears of taxes, in contempt of the Sultan's
Firman, who wished to " temper the wind to the
shorn lamb." I read at the time in a letter from
Cesarea that " both tithes and taxes are sold out to
contractors, who naturally take no heed of the
Firman, and observe, with some reason, that the
Sultan has no right to be generous at their ex-
pense. . . The Vali, or Governor, sends word to
the Mussetariffs, his subordinates, that unless he
forwards a certain amount within a specific time, he
will be deposed ;" hence the screw was put on with-
out mercy.
And in a private letter from Erzeroum which a
friend lays before me I read :
" The horrors, the cruelties, the roguery of officials
142
212 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
one sees in the provinces are sickening, even at this
moment, when one would suppose the Mussulman
would be on his good behaviour to save the empire.
One would say the Turks are acting on the sauve
qui pent pressure of despair. Instead of 12^ per
cent, tithe, they are taking on some articles '20 to
50 per cent. In two cases I had to expostulate
with the Vali. In one the demand of the collectors
was at the rate of some 60 or more per cent. They
demanded 12^ per cent, on hay, fixing the value at
168 piastres a measure, when the value in the town
where it was sold was only 50. Thus the tax was
over 42 per cent. The case was so glaring that the
Pasha was obliged to step in. But in rural districts
away from here the Vali's interference could not
avail. There the > tithe-collectors have been levying
32-^ per cent, on hay. In the district of Ismir the
Christians are at this moment being robbed of every-
thing they have by the Government, by bands of
armed deserters, and by organised bands of brigand
traders. The Government takes taxes in excess ;
the deserters levy blackmail, and the armed traders
force their goods on the villagers at three, four, and
five times their value."
And again in the same letter : " An Armenian
preacher in one of the monasteries of the city of
Bitlis (province of Erzeroum) was severely wounded
by robbers, whom he recognised and denounced to
the Caimacan, or Lieutenant-Governor, but the latter
made no attempt to arrest or punish the criminals.
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 213
An aged Armenian, while returning from the market-
place in Bitlis, was attacked by four Turks and
nearly cut to pieces. An Armenian muleteer was
stabbed in the abdomen, and died on the spot, and
that at the very gates of the Caimacan's palace.
These occurrences were all reported to the Govern-
ment officials, but these made no attempt to punish
the guilty parties."
In many cases the Caimacan himself is the worst
offender :
" The cruel and sensual Caimacan of Boolanic
compelled twenty-five young Armenian women to
enter his harem. For this the outraged villagers
made complaint to the Governor- General at Erze-
roum. The charge was proved against the Caimacan,
and sentence was passed upon him, but he escaped
from punishment by means of bribes, and was soon
restored to office. The Caimacan of the village of
Chookhoova is of the like character."
One of Armenia's greatest scourges is that of the
incursions of the Koords, utterly lawless savages,
who rob and burn the houses and barns, and murder
the inhabitants on the least attempt at resistance :
" In the district of Akhlaat the Koords plundered
an Armenian village and carried off all the domestic
animals. A few days ago a similar attack was made
on an Armenian village on the plain of Moosh, and
in the fruitless endeavours of the villagers to recap-
ture their cattle, one of the men was killed. A
father and son while peacefully at work in the field,
214 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
were attacked, stripped naked, and nearly hacked to
pieces," etc.
I could multiply the quotations to the end of
time, and I assure you I suppress the most startling
cases, because they seem to myself hardly credible.
The letter concludes :
" Up to this date some 350 Armenians have pro-
fessed to become Mussulmans, with the hope that,
under the cloak of Mohammedanism, they may secure
a little freedom from the cruel insults, outrages,
beatings, and oppressions of Turks and Koords."
I repeat that no one can be blind to those noble
features in their character by which the Osrnanli
race were enabled to assert and maintain for several
centuries their sway over a large portion of Europe
and Asia. One may sum up all eulogy of the
Turks by allowing that they are a brave race of
men. But owing to the very nature of their con-
quest, they have learnt to look upon the Christians
as a conquered, a subject, and in a great measure, a
debased and despised race. They have not often
willingly oppressed them ; they have in many in-
stances been anxious to treat them well and protect
them in the same manner and on the same principle
that a well- constituted, humane man will for his
own interest be merciful and considerate to his
cattle ; but it has never been, and it will perhaps
never be, an easy task to bring them to live with the
Christians on a footing of equality. The conscious-
ness of superiority originally founded on the right of
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 215
the strongest will not at any time be obliterated.
The ruling race will never amalgamate with the
subject people. Extortion, oppression, injustice,
no doubt fall on Mussulmans and Christians, but
rather more on the Christians at least, on those
remote rural Christians to whom the interference of
strong-fisted European consuls does not extend. To
make the rapacity and venality of all functionaries,
to which they were perhaps inclined, a matter of
necessity, the wretched inadequacy of their salaries
has powerfully contributed. The greatest scourges
of the country throughout its extent are the police
those zaptiehs, whose name was corrupted into zaffi
in old Venice to designate something lower and
more villanous than even sbirri. The zaptiehs have
up to this day all been Mussulmans. We are told
that they will now be appointed without any dis-
tinction as to religion. But doubtless there are
Christian as well as Mohammedan rogues. And
how can a man be aught else than a rogue who
must manage to live on thirty piastres (five shillings)
a month ? Many of the magistrates are proportion-
ately not much better off. Assurance is given that
the pay of all these people is to be raised. It is to
be hoped that, higher or lower, the pay may at least
be forthcoming with better punctuality. As a very
general rule, the salaries of officers of high rank in
the army, heads of departments even here in the
capital, are often ten months in arrear. In the pro-
vinces many have seen no Government coin for
216 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
nearly two years. Is it to be wondered at if they
help themselves as they best can \ If the Sultan's
creditors are not paid, they may console themselves
with the reflection that he pays nobody else.
But after thus having conscientiously dwelt on
the best, and freely exposed the worst qualities of
the Turks, I must say that it was with little
patience one read some mawkish, morbid effusions
in their praise, published by a London evening
paper, in December, 1875, and bearing the evidently
false date of Constantinople. Those "Turkish
letters " were, of course, eagerly reproduced by all
the newspapers in Turkey, and were read by the
Philo-Turks with delight, not unmixed with a great
deal of amazement. The good Mussulmans them-
selves had never suspected what marvellous patterns
of cleanliness, politeness, temperance, and all other
virtues they might in the estimation of a sane, as
well, as accomplished, and intelligent stranger, be
held to be. They were aware, of course, that poly-
gamy, though sanctioned by the Mosaic and Mo-
hammedan codes, is on the wane among them. But
they did not for all that take credit to themselves.
The Turks are simply poorer than they were, and
find a household of wives too expensive a luxury.
Many a poor-spirited bachelor among the Christians
on the same ground denies himself the blessing of a
solitary partner. What opportunities the writer of
those " Turkish letters " may have had of prying
into the mysteries of a Moslem harem I know not,
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 217
but I saw no such glass-houses as he describes in
Turkey, in town or country, no genial residences
the tenants of which seem anxious " to be seen by
every one every hour of the day," no habitation on the
lintel of which the inscription " Nilfcedum hcec limina
tangat " may be read by the passer-by. I see plain,
unsightly buildings, looking to my eyes like gloomy
prisons, with thick blinds drawn close across the
windows, and tall walls around their gardens ; en-
chanted castles with gardens in the charge of black
slaves guarding the entrance against intruders. The
distinguished Osmanlis I have seen in some of them
are certainly well-bred and consummately courteous
gentlemen, and the apartments in which strangers
are received seem carefully swept, scoured, and
white-washed. But that is about all. To the cleanly
habits of a few persons of high rank, as a general
rule, one may be perfectly willing to bear witness ;
but with respect to the ablutions prescribed to every
good Mussulman by the Prophet's precept or prac-
tice, and described as " more frequent than those of
any other people, and to be performed not in stag-
nant but in running water," the least one says about
it, I think, will be the soonest mended. Religion
proposes, but Nature disposes. All the running
waters of the currents of the Bosphorus would not
have power to cleanse the unwashed faces of Turks,
Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and other Orientals_one
meets throughout the length and width of Pera and
Stamboul, and nothing is more astonishino- than the
218 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
knack devotees exhibit in the performance of their
purifying rites at the fountain in front of the mosque,
dipping their fingers and toes in the cool element as
if it were hissing hot, and contriving to part with as
little of their beloved dirt as if in it were the essence
of their holiness. The Turks, undoubtedly, manage
to harbour mother and daughter-in-law under the
same roof, and their children have all the demure-
ness without the bright colours, the chubby smile,
and the nameless graces that French toy-makers
know how to impart to mere wax dolls ; but those
are general Southern, and not merely Mussulman
peculiarities. The nursery is not a Turkish any more
than a Greek, or, alas ! an Italian or French institu-
tion. Those too wise-looking, old-looking infant
prodigies are simply the result of a sickly growth
and stunted hot-house training ; and men are no
better men for never having known what childhood,
boyhood, or early youth ought to be. A Turk, it is
true, is free from the " abomination of shaking
hands." But I cannot see why his tetnenah, the
whisking away the flies from his face, with which he
greets, an acquaintance, should be considered a less
hypocritical form of salutation than the common
Christian, or at least English practice, of making a
pump-handle of a friend's arm. The cordiality with
which one is sometimes compelled among us to treat
a person for whom one may entertain no affection is
not more " conventional" or hypocritical than the
demonstration of respect a Mussulman shows to. a
THE GOOD AND BAD OF THE TURKS. 219
person for whom in his heart he may harbour the
most unqualified contempt. They are all social
usages to be taken for what they are worth, and it is
not easy to live in the world without our outward
manner having in some measure to do violence to
our inner feelings. There certainly are Mussulman
as well as Christian hands one would rather not
touch without a glove, and even with one, hoping all
the time as one thinks of the dirt that it will not, as
the Italians say of love " go through the kid."
220 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER XIII.
TURKISH FINANCES.
TURKISH BOND-HOLDERS. THEIR AGENTS. THE FIRMAN OP OCTOBER.
TURKISH BUDGETS. THE CIVIL LIST. TURKISH AND EUROPEAN
NEGOTIATIONS. THE SULTAN'S EXTRAVAGANCE. HIS ILLNESS.
THE HARD-BOILED EGGS. ALL FOOLS* DAY. EXEUNT THE BOND-
HOLDERS* AGENTS. MR. HAMOND's FAMOUS SNUFF-BOX.
I DO not know to what extent paradoxical writers of
olden times have exhausted the subject of " the
pleasures and advantages of being in debt." There
must certainly be a great comfort in the conscious-
ness of the strong interest our friends the creditors
take in the preservation of our precious existence
and in the promotion of our welfare ; something
touching, also, in the certainty that the remembrance
of us will be kept green in their minds when we are
no more, and when the world would otherwise dismiss
us from its thoughts ; our liabilities too generally
surviving any posthumous honours that might be
paid to the memory of our good deeds. Whatever
may be thought of the benevolent policy evinced on
behalf of the Turkish Empire by politicians, diploma-
tists, framers of Andrassy notes, and Berlin Memor-
andums, there is no doubt the heartiest well-wishers
TURKISH FINANCES. 221
to the Ottoman Empire and its Government ought to
be the holders of Ottoman bonds. The Ministers of
the Porte show their sense of the titles their various
visitors have to their gratitude by awarding only a
jewelled gold bracelet, worth 200, as an acknowledg-
ment of a gifted lady's " sympathies," while they re-
munerate the "good intentions" of a representative of
the bond-holders with a jewelled gold snuff-box of the
value of 500. " Vivent nos amis les ennemis!" debtors
may say, and there can be no foe whom it may better
be worth our while to propitiate than a dun who
comes to us, not so much to remind us of our obliga-
tions as to show how easy it is for us to acquit ourselves
of them, either by putting off the " evil quarter of
an hour," or by diminishing its horrors so as in every
respect to consult our own convenience. Of these
well-meaning and considerate gentlemen who went
to Constantinople regardless of the hardships of a
winter journey, the number soon began to be pretty
strong, and their presence, if it had no other effect,
must have been cheering to the managers of the
Hotel d' Angleterre, where they put up an establish-
ment which its former head, the well-known Missirie,
Eothen's dragoman, now somewhat under a cloud,
had left to look for better employment and for more
benignant stars on the banks of the Nile.
The first of these humane doctors who, aware that
the Sick Man's complaint, like that of the late
Theodore Hook, lay in " the chest," travelled to
Turkey, confident of the soundness of their various
222 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
methods of cure, was Mr. Hamond, of Newcastle-
upon-Tyne. Close upon his track we had two young
gentlemen fresh from the Cornhill and Lombard
Street hospitals the Messrs. Palmer bent ap-
parently on the application of a local and special
treatment. Next followed, as consulting physicians,
Sir Philip Rose and Mr. John Staniforth, and after-
wards there appeared a pupil of the French Ecole de
Mtdecine, of Rue Vivienne, Count Dumanoir act-
ing as alter ego of one of the magnates of that far-
famed Parisian institution, M. Bourse. Last of the
number, and in a more genial season, the Hon.
Randolph Stewart, and Mr. McEwen tried their
hands where others had failed.
Of the disease itself the diagnosis is by no means
difficult. The Ottoman Empire, with a constitution
seriously damaged by habitual intemperance and fre-
quent spasmodic attacks, contracted a consolidated
debt calculated, in round numbers, at 200,000,000
involving an annual charge of 14,000,000 ; and it
laboured, besides, under the burden of a floating debt,
which may amount to 12,000,000, or, say, perhaps,
20,000,000. The Grand Vizier, Mahmoud Pasha,
hoping to rid himself of his most pressing difficulties,
ventured, on the 5th of October last, upon a partial
repudiation of the debt, signifying to his creditors
that the interest of their bonds should, for the next
five years, be paid half in gold and the other half in
paper bearing five per cent, interest. We all know
how even this part of the engagement was fulfilled.
TURKISH FINANCES. 223
The Government of the Porte was said to be strain-
ing every nerve to pay the half coupons falling due
at the beginning of the half-year, but broke down at
'an early period of the attempt.
The men bent on bearing out the Turks in all their
misdeeds, endeavoured to palliate the dishonesty of
the Grand Vizier's repudiating Firman by asserting
that it had been put forth at the suggestion of General
Ignatieff, and that it was part of the treacherous
scheme by which the wily Russian contrived to
throw discredit on the Ottoman Government, and to
compromise it before public opinion in England ; but
without going so far as to deny Russia's interference
in this matter, it must be allowed that both Her
Majesty's Government and Sir Henry Elliot, their
representative, did all they could to encourage Mah-
moud Nedim in his evil courses by proclaiming with
unnecessary hurry, and in the most emphatic
manner, that they would abstain from all inter-
ference in behalf of the bond-holders, even throwing
out some hints as to the unfair advantage at which
the negotiators of the various Turkish loans had, in
its most distressing circumstances, taken the Govern-
ment of the Porte, that the creditors ought to con-
sider themselves in some degree repaid for their
capital by the heavy rate of interest on which they
had invested their money, and which they had en-
joyed year after year, and finally that it would be
inhuman, as well as impolitic, on their part, to put
any pressure on the Porte at a moment in which it
224 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
had an open civil war, and a wide-spread secret con-
spiracy to contend with. I remember that, at the
time, Alekos Bey, Prince Vogorides, now Alekos
Pasha, Ottoman Ambassador at the Court of Vienna,
who honoured me with very frequent visits, and was
at the time out of office, and therefore a violent op-
ponent of the Sultan's Government, inveighed in no
measured terms against Lord Derby and his
colleagues, branding them as " cowards and traitors
to the interests of English subjects, whom they
suffered to be defrauded to the amount of many
millions of money."
It is important to observe that when the Grand
Vizier, in October last, chose to alter the terms which
bound the Porte to its creditors, he seemed to con-
sider himself entitled to submit all of them to one
and the same treatment, ignoring the fact that some
of the bond-holders stood on safer ground than others.
The loans of 1854, '55, and '71 were contracted upon
the express stipulation that the Egyptian tribute
should, by an order of the Sultan to the Khedive, be
paid into the Banks of England and France, and by
these banks be distributed among the bond-holders
upon an order from the Diplomatic Representatives
of the Porte in London and Paris. The Ottoman
Government could not, therefore, divert the Egyptian
tribute to any other purpose, unless it had in hand
some other security equally satisfactory, to the holders
of these three special loans. The bondholders of
1855 had, besides, a guarantee from the English and
TURKISH FINANCES. 225
French Governments for their payment ; but it was
clear that England and France would not think of
fulfilling their obligations till they saw the reason .why
Turkey herself did n<ft accomplish hers. The loans
of the three above-mentioned years were contracted
at a reasonably high issue price, and bore a compa-
ratively moderate rate of interest, and they were
placed, therefore, in very different conditions from
the other loans, to which more advantageous terms
were allowed, and the payment of which was only
vaguely guaranteed on tobacco, salt, and other taxes
and duties, or still more indefinitely, on the general
revenue of the Empire. But the three materially and
specially guaranteed loans only amounted altogether
to 13,700,000, a small fraction of the general bulk of
Turkish liabilities; while that of 1855, the one loan
which depended for repayment on something besides
the goodwill and power to pay of the Ottoman
Government i.e. on the pledges of the English and
French Governments was only 5,000,000.
The agents who were from time to time attempt-
ing to treat with the Government of the Porte for
better terms than those imposed by the decree of the
5th of October, were some of them connected with
the bond-holders of the three guaranteed loans ;
others were simply acting as protectors of the in-
terests of those three loans, while others, again, were
in opposition to the said loans, and encouraged the
Grand Vizier in his declaration that Turkey had
encountered the same moral obligations with all her
VOL. i. 15
226 1HE EASTERN QUESTION.
creditors, and that, whatever might be the legal
terms of each individual contract, she would im-
partially fulfil her engagements to them all ; i.e. she
would equally pay everybody, V, and when, she was
in a position to do so, the inference very plainly being
that, till then, she would pay nobody.
The astute old Grand Vizier, and the no less
crafty Minister of Finance, Yoossooff Pasha, ma-
naged these various representatives of the bond-
holders with consummate skill. They received them
with every show of Oriental courtesy and politeness;
treated them to their choicest coffee and most ex-
quisite cigarettes, listened to them with grave defer-
ence, raised their eyebrows and clasped their hands
with well-acted admiration of the flow of their elo-
quence and of the lucidity of their arguments, declared
themselves fully satisfied and convinced, and were
liberal of the largest, but at the same time the most
guarded and vaguest promises; but invariably ended
with their bakaloom, or "we shall see," showed them
to the door, took care not to be at home to them, or
in their office, as long as they and their valets and
porters could contrive to put them off the scent,
drove them mad by a well-contrived system of
subterfuge and procrastination, and meanwhile ex-
erted their ingenuity to raise the mutual jealousy of
the holders of the various loans and of their agents,
and to set them by the ears, holding to the men in
Constantinople an ambiguous language, upon which
their ambassadors in Paris and London either could
TURKISH FINANCES. 227
put no construction, or only such interpretation as
best suited the Government's purposes. It is by
such shifts and devices, by endless delays, mystifica-
tions and tergiversations, that Turkish negotiators
nowadays manage to conduct all affairs from the
weightiest to the most trifling. The meanest and
dirtiest tricks of the stall-keepers at the Stamboul
bazaars are nothing to the arts of the political or
diplomatic functionaries at the Porte, and I defy
any man who has ever had to deal with them to
contradict me if he can.
" It is agreed by almost all reasonable men," said
the Turks, "that the Grand Vizier, although he
acted with unnecessary rashness and bluntness,
yielded in October to an irresistible necessity, and
put forth as reasonable and equitable a measure as
circumstances allowed. He could not pay the whole
interest of his debt he engaged to pay half. He
did not stop to consider the various claims of his
creditors ; he did not inquire which of them had
taken a more unsparing advantage of Turkey's ex-
tremities. They had all of them driven a more or
less profitable bargain; they could and should, all of
them, bear a partial sacrifice. If any new arrange-
ment could be devised by which that sacrifice might
be lightened or which might more equitably appor-
tion it in consideration of their various claims, he
would, doubtless, gladly listen to such a proposal ;
but the proposal must be made in the name and
with the consent of a sufficient majority of Turkey's
152
228 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
creditors, for the Grand Vizier's own decree was
meant to be and it undeniably was based on equitable
general principles, however it might exceed the Go-
vernment's powers, or trespass on the individual rights
of some of the interested parties. The Grand Vizier
came to what seemed to him, and what cannot in the
circumstances be denied to have been, a fair, how-
ever clumsy, settlement with his creditors. If they
could agree among themselves to a better settlement,
his consent to it, within the limits of his abilities,
would not be withheld. But the agreement must be
spontaneous and general, because, although the obli-
gations by which Turkey was bound to her creditors
were of a different nature, the claim on her honour
was the same, and better results could be hoped from
a frank appeal to what a Mussulman will acknow-
ledge as his pledged word than from any argument
founded on what he will consider mere legal quibble
and chicane."
It was not difficult, upon these premises, to foresee
what might and must be the upshot of any scheme
aiming at a revision of the compact by which
Turkey, in October, bound herself to her creditors.
The matter must be decided, not in Constantinople,
but in London, Paris, Borne, Amsterdam, or in any
place where all the holders of Ottoman Bonds might
come to a common understanding of what they
deemed a fair settlement of their claims, subject, of
course, to the modification those claims have under-
gone in consequence of the October decree. Was
TURKISH FINANCES. 229
there any possibility of the bond-holders coming to
such an agreement ? Should we ever see in Con-
stantinople any agent entitled to consider himself
the bond fide representative of the majority of the
bond-holders, able to show the credentials qualifying
him for the discharge of his mission, so thoroughly
conversant with the matter he had in hand, so deeply
penetrated with the thought of the general interest,
and so little biased by partial or special objects as to
enable him, as creditor, to meet the Grand Vizier,
as debtor, on a footing of perfectly equal authority ?
It was only too evident to all disinterested persons
that the creditors of Turkey, if they could have been
brought to act as one man, would have constituted
as great a power as the combined diplomacy of the
European States, and that their representatives, if
properly accredited, would have been able to exer-
cise on the Porte, not only for financial, but also for
political objects, as strong and decisive a pressure as
was put by the Ambassadors of the six Powers who
presented or endorsed the famous Andrassy Note.
Indeed, the bond-holders bear more intimate rela-
tions to the Ottoman Government, and are therefore
entitled to a more thorough knowledge of its home
policy and to a more active inquiry into its adminis-
tration, than the Governments on which they re-
spectively depend ; for, by virtue of their share of
the public debt, they have in some measure a right
to consider themselves Ottoman subjects and pro-
prietors, and every act of the Government affects
230 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
their interests as directly as those of any Ottoman
landowner, labourer, or trader.
Could a deputation of unanimous, or at least not
implacably discordant, bond-holders, whether or not
introduced or backed by the representatives of their
respective States, have obtained admission into the
Sultan's presence, and given him to understand that
by not putting any limits to his exorbitant civil list,
by freely laying hands on any sum of money coming
within his reach, he not only inflicted the utmost
misery and sowed the most dangerous discontent
among his own subjects, but also defrauded creditors
who proved to be his best friends in his sorest need,
and who were mainly instrumental in rescuing him
from the worst embarrassments, it is by no means
unlikely that some impression could have been made
on a Sovereign whose chief offence was the result of
gross ignorance, and with whom it was a favourite
saying that " he could not see what was the use of
his Ministers, unless it was to procure him money."
If there was a point upon which everybody in Con-
stantinople was agreed, it was this, that any reform
which might lead to good results in Turkey must begin
with the Sultan, and that the Sultan, in spite of all
his defects, would not be unamenable to reason or
necessity if the man could be found, either among his
own Pashas or among foreign Ambassadors, who
would undertake to exercise sufficient pressure upon
him." Would and could some heroic deputation of
TURKISH FINANCES. 231
Ottoman bond-holders kindly take that somewhat
ticklish operation upon itself?
Till a steady and vigorous curb can be put upon the
whims and passions of the Sovereign, the situation
of the Ottoman Empire must always be precarious,
and there is no absurdity or iniquity to which the
private advisers of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz would have
hesitated to urge him. Any attempt to establish a
check upon the exercise of the Sultan's arbitrary power,
either by a native Council or Cabinet, would have
been utterly hopeless, for, on the one hand, the highest
in the land never approached their Padishah except
in an attitude of the most abject physical and mental
prostration ; and, on the other hand, whenever the
Sultan was bent on mischief, he was never at a loss
for willing instruments to work out his purpose.
The same servile dependence exhibited by Viziers
and Pashas when standing in the presence of their
dread liege was equally evinced by the Christian
notabilities when they were summoned by their
Mussulman rulers in any measure to share their
authority and to enlighten them in the management
of public affairs. The Rayah, Greek, Armenian, or
other Giaour, when admitted into Council with his
Moslem fellow-subject, behaves as if he scarcely con-
sidered himself entitled to the breath that is in his
body. He sits upon the extreme edge of his chair,
bolt upright as a boarding-school young lady, with
both hands between his legs, holding both hems of
his gabardine, " in the attitude," as an Ambassador
232 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
was saying to me one morning, "of a Venus pudique,"
simpering and mincing his words, and nodding assent
to whatever the men of the ruling race may have to
propose. For his own part, the proud Mussulman,
who shows so much testiness and stubbornness when
dealing with the Christian, never approaches his
Imperial master without abdicating all his faculties of
thinking, judging and deciding for himself. Every
word from the Sovereign's lips is met with a dumb
but profound obeisance, implying that " to hear is
to obey."
To look to such elements for the construction
of an independent Council or a responsible Cabi-
net would be egregious folly. There will never
be a limitation to the arbitrary and mischievous
power of the Sultan until a strong pressure is
brought to bear upon it from without until his
Government is made to acknowledge and to bow to
the influence of well-meaning foreign Powers. That
is what the representatives of the European States
ought to have felt. They should have seen that, as
they could not agree on some plausible solution of
the Eastern Question, and as they were all in-
terested in the adjournment of that solution, they
should have turned all their joint efforts to support
the Ottoman Government by imposing upon it the
only policy which, in their opinion, might have pro-
longed its existence. To bring the Ambassadors
and Ministers here assembled to work heartily to-
gether to any purpose was, however, no easy task ;
TURKISH FINANCES. 233
and the conviction is strong in my rnind, that if
there ever was a case in which men who are paid to
promote and maintain peace contrived to bring about
war, it was that of their Excellencies the Envois
ordinary and extraordinary who represented the
European Powers at Constantinople during my
stay.
The Representatives of foreign Powers are not
able to obtain from the Porte justice even on behalf
of their respective subjects. In February, 1876,
about sixty English working-men smiths, boiler-
makers, shipbuilders, engineers, etc. all living at
Hasskeui, and employed by the Government in the
Naval Arsenal there, applied to her Majesty's
Cousul-General, Sir Philip Francis, for advice. The
whole of their colony, they said, consisting of above
ninety families, had been for the last five months
vainly applying for their wages. Their arrears had
been promised to them ever so many times, but the
promises only led to repeated disappointments. Sir
Philip Francis hardly seemed to see how .he could
help the poor fellows. Of course he and his Ambas-
sador could address the Government of the Porte in
their behalf; but what if they were met with the
answer, "Nemo dat quod non habet?" Claims of
money due, complaints of justice denied or uncon-
scionably delayed, are showered daily on the tables
of Diplomatic and Consular Agents of all nations
here ; but who can boast of obtaining any attention,
to say nothing of redress, at the Porte ? What
234 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
answer is ever vouchsafed except the most provok-
ingly dilatory and evasive one ? In their stolid vis
inerticB the Turks are invincible. Recollect that
French subject who, as I said, was ejected from
his house by a mob led by a magistrate and a
priest, illtreated by the police, imprisoned for a
whole day with his family, and subjected to the
greatest indignation, here in Pera, within sight,
as it were, of his Ambassador's palace. What
redress or damages has his Ambassador been able
to exact for him ? What has he been able to achieve
towards restoring the homeless family to the posses-
sion of their house, or having damages allowed to
them for their broken furniture ? But if, with all
the intervention of their Diplomatic and Consular
Agents, Europeans here in Pera fare no better, how
can the unprotected subjects of the Porte, whether
Moslems or Rayahs, ever hope to come by their
own ? What security will they have that they shall
not be made to bear more than their share of the
public burdens, or with what confidence can they
apply to their magistrates or to any of their rulers
for justice ?
