The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay

The Porte also collected two armies for the reconquest of Egypt, the one in Syria, the other in the island of Rhodes. Bonaparte decided to anticipate attack by the invasion of Syria. He spent at Cairo the winter of 1798-9, the least reputable period of his amazing career. His private life there was most scandalous, far more so than that, bad enough, of his wife, Josephine, whom he had left at Paris. His public life was little better. In the hopes of conciliating the Egyptian people and facilitating the further conquests in the East, of which he dreamt, he professed unbounded admiration for the Moslem religion. He feigned to be a convert to that faith. His vaunting proclamations were headed: “In the name of Allah. There is no God but God. He has no son and reigns without a partner.” He did his best to induce his soldiers to become Moslems, but in vain. No one was taken in by these fooleries. He gained no respect from Egyptians of any creed. There were many outbreaks in different parts of the country, and a most serious one in Cairo. They were put down with ruthless severity. He followed the Turkish practice of decapitating the prisoners and great numbers of suspects, and exhibiting their bleeding heads in public places as a warning to others.

Bonaparte left Egypt in January, 1799, with an army of twenty-five thousand, made up in part by sailors of his sunken fleet, and in part by recruits from the Mamelukes. He crossed the Isthmus of Suez, and reached Gaza on February 25th and Jaffa on March 7th. This last city was held by five thousand Turks. After a brave defence they capitulated on terms that they should be treated as prisoners of war. In disregard of this they were marched down to the beach and, by order of Bonaparte, were slaughtered in cold blood because it was inconvenient to encumber his army with prisoners. No worse deed of Turkish atrocity has been recorded in these pages. Leaving Jaffa, his army arrived before Acre in a few days. “When I have captured Acre,” he said to his generals, “I shall arm the tribes. I shall be in a position to threaten Constantinople. I shall turn the British Empire upside down.”

But he reached at Acre the end of his tether in the East. He had sent his heavy guns by sea to meet him there. They were captured on the way by the British fleet, and were now mounted on the mud ramparts of the fortress and used against him. A British fleet, under command of Sir Sidney Smith, was lying in the roadstead and kept the communications open with Constantinople. The admiral and his sailors assisted in the defence of the city, the garrison of which consisted of only three thousand men. Its weak fortifications had been strengthened by Colonel Philippeaux, a distinguished French royalist. Against these defences Bonaparte hurled his army in vain. In the sixty days of siege there were forty assaults and twenty sorties of the garrison. “In that miserable fort,” said Bonaparte, “lay the fate of the East.”

On May 7th large reinforcements arrived from the Turkish army at Rhodes. A last and desperate assault, led by General Kléber, was unsuccessful. Bonaparte was compelled to admit his failure. His dream of an Eastern Empire was dissipated for ever. On May 20th he commenced a retreat, after a loss by death of four thousand men and eight generals. The army suffered most severely in passing through the desert.

Shortly after the return of the French troops to Egypt on July 14th, an army of fifteen thousand Turks, convoyed by the British fleet, was landed at Aboukir. Bonaparte attacked on the 25th and utterly defeated it. Thousands of the Turks were driven into the sea and drowned. This victory of the veterans of the French army over the ill-trained Turkish levies, without guns or cavalry, was a godsend to Bonaparte. It shed a gleam of glory over the terrible failure of the whole expedition. His dispatches made the most of it. At this stage news from France showed the necessity for his return there. He decided to abandon the army to its fate. With the utmost secrecy arrangements were made for the embarkation of the general and his staff on board two frigates. They rode down to the shore and got into boats, leaving their horses behind them. The return of the riderless horses was the first intimation to those left behind that they were abandoned by their general. The two frigates left Egypt on August 22nd and, by hugging the African coast, they escaped the British cruisers, and after a most hazardous voyage of six weeks they landed their passengers in France, where Bonaparte posed as a conqueror. Nor did his failure in Egypt interfere with his subsequent triumphant career.

Early in March 1801 a British army of fifteen thousand men, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, landed in Egypt, and later another contingent, under General Baird, coming from India, also arrived there. The French army of occupation was badly handled. It was divided between Cairo and Alexandria. It was defeated in detail and ultimately surrendered. It was then said to number twenty-four thousand men and three hundred and twelve guns. On hearing of this disaster Bonaparte is said to have felt great anguish. “We have lost Egypt,” he said. “My projects have been destroyed by the British.” Egypt was restored to the Sultan, freed not only from the French but also from the Mamelukes, and for a time Turkish pashas, appointed by the Porte, ruled the country. There can be no doubt that the Sultan owed this wholly and solely to the British Government. It will be seen that he showed little gratitude, for in a very few years’ time he took the part of the French in the great war.

