History of Turkey

Front matter

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Preface

Paom

^ Heroism of Turkey — Sultan Mahmoud — ^Independence and invio- '"^

CS^ lability of nations — The Ottoman Empire — ^Russia in place '

** of Turkey— BumiDg the Turkish Fleet— Abdul-Medjid —

Stamboul— The Crime of Abdul-Medjid — His Designs — ^Ex- . oneration of the French — ^The game of Russia — ^The Holy Places — ^France and England— Austria and Prugsia^-Words • of Napoleon—J^mportance of Turkey — ^Russian Civilisation, ........ 9

BOOK L

Religion in the East — ^Asia Minor the seat of three Religions-— \ Arabiar— Genealogy of the Arabians — ^Abraham their pro- ' genitor — ^Arabs of the Desert — ^Their Ciyil Constitution — Their primitiye Religion — ^Their inspired men — The young, Mourakkich — Epoch of Mahomet — Abdelmotaleb — ^Abdallah — ^Aboutaleb— Four Sages of Mecca — ^Mahomet — ^Dja^ ber — ^Characteristics of Mahomet — Commencement of his mission — ^Progress of his doctrine — Opposition — Khoreishite Elders — ^Reception of the early Mahometans by the Christians — ^Riyal of Mahomet — Omar — Precepts of the Koran — Dreams of Mahomet — ^Mosad — ^Resort to Arms— Battles—

4 CONTENTS.

Paas

Progress of his Arms — ^A'iche — ^AxmiBtice— Triumph of Ma^ hometanism — ^Death of Mahomet, . . . .85

BOOK n.

Aboubekre the Elhalif— Address to the warriors — ^Death of Mahomet discredited — Other Prophets — Subjection of the Lieutenants — ^Ehaled — ^March upon Euphrates — ^Defeat of Persian army — ^Persians seek aid of Romans — ^Both armies defeated — ^Progress of the victors — ^Death of Aboubekre — Omar made Khalif— Capture of Damascus — ^Envoys from Persia — Said — ^Ehaled marches upon Jerusalem — ^Its surrender — ^The Patriarch Sophronius — Omar's visit to Bethlehem — ^Extent of Omar's dominion — ^Death of Omar — Othman made Ehalif — Perished by civil discord — ^First appearance of Turks in Asia— Kotaibah — ^Dismemberment of the Arab Empire — ^Origin of the Turks — ^Othman, son of Ertogrul — ^His Dream — State of Roman Empire, . 167

BOOK m.

Constantinople — ^Ezploits of Othman — Conquests of the Greeks — ^Pillage of the Islands of Archipelago— Orkhan, son of Othman — Starts for the conquest of Broussa — ^Last interview between Father and Son — ^Death and character of Othman, 193

BOOK IV.

The sons of Othman — ^Dress of the Turks — Ottoman Soldiers— Hadji-Begtasch — Pay of the Soldiers — ^Descent upon Greece —Army of Andronicus — Surrender of Nice — ^Treatment of the Inhabitants — Progress of Orkhan — ^Andronicus IL — Andronicus III. — Anne of Savoy — The beautiful Theodora — Soliman— His Death— The death of Orkhan, . . 20Y

BOOK V.

Amurath or Monrad L — ^His ambition — ^Asia Minor — Organization of his Foreee— Adrianople— Fall of Philippopolia— The

CONTENTS. 6

generous Ilbeki — ^iBlamism — ^Amurath's Edncation — Siege J of ApoUonia — Sports — Sons of Amurath — ^Kutaiah — The^l ological Quarrels — John Paleologus — ^Peaoe between thei Latin and Greek Churches — Falls into contempt — ^Parri- \ cidal Conspiracy — Siege of Iconium — ^March upon Bui- 1 garia — ^Army of the Confederates — John Castriot— Death of / Amurath, ....... 237

BOOK VI.

The Sons of Amurath — ^ELis succession — ^Meeting of the Divan — • Execution of Yacoub— Bajazet assumes the throne — Com- j mences his oareeiv-The Magyars— Sigismund— His Defeat ( by Bajazet— Who returns to Adriannople— Sheik Boukara I — ^Invasion by Hungarians and French — Triumph of Bajazet ) — ^His enjoyments, . . . . . z79

BOOK vn.

