recent times, that the Ottoman armies which invaded Europe from Asia
Minor were composed of pure Turks, and that the motive which impelled
them in their conquest was the fanatical desire to extend Islam. But
these views have been modified of late years. It has been shown that
the armies which Sultans Orchan and Murad led across the Straits into
Europe were not pure Turks, but were very largely composed of subjects
of the East Roman Empire from the northern parts of Asia Minor, who,
after the defeat there of the Byzantine armies, had embraced Islam.
They were welded with the Turks by religion into something approaching
to a nation. They called themselves Osmanlis, or Ottomans, from the
founder of the Othman dynasty. It may be doubted whether the Turks
alone were capable of effecting the conquests in Europe. It is certain
that they could not have maintained the Empire when formed.
The Turks of Anatolia had many valuable qualities as soldiers. They
were, and are to this day, brave, hardy, sober, frugal, and cleanly in
their habits, as inculcated by their religion, a strong point in their
favour in days when sanitary arrangements were completely ignored by
armies. They bore the hardships of long campaigns without complaint.
But they were deficient in intelligence and education, which count for
much in war as in civil life. In this respect they were very inferior
to subjects of the East Roman Empire and to many of the Christians with
whom they came in conflict. But the Ottomans who first invaded Europe
were not simply Turks. Later, the most effective corps in the Ottoman
army was formed exclusively of the sons of Christian parents in the
Balkans, conscripted at an early age and forcibly converted to Islam.
It was with forces thus constituted that the Ottomans extended their
Empire up to and beyond the Danube. The conquests of the larger part
of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, were also effected,
by composite forces, to which Serbia and Wallachia sent contingents
by virtue of treaties with the Porte. The greater number of Ottoman
generals who distinguished themselves in these early days of conquest
were not of Turkish race, but were Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and
Italians, who had embraced Islam or whose forbears had done so. It was
the same with almost all the naval commanders. They were of foreign
origin, who had gained experience as pirates and had embraced Islam.
The crews who manned the Ottoman navy were mainly Greeks from the
islands in the Ægean Sea.
With respect to the objects and motives of the Ottoman conquests, a
careful review of the history of the early Sultans has shown that there
was very little, if any, of missionary enterprise on behalf of Islam.
It will be admitted that there is no pretence for concluding that the
vast conquests in Asia and Africa had any such motive. The populations
there were already Moslems. The motives for conquest were the ambition
to extend the Empire at the expense of neighbouring States and the hope
of plunder on the part of the soldiers. Religious zeal had nothing to
do with it. What reason is there to suppose that conquests in Europe
had any different object than those in Asia? As a matter of fact,
there was no very large extension of Islam in Europe as a result of
Ottoman conquest. When cities were captured and their inhabitants were
massacred, or when districts were conquered and the people were carried
away as captives to be sold as slaves, they do not appear to have had
the alternative offered to them of embracing Islam.
In some few districts, as in Bosnia and parts of Albania and the Morea,
the landowners, or some of them, were allowed to avoid the confiscation
of their property by becoming Mussulmans. But these were exceptions.
The general rule was that the land of the conquered districts was
confiscated without the option to the owners of changing their religion
and saving their property. As regards the labouring people, the rayas,
there does not appear to have been any desire that they should adopt
the religion of their conquerors. They were wanted for the cultivation
of the land as serfs or slaves. It seems to have been a matter of
indifference what their religion was.
There is also nothing to show that the Ottoman soldiers were animated
by any religious zeal in their campaigns in Europe. The main cause of
their military efficiency was the organization of the army effected
by Orchan and perfected by Murad I. It offered immense rewards to the
soldiers for victories in battle and for personal valour, in the share
of booty and plunder levied in the conquered districts, of captives to
be sold as slaves, of women for wives or concubines or to be sold for
harems, and of lands to be distributed as fiefs. These rewards appealed
to the predatory instincts of the Moslem soldiers, whether Turks or
others of alien origin. In the rare intervals of peace the soldiers
soon wearied of life in barracks, and yearned for active campaigns.
At such times the Janissaries and other soldiers were a danger to the
State from their turbulence and disorder. It was necessary to find
employment for them at a distance. This acted as a constant incitement
to war and to fresh conquests. It was one of the causes of the
continuous growth of the Empire.
A second main cause of success to the Ottoman armies in Europe
was the want of union for resistance on the part of the people of
the Balkan States. There can be little doubt that if the Greeks,
Bulgarians, and Serbians had combined to resist the invading Moslems
their efforts would have been successful. But Greeks and Bulgarians,
Greeks and Serbians hated one another more than they feared and hated
the Ottomans. In the six centuries dealt with in this volume there
was only a single occasion when Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbians
formed a combination against the Ottomans. This was not till 1912.