Meanwhile, in 1802, a peace was patched up for a time between England and France at Amiens. Concurrently with this terms of peace were agreed upon between France and the Porte, under which the sovereignty of the Sultan over Egypt was recognized. When, two years later, war again broke out between France and England and other Powers, Bonaparte, then First Consul, reversed his action as regards the Ottoman Empire, and made an alliance with it a cardinal point of his new policy.

After the conclusion of peace with France in 1802, Sultan Selim had a respite for a very few years before he was again involved in war. He directed his attention to serious internal reforms of his Empire. He fully recognized that the first and foremost of these must be the reorganization, if not the suppression, of the corps of Janissaries. Not only had the experience of late wars shown that they had become a most incompetent military force, quite unable to meet on equal terms the well-trained soldiers of Russia and France, but in every part of his Empire they were a danger to the State, endeavouring to monopolize power and to oust that of the pashas appointed by himself. They were also the main oppressors of the rayas. The task of suppressing them and of creating an army on the model of those of European Powers was a most difficult and dangerous one, for the Janissaries were, or pretended to be, the most devout of Moslems, and were supported by the fanatical part of the population. They had strong supporters in the Divan. The ulemas were almost unanimously in their favour. The Divan was divided into two parties, those who favoured reform and who gave support to the Sultan, and the reactionary party, who were opposed to all reform and championed the Janissaries. There was another serious division of the Divan – namely those who espoused the cause of Russia, not infrequently in the pay of that Power, and those who favoured France. After the conclusion of peace, France was represented at the Court of the Sultan by very able ministers, who soon regained the influence for that country which it had formerly enjoyed.

Nowhere throughout the Empire were the Janissaries more turbulent and dangerous or more oppressive to the rayas than in Serbia. They aimed at governing the province in the same way as the Mamelukes in Egypt and the military Begs in Algiers and Tunis, and if they had been allowed to have their way, Serbia would have achieved a virtual independence of the Porte, under a military and fanatical Moslem despotism. The Janissaries there were almost as hostile to the Spahis inhabiting the provinces as to the rayas. They aimed at ousting the Spahis from their feudal rights in the country districts and at an assumption of ownership of land, more oppressive to the peasant Christian cultivators of the soil than that of the Spahis. Both Spahis and rayas appealed to the Porte for protection against these ruffians. The rayas in their petition to the Sultan said that —

not only were they reduced to abject poverty by the Dahis (the leaders of the Janissaries), but they were attacked in their religion, their morality, and their honour. No husband was secure as to his wife, no father as to his daughter, no brother as to his sister. The Church, the cloister, the monks, the priests, all were violated. Art thou still our Czar? then come and free us from these evildoers, and if thou wilt not save us, at least tell us that we may decide whether to flee to the mountains and forests, or to seek in the rivers a termination of our miserable existence.[31 - Ranke’s History of Serbia, p. 115.]

The Sultan was willing to listen to these grave complaints, and to put down the turbulent Dahis and their attendant Janissaries, not so much out of sympathy for the rayas as in order to restore his own authority in the province and as a first step towards the reformation or suppression of the Janissaries elsewhere throughout his Empire. He began by threatening the Dahis. If they did not mend their ways, he would send an army against them. These ruffians, knowing that the Sultan could not venture to employ a Moslem force against them, came to the conclusion that he meant to arm the rayas of the province. They determined to anticipate this by a general massacre. If no resistance had been offered to this, the whole Christian population of Serbia would have been exterminated. The rayas, however, were no longer the submissive and patient people they had been reduced to by servitude for two hundred and fifty years under the Turks, during which no one of them had been allowed to carry about him a weapon of defence. As has been already stated, they had been invited to rebel by the Austrians in their last war with the Turks, had been armed by them, and had given valuable assistance. Great numbers of them had been trained as soldiers, and retained their arms when the Austrians retired from the country, after the peace of Sistova, which provided no adequate security for these unfortunate people.

They now, in 1807, rose in arms against their oppressors, who were bent on exterminating them. They elected as their leader George Petrowitsch (Kara George, as he is known in history), a peasant like themselves, a most brave man, who had served in the Austrian army, and who soon showed great qualities as a general. Under his leadership the rayas succeeded in driving the Dahis and Janissaries out of the country districts.

The Sultan at the commencement of this servile war lent his assistance to the rayas. The Pasha of Bosnia was instructed to support them with an armed force. The local Spahis also, who were still in the country and had not been driven away by the Dahis, lent assistance. On the other hand, the Dahis received assistance from the fanatical part of the Moslems in the towns. They had also the sympathy and aid of Passhwan Oghlou, the mutinous Pasha of Widdin. It was, however, almost wholly due to the efforts of the Serbian rayas that the Dahis were completely defeated. Most of them were slaughtered, and the world was well rid of them. When this was achieved, the whole of Serbia was practically in the hands of the Christian rayas, with the exception of Belgrade and a few fortresses, which were garrisoned by the Sultan’s troops.

