This is the thirty-fourth Sultan in the Ottoman line, and probably
the worst, the least, and the last. It is not likely the Turks will
ever have another Sultan, for this one is pretty sure to bring the
Sultanate to an end. His days are numbered, he knows it well, and the
Turks know it well too. Before his life and his kingdom are finished,
he has resolved to end the Armenian nation; that, however, will not
be ended, the people will not be exterminated; when the Turkish Empire
is abolished the remaining Armenians will have freedom.
Hamid II was born September 22, 1842, second son of Abdul Mejid,
and wrested the throne from his brother Mourad August 31, 1876. He
is not a legitimate Sultan, but a usurper. When but a little boy he
manifested a savage and cruel spirit. While the Dalma Bagsh Palace,
the largest in Constantinople, perhaps in the world--was going up,
he went to visit it; seeing it unfinished, he called the Armenian
architect and told him it must be finished by the next day. "My dear
prince and lord," said the architect, "I wish I could finish it, but it
is impossible; and especially not to-morrow, since it is Sunday, and we
Christians do not work on Sundays." "You heathen dog, you Armenian,"
said the boy Hamid, "if I grow up, and some day become a Sultan,
I will force all the Armenians to break the Sabbath, and if they do
not, I will order the soldiers to kill them all." He is carrying
out his threat. He grew to manhood without becoming any milder,
and is morally corrupt besides. He has drunken bouts with worthless
associates, and spent his time in all sorts of monstrous debauchery
and brutality. He was such a miserable wretch that it is impossible
to describe his beastly life on paper. There is no humanity in him,
no grace, no sympathy, no brains, no strength; he is pale and sick,
well worthy to be called the "sick man of Turkey."
This is a very different description of him from that given by
General Lew Wallace and Mr. Terrell. I can only say that I know what
I am talking about, and they do not. I lived in Constantinople, as
a native of Turkey, and with means of knowing, seeing him often, and
hear authentic stories of his doings day by day. General Wallace was
invited to the palace, feasted and flattered, and his wife decorated
with jewels; naturally, he thinks no ill of a man who treated him so
well, and with whom he hopes for more good times when he goes back. He
has done infinite harm to the cause of Armenia by his popular lectures,
declaring the atrocities "exaggerated" (he evidently thinks that if
a newspaper report gives ten thousand men murdered when there were
only five, and all the women of a city violated when a dozen of them
got away, you are entitled to dismiss the whole thing from your mind
as of little account), and the Sultan a good man, incapable of such
things. People are bewildered, and ask, "How can we doubt a good
American who was minister there?" Why, good people, what has his
ministry got to do with it? He was hundreds of miles from Armenia,
and did not know any of the chief languages of Constantinople,--either
Armenian, Turkish, or Romanic; and what could he tell of his host,
except of the quality of his hospitality? A man usually shows his
best side to those he entertains; did he suppose the Sultan was going
to amuse his guests by having one Armenian disemboweled, and another
emasculated or impaled on red-hot iron rods, and a couple of women
ravished, as a light and playful interlude between the main dishes and
the dessert? His praise of the Sultan is as valuable as his praise
of the Grand Llama would be,--he knows nothing of either; and his
inference from the Sultan's pleasant talk that he could not order
a nation extirpated with hideous cruelties, is simply imbecile. And
since he has given all this loose talk, the consular reports, from
English residents among the very scenes, have been published, showing
that the atrocities have not only not been exaggerated, but are even
worse than reported. In this case, even the newspapers were unable to
come up to the truth; their rhetoric fell short of the full measure
of the awful truth.
