There are certain things in history which every one _must_ know.
You can get along very well without being able to tell when the battle of
Crecy was fought. You will not be at all disgraced by not knowing how many
were killed at Bosworth Field, nor how many ships were engaged at the
battle of Trafalgar.
But you _must_ know how England became England, how France came to be
France, and Germany Germany. And yet you cannot know one of these things
unless you know about the Roman Empire too, which like an old dead root
underlies the greater part of Europe.
Now I am going to tell you about the Ottoman Empire, or Turkey. And yet I
find I must begin by talking about other things, and chiefly about that
old dead Roman Empire, with which everything else is tangled up.
It was during the reign of Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor, that
Christ was born. So the Roman Empire was always just the age of the
Christian era.
For the first three centuries, and while it was fiercely fighting the new
Christianity, its power seemed invincible. It spread upon every side,
toward the East as far as Asia, and in the West as far as the Atlantic.
Gaul (or France and Spain) and Britain were gathered in by this insatiable
power.
But the Romans could not conquer Germany. Instead of that, the Germans or
Goths were always pressing down into Italy, and even thundered at the
gates of Rome.
So harassed were the Romans by these terrible barbarians that at last they
could no longer spare their legions in distant provinces. So Britain was
dropped. And then, as she grew more decrepit and feeble, France got away
from her too, and the Germans (who were already in Spain) took that fair
land (France) into their own strong, rough keeping.
In the year 323, the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian. The
Empire threw off its old Greek paganism and adopted Christianity.
Constantine determined to remove his capital far into the East, away from
the terrible Goths. There was on the shores of the Bosphorus an old Greek
city named Byzantion. This he chose for his capital, and called it
Constantinople. So the Empire was divided into an "Eastern" and a
"Western" Empire, with two Emperors, one at Rome and the other at
Constantinople, or, as it was sometimes called, Byzantium.
Although the Empire was now richer in emperors, and had two Cæsars instead
of one, it rapidly became a mere shadow of what it once was; and all
because of those terrible, ignorant, but iron-willed Goths, who not only
would not be conquered, but were not satisfied until they had hammered to
pieces the greatest Empire the world had ever seen.
The Eastern Empire with its beautiful Constantinople was in the country of
the Ancient Greeks. The Greek language was the one spoken there; and while
it had not the glory of the old imperial city of Rome, it had another sort
of splendor.
It became the centre of the most brilliant intelligence of the world at
that time. There were men great in learning, in art, in literature, and a
polished civilization which was chiefly Greek and became less and less
Roman.
All this was very dazzling in a way. But the days of the great ascendency
of the Roman Empire were gone. A new star had arisen in the West.
Charlemagne, a German, was in the year 800 crowned Emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire at Rome, and had displaced the Cæsars as the head of
Christendom.
Besides that, the "Bishop of Rome," as he was once called, had now become
the Pope, the Vicar of Christ on Earth; and as the power of the rival
emperors declined, the power of the Pope increased; so that Rome, as the
spiritual head of Christendom, was now superior to Constantinople.
While the Goths were breaking in pieces the Roman Empire, and while
Constantinople was growing in splendor, important events were happening in
far-off Asia.
* * * * *
In the year 569, there was born in Arabia a child who altered the whole
course of history. His name was Mahomet.
As the Mahometan religion has always been a scourge and a curse, you would
naturally suppose its founder was a bad man. But on the contrary he was a
very good man, and had a great desire to make his people better.
The Arabians had a corrupt form of idolatry which came from the Persians,
and worshipped not one, but a great many gods.
Mahomet sincerely believed that he was inspired by the one true and great
God to overthrow this old religion and to establish a pure and true one.
Under this inspiration he wrote the Koran, which is the Mahometan Bible.
This book told them of the sins they must not commit, and of the joys
which hereafter awaited those who should be faithful to the teachings of
the one God and his prophet Mahomet.
The fatal element in this religion was its cruelty. The Prophet had
declared that it should be enforced with the sword, that it should be: the
Koran--or death!
