Islam--And Christianity--Turks and the law of the Prophet--Their
relations to the Sultan--Bajazet II and his army--Slavs go over to
Islam--The rebellion of Djem--Matthias Corvinus--The growth of
Western culture--Jews expelled from Spain--Kemal-Reis and Turkish
sea-power--Bajazet and his sons--The revolt of Selim--Selim kills
his brothers--Selim defeats Shah Ismail--Selim and his Grand
Vizier--Selim defeats the Mamelukes--The death of Selim--Solyman
the Great--Contemporary history--The conquest of Rhodes--The
invasion of Hungary--Buda-Pesth surrenders--The first siege of
Vienna--Sea victories of Barbarossa--Solyman and
Roxalana--Solyman's death.
Religion affects the private life of the Turk as also the life of the
body politic more than is the case among the followers of other creeds,
and Islam is singularly adapted to the sons of Othman, or rather has
made them what they are. Mohammed assumed both spiritual and temporal
power in the name of a god, who thrones high above the humble faithful,
who is so far concerned in each believer that he arranges every detail
of his life long before the poor mortal enters upon it. There is no
mercy, no departure from the course marked out, no hope of propitiating
a stern deity, aloof and vengeful, by prayer and intercession;
Islam--obedience, submission. Allah is not often moved by
loving-kindness, but anger may rouse him to punish by the hand of his
"shadow on earth," the Caliph-Sultan. He is particularly easily incensed
against non-believers, and through his Prophet has promised all
happiness after death to those to combat unbelief, and by war and
rapine, murder and outrage, proclaim the fact that "La ilaha illa
'Uah!"
[Illustration: The Gate of Adrianople
Through this gate, Edirné Kapoo, as the Turks call it, the Sultan's army
marched out to war; through it his soldiery, defeated, sick, wounded,
returned in small parties from the battlefields.]
It is not surprising to find that, whatever its theory, in practice
Islam discouraged any serious regard for human life, whether a man's own
or the life of his neighbour. It also strengthened the ruler's hands,
for he was the voice of Allah on earth, and therefore privileged to take
life without trial, inquiry, or any formality. Of this privilege Sultans
have availed themselves freely, though it was not _bien vue_ to kill
more than a thousand in a day. For political reasons Mohammedan subjects
were less exposed to violence, whereas Christians became more and more
subject to ill-treatment as Christianity gained strength and helped to
build up Empires strong enough to check the flowing tide of Islam.
Islam acted as an intellectual stimulus on its first adherents, the
poetic-minded Arabs, though possibly it did not assume its present
rigidity when they were a ruling power in Asia, Africa, and Southern
Europe. I think it likely that the Arabs did not allow the strict letter
of the law to cramp their intellectual development, but their converts,
the Turks, a race devoid of the power of imagination, proved incapable
of interpreting the "Book" in a liberal spirit even if it were possible,
for the Koran, with all its contradictions, contains hard-and-fast
dogma, definite rules to regulate conduct, and threatens those who
depart from its teachings by but a hand's-breadth with all the pains of
Eternal Damnation. Gautama, the Prince, retired into seclusion, and by
the beauty of a soul trained to deep meditation became Buddha; Christ
came to earth and suffered all indignities and pains at the hands of
men, rather than assert the power of His Godhead by offering political
opposition to those who spurned His teachings: "His kingdom is not of
this world." After the awful day on Calvary none of the temporal powers
of the day attached any further importance to His sayings, nor to the
small band of disciples who went out into the outer darkness of the
world carrying with them the first flickerings of a light which should
illumine the earth and draw from mortals the best that is in them.
Buddha lived alone in deep seclusion, renouncing all earthly vanities,
and his few disciples went abroad poor and homeless searching for the
souls of men. Mohammed drew men to him by promises of glory and honour
on this earth, ease and luxury in the Beyond. Christianity bids you
forgive your enemies; Mohammed led his followers to battle against the
unbelievers, conquered their cities, and called those places holy when
he had fixed the strongholds of his militant faith. Mohammed died in the
possession of great power, spiritual and temporal, enjoining his
descendants to maintain and increase it by the sword. The realm thus
founded was inherited by the Caliphs, but they in time became enfeebled
and hard pressed by their enemies, till first the temporal then
spiritual power went to a race of rulers incapable and disinclined to
widen the intellectual horizon of their subjects, the House of Othman.