To go back a little: Twenty years ago Abdul Aziz, uncle of the present
Sultan, was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. He cared little for
the country or the people; he wanted only to eat and drink, and have
good times. He was a very strong and hearty man, and I was told he
could eat a whole roast lamb for dinner, and think it probable. He
had the innate cruelty of his family, their love of blood for its
own sake. He had tigers and lions fight together; he would order a
live lamb flung to a lion, and laugh to see the lion tear and devour
it. He married all the handsome girls he could find, but for pure
animality; he cared nothing for their education or virtue, and his
several hundred wives were what you might expect. One of them fell in
love with the commander-in-chief, or Minister of War, Heussein Avni
Pasha, a very ambitious and daring adventurer, who had gained the
confidence of the Sultan, and went often to the palace. The Sultan
heard of the intrigue, went to the woman's room, kicked her fatally,
and threw her out of the window. But before her death, she sent word
to Heussein to avenge her on the Sultan. Heussein's position was very
critical; evidently it was a race between him and the Sultan which
should kill the other first. He went to Midhad, the Grand Vezir,
and to Kaysereli Ahmed, the admiral, both liberal-minded pashas,
in favor of establishing a constitutional (or even if they could,
a republican) government, and without telling them his relations
to and fears from the Sultan, persuaded them that now was the time
to depose the Sultan, and establish liberal institutions, and told
them it must be done that night, or the Sultan would get wind of
it, and then good-by to all of them. And he clinched the argument
by telling them he would order his soldiers to kill both of them if
they refused to join him, and then depose the Sultan just the same;
"as commander-in-chief," he said, "I can compel obedience, and I am
in earnest." They consented, and while the Sultan was asleep that
night the commander's soldiers and the admiral's sailors surrounded
the palace by the land and sea. This was the Dalma Bagsh, the largest
and handsomest palace in Constantinople. Heussein entered, saying he
had important news for the Sultan. Going to the chamber where Aziz
was sleeping, he awakened him, and said, "In the name of your nephew,
Sultan Murad, I depose you." Then he compelled him to go down-stairs
to a boat in waiting, filled with soldiers, carried him to Cheragan
Palace, and imprisoned him there; after which he informed the Sultan's
nephew, then Prince Murad, that his uncle had been deposed because the
people would not endure him, and added, "As the oldest in the royal
family you succeed him, and I, as commander-in-chief, have the honor
and privilege of humbly serving my master, and leading your majesty
to the throne of the Ottoman Empire."
Murad was too astonished to know what to do or say; but Heussein was
resolute, and Murad reluctantly followed him to the Dalma Bagsh;
there the commander ordered the soldiers to cry out three times
"Padishahum chock yasa" (Long live the Sultan). All this was about
midnight; and meantime printed notices were prepared and scattered
throughout Constantinople that Sultan Aziz was deposed and Sultan
Murad was on the throne. After a few days the commander-in-chief
sent a eunuch and a physician to Cheragan Palace, with orders to
put Aziz to death. They did so by chloroforming him and cutting his
blood-vessels with scissors. Heussein prepared a false report stating
that he had committed suicide, and brought it to Sultan Murad. The
latter did not believe it, and said, "you killed my uncle." Heussein
left the Sultan's presence in great anger, and went to Midhad's
palace to confer with him, calling in also Kaysereli Ahmed and other
officers. While they were together, another officer, Cherkez Hassan
by name, brother-in-law of the dead Sultan, came to the palace,
informing the guard that he had a message from the Sultan to the
pashas, who were in conference. The guard admitted him, and he went
to the parlor. After the usual salutations the commander asked him,
"Hassan, why did you come here?" Hassan replied, "I came to kill you,
dog," and fired three shots at him from his revolver, stretching
him dead on the floor. Then, before the others could assail him,
he killed every one present, except Midhad, who escaped. Hassan
was finally captured and hanged, but Murad was established on the
throne. He was a good-natured and liberal-minded man; he believed in
constitutional government, and organized a working system. There was
to be a parliament, one-third Christians and two-thirds Mohammedans,
elected by the people of the provinces or vilayets. Each vilayet
furnished three members, two Mohammedans and one Christian, all
indorsed by the clergymen. During the elections I was pastor of Adana
in Armenia Minor, and had to endorse our members. The Adana member
was an Armenian named Krikor Bizdigian, the richest man of that
city, perhaps in Turkey; if still living, he must be ninety. When
the parliament was opened in Constantinople, Sultan Murad presided,
and told the members to discuss any questions freely. He said, "We are
here for the good of the country, and the empire needs to be reformed;
how can we reform it?" This was an entire novelty; "government by
discussion" is not the Oriental way, and not the Oriental liking
either. The Mohammedan members were astonished, and they were wrathful
at the Christian members when the latter began to make free and able
speeches. They said, "Are we going to be governed by these heathen
dogs, the Christian hogs? We will have no parliament where every dog
is free to open his mouth. We want the good old ways of Mohammed." They
were like mad dogs, ready to bite. They hated the Christians, and they
hated the Sultan. They went to his younger brother, the present Sultan,
and told him his brother Murad was insane. "He makes Christian dogs
equal to Mussulmen; he will ruin the country; you must become Sultan to
save the Turkish Empire." This suited Abdul Aziz exactly; he headed a
revolt, deposed his good brother, dissolved the parliament, imprisoned
Murad in the palace where his uncle was assassinated, and since then
has been carrying the country to destruction. He is a perfect devil
in all respects. A devil can take the guise of an angel, and the
Sultan has the cunning to make himself appear a perfect gentleman,
a benevolent and humane person. The devil can cheat most people,
and so can the Sultan, all but the native Christians in Turkey,
to whom he shows his horns, and hoofs, and tail.
