Turkey and Russia, their races, history and wars. Embracing a graphic account of the great Crimean War and of the Russo-Turkish war

Chapter I. The Primitive Turkish

TRIBES— BIRTH AND MISSION OF MOHAMMED — THE TURKS CONQUERED AND CONVERTED — ERTOGRUL, FATHER OF OTHMAN — OTHMAN, FOUNDER OF THE OTTOMAN POWER. HE proper and original area of the Tartar, Turcoman, or Turk, is the vast infertile plain, extending east and north-east from the Caspian Sea across Turkestan into Central Asia. This immense region, consistingfor the most 0 ; 0 part of barren tablelands or steppes, and comprising but few tracts suitable for agriculture, has been, in one sense at least, extraordinarily productive. It has been the fatherland of countless hordes of shepherd-warriors, who have carried their victorious arms into the richest regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. From time immemorial the plains of Central Asia, of which Tartary forms only a part, have been occupied by hardy, hungry, restless, and aggressive races, in numbers greater, it appears, than the resources of the country could well support.

From the original seat of this shepherd race, tribes and groups of tribes have constantly been swarming off in search of pastures new for the flocks upon which they mainly depended for their subsistence, in search of fresh hunting grounds in which they might at once gratify their love of the chase and supplement the limited fare of cheese and milk on which they usually subsisted. Their horses, their sheep, their weapons, and their tents comprised the whole of their property ; but they were never averse to increase their wealth at the expense of more fortunate and less war like tribes. The Tartars or Turcomans have been shepherds, warriors, robbers, from the period of the dawn of history, — nomads born, wandering Ishmaelites. In the course of A their wanderings to east, south, and west, they have in every age come upon fertile regions peopled by prosperous husbandmen, whom they have conquered and exterminated, or among whom they have become absorbed.

Thus, from the steppes of Tartary successive waves of population, driven by necessity, predatory instinct, love of conquest, and religious enthusiasm, have from time to time flowed over Mongolia, China, India, Persia, Asia Minor, Southern Russia, and the fairest regions of Southern Europe. The narrative of the rush, the fall, the absorption or repulsion of these successive waves of desert adventurers forms the history of the earliest known Turkish tribes down to the rise of the Ottoman Empire. With the earlier migrations of the Tartars from the regions east of the Caspian, it is not within the scope of the present work to deal. Dr. Latham (see " Ethnology of Europe," 1852) finds them settled in the south of Russia as early as the fifth century B.C. In a later work, however (" Nationalities of Europe," 1863), the same accomplished ethnologist writes : — " Upon the possible history of the earliest emigrants from Turkestan I abstain from writing.

It might satisfy others less than it satisfies me. I begin with the times immediately following the Mahometan conquest of Persia, a con quest that carries the Caliphate beyond the Turk frontier." The Mohammedan conquest of Persia took place in 710 ; but long before this period migrating hordes of Turks make themselves conspicuous in the history of Europe. The Scythians, regarded as Turks by Latham, have been in Europe since the commencement of the historical period ; the Huns, a nation of the Turkish stock, appeared in Europe in the fourth century; and the Bulgarians and Magyars, also belonging to the same race, in the sixth and the tenth century respectively. For present purposes, however, the Turk becomes interesting to us only when he becomes a Mohammedan, at the beginning of the eighth century of our era.

The Turks were called into existence as a distinctive nation under the influence of Mohammedanism. After their conversion to the faith of the Prophet of Arabia, the Tartar tribes were welded together into a compact unity by a religious zeal that concen trated all their energies and gave a definite direction to the boundless enthusiasm which, like all new converts to a fascinating creed, they did not fail to exhibit. Under the inspiring influence of Islam, the wandering loosely-allied tribes became a distinctive, homogeneous, firmly-knit nation ; and, as such, soon began to make their presence and their influence felt in their native steppes and in the regions around. It is necessary, therefore, to sketch in briefest outline the rise of the Mohammedan religion, and to track its advance from the Arabian shores of the Red Sea across Persia to the Tartar plains on the east of the Caspian.

