Mustapha II defeated by Prince Eugène--The Peace of
Carlowitz--Death of Mustapha II--Charles XII of Sweden--More
Turkish provinces lost--Mahmoud I--Gazi Hassan--Selim III and the
Janissaries--Mahmoud II ascends the throne--Ibrahim punishes the
Janissaries--Changes in Europe--The battle of Navarino--Von Moltke
and the Turkish Army--The steady loss of provinces--Recent changes
in the Ottoman Empire--Independence of military governors--Revolt
of the Pasha of Scutari--Influence of the telegraph--The reign of
Abdul Hamid--The Turks and non-Islamic subjects--The Young Turk
party--Revolution and reaction--Deposition of Abdul Hamid--Western
opinion of the Young Turks--The result of reform--The invasion of
Turkey by the Allies--Turkey at the outbreak of the war.
The power of the Ottoman Empire had been brought very low by the time
Mustapha II, son of Mohammed IV, came to the throne in 1695. This Sultan
was a man of greater capacity than any of his predecessors, and saw that
only a return to the old ideals could bring the people back to the ways
that lead to success in the field and prestige in the council of
nations. He therefore issued a Hatti-Sherif, a manifesto of state,
declaring that he would restore ancient usages, and in person lead his
armies in the field. This he did with some initial success, marching
from Belgrade to Temesvar, retaking several strong places, and defeating
the Austrian general, Veterani, whose hiding-places were the caves which
the traveller may see in the precipitous rocks that close in the Danube
to northward on its way through the pass of Kazan to the Iron Gate. The
campaign against Austria in 1696 also brought to the Sultan the victory
over the Duke of Saxony and an imperial army at Temesvar. But in the
following year Mustapha had to meet Prince Eugène at Zenta, and being
completely out-manoeuvred, suffered defeat, aggravated by the conduct
of the mutinous Janissaries, who thought fit to massacre their officers
during the battle. By evening of September 11th, 1697, Prince Eugène saw
his enemy in full flight, and was able to send the following message to
his imperial master at Vienna: "The sun seemed to linger on the horizon
to gild with his last rays the victorious standards of Austria."
Sultan Mustapha fled from the field, where his Grand Vizier lay slain
among thousands of his army, and never led his troops again in person. A
treaty of peace for twenty-five years was signed at Carlowitz, on the
Danube, after a vast amount of unnecessary trouble. The ambassadors of
all the Powers, and there were many, represented at the conference, were
each so jealous of their sovereign's dignity that the order of
precedence could not be agreed upon. So a special chapel was built, and
provided with so many doors that all the ambassadors could enter at the
same moment. The chapel still stands on a hill-side near Carlowitz, a
witness to this scene of exquisite trifling.
Turkey was still strong at sea, and able to check Venetian aggressions,
but on land Ottoman power had sunk below the level of the great nations
of Western Europe, and so began that rôle of political rather than
military importance, which has characterized the status of the Sublime
Porte ever since.
Another Kiüprilü Grand Vizier, Hussein, assisted Mustapha with the
family aptitude for affairs, and certainly managed to improve Turkey's
financial position. But the enemies of the Porte were all too powerful,
not only Austria, but also Russia, for Peter the Great had been waging
war with energy, and had added Turkish territory by the Sea of Azof to
his Empire. Sick at heart, Mustapha II died in 1703, shortly after his
Grand Vizier, Hussein Kiüprilü.
It was perhaps owing to Russian designs that the Porte looked with a
friendly mien towards Great Britain, and we find Sir Robert Sutton
establishing pleasant relations between his sovereign and Achmet III,
brother of and successor to Mustapha III. In this monarch's reign a
romantic person roamed at large in Europe, fought battles, lost and won,
and generally conducted himself more after the manner of the condottieri
of other times than of a reigning sovereign of eighteenth-century
Europe: Charles XII of Sweden was abroad, and though doing very much,
effecting nothing. He drifted through Russia at variance with that
country's ruler, and being defeated by Peter the Great at Pultowa in
1709, sought refuge in the Sultan's dominions. Another name well known
to legend comes into history for a moment here--Hetman Mazeppa, who
joined forces with Charles XII and, being considered a traitor by the
Russians, met with the treatment his case required, according to their
standard.
