Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

VIENNA NOTE.

“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”

Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”

Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.

The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the English Ambassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”

The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”

In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.

Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.

Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”

The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of the Christians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.

The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.

Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.

All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade

“Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well;

Into the jaws of Death

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.”

All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.

Froude says “that the whole power of England and France supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”

While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”

And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.

The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance, speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.

The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.

These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.

But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.

In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity they made also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”

“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”

So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.

“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”

About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?

The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known as the Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—

1. Religious liberty, full and entire.

2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.

3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.

4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.

5. The amelioration of the rural population.

The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.

The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage, violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.

These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’ answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.

The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.

On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey. Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to secure the payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.

The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.

The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.

Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going to stand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”

The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.

Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.

We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—

“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. There is not a criminal in a European jail; there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands whose indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done, which has been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”

Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.

The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.

When flesh and blood could bear no more there was some slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.

Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”

For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”

Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th. In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”

The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.

It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.

From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, published in one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—

“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)

“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.

“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of this having now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”

It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?

The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.

Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.

War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how it should be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.

When it became evident that there was no hope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.

The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.

In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.

A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”

British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.

The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.

The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.

The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it: indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusal of the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”

The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.

England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.

CHAPTER VII.

THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.

We turn back a single leaf of history in beginning this chapter on the Russo-Turkish War,—and stand at the opening of the year 1876. As the nations of Europe faced the questions of that hour, there was not one of them that desired to begin a war of which no statesman could foresee the issue.

Perhaps the traditional desire of Russia to possess the gates of the two continents and fly her flag over Constantinople, delivered from the Crescent of Islam, was growing apace, and her indignation at the treatment of the Greek Christians was rising to fever heat, but she did not desire war. Turkey did not desire war, the insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina was giving her serious trouble. England did not desire war, though her people were divided, part favoring Russia as a Christian nation, as against an infidel, but a greater part thinking of Turkish bonds which were held in London that would be worthless if Turkey should be dismembered; France did not want a war which would imperil her interests in the Suez Canal and in Syria, and because if she sided with Turkey, Germany might side with the Czar. And as neither Germany nor Italy desired war it would seem as if it might be easy to prevent its occurrence.

Hence the diplomats put their heads together, and Count Julius Andrassy, the Premier of Austria, one of the ablest of the Continental statesmen undertook on the 25th of January, 1876, to draw up a note to the Ottoman Porte demanding certain reforms from Turkey, and promising to sustain her if she would institute these reforms promptly.

The following are some of the measures proposed for the pacification of discontented Servia, Roumania and Montenegro, viz:

1. Religious liberty, full and entire.

2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.

3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the province.

4. A special commission, composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.

5. The amelioration of the condition of the rural populations.

The Grand Vizier, Midhat Pasha, replied, that he was preparing a Constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.

The Powers trusted his integrity and disposition to promote these reforms; but even though the entire Imperial ministry saw clearly the evils out of which the insurrections had grown, it were in the face of centuries of deceit and the cruelty and the intolerance of Islam, to believe that the Porte would of its own volition enforce these reforms against a hostile Mussulman sentiment.

The Powers waited for months until on May 1st, 1876, without having received the honest approval of the Sultan, the outline of the Constitution of Midhat Pasha was published.

Now note this fact—that on the 14th of May, when the representatives of Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Great Britain, met at Berlin, desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier and agreed upon a paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum,” which provided for a guaranty by the great powers of the several reforms which had been already proclaimed, when all the others had signed it, knowing that only by such a broad guaranty could the reforms ever be enforced, Great Britain refused to sign it on the ground “that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.”

The Memorandum fell to the ground by the action of England, who was not willing to stand with the other powers and compel the enforcement of the reforms demanded. England was alone responsible for that failure.

But worse than that, with all the enormities of the Bulgarian outrages which took place during the sessions of the great powers, just coming to the ears of the horrified nations, England sent her fleet into Besika Bay, on the 26th of May, as if to say to the other powers, “Hands off, let Turkey alone, no reforms are needed.”

Two or three weeks after this demonstration, which had had its effect in assuring Turkey that England would stand by her, the fleet withdrew to its former harbor.

Those were stormy days at Constantinople. The Grand Vizier, Mehemet Ruchdi, and Midhat Pasha requested the Sultan Abdul Aziz to give up some of his treasure to save the nation from ruin. He refused and was deposed May 29th. The next day his nephew was proclaimed as Murad V., joyfully accepted by the people and recognized by the Western powers. But he also was deposed on August 31st and his brother proclaimed. When invested on the 7th of September, with the Sword of Othman, Abdul Hamid II., in his inaugural address, said: “The great object to be aimed at, is to adopt measures for placing the laws and regulations of the country upon a basis which shall inspire confidence in their execution. For this purpose it is indispensable to proceed to the establishment of a general Council or National Assembly, whose acts will inspire confidence in the nation, and will be in harmony with the customs, aptitudes and capabilities of the populations of the Empire. The mission and duty of this Council will be, to guarantee without exception, the faithful execution of the existing laws, or of those which shall be promulgated in conformity with the provisions of the “Sheri” (The decrees already published), in connection with the real and legitimate wants of the country and its inhabitants, as also to control the equilibrium of the revenue and expenditures of the Empire.”

In accordance with this inaugural promise the Council of Ministers prepared a Constitution, not quite so liberal as the one Midhat Pasha had previously presented, and proclaimed it on December 23d, 1876.

Midhat Pasha had been made Grand Vizier on the 19th. On the 23d the opening of a Conference of six great Powers took place in Constantinople to consider measures that would ensure peace at the close of the Armistice then existing between Turkey and Servia and Montenegro which had been extended to February, 1877. They asked for local self-government for the Turkish provinces in Europe—equal treatment of Mohammedans and Christians, better administration for both, security for life and property and effectual guarantees against the repetition of outrages. On January 18th, 1877, the great National Council of Turkey rejected the propositions of the Conference, which therefore closed its sittings on the 20th, having accomplished nothing.

Now just here please note this fact—that if Great Britain had signed the Berlin memorandum which was to guarantee the execution of the reforms promised—the Ambassadors might have demanded the enforcement of such reforms, and backed their demand by the presence of a fleet before Constantinople.

Great Britain thus was to blame for the feebleness of the advice which was tendered and of course rejected. If the Sultan had been sincere when he issued his inaugural, if he really meant to give equal rights to his Christian subjects he would have welcomed the presence of a combined fleet that would have protected himself from the opposition of fanatical leaders of the old Turkish party. This was the crisis of 1876,—granting that there was an honest desire to reform the government of Turkey and the distinct refusal of Great Britain to sign the memorandum guaranteeing that said reforms promised should be executed, settles upon her government the responsibility of the failure of the promised reforms of the constitution proposed, and also of the war that followed.

Notice further, the fanatical leading Turks were bound not to suffer the interference of any foreign power, and this bitterness of fanaticism apparently compelled the Sultan to dismiss and send into exile (February 5th) Midhat Pasha, the wisest minister in the Government, and drove the Porte itself on to the war which followed.

After the failure of the Conference at Constantinople, Prince Gortschakoff issued a circular in which after reciting what had taken place he said, “It is necessary for us to know what the cabinets with which we have hitherto acted in common, propose to do with a view of meeting this refusal and insuring the execution of their wishes.”

Now remember the armistice was only extended to February 1st, 1877. Turkey refused to give any guarantee to fulfil the reforms promised, the atrocities of Bulgaria were still unpunished—the people were still at the mercy of the fanatical and cruel Turks.

Before any response had been made to this request for information from the other Cabinets, a treaty of peace with Servia had been signed March 1st, and the First Parliament was convened at Constantinople March 19th.

The Russian Government pressed for an answer, and fearing it might be embarrassed prepared a protocol which was signed by the representatives of the six powers at London on the 31st of March, 1877. After taking cognizance of the peace which had recently been concluded between Turkey and Servia, and of the good intentions of the Porte as had been shown in its declarations made from time to time during the past year, the protocol invited the Porte to place its army on a peace footing and then declared that “the Powers propose to watch carefully by means of their representatives at Constantinople and their local agents, the manner in which the promises of the Ottoman Government are carried into effect.

“If their hopes should once more be disappointed, and if the condition of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should not be improved in such a manner as to prevent the returns of the complications which periodically disturb the peace of the East, they think it right to declare that such a state of affairs would be incompatible with their interests and those of Europe in general. In such case they reserve to themselves to consider in common as to the means which they may deem best fitted to secure the well-being of the Christian populations and the interests of the general peace.”

These are very good words, but unless the Powers meant to back them up with men and guns and war ships, they were only waste breath and paper.