Mohammed, the apostle of a creed that to this day has one hundred million ad herents, was born in 570, or, according to Freeman, the latest historian of the Saracens and Turks, in 569. His birthplace was Mecca, the holy place of Arabia, situated in the middle of the maritime province of Hedjaz, about fifty miles from the shores of the Red Sea. He was the descendant of the noblest of the Arab tribes, that of Koreish, and of the noblest family of that tribe — that of Hashem. His descent constituted a powerful claim upon the regard of his countrymen, among whom the ancestral feeling has ever been cherished with the utmost loyalty. The hereditary guardianship, also, of the Kaaba, or BIRTH AND MISSION OF MOHAMMED. 3 Sacred Temple of Mecca, was vested in Mohammed's family — so that, both by birth and by distinction of sacred office, to which he added the immeasurable influences of com manding intellect, exalted personal character, and that profound knowledge of human nature, which is the characteristic only of men of the highest order of genius, the Prophet of Mecca was the natural leader of his race.

The original faith of the Arabians may be described as a pure Deism ; but long before the birth of Mohammed this faith had become corrupted and degraded. The ancient Arabs had worshipped one supreme God ; but in the sixth century a.d. a number of inferior divinities, family and other idols, had come to be acknowledged, and offerings of first-fruits and sacrifices — occasionally of human beings — were offered to them as well as to the Deity. The Kaaba, built by Abraham according to Arab tradition, was the great national temple and sanctuary of this religion, and the immemorial place of pilgrimage. Here the Arabs worshipped the one God and the three hundred and sixty images of minor divinities with which in the course of time the holy place had become stocked. It should be noted here, however, that though the prevailing religion of Arabia was idolatrous, grotesque with fantastic customs, polluted with unnameable rites, both Judaism and Christianity had many followers, especially in the northern borderlands and western shores of the country ; and it is necessary further to add that at the period of the advent of Mohammed, the whole Arabian peninsula was fermenting with confused and formless religious excitement — the degraded national creed was felt to be vain and profit less for all purposes of spiritual nourishment, and the minds of men were ripe for a great religious revolution.

At a time such as this, when the fear and the hope of change are perplexing nations, the needs and the aspirations of a community are most greatly felt by its greatest men. The characteristics of every age are most vividly reflected in the bright mirror of the intellect of its typical representative. On the emotional nature of Mohammed, wider, grander than that of his cotemporaries, the pressure and exigency of the time weighed more heavily than on theirs. To his more piercing and clearer vision, the vanity, the foizonlessness of the dead creed of his country was more obtrusively apparent than to them. But, successful in comprehending all the spiritual unwholesomeness of his time, he was also successful, after years of meditation, of mental conflict — of absolute agony, we are told — in discovering a remedy.

A new and a purer faith was revealed to him, the operation of which, in his belief, would be to cleanse the whole infected world. " He wrought a great reform," writes Freeman, "and that on the whole by what his fellows regarded as noble means. For a corrupt, debasing, and sanguinary idolatry he substi tuted the worship of the one God, and taught men that the one God was alike almighty and all-righteous. He gathered his people together under one nation, and gave them civil and moral precepts, imperfect indeed, but far better than any they had previously possessed. Their most revolting practices, as infanticide, he utterly abolished. Others, as polygamy and private revenge, he subjected to stringent regulations. In some respects, as in the prohibition of wine, the character of his teaching was positively ascetic. . . .

To the Arab of the seventh century he was the greatest of benefactors." Speaking of the unregenerate days of the old Arabian idolatry, the Sheikh Maghareh says : " Our food was green lizards ; we buried our infant daughters alive, nay, some of us feasted on dead carcases and drank blood ; while others slew their relations, and thought themselves great and valiant when, by such'an act, they became possessed of more property ; we were clothed with hair garments, knew not good from evil, and made no distinction between that which is lawful and that which is unlawful. Such was our state. But God in His mercy has sent us, by a holy prophet, a sacred volume, which teaches us the true faith. By it we are commanded to bear with infidels, and to exchange our poor and miserable condition for that of wealth and power."