The Swedish King's stay in Turkish territory did not improve the
relations between the Porte and Russia; war was declared by the former
in 1710, the method adopted being to incarcerate the Tsar's ambassador
in the stronghold of Yedi Koulé. It is true that Turkey gained some
successes, defeating Peter the Great by the banks of the Pruth, and
Ottoman arms won some small victories over in Austria; but the decline
of Turkey was not arrested. Prince Eugène marched on Belgrade, Servia
rose, and more and more possessions passed from the Ottoman Empire in
Europe, till by the Peace of Passarowitz, in Servia, all Hungary became
free of Turkey, who had also lost Belgrade, Semendria, several other
cities, and the province of Wallachia.
Achmet abdicated in favour of his nephew, Mahmoud I, whose reign, from
1730-1754, showed a yet greater decline of Turkish power and prestige.
Topal Osman, Mahmoud's general, scored some successes over the raiding
Persian armies, but was defeated and killed at Kerkoud, while Nadir,
Shah of Persia, was beating other Turkish armies. Desultory wars with
Austria led to no other result than that Turkey was passing out of the
ranks of great Powers, through its inability to adapt itself to the
spirit of the age, to adopt new methods in place of those which had
proved useless, even harmful, in the day of trouble.
Attempts were made from time to time at a new order of things. Amongst
the reformers was Gazi Hassan, the hero of the battle of Shio, in 1770.
A fierce sea-fight was raging, in which the Turks were being worsted,
when Hassan brought his ship alongside the Russian Admiral's and fought
yard-arm to yard-arm until both vessels caught fire and went up. Hassan
was the last to leave his ship, and then swam ashore, badly wounded. He
rose to high office in the State, and endeavoured to introduce modern
improvements, to equip the army with up-to-date weapons, and to restore
some sort of discipline; but the army would have none of it, and even
stout-hearted Hassan could not push his way through the inert mass of
Turkish officialdom which crowded in to stifle all efforts at reform.
Only the navy experienced any improvement, and that because Hassan
insisted on the high-pooped, heavy Turkish ships being replaced by
lighter, faster vessels, built on English lines. But fresh difficulties
arose over the manning of these ships, as the Turks declined to do
anything but act as gunners, so Greeks had to fill the ratings of the
sailors. Gazi Hassan worked hard at this reform, and was surely entitled
to the gratitude of his country; but such feelings existed not in those
days, neither will any reformer find it in Turkey of to-day. Gazi Hassan
was unsuccessful in war, during the latter years of his life, owing to
the opposition offered to all his reforms, but this was not taken into
consideration; it probably increased his unpopularity, till Selim III,
on his accession in 1789, had to execute the old hero to appease a
tumult among the populace of Constantinople.
Selim III did not gain anything by his complaisance to the unruly
soldiery, for by the beginning of his reign the Janissaries had become
quite unmanageable, at least to a weak man. Their numbers had increased
considerably, and stood at one hundred and fifty thousand, at least on
paper, but there was sufficient reason to suppose that many figured on
paper only, and that high-placed officials pocketed the pay of the
non-existent members of the corps. Another change which had crept into
the corps was that members were not necessarily available for, or liable
to, military service, so many being engaged in civil employment. They
were, however, ever ready to take up arms in revolt, and proved their
political power by deposing and murdering Sultan Achmet III. The
Janissaries had lost their _raison d'être_, and were no more than a
public nuisance at a time when all Europe was seething with discontent,
when old thrones were falling to the ground and new popular political
institutions were teaching monarchs how a people prefers to be governed.
Possibly the Janissaries were influenced by the spirit of revolt which
informed so many peoples at this period, but I think it more likely that
they acted out of selfishness only, and had no other desire than to hold
the power of the State in their own hands, to their own advantage,
allowing the Sultan to reign as long as he did not interfere with their
rule. They were far too bigoted and jealous of their privileges to have
taken to the idealistic notions which possessed so many patriots of the
French Revolution. They deposed Selim III, and his successor reigned
only a few months.
