3.
It was said by a Prophet of old, in the prospect of a fierce invader, "a day of clouds and whirlwinds, a numerous and strong people, as the morning spread upon the mountains. The like to it hath not been from the beginning, nor shall be after it, even to the years of generation and generation. Before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a burning flame. The land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness; neither is there any one can escape it." Now I might, in illustration of the character which the Turks bear in history, suitably accommodate these words to the moral, or the social, or the political, or the religious calamities, of which they were the authors to the Christian countries they overran; and so I might bring home to you the meaning and drift of that opposition with which the Holy See has met them in every age. I might allude (if I dare, but I dare not, nor does any one dare),—else, allusion might be made to those unutterable deeds which brand the people which allows them, even in the natural judgment of men, as the most flagitious, the most detestable of nations. I might enlarge on the reckless and remorseless cruelty which, had they succeeded in Europe, as they succeeded in Asia, would have decimated or exterminated her children; I might have reminded you, for instance, how it has been almost a canon of their imperial policy for centuries, that their Sultan, on mounting the throne, should destroy his nearest of kin, father, brother, or cousin, who might rival him in his sovereignty; how he is surrounded, and his subjects according to their wealth, with slaves carried off from their homes, men and boys, living monuments of his barbarity towards the work of God's hands; how he has at his remorseless will and in the sudden breath of his mouth the life or death of all his subjects; how he multiplies his despotism by giving to his lieutenants in every province, a like prerogative; how little scruple those governors have ever felt in exercising this prerogative to the full, in executions on a large scale, and sudden overwhelming massacres, shedding blood like water, and playing with the life of man as though it were the life of a mere beast or reptile. I might call your attention to particular instances of such atrocities, such as that outrage perpetrated in the memory of many of us,—how, on the insurrection of the Greeks at Scio, their barbarian masters carried fire and sword throughout the flourishing island till it was left a desert, hurrying away women and boys to an infamous captivity, and murdering youths and grown men, till out of 120,000 souls, in the spring time, not 900 were left there when the crops were ripe for the sickle. If I do not go into scenes such as these in detail, it is because I have wearied and troubled you more than enough already, in my account of the savage perpetrations of Zingis and Timour.
Or I might, in like manner, still more obviously insist on their system of compulsory conversion, which, from the time of the Seljukian Sultans to the present day, have raised the indignation and the compassion of the Christian world; how, when the lieutenants of Malek Shah got possession of Asia Minor, they profaned the churches, subjected Bishops and Clergy to the most revolting outrages, circumcised the youth, and led off their sisters to their profligate households;—how, when the Ottomans conquered in turn, and added an infantry, I mean the Janizaries, to their Tartar horse, they formed that body of troops, from first to last, for near five hundred years, of boys, all born Christian, a body of at first 12,000, at last 40,000 strong, torn away year by year from their parents, circumcised, trained to the faith and morals of their masters, and becoming in their turn the instruments of the terrible policy of which they had themselves been victims; and how, when at length lately they abolished this work of their hands, they ended it by the slaughter of 20,000 of the poor renegades whom they had seduced from their God. I might remind you how within the last few years a Protestant traveller tells us that he found the Nestorian Christians, who had survived the massacres of their race, living in holes and pits, their pastures and tillage land forfeited, their sheep and cattle driven away, their villages burned, and their ministers and people tortured; and how a Catholic missionary has found in the neighbourhood of Broussa the remnant of some twenty Catholic families, who, in consequence of repudiating the Turkish faith, had been carried all the way from Servia and Albania across the sea to Asia Minor; the men killed, the women disgraced, the boys sold, till out of a hundred and eighty persons but eighty-seven were left, and they sick, and famished, and dying among their unburied dead. I could of course continue this topic also to any extent, and draw it out as an illustration of the words of the Prophet which I have quoted. But I prefer to take those words literally, as expressive of the desolation spread by an infidel foe over the face of a flourishing country; and then I shall be viewing the Turkish rule under an aspect addressed to the senses, not admitting of a question, calculated to rouse the sensibilities of Christians of whatever caste of opinion, and explanatory by itself of the determined front which the Holy See has ever made against it.