Timour — ^His character — ^His tribe — Samarcand — ^Inyasion of Persia by Timour — ^Returns to Bagdad — ^March westward — Letter to Bajazet — ^Indignation of the latter — ^Letter of defiance — ^Timour marches upon Aleppo— Defeats the Egyptians — ^Marches upon Damascus — ^Its conflagration — ^Marches to the confines of the Ottoman Empire — Angry correspondence with Bajazet — Encounter of their armies — ^Defeat of Bajazet — Sons of Bajazet — ^Their escape — ^Treatment of Bajazet by Timour, ..... 802

BOOK vni

Mahomet-Schah — ^Rapid march upon Bronssa— Destruction of Broussa — ^The Valley of Kutaiah — Knights of Si John — Hospitals at Jerusalem— March of Timour against the Knights — SmyiTia— Assault upon — ^Its burning— Treatment of Bajazet— Death of Mahomet-Schah— Effect upon Timour, ........ 840

JOOHTENTS.

m^ ^i30K IX

Paab

I

The history of a people has never yet been written in circumstances more supreme to this people itself. When, a nation is afflicted by iniquity and misfortune, it is the time to yieia it sympathy and do it justice. Posterity is like justice, it loves to defend the weak, and to avenge the oppressed. Nations sometimes find .their chastisement, sometimes, also, their vengeance, their justification, their glory, in history.

Startled from their long slumber by the perils of their race and name, attacked in the midst of peace by an invasion of their seas and territory, insulted in their dwellings, assassinated in their ports, overwhelmed on all sides by the armies of those Muscovites, who take number for right and the sabre for title, the Turks, erect upon their latest frontier, and wielding the weapons of despair, are fighting recklessly to see if Turkey shall not be regenerated in their blood, or to die themselves before the last hour of their country.

If Europe be not moved, at least it ought to be attentive. It is the time to say what were formerly, what are to-day, and what may be presently, these Ottomans, disfigured to its eyes since the epoch of the Crusades by antipathies of religion. These antipathies are falling, from age to age, away before the civilization of races and the equilibration of

12 PBEFAOB.

must retain her place, or France most abandon hers. So says France ; so says England ; so says Asia, Africa, Spain, Italy ; so will Austria herself say, a victim by and by, if she keeps still, to an ambition which caresses but to crush her.

Before and since the treaties of 1815, the Ottoman empire, consolidated by the common interest of the powers, had entered as an integral part into the system of the pacified world. This empire underwent internally the phases of all empires that decline after an excessiye aggrandizement. But, to the contrary of empires that deteriorate in their decadence, the Ottoman empire was civilizing itself, Europeanizing itself, rejuvenating itself by contact with Europe, while reducing its dimensions. The father of the present Sultan, the intrepid Mahmoud, three times risked his crown and life for the regeneration of his nation. After having, by the most legal and heroic coup d'etat of modem history, destroyed the enemies of his reforms in the flagrant act of their sedition, the Sultan Mahmoud pursued interiorly his great conceptions of toleration and general assimilation of the East to the West. Prejudices of fanaticism were burned with the bodies of the Janizaries. The Ottoman empire was about to have her Peter the Great, after having had her Strelitz.

Europe then committed the mistake of sundering Greece, and burning the Turkish fleet to the advantage of the Russians. 1840, the date of an erroneous policy in France, a policy which we opposed by every eflfort in the tribune, made the mistake, still more unpardonable, of taking sides with an Egyptian Pacha in revolt against the Sultan. The French ministry menaced entire Europe with a war to farther mutilate the empire, already so enfeebled, and strip it of Egypt, Arabia, Syria along to the Taurus, and the isles. It were better to declare frankly the outlawry of Turkey, and to distribute to themselves the provinces of that empire. A European confederation would have at least retained the ground, and fortified the western world against Muscovite monopoly.

