The life of Midhat Pasha 4

The life of Midhat Pasha 4

The struggle of these two contending forces, the Palace and the Porte,

continued for a long time, with alternate preponderance on either

side, a strong Sultan and a weak vizier inclining the scales towards

autocracy, whilst a strong vizier with a weak or luxurious Sultan,

redressed the balance to the other side. The Keuprulu Mehemets,

Reshids, Aalis and Fuads left the impress of their minds on the

Ottoman policy and administration, whilst a host of so‐called Grand

Viziers—whom it would be superfluous to name singly, inasmuch as

their collective name is legion—were the mere registers of the will,

and instruments of the caprices, of their masters. The Sultan Abdul

Medjid counted with Reshid Pasha, and Abdul Aziz with Aali and Fuad,

as long as they were alive; but it was reserved for his successor,

after he had suppressed a Constitution that he had sworn to observe as

the very condition of his mounting to the throne, to brush all checks

and counterpoises of every kind aside, and to set up a pure, unmixed

despotism, based on caprice and corruption alone. Such a system of

government had been hitherto unknown to the Ottoman Constitution, was

emphatically denounced by the prophets, was contrary to the express

provisions of the Sacred Law, was repudiated by Mehemet II. and all the

early Sultans as well as Caliphs of Islam, and ran counter to all the

traditions of the Ottoman people.

 

Simultaneously with the beginning of this fatal perversion and this

gradual absorption by the Sultans of all power in the State, another

change was taking place, closely connected with it, and aggravating all

its worst effects.

 

The high character of the early Sultans of Turkey—to which all

contemporary authorities, Christian and Mahomedan alike, bear

testimony—had, as has been said, profoundly affected the Ottoman

character. Their fervid loyalty to their rulers sprang in no small

measure from the lessons inculcated by their early history and their

most cherished traditions. Now, up to the reign of Selim II., the

Sultan of Turkey received a very superior education. They were not

merely patrons of learning, but often themselves men of letters of

no mean order. Mehemet II., the conqueror of Constantinople, was a

distinguished poet; Selim I., a poet and a litterateur, prided himself,

above all his prerogatives, on being the patron of men of letters

and of science. This pursuit of science and learning was, moreover,

in strict conformity with the spirit and letter of the Koran. “Seek

science, even if it be in China”; “The wise and learned are the heirs

of the Prophet,” are not isolated texts in a book teeming with passages

of a similar kind. The early Caliphs, too, of Bagdad and Cordova, the

Abdur Rahmans, Solimans, and Haroun el Reshid, were living proofs and

typical examples of enlightened Mahomedan teaching.

 

But from the middle of the seventeenth century a change came over the

spirit of the Sultanate in Turkey. Instead of identifying themselves

with the life of their people and priding themselves on being the light

that guided them, the Sultans now retired into the harems and gave

themselves up to a life of ease and indulgence utterly foreign to the

habits and principles of their great predecessors. They surrendered the

reins of government into the hands of their Kizlar‐Agassi (chiefs of

eunuchs), or Bostandji Bashi, and as one favourite succeeded another,

or one palace clique displaced another, so vizier followed vizier

in rapid and bewildering succession. All the corrupt and turbulent

elements in the State were now unchained, justice was sacrificed to

private interests, the muscles of the State were relaxed, and its most

vital interests neglected and ignored. To such a pass had things come

in this “State of Denmark,” that when at last a reforming Sultan arose

in the person of Selim III., he had to pay with his life his reforming

ardour, and leave to his successor, Mahmoud II., a task almost beyond

human strength to accomplish. The reigns of the next three Sultans

after Selim are the history of honest, though intermittent, struggles

against the fatal legacies of the past two centuries, and of many

abortive attempts to grapple with the evils that a departure from the

primitive Constitution of the Empire had entailed on it, aggravated as

these evils were by revolutions organised across its borders, and the

systematic intrigues and almost uninterrupted hostility of its nearest

neighbours.

 

But in following the evolution of the struggle between autocracy and

the Ottoman people, and endeavouring to trace its origin, we have been

anticipating the chronological order of events. We must now return to

the narrative of the military movement of the eighteenth century, from

the time that Peter the Great turned the energies of his diplomacy and

his armies in the direction of the Ottoman provinces.

 

The first collision between the armed forces of Turkey and Russia ended

unfavourably for the latter. By the treaty of Falksen (1711), Russia

was compelled to restore Azov, that she had seized, and to undertake to

abstain from meddling in the affairs of Poland. But for the treachery

of Baltadji Mehemet Pasha, it is probable that this first campaign

would have ended still more disastrously for Russian arms, and possibly

the final partition of Poland would have been averted. That unhappy

country found, at this crisis of her history, in the Sultan of Turkey

her sole champion and defender among the sovereigns of Europe, and her

name figured for the last time in history in a public instrument in

which her rights were safeguarded by a Mahomedan sovereign against the

deadly machinations of her Christian neighbour.

 

It was certainly unfortunate for the Ottoman Empire—and it may

possibly not have been altogether fortunate for the rest of

Europe—that the rise of the power of Russia should have been

synchronous with the period of the greatest weakness of Turkey.