As I think I have often observed, not only is
Turkey not a country in which an improvement in
the administration may lead to a relief of financial
difficulty, but the distress of the finance must, at
least for a time, be aggravated by any practicable
attempt at reform. A reform would imply both a
falling off in the revenue the result of a reduction
TURKISH FINANCES. 235
or remission of some of the taxes and an increase
of the expenditure a consequence of the necessity
of bettering the character of the public functionaries
by allowing them more liberal salaries. There is
no force in the world that could compel Turkey to
keep to her engagements if she was actually unable
to fulfil them ; but her creditors might so mismanage
their affairs as to make her unwilling to pay her
debts even to the extent of her ability. The cause
of the Turkish bond-holders was abandoned by their
respective Governments, and it was further weakened
by dissension and wrangling among themselves. By
a good understanding and wise combination of their
forces the creditors of Turkey might, perhaps, have
become a power in themselves, but the discord and
disorganisation to which their meetings almost in-
variably led, revealed most emphatically their in-
capacity for united action, and satisfied the Govern-
ment of the Porte as to the perfect freedom it might
adopt towards them in its future course. The
Government of the Porte, with a revenue which,
after deducting the two and a half addition to the
tithe, the abolition of which was lately decreed, may
be fairly estimated at 22,103,300 Turkish lire (the
lira equal to 18s. 2d.), found it impossible to allow
the bond-holders to receive the T. 14,000,000 due to
them as the interest of the Consolidated Debt. By
the Irade of October, as I said, it was decreed that
only half that sum, or T.7,000,000, should be paid.
I have known some friendly advisers of Turkey,
236 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
English gentlemen among others, who strongly
advised the Government of the Sublime Porte to
break even from the engagement contracted in
October, and to pay nothing at all, their argument
being that their first duty was to their own people,
and their most immediate task that of setting their
house in order, for which the whole of their revenu e
would prove no more than sufficient. I will not
undertake to say whether the Ottoman Government
took the friendly hint from the beginning ; I do not
know to what extent that kind advice to cancel all
debts by a scratch of the pen coincided with the
Government's original intentions. But all that is
clear is that such has hitherto been, such is likely
to the end of time to be the result. The Turks will
show their impartiality to their creditors by paying
nobody.
Some hope of a possible restoration of the finance,
as well as of a cure of all the evils of Turkey, began
to be entertained in the early part of the spring of
1876, when Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz was reported to
be ill. As I stated on good authority, he had eaten
eighteen eggs at breakfast an excess which had
naturally disagreed with him. The indigestion and
colic from which he was suffering were aggravated, as
I also said, by boils, one of which, presenting all the
symptoms of a carbuncle, had to be cut open by the
surgeon, Omer Pasha. On a Friday in February, his
Majesty, who is both Sovereign and Pontiff, was
expected, as usual, to give his subjects the example of
TURKISH FINANCES. 237
a punctilious observance of his religious duties by
going in state to one of the mosques, where, after
prayer, all the grand dignitaries and functionaries of
the empire perform their weekly obeisance, or
selamlik. For more than a hundred years, I am told,
there has been no instance of the " Shadow of God "
failing in the performance of this imposing cere-
mony, though some of the Sultans were in some
cases so ill that they had to be carried to the place
of worship in a blanket ; his Majesty's brother
and immediate predecessor, Abd-ul-Medjid, was seen
at his mosque only two days before he died. It
will be easy to imagine the sensation produced at
Stamboul and Pera on that February day towards
noon, when no report of the cannon announcing
that the Sultan was proceeding to the mosque was
heard, and when it became known that the Pashas,
who are regularly informed of the particular mosque
where they are expected to attend, had on that day
received no message. All that was positively known
was that the Sultan remained for three days shut
up in the harem, invisible to all persons, the Grand
Vizier vainly dancing attendance in the ante-
chamber. The most ominous rumours were spread
as to the possible gravity of the Padishah's illness,
and speculation was afloat as to what people might
be looking forward to, " should things come to the
worst." People considered that the Sultan spent
yearly from T.4,500,000 to T.5,000,000. And
that as no means had hitherto been found to compel
233 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
him to keep within the limits of any civil list,
some sanguine conjectures as to the beneficial change
a new reign might usher in were, therefore, ex-
tremely natural, and the immediate expectation was
that relief might be afforded to the distressed finance
of the empire by laying hands on the T. 4, 000,0 00
in gold and T. 8,000,000 in Ottoman Bonds the
ailing Sultan was supposed to be hoarding, to say
nothing of XT. 500, 000 in jewels it was said he
ow^ned as private property, apart from the Crown
jewels treasured up at the Seraglio. Hopes were
also entertained that the new Sovereign, aware of
the serious crisis through which the empire was
passing, might not be indisposed to yield either to
the respectful solicitations of well-meaning native
advisers, or to the friendly suggestions of the Re-
presentatives of the European Powers, so as partly
to divest himself of that absolute and arbitrary
authority wherein lay the main evil of the country,
and to inaugurate that true era of reform which,
to be of any avail, must begin with the head of the
State.
It would, meanwhile, have done his Majesty in-
finite good if he had heard in what mood the
immense majority of his subjects received the news
of his supposed danger. A good Mussulman said
in my hearing, " Le Sultan est malade la Turquie
est en convalescence ; le Sultan meurt la Turquie
est sauvee." And when the Bassiret explained on
the Saturday that his Majesty, " d cause d'un
TURKISH FINANCES. 239
furonde, found it difficult to put on his uniform,"
giving that as a reason for his non-attendance at
mosque, the pithy remark was, " The Sultan is
better, worse luck !" To such a depth of unpopu-
larity a Sovereign had sunk with respect to whose
character the brightest anticipations were cherished
at his accession, and who in his progress through
Western Europe was hailed as "the Man of his Age."
It soon became evident, however, that it would
take something stronger than boils to kill Sultan
Abd-ul-Aziz. He lived through half the year, and
continued to the end to lay hand on whatever public
money came within his reach.
A decree of the Grand Vizier, intended to re-
assure the Turkish bond-holders of, at least, that half
of their dividends which was allowed them by the
Trade of the 6th of October, had placed the whole
revenue arising from the indirect taxes at their dis-
posal, ordering that the proceeds therefrom should
be paid into the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and em-
powering the Bank to exercise the strictest control
over the Custom House. What happened ? I was
informed by a Broussa correspondent of the highest
respectability that " a quantity of embroidered work,
such as table-covers, etc., was ordered some weeks
ago there for the Palace," and that " an order had
been given for the payment of T.15,000 on the
Mizam, or Custom House." There is a branch of
the Ottoman Bank in that city, which was supposed,
240 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
notwithstanding, to receive all the produce of the
indirect taxes.
Nay, the Imperial brute went so far as to sefee
90,000 on board a transport ship bound for the
Bocche di Cattaro, taking thus violent possession of
money which had been scraped together with the
greatest difficulty, and which was destined to relieve
the most immediate wants of the brave and devoted
army of the Porte in Herzegovina, an army which
was much more formidably mown down by hunger
and privations of every kind than by the sword of
the insurgents ! With all these instances of his in-
satiable rapacity, which could be multiplied to infinity,
the Sultan was, or seemed at least to be, always
penniless, for so appalling was the distress under
which the Ottoman treasury was labouring, that even
the monthly payment of the Sultan's civil list had
fallen in arrear, and the purveyor who supplied his
Majesty's household with flour was begged or bidden
to repair at his own expense the oven in the kitchens
of the Imperial Palace, as the money necessary for
such a trumpery piece of work was not forthcoming.
Nay more ! The Sultan's sister, Adile Sultan, whose
residence was in a charming villa, at Candilli, just
across the waters of the Bosphorus, did not receive
one piastre of her monthly allowance from Septem-
ber to April, and herself and her domestic establish-
ment were for those six months living from hand to
mouth, on such money as they could scrape together
by petty loans among their friends and dependents,
TURKISH FINANCES. 241
the Princess all the time bitterly complaining of her
brother, whose improvidence and extravagance had
brought the family to so dire an extremity.
The first of April, 1876, came, and it was "All
Fools' Day " to the holders of Ottoman bonds.
After long hesitation, real or affected, the Govern-
ment of the Sublime Porte made known their pro-
bably long adopted resolution of deferring payment
of the dividend of the debt due at that date. The
representatives of the English and other foreign
bond-holders left Constantinople one by one, some of
them, like Sir Philip Rose and Mr. Staniforth,
endeavouring, as it seemed, to soothe the disappoint-
ment and cover the disgrace of their defeat by
seeking a quarrel with the correspondent of an
English newspaper, not because he had opposed
their imbroglio, but simply because he had refused
to recommend it. They all went away re-infectd,
and did not even take with them, as a liniment to
their sore hearts, so handsome j a present as Mr.
Hamond was proud to show to his honourable col-
leagues in the House of Commons. With respect
to Mr. Hamond and his golden snuff-box, we were
told here that when it was resolved in Council that
Mr. Hamond should be consoled for the failure
of his scheme by the gift of that bauble, the
Minister of the Marine, Dervish Pasha, suggested
that " a brand-new snuff-box would cost 500
Turkish, but that he had a second-hand one, a
former token of the Sultan's regard to himself,
VOL. i. 16
242 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
which the Government could have from him at the
reduced price of 300 Turkish." The hint was
taken. Dervish's old snuff-box, " as good as new,"
was handed over to Mr. Hamond, but the unfor-
tunate Minister of Marine is still waiting for his
300 Turkish. I can guarantee the anecdote as
perfectly authentic, and "Dervish's snuff-box" is a
theme of endless mirth to the Grand Vizier, who
is not a little proud of the skill with which he had
" done " his colleague.
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS.
ENGLISH OPERATIVES. THE IMPERIAL OTTOMAN NAVAL ESTABLISH-
MENT. AN ENGLISH COLONY. ENGLISH HOMES. COTTAGE-HOMES
AND VILLA-HOMES. NEW CHALCEDON. THE ISLANDS OF THE
BLESSED. THE SULTAN'S PALACES. THE BIBLE IN TURKEY.
I SAID somewhere in the foregoing chapter that a
certain number of English working men employed
at the Imperial Naval Arsenal, at Hasskeui, ap-
peared before her Majesty's Consul-General, Sir
Philip Francis, asking his advice under the diffi-
culties in which they were placed by the Ottoman
Government, who had not paid them one piastre of
their wages for nearly five months. The clean,
healthy faces, and decent Sunday garb in which
these honest Britons were clothed, contrasting so
pleasantly with the dirt and rags, and loathsome
look of disease common to a large part of the human
as well as canine population of this place, and the
manly, moderate and evidently truthful language
in which they retailed their grievances, awakened
my interest on behalf of these sturdy operatives, and
162
244 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
I gladly accepted Sir Philip's invitation to return
their visit, and see their workshops and home in
their once flourishing colony at Hasskeui.
I arrived at Constantinople, as I said, at the
beginning of winter, the time of the year least
favourable to receive an adequate impression of the
unmatched beauties of the Bosphorus, but had seen
enough of it, even in its least favourable condition,
to fill up in my imagination the picture which the
Strait must exhibit when in a month or two it
should go through the magic transformation of the
early spring. I had twice driven and steamed as
far as Therapia and Buyukdere ; twice crossed over
to the Asiatic shore at Scutari and Kadikeui, and
taken long walks and rides along shore and across
the hills, beyond Ferikeui, and Fondookli, as far as
Ortakeui and Arnaout Keui on one side, and past
the suburb of Kassim Pasha, in the direction of the
" Sweet Waters of Europe" on the other. I had
visited a Mussulman gentleman and scholar at
Roumeli Hissar, where he then lived a secluded life,
dividing his time between his excellent library and
his garden a little paradise, fenced round by the
battlemented walls and towers of the "old Castle of
Europe" and climbed up to the height where Mr.
Washburne directs his American College above Be-
bek. Stripped though it then was of the little verdure
the trees afford which the Osmanlis suffer to grow on
its hills, the Bosphorus, if you plied along its shores
on a fine day, was a scene, or rather a succession of
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 245
scenes, of incomparable loveliness, its headlands and
bays charmingly dovetailing and blending into one
another, receding, projecting, unfolding themselves
before you at every stage of your progress every
bay a secluded little mountain lake, every promontory
as you round it or top it laying open a new lake,
more calm, more deep-blue, more sweetly smiling
than the former a series of landscapes to which
hardly any artist, except Preziosi, an Italian,
Jerichau, a Dane, and Aivassoski, a Russian,
has even attempted to do justice.
With one of the Sultan's twenty-oar barges, or with
an Ambassador's despatch boat, I could imagine no
greater delight than to while away the long summer
day on these waters ; it would be like gliding along
the shore of Mergellina at Naples, or winding
between the banks of the Larian Lake between
Bellaggio and Como. The scenery is, indeed, less
luxuriant and magnificent, but it surpasses anything
to be seen anywhere else in variety and liveliness.
Hundreds of fast steamers, thousands of lazy boats,
a million of motley people are swarming on these
deep waves ; the shores are as thickly studded with
human dwellings as the Riviera at Genoa, and,
viewed from a distance, there is no such cluster of
water-girt cities to be seen in the world as the
mosque-and-minaret-crowned seven hills of Stam-
boul, the palace-and-barrack mass of Galata and
Pera, and the cypress-fringed long sweep of Scutari
and Kadikeui.
246 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
All must be seen at a distance, however, and not
by any of the means of locomotion that the country
affords. The little steamers of the various Turkish
companies that ply along or across the Straits,
looking so gay and trim as they skim the blue tide,
are an unutterable mass of foulness both deck and
cabin inside. Access to or egress from them at
the Karakeui-bridge piers between Stamboul and
Galata is only to be gained by several minutes'
pushing and elbowing through the throng of such
an unwashed multitude as could hardly be matched
by the pilgrim mob besetting the portals of the
Temple at Jerusalem; and as for the little canoes,
wherries, or caiques, 30,000 of which are waiting for
custom at all the landing-places, and ready to pounce
upon a fare with a vociferation unsurpassed even at
the mole of Leghorn or Naples although no craft
can glide along more pleasantly, and there are no
cleaner, tidier, more honest gondoliers in the world
than the white-clad caikji, or boatmen in this region
no man who has not made his will and insured his
life should ever get into them, for they are such
frail structures that the least untoward movement is
sufficient to throw them off their balance and over-
set them, and they are no sooner capsized than they
sink, irreparably wrecked and swamped.
In one of these boats, however, rowed by two
lusty Albanians, we embarked the Consul, his
cavass or body-guard, and I and in ten minutes we
were wafted over the distance between the landing-
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 247
steps at Galata, and the dockyard, about one mile up
the Golden Horn, at Hasskeui. We were met at
the landing-place by Mr. Walker, one of the foremen
in the dockyards, were shown over a long suite of
large, lofty, well-aired and lighted workshops, forges,
and engine rooms, inspected the various branches of
machinery bearing on the construction of a large
ironclad, visited the design and model rooms, and
finally saw the half-finished vessel itself as it stood
propped up close to the water-edge, its six inches
thick plate armour being riveted on its ribs by
heavy sledge-hammers. The honours of the place
were done by two English-speaking Mussulman
officers of the rank of Bey, well-informed gentlemen
charged with the direction and superintendence of
the works, who received us with that courtesy which
comes as easy to the Osmanlis of the educated
classes as swimming to ducks.
The establishment of the Arsenal at Hasskeui
arose from a natural instinct of national pride prompt-
ing the Turkish Government to be independent
of the foreigner for the construction of its navy.
The Turks, originally an inland tribe, when at the
time of their early invasion they aspired to the
rank of a maritime Power were in a great measure
indebted to the conquered people for the models of
their galleys, for the slaves who rowed them, and in
some instances for the bold renegade chiefs who
commanded them. The disasters of Lepanto in the
sixteenth century, and of Navarino in times nearer
248 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
to us, made them aware that they had something to
learn from Western civilisation in the maritime de-
partment, and, about thirty years ago, English ship-
wrights, mechanics, and engineers were invited to
settle as a naval normal school at the dockyard at
Hasskeui, as other skilled workmen were admitted
into the artillery arsenal at Top-haneh, to impart
their knowledge to the native workmen. When iron-
clad vessels became known, the present Sultan as-
pired to give his naval establishment a larger develop-
ment, and expensive machinery and material were
brought in with a view that a complete Imperial
ironclad from stem to stern, and from keel to
topmast, might be built on the Golden Horn ;
the boiler, the complicate steam-engine and elabo-
rate plate-rolling mills, and all other appliances
being provided on the spot. Success has so far
crowned the enterprise that one man-of-war has
already been constructed and launched, fitted for
the work such a vessel, in present circumstances,
could be expected to do riding well at anchor off
the Sultan's palace on the Bosphorus in the summer
months, and sleeping comfortably in the still waters
of the Golden Horn throughout the winter season.
The launching of it was a grand ceremony ; sheep
were sacrificed, Pashas promoted, Beys rewarded
with baksheesh, and Effendis with orders and medals,
while the only man who was at all competent to
estimate her cost, her worth, and probable use, ex-
claimed, " She is the dearest ship ever built ; her
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORVS. 249
weight in copper would not pay for her." Imported
skilled labour, imported iron, coal imported from
Wales and Newcastle, imported capital, borrowed at
15 per cent., so long as money could be got at that
rate from Europe, all went to gratify the Sultan's
conceit about a "home-made man-of-war." And
now we had before us such another vessel, designed
in 1871, begun in 1873, and to be finished probably
in 1879 or 1880, besides designs for two more ships,
and, as we were told, for a dainty yacht to serve as a
toy for Yoossooff Izzedin Effendi, the Sultan's eldest
son.
Undoubtedly, however, the native workman has
caught some skill under the influence of European
handicraft. Twenty years ago no native smith or
mechanic was worth more than Is. Qd. or 2s. a day.
There are now some rated at 6s. and even 8s. a day.
They are sober, strong, willing, and faithful men,
but like all who are imperfect masters of their art,
apt to think they have no more to learn, and little
inclined to improve their present knowledge. With
respect to the common labourers, they are merely
soldiers and sailors told off to arsenal duty, and they
work for their rations and for their 2d. a day when
they can get it.
The little English colony of engineers and carpen-
ters to whom these results are mainly due consisted
at the outset of upwards of 400 working men with
their families, and at their head was, first, ' Mr.
Herdman (made Herdman Bey), who retired from
250 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the service with a present of 1,000 ; and after him
Mr. Alexander Shanks (Iskander Bey), who also
went back to Scotland, where he is now in the em-
ployment of the Napiers at Glasgow. Under their
influence sprang up good schools, a capital self-sup-
porting mechanics' institute, with reading and lecture
rooms, a circulating library and library of reference,
a club, masonic hall, and co-operative stores,
altogether a well-organised and well-behaved
community, from which Mr. Shanks took good
care to weed out the drunken, rowdy mechanics,
whom the wages of 20 a month tempted to disgrace
themselves by vicious or disorderly conduct. Many
of these immigrant mechanics were Scotch. There
was one Scotch minister and one Free Kirk preacher,
besides one Church of England clergyman, a sort of
missionary to the Jews, a whole tribe of which race
are among the oldest settlers at Hasskeui. An excel-
lent woman, Mrs. Freeman, conducts an orphan
school, dependent on voluntary contributions.
By degrees, however, the cost of such an esta-
blishment began to be felt rather heavily. It was
necessarily wasteful. Highly-paid Pashas and Beys
were crowded on as nominal heads of departments ;
the drones soon threatened to outnumber the bees.
Two or three years ago the Porte deemed it expe-
dient to dismiss the English workmen, and now less
than 100 are employed, and these, seeing the bad
prospect before them, are gradually leaving the in-
hospitable country sacrificing, in many instances,
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 251
two-thirds of the value of their cottage property
for some of them had bought and even built houses
and their shares in their social establishments.
These operatives, as I said, had at the time received
no wages for the last five months. The Govern-
ment, some few days after my visit, published a notice
that the salaries of public functionaries should be
paid from the 1st of December, leaving former arrears
to be settled by instalments at some future time
viz., the Greek Kalends. But the English workmen
have as yet not received one penny of their dues, and
will accept no other conditions than the full and
immediate acknowledgment and satisfaction of their
claims, so that a general breaking up of the whole
establishment may be looked forward to. As I saw
the bright faces and heard the choral songs of the
children at the school-house in the village, and
passed them later in the day at play on the common,
I could not but regret that what had promised to
become a flourishing and permanent settlement should
be so likely soon to vanish from the land, leaving no
trace. For though the standard of the Turkish
workman has been raised, and the Government can
now repair their ships, mend their boilers, and even
manufacture steam-engines, the native factory cannot
be said to have taken root, and the Hasskeui Dock-
yard is probably doomed soon to go to decay. A
native real head for such a concern has not been
found, punctual pay and economical purchase of ma-
terial seem impracticable, system and organisation
252 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
are wanting, and the appointment of native officers is
made in obedience to mere favouritism. And thus,
with iron mines and coalfields at hand, with honest
native labour and talent to be found if properly sought
and paid for, with all the elements of success within
reach, the Arsenal at Hasskeui, like so many other
unlucky attempts at European civilisation under
Ottoman rule, must be pronounced a failure, and
what remains of it will only be a monument of that
utter corruption and incapacity which characterise
every branch of Turkish administration.
The country residences of English families of more
thriving classes than these now ill-remunerated
English workmen are also a pleasant contrast to
Turkish squalor. Some of them are scattered here
and there on the hills, or along shore, but others
cluster together at- some favourite spots like Ortakeui
or Bebek, Candilli or Beylerbey, Buyukdere or
Therapia, and especially at Kadikeui or Chalcedon.
Many of these are merely used as summer abodes
by the English bankers and merchants who own
them, but some again are permanent homes, and
men bound to this irksome and filthly Pera-Galata
by the daily calls of their business row or ride back-
wards and forwards the whole year round, morning
and evening, to the sweet spots where their wives
and children luxuriate in pure air and rural peace,
in the enjoyment of such leisure and pleasure as
well-earned wealth can afford. Kadikeui, till lately
a dirty Mussulman village, has sprung up as an
THE ENGLISH ON THE 'BOSPHORUS. 253
entirely Christian, and mostly European, English or
Anglicised quarter ; a little town, on level ground,
in a little bay, between two bold prominent points,
with clean, newly-paved streets and rows of tidy
villas, laid out in little squares and marine parades,
lined with miraculously saved old trees, with well-
trimmed gardens, and a long range of the cliffs and
stony beach ; within reach extensive grounds for ex-
cursions to the cypress forest of the Scutari Cemetery,
and to the summit of panoramic Boolgoorloo. I was
out with one of these thrifty and hospitable house-
holders for one evening and morning, and the quiet
happiness his own family and that of many of his
neighbours seemed to enjoy in their gladsome re-
treat made me for the time forget the horrors I had
left behind me in the mouldering city of the Sultan,
and in its scarcely less unwholesome diplomatic
suburb. The climate of the Bosphorus is, at the
season I refer to, February and March, very bracing,
and though somewhat trying, yet eminently healthy
to the healthy. With that knack peculiar to the
English of always finding plenty of work where for
other people there seems to be nothing to do, our
friends utilise the various resources and capabilities
of the place. At home in bad weather they have
their books, their illustrated papers, their Bibles,
their peerages, their pianos, their chess and bagatelle
boards. Out of doors in the sunshine they have
their boat and bathing-houses, fishing and shooting
parties in the bay or on the hills for men, with
254 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
scrambling on the brow of the cliffs to harden the
limbs and steady the nerves of growing boys. With
the girls sits the governess at her daily task ; the
tutor in the family is at the same time the clergy-
man of the little community, and he will be happy
to open for your inspection the tiny but elegant
church which private munificence has erected and
consecrated for the worship of the Anglican colony.
I have seen a cafe and a theatre in Kadikeui, and
there are half a score of similar establishments in
Pera, but the English have no need of such diver-
sions, and little care for them. Their domestic habits
go with them to the world's end. Other nations,
whether Eastern or Western, understand nothing of
this proud, self-dependent individualism. The dark,
dingy quarters in which at Pera, as at Stamboul, at
Scutari, and many another village along the shores
of the Bosphorus, herd together Jews, Greeks, and
Osmanlis are simply the result of helpless gregarious
instincts. Other people crowd together that, if one is
idle and delights in doing nothing, the rest may help
him ; but what the Englishman wants is room to
himself to live and work. He must always be up
and doing, and he only looks for company when he
thinks others may join him in accomplishing what he
cannot achieve by himself.
From the earliest day of March, as if to console
us for our gloomy political prospects, we enjoyed
the most cheerful and genial summer rather than
spring weather. Fine dry days followed one ano-
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 255
ther with grateful succession. The green of the
meadows revived ; almond-trees were already in
blossom at Kadikeui when I went up to Bool-
goorloo nearly on the last day in February, and
the pear and apple-trees were also all in bloom on
March 29th, when I joined a party of friends bound
to the Prince's Islands, or " Daimon-n isoi" (Isles of
the Blessed), near the Asiatic coast at the entrance
of the Bosphorus on the Marmora side. The whole
population, both Moslem and Rayah, were breaking
from winter confinement, and crowds of Turkish
ladies were to be seen daily on the Corso, or car-
riage drive at the Taxim, outside the Rue de Pera,
and weekly, on Fridays and Sundays, walking on
the fresh sward at the Sweet Waters of Europe.
New-born lambs in unusually great numbers were
frisking and bleating in every pasture, the promise
of a bountiful yield to the collectors of the sheep-
tax ; and the tithe on grain and other produce would
prove equally beneficial if copious April showers
followed upon all the accumulation of March dust.
For the bane of this Roumelian and Anatolian cli-
mate is the drought, and Turkey, as well as Spain,
not enjoying the moisture with which the snow
mountains bless a large part of Italy, is never quite
safe from the blazing sun which scorches and withers
the very harvest it has helped to ripen. It is this
want of summer-swollen rivers, the absence of all
means of irrigation, and the scantiness of fertilising
dews which gives this lovely Bosphorus and its even
256 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
more charming neighbourhood its cruel aspect of
bareness and aridity. The scenery is unmatched
for beauty and variety. Every hill, every headland,
every secluded bay, had unspeakable charms, as I
saw the landscape from my window in the stillness
of early dawn, or as I gazed from one of the heights
on the purple horizon at the witching hour of sunset.
Somehow, however, the pictures look to the best
advantage when distance lends them enchantment,
and when the morning or evening haze curtains
their too bold and naked outlines. The beauty of
the Bosphorus, like that of many of the islands of
the Archipelago, does not gain upon the beholder
on a nearer approach. Even the " Isles of the
Blessed," of which I had heard so much, so dear to
the Greeks, to the English, and other Levantines
who have their homes there to the almost total
exclusion of the Moslems, even Prinkipo, with its
well-trimmed gardens, and Halki, with its far-famed
colleges, and Porti and Antigone, and the steeper
Oxeia, and the smoother Plate where Sir Henry
Bulwer built his "folly" were, on the whole, a
disappointment to me as I threaded their narrow
canals in a lazily-paddling steamer in that quiet
morning and afternoon. Picturesque they all are,
and extremely fertile, no doubt, wherever their soil
is by thrifty Europeans turned to useful purposes ;
but somehow the impression they make is of so
many masses of rock and dust. Verdure, the great
element of natural beauty, is deficient ; the eye looks
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 257
in vain everywhere for a foreground, and although
better things might be hoped from the progress of
April and May, one could not think without dismay
of the dreariness they must exhibit during the long
lapse of months between June and November.