At this stage the Sultan, when all that he really aimed at was achieved – namely the suppression of the local Janissaries – summoned the insurgent rayas to lay down their arms and to resume their position as subjects of the Porte and as rayas under the yoke of the local Spahis as of yore. The war, however, had evoked a national spirit among the Christian population, which would not be content with the old condition of servitude. They sent a petition to the Russian Government claiming assistance on the ground that they were members of the Greek Church. The Czar, in reply, advised them to present their claims at Constantinople, and promised to give his support to them at the Porte. They then sent a deputation to the Sultan, and boldly claimed that Belgrade and the other fortresses should be given up to them, and asked that arrears of taxes and tribute should be remitted. The first of these was the most important, for it virtually meant a claim for autonomy under the suzerainty only of the Sultan.

These demands caused the greatest indignation among the Moslems of the capital, and the Sultan forthwith rejected them. He ordered the members of the deputation to be imprisoned. He directed the Pasha of Nisch to invade Serbia and reduce the contumacious rayas to their former condition. He threatened them with death or slavery. Kara George met this force on the frontier of Serbia and defeated it. He also defeated two other armies which the Sultan sent against him, and he was able, unaided by any external force, to capture Belgrade and the other fortresses and expel the Turkish garrisons. Thus it happened that the native Christians of Serbia, by their own heroic efforts, without any foreign assistance, achieved a virtual independence of Ottoman rule, an event of supreme importance in its effect on other Christian communities under servitude to the Turks.

Meanwhile important events were developing at Constantinople. It was the scene of a violent diplomatic struggle between Russia and England on the one hand, and France on the other, for the support of the Porte in the war then raging in Europe. The Emperor Napoleon sent as ambassador there General Sebastiani, formerly a priest, now a soldier and able diplomat. His demands were supported by the great victory of the French over the Austrians at Ulm. The recent acquisition by France of Dalmatia and a part of Croatia brought that Power into close relation with Turkey. Sebastiani pressed for the support of Turkey with great insistence.

On the other hand, Russia was equally cogent in its demands, and even more threatening. It insisted on an alliance, offensive and defensive. It demanded that the Sultan should recognize the Czar as the protector of all the Christians in Turkey professing the Greek religion, and that the Russian Ambassador should have the right of intervention on their behalf. The Sultan, conscious of the inferiority of his military force, could only temporize.

Moslem pride and fanaticism was greatly excited by the demands of Russia. Sebastiani, working on this, persuaded the Sultan, by way of retort to Russia, to depose the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, on the ground that they were suspected of being pensioners of Russia. The Czar treated this as a gross breach of the engagement entered into by the Porte, in 1802, under which the Hospodars of the two principalities were only to be removed from their posts with the consent of Russia. He thereupon ordered an army of thirty-five thousand men, under General Michelsen, to invade Moldavia. The army entered Jassy and, a little later, Bucharest before the Porte was able to make any resistance.

The British Government at the same time gave full support to Russia. Its Ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot, insisted on the Porte joining the alliance of England and Russia against France. The Sultan refused to do so. Mr. Arbuthnot thereupon sailed away in a frigate and joined the British fleet lying off the island of Tenedos, under the command of Admiral Duckworth, which consisted of seven battleships and two frigates. This fleet, favoured by a fair wind, then forced the Dardanelles against the Turkish batteries on February 19, 1807, with little damage, and made its appearance in the Sea of Marmora. It there destroyed a Turkish battleship and four corvettes.

The fleet anchored off the Prince’s Islands, within a few miles of Constantinople, which was exposed to bombardment from the sea. The admiral presented a demand to the Porte for the surrender of the Ottoman fleet lying at Constantinople and for compliance with the demands of Mr. Arbuthnot. He threatened to bombard the city if his ultimatum was rejected. If any serious effect could have been given to this menace, immediate action should have been taken. The Ambassador and the admiral allowed themselves to be drawn into a negotiation spread over ten days, during which the Sultan and the whole male population of his capital were engaged, with feverish haste, in strengthening the defences of the city. A thousand guns and a hundred mortars were mounted on its batteries. The Turkish fleet, consisting of twelve battleships, was removed to a point in the harbour beyond the reach of the guns of a bombarding fleet. The defences of the Dardanelles were also greatly strengthened. Admiral Duckworth was compelled at last to the conclusion that a bombardment would be attended with very serious risk to his own fleet. If it were damaged, the Turkish fleet, coming out of the Bosphorus, might assail it with advantage. It might also be impossible for it to repass the Dardanelles. He decided to withdraw. On March 1st he weighed anchor, and on the 3rd he repassed the Dardanelles, this time with considerable damage to his ships and loss of life. Some of the ships were struck by the enormous stone balls fired from the Turkish batteries. Two corvettes were sunk and six hundred men were killed. The fleet narrowly escaped destruction. The whole adventure redounded little to the credit either of the diplomacy or strategy of the British Government.