The combination was successful and drove the Turks out of Macedonia,
Epirus, Albania, and the greater part of Thrace. But we have shown
that it broke down on the division of the spoil, with the result that
the Turks recovered a small part of their lost territory. The case
illustrates our contention that want of union of the Christian States
was a main cause of the servitude of all of them for nearly five
hundred years under Turkish rule.
Lastly, in appreciating the causes of the wonderful growth of the
Ottoman Empire, we must not lose sight of the personal element, of
the fact that, for ten generations, the Othman family produced men
capable of leading their armies in the field to victory, and almost
equally remarkable as administrators and statesmen. This succession of
a single family, father and son, for ten generations without a break,
culminating in the greatest of them, Solyman the Magnificent, is quite
without precedent or example in history. The Othman family were pure
Turks in their origin. But the Turkish blood was very soon diluted.
The mothers of future Sultans were either captives taken by corsairs
or slaves bought on account of their beauty. They were of every
race—Greeks, Slavs, Italians, or Russians. But in spite of this mixed
blood the type of Sultans remained much the same for ten generations.
The prestige acquired by the family in these three hundred years,
as founders and maintainers of the Empire and as generals who led
their armies to victory, was such that it has impressed itself on the
imagination of all Ottomans, and has survived to this day, in spite
of the long subsequent degeneration of the family. Unquestionably, the
foundation and growth of the Empire were largely due to the personal
qualities of the Othman dynasty.
After the death in 1578 of Grand Vizier Sokolli, who carried on
the traditions of the first ten Sultans for a few years under the
worthless Selim II, the pendulum of Empire swung in the opposite
direction. Thenceforth, down to the present time, there were
successions of defeats and disasters to the Turkish Empire, with but
few intermissions. Provinces were torn from it periodically, like
leaves from an artichoke, till all but a small fraction of it in
Europe, the whole of its possessions in Africa, and a large part in
Asia have been lost to the Empire. What remains to it is the core of
Turkish and Arabic provinces in Asia, and in Europe only its capital,
Constantinople, and a small portion of Thrace to the north of it.
Five of the Great Powers of Europe have had their share of the spoils,
and six independent States have been resuscitated out of the remaining
débris of it. It is hard to say which of the Great Powers gained most.
Austria recovered by force of arms Hungary, Transylvania, Dalmatia,
Croatia, and Slavonia, and by artful policy Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Russia obtained by conquest the Crimea, Bessarabia, Podolia, and a
part of the Ukraine in Europe, and the Caucasus, and a great part of
Armenia, in Asia. France has possessed itself of Algiers and Tunis.
England has secured the suzerainty and practical possession of Egypt
and complete possession of Cyprus and Aden. Italy has seized Tripoli.
Of the six smaller independent States, Bulgaria and Roumania owe their
revival solely to Russia, Greece mainly to Great Britain and France,
Albania to the concert of the Balkan States in 1912, and Serbia and
Montenegro alone owe their freedom mainly to their own valour. It
need not be said that gratitude forms no part of the ethics of modern
statecraft, and a few only of the above States have recognized that
they owe anything to the Powers who rescued them from Turkish rule.
During the last three hundred years, when these vast changes were
being effected, the Ottoman army lost all the prestige it had acquired
during the previous three hundred years. With the single exception of
the battle of Cerestes, fought against the Hungarians in 1646, when
a _débâcle_ of the Turkish army was averted by the splendid cavalry
charge of Cicala Pasha, which saved to the Ottoman Empire the larger
part of Hungary for another term of seventy-two years, its armies were
defeated in almost every battle of any importance. In nearly all of
them the Ottomans had the advantage of very superior numbers, but this
did not save them from disaster. The armies opposed to them were led
by a succession of generals who were masters of the art of war, such
as Sobieski, King of Poland, Prince Eugène of Savoy, Prince Charles
of Lorraine, Generals Munnich, Loudon, Kutusoff, Suvorov, Diebitsch,
Paskievitch, Skobeleff, and Gourko. Compared with these, the Turks had
not a single general of eminence and only a few valiant leaders in
battle.
To what causes, then, are we to attribute the decay and dismemberment
of the vast Empire, and the complete failure of its armies to maintain
prestige for victory and valour? It is more easy perhaps to suggest
causes for downfall than for the birth and growth of the Empire. First
and foremost of the causes has unquestionably been the degeneracy of
the Othman dynasty. It could not have been by a mere chance coincidence
that the growth of Empire was synchronous with the reign of the first
ten Sultans, and that its decay and dismemberment were extended through
the reign of twenty-five successors, of whom all but two, or possibly
three, were degenerates and wholly incompetent to rule. The Ottoman
State was an autocracy in which all military, civil, and religious
faculties were centred in its head. It needed autocrats competent for
the task, and in the absence of such it was certain that the State
would take the road to ruin. Whether the degeneracy of the dynasty was
due, as has been hinted, to a break in the true succession, and the
introduction of alien blood after Solyman the Magnificent, or not, the
fact remains that we can discern no trace of the eminent qualities of
the family in those who succeeded him.