Their climate in winter is considerably milder than
that of the Bosphorus, and though in summer they
must be hotter than Therapia, Candilli, and other
projecting points lying in the path of the wind of
the two seas, I am told that the sea-breeze, never
failing in the hottest hours, is sufficiently fresh to
render the temperature quite endurable even in the
dog-days. Turkey, like many other countries ex-
clusively agricultural, depends for its prosperity on
the harvest, and it was all a " toss up " whether the
crops at that time so luxuriant would, by timely
rains, be brought to maturity, or whether they
would be altogether burnt up and annihilated by a
continuation of the splendid weather, in which we
were so ready to bask and exult.
The lovely weather seemed to have affected even
Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz in all the gloom of his sullen
seclusion. Official information was published at the
end of March that his Majesty had shifted his
quarters from his winter residence at Dolmabacheh
to the adjoining palace at Cheragan, and also that
he had gone up to his sweet retreat at Yildiz-Kiosk.
The old palace of the Seraglio, which has been the
residence of the rulers of the land which is now
VOL. i. 17
258 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Turkey for fifteen centuries, and the position of which,
at the point of the triangle formed by the city of
Cons tan tine, between the Sea of Marmora and the
harbour of the Golden Horn, points it out as the
very key of the Bosphorus, has been abandoned by
the degenerate descendants of Mohammed II., since
its main building was destroyed by fire in 1863.
Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid lavished immense treasures to
build his new palace of Dolmabacheh, on the shore
at the foot of the Pera-hill, round the turning of the
left or northern bend of the Golden Horn, past the
Artillery Arsenal of Top-haneh, and the suburb of
Fondookli ; and, not satisfied with this, Abd-ul-Aziz,
his brother and successor, outdid Abd-ul-Medjid by
the construction of his new palace of Cheragan, a
gorgeous edifice, where millions have been sunk in
precious marbles, mere splendour and magnificence
so dazzling the eye as to blind it to the deficiency of
architectural taste. Cheragan lies also on the shore,
beyond Dolmabacheh, separated from it by only a
few yards' interval, and the two mansions, with their
grounds and premises, stretch on a long line fronting
the Bosphorus from Top-haneh or Ortakeui, their
blank walls obstructing the sea view from the
high-road which runs behind them for the best part
of two miles. The Sultan's removal from one to the
other of these sumptuous abodes implies, therefore,
only a few steps' journey, and involves neither a
change of air nor of prospect, for the two palaces
stand side by side, like the two wings of Carlton
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 259
House Terrace, with a gap not much larger than
Waterloo Place between them.
The announced flitting, however, was only the first
of the many migrations to which the Sultan would,
in his idle restlessness, be impelled as the summer
advanced. The care of his scores of palaces, pavilions,
kiosks, and pleasaunces on either side of the Strait
constituted one of the main occupations of his vacant
existence. To hoard money, to pile up brick or stone
and mortar, and to gaze from his window at his iron-
clads riding at anchor, were the only breaks on the
indolence and indulgence of his harem seclusion. A
prince born in the purple, not perhaps destitute of
such instincts and faculties as might have raised him
to high destinies, Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz had sunk into
a mere pampered and cloyed voluptuary. Unfitted
for any work by his effeminate bringing up, obese and
flabby, incapable of sustained exertion, mental or
physical, corrupted by his own overweening conscious-
ness of unbounded authority, and by the base adula-
tion and adoration of those who exaggerated his
conceit of a power which they exercised in his name
but for their own benefit, this Padishah, this "Refuge
of the World," this " Shadow of God," kept aloof
from cares and duties, and withdrew within himself,
limiting his intercourse to a bevy of female slaves
and a herd of eunuchs, or Court-Chamberlains with
eunuchs' hearts, with such effects on his temper as
might be expected from a contrast between the obse-
quiousness that surrounded him in his fool's paradise
172
260 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
and the snubs and buffets which awaited him whenever
he ventured into collision with the stubbornness of
the outer world. It was only in his harem, as he often
felt in spite of himself, that his reign was absolute.
Outside its walls there were rebellious Giaours and
meddling Christian potentates, and weak-minded
Ministers grudging the supplies. But within those
walls his stronghold was impregnable, and there he
abode, invisible, inaccessible to reason or remon-
strance, unamenable to advice from Vizier or Ambas-
sador. No truth, it was felt, would make its way to
the Sultan ; no good would come of it if it could. For
any measure of reform or improvement by which his
tottering Empire might be stayed in its fall the Sul-
tan had to be surprised, hoodwinked, or bribed into
giving his consent, nor was there ever any certainty
that what had been obtained by the Minister's stra-
tagem might not at any moment be revoked by the
Sovereign's caprice.
But I have suffered political considerations to
divert me from the subject of this present chapter,
which I intended to devote exclusively to the English
colony on the Bosphorus. " One of the things I
should like to call your attention to," said Sir Philip
Francis, the English Consul, to whom I was indebted
for much useful information, "is that we are here
rather over-parsoned," and proceeding to particulars,
he stated what I now will attempt to write down,
quoting, as closely as I can, his own words. " I
remember a good old English lady, whose home lay
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 261
in the centre of one of the most charming rural dis-
tricts, and who yet came to the resolution to leave
the spot to which half a century of wedded life had
strongly attached her, for the only reason that she
could not live where she could not enjoy ' daily ser-
vices and weekly celebrations.' It might seem that
any person acting under the impulse of such laudable
wants would not be easily induced to settle in par-
tibus infidelium, yet there is, perhaps, hardly a
cathedral town in England itself where my vener-
able friend could have better gratified her devotional
cravings than here on the Bosphorus, under the rule
of the Sovereign who calls himself ' head of the
Mohammedan faith.' Reckoning Stamboul and
Pera, and all the various villages situated on either
shore of the Strait, the British and American popu-
lation averages about five hundred souls, and to
minister to their spiritual wants, it is hardly exaggera-
tion to assert that we have fifty gentlemen one in
ten who go about in black coats and white neck-
cloths, and whom it would be ill manners not to
designate by the much-disputed title of ' reverend.'
First and foremost we have here in Pera the chap-
lain of her Majesty's Embassy, the Rev. C. B.
Gribble, whose impressive delivery and sound doc-
trine edify a numerous but select official congregation ;
while for those whose leanings are towards the more
demonstrative Ritualistic innovations there is the
' Memorial Church,' a monument in good style
erected in honour of the Crimean heroes, where Mr,
262 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Curtis, deeply versed in Byzantine Archaeological
lore, regularly officiates ; and we muster besides, Dr.
Millingen, a Presbyterian minister, and Dr. Roller,
a German by extraction, but ordained in England,
and equally at home in an English and German
pulpit. The Scotch have their own minister, Mr.
Christie, of the Established, and Mr. Brown, of the
Free Kirk. The Americans assemble under the
auspices of a clergyman, Mr. Ternary, and they have
besides a whole colony of preachers attached to their
flourishing college at Roumeli Hissar and Bebek.
The little flock at Kadikeui, near Scutari, are in the
charge of Messrs. Elliot, Bliss, and Wood the first-
named English, the two others Americans nume-
rous enough, one would think, in proportion to their
congregation, to hold a council in that hallowed
locality the ancient Chalcedon renowned in olden
times for its grand ecclesiastical gatherings. The
British and American Bible Societies have, besides,
their clerical establishments both at Galata and
Scutari, and under the shadow of the Great Mosque
at Stamboul ; and at Hasskeui, the home of the
Israelites, there is a Church of England missionary,
Mr. Neumann, and a /good number of other mis-
sionaries, with missionary schools for Jew boys and
girls.
" It will not be easy, after this long enumeration,
to question the tolerant disposition of these good and
wise Mussulmans towards the professors of alien
creeds. What grievances the clause of the Andrassy
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 263
Note referring to religious equality may be intended
to redress in the provinces I do not pretend to know,
but here, in and about the capital, I may safely assert
that the various communities of Christians enjoy as
perfect a freedom not only of worship, with book,
bell, and candle, but also of active and somewhat
ostentatious proselytism, as the most advanced Con-
stitutional or Republican State ever allowed. It
was not in the nature of the votaries either of the
Hebrew or of the Mohammedan faith to aspire to
the ' conversion' of ' unbelievers,' or to dread the
' perversion ' of their own people by the arguments
of extraneous teachers. To believe in one Jehovah or
one Allah, is for the disciple of Moses or Mohammed
the greatest privilege. He may not grudge the
extension of this inestimable blessing to benighted
' heathens ' or ' idolaters ;' but his own form of
belief is, in his opinion, so simple and pure, so
sunlike and self-asserting, that it ought to carry
conviction with it without further reasoning; and
whatever pity and contempt he may feel for the
' blind who will not see,' he is perfectly content to
let them grope in darkness, heedless of the goal to
which ignorance or error may lead them. The per-
secutions by which the Ottoman invaders established
their sway in these regions, like the extermination
by the Hebrews of the tribes inhabiting the Pro-
mised Land, were the result not so much of religious
fanaticism as of territorial greed. The object was
not to convert, but to despoil the natives, and though
264: THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the Moslem did not disdain the co-operation of those
' Giaours/ who showed no hesitation about pro-
moting their worldly prosperity by a timely apos-
tasy involving the loss of their eternal welfare, he
slackened in his zeal as soon as it had answered his
ambitious or avaricious purposes, and though he
actually did not reject and spurn such converts as
rendered their services available, he never made any
efforts to add to their number, nor ever thought
better of them for their desertion of their fathers'
Creed.
" There was at all times in the intercourse between
the Turk and his Christian subjects something cal-
culated to inspire the former with unmitigated con-
tempt not only of the character, but also of the
creed of the latter, and it was also natural that he
should look upon moral degradation as a necessary
consequence of unsound religious doctrine. He found
at his invasion a craven people, wasting in the subtle-
ties of theological disputes an energy of which they had
given no proof in the defence of their territory or of
the walls of their capital. The corruption and false-
hood, the abject cunning which were inherent in the
enslaved condition of a vanquished race were by the
conqueror ascribed to the enervating influence of a
pusillanimous mistrust in God's greatness and good-
ness. He never knew how to put a generous con-
struction on the sublimity of Christian self-abasement;
and he felt no scruple about crushing the feelings of
men who looked to a future life for the redress of
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 265
the ignominy to which they submitted in this world.
It was only in later times that he had a chance of
becoming acquainted with the purer faith of Protes-
tant Christianity. His first impression of the doctrine
of the Gospel was that of the abstruse mysteries, of
the complicated ceremonies, of the miracles, images,
and relics of the Greek and Latin Churches. It
was as much as he could do to restrain his abhorrence
and loathing of what seemed to him the grossest of
idolatries, and it was not without scorn that he saw
himself compelled to act as peacemaker in those
undignified squabbles of monks and pilgrims at Jeru-
salem, Bethlehem, and other sanctuaries, where,
without the salutary dread of his heavy-thonged
horse- whip, rabid fanatics were as they are even
now always ready to fly at each other's throats.
His first instinct in presence of that grovelling super-
stition was sheer compassion, and it could scarcely
be roused into indignation when he perceived that
so debased a faith developed aggressive tendencies,
and laboured at its extension among the followers of
his own creed. Yet even the attempts at Christian
proselytism did not in any great measure disturb the
magnanimity of his forbearance, and the terrible laws
punishing the Moslem's apostasy were, as a rule, or
have been lately, at least, leniently interpreted and
laxly applied. The Mussulman seemed inclined to
leave to Allah the care of the souls ' of those who
belonged to Him/ and relied on the humane and
consoling doctrine embodied in the old fable of the
266 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
( Three Kings ' that fable of evident Eastern
origin, which, from the days of Boccaccio to those of
Lessing's ' Nathan der Weise,' was intended to
teach man tolerance of other people's faith, as well
as confidence in his own.
" Of late, when the more rapid advance of the
Western nations in the path of civilisation struck
the Moslem with the sense of his own intellectual
inferiority, he not only evinced no mistrust of the
religious teachers whom burning Christian charity
sent forward as bearers of light into his dominions,
but gladly allowed his rising generation to attend their
schools, where he conceived that knowledge might
be obtained with but little or no danger to the in-
tegrity of Islamism. The American College at
Koumeli Hissar, and various other institutions
opened on the Bosphorus and throughout the Otto-
man Empire by Scotch and English missionaries
number both among their boarders and their day
pupils not a few children of Mussulmans of all ranks,
and whatever aptitude these young Turks may
evince in their acquirement of useful knowledge, it is
evident either that their teachers do not ply them with
sufficiently strong arguments to shake their religious
convictions or that their principles in that respect
are too firmly rooted to yield to dogmatic influence.
The Moslem pupils almost invariably leave school
where they have edified their Christian classmates
by their docility and submissiveness, if not by their
intelligence full of respect and gratitude for their
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 267
instructors, but as stanch in their allegiance to the
Koran as they entered it. Their dilemma seems to
be that either Christianity is the worship of one
God, and as such it is identical with Mohammedanism,
or it is something else, and, in that case, no sophistry
can free it from the charge of idolatry.
"It is not otherwise with the Jews, for whose
exclusive benefit schools have been opened both at
Hasskeui on the Golden Horn and in their more
numerous communities at Salonica and other im-
portant provincial cities. Neither the Jew nor the
Mussulman evinces the least horror of the Bible ; but
no reading in its sacred pages can ' convince them
against their will.' The Jew stops halfway in its
perusal, the Moslem takes in both the Old and New
Testament, but sticks to Mohammed's volume as a
corrected edition of both.
" If anything could be more surprising than the
intensity of the zeal of British and American Pro-
testant missionaries, it would be the strange purposes
to which only too much of it is directed. That the
conversion of the Mussulmans or the reform of the
Greek and Armenian Churches should be attempted
here, where those creeds have their head-quarters,
would be perfectly intelligible ; but what strikes me
as singular is that the reverend gentlemen who are
backed by private and public Bible Societies should
most eagerly seek their proselytes among the Jews,
considering that the children of Israel are scattered
all over the world, and that if little or no impression
268 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
can be made by Christian arguments on those mem-
bers of the tribes who are settled in the West, there
ought to be little encouragement to hope for success
in the East. As an explanation of the phenomenon,
I may state that the most strenuous endeavours to
impress the Jewish mind here are made by agents of
Bible Societies in Scotland, a country where, as in
Greece and in Genoa, it is an established fact that
no Jew can live, the natives there being sufficiently
shrewd to beat the Hebrew at his own weapons.
There are at Constantinople and in its suburbs about
50,000 Jews, most of them, like those of Salonica,
Leghorn, and Venice, descendants of those Israelites
whom the blind bigotry of Philip II. drove from
Spain, and among whom a strange jargon of corrupt
Castilian is still spoken. They are mostly tinmen
and glaziers, window-washers and boot-cleaners, mud-
larks in the bazaars, and keepers of nondescript
houses, which are neither inns nor lodging-houses,
but partake of the nature of both. They are pedlars
of small wares, the lowest of commissionaires, and
swarm in foul dens like rabbits in warrens, their
numerous progeny clustering at their doors and dab-
bling in the mud.
" For the benefit of these people there are at Hass-
keui, close to the little colony of English mechanics
and engineers busy at the Naval Arsenal, two schools,
one kept by Mr. Christie, supported by the Scotch
Jewish Mission Society, and also by another Anglo-
American Bible Society, at whose expense he is en-
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 269
gaged in a curious philological undertaking that of
translating the Scriptures into the bastard Spanish
patois of the locality, which he prints in the Hebrew
type, the Hebrew character only being used for
reading and writing in schools where the Hebrew
language is unknown, and where only base Spanish
is spoken ! The other school at Hasskeui is under
the guidance of Mr. Neumann, acting for the Church
of England Society for the Promotion of Christianity
among the Jews. The two schools average about
100 pupils between them. Their avowed object is
the conversion of the * chosen people.' That an in-
dividual conversion may have been achieved by their
efforts is just possible ; but I have heard of no case
resting on bond fide historical evidence. At any
rate, there can be no doubt about the missionaries
greatly outnumbering the converts.
" Here at Galata, again, another large Jewish
school has been erected by British subscription at
the cost of many thousand pounds, directed by Mr.
Tomary, a converted Austrian Jew, under the aus-
pices of the Free Kirk of Scotland. There is, besides,
a school for Italian Jews, kept by Miss Macgregor,
also a dependent on the Scotch Free Kirk, and a
Miss Ewen has a pet private mission in one of the
Jewish villages on the Bosphorus. That, irrespective
of their religious object, all these missions and schools
may do some good in relieving want, imparting
knowledge, and introducing habits of decency and
cleanliness, no one would deny. The only contro-
270 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
vertible point is the adequacy of the means to the
end; the melancholy consideration which suggests
itself is whether the ladies and gentlemen who con-
tributed their funds for these special, exclusive, and
illusory enterprises might not be made to perceive
the futility of their efforts, and to devote their cha-
rities to the general development of those civilising
influences by which true religion as well as true
morality is best promoted.
" Happily, men are in many cases better than the
institutions they spring from. Most of the American
missionaries, both at the Bible House in Constanti-
nople and throughout the provinces, show the most
laudable anxiety to extend their influence over the
people by the publication not only of the Scriptures,
but of books and newspapers on a variety of secular
as well as spiritual subjects, in the Turkish, Arabic,
Armenian, and Bulgarian languages ; they war
against every shape of superstition and immorality,
and are foremost in all good deeds of charity, and in
the promotion of all the virtues inseparable from true
practical religion. On the same principle Mrs. Neu-
mann, the wife of the missionary to the Jews, carries
on an excellent private school at Hasskeui, apart
from her husband's proselytising exertions, and inde-
pendent of any joint-stock 'society,' her object being
merely to rescue poor fatherless children from the
contamination of the life by which they are sur-
rounded, and to train them to be useful and honest
members of society. That charity without the leaven
THE ENGLISH ON THE BOSPHORUS. 271
of religious enthusiasm may achieve much is, how-
ever, not a thing to be hoped. People will go on
devoting their energies i.e. subscribing their funds
for the conversion of the inconvertible. Why not ?
Are they not free to do as they please with their
own ? After all, is not an investment in little Le-
vantine Jews as safe as the purchase of Ottoman
bonds ? There is as great a necessity for some people
to get rid of their surplus wealth as for some other
people to come in for it. What is good for the sow-
ers is good also for the reapers."
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTER XV.
HERZEGOVINA.
POSITION OF THE PROVINCE. ITS POLITICAL AND ECONOMICAL CON-
DITIONS. THE OUTBREAK. ITS IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCE. TURK-
ISH GOVERNORS AND GENERALS. SERVER. RAOUF. MUKHTAR.
THE FIGHTING ABOUT NIKSITCH. TURKISH STRATEGY AND TACTICS.
FROM the middle of summer, in 1875, to May, 1876,
there was civil war in Herzegovina. An insur-
rection broke out in that district with which the
Government of the Porte at first dealt with its
wonted slackness and remissness, and against which,
as the movement spread, it turned all its energies,
but which in the end it seemed unable fully to over-
come. The Porte was hampered and hindered in
its work of pacification by the interference of the
Powers, which either upon its solicitation, or from
their own impulse, attempted to lend their aid, and
the outbreak, which had at first a local character,
and was circumscribed within the limits of a home
disorder, spread to adjoining and even to distant
regions, and led to international complications and
actual contention. Before" Turkey had thoroughly
subdued her Herzegovinian rebellious subjects, she
HERZEGOVINA. 273
came into violent collision with her disloyal vassals
of Servia and Montenegro, and, ere she could settle
her differences with these two semi-independent Prin-
cipalities, she brought upon herself the hostility of
Russia.
The territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, some-
times ruled by the Porte as one province or Vilayet,
sometimes split into two separate governments, con-
stitutes the extreme north-western border of Euro-
pean Turkey, and is hemmed in on the north by
the Austrian Provinces of Croatia and Slavonia ; on
the west by the strip of sea-coast also belonging to
Austria of Dalmatia ; on the south by the little
domain of the Prince of Montenegro, whom Turkey
claims as a dependent, but who considers himself a
self-standing potentate, and by the Ottoman (Al-
banian) territory of Prisrend. On the east, the
Drina separates Bosnia from Servia. The northern
frontier of Bosnia, almost throughout its length, is
formed by the Save ; the western by the Dinaric
Alps, which run all along the sea-border of Dalmatia,
shutting in Bosnia, as well as Montenegro, except at
the two narrow outlets of Klek in the Gulf of
Sabbioncello and Sutorina in the Bocche di Cattaro,
the limit, once, of the little Republic of Ragusa,
separating its territory from the Venetian possessions
on the coast of the Adriatic.
Herzegovina is properly a district of Bosnia, and
lies in the south-western corner of the province,
having Montenegro on the south and Dalmatia on
VOL. i. 18
274 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the west. Its chief town is Mostar ; the capital of
Bosnia is Scraievo or Bosna-serai. The whole terri-
tory, though mountainous, is fertile, and its popula-
tion lives mainly by agriculture. Its numbers are
given at 1,337,393, of whom 480,596 or a little
more than one-third are Mohammedans, and
856,797, Christians.
I have said that the insurrection in these districts
has been described by some people as a by no means
spontaneous movement, the mere result of the
manceuvres of Panslavist committees acting in the
interest of Russia, by whom not only the arms and
ammunition, and the funds, but even the combatants
were supplied. Mr. Holmes, Consul at Mostar, who
was summoned by Sir Henry Elliot to Constantinople
in the winter of 1875, for the express purpose of en-
lightening us as to the real condition of the insurgent
districts, assured us that the Turkish Government
had not lately been worse than at any former period,
not worse in Bosnia or Herzegovina than in any
other Ottoman province ; that there had been no
very loud or serious complaints, no recent cause of
offence, and that the agitation was owing to the
influence of Panslavist emissaries from Montenegro,
Servia, and Dalmatia, from which provinces adven-
turers came in crowds to swell the insurgents.
There was some truth in that, and it agreed with
the arguments by which General Ignatieff urged the
Sultan's Government to mend their ways. " Look,"
he said, " at your subjects in Bosnia and Herzego-
J
HERZE G VINA. 275
/
vina, and compare their condition with that of the
brethren of their own race living across the borders
in Dalmatia, Croatia, etc., under Austrian rule !
Can you prevent your Slavs from communing with the
Austrian Slavs, from exchanging ideas with them,
reciprocating their sympathies, and indulging their
common hopes and aspirations ? The terms on which
Austria bases her sway are public security, impartial
justice, political, religious, and social equality. Do
you think your Christian subjects will long submit
to see their most sacred rights trampled upon by
your Mussulmans ? And do you think your neigh-
bours' subjects will long be restrained from vindi-
cating those rights in their oppressed brethren's
behalf?" Of course there was on the part of
Turkey's neighbours political propagandism. But
what gave rise to disaffection, and led to periodical
spasmodical outbreaks, long before Panslavism was
dreamt of, was Turkish misgovernment ; a state of
things introduced into the country by violence, and
against which violent reaction might at all times be
expected to set in. The oppression the labouring
population of the Turkish provinces endured at the
hands of the landowners was not an evil of recent
date, but must be traced up to times anterior to the
Mohammedan occupation. In Bosnia, as in all Euro-
pean communities, the land was originally seized by
strong men, who held it on the terms of feudal
tenure, and who distributed it among the peasantry
to be cultivated for the common benefit of master
182
276 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
and man. At the time of the Mohammedan conquest
most of the great landowners became Mussulmans,
the only condition on which they could assert
their rights over their own property, and be the
equals of those invaders who had seized upon the
goods of their slain or fugitive countrymen. The
result was that the landed class, whether natives or
intruders, were all Mussulmans, while the majority
of the labouring peasantry though not all were
Christians. There never was a law actually and
absolutely forbidding the purchase of land by the
Christians ; but the landowners were too jealous and
grasping, and the labouring peasantry too helpless
and degraded, for these latter to aspire to improve
their condition. The lands were farmed out to the
peasants on terms perfectly analogous to the Mezza-
dria, or cultivation on half profits, a system which
has existed in Lombardy and other parts of Italy
from time immemorial, and which, though not the
best for the landlord and the general interests of
agriculture, enables the husbandman, if he is intelli-
gent and thrifty, to make his position as comfortable
as that of any man working for another's profit can
well be. The terms by which the profits of the
land were to be shared between landlord and tenant
were apparently in Bosnia left very much to the
contracting parties themselves. To meddle with
them, and to establish rules guaranteeing their
mutual interests, is found a matter of great diffi-
culty even in Italy ; for in spite of all legislative
HERZEGOVINA. 277
provisions, a " screwing " landlord will always find
the means of privately imposing onerous conditions
on a needy tenant ; and, on the other hand, a tenant
either in flourishing circumstances, or with any pros-
pect of bettering himself elsewhere for this is not
a case of labourers adscripti glebes will always
have the power to stand up for his own terms, and
establish himself on a footing of quasi-independence.
There is here a question of demand and supply, and
the landlord farms out his property to the tenant
who bids highest, precisely as a shopkeeper accepts
the best offer for his goods from his customers. The
Christians in Bosnia, it may be presumed, became
naturally accustomed to this state of things as the most
natural, and they acquiesced in it because they knew
no better. The evil lay in this, that the titles to
the property were extremely ill-defined; the Beys
and Aghas claimed as their own the fallow, virgin,
or no-man's-land, which Christian labourers had
brought into cultivation, often extending their land-
marks even on property belonging to the State.
The Government had no land left to dispose of; no
means of encouraging any attempt at free cultiva-
tion, and no chance to offer to the peasant of
emancipating himself from his master's tyranny.
Immigrants from other countries came in in crowds,
attracted, probably, by the vaunted fertility of the
Bosnian soil, and the helplessness of so many unem-
ployed hands enabled the landlord to select the
labourer who offered himself on the lowest terms.
278 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Even with respect to the land tax the landlord
found the means of shifting the heaviest part of the
burden from his own shoulders on to those of his
tenant, and this hardship, for which the landlord
alone was answerable, was resented by the tenant
as a grievance against the Government. The peasant
had, besides the labour the profits of which he shared
with his master, to do, also, a good deal of w r ork for
his master's exclusive benefit, and this, most un-
doubtedly, came near to the nature of feudal corvees.
The master, certainly, had no right to exact more
than was by common consent set down in the con-
tract, if the peasant was strong enough to stick to
his contract ; but, on the other hand, the peasant
was compelled to lend himself and his cattle when-
ever and wherever the service of the State required
it, and received no other remuneration than Govern-
ment bonds, which were either never or very seldom
cashed. As a reward for similar corvees imposed
upon the Latin, or Kornan Catholic community of
Mostar during the war of Montenegro, in 1862, the
Sultan had given them a plot of land with permission
to build a church and school upon it, but, owing to
the fanaticism of the Mussulmans of Herzegovina
and the weakness of the Governors, the buildings
were never suffered to rise above their foundation.
There was here, therefore, as a first disturbing
cause, an agrarian question, and the insurgents,
whenever they consented to negotiate at the various
periods of the civil war, always put forward among
HERZEGOVINA. 279
the most important conditions, the acknowledgment
of the people's titles to a portion, say one -third, of
the land, a point that could not be yielded without
wounding the interests of the Beys and Aghas, a
class which identified itself with the Government.
Add to the sense of this galling, however time-
sanctioned, injustice, the thousand and one general
and permanent shortcomings of the Turkish Govern-
ment, the venality of the magistrates, the rapacity of
the police, the outrages perpetrated with full impu-
nity by the above-named Beys and Aghas, and by
the authorities to whom the people vainly looked for
protection, and it will be evident that it required no
great incitement from abroad to rouse a rude but
brave population to seek, in an appeal to arms, the
redress of their grievances.
The matter seemed at first of no great importance.