On affixing his signature the Russian Ambassador filed the following declaration:—

“If peace with Montenegro is concluded and the Porte accepts the advice of Europe, and shows itself ready to replace its forces on a peace footing—seriously to undertake the reforms mentioned in the protocol, let it send to St. Petersburg a special envoy to treat of disarmament to which His Majesty, the Emperor, would also on his part consent. If massacres similar to those which have stained Bulgaria with blood take place, this would necessarily put a stop to the measures of demobilization.”

If Turkey had honestly desired to enforce the reforms promised, and deal justly by her Christian subjects, and avoid the dangers of war, there should have been no hesitation in giving its assent to this protocol.

But the Sublime Porte knew very well that Great Britain would never take up arms against her, as she had distinctly refused to sign a memorandum that might involve the pressure of force. The Porte knew it could rely upon the diplomatic resources of England in the final issue of affairs, hence rejected the protocol with audacity and insolence. In substance the rejection of these last offers of peace stated that:—First, the Sublime Porte would spare no effort to arrive at an understanding with the Prince of Montenegro. Second, that the Imperial government was prepared to adopt all the promised reforms. Third, that Turkey was ready to place its armies on a peace footing as soon as it saw the Russian government take measures to the same end. Fourth, with regard to the disturbances which might break out and stop the demobilization of the Russian army, the Turkish government repelled the injurious terms in which the idea had been expressed, and stated its belief that Europe was convinced that the recent disturbances were due to foreign instigation, (i. e. Russia’s) and after other reasons given, it declared that Turkey can not allow foreign agents or representatives charged to protect the interests of their compatriots to have any mission of official supervision. (Precisely its position to-day.)

The Imperial government in fact is not aware how it can have deserved so ill of justice and civilization, as to see itself placed in a humiliating position without example in the world. (This after all the horrors of Bulgaria—which were known to the world long before this.)

The treaty of Paris gave an explicit sanction to the principle of non-intervention. * * * And if Turkey appeals to the stipulations of the treaty * * it is for the purpose of calling attention to the grave reasons which, in the interest of the general peace of Europe, induced the powers, twenty years ago, to place the recognition of the inviolability of this Empire’s right to sovereignty, under the guaranty of its collective promise.

When the Turkish ambassador in London called upon Earl Derby, on the 12th of April, to deliver the above circular, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his deep regrets at the view the Porte had taken, and said he could not see what further steps England could take to avert the war which appeared to be inevitable.

On the 24th of April, the Czar, who was at Kischeneff, with his army, issued his manifesto in which he said:—

“For two years we have made incessant efforts to induce the Porte to effect such reforms as would protect the Christians in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria from the arbitrary measures of the local authorities. The accomplishment of these reforms was absolutely stipulated by anterior engagements contracted by the Porte to the whole of Europe.

“Our efforts supported by diplomatic representations made in common by the other governments have not, however, attained their object. The Porte has remained unshaken in its formal refusal of any effective guaranty for the security of its Christian subjects, and has rejected the conclusions of the Constantinople Conference. Wishing to essay every possible means of conciliation in order to persuade the Porte, we proposed to the other Cabinets to draw up a special protocol, comprising the most essential conditions of the Constantinople Conference, and to invite the Turkish government to adhere to this international act, which states the extreme limits of our peaceful demands. But our expectation was not fulfilled. The Porte did not defer to this unanimous wish of Christian Europe and did not adhere to the conclusions of the protocol. Having exhausted pacific efforts we are compelled by the haughty obstinacy of the Porte to proceed to more decisive acts, feeling that equity and our own dignity enjoin it. By her refusal, Turkey places us under the necessity of having recourse to arms.

“Profoundly convinced of the justice of our cause and humbly committing ourselves to the grace and help of the Most High, we make known to our faithful subjects that the moment foreseen when we pronounced words to which all Russia responded with complete unanimity, has now arrived. We expressed the intention to act independently when we deemed it necessary, and when Russia’s honor should demand it. And now, invoking the blessing of God upon our valiant armies, we give them the order to cross the Turkish frontier.”

Never was the sword drawn in more dignified and solemn manner; never in a more holy war for the deliverance of persecuted and outraged humanity. Alexander drew his sword in the cause of Bulgaria, knowing that single-handed and alone he must face the armies of Turkey, the indifference of Continental Europe; knowing that he must face the bitter opposition and jealousy of England, and not knowing but he might have to meet her armies and fleets as well. This latter possibility was averted, as we know, by the vehement opposition of Gladstone, John Bright, and other statesmen; the people voiced their opinions in four hundred public meetings, and the Disraeli Cabinet was prevented from declaring war in behalf of injured and self-righteous Turkey.

It is very well known that there are many who deny that Russia was moved by any high sense of honor, or driven by righteous and outraged Christian sentiment to draw the sword for the deliverance of Bulgaria and the punishment of the unspeakable Turk. They affirm her to be governed entirely by self-interest, and that under the garb of zeal for her distressed co-religionists she seeks to conceal her purposes of self-aggrandizement. Russia has been the persistent and bitter foe of Turkey for three hundred years, and Turkey of Russia.

Only once in all that time (1833) did Russia stretch out her hand to aid the Turk, and for reward she received the free navigation of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus for a series of years. She has fought the Turk single-handed and alone: she has fought him when he has had Poland and the Tartars for his allies: when Venice and Austria and Hungary fought under his banners: when Italy and France were his allies: when England, France and Sardinia united to help him in the Crimea.

Whatever her motives Russia has always been true to herself, and consistent in her hatred of the Turk. It may be that she has dreams of an empire ruled from Constantinople as a Winter Capital; but whatever her dreams or purposes, no nation has less claim to rule over the ancient Byzantine Empire than the alien race of the Ottoman Turks—fanatical followers of the prophet.

The Russo-Turkish war, while but a brief campaign, was from its beginning to the treaty of San Stefano a war for religious life and freedom and singularly free from death or insult to civilian or woman, while abounding in thrilling and dramatic incident.

On the Russian side the preparations for war had been carried on with much secrecy, headquarters being at Kischeneff in Bessarabia. The greater part of the army had been distributed throughout the provinces in comfortable winter quarters, and were in excellent health and spirits. Early in April the soldiers began swarming towards Kischeneff for the Grand Review and the expected declaration of war. The city had put on its holiday attire, flags and streamers were flying from the houses, and there was the greatest excitement among the people and the soldiers as they waited the arrival of the Emperor. The Review was to be no dress parade, but the serious prelude to war. It was all the more impressive therefore, as early on the morning of April 24th, 1877, the army corps began to gather on the broad plains and sloping hillsides above the town. The troops were already under arms by nine o’clock, standing in lone lines and solid masses, silent and almost motionless as for an hour and a half, they waited the arrival of the Emperor. The crowd, too, of onlookers were serious, and spoke in hushed voices, for these splendid troops were soon to be hurled against the fortification of Plevna only to be shattered, broken, decimated. Only when the Emperor appeared mounted, accompanied by his brother the Grand Duke Nicholas and an immense staff of a hundred officers and rode slowly along the lines, was the silence broken by the sound of music and the cheering of the soldiers.

The review was over in an hour. The music ceased, silence reigned, the soldiers stood uncovered and the crowd also removed their caps. The voice of only one man was heard, that of the Bishop of Kischeneff saying a grand military Mass. For more than half an hour the soldiers, composed, expectant, reverently stood and listened. When the Mass was finished a low murmur ran through the crowd. Then a dead silence, and again the strong voice of the Bishop was heard not now engaged in prayer but in reading the Manifesto. In the midst of it sobs were heard and as men looked they saw the Emperor weeping like a child. It had been the pride and glory of the reign of Alexander that his reign had been of peace. He hoped to finish it without war, and now the fatal step had been taken, and who could tell its issue. This was not the spirit of a man eager, determined on conquest, lusting for martial fame and glory. There was not a dry eye within sound of the Bishop’s voice, but when he closed with the impressive words, “And now, invoking the blessing of God upon our valiant armies we give them the order to cross the Turkish frontier,” a wild and universal shout went up—a shout of exultation, triumph, relief, which ran through all the army over hill and plain till the whole air resounded with the glad acclaim. Some corps started at once for the frontier and the rest began rapidly preparing for the march—and by the 10th of May the Russian army, over two hundred thousand men, was posted along the banks of the Danube facing the forts, the fleets and the armies of the Porte which numbered one hundred and fifty thousand effective soldiers.

Not until June 27th did the main body of the Russians succeed in crossing the Danube, but it was most skillfully done and the march began for Constantinople. Already the hero of the war had been revealed in the person of General Skobeleff—the Custer of the Russian army and the youngest general in the army, with a strange and brilliant career which was to be most gloriously eclipsed by the successes of this campaign.