PBBFACE. 13

The victory of Ibrahim-Pacha at Nezib, encouraged by the thoughtless favor of the French government of 1840, caused the death of Mahmoud, and well-nigh gave up the Turkish empire to an adventurer, who would have sold it back to Russia. A cry of horror then arose from every thinking mind of France. The ministry, abandoned by public opinion, was obliged to recall our fleets, to acknowledge honorably its fault, and to make recantation. The confirmation of the Ottoman empire was signed at London, by the treaty of the 15th July. A gesture of Europe, and a few thousand Austrians landed in Syria, sufficed to turn into a rout the invasion of the Egyptian army of Ibrahim-Pacha, reputed invincible, and thrown back upon the banks of the Nile.

The Sultan Mahmoud died under the affliction of his disgrace, and the false policy of France in 1840; his son, Abdul-Medjid, received the empire in his cradle under better auspices. The reforms were accomplished, and the hatreds which are always excited by a reformer had died with Mahmoud.

No young sovereign has ever appeared more predestined by birth, by character, by even exterior, for the pacific reparation of an empire. The following is the faithful portrait which we drew of Abdul-Medjid, some years after, on retiring £rom a conversation with him. Thousands of witnesses all over Europe could attest that this description borrows nothing from either favor or illusion.

Abdul-Medjid made appointment to receive us in the country, in a small pavilion of retreat wherein he loved to meditate, remote from the noise and pomp of his palaces of Stamboul. We copy from our notes of travel the description of the site and man.

14 PBEFAOS.

VI.

" After passing the desert hills which lie between Flam' mour and Constantinople, we descended on horseback to the bottom of a narrow valley, on the borders of a rivulet, in a bush-covered crossway^ formed by three or four pathways through the moist sand beneath the brushwood. We were conducted to the left, by the darkest of the pathways, towards an opening, at the bottom of which we perceived a square cottage, flat-roofed, and furnished with a single window, a house not much dissimilar to the parsonage of a poor country cur6 in our villages of the south of France. A flight of stairs consisting of three steps led from the side of the way to the exterior platform of the house. Some fine fruit-trees, planted in the garden in front of this cottage, threw around it their shade. Five or six ancient chestnut-trees, which have given its name to this valley, bespread their boughs above the roof. In front of the staircase, an imperceptible jet-d'eau, which sent its waters to a height not exceeding that of the domestic jasmines, tinkled melancholily in falling back into its stoneencircled basin, and served to water the flowers and vegetables round it. A kitchen-garden of a quarter of an acre lay below it. The descent to it consisted of five or six steps. A Turkish gardener and his family resided in a rustic hut, at some twenty paces distant from the Kiosk of the Sultan. The gardener and his children went to and fro along the walks, the hoe and the watering-pot in hand, as if they had been in a spot of their own, a thousand leagues from the eyes of their Fadisha. They paid us no attention. This was, however, the favorite Kiosk of the Sultan, the palace of leisure and of study of that master of a part of Asia, of Africa, of Europe, from Babylon to the Danube, and all along to Tunis, and from Thebes to Belgrade in Servia. We stood at his door, and might imagine ourselves on the threshold of a poor hermit, living retired upon an acre of the paternal tenement, in front of his valley, on the borders of his wilderness.

PBEFAOB. 15

VII.

" Abdul-Medjid had not yet arrived. The peasant keeper of the place threw open to us a wooden gate. He led ns, in passing to the garden, in front of the door of the Kiosk. The door was laid open to give ingress to the air, the coolness, and the murmuring of the fountain. We threw, in passing, a furtive glance on the interior. It was merely an empty hall between four walls painted in oil of a grayish tint, a pebble-stone pavement in mosaic, a divan covered with cloth of white cotton around the hall, a large window half-masked by the enormous trunk of one of the chestnuts, a small basin murmuring with the distillations of a jet-d^eau in the middle of a pavement in mosaic. No furniture, no ornaments ; the pavilion was adorned but with its solitude, its murmuring waters and its grateful shade. The Mussulmans born in the mountains and valleys of Asia, the sons of shepherds, have brought with them into their very palaces the memory, the images, the passion of rural nature; they love her too much to bedeck her. A woman, a horse, a weapon, a fountain, a tree, — such are the five paradises of the children of Othman. •