The outbreak began in a few villages, but there the
rioters were soon overpowered and driven to the
country, where they mustered in bands, taking to
the mountains and clinging to the frontiers of Dal-
matia and Montenegro, particularly to the latter,
where they could at all times find refuge under a
Government not likely to insist on their laying down
their arms, and where they knew that their strength
could be recruited, and their ranks filled up by volun-
teers akin to them by blood, and bound to them by
every tie of common interests and desires. Divided
into bands under the orders of Socissa, Petrovich,
Paulo vich, and other chiefs, whose names became
280 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
famous, they baffled pursuit by a well-combined
system of desultory movements. They contrived to
be everywhere or nowhere, as best suited their pur-
poses, falling on the imperial troops when they had
them at advantage, declining any encounter in which
they saw themselves out-numbered, advancing or
retreating with the certainty that with them lay
always the choice of the battle-field. It was the
same kind of party warfare brigand warfare with
which the annals of Greece, of Calabria, of Spain and
her colonies have so often made us familiar. The
fire might seem, during the winter, smothered under
the ashes, but the Porte had no good reason to take
it for granted that it was, as the papers said, " as
good as put out," for it might be, on the contrary,
confidently expected to blaze forth afresh with re-
doubled intensity in the spring.
The Turkish soldiers had the advantage of num-
bers and discipline, and, as a rule, they behaved
with a valour worthy of their ancient renown. But
they had to deal with an enemy no less intrepid,
though more wary and agile, and relying for success
on tactics which Turkish officers little understood,
and with which they were hardly fitted to contend.
They had to carry on operations in a country where
they could only be maintained at a heavy expense,
and where they were exposed to the greatest hard-
ships and the sorest privations. Even on the
Bosphorus the season was that year unusually cold
and gloomy ; the sun, moon, and stars were only
HERZEGOVINA. 281
visible at short and rare intervals, and the mails
suffered frequent delays in consequence of stormy
seas and snow in the mountains, leaving us, in one
instance, without news of the West for more than a
fortnight. We had, on New Year's Eve, a fall of
snow which covered the ground to the depth of six
inches, where it lay, day after day, hard and com-
pact, smoothing even the asperities of the villanous
pavement of the Great Pera main street, and en-
abling us for once in the year to walk with some
comfort on a surface which had all the softness of a
drawing-room carpet combined with the slipperiness
of the floor of a rink. Under the influence of such
a temperature it was no wonder to us to hear that
the condition of the troops wintering in the vicinity
of the Black Mountain soon became deplorable.
The improvidence of the War Office left them with-
out food or shelter, without medicines or proper
attendance in the ambulances, and even in the
hospital of Mostar, as I knew from sure sources, the
doctors had no other provisions for themselves, or for
1500 patients, than a little unseasoned pillau, or plain-
boiled rice. Without pay, without bread or meat,
almost without clothing, the poor soldiers endured
and died uncomplaining. " They are," we were told,
"greatly dispirited, and their demoralisation has
reached such a point that they threaten to pass over
to Montenegro, or to cross the Austrian frontier."
This fear, however, was ill-grounded. The cases of
desertion among the Turks are extremely rare, for a
282 THE EASTERN QUESTION,
good Mussulman cannot reconcile himself to life out
of the pale of Islam.
On the other hand, the Turkish troops might feel
confident, if it was any consolation to them, that they
inflicted on their enemies, or at least on their enemies'
families, a hundredfold the suffering to which they
were themselves exposed. From most of the villages
and from vast tracts of the open country, the popula-
tion had to fly en masse, some under the influence of
terror, some in obedience to the policy of the insur-
gents, but most of them on the approach of the sword
and fire of the unsparing Turkish soldiers. Thousands
of households were deserted, their helpless inmates-
decrepit old men, defenceless women and children-
migrated across the border, and were compelled to rely
on the hospitality either of Montenegro, who had
nothing to give, or on that of the unsympathising
Austro-Hungarian Government, who grudged what
it doled out to them.
An outcry went forth against Server Pasha, who
was sent out as a pacificator of the revolted districts,
in December, and had been preceded by a declaration
that he intended to re-establish order on the basis of
justice and humanity, but whom the Christians charged
with ill-faith as well as fanaticism, and with a design
to pacify the district by extermination, driving off all
the non-Mussulmans, and re-colonising the land with
Asiatic Mohammedans. I have read despatches of
the Consuls who saw this Pasha at Mostar, and to
whom he expressed his opinion that " he would rather
HERZEGOVINA. 283
have a desert than a disaffected population ;" and if
the Consular reports may be trusted, the Imperial
Commissioner was very near the accomplishment of
his object. The outrages which were perpetrated
under the Consul's own eyes of those Consuls who
had assembled with a view to reconcile the rebels
with the Government transcend all belief : " A
Christian is found murdered ; he is at once buried
out of sight, and no question asked. Another is mal-
treated by Mussulmans ; the police interfere and take
hold, not of the offenders but of the victim." There
was no end to the deeds of violence and extortion, no
end to the murders. The Mussulmans of the pro-
vince, Slavs by race as their Christian fellow- subjects,
were by nature no bigots, and the two creeds har-
boured hitherto no very relentless mutual hostility.
It was Server Pasha, we were told, who spread mis-
trust and ill-will between them, rousing the fears of
the Mussulmans by persuading them that the insur-
rection, if successful, would lead to their spoliation
and expulsion, thus enlisting their very instinct of
self-preservation in the interests of the Government.
Therein lay the main obstacle to all projected reform,
that any seeming concession made to the Christians,
however illusory and deceptive, had the effect of
raising their demands and pretensions, and in a cor-
responding degree creating alarm and implacable rage
among the Mussulmans. It did not seem likely that
the disturbed districts could ever be pacified other-
wise than by its utter depopulation, and, indeed, two-
284 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
thirds of it had already been laid waste and ravaged.
Server Pasha, it is alleged, exulted at the solitude he
had made, and he asked ingenuously and not without
reason, " Where is now the insurrection V But the
truth is that, although there was silence in Mostar,
the insurgents were still holding their ground in the
mountains.
Important as the campaign in Herzegovina even-
tually turned out in its results, the particulars were
not, however, even at the time, very interesting.
Disgusted with the ill-success of its superior officers,
the Government of the Porte placed one Pasha after
another in command, every change being hailed with
a sanguine expectation which was seldom justified by
success. Dervish Pasha, whom I found in place on
my arrival, was a month or two aftenvards super-
seded by Raouf Pasha, who, towards the end of De-
cember, attempted to drive the insurgents from their
last retreat of the Duga Pass, on the Montenegrin
frontier, and to relieve the distress of the garrison
of Niksitch, the fortress lying close upon the edge of
that Principality which the insurgents closely block-
aded, and hoped to have soon at discretion. He col-
lected a mass of thirty battalions, forced the mountain
defile, and by hard fighting accomplished his object,
throwing about two months' provisions into the be-
leaguered stronghold. Raouf, however, had no sooner
achieved this splendid deed of arms than the intelli-
gence reached him of his appointment as Governor-
General of Herzegovina now treated as a separate
HERZEGOVINA. 285
province a promotion implying his removal from the
command of the troops, to which the same decree
appointed Ahmed Mukhtar. This was a deplorable
change in every respect, for Raouf Pasha, a Circas-
sian, was every inch a soldier, whose presence electri-
fied the troops by his example of heroic courage and
endurance, the General submitting to the hardships
of a winter campaign at the bivouac and on the march
like the meanest of his followers, while he possessed
none of the qualities which could make him of use
in his new capacity of Governor, and could only
waste his time in idle residence at Mostar. Ahmed
Mukhtar, on the other hand, enjoyed but an indif-
ferent reputation for military talents. The Grand
Vizier, Mahmoud Pasha, who had been fortunate in
his appointment of Raouf, was however compelled r
greatly against his own judgment, to acquiesce in
this new arrangement, which was entirely owing
to the arbitrary caprice of the Sultan or of his
harem.
The two months for which Niksitch had been pro-
vided had expired, and it became necessary to renew
the dangerous experiment of revictualling it.
Ahmed Mukhtar marched again and again on the
track of his predecessor, sometimes with good, at other
times with ill fortune ; but it soon became impossible
to rely on his reports of his various engagements, so
ready was he to exaggerate the importance of his
more than problematic victories, and to palliate the
extent of his undoubted reverses.
286 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Ahmed Mukhtar is, in this respect, no exception
to the common rule of his countrymen. Whatever
qualities, good, bad, or indifferent, may be attributed
to the Turks and I believe I can hardly be charged
with ever having flattered them there is this much
to be said in their favour, that they know not how
to lie. They do try their hand at it, doubtless, for
these are no longer the days in which strength and
bravery incline the conquering race to scorn equivo-
cation and subterfuge as weapons to be left to an
enslaved people. But somehow, in all their attempts
to tamper with the truth in their despatches, the
Turks betray the clumsiness of men not to the
manner born, and they never venture on a false
statement without unwittingly allowing the real fact
to strike the eye of any one in the least accustomed
to read between the lines.
This same disposition to draw the long-bow, and
the same clumsiness in disguising too obvious truths,
was perceptible throughout the accounts Mukhtar
sent fifteen months ago of his doings in Herzegovina,
and it is transparent now (June, 1877) in the bul-
letins he sends of his conduct as commander-in-chief
of the Ottoman armies in Armenia, where the issues
of the war, so far as one can make out, are by no
means likely to turn out in his favour. By what
secret influence Mukhtar contrived to maintain him-
self under Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid in the highly
responsible post to which Court intrigue raised him
under Sultan Abd- ul-Aziz, is to me a problem ; but
HERZEGOVINA. 287
the astounding fact is that there he is, compromising
his country's destinies by his blunders, and mystify-
ing the world by his telegrams.
On the 22nd of April, 1876, Mukhtar Pasha was
enabled to inform the Government of the Porte that
there had been six days' hard fighting in the Duga
Pass, and that with seventeen battalions he had been
able to march between Gatchko and Niksitch,
" there and back," as he expressed it, his troops sig-
nalising every step of their progress by victorious
combats against forces twice their superior. He had
however, at this juncture, for the second time, failed
in his enterprise of revictualling Niksitch, a feat which
seemed to be, from beginning to end, the great test
of a Turkish commander's abilities throughout that
Herzegovinian campaign. Mukhtar complained that
the insurgents, who were at least 14,000, occupying
a strong position, consisted half their number of
Servians and Montenegrins, and proclaimed at the
close of his report that " the Prince of Montenegro
had, on that day, virtually made open war upon
Turkey."
The Pasha was evidently romancing, for the Ser-
vians could not have crossed all the territory between
their own frontier and Herzegovina without their
march, if they were a body at all considerable, being
noticed, and nothing had hitherto ever been heard of
any movement on their part. With respect to the
Montenegrins, if they were at all present, it was
proved by the Pasha's report itself that they main-
288 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
tained an observant attitude on their own frontier,
and took no part in the fray. However, Mukhtar
was hard driven by the necessity of accounting for a
defeat as he best could.
But the very fictions of Mukhtar Pasha sufficiently
showed how the wind blew. On the first coming
of spring, the propitious time for a renewal of hos-
tilities, Turkey had to consider not only how she
was to fight the rebels, but also how she was to deal
with Montenegro and Servia. For, however dis-
cordant might be the views and interests of those
two Principalities, and however the aspirations
of one might clash with those of the other, it was
evident that they looked upon the Turk as their
common enemy, and the Ottoman troops could not
attack one of them without being taken to account
by the other. The Servians and Montenegrins had
settled it in their own minds that the insurrection in
Herzegovina must be productive of some good for
themselves. They looked upon that district and
upon the whole of Bosnia as the spoils of a victory
which the Cross was to achieve over the Crescent,
and the only question which could arise would be as
to the share each of them was to come in for. They
would take what suited them by peaceful arrange-
ment, if that should be possible, consenting to pay a
tribute to the Porte proportionate to their respective
aggrandisement, but if not by agreement, then they
would take what they coveted by main force and
anyhow. The Servians especially, who boasted that
HERZEGOVINA. 289
they could muster 150,000 combatants, and were
looking out everywhere for arms and ammunition,
felt as if they were eventually called upon to play in
Turkey the part sustained by " little Piedmont " in
Italy ; to place themselves at the head of that
Slavic Confederation which was to be erected on
the ruins of the Ottoman, and possibly also of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire a Confederation in
which alone, they thought, Europe would find the
barrier against the otherwise inevitable southern
advance of Russia.
Without looking so far into the future, however,
Servia would for the present have been satisfied with
only that one leaf of the artichoke, the province of
Bosnia. It was to little purpose that men asked
how the 500,000 Mussulmans natives of the coun-
try were to be disposed of. The Servians saw no
necessity why these poor people should either be
massacred or driven from their homes and lands.
They should be suffered to abide in the province as
they did then, infinitely better treated by the laws of
their Christian brethren than these ever were under
Moslem rule, and they should fare no worse than the
Mohammedan subjects of France in Algeria, or those
of England in India. The Servians did not see why
the submission of the Turk to Rayah government
upon the footing of legal equality should be a greater
hardship than that supremacy of the Turk to which
the Rayah had had to submit for centuries. Except
in as far as it might clash with the provisions of the
VOL. i. 19
290 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
civil law, the Mussulmans would enjoy the most
unlimited freedom in the exercise of their religion.
That this would be the most plausible and the only
peaceful solution of the Herzegovinian difficulty,
was a point upon which, even in Constantinople,
many people began to agree ; and it is by no means
improbable that the Porte might, in the difficulties
she had then to contend with, be brought to accede
to terms which, without impairing its rights of high
suzerainete over its provinces, might enable it to
enjoy a portion of their revenues in the shape of a
tribute, without being at the pains of governing
disaffected and turbulent subjects. Where opposi-
tion might be apprehended was on the part of Russia
and Austria ; but the Servians flattered themselves
that the other European Powers could, if they ex-
erted themselves, have contrived to bring the Czar
and the Kaiser to listen to reason.
On the Turkish side, again, it should be borne in
mind that Mukhtar Pasha belonged to that war
party which was there known under the name of
" Young Turkey," and of which the former Vizier,
Hussein Avni Pasha, was the acknowledged head.
These men had been from the very outbreak of the
insurrection fully aware that the revolt the Govern-
ment of the Porte had to deal with was not merely
limited to the Bosnians and Herzegovinians, but that
it had its stronghold in Servia and Montenegro,
as well as in those provinces of Austria where the
aspirations of the Slav party had been stirred up by
HERZEGO VINA. 291
the summer tour of the Emperor Francis Joseph
along the borders of Dalmatia. Of the construction
which both the Slavs of the Ottoman and of the
Austrian Empires put upon that imperial progress
and of the agitation it gave rise to, I have given
some hints in my account of the voyage from
Brindisi to Constantinople in the first chapter.
When I arrived at Constantinople about three
months later, I found the Sultan's Council divided
between the influence of the war party, headed by
Hussein Avni Pasha, who advised immediate h os
tilities against Montenegro, Servia, and if necessary
against Austria, and that of the men in power, the
Vizier, Mahmoud Pasha and his colleagues, who,
prompted by Russia, advocated moderate measures,
and sought their safety in the mediation of the
European Powers. All the efforts of these Powers
to patch up a peace between the Porte and its re-
volted subjects had turned out failures. Upon this
unfavourable result of their peaceful policy, the war-
like spirits even of the Sultan's actual advisers were
roused, and for several weeks it was contemplated to
bring together large bodies of troops at Scutari, in
Albania, with a view, as it is natural to suppose,
to venture upon an attack on Montenegro on the
southern side. It was at this juncture and under
the sway of these unfriendly feelings, that Mukhtar
Pasha proclaimed " that the Prince of Montenegro
had now made open war upon Turkey."
Were we to infer that Turkey was bent on waging
192
292 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
open war with Montenegro ? Many people thought
so at Constantinople, and had no doubt that any
resolution to that effect might be looked upon as the
beginning of the end. There was a time, indeed, in
which a good strong resolution to proceed to decisive
measures against Montenegro might have been con-
sidered both advisable and justifiable, for the conduct
of the Sovereign of that little Principality or of his
subjects amounted to virtual hostility to the Ottoman
Government. But the enterprise, which was suffi-
ciently dangerous from the beginning, had become
in process of time absolutely desperate, when both
the military and financial resources of the empire had
been exhausted by a six months' unavailing struggle
with a mere handful of the insurgents, and when
these latter had given signs of a stout determination
which, while it baffled the best intentions of a puzzled
diplomacy, enlisted in their favour the sympathies of
European opinion. To attack Montenegro and to
arouse Servia from her wavering and expectant
policy, forcing her to an invasion of Bosnia, would
be one and the same thing ; for whatever jealousies
might exist between the Courts and Governments of
those tributary Principalities, they both equally felt
that in any quarrel with the Porte, their interests
were identical, and that an attack upon one con-
veyed a deliberate menace to both of them. A
contest which had already assumed the most bloody
character in Herzegovina would now be extended
over a much larger area it would bring much
HERZEGOVINA. 293
greater masses of combatants into action, and its
atrocities would be aggravated by the conviction
that the quarrel was past all hope of diplomatic
arrangement, and had now to be fought out to the
bitter end. In such circumstances it was no longer
by persuasion, but only by sheer force, that Europe
could hope to step between the combatants. The
armed intervention of all or some of the Powers had
become a necessity, and the question was which of
the Powers could be trusted with the task with the
least chance of a collision and the least risk of leading
to a violent solution of this fatal Eastern question.
No doubt, Austria was the State more immediately
at hand ; it had the strongest interest in averting a
general catastrophe, and had so long been contem-
plating the necessity of following up words by deeds
as to be virtually pledged to do so. But an armed
occupation of any part of the Ottoman territory in
opposition, not only to the Herzegovinian insurgents,
but also to Servia and Montenegro, was not only in
itself a very arduous and expensive undertaking, but
it could hardly be popular in Liberal Europe, and
would be felt as little less than outrageous by the
excitable population of the Slav provinces of the
Austrian Empire. In spite of the goodwill shown
by Count Andrassy in his late scheme for a recon-
ciliation between the Turks and the Herzegovinians,
the name of Austria was never mentioned in Turkey
by either party without mistrust. It was on Austria
herself that both the best hopes and the worst fears
294 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
of the insurgents were built ; for if, on the one hand,
they were aware that the Germano-Magyar Govern-
ment had every interest in crushing Slavic aspira-
tions, they, on the other hand, felt confident that the
Slav element in Dalmatia, Croatia, and other pro-
vinces could exercise a sufficiently strong moral and
material influence over the Kaiser's Council to para-
lyse the whole energy of the Kaiser's Government.
As Austria, though backed by the other Powers, had
been unable to achieve anything by pacific negotiation,
so she would also be equally powerless in any attempt
at armed intervention, for she knew not how many
sympathisers with Slavic aspirations she might not
have in that army on which she must rely on any
emergency, in which such officers as General Rodich
filled the first ranks, and of which the Archduke
Albrecht was the idol. Austrian intervention, be-
sides, must needs determine and hasten Russian
intervention, and as to any results that might be
expected from the juxtaposition of the forces of the
two empires on the Danube or the Save, it was as idle
to speculate now as it has been at all times since the
Ottoman Power first exhibited symptoms of approach-
ing dissolution. That, whoever else might gain by
a foreign intervention, Turkey was sure to lose, was
very evident ; for, even admitting that the invading
Austrians or Russians might be sufficiently generous
to act purely in the interests of peace and without
claiming any compensation for themselves, there
could be no doubt that the only condition upon which
HERZEGOVINA. 295
the country could, under present circumstances, be
pacified, would be such degree of emancipation of
the insurgent districts as would meet the utmost
bent of their demands ; otherwise, it would always
be in their power to renew the struggle and perpetu-
ate the foreign occupation. But, on the other hand,
if the revolted provinces carried their point and
established independence, how could the Porte hope
to keep the other provinces under subjection ; or
how could it, indeed, weather the storm which the
bare prospect of a continuance and extension of the
present disturbance was already brewing around it ?
For the discontent arising from general distress was
very apparent, and the most moderate men declared
that the state of things was becoming intolerable.
There is no word of opprobrium that was not, at the
time, loudly flung at the names of the Ottoman
rulers and of the Sovereign at the head of them; and
I repeatedly heard with my own ears old Mussul-
mans in remote and peaceful villages of Asia Minor,
where, as everywhere else, the ruling race is being
rapidly ousted by the Greeks, say that " the Herze-
govinians were their best friends, as they were at
war against the Government, sundlnshallah! it might
be hoped they would hold out till they had altogether
overthrown it." In such a state of affairs it might
certainly seem impossible that either the Govern-
ment then in power or any other should entertain
serious thoughts of an outbreak with Montenegro.
But any other line of policy was equally bristling
296 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
with difficulties, and how either the Grand Vizier,
Mahmoud Pasha, or any other man in his place
might manage to steer safe of so many rocks ahead
was perfectly incomprehensible.
In defiance of all the above considerations we went
towards the end of that April through an alarming
crisis, and we did not for some time recover our equani-
mity. The unwise despatch by which Mukhtar Pasha
announced that Prince Nicholas had ventured on
open hostilities found the Government of the Porte
strongly predisposed against Montenegro, and
already so far bent on proceeding to extreme
measures against that Principality as to have some
time before issued orders to bring together a force of
thirty battalions at Scutari, in Albania, close to the
southern frontier of that little vassal State. Upon
the arrival of the first telegram, therefore, a stormy
deliberation was held in the Council, at the close of
which Riza Pasha, Minister for War, was dismissed,
and his place was filled by Dervish Pasha, the
former Minister of Marine, and other members were
brought into the Cabinet, by which a decided
ascendency was given to the war party. In a
council which was held in the Sultan's presence on
the subject, Dervish Pasha was so far carried away
by his zeal as to assure his imperial master that, if
allowed freedom of action, he would " lay at the
Padishah's feet 50,000 Christian heads," a proposal
at which we are told, the Sultan himself, Hunkiar,
or "Manslayer," as he is called, shuddered. A
HERZEGOVINA. 297
proposition, however, to consider the conduct of
Montenegro in the late encounter a casiis belli found
strong support in the Council, and was all but
adopted when the Council adjourned.
On the ensuing day General Ignatieff had an
interview with Sir Henry Elliot, and held afterwards
a conference with the representatives of the other
Powers, as the result of which the Russian Ambassa-
dor, who was the Doyen of the diplomatic body, was
empowered to proceed to the Sublime Porte, and to
convey to the Grand Vizier their unanimous resolu-
tion on the subject. General Ignatieff had, therefore,
an interview with the Grand Vizier on the following
morning, and advised him to urge the Council to
reconsider their resolution, as Montenegro had given
no provocation, and as the projected hostilities against
that State might lead to complications not unlikely
to bring about a violent solution of the much-dreaded
Eastern question. The Grand Vizier gave the Am-
bassador the fullest assurance of his own pacific dis-
position, but expressed himself unable to withstand
the ascendency of the war party both among his
colleagues, over whose appointment he had no
control, and among the private advisers of the Sultan.
The Russian Ambassador then engaged the Vizier
to proceed to the Sultan, and to convey to his Im-
perial Majesty the wishes of the representatives of
the Six Powers, volunteering to see the Sultan him-
self if the Vizier had not sufficient courage to speak
out. The Grand Vizier prostrated himself before
298 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
his Sovereign, and came back with a full assurance
that the thought of immediate hostilities against the
Prince of Montenegro would not be persevered in,
and that efficient measures would only be adopted to
guard against his future interference, and to bring
the Herzegovinian insurrection to a speedy end. It
was subsequently understood that the thirty battalions
should with all possible speed be assembled at
Scutari, and that the new War Minister, Dervish
Pasha, should at once proceed to that place as
Serdar Ekrem, or Commander-in- Chief of the forces,
and also that in Herzegovina, where already fifty-
two battalions were in the field, Ahmed Mukhtar
Pasha should, with twenty-five battalions, again on
the morrow (April 25th) march across the Duga Pass
and renew his attempt to relieve Niksitch. Turkish
battalions consisted of 400 combatants each. The
Ottoman force in Herzegovina amounted, therefore,
to 20,800 men. The force to be concentrated at
Scutari was to consist of 12,000 ; and it was hoped
that Mukhtar Pasha might accomplish with 10,000
men the task in which he had failed with 6,806. The
Government of the Porte, however, was straining
every nerve to send fresh troops to its north-
western provinces, and all the districts of Asia
Minor and Syria were called upon for the contingents
of their last reserves. It was even supposed that
the mission of Abraham Pasha, a Christian, and
agent of the Khedive at Constantinople, who had
lately been appointed Minister without portfolio in
HERZEGO VINA. 299
the Ottoman Cabinet, and who immediately after-
wards embarked for Alexandria was to induce the
Khedive to lend the Sultan an auxiliary Egyptian
force, intended, not to take part in active military
operations, but simply to fill the place of the Turkish
troops, so as to allow the disengaged garrisons,
especially those of Syria and Asia Minor, to proceed
to the theatre of war in Herzegovina. But it
seemed then doubtful whether the Sultan's Govern-
ment would stoop to ask for such a reinforcement,
and very improbable that Egypt, even if applied to,
would be either able or willing to accede to the
O
demand, except on conditions which might appear to
the Porte more onerous than the terms on which it
might be able to settle its disputes with the Herze-
govinian insurgents. As a part of the alleged plan,
it was said that 10,000 Egyptians were to occupy
the disturbed districts of the Yemen. But if the
Egyptians once got into those districts, when might
they be expected to come out of them again ?
The conclusion of this is that there was then for
some time a lull in the atmosphere ; but it would
have been rash to assert that the storm had com-
pletely blown over. There was, as I have said, and
there had been from the very outbreak of the dis-
turbances in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Young Tur-
key, or war party, who looked to Servia and Monte-
negro, and indeed to Austria and Russia, as the real
authors and movers of the insurrection, and who
always thought that no good could be achieved unless
300 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the evil was struck at the root by a direct attack on
Montenegro, which should bring the refractory
vassals of the Porte to their allegiance, and at the
same time give the Great Powers to understand that
Turkey was aware of their intentions, and that,
although she might have to succumb to open force,
she would not fall a victim to intrigue. There was
something noble and magnanimous in that conceit,
and, had it been acted upon eight months before, it
might have made a strong appeal to brave men's
sympathies, and, by deserving, might perhaps even
have commanded success. Had the Sultan, for in-
stance, and all the men of high distinction, stood up
with sufficient energy, had they unfurled the Pro-
phet's banner, mounted on horseback, and marched
en masse, declaring that they would come to no terms
with rebels in arms, that they repented former con-
cessions, and that they would either perish or bring
not only the Bosnian and Herzegovinian insurgents
but also Servia and Montenegro to subjection, there
would have been, if not safety, at least honour in
their resolution. But Abd-ul-Aziz Allah knows !
was not a Bajazet or a Mohammed ; nor were the
men of the so-called 'war party' by any means as
earnest in their ardour for the cause of the Crescent
as they pretended to be. The so-called Young Tur-
key were not a patriotic, but merely a political party.
Their aim was not to wage war against the Giaours,
but simply to oust the present Ministers, and to put
themselves into their place. Hussein Avni Pasha him-
HERZEGOVINA. 301
self, who was at the head of that party, who had been
Grand Vizier, and was at this time Vali, or Governor-
General at Broussa, was only anxious to regain his
post at the head of the Government, and in pursu-
ance of that object he carried his complacency to the
Sultan so far as to send to the palace, for the private
use of his Sovereign, all the money he was able to
wrest from the taxpayers in his province, which
ought to have been paid into the Treasury or the
Bank. A sum of T. 400,000 had already, as I was
assured, been diverted from its proper channel and
offered as baksheesh to a ruler whose cry was still,
" Give, give !" Had Hussein Avni Pasha been able
to carry his point and supersede Mahmoud Nedim
Pasha, does anybody think the policy would have
been materially altered? Would the new Grand Vizier
have been as warlike in office as he was for nine
months in opposition ? Most assuredly not !