The nauseous praise of the Sultan from travelers and ministers reminds
me of a Turkish brigand named Guro, who infested Asia Minor a quarter
of a century ago. He robbed year after year all travelers who had
anything worth taking; but when he met tramps he gave them money,
and even a roasted lamb to eat now and then. The tramps all praised
him; he was a benevolent, humane, kind-hearted man; they had never
seen anything cruel or dishonest about him. So the Sultan robs the
Armenians, and uses their money to feast the American ministers and
decorate their wives. Oh, but the Sultan sent money to the sufferers
from famine in the Western States of America; so generous of him! I am
glad to say the money was refused. All Americans who praise the Sultan
are like the tramps and the brigand. They are either ignorant or in
effect bribed. And then there is the affectation of impartiality,
so easy a cover for ignorance, coldness, and laziness. You must say
some good things about a scoundrel, and some ill ones about a saint,
or you will be considered a partisan. You must not tell even the
truth, if the truth is all on one side. If the Sultan massacres all
the Christians in Turkey, why, there are two sides to the question;
perhaps the Christians were not agreeable people, and if so, you cannot
wonder he has them exterminated by sword, and fire, and torture, and
rape; it is really the only way he could get rid of them. And then,
he is king, and has a right to do what he pleases with his own; nobody
has any business to interfere. Of course a President could not order
three millions of people put to death by letting loose all the savage
Indians of the West on them to do as they pleased with them, for the
sake of making them worship the Big Manitou; but a Sultan--that is
different, even though a Kurd is exactly as bad as an Indian, and
an Indian's knife does not cut throats any more effectively, nor an
Indian's tortures inflict more unnamable horrors of suffering, nor an
Indian's torch burn houses any better, nor an Indian's beastly lust
defile women any worse. Are all the writers, then, who have praised
him ignorant or silly? Yes; the Sultan's deeds, proved by countless
thousands of witnesses, set forth in the consular reports, show that
they are.
As soon as Abdul Hamid had seized the throne, he girded on the sword of
Osman, which I will explain later is equivalent to coronation. The keys
of the palace where Murad was imprisoned he keeps in his pocket. The
nominal ground of his imprisonment is insanity, but he was not insane;
it was his liberality of mind, his greatness of heart, and his mild
and kind spirit. He was an exceptional Turk. Then Hamid called Midhad
Pasha to him, gave him $25,000, and told him to leave the country and
never come back. The country was thus left without a single man of any
force of character and a large position combined. After the death of
Aziz the two greatest Turks were Sultan Murad and Midhad Pasha, and
had Murad not been imprisoned, and Midhad banished, the Turkish Empire
would be an entirely different country, and have a different future.
Midhad was finally recalled, but only to be murdered. As the Sultan
felt his position secure, he began to get rid of all men of superior
character and education. Some he banished, some he imprisoned, some he
killed. But Midhad, as the greatest, was the most obnoxious. He was
of course not dispatched at once. He was invited back, made governor
of Smyrna, given the highest emoluments, paid the greatest honors;
then one night he was suddenly summoned to Constantinople by the
Sultan. He knew it was the death-call, and fled to the French consulate
for shelter, but the consul was afraid to protect him. Finally he was
taken by force to Constantinople, tried before a tribunal of course
packed by the Sultan, and condemned to death. But the kind-hearted
Sultan commuted the death sentence to banishment and hard labor for
life, and quietly ordered the officers who were going to take him to
banishment to kill him instead, which they did.