Then came Mahmoud II, and he was more like the Sultans of the days of
conquests than any of his immediate predecessors had been. The
Janissaries annoyed him, so he determined to get rid of them, and
happily had heard of the method used by Murat for soothing the turbulent
Madrileños. It was time for drastic measures, because the external
situation was becoming very dangerous; the Greeks were in revolt, Kara
George had risen in Servia, Christians were being massacred in the
Ottoman dominions, and the fact was beginning to attract the notice of
Europe, in spite of so many other preoccupations. So Mahmoud II saw to
his artillery, and instructed his Master of the Ordnance, Ibrahim,
commonly called Kara Gehennin, Black Hell, in the use he wished it put
to. The Janissaries were ordered out to military exercises one day, and
as this did not please them, they gave the usual signal of revolt, by
upsetting their camp-kettles.
Mahmoud was ready for them; he unfurled the Sacred Standard of the
Prophet, called on all true believers to rally round their Padishah and
Caliph, and left Ibrahim to do the rest with his artillery. Those
Janissaries who survived this treatment broke back to barracks, where
they barricaded themselves, some six thousand. Ibrahim came up with his
guns and knocked the buildings down about their ears; those who did not
perish here were slain by irate citizens wherever they were caught, and
so a great corps, whose earliest records were those of honourable
battle, perished in a day. A new army of forty thousand was then raised,
clothed, armed, and disciplined, according to European models.
The old order was changing, had changed, with startling quickness all
over Europe, and all the known world was affected by the events that
filled the times when Mahmoud II sat on the throne of Constantine. When
this Sultan succeeded, France had already passed through the fire of
Republican Government to the glory of a military Empire, had again
accepted the principle of hereditary nobility while French arms were
victorious over nearly all the continent of Europe. A new Republic had
arisen out of muddle and misrule in Great Britain's American colonies,
and as compensation, perhaps, that country was laying the foundations of
the Indian Empire, and paving the way to the possession of Egypt, on the
battlefields of the Iberian Peninsula.
Mahmoud lived long enough to witness all these many changes. Before he
died, in 1839, he saw the fleets of Great Britain, France, and Russia
threatening him with punishment unless the bloodshed caused by the
Hellenic effort after freedom ceased at once, saw his own fleet, despite
its bravery and that of his Egyptian allies, destroyed at Navarino, and
as consequence a Christian King appointed by the Powers to rule over his
former subjects in Greece.
Even Turkey endeavoured to show some appreciation of the "Zeit Geist" by
instituting reforms, and wisely began with the Army, calling in for the
first time German instructors. One of these, a tall young officer with
fair curly hair, some forty years later planned the campaign which laid
the second French Empire in the dust, Field-Marshal Count von Moltke. Of
the Turks, after the war with Russia, which followed shortly on
Navarino, Moltke said: "The splendid appearance, the beautiful arms, the
reckless bravery of the old Moslem horde had disappeared, yet this new
army had one quality which placed it above the numerous host that in
former times the Porte could summon to the field--it obeyed."
Does the spirit of obedience still form one of the many good qualities
of the Turkish soldier? It is hard to say, for this war has given
instances of the old bravery and devotion, steadiness under fire, which
means discipline, obedience; but against that you have evidence of the
contrary, of swarms of men straying away unarmed from their posts at the
front, and hiding in the purlieus of Stamboul, while from Asia Minor
come reports of whole divisions which had declined to take part in the
Balkan War.
In the meantime the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire continued. By
1811 Milosh Obrenoviç had forced the Porte to relinquish all claims on
Servia, and in 1832 a Bavarian Prince became King of an independent
Greece. Some thirty years later the Russo-Turkish War gave autonomy to
Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austria, these events
being followed by the independence of Roumania and Servia as kingdoms
entirely free from any Turkish control. The last of Turkey's conquered
provinces became free when Tsar Ferdinand proclaimed himself ruler of
all the Bulgarians. This last event synchronized with an expression of
popular feeling engineered by a political association generally known as
Young Turks.