The new gospel promulgated by Mohammed was the great reviving agent by which the Arab nation was recalled to life. The announcement, " There is but one God," must have fallen upon his countrymen with all the force of a divine revelation. Here then, at last, was something clear and definite, something to lay hold of, something to nourish the hungered spirit upon. The encumbering impedimenta of idolatry, the gods of the house, of the field, of the nation, are thrown aside as useless — and there is nothing more useless than a discarded deity — and now man and the one Supreme stand once more face to face. That " there is no God but God" was the discovery — for, under the circumstances, it was a discovery — with which this priest-hero overwhelmed and overawed his countrymen ; and when he further announced that " Mohammed was the Prophet of God," what wonder is it that the nations should receive that also as a revelation ?

Mohammed was at first a preacher and teacher ; he taught belief in one God, and rigorously enjoined strict justice, mercy, personal and moral cleanliness upon his followers. His preaching and teaching was rewarded by the hatred of his fellows, and ended in his enforced flight to Medina, after which event his character exhibits a new phase. He is no longer the meek teacher exhorting to brotherly love and toleration — that method of recommending the new religion had resulted only in his being driven in desperate and headlong flight from home and place of birth. His religion now became aggressive — he began to proselytize and to use the sword as his last and conclusive, often his only argument. If it be true that " there is no God but God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God," then it is necessary that all nations shall acknowledge these facts, or die the death as infidels.

To rid the world of an unbeliever, of a city, of a nation of unbelievers, is an act of the purest piety. The first duty of believers is to make war upon the infidels, and, fts angels fight beneath the banners of the faithful, conquest is certain. The Koran mercifully offers an alternative to the conquered infidel — he shall accept the Koran, and become a Mohammedan, or, failing that, he shall either pay tribute or die by the sword. "The Koran, Tribute, or the Sword" is the brief formula addressed by the faithful to the enemies of God and the Prophet. Such was the military genius of Mohammed, such the enthusiasm of his fanatic followers, such the magic influence of the promised Paradise, with its black-eyed maidens ministering to them that have fallen in battle, that even during the lifetime of Mohammed the whole of the Arabian Peninsula had been subdued by the arms, and had accepted the creed, of the prophet.

"We may feel certain," says Freeman, "that Mohammed began his career merely as the Prophet of Arabia, and gradually persuaded himself that he was the prophet of the whole world. Even when his pretensions had developed to their full development, when he claimed the heathen for his inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession, Arabia was still to remain the peculiar and holy land of the THE TURKS CONQUERED AND CONVERTED. 5 faithful. Elsewhere the infidel might be tolerated on payment of the prescribed tribute; but within the sacred peninsula only the faith of Allah and his Prophet was to be endured. The local religion of Arabia was to become the religion of the world." Thus, with their native Arabia as their military basis, the early Caliphs — as the successors of Mohammed, in the combined temporal and spiritual sovereignty over all believers, were named — spread eastward, northward, westward, compelling the ever-vanquished nations to accept the " Koran, tribute, or the sword."

The Arabian Mohammedans or Saracens, who had risen to the height of their power at the close of the seventh century, and had already made their arms disastrously felt in the ancient empires of Rome and of Persia, crossed the Oxus (Amu Daria) in 710, seventy eight years after the death of Mohammed, and began to make converts and subjects among the Turkish tribes then occupying the plains between that great river and the Jaxartes (Sir Daria). The year named is the date when Turk and Arab first met, the date on which the former, abjuring the paganism or the fire-worship of his ancestors, first accepted Mohammedanism, and assumed those national characteristics which distinguish him down to the present day. The whole of Transoxiana — the land beyond the Oxus — was subdued in the year 710, and converted into a Mohammedan province, under the Caliph, who had now transferred his seat of empire to Damascus — the " holy " Damascus, the "earthly paradise" of the faithful, the queen of the many-gardened cities of Syria.

Catibah, the commander of the Saracens who subdued Turkish Transoxiana, between Khiva and Bokhara, was quick enough to perceive that the newly subjugated tribes were a powerful, hardy, alert people. A large number of them, sent as slaves and prisoners to Caliph Motassem, were converted by that monarch into a standing body-guard. This band of foreign mercenaries, however, soon began to threaten the peace, and eventually the existence, of the Saracenic Caliphate. The new Turkish guards were utterly lawless and ungovernable. They deposed Motassem, and set up and overthrew other Caliphs as they pleased. The riotous domination of these regardless guards lasted to the middle of the tenth century, when the Turks were superseded, as the guardians and the tormentors of the Caliph, by the Dilemites.