After he had got rid of all the great Turks, he appointed a host
of ignorant and cruel ruffians as governors, sub-governors, and
generals; like Hadjii Hassan Pasha, governor of Beshick-Tash near
the Sultan's palace, and whose business is to watch over the Sultan,
and who cannot read or write. He prefers ignorance, because it means
fanaticism, and he thinks cannot plot against him. He dreads and hates
education and the educated, though he makes a show of encouraging
them. He taxed the people for public schools and put up magnificent
buildings, but there are few if any scholars in them; they were not
built for educational purposes, but for a show, and if necessary,
for barracks in the future. All the same, he has his agents in Europe
and America chant his praises as a lover of learning. Parents will
not send their children to them anyway, for there are not competent
teachers in them; there are a very few ignorant Mohammedan teachers,
but even they are so corrupt morally that no one dares trust his boy or
girl with them. The Sultan professed that people of all nationalities
and religions would have equal privileges in his public schools,
therefore he ordered all to contribute money for them. He raised the
farmers' tax from one-tenth to one-eighth of the crops on pretense
of supporting the public schools. Of course he got most of it from
the Armenians, but there is not an Armenian teacher or child in them.
Abdul Hamid is a stupendous hypocrite and charlatan; he makes a great
pretense of wisdom, religion, and morality, and he has not a spark of
either one. His wisdom is only the animal cunning of a jealous, cruel,
suspicious brute, his morals simply do not exist, and his religion
is pure sham. It is often reported that he is very religious. All
that it amounts to is that every Friday (the Mohammedan Sunday)
he goes to the mosque to worship (a ceremony called selamlik), with
several thousand soldiers lining the roads from the palace to the
mosque to prevent his assassination, of which he is in hourly fear;
that once a year he goes to the old Seraglio and pays tribute to
the mantle of Mohammed and other relics, kissing the slipper, coat,
and beard of the prophet; and he worships in the mosque of St. Sophia
as a conqueror. All this is merely for show, to please the fanatic
Mohammedans. He advertises himself as a temperance man, too, but he
drinks to excess privately. In a word, he is thoroughly false from
top to bottom, pretending all good, and doing all evil.
His officers of course imitate him; most of them are absolute
infidels, believing in nothing, but professing great devotion. I
knew a governor of this stamp. He used to worship at the mosque,
and even ordered a hair of Mohammed's whiskers to be brought from
Constantinople to please the Mohammedan population. He never drank a
drop of liquor in public, but privately drank all he could hold. He
had plenty of fellows. For instance, Khalil Rifat Pasha, the present
Grand Vezir, appointed a few months ago, has been governor of several
different provinces, and notorious in all as a great hypocrite and a
thoroughly corrupt man, full of lust and profligacy. When a European
or a native Christian of high position called on him, he would treat
the visitor with great politeness, promise anything he asked, say,
"take my word of honor," and assure him of his entire sincerity; as
soon as he was gone, Khalil would curse him, and call him a heathen
dog, say to another Mohammedan, "See how that Christian hog believed
what I said!" and keep not a word of his promises.
The Sultan is just the same. He is outwardly very pleasant, very
gentlemanly, very humane. He will promise almost anything, but he will
do nothing, and he calls his enraptured guests dogs and hogs behind
their backs. Who knows how many times he has called Lord Salisbury,
the German Emperor, or the Russian Czar, who are helping him to kill
the Armenians, heathen dogs? See the promises of the Sultan in 1878,
in the Berlin Treaty, Article 61:--"The Sublime Porte undertakes to
carry out without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded
by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians,
and to guarantee their security against Circassians and Kurds. It
will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the
powers, who will superintend their application." These promises were
made eighteen years ago, and the reforms were to be made "without
further delay." His reforms have consisted in ordering Circassians
and Kurds to murder and plunder them. Since the Berlin Treaty, the
Sultan, calling the European kings, emperors, and princes heathen
hogs and Christian dogs, directly and indirectly has killed 200,000
Armenians. That was his reform.