So the sovereign's power was absolute, in his hands were life and death,
all property but that applied to pious purposes came from him and by him
could be retaken. The strict adherence to religious observances had its
beneficial effects, for the laws that regulate the conduct, that
prescribe for each hour of the day, allowed of no expansion and could
not openly be disregarded, therefore the life of the people, at least to
outward appearance, was clean and decorous. Mollahs and imams never
gained the ascendancy over the minds of men which Christian priests and
holy men of Buddhism have from time to time acquired; they played an
unimportant part, acting rather as precentors at the worship of Allah in
the mosques, though as preachers they could incite the fierce passions
of a people untrained to independent thought. From time to time the
Sultan would think fit to consult the mufti, the head priest, as to the
advisability of some political measure, and that official generally
found it convenient to agree, as his appointment was in the sovereign's
gift and could be recalled by him.
Under the law, administered by the Sultan, the Turks increased in
numbers, extended their possession, carved a large Empire out of the
ruins of former civilizations, and left unsought those Elysian fields
wherein the intellect of a nation gains those victories that make for
stability, the fields of progress, scientific, literary, artistic. Under
the law they built up their body politic, each member sincerely, blindly
devoted to the dynasty of Othman, however many corpses of its scions
might pave a Sultan's upward path to power. They swept over Asia Minor
carrying their few belongings with them, nomads ever, expressing even in
their poor attempt at imagery no other spirit than that of the houseless
wanderer: The edifice of state is but a tent, its supporting poles the
viziers, judges, treasurers, and secretaries of state. Its entrance, the
Sublime Porte, is likened to curtained opening, and curtains rather than
doors still screen the latticed chambers of many a present-day Turkish
harem. The provinces they conquered were distributed among the fighting
men as military fiefs and called Sanjaks, banners, remaining purely
military organizations until more stable conditions led to the raising
of a standing army; and civil officials always looked to their sovereign
for guidance in the smallest matters as they had looked to him for
leadership in the field.
Thus equipped the sons of Othman set out for conquest, and in one
respect at least the records of those early days show signs of great
capacity, though always the output of one active mind, not resulting
from the reasoned growth of a collective national intelligence.
Mohammed the Conqueror had established the Ottoman Empire in Europe by
means of a well-trained, Koran-disciplined army, his successor Bajazet
II increased and strengthened it. Great attention was paid to all
matters of artillery and military engineering, in which the Turks of
those days outshone all other nations, and which made the hastily levied
undisciplined armies of the West, the bands of hired condottieri, or
enthusiastic swarms of Christian knights, go under before the sword of
Othman. The conquered provinces provided recruits for the corps of
Janissaries. In those days, too, the Turkish armies were more mobile and
better found than even that which Charles VII of France raised in 1445,
the first standing army of the West; supplies were well organized and
transport effected by beasts of burden, not by carts which depend upon
good roads. So Bajazet inherited a great Empire, won by the sword of a
people in arms and governed by warriors devoted to his House, and over
whom the Sultan had complete control; they could not rise above their
fellows, for according to the law all Moslems are equal under the
Caliph, and no ruling caste rose to defy the power of the sovereign or
force him to grant concessions. Fresh blood was added to this
homogeneous body politic by the voluntary desertion of Christians from
the conquered provinces to Islam: Croats, Albanians, Bosniaks, Russians,
even Scotsmen, adventurers mostly, and among the fiercest followers of
the Prophet. Many of these rose to high office.