Russia’s principal attacks on the integrity and independence of Turkey

were skilfully timed so as to coincide with the moment when that empire

was in the throes of internal revolution, and could offer the least

resistance to an external foe. At the time of Mahmoud II.’s accession

to the throne, after the murder of Selim III., the accumulation of

difficulties and dangers that beset the empire were such that it

seemed as if nothing short of a miracle could prevent its complete

destruction. It required at any rate some very potent principles of

internal strength and cohesion to resist the centrifugal forces in

full activity at that crisis. Servia was in open revolt under Michel

Obrenowitz, Egypt was in the hands of the able and ambitious Mehemet

Ali, Arabia was in the effervescence of a Wahabee rising, the Pasha of

Janina had raised the standard of revolt, and the Governor of Widdin,

the famous Pasvan Oglou, had proclaimed his independence, and—most

serious danger of all—the insurrection of Greece, supported by a

consensus of enthusiasm in Europe, threatened the integrity of the

empire; all this, too, at the very moment when the military forces of

the empire were undergoing the complete re‐organisation which Selim had

begun, and Mahmoud was resolved to carry out. This revolution, for it

was nothing less, consisted in the abolition of the ancient corps

of Janissaries and the substitution for it of a regular force (the

_Nizam_) drilled and organised on the European model.

 

The Janissaries from being a redoubtable _corps d’élite_ recruited

from Christian youths, who embraced the military as a life‐long

profession, and were imbued with a military spirit which proved its

worth on the hard‐fought fields of Mohacs, Nicopolis and Cossovo, had

become through successive relaxings of the bonds of discipline and

the ruin of its military _esprit de corps_, nothing but an unruly

Pretorian Guard, a greater terror to the sovereign and to peaceful

citizens than to the enemies of the empire. The gratuities that they

were accustomed to receive on the accession of a new Sultan, and the

licensed pillagings that invariably ensued on these occasions, were

irresistible temptations to them to render this event as frequent as

possible, and they consequently deposed sovereigns and proclaimed

new ones almost at their will. The privileges, moreover, that they

wrested from the terrified sovereigns, especially after the death of

Soliman I.—such as the right to marry, to desert barrack life (their

_odjaks_), and to pursue trades and industries—completely changed and

deteriorated their martial character, and from the victorious soldiery

that they were in the days of Ilderim Bayazid they became nothing but

a turbulent militia. At last the scandal caused by their depredations

and violence became intolerable, and their disbandment was loudly

demanded by public opinion in all classes of the population. Selim

III. determined to suppress them, and, as a necessary preliminary,

commenced the re‐organisation of the naval and military forces of the

empire by inviting French engineers to build ships of war, and French

officers to drill and discipline a new army on European principles.

Unfortunately Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt, and the declaration

of war that ensued between France and Turkey, recalled these military

instructors before the work of instruction and re‐organisation was half

completed. It was these threatened Janissaries who, on their return to

Constantinople from an expedition to Syria, willingly lent themselves

as instruments of the ambition of the Sultan’s brother, Mustafa, and

who deposed and finally murdered Selim. But the deposed sovereign,

in his retirement and before his death, found time and opportunity

thoroughly to imbue with his reforming enthusiasm his cousin Mahmoud,

and he, on ascending the throne, determined, as the only means of

saving the empire from ruin, and in spite of the menacing attitude

of the new Czar Nicholas of Russia—who inaugurated his accession by

sending an Ultimatum to Constantinople—to carry out unflinchingly

the whole programme of reforms conceived by Selim. At a Grand Council

(_Divan_) assembled in 1826, a unanimous vote was passed in favour of

the total suppression of the Janissaries, and shortly afterwards, the

decree being resisted by the mutinous soldiery, they were surrounded

and overpowered, and in the massacre that ensued this famous Pretorian

Guard finally disappeared.

 

The organisation, however, of the regular forces (_Nizam_), which were

to take their place, being only half complete, it was just at the

moment when the military organisation of the empire was undergoing a

radical transformation that the new Sultan was called upon to face

all the complications of internal revolution and foreign wars that

confronted him on his accession. Mahmoud, however, set resolutely

about the task, and a certain measure of success attended his first

efforts. The Pashas of Widdin and Janina were successively reduced to

subjection, and by the help of the Pasha of Egypt who had not yet

thrown off his allegiance, the Morea was reconquered by the troops

of Ibrahim Pasha, and Greece would undoubtedly have been restored to

her position as the Western horn of the Ottoman Crescent but for the

forcible interference of Europe and the military expedition of Marshal

Maison.

 

By a protocol, signed at St Petersburg, on 4th April 1826, Greece was

declared an autonomous and vassal State; but after the rejection by

the Sultan of the collective mediation of the four Great Powers (5th

February 1827), Austria, France, Great Britain and Russia (Protocol

of London), and the destruction by the allied forces, without the

formality of a declaration of war, of the Turkish fleet at Navarino

(1827), immediately followed by a declaration of war on the part of

Russia, and the campaigns of Diebitch in Europe, and Paskiewitz in

Asia Minor, terminating in the disastrous Treaty of Adrianople (14th

September 1829), Mahmoud had no choice but to consent in the following

year (1830) to the creation of Greece into an independent kingdom, an

arrangement confirmed by the Treaty of London on the 13th July 1841.