Turkey, Greece and the great powers; a study in friendship and hate

Part I

CHAP. PAGE

I The Little Dogs and the Lion . . . . i II France and the Turks .... 17

III Russia and the Turks 54

IV England and the Turks . . . . . 76

V The Germanic Powers and Turkey . . . 167 VI Turkey's Choice ...... 194

PART II I Greece and the Powers . . . . .201 II Renascence ....... 243

III England and Greece . . . . . . 274

IV France and Greece . . . . . .318

V Russia and Greece . . . . . • 33 1 VI The Germanic Powers and Greece . • . 342

Full titles of the books most frequently cited in the following pages : —

"3usbe<3uius : The Four Epistles of Augerius Gislenius Busbequius, Concerning his Embassy into Turkey. Done into English. London : 1694.

Hakluyt : The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation. By Richard Hakluyt. Glasgow : 1903-5.

Hammer : Histoire de l' Empire Ottoman. Par J. de Hammer. Traduit de VAllemand par J. J. Hellert. Paris : 1 835-1 843.

Holland : Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly, Macedonia, etc., during the years 1812 and 1813. By Henry Holland. London : 1815.

Porter : Observations on the Religion, Law, Government, and Manners of the Turks. By Sir James Porter. Second Edition to which is added The State of the Turkey Commerce Considered from its Origin to the Present Time. London : 1771.

Purchas : Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes. By Samuel Purchas. Glasgow : 1905-7.

Ricaut : The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire. By Sir Paul Ricaut. Sixth Edition. London : 1686.

Thevenot : The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant. Newly done out of French. London : 1687.

Tournefort : A Voyage into the Levant. By M. Tournefort. London : 1741.

Vll

PART I Chapter I

" r I ^HEY are proud, esteeming themselves above all other nations . . . and, indeed, they despise all other nations in general, and especially those who are not of their religion . . . and they commonly call Christians dogs." 1 These words, written about 1655, faithfully depict the Turk's habitual attitude towards the European. All Western visitors to the Ottoman Empire, from the sixteenth century onwards, however widely they may differ in their general estimates of the Turk's character, agree in testifying to this particular trait in his mentality. 2

Some attribute it to religious fanaticism, others to national conceit. But those who call the Turk a fanatic forget that the non-Moslem communities under his rule have alwaj^s enjoyed a measure of toleration such as infidels have seldom experienced in Christian States.

1 Thevenot, i. 59. 2 Cp. Busbequius, 40; Porter, 249.

Nor is the average Turk, inherently, more conceited than any other human being. The truth seems to be that his overweening contempt for us was the product of circumstances rather than of nature. It was created, not by the influence of one cause, but by the combination of many.

In the first place, as the Sultans, until a comparatively recent date, did not keep permanent ambassadors at foreign courts, the Turk, while cherishing a very high opinion of his own importance, possessed but the vaguest ideas on the importance of other nations. Of the strength which consists in extent of territory and in number of fighting men he knew something ; of the strength which is derived from other than material springs he had no conception. Nor did the presence of numerous Europeans in the Ottoman Empire help to correct this erroneous perspective. The profound difference in morals and manners that separated all foreigners from the Turk, and the ignorance of each other's language which precluded direct and free social intercourse, were calculated not to remove but to foster prejudice. The Turk, while conscious of his own virtues, had no means of discovering the virtues of other people. What he saw were their vices. The insobriety of the Franks, their bitter animosities, and other weaknesses of an equally obvious description, inspired him with scorn and deepened an antipathy that had its origin in the inevitable antagonism between the Mohammedan invaders of Europe and Christendom.

