fifth day of June--that is, in the season when the greater part of
the well-to-do population of Pera is out of town, spending the summer
in their country-houses on the Bosphorus--and at one o’clock, just
when the entire community, European as well, is shut up in-doors
taking the mid-day siesta. The only occupant of the house in the Rue
Feridee was an old female servant--the family having that very day
gone to the country--who, as soon as she discovered the fire, rushed
into the street and began to run, yelling “Fire!” at the top of
her lungs. People at once poured out of the neighboring houses with
buckets and little hand-pumps, the idiotic law prohibiting persons
from extinguishing a fire until the Serasker officials have arrived
upon the scene having already fallen into disuse, and flew of course
to the nearest fountain to have them filled. Now, the Pera fountains
are only open at certain hours of the day, when the water-carriers
who draw the supply for the families of the vicinity can have access
to them; once the distribution is over, they are closed and locked,
the keys being placed in charge of an official with orders not to
give them up “except on receipt of a notice from the authorities.”
At this very moment there lounged beside this particular fountain a
member of the Turkish municipal guard of Pera, with the keys in his
pocket, looking impassively on at the fire; the crowd surrounded him,
imploring him in excited tones to unlock the fountain; but this he
flatly refused to do, on the ground that he had received no orders to
that effect. They pressed closer, grew threatening, and finally laid
forcible hands upon him, on which he resisted, defending himself to the
best of his ability and declaring that they should never get the key
from him alive. In the mean time the flames had made great headway;
the original house was completely destroyed, and those next to it were
burning merrily. News of the fire had spread rapidly from quarter to
quarter; the watchmen on the summits of the Galata and Serasker towers
had hoisted the red balloons used in the day-time as fire-signals.
All the city guards were running through the streets, striking the
pavement with their long staves and raising the dreaded cry, “Yanghen
Vahr!” (There is a fire), in response to which was heard the hollow
beating of a thousand drums as all the barracks took the alarm. Then
three guns fired from Topkhâneh announced the news to every quarter of
the great city, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, and at that
sound the Seraskerat, the Seraglio, the foreign embassies, all Pera,
all Galata, were thrown into an uproar, and in a short space of time
the minister of war, accompanied by a crowd of officials, appeared in
the Rue Feridee, shortly followed by a troop of firemen eager for the
fray. But, as is almost always the case, their first efforts proved
wholly unavailing. The narrowness of the streets interfered with
their movements; the pumps would not work; the water-supply was both
insufficient and distant, while the undisciplined rabble of firemen
found it more to their interest to add to rather than allay the general
disorder, under cover of which they were able to appropriate many stray
pieces of property; and in addition to everything else it was found
that an Armenian festival, which was being celebrated at Beikos, had
drawn almost all the porters thither, so that hardly any were to be
found to transport the contents of the burning houses to places of
safety. It must be borne in mind that wooden houses were much more
generally the rule then in Constantinople than at present, even those
whose walls were of stone or brick being surmounted by a flimsy roof
but seldom protected by tiles, and consequently very easily ignited.
On this occasion there was not even the advantage of a population
of Mussulmans; apathetic and fatalistic as they are, even fire does
not arouse them to any great excitement, and consequently, although
of little or no help so far as putting it out is concerned, they at
least do not interfere by their own ill-directed efforts with what is
being done by others. Here the people were almost all Christians, who
immediately lost their heads: hardly had the fire spread beyond the
first few houses when the entire neighborhood became a scene of the
wildest, most indescribable confusion: furniture was thrown recklessly
out of upper windows; shrieks and lamentations rent the air; streets
were blocked up, and a general state of panic ensued, upon which
neither threats nor force availed to make the smallest impression.
Hardly one hour had elapsed from the time when the fire first broke
out before the Rue Feridee was in flames from one end to the other.
Officials and firemen beat a hasty retreat in all directions, sometimes
abandoning the bodies of the dead and injured in their flight, and
all hope vanished of stamping the fire out at its birth. Most
unfortunately, a high wind was blowing, and this carried the flames
from the burning buildings in horizontal sheets across the roofs of
the neighboring houses, like flapping tents of fire, so that they all
caught from above as though a volcano were being discharged upon them.