Not content with this futile demonstration against Constantinople, the British Government attempted another expedition, even more futile and senseless, this time against Egypt, in the hope, it may be supposed, of bringing pressure to bear on the Sultan. A force of five thousand soldiers was sent from Sicily, then in British occupation, and was landed on the Egyptian coast near Alexandria on March 18th. It marched on that city, which, garrisoned by only four hundred and fifty Turks, surrendered. This was its first and last success. A few days later fifteen hundred men were sent to attack Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile, and were repulsed. Another expedition was even more unsuccessful. Of two thousand men sent out, one thousand were killed and wounded. There seems to have been expectation that the Mamelukes would assist the British against the Turkish troops. This was not realized. The remains of the small army under General Fraser were cooped up in Alexandria until September, when, owing to the serious disaffection of the inhabitants of the city and the approach of a large body of Turks from Cairo, it was recognized that its position was untenable. A flag of truce was sent to the advancing Turks with the offer to evacuate Egypt if the British prisoners in their hands were given up to them. This was accepted, and on September 25th the little army embarked again on its transports and returned to Sicily.

These two senseless expeditions had an effect the very reverse of which was intended. They exasperated Turkish opinion and drove the Porte into closer alliance with the French. In the meantime, and since the failure of the demonstration by Duckworth’s fleet, momentous events occurred in Constantinople. The Sultan took advantage of the departure of the main body of Janissaries with the army sent to the Danube to extend his scheme for raising a military force, clothed and drilled and paid on the European system. He issued an edict that the youngest and best of the Janissaries were to be enrolled in this new corps. This caused the gravest discontent among the Janissaries still in garrison at Constantinople, to the reactionary party in the Divan, and to the ulemas. The Janissaries broke out in mutiny at the end of May 1807. They put this question to the Mufti: “What punishment is deserved by one who has established the new military force?” The Mufti replied: “Death, and that according to the Koran, since the Divan had introduced among Mussulmans the manners of infidels and manifested an intention to suppress the Janissaries, who were the true defenders of the law and the prophets.”

Fortified by this fetva, the Janissaries then passed a resolution that Selim must be deposed. They sent a deputation to the Sultan to insist on his abdication. Selim, however, had already heard of their intention. He had no force at hand sufficient to overcome the mutinous Janissaries. He anticipated their demands by himself going to the Cage, where his cousin Mustapha, the next heir to the throne, was immured, making obeisance to him as Sultan, advising him not to listen to those who desired great changes, and wishing him a happier reign than his own. He then attempted to commit suicide by taking poison, but Mustapha dashed the cup containing it from his hands and swore that his life should be saved. On the arrival of the deputation of Janissaries at the palace they found that a new Sultan was already installed there. Selim retired with dignity to the apartments in the Cage vacated by Mustapha.

The new Sultan, Mustapha III, was a very weak and incompetent man. He was aged thirty, of imperfect education and poor intellect. He filled the throne for a few months only, during which there was practically no government. Though Selim himself was reconciled to the loss of his throne, he had powerful friends who resented his fall. Bairactar, the Pasha of Rustchuck, who owed his post to Selim, marched upon Constantinople with forty thousand Bosnians and Albanians. They overawed the Janissaries and invaded the palace. They knocked at its gates and demanded that Selim should be brought out to them. Mustapha, however, on their approach, had already given orders that Selim and Mahmoud, the only survivors of the Othman race besides himself, were to be put to death, in the hope that this might save his own life. The mutes were able to strangle Selim, not without a desperate struggle, which, if prolonged for a few minutes, would have saved him, for Bairactar was already storming at the gate of the palace. Mahmoud could not be found. Selim’s body was then cast out to Bairactar and his men. “Here is he you seek!” it was called out. On entering the palace Bairactar found Mustapha seated on his throne. He was dragged from it and was sent to prison. Mahmoud, who had been hidden in the furnace of a bath, was found and was installed as Sultan.

Bairactar, having succeeded in deposing Mustapha and installing Mahmoud, most unwisely allowed the Bosnian and Albanian troops to return to their homes. There remained only four thousand men as a bodyguard on whom the new Sultan could rely. They were not sufficient to withstand the Janissaries. These turbulent men broke out in another rebellion. They attacked Bairactar in his palace. He took refuge in a tower used as a powder magazine. He was there blown up, whether by accident or wilfully is not known. There ensued a few days of civil war. The artillery on whom the Sultan relied went over to the Janissaries. A counter-revolution was effected. Mustapha would have been restored to the throne if he had not been put to death in the interval. Mahmoud owed his life to the fact that he was the last surviving male of the Othman race. He was compelled to yield to the menaces of the Janissaries, who were now masters of the city. An edict was issued in his name which repealed all the reforms effected by Selim. The old system was restored, with all its abuses. In the next three or four years the Janissaries were virtually the rulers of the Empire. Grand Viziers were appointed and dismissed at their dictation. Mahmoud was greatly humiliated. But he bided his time, and it will be seen that before long he inflicted a most bloody revenge on the Janissaries and extinguished their corps for ever.