The nations which had neglected, through their disunion, to save Constantinople, did not easily resign themselves to its loss. Even after the Popes had got tired of preaching holy wars against the enemies of God, many Christian potentates continued to nourish the dream of chasing them back to the continent whence they came. The knights of Malta never ceased to plunder the ships of the Grand Signor's subjects and to enslave their crews ; thus keeping the old flame of hatred, kindled by the Crusades, alive — reminding the Turk that there could be no peace between Christendom and Islam. And it must be remembered that the knights of Malta were a body composed of representatives of every European nation and supported by revenues drawn from every European country. These efforts irritated the Turk, while their futility lowered his opinion of their authors and strengthened his belief in his own superiority. Whenever the danger of a coalition of the Christian Powers against Turkey was mentioned to the Sultan's Ministers, they laughed, comparing their own sovereign to a Hon and the kings of other nations to little dogs, " which," they said, " may serve to rouse and discompose the quiet and majesty of the lion but can never bite him." *

Thus a little knowledge and a great ignorance conspired to implant in the Turk's mind a habit of insolence, which grew with the growth of his power, which, as is the way of such habits, survived its root, and which for more than two hundred years cost the Europeans who had dealings with him many sorrows.

The various Frank colonies in Turkey lived, until the other day, under the protection of special treaties — known by the name of Capitulations — which enabled them to retain their nationality as long as they chose, to be governed by their own ambassadors and consuls without any interference from the Ottoman judicial authorities, and to conduct their business on clearly

1 Ricaut, 171.

defined terms. The Turk had found this system already established in the Greek Empire, and adopted it as he adopted so many other Byzantine customs, good and bad. It was an arrangement which, scrupulously observed, guaranteed to foreign residents privileges and immunities not only incomparably greater than any known to the Sultan's Christian subjects, but even greater than those which Frenchmen, Englishmen, and other Europeans enjoyed in their own countries. But the Turks were pleased to regard the Capitulations as mere tokens of the Grand Signor's magnanimity — to be observed at his discretion, to be interpreted according to his convenience, and to be withdrawn at his caprice.

In the circumstances, it is not surprising to find that his officials, from the highest to the lowest, looked upon the Frank merchants in their midst as fair game. Arbitrary demands, often supported by false charges (avanias), were of almost daily occurrence. When the victims complained of these infringements of their rights to the Porte, they were told : "Do you not breathe the Sultan's air, and will you pay nothing for the privilege ? "

The ambassadors at Constantinople soon learnt the utter uselessness of appealing to treaties or tribunals in a land where might was right, and, unless their Governments were prepared to go to war, they had nothing else to appeal to : nothing, except the oppressor's cupidity. Similia similibus curantur : the love of gold which prompted the injury was made to remedy it. The annals of European diplomacy in Turkey reek with bakshish. There is not one Western representative of any nationality or epoch who has not left on record his faith in this homoeopathic treatment. The Imperial envoy Busbecq found in the sixteenth century that " there is no other way of treating with a Turk but by opening the purse-strings, as soon as any Christian comes among them ; neither must he think to shut them again, till he go out of their country. . . . Without this open-handedness there were no more living among them, for strangers, than in the most desolate and uninhabited places. . . . But with the bait of liberality you may catch a Turk at any time " (39-40). A hundred years later our honest Ricaut, after stating that " this way of negotiating by presents and gratuities is so much in custom amongst the Turks that, to speak truly, scarce anything can be obtained without it," proceeds to advise foreign ministers how to bribe " with honour, decency, and advantage " — to wit : " There are, and have always been, two or three powerful persons in this Court, which in all times carry the principal sway and command of all.

These must necessarily be treated with respect and often sweetened with gratuities : he that hath money may doubtless make friends when he needs them, and with that secure his Capitulation and his privilege, purchase justice, and if his stock will hold out, act anything that can reasonably be imagined " (171). A hundred years later still, the English Ambassador Porter sings the praises of " the soothing palliative of a golden unction : this never fails of success," and, speaking of the Capitulations specifically, observes : " the only way to support them is by prudence, and a circumspect behaviour : and a constant annual expense of presents " (229, 232). Even when an Imperial decree was obtained, ordering the local authorities to make redress, it did not follow that it would be obeyed. The spoliation of the Franks had come to be considered not so much a venial sin as a natural process, hallowed by venerable tradition : the very persons who condemned it openly, in secret condoned it. Often the document contained " private marks, which signified ' Do as you will,', or ' Let it lie by.' " x In brief, after purchasing a favourable verdict from the Sultan, you could only have it executed by purchasing the good will of his pashas on the spot. The meekness with which the Powers of Europe bore this oppression naturally tended to perpetuate it. The Turk's appetite for bribes, stimulated by gratification, became more and more exacting as time went on, and his insolence, encouraged by the Frank's " prudence," attained such dimensions that the surprising thing is, not that the treaties were so systematically violated, but that they were observed at all. No doubt the Turk's own prudence set a limit to his rapacity, and he chose to shear rather than to slay the sheep that grew the golden fleece.