In the middle of the eleventh century the Dilemites had in turn become so intolerable that the Caliph Al Kayem resolved to call in the aid of the Turks once more to deliver him from the dreadful Dilemites. The Turkish prince to whom the Caliph appealed in his extremity was Togrul Beg, the grandson of Seljuk. Seljuk, a notable Turk, being discontented with matters in his native country, removed, at the commencement of the eleventh century, to Samarcand on the north-east frontier of Turkestan, became a Mohammedan, and set about improving his fortunes earnestly and sedulously. His efforts were completely successful, and as whole tribes of his countrymen from the banks of the Oxus joined him in his prosperity, Seljuk soon found himself at the head of an important Turkish sept. Of his son, Michael, scarce any mention is made, but his grandson, Togrul Beg, a prince of great ability, became sovereign of Chorassan in 1035.

In response to the appeal of the Caliph Al Kayem, Togrul Beg marched to Bagdad, subdued the riotous citizens, and scattered the pestilent Dilemites, and was soon recognised as lord of the richest and most extensive territories — held nominally as feudatory of the Caliph — in Asia. " This new sovereign," writes Finlay, the eminent historian of the Byzantine Empire, " after destroying the dynasty of the Bowides (Dilemites), became Sultan of Persia, and the limits of his dominions touched the frontiers of the Byzantine conquests in Armenia." Togrul Beg visited Bagdad, assumed the title of "Defender of the Faith, and Protector of the Caliph;" and when he had rendered himself completely master of the temporal power at Bagdad, he compelled the haughty Caliph to receive him as a son-in-law and heir, by pointing out to the repre sentative of the Prophet that he (Togrul) could starve him on his sacred throne.

Of the later exploits of this brilliant and chivalrous Seljukian it is out of our province to speak. Alp Arslan, the nephew and heir of Togrul Beg, succeeded as Grand Sultan. Probably the most noteworthy event in his career is his encounter with Romanus IV., the Byzantine Emperor. Alp Arslan had captured the city of Manzikert in Asia Minor, which was then under the sway of the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, when Romanus, in the spring of 1071, set out at the head of a numerous army to recover the captured city, and to punish the Grand Sultan. The two armies met in the vicinity of Manzikert. The result of the battle, which raged from morning to night, was a complete victory for the Turks (107 1). Romanus fought like a hero, but his bravery was unavailing. He was wounded and made prisoner. On the following morning he was brought in front of the great tent in which Alp Arslan sat enthroned.

The guards, having brought Romanus to his foe's footstool, threw him on the ground, and the Grand Sultan, descending from his throne, placed his foot upon the neck of the Emperor, in compliance with the established and traditional practice of the Turks. Malek Shah, the son of Alp Arslan, succeeded to the Grand Sultanate toward the close of the eleventh century. His cousin, Suleiman, was appointed his lieutenant, and invested with a subordinate sovereignty in Asia Minor. By a treaty with the Byzantine Empire, dated 1074, Suleiman was acknowledged sovereign of the greater part of Asia Minor. This prince, who was honoured with the title of Sultan by Malek Shah, became the founder of the Seljukian Turks in Asia Minor. He established his capital at Nicæa, or Nice, about fifty miles east from the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and to the dominion which he ruled he gave the name of Roum, or Rome, to commemorate its having been conquered from the Roman empire.

After the death of Malek Shah, which took place in 1092, the Seljuk Empire was partitioned among a number of independent sultans ; all of whom, however, owned allegiance to the chief of the dynasty, the Grand Sultan of Persia — the title borne from 1092 to 1 157 by the three sons of the Malek Shah successively. The last of the grand sultans of the Seljuk race was Sanjar, who reigned from 11 16 to 1157; and from him the splendid heritage of the grand sultanate passed into the hands of the Chorasmians, a separate Turkish dynasty, and the predominant Mohammedan power in Asia in the beginning of the thirteenth century. With the Chorasmian Caliphs, however, our narrative is not concerned, and we leave them to glance at the fortunes of that subordinate branch of the Seljuk dynasty, the Sultans of Roum.