The deterioration of the race, which began with Selim ‘the Sot,’ was
confirmed and accentuated by what occurred after three more Sultans had
succeeded father to son—all of them equally unfit to fill the throne.
The original law of succession, which had been set aside by the cruel
practice of fratricide, was then reverted to, and the eldest male of
the family, and not the eldest son of a defunct Sultan, was recognized
as his successor. Thenceforth, by way of precaution against conspiracy
and rebellion, the reigning Sultans, in lieu of putting their brothers
to death, immured them as virtual prisoners in the building of the
Seraglio known as the Cage, where they were allowed little or no
communication with the world. They were permitted to maintain their
harems, but by some abominable process the women were sterilized so
as to prevent their giving birth to possible claimants to the throne.
Of twenty successors to Mahomet IV, seventeen were subjected to this
degrading treatment, and only left prison on succeeding to the throne.
Three Sultans escaped this treatment, two of them by succeeding their
fathers, in default of other male heirs of an older age. Only one of
these three was better equipped to fill the throne than the average of
the other seventeen. It is evident, therefore, that the dynasty was
worn out. It would have been well for the Empire if the Othman race had
long ago come to an end, and had been replaced by some more virile and
competent stock.
It followed, from the degeneracy of this long succession of Sultans,
that the supreme power of the State fell into other hands, either of
viziers who were able to dominate the reigning Sultans and to secure
themselves against intrigues of all kinds, or more often of the harem.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the evils which resulted from the
intervention of the Sultan’s harem in affairs of State. The harem
consisted of a vast concourse of women and slaves, of concubines and
eunuchs, maintained at a huge expense—a nest of extravagance and
corruption. It was always in antagonism to the official administration
of the Porte, which ostensibly carried on the administration of the
State under the direction of the Sultan. The favourite concubine
for the time being, or the ambitious mother of a Sultan, or not
infrequently the principal eunuch, gained the ear of the Sultan and
overruled the more experienced advisers of the Porte. The harem was
the centre from which corruption spread throughout the Turkish Empire,
as officials of every degree, from the highest to the lowest, found it
expedient to secure their interest with its inmates by heavy bribes.
It has been shown in previous pages that the sale of offices, civil
and military, became universal. This was largely responsible for the
decay and dismemberment of the State. An illustration of this was to
be found in the cases of Egypt, Algiers, and Tunis. The incompetent
pashas, who had obtained by purchase the governorships of these
important provinces, were unable to control the local Mamelukes in
Egypt, or the local Janissaries in Algiers and Tunis, with the result
that these provinces became practically independent and later were lost
to the Empire.
A second main cause of the decadence of the Empire was undoubtedly
the deterioration of its armies. We miss altogether in the many great
battles of the last three hundred years the élan and the daring
spirit by which the Ottomans won their many victories in the period
of accretion of the Empire. Two main explanations may be offered for
this. The one that the armies in the later period were formed more
exclusively from the Turkish and Arabic subjects of the Empire, and
that the proportion of men of Greek or Slav descent was far less, if
it was not wholly absent. When the Empire was extended over the whole
of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Syria, the Moslem population was
enormously increased. In 1648 the corps of Janissaries ceased to be
levied from Christian youths and was recruited from Moslems. There was
wanting, therefore, to the army the spirit given to it in the past by
the Greeks and other Christian races. This difference was probably more
serious in the case of the officers than with the rank and file. The
Turks supplied very poor material for officers.
The other explanation is to be found in the absence of incentive to
military ardour in the later period. If we have been justified in the
conclusion that there was little or no motive for the Turkish army in
the shape of religious fanaticism and the desire to spread Islam, but
that plunder and the hope of acquiring lands for distribution among
the soldiers was its main inducement, it followed that this incentive
to victory and valour was almost entirely absent in the later period
when the Empire was on the defensive, when it was no longer a question
of making fresh conquests, but of retaining what had already been won.