“He was a tall, handsome man with a lithe, slender, active figure, clear, blue eyes, a large prominent, but straight well-shaped nose, the kind of a nose it said Napoleon used to look for among his officers when he wished to find a general.” He was highly educated, speaking five languages fluently, and always had time even in his hardest campaigns for new books and reviews. He was every inch a soldier, and his great strength lay in the power and influence he had over his men. He was never weary of seeing that his men were well fed, warmly clothed and comfortable. He was always intelligible in his orders. He was the comrade of his men as well as their officer. When the passage of the Danube was made finally on the pontoon bridge, Skobeleff shouldered a musket like a private soldier and marched over with his men. Every officer under him was devoted to him. He treated them all as friends, but then every one of them was expected when occasion came to lay down his life as an example to his men. “Fear,” he said, “must cease when a man reaches the grade of captain.”

The British Mediterranean Fleet.

After the passage of the Danube, he was given the command of a division—was always at the front, in the thickest of every fight. He was a hero at Plevna, that stronghold commanding the pass through the Balkans, where Osman Pasha held the Russians at bay from July until December 11th. Three times the Russians had attacked it and been repulsed; twice in July and the third time in September. The great infantry assault was made on the 11th day of September, the fifth day of the bombardment.

On this last occasion Skobeleff’s duty was to take a redoubt on a certain Green Hill, which he regarded as the key to the Turkish position. He always rode a white horse and wore a white coat that he might be more conspicuous to his own men during a battle. With his usual address to his soldiers he despatched them to the redoubt. He knew well that he was sending many of them to their death. They knew it too, but advanced unflinchingly in the face of a fearful fire from cannon and from infantry. One company wavered and broke. Instantly Skobeleff was among them on his white charger. “Follow me,” he cried, “I will show you how to thrash the Turks. Close up there! Follow me my men. I will lead you myself. He who deserts me should be ashamed of himself! Now then, drummers—look alive.”

Meantime the Turks were seen everywhere torturing the wounded before despatching them. This roused the spirit of the Russians and they pushed on with fury. With fearful loss they captured the redoubt, and planted two Russian flags on it. Then Skobeleff, who had had two horses shot under him, started back for reinforcements.

In vain he pleaded for men. In vain he pleaded that the redoubt was the key of the position. He burst into tears. He visited the redoubt three or four times during the day to encourage them. Plevna would soon be taken. Victory would crown their efforts. For the honor and the glory of the Russian arms;—and they always replied with the same cheery shouts while their numbers were dwindling by hundreds. But the battle was against the Russians. One more effort must be made.

“Major Gortaloff, you will remain here in charge of the redoubt,” he said. “Can I depend on you? You must hold this at any price.” “I will remain or die, Your Excellency.” “Possibly I shall be unable to send you any reinforcements. Give me your word that you will not leave the redoubt.” “My honor is pledged. I will not leave this place alive.” The Major raised his hand as if taking an oath. Skobeleff embraced him. “God help you! Remember my men, there may be no reinforcements. Count only on yourselves. Farewell, heroes.” But as he took his last look at them—the finest troops of his division, he sighed. “Consecrated to death,” he said and thundered down the hill.

Only one thing remained, to draw off his men and save as many of them as possible.

A colonel of one regiment of Cossack infantry, however, without orders, put his men at Skobeleff’s disposal and once more he started for the redoubt.

The Turks were swarming over the ramparts, mounting its walls on dead bodies. The garrison defending themselves by bayonets began to despair. At last through the fog and smoke they saw their comrades coming. But Skobeleff had only one battalion; not enough to drive out the Turks.

“I think he wants to cover our retreat,” said the Major. He gathered his men about him. “Comrades go. Open your way with your bayonets. This place can no longer be held. God bless you, my children. Forward.” And bowing his head he reverently made the sign of the cross over his men. “And you, father?” they exclaimed. “I stay with our dead. Tell the general I have kept my word. Good by, children.” They watched him as they turned their heads in their retreat. They saw him standing on the ramparts waving to them. Then the Turks rushed in. They saw the struggle. They saw his body uplifted upon Turkish bayonets.

“It was just after this,” said a correspondent, “that I met General Skobeleff the first time that day. He was in a fearful state of excitement and fury. His uniform was covered with mud and filth, his sword broken; his cross of St. George twisted round on his shoulder; his face black with powder and smoke; his eyes haggard and bloodshot, and his voice quite gone. I never before saw such a picture of battle as he presented. I saw him again in his tent at night. He was quite calm and collected. He said, ‘I have done my best. I could do no more. My detachment is half destroyed; my regiments do not exist; I have no officers left; they sent me no reinforcements, and I have lost three guns.’ ‘Why did they refuse you reinforcements?’ I asked. ‘Who was to blame?’ ‘I blame nobody,’ he replied. ‘It is the will of God.’”

The Russians fell back from Plevna for a little breathing spell, having lost in this third assault more than twenty thousand men.

At Bucharest General Skobeleff met General Todleben, the great engineer who had planned and superintended twenty-one years before the defence of Sebastopol. It had been decided to plan works by which Plevna should be taken, not by assault but by starvation.

By the middle of October, 1877, Skobeleff was back at the seat of war with his division of about forty thousand men. He had no longer with him the “lions,” the “eagles,” the “heroes” of the third assault, but largely new recruits whom he must train.

Two months of the siege sufficed to starve out the garrison, and Osman Pasha surrendered unconditionally on December 11th, and thirty-two thousand men laid down their arms and the gates were open towards Constantinople. As soon as Plevna fell Skobeleff was appointed its military governor. The Roumanians in the Russian army had already begun the plunder of the city. When Skobeleff remonstrated, their officers replied: “We are the victors, and the victors have a right to the spoils.” “In the first place,” answered the general, “we were never at war with the peaceable inhabitants of this place, and consequently can not have conquered them. But, secondly, please acquaint your men that I shall have victors of this kind shot. Every man caught marauding shall be shot like a dog. Please bear this in mind. There is another thing. You must not insult women. Such conduct is very humiliating. Let me tell you that every such complaint will be investigated and every case of outrage punished.”

Compare this order with the horrible atrocities continually committed upon the Bulgarians during this campaign by Bashi-Bazouks and the thirty thousand Circassian horsemen, who were allowed to follow their own fashions, in which they excel even the Apache tribes once the terror of the Southwest. Before them went anguish and horror; after them death, ruin and despair.

We have no time to follow the war as carried on in Armenia, but on November 17–18, the city and fortress of Kars was carried by assault, and the Russian officers remembering how the fanatical Turks had tortured and killed the wounded soldiers that had fallen into their cruel hands, expressed the fear lest their excited soldiers might put aside feelings of humanity and inflict summary vengeance.

But contrary to all expectations, Cossack and Russian put aside all thought of personal revenge; and not a single civilian was killed or insulted, and not a woman had to complain of insult or outrage. These facts are stated for the sake of those who may have thought that there is little to choose between the semi-barbarous hordes of Russia (as they call them) and the armies of Turks, Kurds and Circassians.

Another fact regarding the religious sentiment of the Russian peasant transformed into a soldier. A Frenchman who was at Plevna with the officers of the Commander-in-chief’s staff thus writes of Skobeleff: “He is a magnificent looking soldier, almost as tall as the Emperor. * * On the battlefield he is brave as a lion. * * * When ordering a retreat, he sheathes his sword, sends his white charger to the front and remains on foot, the last man in the rear, saying; ‘They may kill me if they like, but they shall not harm my horse unless he is advancing against the enemy.’ He has never quitted a battlefield without carrying off his wounded (unless in such retreat as from the third assault on Plevna), nor has he ever after a battle gone to rest without making an address to his men, and writing his own report to the commander-in-chief. He is adored by his soldiers. * * He is highly educated and a sincerely religious man. ‘No man can feel comfortable in facing death’ he has been heard to say ‘who does not believe in God and have hope of a life to come.’ Each evening in the camp he stood bareheaded taking part in the evening service which was chanted by fifty or sixty of his soldiers. * If the people of Paris who shed tears over the Miserére in Trovatore, could hear these simple soldiers in the presence of death addressing prayers and praises to the Almighty Father with their whole hearts, they would find it far more moving. Skobeleff is as distinguished for his modesty as his bravery. ‘My children,’ he says to his soldiers, ‘I wear these crosses, but it is you who have won them for me.’”

Attention is called to these things that you can compare for yourselves the morale of the Russian army with its reverence for woman and for God, with the grossness and corruption and wickedness that prevails in the mixed multitudes that form the soldiers of Islam.