These, driven from the western regions of Asia Minor by the first Crusaders, and by the Byzantine Emperors, retired from Nice to Iconium (Konieh), toward the south of the middle region of Anatolia or Asia Minor. Here they established their capital, and with varying fortune maintained an almost constant warfare with the imperial legions of Constantinople. But a more powerful, more savage enemy was soon to threaten the gates of Iconium. Early in the thirteenth century, Jenghiz Khan, with his ER TOGRUL, FATHER OF OTHMAN. 7 hordes of Moguls from the east of Central Asia, swept westward over the dominions of the Mohammedans, ravaging and destroying wherever they went. In front of them were fruitful plains and prosperous towns, behind them there was only a reeking desert. " In war," says Freeman, " they were simple savages, — barbarians is far too gentle a word.

A captured city, attacked without provocation, was commonly levelled with the ground, and its inhabitants massacred. Surrender, capitulation, safe-conduct, availed nothing. To be overcome by Saracens or Turks was a blessing compared with falling into the jaws of the implacable Moguls." These terrible warriors abolished the Chorasmian kingdom in 1222, and, continuing their westward march, devastated many of the richest and most populous cities of Asia. In 1258 they abolished the Caliphate of Bagdad and slew Al Mostassem, the last commander of the Faithful. A few years after, they had devastated almost the whole of Asia Minor, and war began to threaten the territory of the last of the Seljuk Sultans of Iconium, an episode in whose history brings us acquainted with the immediate ancestor of the founder of the Ottoman power in Europe.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, at about the time when Edward I. of England, " The Hammer of the Scots," was indulging his first fond dreams of conquering North Britain, a stirring Turkish chieftain named Ertogrul was leading his pastoral tribe of 400 Turcoman families westward from the southern spurs of the Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor toward the ancient city of Iconium. At that time (about 1250 a.d.) Alaeddin, the Sultan of Iconium, was the most considerable Turkish potentate in this region, and Ertogrul, which means "The Right-Hearted Man," was desirous of taking military service under him, and acquiring for his tribe some desirable dwelling-place, with reasonable chances of pillage, somewhere on the border of his dominions. The chieftain's tribe or clan may have numbered, at the usual rate of computation, — five individuals to every family, — about 2000 persons, including women and children ; his fighting force, as we are minutely informed by Neschri, the Turkish historian, consisted of 444 mounted swordsmen.

With this small troop of desert warriors, the chief, with his tent-dwelling clan, his flocks of sheep and herds of horses, journeyed slowly westward, keeping a very vigilant look-out for any adventure — any windfall which the Prophet might be pleased to send his way. As he continued his journey towards Iconium, it happened, say the Oriental chroniclers, that he came upon a plain in which two armies, the one of much greater numerical strength than the other, were engaged in battle. The " Right- Hearted Man," resolving to assist the weaker force, drew up his troop, and charging the stronger force with a valour becoming the generosity of the action, drove it in a panic from the field. A singular coincidence, almost as singular as that which every man can relate as having happened in his own experience, now occurred.

It turned out that the weaker army, the force that had won a signal victory through Ertogrul's opportune appearance and generous assistance on the field, was commanded by no other than the Sultan Alaeddin of Iconium, to whom the desert chieftain had journeyed a long distance to offer military service. The exploit by which he had that day distinguished himself being regarded as a satisfactory testimonial in favour of his qualifications for the service, Ertogrul's offer was gladly accepted, and in further token of his gratitude, and with a lively sense of similar services to be performed in the future, Alaeddin bestowed upon the hero a principality on his north western frontier, — a frontier which, exposed to frequent attack and perpetual danger from TURKE Y AND R USSIA . the proximity of hostile armies, might suitably employ the ready sword of his new feudatory.

As warden of Alaeddin's north-west marches, Ertogrul had not much unoccupied time on his hands. In his day the inveterate enemies of the Sultanate of Iconium were the wandering tribes of Moguls, that threatened the very existence of the Turkish principalities, and the legions of the Byzantine Emperors, whose Asiatic territories, once spreading far eastward, and including Persia, were already (with the exception of a mari time strip bordering the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora) occupied by the Turks. When not actively engaged in battle with these persistent foes, or in mere local forays, Ertogrul appears to have employed himself chiefly in studying the art of war. Of his military capacity one instance, from which the most important results accrued, may be given. In a battle which Ertogrul, as Alaeddin's lieutenant, fought against a mixed army of Greeks and Moguls, between Brusa and Yenischeer, he drew up his troops so as to throw forward upon the enemy a cloud of light cavalry called Akindji, thus completely masking the centre of his main army, which, as the post of honour, was termed the " Sultan's station."