In this way the conflagration spread with fearful rapidity, and many
families who were still assembled in their homes, feeling that they
were perfectly secure for some time yet, and would be able to remove
at least a part of their belongings, were first made aware of their
danger by having the roof fall in, and barely had time to escape with
their lives. House after house caught as though smeared with pitch, and
instantly out of each of the innumerable little windows there poured a
torrent of flame, long winding sheets, curling and swaying from side
to side like great fiery serpents hungry for their prey, reaching down
and licking the very stones as though in search of human victims. The
fire did not seem to run, but rather fly, and, instead of enveloping
the objects in its path, flowed over them like an angry tide. From the
Rue Feridee it swept furiously down the Rue Tarla-Bashi, then turned
back to pour like a torrent through the Rue de Misc and enfold the
entire quarter of Agha-Dgiami as though it had been a forest of dead
trees; then the Rue Sakes-Agatshe, then that of Kalindgi-Kuluk, and
then street after street with terrifying rapidity until the entire
incline of Yeni-Sheir was wrapped in flames; and these met and mingled
with the blazing whirlwind which swept, roaring and bellowing, down
the Grande Rue de Pera. It was not even as though there had been a
thousand disconnected fires to extinguish, a thousand disorganized
enemies to vanquish, but rather as though each fresh conflagration were
the well-aimed stroke of some master mind controlling and directing all
his forces, and having no less object in view than the destruction of
the entire city, not one corner of which was to be allowed to escape.
The narrow streets were like so many streams of lava, which would
meet and swell into rivers or suddenly spread out into fiery lakes,
utterly incapable of being stopped or controlled by any one. At the
end of three hours half of Pera was in flames; a thousand columns of
smoke, red, blue, white, and black, swept over the houses, lightly
grazing the roofs, and extending as far as the eye could reach along
the hillsides, obscuring and transforming with sinister effect the
vast outskirts on the Golden Horn. In all directions could be seen
furious whirlwinds of cinders and sparks, while against the houses
still standing in the lower quarters of the city the wind beat showers
of sparks and bits of charred wood, blowing them about like so much
hail. In the burning quarters the streets were simply nothing less than
huge furnaces, covered on top with a thick awning of solid flame, and
constantly fed with pine wood from the Black Sea used for beams, the
light inflammable rafters of _ciardak_, balconies and wooden minarets
from the smaller mosques, all of which, falling in with a crackling,
splintering noise, sounded as though they were being torn in pieces
by an earthquake. Down those streets which were still passable flying
forms were seen of mounted lancers, illuminated by what might have been
the light of the infernal regions, as they galloped furiously in all
directions, carrying the orders of the Seraskerat; Seraglio officials
with bare heads and faces blackened with smoke; stray horses whose
riders had met with some accident; files of porters laden with all
manner of household goods; troops of howling dogs; gangs of homeless
fugitives stumbling and falling in their mad flight down the steep
inclines, blindly treading down the dead and injured, scaling the heaps
of débris, and disappearing finally amid fire and smoke like legions
of the damned. Once, at the opening of a burning street, the mounted
figure of Sultan Abdul-Aziz appeared for an instant, surrounded by
his court, pale as a ghost, staring with dilated eyes at the flames,
as though repeating to himself the memorable words of Selim I.: “This
is the fiery breath of my victims destined to consume my capital, my
seraglio, my very self!” A moment later he had disappeared amid a cloud
of smoke and cinders, followed by his courtiers.
[Illustration: Water Seller.]
All of the army stationed at Constantinople, in addition to the
innumerable brigades of firemen, were pressed into service, being
formed into long chains and immense semicircles, which, under the
direction of the viziers, officials of the court, pashas, and ulemas,
endeavored to surround whole quarters, or, by concentrating their
efforts upon some special spot, check the advance of the fire in that
direction. Row after row of buildings would fall in the space of a
few minutes; the roofs swarmed with intrepid men waging the unequal
conflict at close quarters, and ever and anon falling into the yawning
crater at their feet, only to be succeeded by others, as when some
daring attack is making upon a powerful enemy, sending up hoarse cries
and waving their singed fezzes in the midst of the smoke and flames.