It is a common saying that nothing changes in the East; it is also
inaccurate, like most generalizations. Changes came, even to Turkey,
through her contact with the West. Change comes very slowly to such a
people as are the Turks, and when it does come it leaves behind more
bewilderment among the bulk of the nation than is usually the case in
Western races. Again, to the outside world the changes which have passed
over the Ottoman Empire in recent years have seemed to come suddenly,
because the effects had the appearance of precipitancy. Revolt,
revolutionary changes, are nothing new in the Ottoman Empire, but till
lately have passed more or less unnoticed, probably because their
effects were not particularly striking.
[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE
Seen from above Scutari; beyond it the Sea of Marmora and the distant
coast where the lines of Chatalja end to southward.]
Such changes as have taken place occurred almost entirely in the
European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and may be said to have begun
during the last century. The European provinces of Turkey always
contained factors making for the disruption of the Empire: subject
races, alien in everything to their masters, centrifugal forces for a
time controlled by military governors whose methods did not as a rule
tend to bring about conciliation. The bonds that bound the provinces to
the Central Government were none of the strongest before the days when
an official's every step was dictated to him by telegraph from the
Porte, and local governors acted with great independence. Military
pashas even made war on and concluded peace with each other, after the
manner of mediæval dynasts. Some went even further, as did the Pasha of
Janina. He started life as a brigand, and made himself pasha by the
simple expedient of forging his commission. This trifling misdemeanour
was overlooked by the Porte, as he was a strong man, and might be useful
to the interests of the Empire, and, moreover, if it came to the worst,
could always be disowned. As it happened, Ali Pasha was too strong, or
the Central Government too weak, and so he went to lengths to which no
other pasha had gone before him.
Ali Pasha's lifetime fell into those days when Europe was big with
revolution against ancient dynasties, and was tiring of time-honoured
institutions. No doubt personal vanity, that strong incentive of
revolutionaries, reformers, and others in search of notoriety, swayed
Ali Pasha. He conducted a foreign policy quite independent of that
pursued by the Porte, entered into negotiations with Napoleon or Pitt,
as he deemed expedient, and generally acted with complete independence.
Incidentally, Ali Pasha helped towards the dismemberment of his
sovereign's Empire by favouring the Greeks in their strivings after
freedom; it was probably not his original intention. Ali Pasha very
fittingly fell a victim to a conspiracy of those whom he had injured in
one way or another.
Another pasha to raise the banner of revolt was Passvan Oglou of Vidin,
who, when the Porte sought to depose him, prepared to march on
Constantinople, and the Central Government was obliged to make peace
with him.
Then, again, the Pasha of Scutari revolted, but the Porte contrived to
settle him and the chief of his conspiracy by a breach of Turkish
hospitality, by a massacre at a banquet.
The separation of Egypt from the complex of military governorships which
constituted the Ottoman Empire, was another indication that the old
order was not in keeping with the spirit of the age. The destruction of
the Turkish fleet at Navarino, and the massacre of the Janissaries, by
which the flower of the Turkish Army was lost, were further signs of the
times, and prepared for changes even in Turkish administration, and
finally, by the emancipation of Greece, that administration was deprived
of some of its best brains, for since that event not even the meanest
Greek would accept office under the Porte.
The telegraph wrought further changes; it brought the Central
Government, restored to order by Reshid Pasha, into closer touch with
the provinces, made greater control of officials possible, and finally
robbed these of all initiative. Moreover, higher officials were no
longer chosen from among the local magnates, but drawn from a lower
class, less likely to act independently; by this a new bureaucracy was
called into being and its ineptitude caused further trouble.
In the reign of Abdul Hamid all the vilayets of European Turkey were
absolutely controlled from Yildiz Kiosk, and as that ruler was far above
concerning himself with such trifling matters as racial distinctions
among his subjects, unless they proved of value in sowing discord
between the various nationalities under his sway, Greeks, Bulgarians,
Serbs, and others met with little consideration at the hands of the
Sultan's deputies. _Force majeure_ applied by the Great Powers was the
only argument to which Sultan Abdul Hamid answered, and the
Russo-Turkish war brought about changes which we have already
considered.
The great body of the Turkish nation lived quite contentedly under Abdul
Hamid. He was Sultan, Caliph, God's Shadow upon Earth, and ordered
mundane matters from heights almost as remote as the high heavens. He
was the head of a theocratic power, based on militarism, and his Turkish
subjects were content that he should remain so. To them a ruler who
declined to differentiate between dynamo and dynamite was well suited.