Similar vexations and extortions were inflicted upon the Franks who travelled about the country. On every road they encountered officers who levied arbitrary and exorbitant duties, ostensibly for maintaining the highways in good repair and guarding them against rogues and robbers ; but, " instead of being a safeguard, prove the greatest rogues and robbers themselves," writes a plaintive English parson of the seventeenth century. 2 Private Turks copied the manners of the public functionaries. One English traveller tells how on his journey from Nicosia to Famagusta he met four Turks who demanded that he should give them his mount. He refused, and they in revenge pulled him out of the saddle by the heels, beat him " most pitifully " and left him on the road " almost for dead." * The very

1 Porter, 240.

3 Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, 1697, (Early Travels in Palestine, Ed. by T. Wright), 386. Cp. the experiences of the French botanist Tournefort in Armenia about the same time, iii. 99.

3 William Lithgow (1614), in Purchas, x. 478.

muleteers were able to rob their European employers with perfect impunity, 3 and the "Tartars" to take liberties with the persons they escorted. 2

The city rabble always and everywhere made a point of flouting the European passer-by, jeering at him, pelting him with rubbish, jostling him, striking off his hat, and sometimes knocking him down, just for pleasure. 3 Such were the conditions under which the Franks lived even in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Much harder was their lot in towns distant from the seat of the Sultan's authority. Among these Cairo and Alexandria, perhaps, carried off the palm for brutality.

In those Eastern cities the Franks occupied among the Moslems the position which the Jews occupied among the Christians in Western cities. They dwelt in a sort of Ghetto : a Khan which was " locked up by the Turkes at noones and at nights, for fear that the Franks should suffer or offer any outrage." 4

Every Frank was obliged to dismount when he met in the street a Turk of quality : if he did not do so voluntarily, the great man's cavases would drag him off by force and drub him with their cudgels. But to be a blackguard it was not necessary to be a man of quality : it was enough to be a Moslem. Any follower of the Prophet might spit into a Christian's face, belabour him with his stick, even stab him with a knife. The Frank dared not express his resentment by a look, much less defend himself. The least attempt at self-defence was enough to bring upon him a false charge of assault ; and in Turkish law to lift a hand against a True Believer

1 George Sandys (1610), in Purchas, viii. 235.

8 Sandys, 108 ; A Picturesque Tour through part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, by an Italian Gentleman (Constantinople, Dec. 1788), 144. 4 Sandys, vi. 186.

was a crime that could only be expiated by the amputation of the offending limb. Or the accusation might take the favourite form of an indictment for blasphemy against the Mohammedan religion : a crime for which a Christian was given the option between cremation and conversion to Islam. All these charges, however, could be compounded for by money, which sufficiently accounts for their popularity ; and if the individual concerned was too poor, the whole community to which he belonged had to pay for him. 1

In times of public festivity, such as the Bairam, when the lower classes of the Turkish population abandoned themselves to boisterous rejoicings, it was particularly unsafe for a European to show himself abroad. No matter what his rank might be, he was sure to fall a victim to the insolence, if not to the violence, of the mob. 2 Even the ambassadors at Constantinople at such times did not escape insult. Often a Turk would cross the street to give them a push, accompanied with the common epithet of detestation and contempt " Giaour ! " and they found it impossible to obtain from the Ottoman Government satisfaction, or even a bare expression of sympathy. When once an ambassador complained to the Porte, he was curtly told that it was his fault : " ambassadors should not expose themselves in a crowd, but acquaint the Porte when they have business abroad, and then they would be properly secured from insult." s They would be secured by a guard of Janissaries ; but, we are told, " the Janissaries even, who attend the

1 See Thevenot, i. 252-255. " Of the Franks that live in Egypt, and the Avanies which are put upon them ' ' ; James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (3rd. Ed. 1813) i. 101 ; vi. 531-534-

* Thevenot, i. 46, 63 ; Maundrell, 412 ; Tournefort, i. 47.