But, notwithstanding all these efforts, the fire still advanced
triumphant, lit up the thousand streams of water directed against
it, and leaped at a bound across the gardens, open squares, small
cemeteries, and great stone buildings which lay in its path, forcing
back soldiers, firemen, and citizens on all sides, like an army in
retreat, and beating them about the shoulders as with red-hot muskets.
Yet even in all that frightful panic and confusion there were those
who preserved their self-possession sufficiently to perform noble acts
of heroism and devotion. White-veiled Sisters of Charity could be seen
in the midst of blazing ruins leaning over the prostrate forms of the
dying; Turks threw themselves into the flames and reappeared bearing
in their scorched and blackened arms the bodies of Christian children;
other Mussulmans were known to have stood, apparently unmoved, with
folded arms watching a burning house, and, while the families of
Christians around them, utterly beside themselves with fright, filled
the air with useless lamentations, would coldly offer a reward of a
hundred Turkish francs to any one who would rescue a European boy
who had failed to escape with the rest; and others, again, who made
it their business to look after the injured children whom they found
in the streets, binding up their wounds with strips torn from their
own turbans, and seeing that they were restored to their parents; and
still others who generously threw open their doors to the half-naked
fugitives; while more than one was seen to set an example of courage
and indifference to the things of this world by seating himself upon a
rug in front of his burning domicile, calmly smoking a narghileh, and
only moving farther off as the flames advanced.
But neither courage nor indifference, real or assumed, availed to check
that fiery tempest. Now and then, with some temporary dying down of
the wind, it would seem to abate a little of its fury, but not for
long: the wind rising again with renewed violence, the flames, which
had hardly begun to subside, would burst forth afresh, shooting out
their sharp points like well-directed arrows, and accompanied by a
deep, rumbling roar, broken from time to time by sharp explosions from
the petroleum shops or gas in the dwellings, where the pipes were
transformed into streams of molten lead; or when roofs would suddenly
fall as though borne down by an avalanche; or a grove of cypress trees
all at once begin to twist and writhe, and then burst into flame,
sending down showers of burning resin; or some group of old wooden
houses explode simultaneously like rockets, and emit such a fury of
flame that it would seem as though the bellows of a thousand workshops
were being turned upon them. It was a scene of ruin and wholesale
destruction and disaster such as might result from fire, flood,
earthquake, and the sacking of the city by a victorious army, all going
on at once. No one had ever seen or imagined such horrors, and the
effect upon the whole population was as though it had gone stark mad.
In the streets of Pera the wildest confusion reigned, such noise and
panic as are found on the deck of a vessel about to founder. There,
in the midst of heaps of overturned furniture, beneath the flashing
blades of the officers’ swords, the knocks and blows of porters and
water-carriers, the hoofs of the pashas’ horses, gangs of firemen
advancing at a dead run, overturning and treading down all they came in
contact with,--were French, Italian, Greek, and Armenian families, rich
and poor, old and young, men, women, and children, lost, distraught,
groping blindly about in search of missing relatives, filling the
air with shrieks and lamentations, choked with smoke and blinded with
sparks; or a foreign ambassador followed by a troop of servants laden
with books and valuable documents; or monks holding the crucifix aloft
above the heads of the terrified throng; groups of Turkish women, their
arms filled with costly objects from the harem; processions of men
bending beneath the spoils of mosque and school, church or theatre;
and from time to time a suffocating cloud of smoke, blown down by some
sudden gust, would wrap everything in temporary darkness and increase
still more the general terror and confusion.
