The life of Midhat Pasha 9

The life of Midhat Pasha 9

So ingenious was the plan of organisation, that the term of service

for each guardsman did not exceed one month in ten years. The arms and

equipments were provided by voluntary subscription raised from all the

inhabitants of the province.

 

During all this time the greater the energy shown by Midhat in the

organisation, development and defence of this frontier province of the

empire, the greater became the determination of the Slav Committees to

undo and defeat his work.

 

After the late exploits of these committees in Bulgaria, Midhat had

organised a system of surveillance at the headquarters of these

committees, and information having reached him that emissaries had been

despatched from Galatz to Belgrade in order to organise a new raid

into Bulgaria, he ordered these emissaries to be closely watched and

followed in all their movements. On their embarkation at Rustchuk, on

board the Austrian vessel _Germania_, he sent photographs of them to

the Austrian Consul, with a request that the Ottoman authorities should

be allowed to examine the passports of the passengers. Accompanied

by an Austrian Consular Agent the Turkish authorities accordingly

proceeded on board, where they were immediately received by shots

from revolvers on the part of the two suspected agents, who had

barricaded themselves in the saloon of the vessel, and had determined

to resist arrest. After an indescribable scene of confusion among the

panic‐stricken passengers aboard, the Turkish _gendarmerie_, acting

with the consent of the Consul, succeeded in effecting the capture of

the agents, who were both mortally wounded in the encounter.

 

The capture of these revolutionary agents made a great noise in Europe.

General Ignatieff at Constantinople, seized on the circumstance as a

pretext to demand the recall of Midhat, accompanying the Servian Agent

to the Palace in the audience accorded to the latter, whose complaints

were founded on the fact that one of the captured agents was a Servian.

Midhat’s influence, however, was still in the ascendant, and these

intrigues remained for a time without effect.

 

Other means failing, a desperate and criminal attempt was now made

to get rid of this too energetic Pasha. Two attempts to assassinate

him followed in quick succession, the first at Rustchuk, where the

overseer of the training school fired a shot, fortunately without

effect, on the Pasha as he was walking in the school enclosure; and

the other by a Servian, who attempted to enter his service with the

view to assassinating him, and who made a full confession seriously

compromising two important personages in Servia. He was sent to

Constantinople, tried, and condemned to penal servitude for life, in

spite of the strenuous efforts of General Ignatieff in his favour.

 

Not very long after these stirring events (1868) Midhat was summoned

to Constantinople, where he was placed at the head of the Council of

State, and he was succeeded in the governorship of the province, for

which he had done so much, by Sabri Pasha, the deputy‐governor of Nish.

 

As President of the Council, Midhat marked his short tenure of that

office by the institution of a school of Arts and Sciences at Sultan

Ahmed, in Stamboul, and by the establishment of a bank for loans, with

the special purpose of relieving small employers from the tyranny of

usurers. This bank (Emniet Sandighie) still exists. It soon, however,

became obvious to Midhat that his system of usefulness in his new

ministerial position was strictly limited; his authority in matters

pertaining to his own office was constantly overruled on important

matters, especially those concerning finance, by the Grand Vizier,

acting on the authority of the Sultan, and this incompatibility of

views culminated on the question of Turkish railways, whereupon Midhat

insisted on resigning. Just at this time Nakieddine Pasha was dismissed

from the governorship of the province of Bagdad, and Midhat was

appointed Vali of Bagdad (1869).

 

Hardly had the new Vali reached his post, when he found himself

confronted with some difficult problems of quite a different order

from those he had dealt with on the Danube, but of a not less serious

description. The question of recruiting was the most urgent, and called

for immediate solution. The Arab tribes, turbulent and independent by

nature, had always shown themselves refractory to enlistment, and were

now in open revolt against its enforcement. One of the difficulties

of the situation consisted in the fact that the military authority

in the province was separated from the civil, and was in the hands

of the commander of the 6th Army Corps, Samih Pasha, whereas the

situation required all authority, military as well as civil, to be

concentrated in the hands of a single strong central authority. Midhat

did not hesitate at such a crisis to assume the full responsibility

of this concentration, and took immediate military steps to suppress

the insurrection by force. He ordered the city of Bagdad to be

surrounded by cavalry, and sent infantry and artillery to protect

the foreign Mission Houses and the non‐Mussulman quarters from the

fanaticism of the Arabs. He at the same time ordered the bridge over

the Tigris to be cut, so as to prevent intercommunication among the

rebels; and when these energetic measures had fairly intimidated the

Arabs, he offered them a general amnesty on condition of immediate

surrender. These conditions were now accepted, and the insurrection

suddenly collapsed, and no further resistance was offered to the

recruiting. The promptitude with which this dangerous rebellion was

suppressed was appreciated by the Porte, and a telegram was received

from Constantinople approving the measures he had taken, and placing

officially the supreme command of the 6th Army Corps in his hands.

 

The next serious difficulty was connected with the levying of taxes.

This had always been a difficult operation among the nomad tribes, of

which the population in a great measure consisted, and was the cause of

continual disputes and insurrections. Matters had, however, now reached

a crisis, for a colonel at the head of a battalion of regulars sent to

Divanie and Dogara to collect the tithes was surrounded by tribesmen

to the number of ten thousand men, and himself killed and his troops

killed or dispersed. The new Vali seized at once the seriousness of

the situation, for the encouragement which this success afforded the

tribesmen threatened to give rise to a general insurrection of all the

surrounding nomads.