Ertogrul held the centre himself at the head of the 444 horsemen who were his own original followers, and whose scimitars had won the day for Alaeddin when they charged unwittingly in his cause. The system now adopted by Ertogrul of wearying the enemy by collision with a mass of irregular horsemen, and then launching against him a heavy reserve of the best troops, remained for centuries the favourite tactic of the Turkish generals. The battle in which he was now engaged, in which he first tantalised, then exhausted, and then crushed his enemy, was long and desperate, but resulted in a complete victory for the Mohammedans. Alaeddin was so highly pleased with the brilliant achievement of his lieutenant, that in addition to the principality he had already conferred upon him, he gave him the district of Erkischeer, and in commemora tion of the form in which his general had arrayed his army on the day of battle, he named the united territories Sultan Œni, or " Sultan's Front."

Ertogrul's warrior-troop was an offshoot from a tribe of Oghuz Turks, belonging origi nally to Khorassan, one of the eastern provinces of Persia, and, after travelling west through Persia, Kurdistan, and Armenia, they now found themselves settled on the fertile plains that extend along the banks of the Sakaria, which falls into the Black Sea, at the distance of about a hundred miles east from the Bosphorus. Like all the other migratory tribes of the Turkish stock, they had heard of the wealth and the beauty of Constanti nople, — had heard, too, no doubt, of the waning glory of the Roman arms, and they had eagerly desired to reach some permanent settlement within sight of the coveted shores of Europe. So far, their desire and ambition had been realised. It remained now for them to strike deep root in the newly-acquired soil, to increase their strength by the incorpora tion of other Turkish tribes, and in every way to prepare for whatever event might take place as a natural consequence of their proximity to the unbelievers of Constantinople.

The little Turkish colony flourished amain ; warriors of their own race flocked to their standard, and their resources were maintained by periodical and usually successful forays into the territories of neighbouring princes or of the Greeks of the Empire, who still possessed considerable territory in Asia Minor. Ertogrul died in 1288, leaving the principality of Sultan Œni to his son Othman, or FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY. 9 Osman, the father of the Ottoman or Osmanli race — the founder of the nation of the European Turks. Alaeddin, the last of the Seljuk Sultans, died in 1307, and now Oth man, the father of all the faithful, the progenitor of the royal race that has swayed the Mohammedan world in unbroken succession down to our own day, assumed the state and the prerogatives of the deceased Sultan, and waged war and annexed territories with all the freedom and independence of one born in the purple.

Thus commenced that powerful and brilliant, but also cruel and corrupt, dynasty, which has overshadowed the fairest and most renowned countries of Europe for five hundred years. There are few events in ancient or in modern history so surprising and so portentous as the almost sudden growth of the Ottoman power, and its rapid extension in Europe. " No nation," writes the author of the ' History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires,' " ever increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever constituted itself with greater sagacity than the Ottoman ; but no force or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomades to rise with such rapidity to power, had it not been that the (Greek) Emperor Michael and the Greek nation were paralysed by political and moral corruption, and both left behind them descendants equally weak and worth less.

When history records that Michael Palæologus recovered possession of Constan tinople by accident" {see the third chapter of this work), "it ought also to proclaim that by his deliberate policy he prepared the way for the ruin of the Greek race, and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. There is no other instance in history of a nation so numerous, so wealthy, and so civilised as the Greeks were in the fourteenth century, having been permanently subdued by an enemy so inferior in political and military resources. The circumstance becomes the more disgraceful, as its explanation must be sought in social and moral causes." The Greek Empire was ripe for conquest when, as we shall presently see, the forces of the Emperor Andronicus II. were worsted by the horsemen of the chiefs, who acted as petty princes, under the nominal sovereignty of Alaeddin III., the last of the Seljuk Sultans of Iconium.