» Porter, 156.

ambassadors, have so little respect for their masters that they never rise when they pass by." *

Indeed, nowhere can the disdain in which the Christian Powers were held by the Turk be more clearly seen than in the treatment meted out to their official representatives. The humiliations to which those august personages were subjected by the Sultan and his Ministers until our grandfathers' time would be incredible to us if it were not for the unanimous evidence of a cloud of witnesses. Those humiliations grew in severity as the Turk's spirit grew in arrogance, and it is hard to say which of the two things affords more food for wonder : the Turk's capacity for inflicting, or the Frank's for enduring, contumely. The progress of this growth can easily be traced.

When the Ambassador of the Duke of Milan presented himself to Murad II at Adrianople in 1433, he was received with all the courteous affability to which the envoy of a friendly prince was entitled. The Sultan, we read, rose from his couch, descended two of the four or five steps of the dais, and taking him by the hand, asked how his good brother and neighbour the Duke fared in health. After answering, the ambassador was conducted back to his seat, and the Sultan waited for him to sit down before he reseated himself. 2

In significant contrast to this stand all the narratives of ambassadorial audiences subsequent to the capture of Constantinople. Upon reaching the capital, the foreign

1 A Picturesque Tour, etc., 146.

2 Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, Travels during the years 1432 and 1433. {Early Travels in Palestine, ed. by T. Wright, 351). Of course, I assume that the good Bertrandon is speaking the truth, and not letting his pride as a Christian run away with his honesty as an historian.

io TURKEY, GREECE AND THE GREAT POWERS

envoy was first received by the Grand Vizier, who lolled on his sofa, while the guest had to sit on a stool. After a few stereotyped phrases of welcome, the customary compliments of the caftan (robe of honour), sweetmeats, coffee, sherbet, and perfume were presented to him. But the moment he rose to go, the Grand Vizier and his attendants clapped their hands in derision, and two officers, placing themselves on either side of the departing guest, attempted to make him turn round and bow to the Vizier, who never stirred off his corner on the sofa. An ambassador poor in spirit might be surprised into compliance ; but he who had a proper sense of what was due to his character stiffened his back and kept on his way, pulling along the officers. In this undignified fashion His Excellency reached the door, and was hustled and hissed out of the room.

Next came the audience with the Grand Signor himself— an ordeal which made this preliminary mortification pale into almost a pleasant memory. The time appointed for the ambassador's transit across the Golden Horn, from Pera to Stambul, was the dawn, or even an hour before daybreak. On landing with his suite, he was conducted to a mean house destined for that purpose, and climbing up a staircase that was no better than a ladder, was ushered into a room " fit rather for the reception of a Polish Jew than for a man of his dignity." * After waiting for some time in that miserable chamber, he was informed that the Grand Vizier had sent word that he was ready to start for the Palace. He climbed down the ladder, mounted his horse, and the cavalcade proceeded at a slow pace to the Vizier's door. Whether it rained, hailed, or snowed, the ambassador and his suite had to remain on horseback in the street, to watch the 1 Porter, 163.

THE LITTLE DOGS AND THE LION n

Vizier's stately procession, and to salute him and his whole cortege as they went past. When they were near the gate of the Palace, the ambassador was allowed to advance slowly in the same direction. On his arrival, he was shown into the Divan, or Council Chamber, where he found the Vizier lolling, as usual, on a sofa, while he was placed, as usual, on a backless, rickety old stool in the middle of the room. Upon that seat he remained for at least two hours, hearing the discussion of cases he did not understand. If it was a pay-day for the Janissaries — and it generally was, for the Turks chose that day in order to impress the foreign visitor with the strength and wealth of their Empire — he was entertained with the sight of over two thousand yellow bags of money told out and distributed to the soldiery. This performance lasted at least four hours ; so that, to quote the same martyr again, "in a cold day, without a furred coat, his very vitals may freeze, and at any time the spine of his back must suffer cruelly, for he has nothing to lean against to support or ease it."