The reign of Bajazet II began with civil war, a not unusual occurrence,
for Prince Djem, his brother, laid claim to the throne. But Bajazet
vanquished his brother's army, and Djem consoled himself by a visit to
Mecca and Medina, which makes for holiness and raises a Moslem in the
estimation of his fellows. Building on this Djem made further attempts
to displace Bajazet, and went to the Knights of Rhodes to enlist their
sympathies. These nobles kept the Prince a prisoner and made him a
source of income from the Sultan by threatening to set him at large
again. Djem finally escaped from Rhodes and sought help elsewhere, in
Western Europe, but met with little encouragement, and was finally
treacherously murdered by a servant of the Pope, bribed by Bajazet.
In the meantime Bajazet felt the need for expansion--there were still
worlds to conquer and he was minded to acquire a few. His efforts on
land were not particularly successful, he had at least one strong man
against him, Matthias Corvinus, who had restored order in Hungary and
was thus enabled to check the encroachments of Islam. There were other
Powers of some importance in Europe at the time: the Medici, under whom
the glories of Italian art, inspired by ancient Byzant, were preparing
the way for enfranchised thought; and in Germany Meister Gutenberg had
set up his printing-press. All glory to that great man whose gentle
craft made the Reformation possible. "Buchstaben," beech staves, for the
selfish beech tree, which allows no growth under its spreading branches,
found the wood out of which were cut those first strong Gothic letters.
Laboriously pieced together those staves grew into sentences, and in
time the first Bible, printed and bound in solid calf-skin, was given to
the world. Luther perused it, studied it, absorbed it, and with it
filled his soul till his voice arose above the jealousies of Papal
Medicis and rang out over all the earth, is ringing still wherever the
free-born praise their Creator and glorify His works. Even here it
resounds, and strongly, since Christian men and women are aiding the
sick and wounded of an alien race, a hostile creed, and are bringing
them back from those dark depths where they were cast by their own kin,
by those whose lives are overshadowed by rigid Islam. Ferdinand the
Catholic had married Isabella of Castile, and thus brought the Kingdoms
of Spain under one sceptre. They expelled the Jews from Spain to the
"greater glory of God"; the descendants of those Jews now inhabit
Saloniki and still speak Spanish, though they write it in Hebrew
characters. John II of Portugal impoverished his country by the same
method at the same time, though he derived some temporary advantage by
taxing the exiled children of Israel heavily while they passed through
his country on their way to more congenial surroundings. Macchiavelli
was born in that era, and was composing his work on the ideal Prince
when Bajazet was compassing the death of his brother Djem. Columbus
arose to widen the world's horizon, and Vasco da Gama's ships felt their
way cautiously round the Cape of Storms to India. But greatest of all
these was Leonardo da Vinci, who rescued fragments of the art of old
Byzant and breathed into it the life that created all the glories of the
Renaissance. Those were brave days, my masters, when the world was young
and strong, when art and literature revived, free from the trammels of
warped classicism and showed mankind what beauty is and where and how it
may be found and duly reverenced.
But Bajazet had no ideas beyond conquest. His campaign on land being
unattended by the great success his predecessors had prepared him for,
he turned to seaward and did his best to cripple rising Western Europe.
A slave presented to his father was the instrument to hand, Kemal-Reis,
the former name meaning "Perfection," given him by the Sultan because of
his great beauty. In constant sea war against Venice and the other
states by the Mediterranean Sea, Kemal-Reis laid the foundations of
Turkish sea power.
Bajazet sought to extend his power to Egypt, but was baffled by the
Mamelukes, a body of militant nobility superior in training and "morale"
to anything the Othmans could muster. This and other matters cast clouds
over the last days of Sultan Bajazet. Dissensions arose among his sons,
Korkoud, Achmet, and Selim, Governor of Trebizond, who even threatened
his father with war and marched against him to Adrianople. Thereupon
Selim was appointed Governor of Semendria, an old Roman settlement in
modern Servia, now called Smederovo. But Korkoud and Achmet had revolted
in Asia Minor, and by weakening Ottoman rule there invited the Shias, a
heretic sect of Islam according to the Sunnis to which the Turks belong,
under the Persian Prince, Shah Ismail, to ravage the eastern marches of
the Empire. Selim was not content for long, and rose against his father
a second time, but was beaten at Adrianople, that fateful city, and was
carried from the field to safety by his swift horse Karaboulot, the
Black Cloud. He turned to the Khan of the Crimea for assistance, and
returning to the attack with a Tartar army forced his way into
Constantinople and made Bajazet abdicate in his favour. Turbulent
citizens, unruly Janissaries and Spahis gave weight to Selim's demands.