" On entering the Kiosk, I looked around for the Sultan. He was standing almost invisible in the shade between the door and window, at the comer the least lighted of the room. The Sultan Abdul- Medj id is a young man of &om twenty-six to twenty-seven years old, of an appearance rather more mature than his age. His figure is tall, elegant, and slim. He bears his head with that gracefulness at once supple and noble, which the length of neck gives to the bust of Alexander in his early youth. The features are regular, the forehead high, the eyes blue, the eyebrows arched as in the Caucasian races, the nose straight, the lips well cut and parted ; the chin, that foundation of character in the human countenance, is firm and well set ; the aggregate leaves an

16 PBEFACE.

impression rather attractive than imposing ; you feel a man who wishes to be loved rather than to be feared : he has the timidity of modesty in his general air, melancholy on the lips, and a precocious lassitude in the attitude ; you perceive that this young man has thought and suffered before his time. But the feature that predominates is grave and meditative sensibility. You say to yourself: This man carries something weighty and holy in his thoughts, like the interests of a people, and he feels the weight and the sanctity of the burden. Nothing of youth, nothing of levity in the expression. It is the statue of a young pontiff, rather than a young sovereign. The countenance inspires a certain tenderness of heart. You are haunted with the thought despite yourself : that here is a man sacrificed to supreme power, ^ho is young, handsome, all-powerful, who will be doubtless great, but who will be never free, never without care, never happy. You pity, you love him, for amid his greatness he feels visibly his responsibility. Every man in his empire may be happy except himself. The throne has taken him in his cradle.

'^ His apparel was simple, uniform, almost a mourning suit : a tunic of dark drab reaching down to the knees, the neck bare, a loose linen pantaloons over dark-colored halfboots, a sabre without ornament on the hilt. His countenance alone could have discovered him to the crowd. I felt moved, attracted, affected by that melancholy of his majesty

" While I was speaking to him he turned several times the pommel of his sword, upon which he was leaning, in his hand. He blushed and looked down as if he had the bashfulness of his virtue. We attended him to the examination that he went to make in person of the military youth in an adjoining institution

*^ What a destiny, perhaps unique in history, said I on leaving to my companions, is that of this young man whom

PBEFACB. 17

we have just seen occupied with the regeneration of a people ! How many a prayer in how many a tongue is offered up for him to Allah at each day's end that he thus devotes to his noble duties ! How many an invocation to the divine Master of kings and peoples, that it be given to this sovereign to reunite the East to Europe, the Mussulman world to the Christian world, in tolerance and unity as they are evidently joined in his heart 1 It is not sufficient to be good and great, said we, without being also king ; it is not all to be a sovereign, without being also young ; and it is not all to be good, great, a sovereign and young, without being understood, supported, and loved by one's age. Abdul-Medjid is all that. May heaven bless in him the forty million souls, the continents, the seas, the islands, the mountains, the rivers which are dependent on his sway."

Let us be pardoned this citation. But at a moment when we are going to portray the early Sultans who founded the empire, it was necessary to depict the latest of these sons of the Othman line, transformed into a philosopher, in Abdul-Medjid.

VIII.

Such is the prince, innocent, studious, pacific, whom Asia and Europe were admiring in his labors for the civilization and happiness of his subjects without distinction of race or of creed, and who was forming around him by his example, men worthy of such a sovereign, when Bussia, with a sentiment which we leave conscience to pronounce upon, sent him a proconsul, rather than an ambassador, to outrage him in his palace, an army to sustain these outrages, and a fleet to set fire to his vessels and his harbors.

But what was the crime of Abdul-Medjid ? Here it is : In civilizing his people he strengthened them, and advanced them from year to year in the alliance and the manners of the West. He was preparing to realize more fully day by

18 PBEFACS.

day the sublime progress expressed in his name by the ministers of his head and heart : — '^ To make the political, civily and religiotis conditions so eqtud between Mussulmen and Christians of every denomination throughout the empire, that there no longer would be under the laws of the Sultan but one and the same people under different races and religions. In a wordy to nationalize all the fragments of natiotis that cover the soil of Turkey by so much impartiality , amenity y equality and toleration^ that each of these populations should find its honor ^ its conscience^ its security, interested in concurring towards the maintenance of the empire in a species of monarchical confederation under the au^nces of the SuZtan^ — (Words of Abdul-Medjid.)