A lightning-speed banquet followed : fifty dishes laid on the table one after another at half-minute intervals, and whisked off almost untasted. The Grand Signor looked upon this performance, unseen, through a lattice, and as soon as it was over, adjourned to the audience-room. Thereupon the ambassador, preceded by the Chaoush- Bashi or Captain of the Guard, who acted as Master of the Ceremonies, with all his officers, and followed by his own suite, marched out into the court-yard. But before he had gone far he was stopped and made to sit down under a tree — on a bench consisting of a single board on which at other times grooms, ostlers, and scullions lounged (" though," remarks Sir James Porter, " it sometimes serves them for less decent purposes"). On that bench, whether wet or dry, clean or dirty, His Excellency and attendants sat and were invested with their robes of honour ; after which, two Capuji-bashis seized each of them by the shoulders and marched them across the courtyard, followed by the gifts which the ambassador had brought for the Sultan. At the door of the audience-room the gifts were handed over to the officers appointed to receive them, who carried them in, holding them above their heads as high as they could, so that the Grand Signor and his whole Court might see them.

At a certain distance from the lofty and canopied sofa on which sat the Sultan — turbaned, bejewelled, and cross-legged — the two Capuji-bashis, laying their hands upon the ambassador's neck, forced him to bend thrice, until his forehead almost touched the ground (" wiped the dust of the sublime threshold with his face," is the pleasant expression used by the Turkish historians) ; then, raising him up again, they retired to the farther end of the room. The ambassador, left standing, delivered a brief address in his own language, which the Dragoman translated into Turkish. The Grand Signor put on what a seventeenth century narrator describes as " a most severe, terrible, stately look," and, according to another witness, " eyed the ambassador askew," while turning an ostentatiously listless ear to his oratory. Next the ambassador's credentials were handed to the Grand Vizier, who laid them reverently upon the cushion on the Sultan's right hand. The Sultan would cast a scornful glance at the royal message and say a few words to the Vizier, who would advance to the middle of the room and answer the ambassador with some formal banalities, which the Dragoman interpreted. If the Grand Signor happened to be in an exceptionally sulky mood, this answer was compressed into the single word

" Giuzel — good." And the audience was over — in less than five minutes. 1

The poor Excellency was at last free to take his wearybones away. He returned home physically exhausted, mentally disgusted, indignant or chastened, according to individual temperament — to write to his friends in Europe how overrated was the glory of representing a Christian Majesty at the Moslem Court, to give vent to his rage in impotent anathemas against the Unspeakable Turk, or, more often, to pretend that nothing disagreeable had happened to him. 2

In sad harmony with this initial abasement was the ambassador's treatment throughout his residence at Constantinople. It was incessantly repeated to him that he lived there on sufferance, and that the hospitality he enjoyed, such as it was, would cease the moment the

1 The Rev. John Covel timed Sir John Finch's audience, in 1674, by his pulse, and found that it took exactly 248 beats. Diary, 266. Half a century before, Sir Thomas Roe summed up the performance in one sentence : "I spake to a dumb image." Negotiations in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte (1621-1628), 37.

2 All these varieties of idiosyncracy can be found reflected in the numerous accounts of ambassadorial receptions left to us. For instance, Ricaut, with unconscious humour, adds to his narrative the following comment : "This was the manner of the audience given to the Earl of Winchilsea, when Ambassador there for His Majesty, and is the form used to others who come from a Prince equally honoured and respected," 160. In reading other descriptions we must bear in mind Sir James Porter's warning : " Personal vanity, or national pride, has not permitted Christian writers to set this ceremonial in its true light ; nay, some ambassadors have been for softening and palliating the worst of its indecorum," 169. However, in fairness to the Turk, it should be noted that this offensive treatment was not of his own invention. He copied it from the Greeks, who in their turn seem to have borrowed it from the Persians. Both in its spirit and in many of its details the ritual described above has its prototype in the ceremonies of the Byzantine Court. (See Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. liii.) All that the Turk did was to better the instruction.