Meanwhile affairs on the Danube fared badly with the Turks, as might be expected. The Russians gained complete possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. Their armies crossed the Danube and laid siege to fortresses on the right bank. In 1807 Russia and France came to terms. The treaty of Tilsit provided that hostilities were to cease between Russia and Turkey, and that the Russian troops were to be withdrawn from Moldavia and Wallachia, till a definitive agreement had been come to between these two Powers. But a secret article, which was not made public till some time later, provided that all the European provinces of Turkey, except Roumelia and Constantinople, were to be taken from the Sultan. We now know that there were long discussions between Napoleon and the Czar, on the River Niemen, as to the future disposal of these and other provinces. Napoleon was ready to concede to Russia the Danubian principalities and Bulgaria. He claimed for France Egypt, Syria, Greece, all the islands of the Archipelago, and Crete. Austria was to be propitiated by the cession of Bosnia and Serbia. The question remained what was to be done with Constantinople. Napoleon would not concede it to Russia. The Czar insisted upon this. The agreement broke down on this point. But it is certain that Napoleon was willing enough to throw over his recent allies, the Turks, and to join with their hereditary foe in dismembering their Empire. A more perfidious transaction is not to be found in history.

In compliance with the treaty of Tilsit, Russia suspended hostilities with the Porte. But the Russian army remained in occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia, and showed no intention to evacuate them. War was renewed in 1809. Prince Bagration, at the head of a Russian army, crossed the Danube and captured several Turkish fortresses on its right bank. In the following year, 1810, the Russians captured the important stronghold Silistria, but failed with very heavy loss in an assault on Rustchuck. Later in the year they inflicted a severe defeat on the army of the Grand Vizier at Baltin. They then succeeded in a second attack on Rustchuck, and captured Sistova. But they failed to take the fortified camp at Schumla, and were unable therefore to cross the Balkan range.

In 1811 war was again imminent between Russia and France, and the Russian generals on the Danube received orders to stand on the defensive. The Turks took advantage of this, and sent a large army across the Danube. It was eventually defeated and compelled to surrender. In spite of their successes, the Russians were willing to come to terms. They had hitherto insisted on the retention of Wallachia and Moldavia. They were now ready to make concessions. The invasion of Russia by Napoleon was imminent. It was necessary for the Czar to concentrate all his forces in defence of his own Empire. Negotiations were commenced in 1811, and they resulted in the treaty of Bucharest of May 28, 1812. It was agreed that the River Pruth was to be the new boundary between the two Empires. The whole of Wallachia and a great part of Moldavia were restored to Turkey. Bessarabia and a part of Moldavia were ceded to Russia.

The treatment of Serbia in the treaty was ungenerous on the part of Russia. An amnesty was to be granted to its people. They were to be secured in future the regulation of their internal affairs. But the supremacy of the Sultan was to be maintained, and Belgrade and other fortresses which had been captured by the Serbians were again to be garrisoned by Turkish troops. This last was the cause of great troubles in the future. But for the impending invasion of Russia by Napoleon the terms would undoubtedly have been far less favourable to the Porte.