It spread with the fury of a conflagration. The Arabs, or Saracens, as
they were called, conquered Persia and Syria and Egypt. After that they
began to look enviously at Constantinople and to dream of universal empire
like the Romans. They were not a horde of ignorant barbarians like the
Goths. They came from an ancient seat of learning, and their leaders were
men of knowledge and attainments far beyond anything existing in Europe at
that time.
In the year 710, like a flock of vultures a great Mahometan host swooped
down upon Christian Europe.
Spain was the extreme western limit of the Roman Empire. It was the plan
of these terrible Saracens, after conquering Spain, to sweep over the
Pyrenees into France. Then another Saracen army, after conquering
Constantinople, was to flow westward, and the two streams would meet at
Rome.
It was a very nice plan--for the Saracens! But they did _not_ get over the
Pyrenees. Nor did they take Constantinople until six hundred years later.
So they were content to establish themselves firmly in Spain and upon the
African coast opposite, and bided their time.
After the occupation of Northern Africa and Spain, they were no longer
call Saracens, but Moors. They lingered in Spain until the discovery of
America; and the final expulsion of the Moors from the Spanish peninsula,
which was effected with great cruelty, took place during the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella. They made Spain beautiful, and they made it great.
When the Goths flowed in a rough torrent over Southern Europe they effaced
civilization. But this Saracen wave of conquest bore on its crest--but
only on its crest--art, refinements, and culture of a type unknown to
Europe. The twilight of the Middle Ages was illumined by a revival of
Greek culture at Constantinople, and by Saracenic art and erudition in
Spain.
For seven hundred years they remained in Spain, which still bears traces
of their beautiful architecture; and the Middle Ages would have been
darker still but for the enriching stores of knowledge brought into Europe
by the Asiatic people.
So in the 8th century there were two great empires in Europe: the Roman
and the Mahometan.
The one had passed its meridian and was swiftly declining. The other, with
irresistible energy, and with the vigor of a terrible youth, made men
tremble for the fate of Christendom.
This Saracen Empire now stretched from the heart of Asia to the outer
confines of Europe. So, like the Roman, it was divided into its Eastern
and Western parts with two Caliphs (or Emperors): one at Bagdad, in Asia
and the other at Cordova in Spain.
A part of their possessions in the East was the spot the most sacred in
the world to Christians. Palestine, the land hallowed by the birth, life,
and death of Christ, was held by these infidels, whose religion required
them to insult and degrade the very name of Christ, and offered rich
rewards for exterminating His followers.
This led to the most heroic event in all history. The annals of the world
record nothing more astonishing than the Crusades.
When one man offers up fortune and life for a sentiment, he is regarded as
one different from his fellows. If an entire nation does it, it is still
more amazing. But that all the nations of a Continent, forgetting their
own private ambitions and interests, laying aside enmities and jealousies
among themselves, should unite, and for two centuries pour out life and
treasure, and expend all their energies upon an object which could bring
nothing but sacrifice--no material reward,--this is a spectacle the world
has seen but once, will never see again, and will never cease to wonder
at!
When Peter the Hermit came from Jerusalem at the close of the eleventh
century, and with burning eloquence told of the desecration of the Holy
Places in Palestine, and of the sufferings of the small band of Christians
in the Holy City, Europe rose as one man.
From sovereign to serf there was not one dissenting voice. If it took
uncounted lives, and all the treasure of Europe, the Cross, and not the
Crescent, should wave over the Holy Land.
The kingdoms united in one great "European Concert." And for what purpose?
_To drive the Mahometans out of that very land where another "European
Concert" is ingeniously striving to keep them undisturbed to-day,_ and to
rescue a little handful of Christians counted by units, where now they
call to us by thousands!
And is this what 700 years of civilization has done for us?
It may have been a madness, a wild and fruitless expenditure of life,
treasure, and happiness. But I think it must have been a sight which
gladdened the angels in heaven, to see such a mighty outpouring of
generous sacrifice, without one selfish end in view.