Every village provided for its own security by appointing watchmen, and
education was the concern of the churches. The Gendarmerie was not
concerned with preventing crime or tracing criminals unless the State,
not private property, were endangered.
That a State so raised, so maintained, should act as an organization for
protecting and furthering the interests of its subjects, of whatever
race or creed, is not to be expected, neither did the great body of the
Turkish nation ever wish it to assume such functions. For the Turks were
the dominant race, the conquerors, and to them any idea of their
non-Islamic, non-Turk fellow-subjects as equals was inconceivable; their
religion made such a state of affairs impossible. Thus for the ordinary
Turk, as for the more enlightened ones, those in power had every
interest in supporting the old order of things, for most of them must
have known that once the non-Turk elements were placed on a level with
the sons of Othman, the latter's _locus standi_ would have gone, seeing
his ineptitude for any modern thought, his incapacity for progress. The
_raison d'être_ of the State was to perpetuate Osmanli ascendancy, and
to this end Abdul Hamid worked, and he worked well for his own people.
This ascendancy was jealously guarded; no Christian was ever allowed
executive command over Moslems, and to this is due in great measure the
failure of all attempted reforms in the naval and military services of
the Ottoman Empire.
Added to this is a certain distrust which the Turk has of all
Christians, believing that a man who does not follow the law of the
Koran cannot be absolutely loyal to the Sultan. In many instances the
Turk's suspicions were justified, but it was not religious sentiment
alone which separated Moslem and non-Moslem in the Ottoman Empire, for
those Jews who are the Sultan's subjects are well content to remain so.
Unlike other non-Moslem subjects of the Sultan, those Jews, mostly
refugees from Spain's and Portugal's most Catholic Majesties, have no
outside Powers to espouse their cause, nor have they any grievance, for,
being isolated, the Porte has no reason to fear them. It is most
unlikely that the Jews of Saloniki, for instance, would welcome the
Slavs as masters, nor have the Greeks, since their occupation of that
town, ingratiated themselves with the children of Israel.
Like the Jews, the Turks form a religious community rather than a State
in its modern conception, and these two resemble each other inasmuch as
neither understands the word "Fatherland" as applying to a country
exclusively occupied by their co-nationals. The word "Vatan," meaning
Motherland, conveys no definite meaning to the Turks; it had to be
interpreted to them by the self-appointed leaders of thought who formed
the Young Turk Party. To those who have lived in India the word "Vatan"
will be familiar in the sense that it defines a man's place of origin
rather than a sentimental idea, such as the words "Home," "Patria,"
"Heimat," or "Vaterland."
To this inarticulate mass of Moslems living contentedly under the
Sultan's sway, a body of Young Turks brought the Western conception of a
State. The "Spirit of the East," so strong among the Turks, was
disquieted by a movement which seemed to work outside the limits of the
"Law," as written by the Prophet. The work done by the new political
power in Turkey appealed strongly to the great mass of the people in
Western Europe, to those who had no experience of the East and its
mysterious ways. The reformers, after years of strenuous effort, years
spent in exile, broke in upon Abdul Hamid's plans for maintaining
Turkish ascendancy when Niazi Bey raised the standard of revolt in 1908,
and threatened to march on Constantinople with the Second and Third Army
Corps. Abdul Hamid yielded to pressure, and ordered the election of a
Chamber of Deputies, at the same time encouraging a counter-revolution
in his capital. This movement was led by Kiamil Pasha, the Grand Vizier
then (as he is again at present), against the Committee of Union and
Progress. The reformers proved too strong, and Kiamil Pasha was forced
to resign; he was succeeded by Hilmi Pasha, formerly Commissioner of
Macedonia. The acts of the Committee of Union and Progress began to bear
fruit at once, and of a nature unexpected by those enthusiasts who had
only the idea of a great Liberal Empire under a constitutional Sultan
before their eyes, otherwise blind to side issues. But these side issues
grew and crystallized into a segregation of the non-Islamic sections of
the population, who felt more than ever justified in insisting on their
own respective nationality. An early disagreement arose between the
Committee of Union and Progress and the Liberal Union, a body called
into being to represent the Christian electorate. The murder of Hussein
Fehmi, an Albanian editor of the Union's official organ, provoked his
compatriots among the troops in Constantinople to action against the
Committee of Union and Progress; mutinous soldiers seized the Parliament
House and telegraph offices, while delegates from the Liberal Union
suggested entering into negotiations with the other party. In the
meantime Abdul Hamid had pardoned the mutineers, and this gave the
Committee sufficient excuse for considering the revolt as reactionary;
the Committee were well aware that their new regime could not succeed
while the Sultan seemed to favour reaction. An army under Mahmoud
Shevket marched on Constantinople, invested the capital, occupied it
after some fighting, and ordered the National Assembly to depose Abdul
Hamid, electing his younger brother to succeed as Mohammed V.