Who is not touched by the deep sincerity of that word in his first address to his army, “while you are fighting I shall pray for you.”

So deep was his interest in the war that he could not content himself in St. Petersburg but felt that his place was on the Danube. When he reached the seat of war he assumed no command, but he endeavored to inform himself about everything. The failures before Plevna greatly troubled him. “If we lose I will never return to Russia. I will die here with my brave soldiers.” Hence it was with more than usual emotion that the Emperor reviewed the troops, seventy thousand men, at Plevna a few days after its fall.

The troops were drawn up in two lines of quarter columns at intervals of ten paces between regiments. The second line was about fifty paces in rear of the first. He embraced the Generals, greeted the officers and then accompanied by the Grand Duke and Prince Charles, attended by a brilliant staff, he passed down the front line and back by the second. His reception was most enthusiastic, every regiment cheering the moment it caught sight of the white flag with the ornamental cross that denoted the Emperor’s presence; and nothing could be more impressive than the enormous volume of sound produced by the triumphant cheers of seventy thousand men.

In a few days Skobeleff’s division was to cross the Balkans by a pass leading to Senova while the main army was to take the Shipka Pass. One order he gave caused much amusement among his brother officers. Each man of his division was ordered to carry a log of wood with him. “What will he think of next?” said some one. “If Skobeleff has ordered,” said the Grand Duke Nicholas, “he has some good reason for it.”

He had a good reason. There was no wood on the summit of the Balkans. He wanted his men to have three hot meals a day. And in consequence of his precautions not one man of his division arrived disabled or frozen on the other side; not one had straggled, and the only two who were lost had slipped and fallen over a precipice. The soldiers who crossed the Shipka Pass suffered frightfully. The passage to Senova was an awful journey. The men had to break their way through great snowdrifts. They had to drag their cannon on sledges by hand, but on the third day they descended into the Valley of Roses in splendid form.

In the battles that raged during the next few days Skobeleff was uniformly successful, and the regiments coming down the Shipka Pass went right into the thick of the fight. At last the Turks put out two white flags. The Pashas surrendered themselves and their whole army—thirty-five thousand men and one hundred and thirteen guns were given up.

“The scoundrels,” muttered Gen. Skobeleff “to give up with such a force and with such a position.” “No wonder,” cried the Turks, “that we were beaten; for the Russians were commanded by Akh Pasha and it is impossible to overcome him.” The first order given was, “Let the Turks’ property be sacred to us. Let not a crumb of theirs be lost. Warn the men, I will shoot them for stealing.”

“I shall never forget,” said Mr. Kinnard Rose, “a solemn service for the repose of the souls of the dead that was held on that battlefield of Senova by the General and a score of companions. Skobeleff’s chaplain chanted the Mass with a simple dragoon for clerk. Every head was uncovered. The party stood in respectful groups around a monumental column with its cross, the General to the right of the priest. As the service progressed, the General wept like a child, and among the small but deeply moved congregation there were few dry eyes.”

And now the road lay open before him. The last army was beaten—Skobeleff’s forced march made the Turkish Pashas stand aghast—thirty, even fifty miles a day, and soon he had occupied Adrianople, the second city of the Empire. He had entered it without a sick man—there was not a theft nor burglary—not a street row, as he rested there a few days.

The heroes of the campaign in the Balkans were Generals Gourko, Radetzky and Skobeleff. They carried out operations which for difficulty of execution, rapidity of movement and quickness of combination have hardly ever been equalled. In fifteen days they had destroyed three Turkish armies, and swept the country from Shipka Pass to Adrianople and with one hundred and thirty-two thousand bayonets were ready to dictate peace to the Sublime Porte.

General Gourko, who was Skobeleff’s senior, arrived in advance of his columns on January 26th, and took command of the city, while Skobeleff pushed on with his cavalry and in two weeks (February 5th) camped on the shores of the Sea of Marmora a short distance from Constantinople, having marched two hundred and seventy-five miles in twenty days, one hundred miles of it in four days.

The history of the Russo-Turkish war has been written in terms of highest eulogy by impartial historians and disinterested eyewitnesses. The condensed account given in these pages is accorded space to emphasize the difference between warfare as conducted by one of the Great Powers of Europe and the barbarous methods of the “Unspeakable Turk.” Previously to the occupancy of Adrianople by the Russian forces, representatives of the two nations most interested, met and seriously discussed the question of peace.

The Turkish delegates refused to accept the Russian terms. They were informed that the Russians would march upon Constantinople unless they accepted. On the question of the autonomy for Bulgaria, the Russians were inflexible. This the delegates refused, and the troops continued to close in upon Constantinople.

On January 31st an armistice was signed, and a neutral zone declared with Constantinople exposed to the Russian army. While going over the lines of delimitation one day, General Skobeleff and his whole staff gazed upon the city of Constantinople. He was furious when he learned that the Russian army was not even to enter Constantinople, and he is said to have debated whether he would not on his own responsibility take the city without orders and break the meshes of diplomacy.

“I would hold a congress in Constantinople—here!” he said, “and would myself preside if I were Emperor, with three hundred thousand bayonets to back me—prepared for any eventuality. Then we could talk to them.”

“But suppose all Europe should oppose you?”

“There are moments when one must act—when it is criminal to be too cautious. We may have to wait centuries for so favorable an opportunity. You think the bulldogs would fight us? Never. It should be our duty to defend this—our own city—with the last drop of our blood.”

When General Grant said that Russia’s abstaining from entering Constantinople was the greatest mistake a nation ever committed, he was either not aware of the secret engagement made with Lord Loftus, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, or he considered with reason that England’s sending her fleet into the Bosphorus was such a violation of her engagements of neutrality, as would justify Russia in not abiding by her promises.

England, on February 8th, had ordered her fleet to Constantinople to protect British interests. News was received by Skobeleff that the fleet was under way. He instantly informed headquarters, and had orders for concentrating his troops where they could strike at a moment’s notice. He quickly and gladly so disposed his army that in two hours he could occupy the Turkish positions, and in thirty six hours could place two divisions on the high ground just behind Constantinople, the very ground from which the Turks in 1453 had besieged and assaulted and captured this Queen of Eastern Christian Empire. For Russia had decided before the armistice that the English fleet coming into the Bosphorus should be the signal for the march into the city. Then came the news that the Turks refused to allow the fleet to pass and that it was lying at the mouth of the Dardanelles and the danger of a general European war was passed for the time.

But the approach of the fleet was a warning and the delay, and hesitation of the Ambassadors to sign the preliminaries of peace and the objections they made were irritating to the last degree, and the answer of Russia was the removal of headquarters to San Stefano, only twelve miles from Constantinople, and there the treaty of peace must be signed.

There is little time to portray the many dramatic scenes connected with the signing of the treaty of San Stefano. March 3d was the anniversary of the Czar’s accession to the throne. There was to be a grand review. At four o’clock the Grand Duke galloped towards the hill where the army was drawn up; then up dashed a carriage from the village. General Ignatieff was in it and when he approached he rose and said: “I have the honor to congratulate Your Highness on the signature of peace.” Then the Grand Duke to the army: “I have the honor to inform the army that with the help of God we have concluded a treaty of peace.”

A shout, swelling and triumphant, rose from the throats of twenty thousand men, some of them the most famous regiments of Russia’s favored troops. After the review the Grand Duke spoke briefly, “To an army which has accomplished what you have, my friends, nothing is impossible.” Then all dismounted, uncovered and a solemn service was held, the soldiers all kneeling, even the wife of General Ignatieff was seen kneeling on a fur rug beside her carriage. The religious ceremony over, the Grand Duke took his stand and the army began to file past with a swinging, rapid stride. The night was falling, darkness settling over all. Still the Grand Duke sat motionless on his horse, the troops still were passing; the joyous shouts grew fainter and the measured tramp, tramp died out on the ear and the war of 1877–78 had entered into the history of the struggle of humanity for religious life and freedom. The history of the treaties of San Stefano and of Berlin will be told in the chapter that records the greatest crime of the century against the life and freedom of a still suffering and outraged humanity under the curse of Islam.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID.

It does not lie within the plan of this volume to review at any length the history of Turkey, or to sketch the lives of the Sultans who have reigned during the century; it will answer, however, to make our work intelligible and clear, if the life of the reigning Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. is presented briefly.

He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father’s second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. “Then I will never touch wine or liquor again,” said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word.

The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 his Uncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople.

Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation.

His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, “If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks.”