People of all ranks, rich and poor alike, gave out of their abundance or
their poverty; abandoned homes, happiness, everything, and flocked to the
standards of the Cross.
The sufferings of this impetuous host may be imagined, but never
described. No railroads, no telegraphs, no skilled commissariat with
careful provision for sustenance.
Thousands perished by the way. Thousands more by the sword. And although
for a brief time the Cross floated over Jerusalem, it was only a fleeting
vision.
The Saracens recovered what they had lost, and the Crescent waved
triumphant above the Holy Land,--_and does so still._
At this time there was a wandering, warlike people living far beyond in
Asia called Turks. They had not settled homes, and had for centuries been
straying into the lands by the Mediterranean, which were held by an
Asiatic race remotely connected with them.
They had long ago embraced the religion of Mahomet, and by the time of the
Crusades there was a goodly portion of them sprinkled throughout the
Saracen dominions. In fact, it is asserted that most of the outrages in
Palestine which led to the Crusades were the work of Turkish Mahometans,
rather than the Saracens.
One day, about the year 1250 (during the last days of the Crusades), one
of these marauding bands of Turks under the leadership of a man named
Etrogruhl came unexpectedly within sight of a battle which was being
fought between two armies in Asia-Minor.
He did not know who were fighting, nor what they were fighting about. But
he led his 400 horsemen pell-mell into the thick of the fray, to help what
seemed the losing side.
This decided the fate of the battle; and it turned out that they had been
aiding the Sultan of Iconium, the great ruler of that land.
In gratitude for this service, the Sultan gave to Etrogruhl a large piece
of territory, and he became the chief of a clan in this beautiful tract of
land, which was all his own, bordering on the Byzantine Empire (as it was
then called), and almost within sight of the Bosphorus and the city of
Constantinople.
This was the beginning of the great Turkish Empire.
Othman, the son of this nameless adventurer, for whom the Ottoman Empire
was named, was the first of a line of thirty-five sovereigns reaching
down to our own time--where his descendant sits in Constantinople to-day
defying and confounding European statesmanship.
The first thing we hear of this young Othman is that he fell in love. The
beautiful "moon-faced" maiden was the daughter of a learned Doctor of
Laws, who scorned the idea of giving his daughter to this obscure young
person.
But Othman had a dream, which changed all that. He dreamed that a full
moon came from the doctor's breast and sank into his own. Immediately a
great outspreading tree arose from his loins, and over it hung a crescent
moon. Suddenly a great wind came and dashed the Crescent over against the
Cross and the Crown of Constantine, and broke it into pieces.
So the moon-faced maiden was given to Othman just one hundred and seventy
years before the Crescent did break the Crown of Constantine in pieces.
Etrogruhl's clan grew apace; and so did his territory: the one by
accessions from other wandering Turkish tribes, and the other by extending
it by force as he had a chance. Then the Sultan of Iconium died, and his
land and authority were divided among ten states, of which Etrogruhl's was
one. So now he was an independent ruler with none to call him to account.
In the mean time his son Othman had developed great ability as a warrior
and as a leader. He had met the armies of the Byzantine Emperor, and had
defeated them, and had captured fortresses and cities. And the Emperor
from the roof of his palace at Constantinople had seen across the
Bosphorus the smoke of his burning towns and villages. So when his father
died and Othman came into his inheritance, he found himself the ruler of a
powerful and inspiring state, and the Ottoman Empire had commenced its
extraordinary career of conquest.
His son and successor, Orkhan, inherited the same commanding qualities and
the kind of ability required to organize a new state.
By one terrible stroke of genius he created the most effective military
organization which has ever been known--one which, from that time down to
our own century, was the terror of Europe and of Asia.
He conceived the idea of exterminating Christianity by means of
Christians.