In cold blood and upon mature deliberation, no
Turkish Minister would ever so far have displeased
Russia as to venture on an open attack on Monte-
negro. It was well known that little Principality
was looked upon as an advanced post of the great
Northern Empire ; and, as General Ignatieff freely
avowed to the Grand Vizier at this juncture, to
touch Montenegro was to open up the Eastern Ques-
tion. So long as Mahmoud Nedim, or Mahmoudoff,
sat as Grand Vizier in the Divan, it was not the
Sultan, but the Czar's representative, who ruled the
Ottoman Empire. Russia and her agent were at
302 THE EASTERN QUESTION,
this time bent on peace, and, as keepers of the peace,
they relied on the support of all the Powers in
Europe. Three or four days before peace had been
endangered ; the Young Turkey party had the upper
hand we were on the brink of an abyss but
General Ignatieff and his diplomatic colleagues
allayed the storm ; they strengthened the Vizier and
recalled the Sultan to his senses. What was accom-
plished at the end of that week could equally be
achieved at any future time, no matter in what mood
the Sultan might be, no matter whether Hussein
Avni or any other war party Grand Vizier were in
office. There was then no statesman in Turkey
who would, with his eyes open and of deliberate
purpose, strike his head against a stone wall, or, what
would be the same thing, go to war in sheer defiance
of the veto of Russia and Europe. But there is
such a thing as drifting unconsciously and unwil-
lingly into war, and therein lay the main danger.
On the one hand there was Turkey, smarting, it can-
not be denied, under constant provocation ; on the
other, Servia, Montenegro, and the Austrian Slavs
fully aware of Turkey's weakness, and anxious to
turn it to their own purpose. We had already open
hostilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, attended by
incessant "alarms and excursions" on the Monte-
negrin, Servian, and Austrian frontier. Montenegro,
which was only open to inroads on its northern bor-
der, saw itself now threatened with an attack on its
southern frontier. On all sides that little cluster of
HERZEGOVINA. 303
the Black Mountains would henceforth be encom-
passed with the advanced posts of the Ottoman army.
On every road, at the entrance of every mountain
pass, the Montenegrin would see the Turkish rifle
aimed at his breast. Could such a state of things
be long continued without bringing on a collision ?
And could any one estimate all the possible results
even of a mere brush between combatants animated
by such inveterate hostile feelings ? The Ottoman
War Department at this time concentrated all its
forces upon Montenegro, withdrawing even from
Widdin the battalions which had been quartered
there to keep the Servians in check. In their eager-
ness to subdue Herzegovina, the Turks exposed
Bosnia to invasion. They said, indeed, that when
they had settled Herzegovina, and, if needful, crushed
Montenegro, the time would come to serve out
Bosnia, and, if necessary, to punish Servia as well ;
but to march against an enemy with one's back
exposed to the onset of another enemy would have
seemed, to say the least, clumsy strategy on the
Turks' part. In the meanwhile the mere anticipa-
tion of such contingencies, the mere discussion of all
these plans of operation, had the immediate effect of
keeping men's minds on the stretch, creating inces-
sant disquiet, sinking the luckless Ottoman funds to
unprecedented depths, and paralysing the efforts of
those who were working at the relief of the Treasury
by a conversion or unification of the Turkish Debt.
We continued meanwhile to receive from Mukhtar
304 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Pasha more of those despatches, which will be for
ever memorable in the annals of military literature.
On Monday, May-day, he informed the Porte that
he had made another attempt to relieve Niksitch, of
course, again with astonishing success. In pursuit
of his object, he had still at the block-house of Pres-
sieka a convoy of 1000 mules, which had been left-
there under the escort of two battalions, at the close
of his unsuccessful attempt of the previous week.
He took with him 27 battalions, which added to the
troops already on the spot, and some bands of
Bashi-Bazouks supplied by the neighbouring moun-
tain population, constituted a force of 12,000 to
18,000 combatants. On Friday, the 28th of April,
he says, he completely defeated the insurgents at
Pressieka, and " the convoys of provisions were vic-
toriously carried into Niksitch." On the following
Saturday he had another action with the insurgents,
who had been reinforced in the night, and who, the
more of them were killed, seemed to become more
numerous, and he again thoroughly routed them.
On Sunday he was already on his way back towards
Gatchko, and had for the third time to fight his
way through the insurgents, who had gathered in
force in his rear, and once more " gained a glorious
victory," after which he achieved his retreat un-
molested. He had to contend on the first day with
8500 of the enemy; on the second with 13,000; on
the third, with upwards of 16,000 one more victory
and he would have been outnumbered and alto-
HERZEGOVINA. 305
gether, he inflicted upon them immense losses,
amounting from 1300 to 1400, his own being 58
killed and 164 wounded.
His immediate object was to revictual Niksitch,
and this he so far accomplished that on the first day
" the convoys of provisions were victoriously carried
into the place." He does not state that his vic-
torious troops entered Niksitch, or that they them-
selves escorted the " convoys." It may therefore have
been accomplished by the two battalions whom he
had left with the 1,000 mules at Pressieka, or as
private telegrams assert, by the garrison and people
of the beleaguered place itself, who, profiting by the
battle in which the insurgents were engaged on that
day, came forth from their stronghold, gained Pres-
sieka by a mountain path, and there took up as
much of the provisions as they could carry on their
backs about 300 loads and with these regained
the place they had come from. This was however
the all-important point, for one would have been
glad to make out whether the whole of the pro-
visions laid up at Pressieka sufficient for six
months found its way into Niksitch, as the Pasha
said, or whether, as private reports still insisted on,
all the relief the place received could not have en-
abled it to subsist more than eight or ten days, or
at the utmost two or three weeks. The Minister
of War, Dervish Pasha, who seemed to have had
little reason to be satisfied with the exploit of his
Commander-in-Chief, telegraphed to him, saying
VOL. I. 20
306 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
that people in Constantinople doubted whether him-
self, Mukhtar, or any of his troops had ever been at
Niksitch, and the answer was that " he had actually
been there, entering the place and again leaving it,
after a stay of two hours on Friday night." It is
evident that even if he spoke the truth, neither him-
self nor any of his troops tarried long on the spot,
nor were there to any good purpose, their move-
ments being hurried by the presentiment that the
enemy, though "thoroughly beaten," was not alto-
gether annihilated, and that a new and more serious
conflict awaited the Ottoman troops on the morrow.
In the morning, in fact, and on the ensuing day
there were again bloody engagements, and although
the result was invariably a " complete " Turkish vic-
tory, it was very clear that the Pasha had only a
running fight of it, and every triumph found him
one stage farther on his backward way. Notwith-
standing the " decisive " nature of the result of the
third engagement, the insurgents did not see that
they were beaten, and the Pasha, who, although he
counted, never could get a good sight of them
hidden as they were in the bush, had to abandon the
pursuit, owing to the thickness of the forest, " lest
the troops might not recognise each other in the
brushwood, and accidents might ensue."
Read the report as one may, it was easy to per-
ceive that the oft-repeated assertion, " The victory is
complete, and Niksitch is provisioned," was not suffi-
cient to remove the impression that nothing had
HERZEGOVINA. 307
been done which might not, within a very few days,
have to be done over again. The insurrection was
still " scotched, but not killed," and Niksitch would
at no distant period certainly within the month-
have again to be relieved by the same, or perhaps
by more strenuous efforts than those by which it
had obtained a short precarious subsistence. What
really might have answered the purpose would
have been such a defeat of the insurgents as might
have enabled the Commander-in- Chief to establish
a permanent communication with the beleaguered
place, and make it in case of need his base of opera-
tions against Montenegro ; but so far from accom-
plishing this, Ahmed Mukhtar Pasha, if either he
or his men ever actually reached the place, fell back
from it as if the ground had been too hot under his
feet, and made good his retreat by hard, incessant
lighting, never attempting to dislodge the enemies
from the brushwood in which they evidently still
held their ground, rallying on the footsteps of the
retreating Turkish battalions. The fault of all this
did not altogether lie with Mukhtar Pasha himself.
The order to march to the relief of Niksitch was
telegraphed to him from the War Office at a mo-
ment's notice, and it was too pressing and peremp-
tory to allow him leisure for those preparations
without which, in the opinion of very competent
military authorities, no prudent commander would
have ventured on an expedition of this nature. He
had to march through a mountain defile, where his
202
308 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
retreat could at any moment be cut off by the enemy.
The distress of Niksitch was extreme. His march
must needs be of the swiftest ; he could encumber
his troops neither with sufficient provisions nor with
ammunition, and he felt as he advanced that any
delay in his forward movement, any hindrance on
his way back, might compromise the very existence
of his force, and expose it either to perish from
hunger, or in incessant skirmishes with a never at-
tainable yet omnipresent harassing enemy.
All that one could conclude, meanwhile, is that as
little progress had been made towards the suppression
of the insurrection as towards the pacification of the
disturbed districts. It was perfectly impossible to
believe that the insurgents, if indeed their ranks
were as numerous as the Pasha would have given
us to understand, even had their losses been as
heavy as he described them, could have been greatly
discomforted and downcast. Before the month was
over, Niksitch must either surrender or a fourth
effort must be made to relieve the place no one
knew whether with better or with worse results.
That hint of Mukhtar Pasha about the shelter the
insurgents had found in the brushwood had a very
ominous sound ; for their strength hitherto lay in the
mountains which made them inaccessible, but, with
the spread of the foliage, their safety lay now in
the woods which rendered them invisible. We all
know how brigandage in Calabria, which seemed to
die off in winter with the fall of the leaf, always
HERZEGOVINA. 309
evinced some fresh vigour as the country put on its
green mantle at the outbreak of spring. According
to all probability we might prepare ourselves for a
prolonged struggle during the coming months, unless
the Government of the Porte, either in its wisdom
or yielding to the suggestions of a wise diplomacy,
stooped to some compromise, which, while recon-
ciling its rebellious subjects as well as their allies of
Montenegro and Servia, might still enable it to main-
tain a mere shadow of sovereignty over the dis-
affected territory, and at the same time relieve itself
from a continuance of unprofitable warlike efforts,
which would equally shatter its finances and exhaust
the productive resources of the country.
Nothing could be more striking than the analogy
between these hostilities in Herzegovina and the
weary warfare the troops of Concha and Serrano
kept up during three years with the Carlists in
the mountain fastnesses of the Basque Provinces
and Navarre. There, also, military operations were
for a long time limited to desultory efforts to disen-
gage Bilbao, to relieve Pamplona, to revictual now
this, now that, distressed fortress. Success nearly in
every case attended similar attempts, but the work
had again and again to begin afresh, for it was never
undertaken with sufficient patience, foresight, and
method, no time was allowed for thorough prepara-
tion, and instead of proceeding step by step, main-
taining the ground as it was gained, endeavours were
310 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
made to obtain an ephemeral advantage by a head-
long onset, almost invariably followed by a no less
precipitate retreat. After the day in which Raouf
Pasha threw provisions for two months into Niksitch,
Ahmed Mukhtar Pasha, his successor, marched three
times to the rescue of that place. Had he from the
beginning moved forward inch by inch, making Kris-
tatz, Islestop, Pressieka, and so on his base of opera-
tions, and securing the ground in his rear, he would
by this time not only have reached Niksitch, but
would have had so firm a hold upon it, as to use it
as the best weapon of offence against the insurgents
and their auxiliaries. But Turkish commanders evi-
dently knew nothing of the very first rudiments of
strategy. They carried on the war without any such
thing as an intendance, or commissariat. The foolish
notion prevailed that their soldiers needed " neither
food, nor rest, nor shelter." And truly there was
hardly any excess of endurance, hardly any prodigy
of valour of which these good, strong men might not
be capable under difficulties. There Avas no dis-
couragement from which their fatalism, their religious
resignation, and their devotion to their little-deserving
Sovereign would not soon rally them. Pity all these
sterling qualities could be of so little avail in the
hands of their improvident as well as incompetent
leaders ! Mukhtar Pasha seemed to find no words
sufficiently expressive of his admiration of his
soldiers' valour. One would like to know whether
HERZEGO VINA. 311
his troops would have been equally eloquent in praise
of their General's ability. Who would have thought
that more than a twelve month later (June, 1877),
there would still be war on the Duga Pass, and that
the Turkish commanders should still find it so hard
a task to relieve Niksitch ?
312 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
CHAPTEK XVI.
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS.
DIPLOMACY IN THE EAST. THE ANDRA8SY NOTE. DIPLOMATIC ETI-
QUETTE. TURKEY AND THE POWERS. THE PORTE AND THE OP-
POSITION. THE PORTE AND THE INSURGENTS. THE POLICY OF
AUSTRIA. THE POLICY OP RUSSIA. THE GORTSCHAKOFF MEMOR-
ANDUM. THE POLICY OF ENGLAND.
WHILE heroic soldiers and incompetent commanders
in Herzegovina exerted themselves to bring the
rebellious subjects of the Sultan back to their allegi-
ance by might of arms, the European Governments,
and especially those of the "three Northern Empires,"
Russia, Germany, and Austria, were devising the
means of restoring order in the disturbed Turkish
districts by peaceful negotiation. Early in the
autumn of 1875, upon the advice of the Austro-
Hungarian Cabinet, and with the consent of the
Porte, a Conference of the Consuls of the Six Powers
who had signed the Paris Treaty of 1856 France,
England, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Russia-
was assembled at Mostar ; but, as its meeting was
contrived without any well-defined object, it could
have no decisive result, and it answered indeed no
other purpose than that of better acquainting the Go-
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 313
vernments with the real character of the insurrection,
with the circumstances which had given it rise, the
magnitude it might assume, and the perils it would
probably involve. Towards the close of the year the
Sovereigns and Ministers of the three great Northern
Empires became aware of the necessity for more
resolute action, and, taking the initiative upon them-
selves, they came to some agreement on certain pro-
positions to be submitted to the Sublime Porte, upon
which the Arch-Chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire drew up that notable document which, under
the designation of the "Andrassy Note," gave enough
to think and to discuss to all Europe for several
months.
Two distinct ideas seemed from the outset to be
well established in the minds of European politicians ;
the one that, whatever might be thought of the in-
stigations of foreign agitators, and of the intrigues of
Panslavist Committees, the insurgents in the Turk-
ish provinces had really some just cause of complaint
against misgovernment, and were justified in their
clamour for reforms ; the other, that the six Powers
who signed the Paris Treaty had a right and a duty
to suggest to, and even to impose those reforms upon
the Porte the right being grounded on the guarantee
of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, assumed
by the six Powers by the terms of the said treaty,
which involved on their part a vigilance over the
proceedings of the Government of the Porte, to en-
able them to guard against any disorders which might
314 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
jeopardise that integrity; and the duty arising from the
necessity every State is under to provide for its own
safety against the spread within its own boundaries
of any disorder affecting a neighbour's territory.
Upon the strength of these considerations the
Sublime Porte had been, on the first outbreak in
Herzegovina, plied with diplomatic recommendations
to put her house in order, to listen to her subjects'
grievances and to afford them redress ; and, as it
was whispered that the Powers were themselves in-
quiring into those grievances, and projecting some
scheme of redress, the Grand Vizier, Mahnioud
Nedim, acting, as it was asserted, on the advice of
General Ignatieff, attempted to be beforehand
with them, by putting forth that Imperial Firman of
Reforms of December, to which I have alluded in
one of the foregoing chapters.* That decree, how-
ever, did not limit its provisions to the disturbed
districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina; on the con-
trary, while it professed to be applicable throughout
the full extent of the Ottoman Empire, it by an
express clause excepted those localities in which
rebels were standing in armed opposition against the
Sultan's Government. The Andrassy Note, for its
own part, seemed meant to do away with that excep-
tion ; it took up the interests of the revolted provinces,
and proposed measures, some of them of a special and
local character, which should establish a modus
vivendi in those disturbed districts, equally meeting
* Chapter X
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 315
the requirements of the country and of the Govern-
ment, and adapted to the circumstances of discordant
and mutually hostile fractions of its population.
Count Andrassy's Note having obtained the ap-
proval of Berlin and St. Petersburg, was sent to
Paris, London, and Rome on the last day of the
year 1875. It met with no opposition on the part
of any of those Courts, and it was understood that,
owing especially to the good offices of England, the
Porte would not only accept the proposals of the
Powers and give the Note a favourable answer, but
even publish a new Firman of Reforms, based on
Count Andrassy's suggestions, and specially applicable
to the districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And yet
with every disposition of the parties to be agreeable,
the actual presentation of the Note was put off from
day to day, and only took place at the end of January.
Even then diplomacy took immense trouble to adopt
such forms as could spare the amour propre of the
Ottoman Government, as if to give it to understand
that nothing was further removed from the minds of
the framers of the Note than the idea of exercising
the least pressure on the Porte's deliberations. As
this attempt to combine firmness with gentleness, to
employ what might seem efficacious means of persua-
sion without resorting to words or acts which might
give offence, was persevered in throughout all subse-
quent transactions of the Powers in their dealings with
the Porte, an account of what took place in this first
stage of the negotiations may not be without interest.
316 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Instructions received at Constantinople by the
Varna mail induced the representatives of the six
Powers to alter the simple plan on which they were
previously agreed, and prescribed point by point the
ceremonies which were to be observed. Accordingly,
on the last day in January, 1876, the Austrian Am-
bassador proceeded to the Porte and read, or rather
seemed to recite by heart, to the Ottoman Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Raschid Pasha, the Note, the actual
text of which had only reached him twenty-four
hours before. At the Minister's request, Count
Zichy then left in the Minister's hands copies of the
Note, and of the annexed memorandum, and various
other documents, on the subject of which informal
pourparlers had been previously exchanged with the
Porte. On that same Monday, her Majesty's Am-
bassador, Sir Henry Elliot, and after him General
Ignatieif and Baron Werther, the Russian and
German Ambassadors, as well as Count Corti,
Italian Minister, gave their verbal support to the
suggestions conveyed by the Note. The French
Ambassador, Count Bourgoing, whose despatches
only arrived on Monday evening, had to put off his
interview with the Minister to the ensuing Tues-
day.
It was thus managed that the Note should be
"read," not "presented," and "left," not " delivered ;"
that it should not be a " Collective Note," though it
was a common and unanimous act ; the six Powers
exhibiting, as I said, by such nice diplomatic distinc-
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS, 317
tions their anxiety to spare the susceptibilities of the
Porte, and to take from the Note every appearance
of actual dictation. But as it had been pre-arranged
that the Minister for Foreign Affairs should reply to
the proposals communicated to him as soon as they
had been by him laid before the Imperial Divan for
consideration, it was natural that the Minister should
express a wish to have copies of the documents in
his hands as an aide-memoire, and his request was
readily complied with. The upshot of all these deli-
cate manoeuvres was that the Note was virtually pre-
sented, that an answer was to be soon forthcoming,
and it was understood that this answer would
amount to an acceptance of the proposals of the six
Powers ; the Porte, it was added, being pledged
presently to publish in a Firman the programme of
the measures by which the pacification of the insur-
gent districts of Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be
effected.
It was understood at the time that the Chancellor
of the Russian Empire, Prince Gortsehakoff, had ad-
vised the delegates of the insurgents in Herzegovina
to accept the reforms proposed by Count Andrassy,
and to lay down their arms, and the obvious in-
ference was that, while it was deemed that a com-
munication to the Porte could be made more
acceptable by coming from Austria, any intimation
to the insurgents would make a better impression if
conveyed to them by Russia. Hopes for the im-
mediate suspension and for the eventual cessation of
318 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
hostilities in the disturbed districts began, therefore,
to be confidently entertained, and the weather was
just setting fair when ominous clouds again lowered
on the political horizon. In the first place, the
report circulated that the Grand Vizier, Mahmoud
Pasha, was again threatened with dismissal. The
position of Mahmoud at the head of the State had
never been considered very firm, for the Sultan Avas
supposed to listen to the suggestions of the friends
of Hussein Avni Pasha, and, as we have seen, to
harbour desperate designs of cutting the knot with
the sword by venturing on open war with Monte-
negro, and thus taking by the horns the bull of the
Herzegovinian insurrection a scheme which met
with the strenuous opposition of the Grand Vizier.
After the acceptance of the Note, which recom-
mended a more moderate and pacific course, it was
thought that a reconciliation between the Sultan and
his Grand Vizier had been effected, and the position
of Mahmoud Pasha at the direction of affairs was
since then considered surer than ever. But the in-
telligence that the Grand Vizier's seat was trembling
under him was again current at this time, and the
representatives of the Powers were at no little pains
to counteract the influence which the war party were
evidently exercising at Court. The dragomans of
the Embassies, as the report was, were instructed to
proceed to the palace at Dolmabacheh, and there,
through the chamberlain of the Sultan, to represent
to his Imperial Majesty how inexpedient, if not
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 319
dangerous, would at this juncture be the removal
from his Council of a Prime Minister with whom
important negotiations were pending, and who was
fairly entitled to carry out the policy of reform which
had been framed and publicly announced in the
Sultan's own name. First and foremost in urging
these remonstrances, I was assured, was the English
Ambassador, who was strenuously supported by all
his colleagues, the French, and it was added, the
Italian Envoy alone no one knew for what reason
keeping aloof. It was still doubted, however,
whether the Ambassadors' admonition had made
any impression on the Sultan's mind, and the Grand
Vizier's position was still considered very unsafe,
when, to complicate the difficulty, a telegram reached
the Government to the effect that " a fresh insurrec-
tion had broken out in Bosnia, hi the district of
Gratshanitza." The telegram entered into no par-
ticulars with respect either to the nature or to the
importance of the outbreak, but the alarm its arrival
created was sufficient to perplex the Sultan's Council,
and to shake its confidence in the results of the
negotiations aiming at the pacification of the pro-
vinces.
It very soon appeared that the long-expected Note
had been a mere bugbear from the terrors of which
the Porte would find it easy to recover. The Grand
Vizier and his colleagues applauded themselves on
the policy by which the speedy publication of their
Firman of Reforms outstripped the tardy delibera-
320 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
tions of the Austrian Chancellor. The Allied
Powers had, they contended, no measures of reform
to propose that had not been beforehand exceeded
by the liberality of the Sultan's spontaneous con-
cessions. All that they might have attempted to
impose would have been some scheme of joint
guarantees, establishing those concessions as a real
and permanent right in behalf of the people, but
this, had it even been at all practicable the Govern-
ment of the Porte were prepared to resist, and even
resent as an actual interference of foreigners in the
internal affairs of the empire. They were from the
beginning determined to stand up for their inde-
pendence at all hazards, and rather break than bend,
in the full conviction that the Powers were too in-
capable of any real understanding between themselves
to proceed to extremities. I was even at the time
positively assured that an intimation had been for-
warded by the Porte to the Powers to withdraw
their Consuls from Mostar. It is important to take
notice of this stubborn disposition of the Porte at
this early period, as it actuated all its following reso-
lutions and baffled the best intentions of the Powers
for the maintenance of the European peace. The
Porte did not acknowledge the Powers' right to
interfere in her domestic concerns, and the Powers
were never quite of one mind, either as to their
possession of such a right, or as to their determina-
tion to enforce it.
Towards the middle of the ensuing February the
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 321
text of the new Imperial Firman intended to carry
out the special reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina
was published. These reforms were based on the
Five Points of the Andrassy Note, with such modi-
fications as the Porte insisted upon as a condition of
its acceptance of the Austro-Hungarian High-Chan-
cellor's proposal. The Five Points themselves, as
we all know, were merely a European summary of
the new liberties announced by the Ottoman Govern-
ment in the Firman of last December, which, in its
turn, was simply a new version of the Charters of 1839
and 1856. The only new stage to which the matter
had now been brought was that, while the Firman
of December excluded from the promised reforms
the rebels of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Andrassy
Note was purposely meant to benefit those two
provinces, and suggested those measures which could
best lead to their pacification, the Porte expressing
its conviction that by adopting those suggestions, it
had insured the moral support of the European
Powers in her efforts to put an end to the insur-
rection. Faithful to its engagements, the Porte
now, for its own part, promised an amnesty to all
those of her subjects who should deserve its clemency
by an immediate act of submission.
The next move now rested with the insurgents,
and it remained to be seen what influence would be
exercised either by the Imperial Commissioners
acting in the name of the Porte, or by the repre-
sentatives of the six Powers, to induce the leaders
VOL. i. 21
322 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
of the insurrection to lay down their arms. Some
of the diplomatists who in all matters connected
with Eastern questions were best entitled to atten-
tion, expressed a belief that the full compliance of
the insurgents with the intimation now conveyed to
them both by friends and enemies might be confi-
dently looked forward to ; but other gentlemen,
equally authoritative, were less sanguine about the
result. In the first place, they thought that the
revolt had its roots, not in the disturbed provinces
themselves, but in remote regions which no measures
of clemency or improvement could affect; and, in
the second place, they were convinced that the exas-
peration caused by the outrages and excesses com-
mitted by the contending parties during the late
struggle could not fail to leave such mutual ill-will and
rancour between them as nothing but the presence of
an overwhelming force would allay. Their opinion
seemed to be that either the Ottoman Government
must regain its ascendency by the strong hand, or
else the work of Count Andrassy, which began by
diplomatic conciliation, must end by armed interven-
tion. The evils of Turkey, in these gentlemen's
opinion, sprang from the ambition of the Slav party
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the chances
of a remedy lay in the power the dual Govern-
ment, of which Count Andrassy was the head, might
have, not only of discountenancing the Bosnian and
Herzegovinian insurgents, but also of curbing the
turbulent passions of the Slav party in its own do-
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 323
minions, for of the acquiescence of the Servians and
Montenegrins Russia was, or affected to be, per-
fectly sure.
There were some of the conditions laid down
in the Andrassy Note, and accepted in the Imperial
Firman, as well as in the Decree of General Amnesty
by which it was followed, which the Porte, had it
been ever so sincere in its declarations, would not
have had the power, and scarcely even the right, to
fulfil. These were especially the clause relating to
the emancipation of the property from the trammels
of feudal tenure and the proportionate allotment of un-
cultivated land, which was deemed incompatible with
the vested rights of the landowners, and that relating
to the exclusive application of the sums arising from
the collection of the direct taxes to local purposes, and
for the benefit of the province in which they were
raised, which, it was supposed, would clash with the
requirements of the general administration. With
respect to the amnesty, also, it was understood that
not only would the insurgents suffer no molestation
for any past offences, but they should upon their act
of submission be restored to their former position,
their families being recalled from exile, their houses
and churches being rebuilt, and seeds, cattle, imple-
ments, and other means being provided, both in kind
and money, to support them for a season and to en-
able them to resume the cultivation of their desolate
fields. Vassa Effendi, one of the Imperial Commis-
sioners sent to re-establish social order in those
212
324 THE EASTERN QUESTION'.
ravaged and dilapidated districts, declared that " he
could not even begin his work unless the Govern-
ment were willing from the first to incur the expense
of a million of money, which any attempt at the ful-
filment of such promises would immediately involve."
Still greater difficulties arose from the demands put
forth by the insurgents respecting the immediate and
thorough disarmament of the Mussulman population,
the limitation of the armed force which the G overn-
ment should henceforth quarter in their districts, and
their desire that Russian and Austrian agents should
be established in the garrison towns all conditions
without which the insurgents and all the Christian
population would find themselves utterly at the
mercy of the Ottoman Government, and of their
Mohammedan fellow-subjects. And their apprehen-
sions for their safety could not be said to be alto-
gether unfounded, inasmuch as Haidar Pasha, the
Imperial Commissioner in Bosnia, in his intercourse
with the foreign Consuls at Serajewo, declared very
freely that " the population of the disturbed districts
had no just grievances, and must look for no redress,
that both the Imperial Firmans and the Austrian
Note were, in his opinion, mere waste paper, and
peace need only be restored with the strong hand."