So Bajazet retired to Demotika for his remaining days. Violence brought
him to the throne, by violence his son displaced him, and Selim reigned
in his stead as Sultan, Caliph of the Faithful, the Shadow of God on
Earth.
Selim I's reign was short, from 1512-1520, but it showed him a man of
high ability in politics and war, and even well disposed towards the
gentler side of life, for he encouraged literature. He found himself
under the painful necessity of having his brother Korkoud strangled,
but redeemed this unbrotherliness by weeping over the corpse and by
ordering court mourning for three whole days. After that he proceeded to
the business of securing his hold on the Empire by marching against his
other brother Achmet. Achmet was defeated, taken, and slain, but
privileged to burial by the side of Korkoud. Then Selim, a pious Moslem,
turned to the matter of his people's spiritual welfare and discovered to
his horror that large numbers of them held the heretic tenets of the
Shias. This had to be stopped, so a general massacre of these misguided
ones, ferreted out by Selim's excellent secret police, was arranged. The
Osmanli celebrated their St. Bartholomew's Night by the slaughter of
some forty thousand men, women, and children; thirty thousand others
were spared, but spent the remainder of their days in perpetual
imprisonment.
This annoyed Shah Ismail of Persia, and he made ready for war; the Turks
were yet readier, and an army of some hundred and forty thousand men
marched through Kurdistan upon Tabriz, then capital of Persia. They met
with great hardships, which led to discontent among the Janissaries,
whom Selim sought to comfort with quotations from the Persian poets.
However, the two armies soon came to business, and met in battle in the
Valley of Calderan, where the army of Selim beat that of Shah Ismail,
some hundred and twenty thousand, of whom eighty thousand were horsemen,
though suffering serious losses. Selim had all the captives killed
excepting the women and children, among whom was the Shah's favourite
wife, who had come out to encourage her husband to the last. Selim
levied tribute on Tabriz and pursued his march to Karabagh, but the
severity of winter, causing discontent among his troops, obliged him to
retrace his steps. This campaign added Diarbekr and Kurdistan to the
Ottoman Empire. Trouble then arose in the south, the army of observation
in Syria reporting that Egypt was inclined to be dangerous. Selim held a
council of war to discuss the matter, and was so pleased with the advice
of one Mohammed, a Secretary of State, that he appointed him Grand
Vizier on the spot. Mohammed modestly declined, whereupon the Sultan
bastinadoed him into submission with his own heavy hand. Ambassadors
were sent to Kanson-Ghauri, Sultan of Egypt, but were treated with
insults and violence, so Selim marched south and fought a battle at
Aleppo, in which the Turks gained their first victory over the
Mamelukes, and Sultan Kanson-Ghauri died on his flight to Egypt. Selim
then added Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem to his possessions, again
defeated the Mamelukes and occupied Cairo. Of the remaining Mamelukes
eight hundred submitted on Selim's promise of pardon, and were all
beheaded; incidentally the population of Cairo was massacred.
Peace ensured by these simple methods, Selim proceeded to the chief
mosque of Cairo, offered up praise and thanksgiving to Allah for giving
him the victory, and set about the annexation of Egypt, styling himself
"Protector of the Holy Cities of Arabia," the title of the Mameluke
Sultans. This greatly enhanced Selim's dignity among his people, for up
to now the Caliphate had been held by the descendants of the House of
Abbas in Egypt. Thus Selim acquired the sacred standard, sword, and
mantle of the Prophet.