XIX

MAHMOUD II

1808-39

The first four years of Mahmoud’s long reign of thirty-one years were fraught with bitter humiliation to him at the hands of the Janissaries. There was no indication of his subsequent career, when he proved himself to be the most able and resolute of Sultans since Solyman the Magnificent. But he was also the most unfortunate, for he was unable to prevent a greater reduction of the Turkish Empire than had been incurred by any one of the long line of degenerate Sultans. It may well be, however, that but for his action still greater losses would have resulted, for on his advent to the throne the Empire seemed to be on the brink of ruin. In every part of it turbulent and rebellious pashas were asserting independence. In Epirus the celebrated Ali Pasha of Janina had cast off allegiance, and was threatening to extend his rule over Greece, Thessaly, and the Ionian Islands. At Widdin on the Danube, at Bagdad on the Tigris, at Acre in Syria, the same process was being pursued by other pashas. In Egypt, Mehemet Ali had assumed the position of Governor and was creating an army and a navy independent of the Porte. In Arabia, the sect of Wahabees had attained a virtual independence, and had obtained possession of the holy cities. Other provinces, such as Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Greece, were seething with disaffection caused by long and intolerable misgovernment. The difficulty of holding together the distracted Empire was greatly increased by the want of an effective army under the full control of the central Government, so as to enable it to cope with the centrifugal forces which threatened disruption. The Janissaries, who had contributed so largely to the growth of the Empire, were now a standing danger to it. They were able to overawe the Sultan, and to dictate to him the appointment and dismissal of Viziers. But successive campaigns on the Danube, and conflicts with rebellious pashas, had given abundant proof of their inefficiency as a military force. Compared with the armies of European Powers they were an ill-disciplined and badly armed mob. They arrogantly refused to be armed, clothed, and drilled after the fashion of European armies. While useless for war, they were formidable for other purposes. They were under no control. They terrorized the capital, and in the provinces they were at the disposal of any adventurous pasha who suborned them to support his ambitious and rebellious projects. Mahmoud from the earliest years of his reign fully recognized, as many of his predecessors had done, how urgent the necessity was to put an end to this turbulent force, and to create a new army which would obey and support him as Sultan, and be of value against external enemies. It is his principal claim in the history of Turkey that he was able to effect this. Eighteen years, however, elapsed before he felt strong enough to grapple with these foes of his dynasty and State.

Apart from this great achievement, he showed inflexible firmness and courage in the great difficulties which confronted him, and almost alone he bore the burden of the State for thirty-one years of unparalleled peril, and often of most serious disaster. It will be seen that, in spite of these high qualities, and in spite of the reform of his army, the losses of territory to his Empire were very serious. In Greece, the Morea, and the provinces north of the Gulf of Corinth up to the frontier of Thessaly, acquired complete independence under the guarantee of the three Great Powers of Europe. Egypt, Moldavia and Wallachia, and Serbia attained almost similar independence, subject only to the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan of Turkey and the payment of fixed tributes. They no longer added to the real strength of the Empire. On the other hand, he completely destroyed the power of the rebellious Pashas of Janina, Widdin, Bagdad, and Acre, and through Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, he subdued the Wahabees and recovered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

It should be added that Mahmoud, unlike so many of his predecessors, devoted his life to affairs of his State rather than to his harem. He committed at times acts of great cruelty. He put to death his brother Mustapha and Mustapha’s only son, and caused to be drowned in the Bosphorus four ladies of Mustapha’s harem who were enceinte. He had no scruple in directing the secret assassination of any persons whom he suspected of harbouring schemes in opposition to his own. He authorized the perpetration of ruthless massacres of Greeks in all parts of his Empire at the inception of the revolution in Greece. But these were acts of policy in accord with the traditions of his family, approved by public opinion of the Turks, by whom terrorism and massacre were recognized as justifiable methods of government. The murder of his relatives left him the sole survivor of the Othman race, a position which secured him from intrigues against his throne by the Janissaries.

The most serious of the losses to the Empire in Mahmoud’s reign was that of Egypt, for it was a Moslem country, and though for many years previously the hold on it by the Ottoman Porte had been slender, and the Mamelukes had been able, as a rule, to impose their will and to govern the province, yet the Porte could in the main rely on it for support to the Empire in times of emergency. It will be well, therefore, to explain the changes effected in Egypt, for it will be seen that they had a great bearing on events in other parts of the Ottoman Empire.

Mehemet Ali, who effected the virtual independence of Egypt, subject to the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan, was the most remarkable man that the Mahommedan world had produced in modern times. The son of an Albanian Moslem fisherman and small landowner at Kavala, on the borders of Thrace and Macedonia, he was left a penniless orphan, and was brought up as a dependent in the household of the chief magistrate of the district, who was a distant relative. He never learnt to read or write. He said of himself in later years that the only books he ever read were men’s faces, and that he seldom made a mistake in them. When the French invaded Egypt under General Bonaparte, Mehemet Ali was sent in defence of it with a band of three hundred Albanians, as one of their junior officers, and before long, on the return home of the commanding officer, contrived to step into his place. When the Turkish army was driven into the sea at Aboukir in 1794 by Napoleon, he was saved from drowning by a boat from the British admiral’s ship. Later he was put in command of all the Albanians employed in Egypt, and was attached for a time to the British army.

After the departure of the British from Egypt, conflict arose between the Turks and the Mamelukes for the control of the government. Mehemet at first sided with the Mamelukes, but later he threw them over in favour of the Albanians in the service of the Turks. When the British Government sent its futile expedition to Egypt in 1808, Mehemet was chiefly concerned in opposing it. He was in command at Rosetta when a great number of British soldiers were slain, and a few days later he entered Cairo in triumph through an avenue of British heads stuck on pikes. Thenceforth he rapidly rose in influence and position, and at the age of thirty-five was the most powerful man in Egypt, and was able to instal himself as Pasha. He was harassed and opposed by the Mamelukes. He determined to get rid of them. He invited about five hundred of their leading men to a friendly conference at the citadel of Cairo. After entertaining them at a sumptuous repast, he ordered the gates to be shut, and had them all shot down in the narrow street of the citadel. A single man only of them survived by leaping his horse from the wall of the citadel, a height of 30 feet. This was followed by a slaughter of nearly all the Mamelukes in the country. Mehemet in this set the example which was followed a few years later by Sultan Mahmoud in suppressing the Janissaries.