The heart of Europe was responding to these words, the facts were beginning universally to realize them. Visit Smyrna, Constantinople, Syria, Lebanon ; enter the monasteries, the hospitals, the churches, the schools of both sexes, directed by men and women of all the monastic orders who devote themselves to the assuagement of human infirmities or to religious instruction, from the Sisters of Charity to the Lazarists, and ask these countless pious establishments, if they ever experience a failure of favor or of protection. They will all answer you with blessings upon the benevolent Ottoman's son the Sultan. There is not a town in France where conscience and its works are more inviolable and more favored than in those capitals, in those towns, in those regions to the south and north of Lebanon. It is not in the Turkish empire that we should look for martyrs. All the sorts of liberty are intimately bound together. The European knows too well what liberty of conscience is brought by Eussia at the point of her bayonets to the East and to the West.

PREFACE. 19

IX.

The entire world felt an interest in the pacific accomplishment of the designs of Abdal-Medjid in his dominions. It saw besides, in the regeneration of the Ottoman empire, in the discipline and military science of its army, a vanguard and an embankment against the nniyeieal overflow of Russia. We ourselves, charged one day in a storm, to guard the foreign interests of France, gave her ambassador to Constantinople this summary but categorical instruction, in the midst of the conflagration of Europe : " Do by no means provoke a war between Turkey and Eussia : dissuade the Ottoman government from all aggression upon Russians. But if Russia should dare to profit by the consternation of Europe to attack or to threaten the Ottoman empire, say to the Sultan that France is the bounden ally of Turkey, and that he can for his defence dispose not only of the fleets, but of the armies of France, as he would do of his own. In case of war made by Russia upon the Ottoman empire, the sure alliance, because it is natural, is the triple alliance of France, of England, and of the Ottoman empire."

Russia heard these words, she kept still ; Turkey did not abuse the declaration of France, she did not provoke Russia. The war seemed to await at St. Petersburg some mysterious opportunity which might give it the pretext of fanaticism for the great murder which it meditated. France committed a fault in stirring up unseasonably the question of the Holy Places — a diplomatic puerility which negotiators without business amuse themselves by agitating from time to time, when they know not what else to do, at the instigation of some Italian or Spanish monks in a perpetual roar of precedence with some Byzantine brothers.

We will not relate those quarrels, fit only for a sexton, about places on the floor or at the porch, about sacristy van-

20 PBEFACE.

ities, about hours of worship, and keys. The thing is too pitifal. One drop of the world's blood is worth more than all these monkish arrogances, and these jealousies of pilgrims. ' The truth is, that the Turks alone maintain police, impartiality, respect and peace about these sanctuaries ; the truth is, that the bloody contentions of Greeks and Latins have several times well-nigh set on fire, sacked and annihilated the Holy Places for which they battled. We speak here of nothing but what we have witnessed.

On seeing stirred up this silly question of the Holy Places, which should not be touched, we foresaw easily what was about to happen. It was indubitable that Russia, on seeing France move this question at Constantinople, would feel obliged, in order to maintain and increase her Grrseco-orthodox popularity in the East, to try herself some noisy manifestation of religious protection that would make the Greeks of Asia say, " And we too, we have a patron at Moscow I " Hence the collision between the ambassador of the Czar and the government of the Sultan.

Nevertheless, it must be said, in exoneration of the French government, as soon as it perceived that its pretension, rather monkish than political, to the monopoly of the Holy Places, was a bad example set to Eussia, and that a war might well arise out of that sepulchre of a God of peace, the French government made haste to stifle this pretext for discord. It withdrew wisely its exorbitant exigencies, it moderated its notes, it interpreted them, it gave ample satisfaction to Russia, it returned to the common law of nations, and the equality of protection assured by the Divan to the establishments and pilgrimages of the Holy Places. We cannot but approve in this particular the French government, in having thus removed all plausible occasion of war. A diplomatic

PBEFAOE. 21

impertinence and a monastic intrigue are scarcely woriliy of disturbing the peace of the world.