In itself, the deposition of a Sultan by a revolted section of the Army
was nothing new in the annals of Ottoman history; it had occurred
frequently, but was generally understood to have been an expression of
the "Will of Allah." "The Will of the People" was made responsible for
the effects of the last revolution, and none were more bewildered than
the bulk of the Turkish people themselves when this reasoning was
explained to them. The Effendi class, the gentry, as it were, many of
them men of intelligence, were as a whole by no means enamoured of the
Committee of Union and Progress and its ways, knowing well how little
the Turkish people were prepared for violent reforms. The people
themselves seem to have quite failed to enter into the spirit of the new
era; they missed the religious note; no mention was made of Allah, in
fact, the professed agnosticism of some less cautious reformers led them
to suggest that Allah had nothing to do with the business.
Then again, Christians, even Armenians, were to be looked upon as
equals, treated as such, whereas every one knew that they had to submit,
as becomes the vanquished, thus duly acknowledging the Turk as their
superiors. Then a new word, besides the unintelligible "Vatan," was
being used to describe the governing power, "Constitution,"
"Meshrutiet," which many took to be a new, strange name for the
succeeding Sultan. The election of delegates did not meet with thorough
approval; some considered that it raised individuals above the mass of
Moslems, who are all equal in the sight of the Prophet, others could not
understand why an assembly was necessary to voice the Sultan's "Irade"
(in its original meaning, intention), and, again, there were those who
thought of Parliament as a plaything of the Sultan's, and justified for
that reason only.
In the meantime enthusiastic Western nations, especially those who
consider representative government the panacea for all social ills,
because their own genius had evolved the system, loudly acclaimed the
Young Turks as saviours of their country, as apostles of freedom, as
heroes, and most members of the reform party gladly accepted this
interpretation of their somewhat confused mentality. If you are called a
hero you are very likely to believe it, even if it robs you of your
proper sense of proportion. This happened to the Young Turks
collectively. The promised reforms had never been demanded by the bulk
of the Turkish people, who therefore had no standpoint from which to
gauge the results of reforms; they supposed that everything was to be
free, amongst others, railway travelling, and I have heard of Turks
invading a first-class compartment, and not only declining to pay their
fare, but objecting to Christians riding in the same coach.
The Committee of Union and Progress showed the inherited genius of
destruction, but failed when it came to construction. Western people
said, "Give them time," but time brought no betterment. The old order
had been ruthlessly destroyed, the fear of authority had been dispelled,
and nothing was created to fill the vacant places in the mind of the
people. Public administration suffered, neglected because the reformers
had no thought but for the maintenance of their own dignity, and this
was entrusted to an esoteric militarism, to a political body whose
members were not publicly known, and who were therefore removed from
public responsibility. The worst effects of this clandestine body
politic were felt in the army, and those whose business it was to
maintain the efficiency of the Sultan's forces were too much concerned
with political machinations to attend to their primary duties. The
disorder which resulted in all departments of public life led to an
increase in the ever-present inertia of the Turk when not engaged in
warfare, and acted as a further hindrance to reform.