Thenceforward Mehemet was undisputed ruler of Egypt. He had a genius for organization and government. Though cruel and vindictive, and even bloodthirsty, as regards his enemies and against evildoers of all kinds, he had a keen sense of justice, and a determination to mete it out equally, and without favour, to the people of all sects and races. He brought about peace and order and prosperity such as Egypt had never of late years enjoyed. He was ambitious to extend his rule. He organized for this purpose, and for asserting himself against the Porte, an army of a hundred thousand men raised by conscription and armed and drilled on the model of European armies, with the aid of French and Italian officers who had served under Napoleon. He also built a powerful fleet with the help of French naval constructors. He soon proved the value of his new army by putting down a revolt in Arabia of the Wahabees. He did this, on behalf of, and in the name of the Sultan. He also conquered the oasis of Senaar and extended the rule of Egypt into the Sudan. It will be seen that later, in 1825 and 1826, he sent his army and navy in support of the Sultan to the Morea for the purpose of putting an end to the revolution in Greece, which the Sultan had been unable to cope with. Before dealing with this, however, it will be well to revert to Mahmoud and explain the course of events which compelled him to call in aid Mehemet Ali’s army.

One of the earliest matters which Mahmoud had to deal with was that of Serbia. The treaty of Bucharest had left that province in a very unsettled and ambiguous position. The Turks, under its terms, were permitted to garrison Belgrade and other fortresses, and were to concede to the Serbians self-government, but there was no adequate guarantee for this. The Serbians, who were in possession of the fortresses, refused to give them up to the Turks until a scheme of self-government was arranged. The Porte insisted on immediate surrender. Subsequent proceedings showed that there was no intention to give effective self-government to the Serbians. The Sultan in 1813 sent an army to enforce his claims. Kara George, in most strange contrast to his previous heroic action, lost courage on this occasion. After burying the treasure which he had amassed as virtual ruler of Serbia, he fled the country and sought refuge with the Austrians. In so doing he passed out of the history of his country, save that when, some years later, he thought he might safely return to Serbia, he was arrested and shot as a traitor.

After this defection Serbia seemed to be at the mercy of the Turks, and the greater part of it was occupied by them. But at the moment of its great peril another national patriot and hero rose to the front in the person of Milosch Obrenowitch, who, much as Kara George had done a few years previously, took the lead in rousing the Christian population to resistance, and in leading them to victory. He succeeded in driving the Turks from all the country districts and shutting them up in the fortresses. Mahmoud then sent another army with the object of relieving the Turks in the Serbian fortresses and subduing the rebels. The army, however, halted on the frontier, and negotiations ensued which lasted for some years without any result. The Sultan, it seems, was unwilling, in view of the numerous other difficulties pending in his Empire, to risk the loss of an army in a guerrilla war in the mountains of Serbia.

The most serious of Mahmoud’s other difficulties at this period was the insurrection of the Greeks in 1821. Never was rebellion of a subject race more justifiable. Nowhere throughout the Ottoman Empire were the results of its rule more degrading and intolerable than in Greece. It served none of the purposes for which governments exist. Life and property and honour were without security, and justice had degenerated into the practice of selling injustice to the highest bidder.

The condition of the Greek population was infinitely worse than that of their compatriots in most other parts of the Empire. In Constantinople the Greeks were a wealthy community. They had a large share in the administration of the Empire. The Porte, in fact, could not do without them. Their religion was under the special protection accorded to it by Mahomet the Conqueror. The trade of the Empire was largely in their hands. At Smyrna, Salonika, and many other cities, there were large numbers of Greeks who had enjoyed facilities of trade and had accumulated wealth. Mahmoud, like many of his predecessors, recognized that, by largely contributing to taxes, these people were a source of wealth to his Government, and was not disposed to adopt any measure proposed by the more fanatical of Moslems to extirpate them or to drive them into rebellion. Not a few of the islands of the archipelago, such as Scios and Psara, were practically allowed to govern themselves, and life there was as well-ordered as in any part of Europe.