Greatly as the insurgents might be disappointed at
the prospect of the fate that awaited them on their
return to their allegiance, it would, nevertheless, be
by no means unlikely that they would have abated
their demands and desisted from any further contest
. NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS, 325
if they had seen themselves isolated and forsaken by
the Powers which had undertaken to plead their
cause. As it happened, however, they flattered
themselves that help was at hand, and that the
ground they had lost in Herzegovina might be
regained by the success of their sympathisers in
Bosnia, of whose movements they were sure to be
better informed at Ragusa than we could ever hope
to be in Constantinople. What had happened in
Bosnia was not so much an insurrection of the help-
less native population as a downright invasion of
Slavic bands from the Austrian districts. Between
5000 and 6000 Grenzer or Borderers, had, towards
the 10th of April, crossed the frontier from various
points ; they had gained possession of all Turkish
Croatia, overpowered several minor garrisons,
established themselves in strong positions, burnt
several villages, and scattered like chaff 4000 Bashi-
Bazouks, or Volunteer Militia, whom the Vali, or
Governor-General of the Province, had sent, ill-
armed and equipped, to meet them. The invaders
had, as a matter of course, been joined by the Bos-
nians in large numbers, and even by some of the
Mussulmans, whose patriotism as Slavs had ap-
parently got the better of their religious feelings.
The invaders were said to be " well and uniformly
armed " with breechloaders, and provided with two
field-pieces, and both the bands and their leaders
proceeded as men not altogether unacquainted with
the usages of regular warfare. So much, at least, I
326 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
learned from the despatch of Hai'dar Pasha, which I
was allowed to see, and in which that Imperial Com-
missioner, after soliciting reinforcements, expressed
his opinion that the extreme danger justified extreme
measures, and that the only immediate resource con-
sisted in arming the Mussulman population, and pro-
claiming the " Holy War." Haidar Pasha did not
mention that among the causes which had determined
the movement was the provocation given by the Otto-
man troops, and by some of the Mussulmans, who, at
the very moment attempts were made to bring about
the pacification of the province, abandoned them-
selves to the most savage excesses the violation of
women and the murder in cold blood of fugitives
who had ventured to return to their homes on the
faith of the imperial amnesty thereby adding to
the large account of mutual outrages by which the
revengeful passions of both parties, Moslem and
Giaour, were perpetually aggravated and deepened.
Of these horrible deeds detailed reports occurred in
the Consular correspondence, which were also laid
before me, and which I could quote to the letter,
were not some of the atrocities of so dark a dye that
I should probably incur the charge of exaggeration
among civilised readers.*
* !No bad sample of the manner in which the work of pacifica-
tion was likely to be carried on might be seen in the tragic catas-
trophe of which the village of Wukowich, near Bilesch, had just
been the theatre. That village, we were told, had taken no part
in the insurrection, yet the Mussulmans fell suddenly, on April 1st,
on its inoffensive inhabitants, and slaughtered defenceless men and
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 327
Hai'dar Pasha did not hesitate to lay the whole
blame of this new inroad on the Austro-Hungarian
Government, and the animosity against Vienna and
Pesth was consequently very strong among the
Turks in Constantinople. How it happened, in fact,
that so deeply laid a movement, the simultaneous
march of so many detached bands of armed men
across a well-guarded frontier, could be organised
and carried out without the connivance of General
Rodich and the other civil and military autho-
rities of Dalmatia and Slavonia, it seemed difficult to
understand ; it could only be explained either by the
supposition that those authorities, with Rodich at
their head, shared the sympathies of their Slav sub-
jects with the Slav insurgents in Turkey, or that
these sympathies were strong enough to baffle their
vigilance and defy their power. In either case, the
position of the Austro-Hungarian Government was
seriously compromised ; and the evidence of their
helplessness and perplexity might be argued from
the fact that, although General Rodich was well
known as the head of the Slav party in Austria,
acting throughout in contradiction to the views and
interests, if not to the actual orders, of the Andrassy
Government, this very Government, instead of ar-
women, carrying off their severed heads as trophies on the points
of their pikes. The intelligence of these fresh atrocities was sent
by telegraph to one of the Embassies in Constantinople. The
Grand Vizier professed that he knew nothing about it, and refused
to credit the report.
328 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
resting and prosecuting him as an unfaithful servant,
when they recalled him to Vienna, sent him back
charged with that pacification which was meant to
discountenance Slavic aspirations. The Vienna
Government would seem to have evinced a want of
foresight which the Turks, in their present sullen
mood, were very naturally disposed to impute to
bad faith.
There was still a possibility that the Government
of the Porte might succeed both in overcoming all
resistance on the part of the insurgents in Herze-
govina and also in driving back the invaders from
the districts of Turkish Croatia and Bosnia, and no
one could foresee to what extent the efforts and
sacrifices by which the Turks might obtain the vic-
tory might also urge them to abuse it. But there
was, besides, a chance either of the enemies of the
Ottoman Power gaining the upper hand or of the
struggle being inexorably prolonged ; and, in either
case, it behoved Austria and Russia, as well as the
other Powers, to consider what course it might be
fitting for them to pursue ; for, on the one hand, the
occupation of Herzegovina and Bosnia by a large
Austrian force say of 50,000 or 60,000 men
seemed indicated and urged by all the exigencies of
common humanity ; and, on the other hand, it was
difficult to foresee whether the movement of this
army could be so swift, and its steadiness and com-
pactness so firmly relied upon, as to ensure that
it should arrive in time to re-establish order, and
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 329
that its presence should not rather add to than check
and discountenance disorder. The Slav element, it
must be remembered, was as strong in the Austrian
army as in the Austrian monarchy ; and during this
very last inroad of the Slav bands into Turkish
Croatia, a collision occurred between the Turkish
troops in garrison at Novi and the Austrian post
across the border at Dwor, in which, owing to some
misunderstanding about their mutual intentions,
shots were exchanged, and three of the Turks were
killed.
Supposing, however, the occupation of a large
Turkish province by a whole Austrian army to have
the effect of preventing the further effusion of blood
and quelling the rebellious spirit of the subjects of
the Porte, to what endless variety of complications
would it not have given rise ? It could scarcely be
looked upon as anything less than the opening of the
Eastern Question. " What could be done with the
subjugated province ? On what terms could it be
brought back to its allegiance to the Sultan ? What
tnodus Vivendi could be contrived between the Mussul-
man and Christian inhabitants ? What indemnity
or compensation would be allowed to Austria for the
trouble and expense of her occupation ? How long
would that occupation have to be continued? On
the other hand, should Austria be allowed to seize
and annex that province ? Could its possession
suit her convenience, and would Russia raise no
objection to it ? Or, again, suppose that the Powers
330 THE EASTERN QUESTION,
could wrest Turkey's consent to the independence
of that province ; that Bosnia and Herzegovina
were erected into a tributary principality on the
same terms as Servia and Roumania, could the semi-
savage population of those districts be at once con-
sidered fit for self-government, and would Mussul-
mans and Christians, so lately aglow Avith im-
placable and internecine rancour, settle down into a
peaceful community, and lie down side by side as
members of a happy family ? Would not, moreover,
the success of their revolt stir up envy and emula-
tion among the population of the other Christian
districts of European Turkey 1 Would not insur-
rection in Bulgaria, Thessaly, Albania, etc., become
a chronic complaint, fraught with the eventual dis-
solution and extinction of the Ottoman Empire ?"
These were some of the questions which imme-
diately presented themselves to statesmen and
politicians in Constantinople the moment pressing
events turned men's attention to the immediate
future. There was no popular movement, however
in itself insignificant, that did not loom portentously
in the imagination of the terrified Osmanli. The
Turks knew that there was something anomalous in
their constitution, something morbid in their body
politic ; they were aware that their very existence
rested on the superposition of one race upon another,
on that sovereignty of the Moslem over the Giaour
which was established by force, which force could no
longer maintain, and for which no other political
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 331
contrivance could nowadays be substituted. There
was no Turk who did not feel that his Empire could
not be other than it was, and that it must conse-
quently cease to be. The Turk felt that his fate
had overtaken him ; but he was not for all that dis-
posed to submit to it without a struggle. He was
determined to die hard, and to leave little cause for
rejoicing to those who had compassed his end.
The power to settle her own affairs had gone from
the hands of Turkey, and it remained to be seen
what her neighbours could or would do to lighten
her difficulties or to aggravate them. It was, in the
first place, quite apparent that, notwithstanding the
pressure exercised by. the six Powers, or by Austria
and Russia in their name, upon the Prince of Servia
and Montenegro, the attitude of those two princi-
palities became, as the spring advanced, every day
less reassuring. The obstinacy with which the Porte
had set itself against any concession, by which Mon-
tenegro might be won over, disregarding in this
respect the constant advice and even the urgent
entreaties of Russia and General Ignatieff, had the
effect of removing any jealousy existing between
that little mountain state and Servia. The necessity
of promoting a common cause prevailed over all
considerations of separate interests. It brought
about a better understanding among all the former
vassals of the Porte ; and though their Governments,
awed by diplomacy, might consider themselves bound
to keep the peace, they would, as subsequent expe-
332 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
rience proved, find it difficult to allay the active
sympathies or curb the adventurous spirit of their
subjects. That in sheer self-defence Turkey had a
clear casus belli against the two princes, and espe-
cially against Montenegro, no true man could deny ;
but in order to make war it is not enough for a State
to have a right to do so ; and one must consider not
only the immediate, but also the remote consequences
of such a step. The Young Turkey party, and espe-
cially the friends of Hussein Avni Pasha, did not fail
to express their regret that they were not listened
to when they recommended that the bull should be
seized by the horns, and that hostilities against the
insurgents should begin by a direct and immediate
onset upon the territory of Prince Nicholas. The
ex-Grand Vizier, Hussein Avni Pasha, who looked
upon his appointment as Governor at Broussa as a
kind of banishment, bestowed little attention upon
the affairs of his province, and spent his time at
sporting parties, which enabled him to send loads of
pheasants and other game to influential friends at
the Dolmabacheh Palace, to keep up his interest
there, and prepare the day in which he might be re-
called as the man of the situation ; the only man
who, when diplomacy should acknowledge itself
defeated, would be able to restore the Sultan's
authority in the North- Western provinces, with as
much ease as he nine years before had stifled the
last sparks of Hellenic revolt in Crete. Admiral
Hobart Pasha, who was with Hussein at that juncture
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 333
and whose spirited conduct contributed in no small
degree to the pacification of the island, was even now
among the warmest advisers of decisive measures,
and he renewed, for the third time, and always in
vain, his offer to take the field at the head of a naval
brigade of 3000 men, and try what rockets and
grenades in the hands of experienced seamen could
effect towards dislodging the Herzegovinian insur-
gents and their Montenegrin allies from their moun-
tain fastnesses.
But the time for desperate resolutions had not yet
come, and Hussein and Hobart, and all who had
faith in them, were scouted as madmen. The Grand
Vizier, Mahmoud Nedim, was not to be moved by
suggestions of a hazardous policy. Faithful to Igna-
tieff and Russia, to whose influence he had, as we
have seen, been indebted for the support of the other
Powers, and for his continuance in office, he trusted
that Osmanli perseverance would enable the Govern-
ment to achieve the subjugation of the revolted pro-
vinces, and was determined to avoid a collision with
Servia and Montenegro, which, in his opinion, could
not fail to lead to conflicts with far more redoubtable
adversaries ; for Mahmoud Nedim belonged to the
school of old Turkish politicians, who thought that
the Moslem had an enemy in every Giaour, and that
the Cross would always be ready to join in a league
against the Crescent, while, on the contrary, the
Young Turkey party, who looked up to Midhat as its
leader, stood upon the principle that combination or
334 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
good understanding between the Christian Powers
was an impossibility, and that Turkey could never
engage in a contest with one of them without being
sure of the support of the others. " Premenie Deo,
fert Deus alter opem." And it must be borne in
mind that Mahmoud was under Russian, Midhat
under English influence.
" Should it become necessary to proceed to extre-
mities/' the Grand Vizier said, "it is not with such
contemptible foes as Servia and Montenegro that our
quarrel would have to be settled, or at least not with
them alone."
For poor old Mahmoudoff, who, deservedly or not,
was looked upon as the merest passive tool in the
hand of Russia, Turkey had no neighbour whose
attitude seemed fraught with more mischief and
danger than Austria. A feeling unfriendly to the
rulers of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had sprung
up at Constantinople from the very beginning of the
Herzegovinian difficulty. People who still took an
interest in the integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
and who thought the present calamities and the
gloomy prospects of Turkey lay in the overwhelming
influence and in the unswerving ambition of Russia,
could not help viewing with discouragement the
wavering and equivocal conduct of that Government
of Vienna, or Pesth, the very existence of which,
they thought, was compromised by the growing dis-
order of the provinces of European Turkey. On
the other hand, those who looked upon Turkey's
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 335
case as hopeless, wondered why Austria exerted
herself diplomatically in behalf of a doomed state,
why she was heaping notes upon notes, and pro-
tocols upon protocols, when the policy pointed out
to her by her " manifest destinies," should have
been to forestall Russia in her designs upon Con-
stantinople, and to profit by any disturbance in the
Danubian provinces to extend her dominions along
that river and down to its very mouth. It was of
course an article of faith with all politicians in
Turkey that Russia coveted Constantinople and the
Straits, and that the keenness of her desire was only
increased by the necessity she was in of dissembling
her aim and delaying its gratification. The more
Russia argued, and disclaimed, and protested, the
less credit she gained for the disinterestedness of
her intentions. " The grapes may be sour," every-
body said, " but they are ripening in the sun of
every day that passes. Were even the Czar's
Government sincere, it would be utterly powerless
to resist national aspirations. Russia will never
renounce her hope of the Bosphorus and the Dar-
danelles till she ceases to be Russia."
"It is true," it was added, " that the way to Con-
stantinople need not be across the Danube and over
the Balkan. Russia can creep all round along the
shores of the Black Sea as easily as she could march
across Bulgaria and Roumelia. She might leave
the plain of the Danube untouched, or she might
even agree to share its broad expanse with her
336 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Austrian and German accomplices. Still, the
strength of an empire possessing nearly the whole
coast of the Black Sea, with its only outlet, would
be something appalling to all the neighbouring states,
nor would it be possible for any Power to hold the
Straits without extending its sway to at least large
strips of coasts on both sides of the Sea of Marmora.
Constantinople would be of no use to Russia, except
as a centre of a Europeo-Asiatic empire ; and such
of the states in either continent as escaped her
actual occupation would, at least, have to bow to her
overwhelming influence, and be altogether at her
discretion."
Under such circumstances it was evident that
Germany and Austria could not be now, or would
not long continue to be, of one mind with Russia in
their dealings with the Eastern Question ; and, in-
deed, there were flagrant proofs enough of their
mutual distrust to convince any man that they were
only acting together to watch, and endeavour to
thwart, each other.
The charming bluntness with which Prince Bis-
marck caused the hair of old diplomatists' wigs to
stand on end, when he recommended Austrian states-
men to " move eastwards," {. e. from Vienna to Pesth,
to Belgrade, or even farther, was the theme of all
men's discourse. Why should not Austria outstrip
Russia in the race 1 Why should not the Hapsburg
rather than the Romanoff sit on the throne of the
Byzantine Csesars, and aspire to the construction
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 337
of that Oester-reich, or Eastern Empire, which
seemed foreshadowed in the very name of their ori-
ginal state ?
" Not more than thirty years ago/' these politicians
reasoned, " Vienna was considered almost a match
for St. Petersburg, and it seemed certain that in any
design upon Turkey, Russia would find an insur-
mountable barrier so long as Austria could be ar-
rayed against her on the Danube. After 1866, how-
ever, gloomy days arose for the House of Hapsburg.
Defeat abroad and division at home drove it from
Italy, estranged it from Germany, and weakened it
by that dualism which satisfied one of its subject
races at the expense of all others. To regain its
compactness, to recover its ascendency, to fulfil the
destinies which point to the East as the theatre of its
future greatness, the House of Hapsburg must make
itself Slav ; it must take the lead of the Southern
Panslavic movement. It need not deprive its Ger-
man or its Magyar subjects of that home rule which
was secured to them by the compact of 1867 ; but
justice must be done to those nationalities which at
that time were sacrificed to German or Hungarian
ambition. The Empire must be converted into an
aggregate of self-governing communities, with no
other bond between them than a central administra-
tion and personal union. Dualism must be considered
merely as a first step towards . further division and
sub-division. Room must be made in the confederate
State for Croatians, Dalmatians, Slovenians, as well
VOL. i. 22
338 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
as for Roumanians, Servians, Bosnians, Bulgarians,
etc. The new Oester-reich will thus absorb, one
after another, all the Turkish provinces, and end by
making its way to its new capital. What Russia
could only accomplish by conquest, Austria might
easily achieve by assimilation."
Such was the construction it seemed natural to put
on that hint of Prince Bismarck as to the expediency
of Austria shunting eastwards. She could win at the
mouth of the Danube more than she might yet have
to lose near its sources. It might he objected that
the Slav provinces of Turkey, and especially those
which had already achieved semi-independence, might
feel little disposed to transfer to the Hapsburg such
allegiance as they still owed to the Porte ; that the
Servians, the Montenegrins, and especially the Rou-
mans who are not Slavs all of whom had already
reigning Princes at their head, would not be easily
brought to acknowledge a new bond of Imperial
supremacy ; but, in the first place, their admission to
a Confederate State need not be effected on terms
incompatible with their autonomy ; and in the second
place, the alternative for them might be be-
tween becoming Austrians and becoming Russians,
and their sympathies would lie rather with the
Southern Slavs of Austria than with the Northern
Slavs of Russia, should the House of Hapsburg show
any disposition to do justice to its Slav subjects.
It might be answered that such speculations re-
ferred to remote contingencies, but it is the duty of
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 339
statesmen, even if they do nothing to hasten or mature
events, at least to be prepared for them. The Govern-
ment of Vienna had to deal with a difficult situation,
and seemed at a loss how to understand and master
it. Swayed almost exclusively by Hungarian in-
terests, and blinded by an almost rabid dread of
Slavism, the Andrassy Cabinet committed the double
error of considering it a duty to preserve the in-
tegrity of the Ottoman Empire, and of thinking
itself able to accomplish it. It was, however, power-
less in its endeavours to keep a good watch on its
frontier, and to restrain the zeal of its Slavic subjects,
Dalmatians, Croatians, etc., who looked upon the
cause of the Herzegovinian insurgents as their own ;
powerless to remove from his Government at Ragusa
that General Rodich, to whom indeed in spite of
his well-known Slavonic sympathies, the charge of
dealing diplomatically with the insurgents for the
settlement of their differences had again and again
to be entrusted. The real fact was that Rodich was
nearly as powerful in the Aulic Council at Vienna
as Andrassy himself ; the fact was that there was not
one Austria, but two Austrias; that the Emperor
Francis had two ears, with one of which he listened
to the outspoken advice of his Magyar Arch-Chan-
cellor, while with the other he attended to the
whisperings of Rodich 's partisans, among whom,
besides the Slavs and the friends of the Slavs, were
some of the Archdukes, Generals, Ministers, etc.,
Germans, many of them, but aristocrats, Conserva-
222
340 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
tives and Federalists above all things. The Cabinet
of Count Andrassy found it almost impossible to hold
its own against the Slavic element over which the
dualism of 1867 gave it an unnatural preponderance.
It was only in normal times and in a profound peace
that the German in the Cisleithan and the Magyar
in the Transleithan division of the Hapsburg Mo-
narchy could hope to rule over those motley subject
races, each of which was hitherto powerless in itself,
but all of which were now awaking to the conscious-
ness of strength in their united majority. While
Count Andrassy wavered between his Hungarian
predilections and his sense of the general interests
of the empire, there was no lack of private and irre-
sponsible advisers who played upon the vacillating
mind and the vague aspirations of the Emperor
Francis Joseph, who, like many of his German mag-
nates of the Schwarzenberg school, only yielded to
the Magyars and accepted the dualism of 1867 as a
fatal consequence of the disaster at Sadowa, while in
his heart of hearts he always looked on the Hun-
garians as a disturbing element, and cherished a fond
remembrance of that old compact empire of which
his own trusty Germans were the head, and his
devoted Slavs the right arm. How could it be
otherwise ? Can a man divest himself of all the
associations of the past ? Were not Kossuth and
his Hungarians in arms against their sovereign at
the time of the Kaiser's accession to the throne in
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 341
1849, and was not the monarchy at that juncture
saved by Jellachich and his Croatians ?
It is no wonder if, in such a situation, Count
Andrassy was from beginning to end perplexed, and
even stultified. The scheme of a pacification of the
disturbed Turkish provinces conveyed in his Note
having foundered against the stubborn attitude of
the insurgents, Andrassy proceeded to Berlin to
bear a hand in the drawing up of the Gortschakoff
Memorandum, which is the same thing as to say
that Austria, having failed in the negotiation in
which she took the initiative, was now only too
glad to allow Russia to take the lead. A great
stress was laid about this time on the might of the
three great Northern Empires, who, we were told,
" were leagued for peace, and were fully able, as
they were determined, to maintain it." The Czar
and the Emperor William, especially, were described
as " the best of friends, and so long as they were
united, Europe could have no other will than their
own." Even big Emperors, in our days however,
count for much less than they themselves or other
people imagine. There was, is, and ever will be,
jealousy and antipathy, and a world- wide antagonism
of interests, between the Russian and the German
nations. However latent the feeling may be in
normal times, it could not fail to break out on the
first approach of war ; and it found an utterance, as
we shall see, in Prince Bismarck's speech on the first
intimation of Russia's intention to proceed to voies
342 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
de fait against Turkey. People are somewhat apt
to forget that the State of which Bismarck is the
head is no longer Prussia, a little kingdom with no
other outlet than in the Baltic and the North Sea. It
is now Germany, an empire stretching from the ocean
to the Bavarian Alps, and almost as much concerned
in the free navigation of the Danube as in that of
the Rhine. In this respect the interests of Berlin
and those of Vienna have become identical since
1870, and Austria could go any length in her oppo-
sition to Russia, sure, as Bismarck himself declared,
that Germany would in any emergency back her.
The policy of Austria and Germany, throughout the
whole of 1875-6, in allowing Russia to play her own
game, especially with respect to her protection of
Servia and Montenegro, seemed deplorably and in-
explicably short-sighted ; but it has become more
intelligible as events developed themselves. We
have learnt that if Czars and Kaisers propose, the
people dispose, and that when the subjects become
clamorous for war, no other course is open even to
an absolute Sovereign than to declare it.
Count Andrassy, however, aspired to the glory of
a peace-maker, and insisted upon his arduous task
with a zeal which entitled him to greater success
than he ultimately achieved. He repaired to Berlin,
on the invitation of the Emperor Alexander, and
took a prominent part in those Berlin Conferences
in which the three Emperors and their Ministers
discussed and adopted the Gortschakoff Memoran-
NOTES AND MEMORANDUMS. 343
dum. This new document had, at least, an advan-
tage over the Andrassy Note, that it attempted to
place such reforms as might be acceptable to the
Porte under something that might amount to a
joint European guarantee. By the time the Con-
ference came to some conclusion, however, matters
in Turkey had been brought to a crisis, which gave
an altogether new turn to her home and foreign
policy, and England had assumed with respect to the
Eastern question that attitude which involved her
in endless inconsistencies and contradictions. Our
examination of the foreign relations of Turkey, our
review of European notes and protocols, must
therefore break up at this juncture, to be resumed
when the narrative of events shall have made us
more thoroughly acquainted Avith the circumstances
by which the deliberations of the European councils
were affected. Suffice it for the present to state
that England, who had approved of the Andrassy
Note, and taken the utmost pains to induce the
Government of the Porte to accept it, now refused
to sanction with her support the Gortschakoff
Memorandum, to which the other five Guaranteeing
Powers had signified their assent, and thereby em-
boldened the Porte flatly to reject it.
Many people thought that her Majesty's Govern-
ment acted on that occasion with unnecessary pre-
cipitancy, and that they condemned the Memorandum
without bestowing sufficient attention upon it simply
out of a deep-rooted jealousy of, and antipathy to, the
344 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Power whose Minister was the author of it. Not a
little of the mischief that followed might, as we
shall have occasion to see, be ascribed to this first
rash and inconsiderate resolution. The whole world,
not excepting even England's most envious and
hostile neighbours, had been forced to applaud the
stroke of policy coup d'etat or coup de bourse by
which Great Britain had bought up more than half
the shares of the Suez Canal, thereby gaining the
mastery over the navigation of the Canal itself,
insuring in her favour the shortest and most direct
communication with her Asiatic possessions, and at the
same time establishing over Egypt such an ascendency
as could easily be turned to good purposes in any
complication to which the development of the
Eastern question might give rise. Having achieved
that much, it seemed as if the action of England
with respect to that question might be most advanta-
geously limited to wise efforts to maintain peace, and
to watch for every opportunity which might enable
her to thwart Russian ambition. Yet it will not be
difficult to prove by-and-by, that the outbreak of the
war on the Danube and in Armenia, and the con-
sequences it may eventually have, should complete
success crown the Russian arms, must be traced to
the first mistake the Derby-Disraeli Cabinet com-
mitted in too abruptly and peremptorily rejecting the
Gortschakoff Memorandum, the said Cabinet having
in the meantime no proposal of its own to bring
forward in its stead.
1URKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 345
CHAPTER XVII.
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS.
DEALINGS OP THE PORTE WITH FOREIGN POWERS. WHITE AND
BLACK SLAVERY. HAREM LIFE. THE DOCTOR AND THE SLAVE-
MERCHANT. TAXES AND TAX-GATHERERS. TURKISH EQUALITY.
AT THE POLLS. IN THE COURTS OF JUSTICE. TURKISH CRIMINALS
AND TURKISH JUDGES. THE PERA MURDERS. THE MURDER AT
BROUSSA. THE SALONICA MURDERS.
ANY man endowed with strong powers of imagina-
tion, and thereby enabled to place himself in an-
other's position, will often have wondered how the
Sultan, or any of his Mohammedan subjects, from
the highest to the lowest, must feel, when they see
the ease and coolness with which mere strangers
Ambassadors, Consuls, or Consular Agents take
upon themselves to dictate the law to Turkey and
the Turkish Government. " Is the Osmanli dirt ?
Is not the Padishah the King of Kings ? Had he
even lost the control which Allah gave him over the
rest of the universe should he not at least be master
in his own house ? Should not his claim to indepen-
dence be as fully admitted as that of the Czar, or of
either of the Kaisers? Why should the 'Shadow
346 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
of God ' be pestered with Notes and Memorandums '(
How can Giaour statesmen, or hat-wearing proto-
colists be better judges of the grievances of the
Christian subjects of the Porte, or of the measures
by which their wrongs may be redressed, than the
Moslem rulers who have been able to keep the peace
among them for four or five hundred years ? In
what other country but Turkey do we hear of reli-
gious zeal being made a pretext for political inter-
ference ? Where else do the citizens of one State
claim exemptions and privileges based on the de-
mands of a foreign Protectorate."
The answer to this is easy, whether we look for it
among the principles of modern international legisla-
tion, or whether we refer it to the old practice of the
law of the strongest. Turkey is not an independent
State, not in the sense in which that word is applied to
Russia or Germany, England or France. Turkey is
a guaranteed, i.e. a protected State ; as such the
Guaranteeing or Protecting Powers have distinct
rights upon, as well as well-defined duties towards
her.
But, even setting aside all treaties and the obliga-
tions arising from them, the meddling of one or
more States with the concerns of another State may
be justified by considerations relating to the public
peace, or by the promptings of humanity. Every
country is interested in the suppression of such dis-
orders among its neighbours as may compromise its
own safety ; just as every householder may object to
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 347
any explosive or combustible material being stored
up in too large a quantity and in too great a proxi-
mity to his own premises. Moreover, we are all
men, and it cannot be expected of us that we should
stand by and see our fellow-beings subjected to too
cruel a treatment, so lonof as we think that either
' O
our entreaties and remonstrances, or even a recourse
to more cogent arguments, and to actual force, may
stay the hand that inflicts wanton torture.