Porte conceived the least suspicion of his friendliness. Negotiations between him and the Sultan's headstrong and hot-tempered ministers frequently degenerated into altercations. On such occasions the best policy for the envoy who valued his self-respect was, not to attempt to reason, but to possess his soul in patience, opposing to the pashas' passionate vehemence all the imperturbability at his command, and ending with the one argument to which no Turk ever refused to listen. Infinitely worse became his position when there occurred any political incident calculated to rouse the wrath of the Porte against him personally, or against the Government which he represented.

The inviolability of the ambassadorial character forms part of Mohammedan as of all other international law, and the Turks themselves by their maxim, Elchi zaval yokdir (" Hurt not an ambassador "), acknowledged in theory the foreign agent's right to protection and respect. But in practice they allowed themselves considerable latitude of interpretation. It was suspected that European envoys had a greater liberty of action than they admitted — that they were empowered to bargain as plenipotentiaries. To get, therefore, out of them the full measure of their capacity for giving, the Sultan's ministers had recourse to the most revolting methods. Their diplomacy consisted in flying into a passion, covering the ambassador with the coarsest abuse, and soon passing from invective to threats, or, if the ambassador was not very careful, even to blows. But the worst came when all the resources of diplomacy were exhausted. The Turkish idea was that an ambassador was not only a spokesman for his Government, but also a surety for its good behaviour. He was a hostage in the Grand Signor's hands. Accordingly, as soon as they decided on hostilities with a European Power, they began the war by assaulting its representative. The wretched ambassador was seized and cast into the Seven Towers — an ancient Byzantine fortress which after the capture of Constantinople had become a kind of Ottoman Bastille. Sometimes the captive might, by dint of powerful influence exerted on his behalf, seconded by enormous bakshish, succeed in getting himself transferred to a less hideous jail, or he might be granted the alternative of accompanying the Ottoman armies in their campaigns against his own country — " as a barbarous trophy in the time of their successes and as a means at hand to reconcile and mediate when evil fortune compels them to composition," says Ricaut. But as a rule he was kept in the Seven Towers as long as the war lasted, the harshness of his confinement varying with the vicissitudes of the Sultan's arms. It was in vain that friends and foes alike cried out against such a barbarous practice : the Lion took no heed of the barkings of dogs which could not bite. 1

To sum up : Until a long succession of misfortunes

1 The last victim of this brutal custom was the aged French Ambassador, who on news of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt reaching the Porte (August 2, 1798) was thrown into the fortress and remained there for three years. The first diplomatist to taste the pleasure of being given a passport instead of a prison-cell was the Russian Ambassador Italinsky (Dec. 14, 1806) — thanks to the energetic efforts of Napoleon's representative Sebastiani and of his English colleague Arbuthnot, who, somehow, managed to co-operate in a matter concerning the common dignity of all Powers. Thus ended, at last, a disgrace to which Europe had the folly and the meanness to submit for over two centuries. It is interesting to note that so late as 1877 the idea of reviving the custom for the benefit of the Russian Charge d'Affaires, though not seriously discussed, was actually hinted at by some of the Turkish Ministers : See Nelidow's " Souvenirs d'avant et d'apres la Guerre de 1 877-1878," in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1915, p. 277.

beat the Sultans into a sort of sullen civility, all European nations found in them rude and grasping hosts who knew no law but their own whims. No foreigner ever was a hero to the Turk. And yet there were few Turks who did not entertain, behind their insolent attitude towards all the foreigners with whom they came in touch, a mental reservation that some of them were more vile than others. Essentially, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Russians, and Germans might all be dogs ; but there are degrees of caninity. To trace these subtle differentiations to their historic sources, and to show their bearing upon the present European situation, will be my endeavour in the following pages.