The plan was, every year to enroll 1,000 Christian boys taken from the
Christian families captured in war. Only the finest were selected. They
must be very young, so that they would have no ties to remember, no human
sympathies to enfeeble them.
These boys were placed under a rigid military training, with rich rewards
and indulgences for zeal and aptitude, and terrible disgrace and
punishment for the reverse.
They were familiarized with awful atrocities, their sensibilities
destroyed, and at the same time intelligence rendered acute by severe
intellectual training.
In this way was developed the strongest, the fiercest military corps, the
most terrible instrument for the use of despotic power, ever created by
subtle craft or employed by fanaticism.
They were called the Janizaries. And the very name struck a terror which
almost conquered in advance.
When Orkhan led his first 1,000 boys to a dervish priest to bless them,
he flung the sleeve of his robe over the head of one of them, and asked
that the great God of Mahomet would make "their arrows keen, and their
swords deadly."
Thereafter, the dervish cap which they wore had always a long sleeve-like
pendant behind. And the prayer of the dervish was certainly answered.
One thousand boys recruited these ranks every year; and as the years
rolled into centuries, the organization became a more and more terrible
instrument of vengeance in the hands of the Sultan, whose body-guard it
formed.
The line of Sultans following Othman was characterized by intellectual
force of a high order. There was a swelling and irresistible tide of
conquest which moved not only toward Europe, but into Asia. One tribe
after another was absorbed, until all the strongholds of the old Saracen
Empire were in the hands of the Sultans, who replaced the Caliphs; and
like them were not alone temporal rulers, but the representatives of
Mahomet himself.
Composed in this way of a great heterogeneous mass of races, hostile to
each other, and to the Turk, the Ottoman Empire had but one element common
to all. That was its religion. The Sultan stood to them in the place of
the Prophet--hence they dared not defy nor resist his will. And it is this
power of religious fanaticism which not alone created the Empire, but has
held it together long after its vital forces have departed.
* * * * *
In the year 1453 the dream of Othman was realized. The long-hoped-for and
long-dreaded event had come. Constantinople was in the hands of the Turks!
No event since the Christian era had been more momentous, more fraught
with good and with evil.
The Ottoman Power had secured the most beautiful, the most coveted, and
the most impregnable position in Europe.
But Europe was strangely enriched by the result. Driven out of its old
home, Greek culture took refuge in other places, and what had been the
exclusive possession of a few became the heritage of a continent.
Literature, fine arts, and music were revolutionized under the influence
of Greek scholars who were refugees flying from the Turks. The period now
set in which is known as the _Renaissance_. That is, art and intellectual
life were born into a new and higher form by the introduction of Greek
ideals.
The Sultan's palace, court, and the ceremonial attending him had now
become like a fairy-tale in its splendor. He was approached as if he were
a god. Men prostrated themselves in his presence, and spoke in whispers.
No man's head was more insecure on his shoulders than his Grand Vizier's.
A mistake, a failure, and off it went!
Quick to discern ability, no sooner did a Sultan see a man who he thought
could serve him--however low his station--than he clutched the unfortunate
subject and placed him in high and responsible position.
In vain did the wretched man protest his unfitness for such an honor.
The Grand Vizier was next in authority to the Sultan himself, and was
treated like a king. But a favorite form of curse was, "May you be Grand
Vizier to the Sultan!"
When great European Ambassadors were presented to the Sultan at
Constantinople, each one was taken separately, and, with a courtier
holding him by the arm on each side, he was led like a prisoner into the
great presence in awful silence.
There was the Sultan cross-legged on his divan, his turban and his robes
blazing with jewels. He did not deign to speak nor even to look at the
Ambassador, gazing away fixedly and with stony indifference as he was
presented.
One of the first acts of a new Sultan was to kill all of his brothers, if
he had any, or any one else who could possibly conspire to get his throne.
It was an effectual way of destroying conspiracies in the germ, as we do
disease, and was a custom much honored.