On Selim's return to Constantinople he set about rebuilding his navy,
for the presence of the Knights of Rhodes on the seaway to Egypt
displeased him, but before he could accomplish the task of subduing them
death overtook him at the place near Adrianople where he had formerly
met his father in battle. Selim's constant companion, Hasandshan, was
just reading to the dying Sultan the verse from the Koran: "The word of
the Almighty is salvation," when Selim's fierce career came to its
close.
Upon this picturesque ruffian, this embodiment of all Turkish virtues
and defects, followed one who may rank among the greatest of all the
sons of Othman, a man of very different mind, stately Solyman, called
the Great.
This monarch's reign, from 1520-1566, fell into a great age for Europe,
for among his contemporaries were some of those whose names shed lustre
on the pages of history. Charles V, that gloomy monarch, ruled over half
the known world, his Empire extending over the continent discovered by
Columbus, where Cortez added Mexico to fill the imperial coffers, and
Pizarro's daring march across the Andes brought untold wealth to the
Holy Roman Empire, "Deutscher Nation," though Peru and its mild-mannered
people suffered worse horrors than attended even the triumphal progress
of the Turkish armies. Discord there was in Western Europe, too, for
Luther had nailed his theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in
1517, and thirteen years later the Protestants had made public
confession of their faith at Augsburg, to be followed in 1540 by Paul
III's sanction of the Jesuits and their order, thus sowing the seeds of
that great war which laid Western Europe at the mercy of the encroaching
Turks, and made smooth their way to power. In England Henry VIII was
King, and bickering with his chivalrous neighbour, Francis I of France.
Solyman had early learnt the art of government as Viceroy of
Constantinople during his father's campaigns in Persia; then, during the
war in Egypt, he governed Adrianople, and succeeded at the age of
twenty-six.
Solyman inherited his father's forethought and military skill, and,
following the traditions of his House, led a fine army westward into
Christendom. By the end of 1521 he had captured Belgrade, and made it a
strong outpost of advancing Islam. Unlike his father, he was merciful;
after long, fierce fighting in the second year of his reign, he forced
the Knights of Rhodes to surrender, but promised their gallant
commander, de Lisle Adam, that no churches would be desecrated, no
children driven into slavery. These promises he kept, and the Knights
left the island with all the honours of war, conveying their wives and
families away unmolested, while the inhabitants became subjects of the
Sultan; moreover, Solyman exacted no tribute for five years.
After a few short years of peace, which Solyman used for reforms in the
administration, the disturbed state of Europe drew Turkey into her
troubles. The Janissaries had already been grumbling about the Sultan's
inaction, and had been sharply brought to order. Their heart's desire,
war and booty, was not long in coming to them, for Solyman decided to
invade Hungary, urged by King Francis of France, who knew that such an
event would annoy Charles V and distract that Emperor's attention from
the French King's designs on Italy. With one hundred thousand men and
three hundred cannon, Solyman set out at the head of his well-found army
to meet the forces which Louis, King of Hungary, had gathered together
to protect his country from invasion. The result was as might have been
expected. Despite great bravery and devotion, because of their faulty
organization and discipline, the Hungarian army was defeated at Mohacz
in August, 1526; King Louis fell, eight bishops, and a great number of
Magyar nobles, and with them some twenty-four thousand men. Buda-Pesth
submitted to the Turks, the road to Vienna lay open, and Solyman's
victorious army carried fire and sword into the Crown lands of the House
of Habsburg. Vienna trembled, but the Turks did not attempt a siege of
that city and were content to return the way they came, heavy laden with
plunder, carrying away one hundred thousand Christians--men, women, and
children--into slavery. After a short absence in Asia Minor, Solyman
felt called to Hungary again; civil war had broken out over the
succession to the throne, and Solyman thought fit to hear the appeal of
Zapolya, a native noble, claimant to the throne, for help against the
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, brother of the Emperor.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SULEIMAN AND THE TOWER OF THE WAR OFFICE
Seen from the height where stands the wireless telegraphy station.]