It was very different with Greece on the mainland. It seems to have been the policy of the Porte to prevent its becoming a populous and wealthy country, with a view to keeping it under close subjection. Much of its land was in the ownership of Moslems, a majority of whom were Greeks by race, who had adopted Islam in order to save their property. They were a fanatical class who were quite as oppressive to the rayas, the cultivators of the soil, as were those of pure Turkish descent. The Ottoman Government presented itself to the Greeks only as an engine to extract taxes, and the pashas who were sent to govern them thought only how best and most quickly to fill their pockets, knowing that their tenure of office would be very short. The people there compared their condition with that of the self-governing communities of Scio and other islands. Education had spread to some extent in spite of the neglect of the Government. Wealthy Greeks from other districts had endowed some schools and colleges. With education came the study of the past history of Greece and the ambition to renew its nationality and greatness. For some time past secret societies such as the Hetairia, promoted in the first instance by the Greeks of Odessa, had been spreading their influence in Greece, and had laid the seeds of revolution.

The insurrection in Greece was not only based on political and racial ideals, it was also an agrarian war, the revolt of cultivators of the soil against their feudal oppressors. This gave to the outbreak in rural districts its intensely persistent, passionate, and cruel attributes.

The revolution broke out in the Morea at the beginning of April 1821, and soon spread over the whole of its country districts. It was estimated that at that time there were twenty thousand Moslems thinly spread in the country districts, most of them of Greek race, feudal lords of the soil and oppressors of the rayas. Nearly the whole of these Moslems were now brutally murdered, without distinction of age or sex. The survivors fled into the fortresses, which were garrisoned by Turks. These fortresses were speedily invested by the Greeks, and within three months nearly all of them were compelled to surrender. In most cases capitulations were agreed to on the terms that lives would be respected, but in no case were these terms adhered to. The garrisons and the Turkish inhabitants and the refugees from the country districts who had gathered there were brutally murdered.

The first encounter between the Turkish soldiers and the Greeks that could be called a battle was at Valtetsi, in the neighbourhood of Tripolitza, the capital of the Morea. Three thousand Greek peasants there defeated five thousand Turks, with a loss of four hundred Turks and a hundred and fifty Greeks. The battle destroyed the prestige of the Turks. It showed that they were no match for the insurgent Greek peasants.

As a result of this victory, Navarino and Tripolitza fell into the hands of the Greek insurgents after short sieges. In both cases the garrisons capitulated on favourable terms for themselves and the inhabitants of the towns. In neither case were the terms observed. All the Moslem troops and inhabitants were ruthlessly massacred. At Tripolitza these numbered eight thousand, including women and children. “Greek historians,” says Finlay in his History of Greece, “have recoiled from telling of these barbarities, while they have been loud in denouncing those of the Turks.”

When news of the massacres in the Morea arrived at Constantinople the greatest alarm and indignation arose. Bloody and ruthless reprisals ensued against the Greeks residing there. The Sultan set the example. He directed that many of the leading Greeks were to be immediately executed. The Greek Patriarch was hanged by his order at the gate of the episcopal residence. The fetva authorizing this was pinned to his body. There was no reason to believe that the Patriarch was implicated in the outbreak in Greece. Four other bishops met the same fate. Thousands of Greeks of inferior position fell victims to the fury of the people at the capital and at many other cities, such as Smyrna and Salonika, and in Cyprus. The Sultan took no steps to restrain these horrors. Women and children equally with men were murdered. Their houses were burnt, their property was pillaged. It was estimated that the number of Greeks thus massacred was not short of the number of Moslems slaughtered in Greece at the outbreak of the revolution. Thenceforth Greeks and Turks emulated one another in their acts of barbarity. The Turks had always been bloodthirsty when their passions and fears were roused, and they now had terrible wrongs to avenge. The Greeks had been degraded by long oppression, and were little better than Turks. Both people evidently thought that the results of their cruelties were proof of the wisdom of inflicting them. The Greeks, by extirpating the Moslems in the Morea, cleared the country, once for all, of their oppressors and effected that separation of the two races which, it will be seen later, the Great Powers of Europe thought desirable, though they hoped to attain it by peaceful expropriation and indemnity. The Turks claimed that their severities checked the spread of the revolution, and compelled one half of the Greek people living within their midst to submit to Ottoman rule.

It has been shown that the revolution broke out in the Morea. Within a few months the whole of that country was cleared of Ottoman troops and of Moslem inhabitants. The outbreak extended to most of the islands of the archipelago, where the Greeks predominated, where there was less admixture of Slav blood than on the mainland, and where the traditions of a long-past national existence and of high civilization survived in a stronger form. In spite of their greater prosperity, due to milder treatment at the hands of the Turks, they were ardently in favour of independence. It was in the islands that the majority of Greek merchant vessels were owned. They numbered between four and five hundred, and were manned by twelve thousand Greek sailors. An active war fleet was formed out of these vessels and sailors. They frequently met and defeated the Turkish fleet. They made special use of fire ships, and blew up or burnt many of the Turkish vessels and caused the greatest alarm to the Turkish sailors.