An amiable English historian describes one of the Sultans as being an
exalted character, pure, upright, and virtuous. He regrets that this
admirable man did blind his only son and have three brothers bowstringed
(strangled). But it was "the only blemish on his character"! Happy Turkey,
to have such an historian!
* * * * *
When "Suleyman the Magnificent" was Sultan in 1550, the Ottoman Empire had
reached its zenith. Its eastern frontier was in the heart of Asia, it held
Egypt and the Northern Coast of Africa, and its European frontier reached
that of Austria and Russia. It included, with the exception of Rome, every
city famous in biblical or classical history.
Europe was dismayed at this advancing and irresistible power.
But there is a moment in the history of empires when they reach a climax.
Then comes a decline,--a time when conquest ceases, and they are content
to defend what they already possess; and finally are glad if they be
permitted to exist at all!
Such a moment of climax arrived to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth
century. The three centuries which have followed have been a gradual and
sure decline.
The growth of a New Power beyond the Black Sea,--of Russia,--and brilliant
combinations by leaders in Hungary, Poland, and Austria, arrested the
fatal advance. Then came the struggle to keep instead of to acquire.
Hungary and Poland were torn from her, and the dismemberment had begun.
With these losses came loss of prestige at home, and revolts and internal
disorders. The Janizaries could no longer be trusted. They were open to
bribes, intriguing, and a source of danger rather than strength; and
finally a reforming Sultan touched a mine of gunpowder which led under
their barracks, and they were exterminated, the bowstring and sword
finishing the few which had escaped.
At this very time (1826) the Greek peninsula had just wrung her freedom
from Turkey and was electing her new king.
Servia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria (1876), one after another revolted,
and was made autonomous, or self-governing, by the Powers of Europe. Thus
was formed a group of states known as the Balkans, which made a bulwark
of neutral territory between Europe and the dissolving and decaying
Empire.
* * * * *
In 1850 Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, determined to take the Christians in
Turkey under his own protection. This gave to Russia a virtual
Protectorate over the Turkish dominions, and excited the jealousy of
England and France.
Affecting to think it was an unfair advantage, and an infringement upon
the rights of Turkey, those two countries united in a great war upon
Russia. This was known as the Crimean War, which ended disastrously for
Russia and placed the persecuted Christians under the combined protection
of Europe.
England and France have made little use since of a right which they
purchased with thousands of precious lives!
The present Sultan, Abdul Hamid, is the thirty-fifth in descent from
Othman.
He is the most luxurious and the most powerful barbarian in the world!
As he sits surrounded by six thousand attendants, eating his pancakes
without table or plate or knife and fork, he is sovereign over lands in
three Continents.
Absolute lord over some of the richest provinces in the world, surrounded
by a fabulous luxury at Constantinople, he is still one of the most abject
and miserable of beings.
This man, known as the "Great Assassin," whose will is law, and whose nod
is death to millions of people, is as ignorant as a child, as nervously
timid as an hysterical woman, and as he cowers in the palace of his
ancestors, he trembles at an approaching footstep.
It is his own subjects that he really fears. The Powers could depose--but
his subjects can assassinate.
The Sultan knows, and the Powers know, that when they demand a vigorous
policy in defence of the Christians they are asking and he is assenting to
an impossibility.
The millions of wild, turbulent people whom he rules only endure his
authority because he stands to them in the place of the Prophet. But the
Prophet taught death to non-Mussulmans.
Should he really be true to his word, and try to bring Kurds and Arnauts
to justice, in defence of Christians, his army would revolt, and his
subjects would depose him in an hour--and deposition would mean death!
It needs all his inherited craft and cunning to keep his head upon his
shoulders at the best of times. And the talk of reforms in the Ottoman
Empire is an idle and diplomatic fiction.
The last stage is reached. The question is whether this Empire, reeking
with crimes, red-handed from the blood of Christians in Armenia, a scourge
in the past, and an offence to the moral sense of humanity in the
present,--shall be permitted longer to exist?
Shall I tell you how this question is being answered to-day?