In consequence of this mental indisposition, Murad V. was deposed August 30th, and Abdul Hamid II. was proclaimed on August 31st, and girded with the sword of Othman a few days later. He was then living in a small palace in the Valley of Sweet Waters, which he inherited from his father. He was very fond of agriculture, and amused himself by cultivating a model farm. To his mother, who is said to have been an Armenian from Georgia, in Russia, he owed a quality very rare in the family of the Sultans, the spirit of economy. He never allowed his expenses to exceed his income before he came to the throne. In this charming retreat he resided quietly with his wife and two children, all eating at the same table, and showing in his dress and surroundings his preference for European modes of life. The only concession he made to Orientalism in personal dress, was in wearing the “fez,” which he disliked, but continued to wear as the necessary token of his nationality.

Six weeks after he was proclaimed Sultan, it was announced that a scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, was in course of preparation. It was published in January, and while it was a much less sweeping reform than Midhat wished, it provided for a Senate and a House of Representatives, which last was to take control of the finances, the system of taxation was to be revised and better laws were to be enacted for the provinces.

Election to the lower house was to be by universal suffrage; for the upper house electors were restricted to two classes: the noble and the educated.

Abdul Hamid cordially disapproved of this check on the absolute power enjoyed by predecessors.

He was willing to do justice and to temper it with mercy, but to be placed in the position of a servant to his people was odious to himself.

At a council held, when only his other ministers were present, the Sultan asked, what should be done with Midhat Pasha. Two of those present said: “Let him die.” But Abdul Hamid was not bloodthirsty, hence he only banished him to Arabia where two years later he was poisoned.

The Sultan was restive under the constitution and the Pashas, against whose cruelty and extortion the most of the reforms were aimed, sided with their sovereign. In 1875, Midhat Pasha had outlined the situation thus to the English Ambassador:

“The Sultan’s Empire is being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption has reached a pitch that it has never before attained. The service of the state is starved, while untold millions are being poured into the palaces and the provinces are being ruined by the uncontrolled exactions of the Governors who purchase their appointments at the palace: and nothing can save the country but a complete change of system.”

And the very worst governed portion of all his Empire was Armenia. We are officially told that its government for the last thirty years has been horrible.

In an Armenian village recently plundered by bandits, the famous Hungarian Professor, Arminius Vambery, an intimate friend of the Sultan, once asked, “Why do you not get help from the Governor of Erzeroum?” “Because,” answered the villagers, “he is at the head of the robbers. God alone and his representative on earth—the Russian Czar, can help us.” This brigandage, is one of the greatest curses of the Turkish Empire, exercising a rule of terror and oppression, and now legalized, apparently, by the transformation of the Kurdish horsemen—robbers—into the Hamidieh—the Sultan’s own Cavalry.

Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.

Such being the spirit of the Pashas who had grown rich by plunder and official theft, of course they were opposed to the Constitution, and by the will of the Sultan it was abrogated after two sessions had been held. This was soon followed by the dismissal of the Ministers who had formed the triumvirate, and the Sultan resumed his despotic and absolute sway. Assured that England would not suffer the dismemberment of his Empire we have seen him refusing to guarantee the enforcement of promised reforms and provoking the war with Russia; but as we have already told this story, we will give some pictures of the Sultan as drawn by his admirers; leaving the horrors of the Armenian massacres to bear witness as to the honesty of his professed devotion to the welfare of his Christian subjects and his promises to observe the terms of said treaty in the amelioration of the condition of all who were suffering under the murderous oppression of Kurds and Circassians.

Professor Vambery, a most remarkable linguist who writes and speaks all the languages of Europe like a native, spent some time in Turkey a few years ago and was received into closest conference by the Sultan.—Here are extracts from what he has written of him:

“I must own that the education of Abdul Hamid, like that of all Oriental princes was defective, very defective indeed; but an iron will, good judgment and rare acuteness have made good this short-coming; and he not only knows the multifarious relations and intricacies of his own much tried Empire but is thoroughly conversant with European politics: and I am not going far from fact when I state that it has been solely the moderation and self-restraint of Sultan Abdul Hamid which has saved us hitherto from a general European conflagration. As to his personal character, I have found the present ruler of the Ottoman Empire of great politeness, amiability and extreme gentleness. When sitting opposite to him during my private interviews, I could not avoid being struck by his extremely modest attitude, by his quiet manners and by the bashful look of his eyes. * * At his table, though wine is served to European guests, it is not offered to the Sultan or any other Mohammedan.

“His views on religion, politics and education have a decidedly modern tone, and yet he is a firm believer in the tenets of his religion, and likes to assemble around him the foremost Mollahs and pious Sheiks on whom he profusely bestows imperial favors; but he does not forget from time to time to send presents to the Greek and the Armenian patriarchates, and nothing is more ludicrous than to hear this prince accused by a certain class of politicians in Europe of being a fanatic and an enemy to Christians,—a prince who by appointing a Christian for his chief medical attendant and a Christian for his chief minister of finance, did not hesitate to intrust most important duties to non-Mohammedans. * * *”

[Doubtless he wanted the best men he could find as his physician and minister of finance, and these men were found among the Christians. Let the last year tell whether he be the friend or the enemy of the Christians.]

“In reference to the charge of ruthless despotism laid upon Sultan Abdul Hamid in connection with his abrogation of the charter granted during the first months of his reign, I will quote his own words. He said to me one day:—‘In Europe the soil was prepared centuries ago for liberal institutions, and now I am asked to transplant a sapling to the foreign, stony and rugged ground of Asiatic life. Let me clear away the thistles, and stones, let me till the soil, and provide for irrigation because rain is very scarce in Asia and then we may transport the new plant; and believe me that nobody will be more delighted at its thriving than myself.’”

Thus far the professor. And now, it is to be wondered if he calls the extermination of the Armenians the clearing away of the thistles and does he propose to irrigate the soil of Armenia with the blood of its noblest race. Is he not rather slitting the veins of Asia Minor and pouring out its heart’s best blood?

That the Sultan was a warm personal friend of Gen. Lew Wallace does not make him any the less a despot; neither because Hon. S. S. Cox, who succeeded Gen. Wallace was an admirer of the Sultan as the following quotation will show; does that make him the less a fanatic and the most remorseless shedder of blood that Europe has seen since the days of Tamerlane.

“The Sultan is of middle size and of Turkish type. He wears a full black beard, is of a dark complexion and has very expressive eyes. His forehead is large, indicative of intellectual power. He is very gracious in manner though at times seemingly a little embarrassed. * * *

“As Caliph he is the divine representative of Mohammed. His family line runs back with unbroken links to the thirteenth century. He is one of the most industrious, painstaking, honest, conscientious and vigilant rulers of the world. He is amiable and just withal. His every word betokens a good heart and a sagacious head. [What a comment the horrors of the many months just past furnishes to this flattering estimate a Mohammedian conscience!]

“He is an early riser. After he leaves his seraglio and has partaken of a slight repast his secretaries wait on him with portfolios. He peruses all the official correspondence and current reports. He gives up his time till noon to work of this character. Then his breakfast is served. After that he walks in his park and gardens, looks in at his aviaries, perhaps stirs up his menagerie, makes an inspection of his two hundred horses in their fine stables, indulges his little daughters in a row upon the fairy lake which he has had constructed, and it may be attends a performance at the little theatre provided for his children in the palace. At 5 P. M. having accomplished most of his official work, he mounts his favorite white horse, Ferhan, a war-scarred veteran for a ride in the park. The park of the palace Yildiz where he lives comprises some thousand acres. It is surrounded by high walls and protected by the soldiery.”

But all this does not tell us what the man at heart is any more than if some flatterer of Nero should expatiate on the esthetic taste of Nero and his love of the fine arts and his skill as a violinist when he sat at night in his marble palace and enjoyed the blazing magnificence of Rome. It is as foreign to the present situation as if some one should praise the skill of Nero’s horsemanship as he drove his mettled steeds with firm reins along the course lighted by the blazing torches of the tar-besmeared Christians, whom he accused of having set the city on fire.

The persistence with which the Sultan has followed out his purpose of exterminating the Armenians, in the face of a horrified and indignant Christendom, marks his audacity and contempt of Christians as sublime in height, as infernal in spirit, and bottomless in its cruelty.

Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can scarcely find polite words enough to express his contempt for the forms of early Christianity and praised the Turks as possessing the rarest of qualities when he said: “The Turks are distinguished for their patience, discipline, sobriety, bravery, honesty and modesty,” and Hon. Sunset Cox echoed the same when he wrote, “It is because of these solid characteristics, and in spite of the harem, in spite of autocratic power, in spite of the Janissary and the seraglio that this race and rule remain potent in the Orient. His heart (the heart of the present Sultan) is touched by suffering, and his views lean strongly to that toleration of the various races and religions of his realm, which other and more boastful nations would do well to imitate.”

The facts given in the chapters on The Reign of Terror will be sufficient commentary on such praise.

Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey—the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after another has been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: “The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed.”

In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities, and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan’s person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.

An interesting story of the present Sultan is related by Mr. W. T. Stead, in an article in his Review of Reviews, which in some measure explains the singular mixture in his character of fanaticism, such as that which produced the Armenian massacres, with the marked ability and intelligence he displays in the conduct of national affairs. It appears that when he was a mere youth, he was conspicuous even in Constantinople, which is notorious for its immorality, for the gross excesses of his private life. There was then little probability of his ever ascending the throne, and as he was condemned by his position to a life of idleness, he plunged into all the wickedness of the capital, and lived a life of debauchery. Suddenly he changed his course. He quitted his evil ways and became a devout follower of Mohammed, was attentive at the Mosque and gave all his thoughts to his religion. From that time until now his religious enthusiasm has been the most prominent feature of his character. But with the change came a fierce intolerance, a desire that others should follow his example and determination, evinced since his accession, that in his own dominions no enemy of the Prophet, nor any who did not avow themselves his followers, should have peace or rest until they accepted the faith. This spirit accounts for the crusade against the Armenians whom he hates because they are Christians.

The real cause for all the trouble in the Turkish Empire will be found to lie within the spirit and purpose of the Sultan himself. His conduct towards the Powers will serve to most abundantly confirm this view.

The condition of Armenia under Turkish rule has for many years been a scandal to Christendom. After the horrors of the Blood bath of Sassoun had been made known to the world a commission of the Powers were sent to investigate and report on the massacres which had been perpetrated.

The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. The Ambassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets—Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte’s true answer to all its own promises of reform.

To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:—

“The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance.”

These different points are:

1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets.

2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis.

3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.

4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles.

5. The final settlement of pending legal proceedings for common law crimes and offences.

6. The inspection of prisons and an inquiry into the condition of the prisoners.

7. The appointment of a high commission of surveillance for the application of reforms in the provinces.

8. The creation of a permanent committee of control at Constantinople.

9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were victims of the events at Sassoun, Talori, etc.

10. The regularization of matters connected with religious conversion.

11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privileges conceded to the Armenians.

12. The position of the Armenians in the other vilayets of Asiatic Turkey.

After much delay the Porte replied that it could not accept the proposals made. Of course not. Why should the Sultan do anything to favor the Armenians or even to prevent the recurrence of these terrible outrages unless compelled to do so by something more than advice! Yet the Sultan would be anxious to know what the three Powers would do about it. He was not kept long in suspense, so far as England was concerned. Orders were issued for the English fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and France and Russia were informed of the fact. The news reached the Sultan and appears to have convinced him that it was not safe to trifle any longer with the demands of the powers. He accordingly telegraphed that he would accede to the principle of reform outlined for him.

The Sultan, learning also that the British Cabinet had met to consider Turkey’s reply to the plan of reform for Armenia, submitted by Great Britain, France and Russia, telegraphed to Rustem Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London, instructing him to ask the Earl of Kimberly, the British Foreign Minister, to postpone a decision in the matter.

The Earl of Kimberly acceded to the request. In the meanwhile the Porte handed to the British, French and Russian Ambassadors a fresh and satisfactory reply, acceding to the principle of control by the Powers, but asking that the period be limited to three years.

While these promises were being so freely made, letters from Armenia, in July, represented Turkish cruelty as unabated; the position of affairs never so grave and critical; and the Armenians to have reached the ultimate limit of despair. Yet in August the world was informed that Turkey had decided to accept in their entirety the Armenian reforms demanded by the Powers, and that the acceptance of these reforms was primarily due to the pressure brought to bear on the government by Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, who communicated to the government a confidential note from Lord Salisbury to the effect that the Porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or England would use sharper means than those adopted by Lord Rosebery to settle affairs in Armenia.

The summer passed in fruitless and endless negotiations. Later in September a press telegram from London voiced the situation as follows:—

“European diplomacy seems already weary of the question, which Turkish diplomacy has handled with an evident ability, based upon temporization and inertia, as well as upon its knowledge of the jealousy existing between the three Powers which proclaim so loudly that they want nothing else but the happiness of the Armenians.

“The question has not progressed one iota, despite all the negotiations, memoranda, appointments of commissions, and even the (awful!) rumor, one month ago, of the assembling of the British fleet in Besika Bay, at the entrance of the Dardanelles. England, France and Russia, however, had the way clear before them, if they had been really in accord and seriously willing to accomplish the humanitarian mission they pretended to assume. Article sixty-one of the Berlin Treaty gave the Powers the right to see that the same rights granted to Bulgaria should be granted also to Armenia. This article has remained a dead letter in regard to the latter country since 1878. When the Sassoun atrocities were recently committed, the Powers merely sent to the Porte a memorandum, requesting it to cease its persecution of Armenians. During two or three months the European Ministers at Pera awaited the decision of the Sultan. Whenever they sent their dragomans to the Foreign Minister, Said Pasha caused his secretary to answer in the Spanish manner, ‘hasta la mañana’ (to-morrow a reply will be given). Finally the three Powers thought of using the rights conferred upon them by Article sixty-one, and required Abdul Hamid to consent that a European Commission of Control should be sent to Armenia, in order to see that reforms be practically applied there. The Sultan will fight stubbornly before accepting them, which would amount to the abandonment of a portion of his sovereignty, and it remains to be seen how much the Powers, jealous of their respective influence at the Porte, are in earnest and how anxious they are promptly to enforce the acceptation of their Control Commission.”

The Turks continued to play a waiting game in Armenian affairs. Remembering the treaty of Berlin, they were shrewd enough to play off one Power against another so as to retain absolute control over their internal affairs, though they had forfeited all right to rule by their outrageous and brutal massacres. The Congress of Berlin was at the time a costly thing to the Eastern Christians but was destined to prove almost their utter ruin.

The Turks did not find it hard to pick flaws in the plan of administrative reform when they did not intend to have any reform. The whole scheme was without any security against the renewal of the Sassoun massacres. Everybody who was interested in Armenia protested against the plan, but it was the best that mere diplomacy could do.

Thus the summer passed filled with plenty of promises, but without any fulfilment, until suddenly the signal was given and the horrors of Sassoun were reënacted throughout all the provinces of Armenia.

At a mass meeting of Armenians held in New York, free expression was given to the feeling of horror with which the news of the Turks’ outrages was received there. There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of these people as to the truth of the reports from Asia Minor, and many were of the opinion that still more terrible news would be received. Mr. Dionian presided, and in calling the meeting to order, said that Armenia and Turkey could never be friends, and that Armenia must either be liberated or annihilated.

Dr. P. Ayvard also spoke, and then Dr. S. Aparcian offered resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, saying in part:—

Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.

Knowing the Turk as they did, the Armenians in this country were prepared for the confirmation of these reports. In due time it came.

A prominent Turk laughed when he saw the report, and said it was a mere fabrication, and that if there was any slaughter it was not committed by the Turks. As to the Turks being opposed to the Armenians because of their being Christians, he said: “People who have lived in the Orient know that to be absurd. We have Christians and Jews among us, and as long as they obey the laws of the land they are treated the same as the members of our faith. Of course,” he added, “when people become revolutionists and conspire against our Government, then we take measures to punish them. The Armenians are revolutionists, and their revolutionary societies exist in every city in this country, while the head-centre is at Naples.”

The Turk laughed and blamed the Armenian revolutionists. The Porte denied the outrages at first then charged the trouble to the Armenians, until the terrible situation at Trebizond and Erzeroum could no longer be kept from the knowledge of Christendom. The prisons in Trebizond were filled with wounded and helpless Armenians: the Mohammedans were well armed and the governor entirely in sympathy with, even if not the instigator of the outrages.

Meanwhile the European manager of the United Press at Constantinople gave the first detailed account of the appalling massacres to which Armenian Christians had been subjected since the Sultan Abdul Hamid gave perfidious assent to the reforms demanded by the European Powers. The harrowing and shameful facts were told on the authority of American Christian men, who witnessed them, and their narrative had the unqualified endorsement of Mr. Terrell, the United States Minister to Turkey. In view of such conclusive testimony to the duplicity and faithlessness of an incorrigible ruler, it seems incredible that Christian peoples will let their rescuing hands be stayed any longer by sordid jealousy and greed, or that they will any longer consent to bear a share of the responsibility for such crimes against humanity. The blood of the slaughtered thousands of their fellow Christians in Armenia cries against them from the ground.