The army could not expect to get loot and plunder or captives for
sale as slaves, or land to be confiscated for fiefs, when engaged in
war for the defence of some tributary or vassal State or of some more
integral part of the Empire. Nor could there be the feeling of fighting
for their own homes and property when defending a subject Christian
province. Yet another partial explanation is to be found in the fact
that the general corruption had infected the army, as well as the civil
administration of the State. Promotions through all the ranks went not
to merit, but to the highest bidders. The civil branches of the army
also, such as the commissariat and those for the supply of munitions,
which in the earlier period were well provided for, fell into disorder
and confusion owing to the universal spread of corruption.
In view of these many serious changes, it is not difficult to
appreciate the causes for the falling off of the _morale_ of the Ottoman
army and for its failure to maintain the reputation it had achieved
in the three centuries of conquest and extension of the Empire. The
war which is now raging in the Near East has shown that the Ottoman
soldiers, when organized, and in part led, by competent foreign
officers, when fighting _pro aris et focis_, and especially when in
defence of well fortified lines, have a great military value.
A third cause, however, for the failure of the Ottomans to maintain
their Empire in Europe is undoubtedly to be found in the continually
worsening conditions of the Christian populations subject to it. In
the earlier period there is good reason to conclude that the average
condition of the rayas in the Christian provinces subjected to Ottoman
rule and law was somewhat better than that of the peasants in some
neighbouring States, such as Hungary, Austria, and Russia. There was
something in the way of fixity of tenure accorded to the rayas which
was absent from the feudal serfs.
It was alleged that peasants from Hungary not infrequently migrated
into the Balkan States in order to enjoy this better treatment, and
it is certain that the Greeks of the Morea and Crete preferred the
rule of the Ottomans, bad as it was, to that of the Venetians, who
were even more cruel and rapacious. However that may have been, it
is certain that everywhere under Turkish rule, during the last three
hundred years, the conditions of the Christian populations became more
wretched and intolerable, and relatively far worse than in neighbouring
States. This was greatly due to the degeneracy and corruption of the
central Government at Constantinople, and to its evil example and
influence throughout the Empire. Governors of provinces and all local
officials became more corrupt and rapacious. There was no security for
life or property. Justice was not obtainable in the local tribunals.
Arbitrary exactions were levied on the peasantry. Brigandage everywhere
increased. Money levied in the provinces was never expended for the
benefit of their populations. Turkish rule acted as a blight on the
districts subject to it. Provinces liberated from it improved in
condition beyond recognition. The comparison with them was an ever
present object-lesson to those who remained under Turkish rule. The
efforts of the combined Powers of Europe to induce or compel the
Porte to effect improvements in the government of its subjects proved
to be futile and impotent. Treaty obligations with this object were
habitually disregarded by the Porte and were treated as waste-paper.
Provinces thus conditioned were always on the brink of rebellion.
They were kept in subjection, not by the maintenance of any large
armed forces there, but by periodic massacres of a ruthless character.
These were not the product of religious fanaticism, as has often been
suggested, but of deliberate policy, and were instigated by orders
direct from the Porte, with the hope of inspiring terror in the minds
of the subject races.
Foreign intervention, incited not so much by territorial ambition as by
popular sympathy for the oppressed, was resorted to for the purpose of
redressing grievous wrongs and for preserving the peace of Europe. As a
result of these causes, extending over more than three hundred years,
the Turkish Empire, so far as Europe is concerned, and in the sense of
a dominant Power over subject races, has ceased to exist. In countries
which it held in subjection for over five hundred years it has left
no trace that it ever existed. The very few Turks and the Tartars and
Circassians who had been planted there by the Porte when the Crimea and
the Caucasus were subjected by Russia have departed bag and baggage
from Europe. They have migrated to Asia Minor at the instigation of
their mollahs. The few Moslems who remain behind in these districts are
not of Ottoman or Turkish descent; they are of the same races as their
neighbours. Their ancestors adopted Islam to save their property.
The Young Turks, who of late years have controlled the Empire, have
signally failed to arrest the great movement which we have above
described. They have further developed their policy of Turkifying what
remains to them of the Empire during the existing war. Their massacres
and deportations of Armenians in Asia Minor have been on a scale and
with a cruelty without precedent in history. Whether responsibility
for this indelible crime will be enforced on them, and whether, as it
richly deserves, the Turkish Empire will suffer further reductions,
will depend on the issue of the colossal struggle in which the nations
of Europe are now engaged. Whatever the future may have in store in
these respects, there is one certain moral to be drawn from the story
which has been told in these pages, namely that an Empire originally
founded on the predatory instincts of an alien military caste, and
whose rulers during the last four hundred years have never recognized
that they had any responsibility for the good government and well-being
of the races subject to them, could not, if there be any law of human
progress in the world, be permanent, and was destined ultimately to
perish by the sword.
APPENDIX
GENEALOGY OF THE OTTOMAN SULTANS.