In the Army the spirit of change brought from the West worked the
greatest havoc. The Anatolian peasant, a simple-minded, strong, enduring
child, when called for service with the colours, found no more of the
old officers, who were content to lead without domineering, in a
single-hearted effort for the Faith. In their stead he found men who
assumed airs of superiority, who lived apart, and were not interested in
the simple working of the soldier's mind. These officers took as their
models the men who train the German Army on German lines, suitable only
to the German people, and appear to have disregarded the national
peculiarities of their own kin. Some were even lax in matters of
religious observance, and how could a war prove victorious when all due
glory was not given to the God of battles? Again, there were Christians
fighting, in the ranks only, side by side with Moslems--how could this
be? Is not war a religious commandment, a sacred matter in which
infidels can have no part? The Koran says: "Who dies for God's sake
receives the highest reward"; but how can a Christian be so blest, as he
does not follow the law of the Prophet? Thus bewildered the Anatolian
peasant marched to war, inspired by Islam, obedience, resignation,
against the armed manhood of nations who breathed freedom.
The Porte, or the inexpert executive of the Ottoman Empire, had failed
to realize that the Balkan States had been strengthened by the
weakening of Islam's simple ideals, that hopes of liberty had risen high
among the Christian subjects of the Sultan in Europe, and that a
formidable alliance was in being, conceived with the sole idea of ending
Turkish rule over European Christians.
With a thoroughness of which the Oriental mind is incapable, the great
coup had been prepared by the Balkan States. A hard-and-fast Alliance
which for the time overrode all political and religious differences
confronted the Porte, and roused it suddenly to face a desperate
emergency. The Kochana massacres brought matters to a head, while Turkey
was still engaged in apathetic war with Italy. Bulgaria insisted in
peremptory tones on reform in Macedonia, Servia raised its voice over
the detention of munitions of war in transit from Saloniki, via Üsküb,
to Nish; Montenegro found a _casus belli_, and was first to pour its
armed sons down from the mountains into Turkey. They captured Detchich
on October 9th, the day after the formal declaration of war; they seized
Tuzi and Berane, and proceeded to invest Scutari. While thus engaged the
Porte was forced to declare war on Bulgaria and Servia on October 17th,
and on the same day Greece took a like step towards Turkey. An army
under the Crown Prince at once invaded the southern provinces of the
Empire.
The floods were out, and Western armies, highly trained, purposeful,
each individual fighter inspired by love of liberty, full of zeal for
the cause he had at heart, overflowed into Thrace, Thessaly, and
Macedonia. The Ottoman Army had but recently been engaged in
manoeuvres, and these had shown many glaring defects of organization.
When the Allied Armies marched, the Turks were more unready than ever;
they had even sent their reservists home. Then began a scene of frantic
disorder. Units were hurried to the front where the commanders of
brigades, divisions, army corps, impatiently awaited them. The
carefully arranged commands and sub-commands were entirely disregarded,
and each brigadier or divisional commander seized on troops as they
arrived, indiscriminately, and added them to his command. Thus the war,
begun in confusion, invited defeat. And defeat came swiftly,
mercilessly, while the unorganized masses of Ottoman troops, however
bravely individuals might comport themselves, were swept away before the
rising tide. Everybody failed, except perhaps the long-suffering Turkish
soldier; ammunition reserves were not, food supplies gave out at once,
and by the end of October all Thessaly, all Macedonia, the greater part
of Thrace, were no longer Turkish possessions, and the Sultan's armies,
broken, starved, diseased, were driven behind the lines of Chatalja, the
outer defences of the capital. On these lines the remnant of Ottoman
military power guarded the last trace of Turkish dominion in Europe;
shivering on the wind-swept heights, ill-equipped, underfed, regardless
of elementary hygiene, they awaited Kismet, these ill-used,
long-suffering sons of Islam, while in the Empire's capital the mosques
filled with sick and wounded, mingling with refugees from the former
European vilayets. There were others yet in the City, or why should the
War Office have issued an order to the imams, the priests, to render
account of officers and men of the army who are hiding in the narrow
streets of their respective parishes? The police were also instructed to
demand of officers they saw in the streets some document to show that
they were authorized to be in the town instead of at the front.
Seven short weeks and the Empire carved out of Europe by the sword of
Othman has shrivelled up before the fierce blast of war like grass
before a prairie fire. And in their need and sickness the soldiers of
Islam turned to Allah, the god of battles, and sought refuge in the
mosques built to commemorate the triumphs of departed Caliphs.