When he seized the throne, Turkey had 40,000,000 people, and the
Sultan thought his power was irresistible. He let loose a horde of
Circassians to massacre the Bulgarians, just as he has let loose
the Kurds to massacre the Armenians. But the Bulgarians are Slavs,
and belong to the Greek Church, and the Russian Czar, Alexander,
grandfather of the present Czar, interfered in their favor. This
excited the fears of the other powers, and a Congress was held in
Constantinople to settle the question. Lord Salisbury came from
England, Count Ignatieff from Russia, and others from other parts
of Europe, gathered in a beautiful palace (now the admiralty) on the
shores of the Golden Horn of sweet waters, discussed the question, and
decided that the Bulgarian atrocities must stop, Bulgaria be reformed
and allowed to govern itself internally, and that Turkey must not fight
Russia because it was too weak. This decision was communicated to the
Sultan, and he was furious: he would not grant freedom or a government
to Bulgaria, and he was quite able to fight Russia. Finally he refused
flatly to accept the decision, and called a Turkish Congress to give
their "opinion." Of course they gave what was wanted, and pronounced
in favor of a war with Russia. A few were bold enough to disfavor it,
and the Sultan punished them. One of these was Hagop Efendi Madteosian,
the representative of the Protestant Armenian community. Another was
a thoughtful, experienced Turk, and when the Sultan asked him his
reason for opposing the war, he related the following parable:
"There was once a miser whom the king gave his choice of three
things: to eat five pounds of raw onions without bread at one meal,
to receive five hundred lashes on the bare back, or to pay $5,000. The
miser could not bear to lose so much money; he could not endure such
a flogging; and he chose to eat the onions. After eating a pound or
so their bitterness and rankness nauseated him, and he concluded to
take the whipping. He stood about a hundred lashes, and saw that he
should die under it; and decided to pay the $5,000 after all." "Now,"
said the wise Turk, "this illustrates what I mean. If you go to war
with Russia, you will sacrifice many thousands of soldiers, which is
a very bitter thing to digest; then you will lose European Turkey,
and finally you will have to pay millions of dollars indemnity and
ruin the country. I cannot approve the war." The Sultan cried out in
rage, "Begone, you old crank! I will not listen to any more foolish
words from you. I shall conquer the Czar, enlarge the country, and
strengthen my kingdom." He did go to war in 1876, was whipped by the
Czar, and lost almost the whole of European Turkey and other parts
of the empire, with 22,000,000 people: Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia,
Bosnia, Herzegovina, part of Macedonia, part of Armenia, Cyprus, and
afterwards Egypt. He lost many thousands of soldiers and millions of
dollars, and besides has had to pay millions of dollars indemnity to
Russia. And the Sultan is called an "able man" and "wise ruler"! These
things look like it.
After the war and the loss of the provinces, he encouraged the
Mohammedan population of European Turkey to emigrate to Asiatic
Turkey, that they might not live under Christians, and that they
might increase the number of Mohammedans in the Asiatic part. The
slaughter of the Armenians and the confiscation of their property
forms part of the scheme to make room for them. Before his time the
Armenians in Armenia outnumbered the Turks; but the massacres, the
occupation of the farms and houses by the savages let loose on them,
and the emigration of many more Armenians to Persia and Russia, have
greatly diminished their numbers. Of course they are not permitted to
emigrate, they simply fly. About 200,000 have actually perished. As
to the forced conversions, the Sultan does not care a particle for
Islamism, but wants to please the Moslem and finds this an agreeable
way to do it. As to the converts from Islamism to Christianity, they
are ordered to go to Constantinople and are killed there. Hundreds
and thousands of the Mohammedan Turks are Christians in secret,
but do not dare to confess it. These are the ones who helped and
protected the Armenians during the recent atrocities. Some six years
ago a number of such professed the Christian religion publicly;
they were at once ordered to go to Constantinople and every one of
them was murdered by order of the Sultan. When the representatives
of the Christian powers asked about them the Sultan denied that they
had come there at all. This was the method of their assassination:
The Sultan has several pleasure boats, and in one of these boats he
fitted up an air-tight room with an air-pump; each night one of the
converts was taken from prison and put into this room, the air was
pumped out, and he was suffocated; then an iron chain was hooked
round him, and he was thrown into the Bosphorus. One by one all of
them were so murdered. How did the author of this book discover the
secret? Well, when in Constantinople, I had an intimate friend among
the engineers; the engineer of this death boat told my friend about
it, and he told me.