A yet greater army gathered together at Constantinople, two hundred and
fifty thousand men with three hundred cannon, and, led by Solyman,
appeared before Buda-Pesth in September, 1529; the town again
surrendered, after a siege of six days, and Zapolya was solemnly
installed as king over the people which Arpad had led out of the East,
which Stephen the Saint had brought over to Christianity, and whose iron
crown now pressed upon the brow of a vassal to the Sultan. Zapolya
marched with his followers in the train of Solyman, his master, to
Vienna. Like the storms of autumn equinox, the Akindji tore over the
fair fields of Lower Austria and surged up against the defences of
Vienna, led by Michael Oglou, descendant of Michael of the Peaked Beard,
who had fought by the side of the first Othman. The main army followed
the swarms of Akindji, and drew a circle of camps around Vienna, which
was defended by low walls and contained a garrison of only sixteen
thousand men. The capital of the Holy Roman Empire was in danger, and
King Ferdinand, in his distress, appealed to his brother, the Emperor,
for assistance; but none came, for the German princes were
quarrelling about religious matters, while Vienna suffered. The city
held out under its brave defender, Count Salm, through days and nights
of storm and stress, till Solyman gave up the attempt and withdrew on
the day on which Count Salm died of his wounds. Before leaving the
outskirts of Vienna the Turks burnt what they could not remove,
slaughtered their Christian prisoners or threw them living into the
flames, and went away into the East, leaving desolation in their wake.
Solyman's pride was deeply wounded by the rebuff before Vienna, and even
the conquest of a large part of Armenia, of Mesopotamia, and Bagdad
failed to comfort him, so he readily took the excuse of interfering with
the West again when Zapolya died, and the question of Hungarian
succession rearose. Throughout the war the Turkish arms, though worsted
now and then, prevailed over the Western armies, and Austria was forced
to enter into a treaty with the Porte and to pay tribute, while nearly
all Hungary and Transylvania came under Turkish domination. To all
these successes came the victories won by Solyman's admiral,
Khairreddin-Barbarossa, in the Mediterranean Sea. He defeated the
Spaniards and drove the Arab pirates (himself a former pirate) of the
north of Africa back to their hiding-places, sought them out there and
made them subjects of the Sultan. He pillaged the coast of the Adriatic
and sacked Italian towns, and with inferior numbers defeated the naval
forces of the Pope, Venice, and the Emperor off Prevesa in 1538.
Solyman went out to meet Khairreddin's successor, Pialé, a Croat by
birth, when the latter made his triumphal entry into the Golden Horn,
but the Sultan's brow was clouded, for trouble had sought him out.
Within the Seraglio walls, in the halls of Solyman the Magnificent,
stalked Tragedy, called in by Jealousy. A fair Russian girl had captured
the Sultan's heart, Sultana Roxalana, or Khourrem (the Joyous One), as
the Turks called her, and her ambitions for Selim, her son, led her to
fill her husband's mind with suspicion. Mustapha, his elder son by a
Circassian, a handsome youth and highly gifted, Governor of Carmania,
was accused of plotting against his father. Mustapha was ordered to
enter the Sultan's presence alone, and Solyman, looking on from an inner
chamber, saw seven mute executioners carry out his command to strangle
his son with the bowstring. Thus the sword of Othman, the mantle of the
Prophet, came to the son of Roxalana, to Selim the Sot.
Solyman died while conducting the siege of Szigath, on the night before
the gallant defender of that place, Zriny, fell in a desperate last
sortie. The news of his death was kept from his army till it had
returned to the neighbourhood of Belgrade. Here, on the outskirts of a
dense forest, when the setting sun threw long shadows out towards the
east, the imams announced the Sultan's death, and great wailings of
lamentation re-echoed among the giant trees and set the leaves trembling
in sympathy with an Empire's grief. Solyman was buried near the mosque
he built, round which to-day refugees, sick and wounded soldiers from
the battlefields, are gathered together, patient sons of Islam awaiting
their fate.