There is therefore to a certain extent, and under
certain conditions, a right inherent in all human
societies, as well as in individuals, to step in for the
redress of extreme wrongs, and for the repression
and even punishment of the wrong-doer ; the only
point that is difficult to settle is, when and where it-
is that interference may be allowable ; or, more
correctly, where it is that it may be available ; for
we must not, with our best intentions to do good,
run the risk of making matters worse, as happened
to Don Quixote, when, at the very outset of his
knight-errantry, he took up the championship of the
servant-boy, Andres, compelling his unjust master
to promise to pay the lad the sixty -three reals he
owed him, little foreseeing in what "perfumed" coin,
as soon as his knightly back was turned, the pay-
ment would be made. Greatly as all Europe was
incensed against that government of King Bomba,
which had been stigmatised as " the negation of
God," there was hardly any man of sense who did
not praise the forbearance of the French and English
348 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Governments when, in 1858, after having ordered
their fleets to Naples with some vague design of
chastising the tyrant's arrogance and contumacy,
they thought better of it, countermanded their order,
and abandoned the Bourbon dynasty to the fate
which was at no distant period to overtake it.
In the case of Turkey, many of the European Go-
vernments, and especially that of Russia on the one
side, and those of England and France on the other,
have shown little hesitation in pressing their views
and wishes upon the Porte, whenever they deemed it
expedient, vindicating their right to interfere and to
impose their good pleasure by every means either of
persuasion or of actual coercion. It was thanks to
European meddling, and, it must unfortunately be
added, " muddling," that a series of insurrections of
the Christian population led to the total or partial
emancipation of Greece, Walachia, and Moldavia,
Servia, the Lebanon, Samos, etc. ; the Powers by
diplomatic action, and even by might of arms, con-
spiring to weaken and dismember the Ottoman
Empire, and then repenting their own deeds, calling
their own victories " untoward events," shedding
crocodile tears at the prospect of that empire's final
dissolution, and even entering into rash engagements
to prevent or at least to retard its downfall at all
hazards.
Placed at the discretion of these overbearing
States, unable fully to comprehend the ever-chang-
ing drift of their policy, the Porte learnt how to
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 349
evade by subterfuge the demands which she durst
not meet with open denial That phrase " To hear
is to obey/' with which every Ottoman subject is
ever ready to receive the Sultan's behest, whatever
it may be, became the form with which the Divan
or the Foreign Office at Constantinople, answered
any request or suggestion of European statesmen.
A proposal of any foreign power was first accepted
and examined afterwards. Was there a political
prisoner to be set free, a tax to be remitted, a school
to be opened, a Pasha to be removed from office ?
" Hey, presto ! It must be done; it will be sure to be
done; nay, it is done!" And, to be sure, if anything
could be accomplished either by publishing a Firman,
or appointing a commission, or instituting an inquiry,
holding a Council of Ministers, or in any other
manner deliberating as to the quid agendum, or the
quomodo agendum, till the affair had gone through
every stage of the " Circumlocution Office," no man
would have had reason to complain of the Forte's
non-compliance with any reasonable, or even un-
reasonable request. Somehow, however, it soon
became manifest that this readiness of the Turkish
rulers to fall in with the desires of foreign potentates
or of their representatives was mere sham and pre-
tence ; simply the result of Oriental mock humility
and lip-courtesy : the thing that was " as good as
done" was never actually done; the Firman extorted
from Sultan or Vizier remained a dead letter ; the
tax that was to be remitted was rigidly exacted, and
350 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
sometimes aggravated ; the prisoner who was to be
liberated passed from one prison to another, often
from a bad prison into a worse ; the Pasha who
was to be dismissed was only transferred from place
to place, mayhap promoted to a better place : the
appointed commission sat day after day, week after
week, the inquiry was prolonged for months, and
never came to a conclusion ; the Ministerial Council
discussed and debated till a crisis, or the death of the
Sultan or some other providential dispensation broke
up their deliberations, and the subject dropped ;
he who was waiting for their decision either being
worn out by long waiting, or through forgetful-
ness, or in sheer despair, giving up the unattainable
object.
It was thus by granting everything in words and
denying everything in deeds, that the Government
of the Porte, especially after the Crimean war, con-
trived to send foreign Ambassadors, and especially
those of England and France those of the Powers
who had fought Turkey's battles empty away. The
Ambassadors themselves, in many instances, out of
mere jealousy of each other's influence, backed the
Turks in their tricks by their guilty collusion ; they
endorsed their lies, winked at their pretences, and
wrote flaming despatches to their Governments, an-
nouncing as granted, settled, ordered, and done, what
had never been, and what they knew perfectly well
could or would never be done. Turkish Ministers
and European Envoys conspired to throw dust into
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 351
people's eyes, and to perpetuate the system of bare-
faced deception.
The Sultan's subjects were not as easily imposed
upon as people at a distance ; and when Hatts or
Trades appeared ushering in unbounded schemes of
reform, they were reminded of the different mood in
which a certain personage when he " gets well" looks
upon the rash resolutions he came to when he " was
sick," and they could quote numerous instances of
engagements entered into by the Government of the
Porte under foreign pressure which came to nothing
when that pressure was removed, the remonstrances
of the Powers being met either with subtle evasion
or with bold, open defiance.
Look, for instance, at the question of slavery and
the slave trade. The good and gentle but weak
Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid required the help of France
and England, when threatened with Russian invasion
in 1854, and in a Firman published in October of
that year, addressed "A toi, mon Vizir," he discovered
that "L'homme est la plus noble de toutes les cre'a-
tures sorties des mains de Dieu, qui 1'a destind k e"tre
heureux, en lui accordant la grace de naitre natur-
ellement libre." His pious feelings and his humane
instinct were equally shocked to hear that " certain
persons in Circassia and Georgia were selling their
children and other relatives into slavery, and even
kidnapping other people's children, selling them like
cattle and common merchandise." He is determined
to put an end to this "blamable and abominable
352 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
practice, equally repugnant to honour and humanity,"
and directs his Minister to inflict severe punishment
upon both the buyer and seller of human flesh. At
a later time January, 1857 in a Firman addressed
to the Pasha of Egypt, and to the authorities through-
out the Ottoman dominions, the same Sultan finds
out that the measures respecting the prohibition of
the Negro slave-trade have been of no effect, and that
" a great number of these slaves during the journey
from their country to the coast perish from the fatigues
and hardships they are exposed to in the deserts, while
the remainder, owing to their passage from warm to
cold climates, become subject to pulmonary and other
diseases, by which means most of them are cut off
from the enjoyment of life at an early age." There-
upon his Majesty again enjoins his Vizier to seek
out and punish the guilty, and put an end to the
outrageous traffic with the strong hand. Upon the
strength of those sovereign orders the Minister gave
instructions that all vessels plying in the Black Sea
and along the 'African coasts should be searched,
that such slaves, white or black, as might be found on
board should be instantly manumitted, and at their
own choice either sent back to their homes or pro-
vided with free employment ; further, that all who
had a hand in the trade should be liable to the
penalty of a year's imprisonment, to be doubled on
any and every repetition of the offence. To the ful-
filment of all these reforms the Government of the
Porte solemnly pledged itself in a despatch addressed
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 353
by Edhem Pasha to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe,
dated January 29, 1857 ; and several years later Sir
Henry Bulwer took upon himself to assure her
Majesty's Government that the conditions to which
the Porte had bound itself were fulfilled, and that
slavery was at an end throughout the Sultan's
dominions, though a gentleman from the Foreign
Office who was at Constantinople in 1869 was
satisfied by ocular evidence that slaves, both black
and white, were still sold and bought with very little
reserve in the immediate vicinity of the Suleyman-
yeh, or Solyman's mosque. The trade, besides, con-
tinued to be carried on the north side of the Golden
Horn, near the Top-haneh or Artillery Arsenal, and
has only lately, and in consideration of the feelings
of the prying Franks, been removed to the Koom
Capoo, or Sand Gate, a quarter inhabited by Circas-
sians, on the far side of Stamboul, on the Sea of
Marmora.
Since the advance of Russia on the region of the
Caucasus has either led to the subjugation or
emigration of the Circassians, the recruiting of wives
for the wealthy Turks can only be carried on under
difficulties, and the commerce is reduced to a profitable
but rather petty retail trade. The business is gene-
rally managed as follows. A Moslem dealer, agent,
or broker, travels to the happy land where beauty
and virtue may be bought, guaranteed first hand.
He makes choice of four young unsophisticated
girls, marries them, imports them to Constantinople,
VOL. i. 23
354 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
keeps them as pure as when they were in their mater-
nal homes, divorces them, sells them, and then goes
back for another " lot ;" and if he can only achieve four
such trips in a year, he can make a decent living out
of sixteen women a noble, self-denying, and useful
trade, tolerated by the Government and consistent
with the Mohammedan code. Many of the Circas-
sians are settled in Turkey, and there actually breed
children for sale, having no more shame about it
than a worldly English mother may feel about
bringing out her girls for the matrimonial market.
The Circassian however does not care for rank or
family connections, but for hard cash. Fatima is
knocked down to a Bey or a Pasha, her father takes
his baksheesh, and the girl becomes the mistress of
a harem till her successor arrives. It can mean-
while be positively assured that there are in Stam-
boul as many as four and twenty houses where the
sale of Circassian and other girls is freely carried on.
Young Shamyl, the son of the renowned Circassian
hero, who lived as a guest at the Russian Embassy,
told me, as the most natural thing in the world, that
at one of these beauty shops he was offered a first-
rate article, for which he was asked 350 Turkish
lire, and he offered 150 lire, when the bargain broke
down simply because the slave merchant did not
allow the would-be purchaser to take the merchan-
dise home with him for a week on trial.
That the supply of wives for the wealthy Turks
should be procured by such means is the almost
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 355
necessary consequence of the seclusion to which the
sex in every condition of life is doomed. One cannot
walk half an hour about the streets of Stamboul
without being struck with the prodigious ugliness of
whatever may be seen of the complexion, features,
and figures of those clumsy bundles of clothes in
which the females of the lower classes are swathed.
Denied all air and exercise, the women of a better
class can develop none of those charms which are
the results of blooming health. In a country where
there grows no beauty for home consumption, men
must needs be dependent on foreign supplies ; and
as a Turk cannot, owing to the peculiar institutions
of Islam, hope to win an alien wife for love, he is
content to get one or more for money. He has in
his sovereign the example of a man who is debarred
from marriage (who that is since the days, I believe,
of Bayazet II., owing to some mischance happening
to his harem, is not allowed to have a lawful wife,
but has his choice of slaves without number) and to
whom when one of these slaves the favourite one,
whom Europeans in their ignorance call his wife-
promises to be a mother, a present of two fresh
slaves is made by an obsequious Vizier. It is very-
edifying to hear the Sultan descanting on " the in-
herent right to freedom to which man, as the noblest
of created beings, is entitled," but all the women in
his palace, the Validd herself not excepted, had
become members of his family by purchase or gift,
and without being consulted as to their wishes.
232
356 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
It is not without a shuddering and sickening horror
that one hears European doctors employed in the
palace give their account of the treatment the
greatest number of the female slaves shut up there
have to endure under brutal eunuch government.
One of them assured me that of these bondswomen,
whether we call them wives, concubines, or at-
tendants on the wives and concubines belonging to
the Sultan, or to the multitude of princes of the blood,
Court favourites or servants, " the consumption was
very large." Pressed for an explanation, he said that
" few of these women lived long ; used and cast aside
after a season or two, unless they become mothers,
when they acquire certain rights: forbidden ever after-
wards the indulgence of those passions which had been
purposely stimulated and quickened, and eating their
hearts in disappointment, humiliation, and unappeased
longings doomed to do the drudgery of the houses
where they have reigned as sovereign beau ties, in cold
rooms, with insufficient clothing, and no fires ; they
waste away to such an extent, that," the doctor
thought, "eighty per cent, would represent the num-
ber who died under thirty years of age." A lady friend
of mine, who had once an opportunity of going
through some of the cold passages of the palace in
which these wretched women were washing clothes
for the harem, on her way to see one of the wives of
a prince, declared to me that " the sight haunted her
ever afterwards as an evil dream."
It may, again, be argued that the internal domes-
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 357
tic and social arrangements of a State are no concern
of other States, arid that the Porte has good reason
to resent all interference with the administration of
its subjects as unwarrantable impertinence ; but that
is the very reason why the Sultan's -subjects evince
so little faith in the efficiency either of Imperial
Firmans or of Diplomatic Notes ; because they are
convinced that neither Firmans nor Notes can be
more binding upon their Sovereign than the promises
to which himself and his predecessors have so often
bound themselves, and that his pledge will as readily
be broken to any Power who may send in Note after
Note, as they have invariably been broken to the
Sultan's subjects themselves.
The mistake lies in dealing with Turkey as a
European State, and amenable to European rule.
Turkey is no more European than Morocco, the only
difference being that Constantinople and the Straits
give the Ottoman Empire a position which was for
a long time supposed to interest Europe in the pre-
servation of its independent existence. For all that,
it will always be easier to oust Turkey from her
European position than to bring her to abolish
slavery or any other of those abuses which have
driven her subjects to rise in arms against her.
That even the constant supply of Circassian and
Georgian slaves has little effect towards improving
the breed of Turkish women we may argue from the
specimens of the "flowers of the harems "- fine
types of womanhood as they originally are whom
35S THE EASTERN QUESTION.
we see driving up and down the Grand Rue de Pera,
especially on a Friday afternoon. On this their
weekly holiday these lovely beings do not disdain
to parade their charms before the despised Giaours,
the gossamer texture of their yashmaks allowing one
to descry their features as if that mere sham of a
disguise were removed. How little real beauty
there is to be seen among them must be obvious to
any one who compares them with the bevies of fresh-
coloured, elegantly-shaped Greek and other Levan-
tine girls who are tripping along the muddy foot-
paths every day, and at all hours of the day, to say
nothing of the dainty European ladies out for a
shopping in their sedan-chairs, each of them looking
like a little Madonna in a glass case. As an ordi-
nary sight inside a Turkish carriage here, you have
the ample Georgian dowager, lolling back in her
carriage, a shapeless mass of obesity, uneasily blow-
ing and groaning ; there, in the next vehicle, the
faded shadow of a Circassian belle, thin and skinny,
leaning forward with eager curiosity, flirting with
her yashmak, anxious to attract attention, the vacuity
of her mind visible through all her affected liveliness,
the spell of her smile made haggard by the paint on
her cheeks, the black dye on her hair, eyebrows, and
even eyelids. Of the genuine article of youthful
female beauty little indeed makes its appearance.
How it was that Mohammed peopled his Paradise
with houris must be obvious to those who consider
how scarce loveliness is for his votaries on earth
TURKISH SHAMS AND DEL USIONS. 359
how rare and how dear to be had dear in every
respect.
If the Turks cannot be broken of their habit of
buying the mothers of their children, how much
more difficult it must be to wean them from the
practice of procuring by money the servants of their
households. A. Circassian youth, by name Sahli,
applied in November, 1875, at the British Consulate,
stating that one Hassan Cadi had sold him at the
place in Constantinople called Sultan Mehemet at
the price of 400 piastres (4 10s.) to one Ibrahim
Aga, a well-known slave-dealer. The dealer's khan
was, he said, in the Slave-market Khan, where ten
or twelve other lads were on sale. The Consul, Sir
Philip Francis, told me that he had no redress for
the boy. A few days later another lad appeared,
about eighteen years old, the slave of one Rushdi
Effendi, a defterdar, or collector of the revenue, of
Yemen, now residing at Aleppo. The boy's master
had sold him to Solyman Agha, of Eyoob, another
notorious trader in slaves, who had again disposed of
him to a cavass, or guard, of the Porte and therein
lay the main offence for the vile sum of eight lire.
" Eight lire," cried the boy indignantly, " is the price
one pays for a donkey," and rather than submit to
the indignity, he had given his new master the slip
and placed himself under the protection of the Consul,
who, in this case, as the boy was an Abyssinian, and
as such the subject of a State friendly to England
and unrepresented at the Porte, was legally entitled
360 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
to grant it. He was afterwards employed as a freeman,
in a gentleman's stable, where he gave satisfaction.
Within the same week two female slaves were
thrown into the British Consul-General's hands.
At Malta, again, three black women were caught
who had been exported from Constantinople, in-
tended for the Tunis market. As they were without
papers, they were sent back to Constantinople in an
English vessel, and the British Consulate was ad-
o
vised thereof by the Malta police. In good faith, or
by inadvertence, they were here handed over to the
Ottoman authorities, who forthwith delivered them
to their original proprietor, declaring that they were
"free" persons. Availing themselves of this free-
dom, the women escaped to the British Consulate,
where they were provided with " places ;" but their
situation must needs be precarious, and they will
most probably relapse into slavery, for it is a fact
that the lazy, unthrifty habits contracted by slaves
in a Turkish household unfit them for free labour.
Had there been any doubt in my mind about the
existence of slavery, and of a bold, though clandes-
tine slave-trade in Constantinople, I should have
received flagrant evidence of the fact from a young
Piedmontese doctor employed in the excellent new
Italian hospital rising on one of the minor eminences
of Pera-Galata. The young physician had kindly
appointed an hour in the day for attendance on out-
door patients, whom he treated without charge, a
privilege highly appreciated by Mussulmans of the
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 361
quarter in which the hospital is situated. One
morning two Turks presented themselves, accom-
panied by a negress, whom they pointed out as the
object of their visit. The doctor had lately settled
at Constantinople, and had slight knowledge of
Turkish to enable him to commune with his patients.
He had therefore to examine his cases minutely, to
avoid the risk of misunderstanding a complaint of
which he could receive little verbal description.
In the case now before him he, of course, felt the
woman's pulse, looked at her tongue, and, as the
men pointed to her chest, he applied his stethoscope,
and found no manner of evil there. In such lingua
Franca as he could muster, lifting and stretching
out both his hands, and shaking his head, the doctor
gave the men to understand that there was nothing
the matter with the woman. Pleased with the
result, one of the men then took the negress by the
hand and hurried off with her with little ceremony.
The doctor, astonished, stopped the other man, who
could speak a few words in French, and asked him
what they thought . was the woman's ailment.
" Nothing," said the man ; " but, as my friend has
bought her, he wished, before he paid, to make sure
that she was sound." The doctor, shocked at the
idea of having been applied to as a farrier to warrant
cattle at the market-place, ran for a few steps
after the woman, to urge the privileges of Italian
ground for her deliverance ; but little acquainted as
he was with the country, a moment's reflection
362 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
brought him face to face with the difficulties and
dangers he would have to encounter in an enterprise
in which he had every chance of being foiled.
Enough, I think, has been stated to prove by
these recent and flagrant examples that slaves, white
and black, as well as slave-dealers, and all but open
slave-markets, exist in Turkey, both in the capital
and at least in the Asiatic and African provinces.
I may be met with the trite remarks that " slaves
are well treated in Turkey ; only bad slaves try to
get their freedom. Slavery is necessary for a Mos-
lem country ; slavery is a domestic institution. It
is sanctioned by the Bible. There is a great deal of
slavery in a different form in Europe. Slavery is
consistent with many national virtues. The slave
question is a difficult one, and the Turks do not like
discussing it. If we meddle with slavery we incur
great responsibility. We cannot do everything. We
have known many slave-owners who are good
fellows at heart ; we have heard of slaves who are
not," etc. These were the arguments formerly urged
in favour of slavery in the West Indies, in the
United States, and elsewhere. They may have
their own weight and may be unanswerable in
Turkey ; but all I can say is that the Sultan and his
Government have proclaimed slavery to be an out-
rage and an abomination. They have solemnly
promised to abolish it, pledging themselves to their
own subjects and to the European Powers, especially
to England, and nevertheless, slavery in Turkey is
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 363
much the same as it ever was ; as flourishing as it
can be in a country where everything is declining.
The Government is in this respect, as in so many
others, equally useless for good or evil, for the
saying is in Turkey that every Firman goes through
three stages, being prepared the first day, promul-
gated the second, and pigeon-holed the third."
As every Firman is merely a make-believe, and its
authors simply promise what they do not mean to
maintain, they never bestow a thought on the prac-
ticability of any scheme, or the opportuneness of any
measure. In pursuance of the reforms announced in
the Trade of December, 1875, the Grand Yizier
Mahmoud Nedim in the ensuing January issued
a decree providing for a more regular collection of
the taxes. In the scheme for the reorganisation of
the police, it was stated that one of the four cate-
gories into which that service was to be divided con-
sisted of the tax-gatherers. These were henceforth
to constitute a separate and special corps, and to be
chosen among respectable men enjoying the public
confidence ; they must be able to read and write,
and give a suitable " caution," bail, or security, for
their good conduct. Two or three collectors would
be appointed for each district, Mussulmans in
Mussulman, and Christians in Christian districts ; in
localities inhabited by a mixed population they
would be appointed in equal numbers from among
Christians and Mussulmans. These functionaries
were strictly, and under heavy penalties, to be
364 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
forbidden living, as the zaptiehs or policemen had
hitherto done, at the expense of the taxpayers. They
must neither exact nor accept anything for them-
selves or for their horses. Their pay was to be
proportionate to the importance of the localities to
which their " beat " or circuit should extend. The
Mukhtars or Mayors of the villages, who, it was to
be hoped, would be chosen among a less rascally set
of men than the former ones, would be eligible to
the tax-gatherer's office.
This important and most desirable reform, we
were told, would involve " no new or additional
expense to the State," as these new functionaries
were only to supersede the zaptiehs who had been
hitherto charged with the collection of the taxes.
But this assertion was a palpable absurdity ; for the
outrageous conduct of the policemen, in whatever
capacity they might be employed, in a great measure
arose from the necessity in which their wretched
pay 30 piastres, or 5s. a month when it was paid
placed them of providing for their sustenance by
any unlawful means their unpopular office suggested.
It was the Government's false economy in under-
paying all its officials that made them all thieves,
and the new functionaries would be no better unless
they received more liberal treatment. A good ad-
ministration in a State, like cleanliness in a house-
hold, is a luxury which the poor or improvident can
ill afford ; and it is most unfortunate that the
Government of the Porte should have waited to
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 365
think of reform till this juncture, when its extrava-
gance, brought about by the facility which en-
couraged it to live by contracting loan after loan,
had brought it to the very verge of bankruptcy.
The reader need hardly be told, that of this separa-
tion of the tax-gatherer's duties from those of the
policeman, nothing was ever attempted during the
reign of Abd-ul-Aziz, and as yet nothing achieved
under his successors. The collection of tithes and
taxes continued to be carried on in the same clumsy,
arbitrary, and ruthless manner. In this respect the
discontent is as rife among the true believers as
among the Giaours, for the intolerable public burdens
weigh equally on all classes, and nothing is safe from
the rapacity of the Government officials, high and
low. An idea of Turkish rule in those Asiatic
regions where the Mussulmans constitute the majo-
rity, may be formed from the treatment of those
provinces of Asia Minor which, as I stated, were
ravaged by the famine of 1 873-4. In Angora alone
a territory twice as large as the British Islands, with
a population of 3,000,000 this scourge, caused by a
combination of a terrible drought, followed by an
unusually severe winter and by a destructive murrain,
swept off by starvation 40,000 souls, caused a loss in
money of several hundred thousand pounds, threw
vast tracts of land out of cultivation, and utterly
crushed the energies and spirits of the impoverished,
helpless peasantry. The Government, who at first
did nothing to relieve the famine, and even denied
366 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
its existence, shamed at last by the generous ex-
ample of Scotch, English, and American residents,
did something of what was expected of it in aid of
the sufferers. It did it however in a hesitating,
half-hearted way, proving its unfitness to meet the
emergency, the impression of eye-witnesses being
that " the first and great thought of most servants
of the State, whether acting in more honourable or
more humble capacity, was, when the work of relief
was referred to them, how they could secure the
largest portion for themselves."
The calamity had done its worst, and the con-
dition in which it had left the population was so
deplorable that the Porte deemed it necessary to
relieve them from the payment of the arrears of
taxes previous to 1872-3, amounting to about
1,500,000, and also to reduce the tithe on produce
by 2^, reverting to the original tenth. Decrees to
that effect were publicly read by the Vali, or
Governor-General, who also announced reforms in
the mounted police, a body of picturesque but ruth-
less ruffians who plundered the people both in the
Government's name and on their own account. A
new Vali was, however, soon appointed seven of
them were changed in three years who ignored the
Sultan's decrees, and declared that " his business
was to collect, not to remit taxes." The grinding of
the people was more unsparing than ever; applica-
tion being made for the land-tax both for the present
and, in advance, for the next year. The tax imposed
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 367
on Christians for exemption from military service
was levied without mercy, "the well-to-do people
being held answerable for the sums due by a whole
community under threat of imprisonment or con-
fiscation, and the still half-famished people, even
those who lived on charity, being compelled to sell
their winter provisions, and to shear their flocks in
the heart of winter, to meet the new exactions
enforced at the sword's point by the police, whose
violence so exceeded all bounds that the Mukhtars,
or Mayors, of Christian communities forbade women
and children to venture from their houses, no matter
on what errand."
These, and even worse atrocities, of which I could
give authentic particulars, were suggested to the
Government by their anxiety to meet their liabilities
to their creditors, and to enable them to pay the
half-coupon of the debt, a design which, if it was
ever seriously harboured, a combination of adverse
circumstances was soon destined to frustrate.
Again, I stated, or should have stated, that the
decree abolishing the corvee, or compulsory labour,
was overlooked, not only in distant provinces,
but even at Constantinople, where the hackney
coachmen were made to convey the wounded from
the bridge pier to the Seraskier's hospital without
payment ; and as some of these objected to this com-
pulsory deed of charity, and insisted on their fare, they
were sent about their business with smart blows from
the flat of the officers' sabres. And we read a few
368 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
days later that the Miitessariff or District Governor
of Sofia, in the Province of the Danube, had compelled
the peasants in the neighbourhood to carry, without
payment each of them two cart-loads of stones for his
new conakjOT residence, an eight to ten hours' distance.
It seemed as difficult to bring the rulers to under-
stand their duties as to encourage the people to
stand upon their rights. The Governor of another
district in the same province, a well-meaning and
deservedly popular Pasha, read on January the
llth the Firman of Reforms to the people assembled
before his house door. He read it in the Turkish
language, in which it had been sent to him, and
then he concluded in the Slavic vernacular : " You
see, my children, the Padishah is anxious to promote
your well-being ; and so everything will be going on
just as it has always done, and you need feel no
uneasiness. Allah bless you !" And the multitude
clapped their hands and cheered, and separated amid
shouts of " Long years to the Pasha 1" The good
old man never intended that as a joke, and he was
speaking with perfectly good faith. He was also
literally correct, for the Firman announced nothing
new and was professedly a repetition of the Hatti-
Sheriff and Hatti-Humayoun, which he himself
carried out to the best of his powers and according to
his lights ; for, unquestionably, there are good, and
just, and provident Pashas, and some of them have
left their marks on their respective provinces, where
their names are recorded with reverence and affec-
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 369
tion. But the integrity and goodwill of individuals
are powerless against the universal corruption of a
whole Administration. It is not much consolation
to hear that in a province of Armenia a punctiliously
righteous Vali has ordered certain taxes which had
been unjustly levied to be instantly paid back in cash
to the last penny when we also know that in other
districts people who had paid all they owed to the
collector were cast into prison and bidden to pay for
the defaulting members of their community, and
never released till, by dint of ill-treatment, they
were made to borrow the money demanded of them,
for which they had to give the wool still growing on
the backs of their sheep as security !
It was from the beginning very clear to all that
did not wilfully blind themselves to the truth that,
bad as things were under the old system, they were
not likely to mend upon a first attempt at innova-
tion, at least for an incalculably long time, for the
great evil of Turkey was the financial disorder, and
no improvement was possible so long as in order to
satisfy the public creditor the Porte was compelled
to grind its subjects and to stint the pay of its
functionaries. As I have before stated, every con-
templated measure of reform would involve increased
expenditure. A good administration will in time
lead to economy, but its first establishment must
needs cause fresh embarrassment.