And the Sultan is not simply a murderer by proxy and official
order; he is a murderer himself personally. When in Constantinople,
I learned from several authoritative sources that he killed with
his own revolver several of his servants, for no cause whatever,
but merely from suspicion or rage. He always keeps a revolver in his
pocket, and whomever in the palace he suspects, he shoots. He is a
great coward. I heard there that he has more than 10,000 detectives,
at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars a year. He lives in
Yildiz Palace, about two miles from the Bosphorus, on a hill on the
European shore; he has built new barracks, and keeps a large army
around the palace to protect him from assassination. His "wisdom" is
merely care for his skin. He cares nothing for the prosperity of the
country; it is steadily growing poorer, while he is personally growing
very rich. That is one reason why he keeps an Armenian treasurer,
that the Turks may not know his secrets. Even the Turks are disgusted
with him. I often used to hear the Turks say, "God deliver us from the
Sultan and send another master, even if he is the Czar of Russia." His
immense family costs him from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year; it is
the largest in the world. I was told that it consists of 5,000 persons,
counting the eunuchs, the servants, and all. He has about 500 wives;
he did not marry them all; he inherited most of them. When a Sultan
dies, his successor has everything that belonged to him, including
his wives. And besides, he has to marry a new wife every year, by the
Mohammedan and governmental law; he has no choice in the matter. That
makes twenty wives in the twenty years of Abdul Hamid's reign. This
is the system: He has at present nearly one hundred young girls in
the harem, supposed to be the most beautiful in the world; they are
presented to him by the governor-generals, who get them from the local
governors, who get their offices by sending their superiors the finest
looking girls, or the best Arabian horses, and the governor-generals
get theirs by passing the gifts on to the Sultan. That is the way to
get office in Turkey. You may be a murderer, a thief, or an ignoramus,
but you can be sure of an office if you can furnish a handsome girl,
or a fine stallion, or a few thousand dollars. When I was pastor in
Marsovan, the local governor, Sudduc Bey, bought a very pretty girl,
and sent her to the governor-general of Beshick-Tash in Constantinople,
Hadji Hassan Pash, the Sultan's special guard; he had got his office
from that functionary. As to how the girls are got, it depends;
if they are Mohammedan, they are bought; if they are Christian
they are seized by force, for the Christians will not sell their
daughters. Several months ago Bahri Pasha, the governor-general of
Van, carried off several Armenian girls and presented them to the
Sultan, who decorated him for the service, and appointed him Vali or
governor-general of Adana, in Armenia Minor. These girls are kept in
the harem of the Sultan. When the time comes to marry another wife,
he has the girls stand in a row, and chooses one of them by covering
her face with a silk handkerchief; then she is taken by the eunuchs to
the quarters allotted to the Sultanas, and can have separate servants,
carriages, and eunuchs. The life of the Sultan and his big family is
the most miserable in the world. The palace is a focus of discontent,
quarrels, jealousy, lust, and cruelty; in a word, it is a perfect
hell. The women have nothing to do, and nothing to think of; they do
not read, they have no work, and no share even in household management;
they are idle, and unspeakably bored, and they do what most idle
people of both sexes do all over the world--excite their nerves with
sensual cravings, and then try to satisfy them. They often manage
to bring boys to their quarters by stealth, and keep them there for
weeks for purposes of lust, and the Sultan knows nothing about it;
often they bribe their eunuchs, and go to other places to satisfy
their desires, and the Sultan never hears of it. Aziz lost his life
through an intrigue of one of his wives. With so large and exacting
a family, it is no wonder the Sultan has no time or energy left for
improving his administration. He only finds a little time to send
telegrams to the governors to exterminate the Armenians.