XL

But that was not the game of Russia. Finding no longer in the question of the Holy Places a sparkle wherewith to kindle the conflagration of the East, Russia resolved to demand of the Sultan an enormity so impossible to obtain, that the refusal would be certain, and that this refusal, construed by her into an offence, would furnish her a pretext for the invasion of Turkey.

And what was this enormity ? Quite simply the abdication of the independence and the sovereignty of the Sultan, a share in his empire, and that share the lion's portion. In a word, she asked that Abdul-Medjid should recognize the Czar (as formerly the debased Cassars used to do at Constantinople) as colleague in the empire. The Czar demanded that twelve millions of Greek subjects living under the laws and upon the soil of the Sultan, should be placed under the foreign protection of the emperors of Russia, in such a manner that these twelve millions of men would have two masters upon Turkish soil, a nominal master at Constantinople, and a great armed and crowned tribune at St. Petersburg ; a tribune to whom they would not fail to make appeal on all occasions from the orders and the government of the nominal sovereign. This promiscuousness of government, demanded thus by Russia, and limited in appearance to the religious interests of twelve millions of Greeks, was so much the more exorbitant that the civil and religious code being, in Turkey, blent in one, every civil question becomes instantly a religious question, at the will of the appellants to Russo- Greek protection. It was the crowned pope of Russia, at the head of seven hundred thousand men, thundering sovereign bulls upon the head of the Divan.

22 PBEFACE.

The empire, on this condition, wonld no longer be an empire ; it would be the worst of seryitudes; for the Saltan, become vassal to the Ozar, wonld not have had even the benefit of his* degradation. Placed at Constantinople between an imperions colleague who would impose upon him his orders from St. Petersburg, and the subjects emancipated from his decrees throughout his dominions, the Sultan would have been the laughing-stock of sovereigns. Better abdicate a thousand times and regain with his Ottoman subjects the valleys of Iconium or the steppe wastes of Tartary. But no, there was something better than this to be done ; it was to appeal to the justice and the indignation of Europe ; to rush to arms, to conquer or to die in defence of the honor of his race, his name, his people, his rights, the independence and dignity of all the other thrones in his,

This is what he did, this is what he does for ten months back, to the astonishment and admiration of the world. Kussia has aroused, by the excess of insult and iniquity, the Ottoman nation. Indignation has formed anew a people of patriots and warriors from a people who were thought to be benumbed in fatalism ; this people is fatalist, undoubtedly ; but fatalist in the manner of heroes, it determines its own destiny I

The whole world is observing attentively that war, wherein a nation without disciplined troops, without finances, without administration, without fleets, without the habits of modem warfare, almost without arms, and voluntarily without pay, struggles desperately and so far miraculously on their Thermopylae of the Danube, against the inexhaustible and irresistible armies of the Persians of the north. An empire thus defended cannot perish. The Kussians imagined they were burying a people ; they have only occasioned its resurrection ; and by a prodigy which it was reserved to our times to contemplate — a prodigy explained by the humane tolerance of the Turks, and by the persecuting prosely tism of the

PBEFAOS. 23

Ozars — Oatholio Christendom itself desires snccess to the Ottomans, liberalism itself demands to fight for the Sultan. For the Turks are at this moment taking Europe quite aback, in the expression of Napoleon at St. Helena : they are fighting in reality for Christianity, and defending on the Danube the liberty of the universe.

XII.

France and England, too long entangled by wily negotiations, hear at last this cry of distress. The powers move to aid the oppressed against the* oppressors. It is late, but there will be time, if the assistance be not unequal to the gravity of the danger of Europe. Greek intrigues in the G-erman courts have subserved Bussia, and clogged England even to the very secret of her councils. The rough hand of the English people has torn away these cobwebs. Future negotiations will be determined but by the sword.

We do not blame either France or England, for having pushed to tame temporization their efforts to preserve the peace of the world. We abhor a war of iniquity, a war of ambition, a war of system, a war of caprice, even a war of precipitation. But here the war is not, before God or man, a war ; this war is nothing else than the defence of peace. There are times when the soundest principles, assailed by brute violence, need to arm themselves and to present bayonets, as the ultimate argument of peace and humanity.