An added feature of the horrors of that fearful time were the armies of
thieves and desperadoes, who, having assembled, in obedience to some
secret code of signals in use among them, from every hole and den in
Constantinople, arrayed themselves in the guise of porters, soldiers,
or respectable citizens, and then, boldly entering houses on pretence
of lending assistance, made off with armsful of plunder: sometimes
these gentry, being detected, would be pursued as they fled with their
booty to Kassim Pasha or Tataola by parties of soldiers, and on being
overtaken and surrounded pitched battles would ensue.
Firemen, porters, and water-carriers, reinforced by their numerous
families and relatives, organized into bands, and before the very eyes
of the distracted owners would all at once strike for higher wages,
utterly declining to go on working unless their pay were doubled
or quadrupled. Furniture and household goods heaped in the narrow
streets and guarded by the families who owned them would be captured
by crews of armed plunderers, the owners driven away, and the defences
strengthened to afford resistance against other bands of blackguards.
Troops of fugitives escaping with some of their personal property,
encountering similar parties in some narrow thoroughfare, would dispute
the right of way fiercely, desperately, abandoning in their mad flight
those who were overthrown or injured in the onslaught.
But by the time the fire had raged for four hours it had gained such
headway that few gave further thought to their property: to escape
alive was the most that could be hoped for; two-thirds of Pera were in
flames, and the fire had now reached such volume, and was advancing
in so many different directions at once, that a whole quarter would
suddenly be surrounded and cut off by a girdle of flame before the
inhabitants had become aware of its approach. Hundreds of terrified
creatures, flying in disorder up some narrow, steep, winding street,
intent only on escaping from the hungry fiend in their rear, would
at some sudden turn be confronted by a whirlwind of smoke and flame
bearing relentlessly down upon them, and turn shrieking back to seek
wildly for some other road of escape; entire families, one numbering
twenty-two persons, were all at once surrounded, suffocated, burned,
charred; some, beside themselves with terror, would take refuge in
cellars, where they were soon choked to death; others threw themselves
into wells and cisterns, climbed trees, or, after searching vainly
through their houses for some spot or corner where they might hope
for protection, suddenly losing their heads, would be seen to rush
out and fling themselves voluntarily into the flames. Looking down
the hillsides of Pera from some high point, families could be seen
assembled upon their roofs, who, kneeling in close groups and with
outstretched arms in the centre of an ever-narrowing circle of flame,
invoked that aid from Heaven which man was powerless to give; herds of
frantic people, rushing from the heights of Pera to scatter themselves
throughout Galata, Topkhâneh, Fundukli, and the cemeteries in the
lower parts of the town, ever running farther and farther, looking for
still more distant and protected spots in which to hide themselves
from the enemy, whom they imagined to be still pursuing them; children
streaming with blood; wild-looking women, with singed hair and torn
flesh, bearing dead or dying infants in their arms; men with faces and
limbs frightfully burned, who writhed on the ground in their agony; old
people sobbing like children; men of wealth reduced in the course of a
few moments to penury, who beat their heads against the stones; youths
yelling like maniacs, who fell unconscious on the banks of the Golden
Horn, spent with excitement and horror; families bearing the blackened
corpses of their dead; poor creatures, driven crazy by the sights
around them, who hurried along dragging chairs after them attached to
strings, or clasped bits of rags or broken pottery to their bosoms as
though they were of priceless value, at the same time giving vent to
loud lamentations or bursts of insane laughter.
And still from the lower quarters of Galata, from the arsenals of
Tersane and Topkhâneh, from barrack, mosque, and imperial palace,
there swarmed fresh battalions of _nizam_, crews of robbers, bands of
firemen, shouting “_Yanghen Vahr_” or “_Allah_,” advancing as to an
attack, scaling the hills under the steady rain of sparks and cinders
and burning brands, and through streets filled with smouldering
débris, and with them generals, dervishes, messengers from the court,
families who had turned back to search for missing members, blackguards
and heroes, misery, crime, and charity,--all mingled together in a
confused, inextricable torrent which swept through the narrow streets
with a roar like that of the ocean in a storm, its surface lighted up
with the crimson glare of that mighty furnace.