 

It was necessary to avenge the defeat at once and to make a signal

example of the tribesmen concerned. Midhat accordingly ordered a large

force, consisting of seven battalions of infantry, four thousand

cavalry, with a complement of artillery, to proceed directly to Dogara,

under the command of Samih Pasha, whilst with three thousand chosen

troops he hastened himself to the disaffected district. A pitched

battle now took place between the Arabs and the troops, which resulted

in the complete defeat of the former and the capture of their chief.

A not unusual incident accompanied the close of the battle. A Shiite

Sheik, Abdul Kerim, was marching at the head of a considerable force

of tribesmen from the Shiite districts of Urfa and Aleppo to join the

rebels, when he received the news of their defeat. Pretending that he

was on the road to offer his services to the Government, he joined his

forces to those of the Vali, and accompanied the victorious troops on

their entry into Bagdad. A military tribunal was at once instituted to

try the rebels; the rebel chiefs were condemned and executed, but the

tribesmen, on the promise of future good behaviour, were released.

 

Midhat Pasha clearly discerned that if an end was to be put to these

chronic troubles, and these nomad tribes were to be reduced to anything

like permanent order, it was not sufficient to defeat them in battle,

and that a radical change had to be brought about in their general

status, and especially the conditions of land tenure in the country.

The Arab cultivator, for the most part, held his lands from the State

on the condition of giving three‐fourths of the produce to the State,

retaining one‐fourth for himself. Such a system naturally discouraged

agriculture and rendered all improvements in cultivation impossible.

The consequence was that, for the most part, the Arab shunned the

soil, preferring predatory to industrial modes of gaining his living.

Midhat determined to attach him to the soil by giving him rights of

proprietorship, and divided large tracts of land into plots, which were

offered for sale on easy and advantageous terms, special provision

being made against accumulation of plots into single hands. The success

of this policy was remarkable, and whereas the revenues of the State

increased, the turbulence of the tribesmen, and the risings which had

become chronic, greatly diminished.

 

The agricultural prosperity that resulted from these measures

stimulated other branches of industry and rendered it necessary to

provide outlets for the newly created surplus of the country. The

first step in this direction was to render navigable the Tigris and

Euphrates, the great arteries of the country, and to improve or create

the means of communication between their two banks, and between the

different towns situated along their course. The only service of the

kind that existed consisted of the boats of an English company plying

between Bagdad and Bussora. Midhat determined to start a service of

Turkish boats to supply adequately the needs now felt, in the same

way that he had formerly done on the Danube when he was Governor of

Bulgaria. He ordered the existing vessels to be repaired, new vessels

of a larger tonnage to be constructed, and coal _dépôts_ to be formed

at Mascat, Aden, Bender and Bushire; and now, for the first time in

history, steamers under the Ottoman flag were to be seen periodically

in the Suez Canal, on their way to Constantinople. The _Babel_, one of

these vessels, which had originally cost £T88,000 for construction,

was bought for the sum of £T33,000 from a bankrupt company, and

on its very first voyage between Constantinople and Bussora, which

coincided with the time of the pilgrimages, it cleared £T35,000—more

than sufficient to cover its purchase price. A net surplus of £T1000

a month resulted from this improved river navigation, and Midhat now

determined on extensive dredging works, with a view to extending the

navigation northwards and adapting it to vessels of a larger tonnage.

Chakir Bey (afterwards Marshal and Ambassador to St Petersburg, and one

of Midhat’s faithful partisans) was despatched north with a company

of engineers, and reported favourably on the enterprise. Thereupon

dredging and other engineering works were immediately ordered to be

undertaken.

 

The periodical overflow of the waters of the Euphrates had converted

large tracts of country into marshes, and marsh fevers in consequence

becoming endemic, rendered them uninhabitable. Drainage works on a

large scale, with a view of reclaiming these lands and of curing the

insalubrity, were also undertaken. Irrigation works were likewise

started, and much attention was devoted to this subject by the Pasha,

with a view to gradually restoring the system introduced by the first

Arab conquerors, which had converted this country into the Garden of

the East, and rendered the Caliphate of Bagdad proverbial for its

wealth and prosperity. A tramway, too, between Bagdad and Kiazimie was

constructed, and its entire length, 7 miles, completed within a year. A

textile manufactory, too, was started, and an engine of 70-h.p. ordered

in France, the despatch of which was only delayed by the breaking out

of the Franco‐German War (1870).

 

Whilst energetically pursuing these material improvements, Midhat

Pasha was far from neglecting the moral side of the problem of Reform.

Schools were opened in every district; hospitals, refuges for old age,

and loan banks everywhere arose, and a printing‐press established

where the newspaper _Zora_ was published, and municipal institutions

for lighting and watering and other local purposes were instituted in

all the principal centres. A petroleum spring discovered in the vilayet

was immediately utilised for public purposes. It was not too much to hope that a decade of such enlightened government would have repaired the neglect of centuries and restored their ancient prosperity to the rich valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.