Still the radical disorder of the Ottoman society
must be sought in the difference long established
VOL. i. 24
S70 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
by all the institutions of the country, the most be-
nevolent as well as the most inhuman, between the
different classes of the population ; and the Govern-
ment of the Porte felt it so deeply that the December
Firman of Reforms promised a novel order of things
which should extend the same beneficial measures
and establish the same political rights in behalf of
the whole people, apart from all difference of creed
and race. But I need hardly multiply the instances
in which that essential principle of equality before
the law, which was to be the palladium of Ottoman
liberties, was openly, flagrantly, and as it were un-
consciously violated not only by the subaltern autho-
rities in remote provinces, but also by the central
Government itself in its official acts ; witness the
Vizirial letter of January, 1876, \vhich bade the
Christians in Pera to remove from the houses in
the so-called Mussulman -quarters, which they had
been allowed to rent when the great fire of 1870
had made them homeless. Different creeds must
continue to live in distinct Ghettos, as Jews did in
Rome under the Pope, and a subject was not to be
free to buy or rent a house which another subject
might be willing to sell or let to him ! The police,
for the reorganisation of which a decree was in the
same month published, was to be divided into four
categories, in three of which it was distinctly stated
that the officials should be " equally chosen among
all the classes of the population," while, with respect
to the first category, that " de la police proprement
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSION'S. 371
dite" the clause about such equality was carefully
omitted, because it was not intended that non-
Mussulmans should be admitted into the force.
And by another decree announcing the principle
of a new Electoral Law for Provincial and Municipal
Councils, also published in January, 1876, it was
provided that the number of non-Mussulman mem-
bers should be equal to that of the Mussulman
members, an arrangement which must needs greatly
limit the freedom of choice in those provinces or
districts in which either the Moslem or the Rayah
element greatly preponderates. In European Turkey,
for instance, a Mussulman minority of 3,619,353
would both in courts and councils meet the majority
of 4,776,652 non-Mussulmans on equal terms. In
Crete, where the law was already in operation,
162,000 Christians were placed in the same condi-
tions as 38,000 Mohammedans. Indeed, it seemed
that in an electoral law based on principles of
equality, any mention of religious difference might
advantageously have been omitted. Some people
suppose that to bring the Moslem and the Rayah
together to the polls would be an impossible under-
taking, and that it would be found expedient to
form separate constituencies in different localities
with reference to their respective creeds, the division
between the two races which despotism has hitherto
maintained being thus perpetuated under what was
meant for a more liberal and equitable regime. It,
however, seemed clear to many, that no real remedy
242
372 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
could be found for the disorders of Turkey, save in
such measures as might tend to the mitigation of
the inveterate hostility of races.
We shall in due time have occasion to see the
same invidious distinction, the same illiberal sepa-
ration maintained in the provisions of the Midhat
constitution, among those very articles which seemed
professedly intended to abolish such differences, and
in despite of the prolonged discussions by which the
opposition in the Chamber of Deputies endeavoured
to bring the letter and the spirit of the organic law
into something like harmony and consistency ; so
difficult it has always been, and will probably for
ever be in Turkey to make the deeds agree with the
words.
The disabilities of the Christians, however, were
far more cruelly felt in the courts of law than at the
polls, for the administration of justice in Turkey
was and is still mainly in the hands of Cadis, or
judges, connected with the Mohammedan establish-
ment, and interpreters of the Sher-i, or sacred law
based on the Koran, in obedience to which the depo-
sitions of Giaours, or unbelievers, are not admitted
as evidence. Exceptions to this rule was made in
the commercial and in some other mixed tribunals,
but the rule was and is still observed, in spite of
many decrees, and of the bold assertions both of
Turks and Turkophiles to the contrary. The re-
source of a Christian was, almost necessarily, bribery,
and that was and is carried on to such an extent
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 373
both among the magistrates and among the privi-
leged Moslem witnesses, that justice may be said to
be put up to auction, and knocked down to the
highest bidder. And this, of course, only when the
interested parties moved in the matter, and had
both the money and the courage and perseverance
to stand upon their rights and claim their dues, for
otherwise there was hardly official initiative, hardly
any public prosecution, the most heinous criminals
too often escaping with perfect impunity, either
thanks to the apathy, incapacity, and inefficiency of
the police, or to the venality, and sometimes sheer
ignorance, carelessness, and dilatoriness of the judges.
A very terrible instance of the extent to which
the ends of justice could be defeated in Turkey fell
under my immediate observation during my stay in
Pera.
A double murder of a mysterious and startling
nature was brought to light in that city, in February,
1876, bearing in its repulsive features some resem-
blance to the horrors with which the revelations of
Whitechapel and of the Roman Railway Station had
lately filled the English and Italian public. A re-
spectable Armenian merchant, residing at Kadikeui,
across the Bosphorus, near Scutari, left at his death
five children, among whom was shared his patrimony,
amounting to 2,300 Turkish lire. Two of his
daughters, unmarried, by name Euphe'mie and Phi-
lomene Hamalik,had received, between three and four
years before, T.450 each, and on the 12th of August,
374 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
1875, T.75 each, the residue of their paternal inhe-
ritance. Both of them lived in Pera, apart from the
rest of their family one, Philomene, aged twenty-
eight, in lodging in the Rue-Tarla-bashi, in the house
of a cafe-keeper, by name Hadji Yassili, a Greek ;
the other, Euphemie, aged thirty-two, at a house in
the Hue Agha Hamam, a Greek butcher's. The
sisters took to immoral courses, and their irregular
life was a source of great unhappiness to the sur-
viving members of their family. In the summer of
1875 they sold a house that belonged to them, and
were reported to have expressed their intention of
leaving the country on a trip to Vienna. They pre-
sently disappeared, and nothing was heard respecting
them till the 7th of February, 1876, when their dead
bodies were found, that of each of the women
in her own apartment, Philomene in her night-
dress, lying upon the floor near the bed, with her
hair in disorder, a terrible knife wound in the abdo-
men, and the traces round her neck of a rope with
which she had been strangled ; Euphemie was also
found in her bed-clothes, under the bed, with the
head nearly severed from the body. They had, to
all appearances, both been murdered in the same
night, each in her own lodgings, in two different
quarters of the town. All valuables had disappeared
in both apartments, that of Philomene* especially
being thoroughly stripped. The bodies were in an
advanced state of decomposition, and the odour that
pervaded the premises was described as horrible.
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 375
That the apartments should for six months have
remained vacant, and that no inquiry should have
been made for the missing women, is one of the most
striking incidents of the case. Philomene had paid
her rent up to October, but even after that date the
cafe-keeping landlord took no measures to get a new
tenant, a circumstance which, coupled with the fact
that the blood of the murdered woman oozed through
the ceiling of a room inhabited by him, tended to
criminate him as at least privy to the deed. The
butcher at whose house Euphemie resided, on the con-
trary, when the paid term expired, in the same month
of October, applied to Euphemie's brother, who,
alarmed at the prolonged absence of his sisters, at
last called in the assistance of the police. These con-
tented themselves with making inquiries and sending
the names and photographs of the missing women to
the authorities at Vienna, Paris, and Marseilles of
course with no results. At last the butcher became
impatient, insisting on obtaining possession of the
vacant apartment, and, on breaking open the door,
the terrible discovery was made, the police being
easily led from one house to the other.
Shortly before the women's disappearance a Jew
stockbroker of Galata, by name David Abravanel,
who was on intimate terms with Philomene, received
from her a sum of T.50 with some jewels, which
were entrusted to him for safe keeping ; but he
averred that he returned these valuables to her shortly
afterwards, and that he held her acknowledgment in
376 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
writing to that effect. He was also said to be the
man who spread the report of the girl's departure for
Vienna, and who hired a porter to carry three large
and heavy chests from Philomene's lodgings to the
Kadikeui steamer, but this he firmly denied. Both
he and the porter, as well as the two landlords, were
arrested, and with them a watchman, who stated that
about the time of the disappearance he, being on duty
in the Rue Agha Hamam, heard the cry of " Yanghen
var !" (Fire !) from Euphemie's house, and saw a man
leaving it, but, as the cries speedily ceased, he did
not think it necessary to take notice of the occur-
rence.
The inquiry into this atrocious affair was tamely
carried on for a few weeks. The Greek coffee-house
keeper, Hadji Vassili, was still under arrest, and
from the first there seemed to be no doubt as to his
guilt. This man bore the very worst character, as it
was known that he had repeatedly been sentenced to
imprisonment for robbery and murder, and, upon
making his escape, he terrorised the neighbourhood
by the savage vengeance he wreaked upon the per-
sons who had been instrumental in bringing about
his conviction. The dread his name inspired among
the lower classes of Greeks, Jews, and Albanians in
Pera engendered a belief that he would yet come off
unscathed even from the present ordeal, no one daring
to come forward with evidence against him ; while
M. Abravanel, who satisfactorily proved that his
connection with Philomene Hamalik was completely
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 377
at an end a considerable time before the sisters' mys-
terious disappearance, was kept in durance till the
middle of March, the police being unwilling to lo'se
the least chance of extorting money from him. Such
is the way justice is only too generally administered
in the Sultan's dominions.
More than a year passed : the tragedy of the two
sisters Hamalik was either completely forgotten or
had lost all its sad interest, when, towards the end of
May of this year, 1 877, it was announced that the case
had again been brought before Court. Hadji Vassili,
being convicted of the chief offence, a premeditated
double murder and robbery, with every aggravation
of stupid cold-blooded ferocity, was said (for as yet
no sentence has been published) to have been con-
demned to fifteen years' imprisonment, a punishment
against the severity of which he appealed. Mean-
while an alleged accomplice of his, a Circassian offi-
cer, by name Hassan Agha, was summoned as a
witness, and came into Court, ostentatiously display-
ing a pair of pistols and an ataghan at his belt, and
sat down with scornful unconcern, unrebuked by the
judge. As it resulted from the evidence that he had
had some connection with the girl Euphemie, and
there was a strong presumption that he had a hand
in the deed which deprived her of life, he was put
under arrest. The matter, however, is not unlikely
to go to sleep for another year, the murderers making
the best of their time in a prison which is never
severe except in cases of political offenders, and
378 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
only enduring confinement because they will not take
the little trouble it would cost them to break from it,
as they prefer it to exile, and are only too confident
that it will end in their eventual acquittal.
Another case, of even a darker dye, was reported
later in the year 1876, about midsummer, from
Broussa. Two young men both natives of the
Levant, I believe, but one of them an Italian sub-
ject, named Valle ; another, Longford, an English
subject went out together one morning on a shoot-
ing excursion, in the immediate neighbourhood of the
town. As they were entering a wood, they were
received by a volley of rifle-shots, and the Italian,
mortally struck,- fell to the ground. His companion
raised him and attempted to carry him in his arms
for a few steps, but being pursued by the shots of
the still invisible aggressors, he lost heart, dropped
the apparently lifeless body, and thought only of his
own safety. He, however, soon returned to the spot,
accompanied by some of the people and by the police
he had met on his way to the town, when the
Italian's body was found not only pierced through
and through by several rifle-balls, but also savagely
mutilated and disfigured, while his watch, purse, and
other portable property were left untouched about
him. His death was evidently the result of a deed
of vengeance, and the apparent cause was to be
sought in an exchange of silly but somewhat offen-
sive words which had occurred a few days before
between some European dragomans and other at-
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 379
tendants idling at the door of the Italian Consulate,
and three intoxicated Turkish soldiers who happened
to pass that way, in consequence of which the soldiers
broke into the premises of the Consulate, a violation of
privilege for which the Consul had them duly punished.
The murdered young man was probably mistaken by
the soldiers for the Italian Consul, to whom he bore
some resemblance. At all events, there seemed to
be no doubt in Broussa as to the persons to whom
the deed of blood could easily be traced. The Vali,
or Governor-General of the Province, Veli Pasha,
however, telegraphed to the central authorities at
Stamboul, giving all the particulars of the event, and
adding that Valle had in all probability been mur-
dered by his companion, the young Englishman,
Longford ; at the same time either the Vali or the
Stamboul authorities withheld for twenty- four hours
the telegrams addressed from Broussa to the Italian
O
and English Consulates in Pera-Galata. Agents
from the Italian Legation and the English Consu-
late were sent to the spot, and as there was nothing
to substantiate the charge against the Englishman,
he was, of course, dismissed ; but it was found alto-
gether vain to urge the Governor to further proceed-
ings in the case, which was thus for ever dropped.
Crimes of that nature were only too frequent in
Turkey at that time, both in the capital and in the
provinces, and their perpetrators grew in audacity in
proportion as the incapacity of the police and the
leniency of the courts of law seemed to conspire to
380 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
ensure their impunity. About this same time, on the
5th of July, a Frenchman the gardener of the
Viceroy of Egypt at Beikos, opposite to Therapia,
across the Strait, on the Asiatic side, was killed in
his bed with his wife, by ruffians whose object was
evidently not plunder, as no article of the property
of the murdered pair was removed from its place.
Those were already the days of Sultan Murad, and
we read in the papers that " His Majesty had been
graciously pleased to remit one-third of the penalty
to all persons condemned for crimes and misdemean-
ours (crimes et delits)" What with the impotence of
the law and the arbitrary power of the Sovereign,
the Ottoman Empire ran the risk of becoming a more
pleasant country for messieurs les assassins than for
honest people.
Another murder or massacre was, however, per-
petrated some time before which the Government of
the Porte could not so easily overlook, and the con-
sequences of which were soon to assume an historical
importance. I allude to the " Salonica Assassina-
tions."
A Christian girl, Greek or Bulgarian, from the
village of Avret Hissar, in the neighbourhood of that
city, arrived, on Friday, the 9th of May, in the even-
ing, at the railway-station in the company of her
mother. She wore the ferejeh and yasmdk of the
Mussulman women, and it was stated that she had
embraced, or wished to embrace, Islamism. Other
accounts were to the effect that either the girl her-
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 381
self or her mother, upon alighting on the platform,
called for help, declaring that the girl was a Christian,
and was being taken from her friends by force. The
result was a scuffle between the police on duty at the
spot and a certain number of Christians who hap-
pened to be, or had purposely assembled, at the
station ; that the zaptiehs were overpowered, and the
girl was borne away by the Christians in the carriage
of the American Consul, which, it was asserted,
chanced to be there in waiting for its owner, who,
however, had missed the train, and did not arrive at
the time he had appointed. The girl was then safely
lodged in some Christian house, from which she was
made to pass into the Greek and then into the Ger-
man Consulate. Meanwhile a great excitement
arose among the Mussulman population (the day
being Friday, the Mohammedan festive-day), which
continued through the night, and on the morrow
5000 men, we were told, paraded the streets of the
town with flags and music, and went up to the konak,
or residence of the Vali, Mehemet Refeet Pasha,
claiming the girl. The Governor-General engaged
to see justice done; but the crowd, not well
satisfied with this half promise, proceeded to the
Mosque Saatly-Djami, near the Vali's palace, still
clamouring for the girl. The Consuls of France and
Germany, Messrs. Moulin and Abbot, happened to
be out at the time, and were either so imprudent or
so zealous for the public peace as to venture into the
mosque. They were there set upon by the mob,
332 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
who shut them up as prisoners or hostages ; and
the Governor, after some delay, went to their rescue,
engaging that the girl should soon be found and de-
livered to the Mussulman authorities. As the pro-
mise could not be fulfilled with sufficient prompt-
ness, the rioters laid violent hands on the Consuls,
and put them to death, stabbing them and beating
them with the iron bars which they tore from the
windows, the butchery being accomplished just as the
girl was traced to her hiding-place and hurried to
the mosque. The multitude then, their rage ap-
peased, was easily dispersed.
The outrage was probably unpremeditated ; but
there seems to have been for some time ill-blood be-
tween the Christian and the Mussulman population,
and the European Consuls had a few weeks before
held a meeting, in which it was resolved that a warn-
ing should be conveyed to the Governor that dis-
turbances were to be apprehended. The English
Consul, Mr. Blunt, it was said, had refused to join
his colleagues in this demonstration, and even advised
the Vali to take no notice of the warning.
The commotion created by this event in the little
world at Pera was tremendous, especially among the
Levantine dragomans and other hangers-on of the
embassies and legations, with whom the two victims
of the savage deed had an extensive connection. The
slain German Consul, Mr. Abbot, was of English ex-
traction, and a British subject. His fellow-sufferer,
M. Moulin, was a born Frenchman, and a Consul de
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 383
Carriere, or regularly appointed and salaried Consul.
Both of them were married to Greek ladies of dis-
tinction, and connected through their wives with
each other, and with the Ottoman Ministers at Rome
and Brussels. The American Consul was a Greek ;
Mr. Blunt, the British Consul, also a Levantine.
The French Consul was young, highly esteemed,
lately married, and he left a young wife with two
children, and the prospect of a third. The German
Consul, also young, married, and with children, had
the reputation of a very determined Turkophile. It
was said of him that he had been lately in Pera, and,
contrary to his wont, had shown great depression of
spirits, and to those who had endeavoured to rally
him, he had confessed that he was haunted by gloomy
forebodings, and as if in expectation of his coming
end.
The remonstrances of the Pera diplomatists at the in-
terview they had with the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Rashid Pasha, immediately upon the news of the tragic
occurrence reaching Constantinople, obtained from the
Government of the Porte the promise of a compli-
ance with all their demands. These were 1. The
appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, the mem-
bers of which were General Eshret Pasha, the new
Governor of Salonica; Vahan Effendi, a Christian,
Under-Secretary of State of the Ministry of Justice ;
the German Consul-General, M. Gillet, with M.
Tischendorff, Dragoman of the German Embassy,
and M. Robert, Dragoman of the French Embassy
384 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
(Sir Henry Elliot, regardless of the fact that the
murdered Abbot was an English subject, refused to
send a representative) ; 2. A solemn funeral in honour
of the dead, to be attended by all the civil and mili-
tary authorities at Salonica, and especially by the
Imam and Mollahs of the mosque which was polluted
by the blood of the victims of Mohammedan fanaticism ;
3. A declaration by the Sultan, expressive of the
grief, indignation, and " shame " with which he had
heard of the savage deed by which his own Moslems
would be held up to the execration of civilised
nations ; and, 4. The severe punishment of the guilty,
and the prevention of similar offences for the future,
by most stringent responsibilities being laid on all
public functionaries, and by the suppression of those
Turkish prints which made appeals to the fanatic
passions of Mohammedans by preaching the Holy
War.
It was expected at the time that those promises
would not be strictly fulfilled, and, in fact, the Porte
showed its usual ingenuity in evading them. The
alleged perpetrators of the murder of the Consuls
were brought for trial before the Court at Salonica,
and eleven of them were found guilty. Six of them
were executed, and the five others were supposed to
have been respited in obedience to the general
amnesty announced by the new Sultan's Proclama-
tion, the probability being that they would have to
undergo some milder punishment. About twenty
other persons, all of obscure rank, were also convicted
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 385
of some degree of complicity and condemned to dif-
ferent terms of imprisonment. Of the instigators or
abettors of the crime, of the Mollahs or Imams of the
mosque where the blood of the two Consuls was
spilt, not one was brought to trial, and no question
was even raised with respect to them.
There remained to be taken into consideration the
conduct of the Vali, or Governor-General of the
Province, and of the other men in authority under
him i.e. the Head of the Police, the Colonel in
command of the Forces, and the commander of the
corvette stationed in the harbour and with respect
to them the Government only came to a decision
several months afterwards, and only upon repeated
demands and even menaces of the French and
German Ambassadors. The Governor-General was
charged 1. With having exercised an undue pres-
sure upon the two Consuls to induce them to obtain
from the Christians the delivery of the girl, when it
should have been his duty to help them out of the
difficult and dangerous position they were in at the
mosque, where they saw themselves surrounded by
a large and excited Mussulman mob. It was in
obedience to this pressure that the German Consul,
Mr. Abbot, saw himself compelled to write to his
brother, entreating him to do his utmost to find the
girl and convey her immediately to the mosque.
2. With having made no attempt to protect the
Consuls while they were being assassinated, though
the murder was committed in a small narrow room,
VOL. i. 25
386 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
in the presence of ten armed zaptiehs, or policemen,
and of two police-officers, besides the members of the
Mejliss, Municipal or Provincial Council, who
might have held the assassins in check until the
arrival of the armed force which had been summoned
to the spot. It had been indisputably proved that
while the Consuls received thirty knife-wounds each,
neither the Vali nor any other person present in the
room was hurt by a single scratch. 3. With having
left the bodies of the Consuls, after the murder, in
the possession of the mob, by whom they were
trodden and spat upon and exposed to extreme
indignities, even long after the arrival of the armed
force. The conclusion against the Vali was, in short,
that he acted throughout in obedience to religious
feelings, and abstained from any exercise of such
authority as might have awed the mob, and saved
the lives of the Consuls. The evidence against the
Chief of the Police was to the effect that he en-
couraged the Consuls to go into the mosque ; but
this rests on the testimony of only one witness, con-
tradicted by another. Nor was it satisfactorily
established that this officer disposed at the time of
sufficient force to enable him to get through the mob
to the room where the Consuls, with the Vali and
the Council, were shut up. Yet for reasons which
the authorities alone seemed to know, neither the
court-martial at Salonica nor the Reporter before the
Superior Council of War at Constantinople showed
any leniency towards him. The evidence against
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 387
the Colonel in command of the garrison proved that
he was at the mosque when the Vali was there, and
received from the latter a verbal order to bring up
his troops to the mosque. To this he demurred,
saying that he must have a written order, under the
authority and seal of the Mejliss. This, of course,
could not be obtained there and then, and the
Colonel lost some time in the mosque before he
made up his mind to comply with the Governor's
will. He then went up to the fortress, and instead
of at once ordering his troops to the mosque, he sent
one of his men to the naval officer (who by this time
had received orders from the Yali to proceed to the
mosque with the marines, and had actually landed
150 of them for that purpose), requesting him to
join him (the Colonel) at the fortress. The naval
officer disregarded the order of the Vali and com-
plied with the Colonel's request, so that the whole
land and sea force remained idle in the fortress while
its help was needed at the mosque. Presently there
came up to the Colonel the Italian Consul and the
dutncelier, or clerk, of the French Consulate, with
urgent entreaties to that officer to proceed instantly
to the mosque. The Colonel, very civilly, offered
coffee and cigarettes to the Consul and chancelier,
and instead of starting at once, and showing any
readiness to accede to their request, he very elabo-
rately endeavoured to convince the two foreign
officials of the propriety and expediency of having
the girl restored to the Moslems. Thirty-six
252
388 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
minutes were thus lost in this idle discussion ; at the
expiration of which a messenger came to inform the
Colonel that the girl had been found and was being
conveyed to the mosque. Thereupon the Colonel
and the naval officer marched with their men to the
mosque, and reached the place ten minutes after the
assassination of the Consuls.
We learnt in process of time how the court-
martial sent from Constantinople to judge these
functionaries at Salonica disposed of their cases.
The Chief of the Police was condemned to degrada-
tion and one year's imprisonment, and the military
and naval officers to forty-five days' imprisonment
each. The Vali was left to be dealt with by the Porte.
On the application of the French and German
Embassies, the sentences of the Salonica court-
martial were cancelled, and the prisoners ordered to
undergo a new trial before the Supreme Council of
War, sitting at the Seraskierate, or War Office, at
Constantinople. This Council held several sittings,
at the first of which one of its members read his
report, reviewing the facts in evidence, and recom-
mending the following conclusions :
1. That the Council declare itself incompetent to
try the Vali, who, although himself a military
officer, was at the time principally a civil func-
tionary.
2. That the Chief of the Police be made to surfer,
besides degradation, ten years' seclusion, or confine-
ment in a fortress.
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 389
3. That the Colonel and the naval officer be con-
demned to degradation and three years' confinement
in a fortress.
Upon the report being submitted to the foreign
Diplomatic Representatives, the French and Ger-
man Embassies, and, with some reserves, also the
English Embassy, considering that the assassina-
tion of the Consuls was the consequence of an
emeute armee, or armed riot, were of opinion that
the Colonel and the naval officer were liable to
charges involving a much heavier punishment than
the ridiculously lenient one (now cancelled) awarded
by the Salonica court-martial, and also a more
severe penalty than that recommended by the Re-
porter to the Supreme Council of War. The French
and German Embassies, therefore, declared them-
selves not satisfied with the Reporter's conclusions,
and made new, stronger, and more urgent applica-
tions to the Porte, whose drift evidently seemed to
be to gain time by throwing hindrances in the way
of the continuation of the trial.
Acting, at last, upon these fresh remonstrances
and incitements, the Reporter of the Superior Council
of War proposed :
1. That the Chief of the Police who at Salonica
had been condemned to degradation and ten years'
imprisonment, should be sent to a fortress as a
prisoner for fifteen years.
2. That the Colonel in command of the garrison,
and the commander of the corvette stationed at
390 THE EASTERN QUESTION.
the port, who had been let off with forty-five days'
imprisonment each, should both be condemned to
degradation and ten years' imprisonment in a fortress.
With respect to the Vali, who had both the civil
and military command of the city and province, the
report declared the Council incompetent to give judg-
ment. The Supreme Court-martial gave sentence
accordingly. The condemned officers were sent to
remote State fortresses, where they are supposed to
expiate their offences ; but whence they have probably
been before this time, or will soon be, secretly set at
liberty. The Yali was, a few months later, declared to
be incapable of filling any public office under the
Government of the Porte. With respect to the hand-
some indemnity of 35,000 to be allowed to the
widows and children of the murdered Consuls, it was
only paid when the Ambassadors of France and Ger-
many threatened to demand their passports unless
the Sultan's Government instantly fulfilled its pro-
mises and obligations.
It is needless to say that, even after their demands
were satisfied to this extent, the representatives of
the foreign Powers, and especially the French Am-
bassador, were far from convinced that justice had
been done. The eleven wretches who suffered
capital punishment at Salonica were common male-
factors, obnoxious to the Turkish populace, and
scarcely worth the rope with which they were
hanged, and of the real instigators of the murders
not one was ever brought to trial, the Government
TURKISH SHAMS AND DELUSIONS. 391
not daring to rouse the fury which would have been
kindled among the Mohammedans should it have
been known that only one drop of precious Mussul-
man blood had been spilt to atone for the blood of
two Giaour victims.
THE BASHI-BAZOUKS' WAK-SOXG.
An Ulema poet has composed the following war-song, which is sung
by the Ottoman soldiers, regular and irregular, with great effect.
BLESSED by our faith and by our calling, our name is in all men's
mouths ; we are the theme of all men's talk ; we, the warlike
people of the ever-bloody sword ; we are the sons of heroes and
are heroes ourselves. The sword of the soldier .ennobles bad
deeds, and the glitter of its steel lights up the page of history !
Ever ready for the fight, the field of battle is for us our wedding-
feast. Our existence is war. We are the warriors of the ever-
bloody sword ; sons of heroes heroes ourselves.
We know how to give up our lives gladly. We march eagerly to
battle, where we joy to find death and the martyr's crown. We,
the warriors of the ever-bloody sword ; sons of heroes heroes
ourselves.
We, being united, wo shall sweep the human race from the surface
of the earth. Our trade is the trade of war. We are the
warriors of the ever-bloody sword ; sons of heroes heroes our-
selves.
God is with us. He helps us. The Prophet leads us. Both guide
our arms. Warm bo our zeal for our holy traditions. Blind bo
our obedience to our chiefs, over brave and bold. Wo are the
warriors of the ever-bloody sword ; sons of heroes heroes our-
selves.
392 - THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Our patterns are our glorious ancestors, who as lions conquered this ^
land. Let us imitate them and defend with the sabre the heri- /
tage they have left us. We, the warriors of the ever-bloody
sword ; sons of heroes heroes ourselves.
Let all men understand this truth, that by the will of God we are
the sons of our fathers. Brave and fortunate as they, we, too,
are the warriors of the ever-bloody sword ; sons of heroes we
too are heroes.
END OP VOL. I.
BILLING AND SOXS, PRINTERS, GCILDFORD, SURREV.
University of California
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