By this trustworthy evidence the conclusion was justified that within the six provinces mainly concerned in the proposed reforms, no fewer than fifteen thousand Armenians were assassinated, while the number of those rendered homeless and robbed of all their possessions, did not fall short of two hundred thousand. The places and dates exposed the aim of the hellish atrocities committed, and drove home the guilt to their authors and accomplices. On October 20, the Sultan authorized Kiamil Pasha, his Grand Vizier, to accept the reforms proposed for the Armenian provinces by the European Powers, and to promise that they should be forthwith carried out. On the next day, October 21, when there had been ample time for the reception of orders telegraphed from Constantinople, the Kurds and Turks throughout Armenia, openly incited and assisted by the regular troops, entered on a scheme of wholesale murder and devastation. The purpose of this preconcerted iniquity, as disclosed by its disgraceful antecedents and its horrible results, was to vent upon the helpless Armenians the venom and the spite engendered by enforced submission to the will of the Christian Powers. It was to enforce at one vindictive stroke the programme of extermination devised in 1890, but prosecuted hitherto with some show of secrecy and caution. It was to make of Armenia a solitude, and then with satanic mockery, to offer exact fulfilment of the pledge of peace and of reform.

A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.

All the circumstances showed that with this flagitious rupture of the Sultan’s plighted word, the person directly and primarily chargeable was the Sultan himself. He sanctioned the plot of extermination, if he did not personally concoct it in 1890, the relentless though disavowed execution of which at last provoked the interposition of Christian Powers. No sooner had Kiamil Pasha been reluctantly permitted to agree to the reforms exacted for Armenia, than he was summarily dismissed by Abdul Hamid from the Grand Vizierate, lest he should execute the agreement in good faith. The new Ministers selected by the Sultan were drawn mainly from the scum of Constantinople, and their first act was to protest that time must be given to the Porte for the proper enforcement of the reform project. Time was needed to render reforms superfluous through the sweeping destruction of its intended beneficiaries. It was needed to perpetrate the design of annihilation on a scale of vast proportions. The Sultan well wished to hide his privity to such a devilish transaction, but he dared not disavow his agents, lest they should divulge his instructions. Accordingly, when high Turkish officials, unmistakably implicated in the Armenian enormities, were subjected to the nominal penalty of a recall at the imperative instance of England’s representative, they were decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid, whose secret aims and wishes were thus betrayed.

On November 10, the Kurds made an attack on Harpoot, but were easily repulsed. On November 11, a party of the soldiers and leading Turks met the Kurds in conference, during the progress of which a bugle was sounded, at which signal the soldiers withdrew. The Kurds thereupon advanced with yells. There was no effort on the part of the soldiers and Armenians to resist, and the Turks joined in the killing and plundering. The Armenian school was burned, and then began an attack upon the Christian quarter, the buildings in which were also set on fire. The Christians were without weapons of any sort, and trusted entirely to the Government to protect them. The Armenians remained in the girls’ seminary until that building was set on fire, and then they appealed to the Governor for protection. They obtained a guard of soldiers, all but two of whom afterward deserted. These two remained and carried out the orders issued to them, to fight the fires which had been kindled.

The burning continued for three days. The Armenians were stripped of everything but their clothing. All the Christian villages around were burned by the Kurds. The outrages continued unchecked until the Government at Constantinople ordered the troops to take action. Fourteen Kurds were then shot, when the murders and pillaging ceased instantly. The districts of Diarbekir, Malatia, Arabkir, Kyin and Palu were made desolate. Thirty-five villages were destroyed, and thousands of the inhabitants embraced Islamism in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon them.

The Turkish troops which were on their way to Zeitoun to suppress the trouble there, were concentrated at Marash, where they awaited the return of the delegation sent to Zeitoun to negotiate with the Armenians in control there for their surrender.

The Government said they were projecting more extensive relief work, and would welcome foreign aid through a joint commission.

Despite this promise of greater relief, the Government was bent on continuing the work of extermination—all promises to the contrary notwithstanding.

The tidal wave of horror and indignation swept over Europe, and found expression in most intense and emphatic speech; it was even felt in the Cabinets of Diplomacy and in Constantinople. There seemed to be more iron in their blood and energy in their action and purpose in their speech.

The general situation was not changed, but it was apparent that a change was about to take place. The representatives of the Powers, some of whom were awaiting instructions from their Governments in regard to the matter of sending additional guardboats into the Bosphorus, seemed to be unanimous in their insistence on the issue of permits for the admission of such boats by the Sultan, and the Ambassadors held a meeting to consider the situation as presented by the Sultan’s refusal to permit the passage of the additional boats through the straits, and to decide on a concerted plan of action.

For several days the wires were hot with the assertion that all the Powers were united and determined to carry their demands to a successful termination. The Sultan was unofficially informed that if he continued to maintain his stubborn attitude, a forced entry of the Dardanelles would possibly be made.

As previously, and with equal pertinence, at this hour of crisis the continental press devoted much space to the affairs of the Orient, and the Sultan was the recipient of much newspaper advice. One writer in particular urged him to remain master of the situation, and to show himself promptly disposed to fulfil his engagements. In that case the crisis would remain an internal one; but if it should assume an international aspect it would be peacefully adjusted on the basis of the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey which would be asserted by France and Russia, the two Pacific Powers. It was also telegraphed from Constantinople that the Czar, in reply to a personal appeal from the Sultan, consented to waive the Russian demand for a second guardship in the Bosphorus. At the same time she was prepared to resent any aggressive action that England might undertake alone.

The Sultan knew very well that there would be no concerted action of the Powers—that England and Russia would never agree as to any joint action, and yet to give color of necessity to his refusal, it was given out that the Powers had decided to depose him, using for this purpose the forces aboard the second guardship which they demanded should be permitted to enter the Bosphorus. This was to stir up the populace against the Powers. Then to furnish another excuse the report was circulated that the Sultan was in daily fear of sharing the fate of Ishmail Pasha at the hands of the Softas and the Young Turkish party.

The Sultan’s letter to Lord Salisbury was often quoted as a confirmation of the report that the Sultan was panic stricken. It will be recalled that Lord Salisbury in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on November 9th, declared that, if the Sultan will not heartily resolve to do justice to them, the most ingenious constitution that can be framed will not avail to protect the Armenians; that through the Sultan alone can any real permanent blessings be conferred on his subjects. “What if the Sultan,” exclaimed the British Prime Minister—

“What if the Sultan is not persuaded? I am bound to say that the news reaching us from Constantinople does not give much cheerfulness in that respect. You will readily understand that I can only speak briefly on such a matter. It would be dangerous to express the opinions that are on my lips lest they injure the cause of peace and good order.”

These words seemed to be freighted with some ominous significance, and they would have been, if there had been any purpose to make them mean anything.

In a remarkable letter to Lord Salisbury which he read publicly at a conference in London, the Sultan used a most beseeching tone to show that the possible dissolution of his Empire was lying heavy on his mind. It sounded like a most abject plea for mercy, a cry for the postponement of the fate which the Powers seemed to be preparing for the terrified monarch. In this note the Sultan said:

“I repeat, I will execute the reforms. I will take the paper containing them, place it before me and see that it is put in force. This is my earnest determination and I give my word of honor, I wish Lord Salisbury to know this and I beg and desire his Lordship, having confidence in these declarations, to make another speech by virtue of the friendly feeling and disposition he has for me and my country. I shall await the result of this message with the greatest anxiety.”

It will be noted that the Sultan’s communication contained no denial that there are wrongs to be remedied in the administration of his government in Armenia and elsewhere. There is no plea that the terms of solemn treaty obligations have been observed. The letter is a tacit confession that the interposition of the Powers as far as it had gone was justifiable and that the reports of the atrocities in Asia Minor, which were at first strenuously denied by the Turkish Government, were true.

It was only a shrewd plea of helplessness to persuade the Powers not to enforce their demands and nothing more. In his rejoinder to the Sultan’s letter, Lord Salisbury substantially admits the hopelessness of reform under the Sultan’s government as now constituted and administered.

A few days after this correspondence the fear of the Sultan seemed to have vanished, and he was brave enough to refuse permission to the Powers to send extra guardboats into the Bosphorus.

At this time it looked as if Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, would act alone, and that he really meant to force the passage of the Dardanelles.

But the Sultan knew he would not dare to do it, and he knew also that the Powers were not agreed to use force. England proved herself impotent before the crafty diplomacy of the timid Sultan.

It is folly at this day to pretend to believe that the Sultan ever intended of his “spontaneous good-will” to protect the Armenians even as human beings from the cruelty of Kurd or Turkish officials.

The horrors of December and January give the lie direct to every promise made at Constantinople. The Sultan had outwitted England, if indeed England ever were in earnest, and by circulating a rumor of a Turco-Russian alliance, most effectually checked all danger of intervention by force—the only argument to which the Turk will ever yield—and proceeded to commit yet greater crimes if that were possible.