And just across from this region of torment lay Stambul, peaceful,
smiling, and serene as ever, while on the other side the tranquil
beauties of the Asiatic shore were mirrored in the waters of the
Bosphorus, on whose unmoved bosom the ships rode peacefully at anchor.
Enormous crowds of people, blackening the banks for miles, stood
silent and impassive witnesses of the horrible sight; the sing-song
voice of the muezzin was heard as usual announcing from every minaret
the setting of the sun; flocks of birds soared lazily above the
mosques on the Seven Hills; and venerable Turks, seated in the shade
of plane trees on the verdant heights of Skutari, murmured placidly
to themselves, “And so the final hour of the City of the Sultans has
sounded? That day which was foretold has come: let Allah’s will be
done.--So be it, so be it!”
Happily, with nightfall came the beginning of the end. At seven o’clock
the last building took fire--the English embassy--and just after that,
the wind suddenly dying down, the fire was either extinguished or went
out of its own accord. It had been burning six hours, and in that
time two-thirds of Pera were reduced to ashes, nine thousand houses
destroyed, and two thousand lives lost.
Next to the famous fire of 1756, which demolished, in the reign of
Osman III. eighty thousand houses and wiped out two-thirds of Stambul,
no such disaster as this has ever visited the city, nor from the time
Constantinople was conquered up to the present day has any one fire
been the cause of so much loss of life.
On the following day Pera presented a spectacle which, if less
terrifying, was in no sense less heart*-rending, than that during the
actual progress of the fire. Wherever the flames had passed there was
nothing to be seen but grim wastes broken only by the naked outlines
of great hills; unfamiliar views were opened up; broad sheets of light
poured down upon vast open spaces covered with ashes, while here and
there the melancholy column of a blackened and half-ruined chimney
stood like a gravestone marking the site of a desolated hearth.
Whole quarters had disappeared as completely as though they had been
Bedouin encampments swept away by a cyclone. Through many streets,
which could only be traced by the double line of black, smoking ruins,
thousands of the homeless wandered up and down, ragged and dishevelled,
imploring aid from the hurrying throng of soldiers and doctors, Sisters
of Charity, and priests of every religion, while employés of all
ranks distributed the food and money or directed the placing of the
mattresses, bedding, and army tents issued by order of the government
for the use of the entirely destitute. The heights of Tataola and the
great Armenian cemetery swarmed with dense crowds of persons formed
into a huge encampment; everywhere one stumbled upon piles of household
goods, whose owners, utterly exhausted with what they had been through,
lay stretched out upon them. The vast Galata cemetery looked like a
bazâr which had been turned upside down: piled along the walks and
among the tombs was a bewildering mass of household stuff--divans,
pillows, bedding, pianos, books, pictures, broken carriages; the gilded
sedan chair of an ambassadress; parrot-cages out of the harems; and
horses who had sustained injuries tied to the cypress trees,--all
watched over by porters and servants blackened with smoke and dropping
with fatigue. The dregs and offscourings of the city employed
themselves in searching through the ruins for stray valuables, locks
off the doors, nails, and bits of iron, avoiding the outstretched forms
of soldiers and firemen, who, unable to hold out any longer against
sleep and fatigue, had dropped wherever they might happen to be. Here
and there persons might be seen endeavoring by the aid of pieces of
board and strips of canvas to erect temporary places of shelter above
their ruined dwellings; groups of people kneeling before the blackened
altar of some roofless church; and men and women passing in review the
long lines of charred and disfigured bodies, who, finally recognizing
in some pitiful blackened heap the object of their search, would burst
into shuddering sobs and wails of despair, while others would suddenly
be seen to drop as though they had been shot from their places in some
long procession of biers and litters; and over all clouds of dust and
smoke and the dense, suffocating atmosphere heavy with the sickening
smell of charred human flesh. Now and then the men working with picks
and shovels among the ruins would dislodge showers of ashes and
cinders upon the close, silent, awe-stricken crowds collected from all
parts of Stambul, above whose heads would appear groups of consuls
and ambassadors, drawn up at the corners of the streets and gazing in
pale-faced consternation at the surrounding ruin.