Under the very eyes of the Russian, English, and French delegates at Moush, the witnesses who had the courage to speak the truth to the representatives of the Powers were thrown into prison, and not a hand was raised to protect them: and within a stone’s throw of the foreign consuls and the missionaries, loyal Armenians were being hung up by the heels, the hair of their heads and beards plucked out one by one, their bodies branded with red-hot irons, and defiled in beastly ways, and their wives and daughters dishonored before their very eyes. And all that philanthropic England has to offer its protégés, for whose protection she holds Cyprus as a pledge, is eloquent sympathy.

She received Cyprus by secret convention, and now holds it as the price of innocent blood. The rewards of iniquity are in her hand. It was worse than folly; it was the refinement of cruelty to send a commission to investigate the outrages in Armenia, thereby irritating the Turk to the height of possible fury as his deeds were proclaimed to the world and then leave him free to wreak his compressed wrath upon the Christians for whose protection no hand would be uplifted. The Powers saw Armenia in misery, bleeding, dying, and passed by on the other side, saying, we are bound by the terms of the Berlin Treaty not to interfere with Turkey in the administration of her domestic affairs; we are sorry for you; we wish the Sultan would listen to our advice and not be quite so severe in his chastisement, but really you must have given him some cause for his anger.

Yes, such provocation as the lamb gave to the wolf that charged it with soiling the water, though it was drinking much farther down the stream.

The humiliation of England as one of the Great Powers was complete when in the House of Commons March 16th, in reply to questions that were put to him Mr. Curzon Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs was obliged to say that reports received by the Government confirmed the statements that a great number of forced conversions from Christianity to Islamism were still being made in Asia Minor. Under the circumstances of cruelty and systematic debauchery of defenceless Christian women through the devastated districts of Anatolia, he said, the British Consuls in Asia Minor had been instructed to report such cases, and representations in regard to them were constantly being made to the Government in Constantinople.

Representations were constantly being made! What did the Porte care for representations? How England was compelled to quaff the contempt even of the Turk who laughs or sneers as his mood may be over these representations of English Consuls and missionaries. The Sublime Porte—which means the Sultan—cabled the Turkish Legation at Washington to deny most emphatically the statements that appeared in the American religious press regarding forcible conversions to Islam.

The Sublime Porte affirmed that “the stories related therein are mere inventions of revolutionists, and their friends intended to attract the sympathy of credulous people. There is no forcible conversion to Islamism in Turkey and no animosity against Protestantism.” This is sublime impudence. The statements thus contradicted, represented conditions certified to by official reports, by careful investigations made by correspondents of newspapers in England and the United States, and by hundreds of private letters from persons in the region where the massacres occurred. Moreover, this declaration of the Sultan is contradicted by centuries of Mohammedan history, by the ruins of ancient churches throughout all Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and by daily prayer concerning the Christians:—

“Oh Allah make their children orphans, * * give them and their families * * their women, their children, * * their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”

The Softas are, properly speaking, the pupils who are engaged in the study of Mussulman theology and law in the medresses, or schools attached to the mosques, the range of their studies, however, being practically limited to learning to read the Koran. The Softas take their name from a corruption of the past-participle soukhte—burned—applied to them because they are supposed to be consumed by the love of study of sacred things, and devoted to a life of meditation. The Softas follow their studies in the school building, sleeping and eating at the imaretts, where free lodgings and food are provided for them out of the legacies of the pious. If their families can afford to do so, they furnish them with clothing and bedding; if not, these are given to them from the same charitable fund. The number of Softas is very large, for one reason because of their exemption from military service. After long-continued study of Arabic, and the Koran and its commentaries, the Softa, after an examination which, though nominally arduous, is almost invariably passed successfully, takes the title of Khodja.

The Khodja—khavadje, reader or singer—a scholar who has taken his diploma in the medresse, teaches for several years, in fact till he has conducted a class of Softas through the same course he had himself taken, when, on application to the Ministry of Worship, at whose head is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and, after a severe examination, he receives the title of Ulema. The Mussulman does not arrive at this dignity until he has reached the age of thirty or thirty-five. It confers numerous privileges, for those doctors escape military service, unless in the event of the djihad, or sacred war, and from their ranks are filled the Judgeships, the curacies (so to speak) of the mosques, the professorships in the medresses, the trusteeships connected with the administration of the trust funds for pious and charitable purposes, etc., etc.

The Imaums—who are the real priests and have charge of the public religious service—are selected from among the Ulema. The title of Imaum comes from the Arabic, and is the equivalent of leader or outpost. There is as a rule one Imaum to each mosque of minor importance—messdjid—while two, or, at most, three, one of whom is designated the chief authority, are appointed to the principal mosques—djamis. Even the Ulema—the word is plural and signifies wise men—are subject to military duty when a holy war is proclaimed.

The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of.

Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How could that benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul?

If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople.

The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?

This conspiracy was made by what was known as the Young Turkey party. It included most of the Softas, and students in all colleges, and many lawyers, doctors, officers of the army and navy, and even civil servants of the Porte. Back of these were multitudes of the general populace. There were many who denied Abdul Hamid’s legal right to be Sultan while his elder brother was living. There were others, numbered by millions, who held that the Caliph must be an Arab and that the Sultan was therefore not to be recognized as the true Commander of the Faithful. Moreover, many, indeed all the leaders of Young Turkey, demanded the carrying out of the Hatt of 1877, establishing a Constitution and Parliament, and denounced the suppression of that promised system as a gross breach of faith and wrong to the people of the Empire. It may not be generally remembered; men’s memories are so short; but it is a fact that a constitutional government was once officially proclaimed in Turkey. The plan was conceived by Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, and formally approved by the Sultan. A Constitution was promulgated. A Parliament, consisting of a Senate and an elective Assembly, was created, and its first session was opened by Abdul Hamid in person on March 19, 1877. Later in the same year its second session was opened, and the Sultan publicly declared that the Constitution should thenceforth be the supreme law of the land, in practice as well as in theory. But before the end of the year one designing politician managed to get Parliament involved in a corrupt job, and then, to avoid investigation, persuaded the Sultan to issue a decree abrogating the Constitution and abolishing Parliament! It was a coup d’état, and it was successful; thanks largely to the indifference of the Powers, and especially of England.

The Young Turkey leaders demanded the restoration of the Constitution. In order to accomplish that they proposed to get rid, in some way, of the Sultan who first decreed and then abrogated that instrument. There were threats of assassination, and something like a reign of terror prevailed at Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan took as many precautions against treachery as ever did the Russian Czar. The man who brought about the abolition of the Parliament by his rascality was a cabinet minister. He, too, was threatened with death. The strictest repression was practiced. The merest hint was enough to cause a man’s arrest and summary execution. But in spite of all, the revolutionary movement grew. Mysterious placards appeared on the walls, calling for fulfilment of the Hatt of 1877. The name of Midhat Pasha, who suffered martyrdom for having given Turkey a Constitution, was spoken now and then, in whispers only, but in tones of grateful reverence. A whisper of “The Constitution,” too, went round. Army and navy were becoming secretly leavened with the idea. The Sultan and his Ministers did not know whom to trust.

And now that we have seen what a fiasco this brilliantly projected great naval demonstration proved itself to be; and how cleverly the Sultan played his pawns against Castles and Kings and Queens, and checkmated all the Powers of Europe, we will leave him in his hell of infamy bathed in the blood of nearly a hundred thousand slain, with the voices of agonized and outraged mothers and daughters raining maledictions upon his accursed head, while we try to be patient until the rod of the Almighty shall smite the wicked, till the day of reckoning and of vengeance shall come in the day of the Lord at hand. We leave the Sultan in his palace to the companionship, perhaps the guidance, of Khalil Rifaat Pasha, the new Grand Vizier, the voice of history and the righteous judgments of God, but as for Islam, as a system of government over Christian populations, we can but pray daily for its speedy, utter and final overthrow.

CHAPTER IX.

PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

In the following pages have been gathered a few very important papers that will be of permanent value, but necessarily the limits are very narrow, and only a sketch of the beneficent influences of the sweet and holy Gospel of Jesus as it comes into the dark, and cruel and ignorant heart of Moslem heathen, or breathes a new life into the dead forms of the ancient church of Armenia can be given. It may, however, be the less regretted as the great missionary periodicals of every Christian church have given to Christendom for years the ever thrilling and precious story of the victories won by grace. It is to be hoped however that these papers will freshen the interest of the reader and increase his faith in the coming of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of peace and good will and righteousness, wherein the terrible evils which prevail under the rule of Islam shall never more be done, but the will of God be sweetly supreme.