The answer to the question of how such an encroaching and cynically pursued policy, violating as it did every principle of international law and comity in its dealings with a neighbouring nation, was possible—in a century, too, that was roused to indignation against a not dissimilar but entirely unofficial raid in South Africa—must be sought in the unfortunate condition and weakness of the Ottoman Empire that exposed it, almost defenceless, to the attacks of its powerful neighbour, and dispensed the latter from even the decencies of international intercourse as practised among civilised nations.
This weakness in its turn was the result, as this work is specially intended to show, of corruptions and perversions that had crept into an originally admirable Constitution, and had produced a paralysis of all its important functions, placing its nation almost as much at the mercy of its enemies as had the Liberum Veto the fair land of Poland.
The successive steps of these innovations must now be rapidly traced. When the conquering energies of the new empire were exhausted, and its victorious armies checked under the walls of Vienna by Sobieski and his Poles, and the maritime power of its fleet broken by Don John of Austria’s victory at Lepanto, a new phase was entered upon in which internal re‐organisation took the place of external conquest.
The latter half of the sixteenth century was devoted to attempts to organise the empire on quasi‐feudal principles. It was divided into timars and zeamets (fiefs), represented by the great feudatories, the Derebeys. This was the first serious innovation, involving a perversion of the cardinal principle of the Ottoman Constitution, which was in spirit and essence purely democratic; and when the counter‐revolution took place, and the Sultans determined to get rid of the Derebeys, so as to establish their own exclusive power, the mischief was already done, for the old principle of democracy, as understood by the companions of Othman, was by this time seriously impaired by the long disuse of its ancient rights and functions; so that this counter‐revolution, instead of restoring the old order of things, only redounded to the exclusive profit of autocracy. Nothing but the Porte (that is the Government), and the traditional authority it exercised, now stood in the way of the complete absolutism of the Sultan, and, owing to the veneration of the Ottoman people for their sovereigns—a veneration founded partly on religious, partly on secular, sentiments, and due in no small measure to the exceptional merits of their early rulers—the Sultans entered on the struggle for absolutism equipped with superior advantages. Having no fear of popular encroachments before their eyes, or of popular passion directed against their persons, they could devote their entire thoughts and energies to the task of dominating the Porte and monopolising power in the State.
The struggle of these two contending forces, the Palace and the Porte, continued for a long time, with alternate preponderance on either side, a strong Sultan and a weak vizier inclining the scales towards autocracy, whilst a strong vizier with a weak or luxurious Sultan, redressed the balance to the other side. The Keuprulu Mehemets, Reshids, Aalis and Fuads left the impress of their minds on the Ottoman policy and administration, whilst a host of so‐called Grand Viziers—whom it would be superfluous to name singly, inasmuch as their collective name is legion—were the mere registers of the will, and instruments of the caprices, of their masters. The Sultan Abdul Medjid counted with Reshid Pasha, and Abdul Aziz with Aali and Fuad, as long as they were alive; but it was reserved for his successor, after he had suppressed a Constitution that he had sworn to observe as the very condition of his mounting to the throne, to brush all checks and counterpoises of every kind aside, and to set up a pure, unmixed despotism, based on caprice and corruption alone. Such a system of government had been hitherto unknown to the Ottoman Constitution, was emphatically denounced by the prophets, was contrary to the express provisions of the Sacred Law, was repudiated by Mehemet II. and all the early Sultans as well as Caliphs of Islam, and ran counter to all the traditions of the Ottoman people.
Simultaneously with the beginning of this fatal perversion and this gradual absorption by the Sultans of all power in the State, another change was taking place, closely connected with it, and aggravating all its worst effects.
The high character of the early Sultans of Turkey—to which all contemporary authorities, Christian and Mahomedan alike, bear testimony—had, as has been said, profoundly affected the Ottoman character. Their fervid loyalty to their rulers sprang in no small measure from the lessons inculcated by their early history and their most cherished traditions. Now, up to the reign of Selim II., the Sultan of Turkey received a very superior education. They were not merely patrons of learning, but often themselves men of letters of no mean order. Mehemet II., the conqueror of Constantinople, was a distinguished poet; Selim I., a poet and a litterateur, prided himself, above all his prerogatives, on being the patron of men of letters and of science. This pursuit of science and learning was, moreover, in strict conformity with the spirit and letter of the Koran. “Seek science, even if it be in China”; “The wise and learned are the heirs of the Prophet,” are not isolated texts in a book teeming with passages of a similar kind. The early Caliphs, too, of Bagdad and Cordova, the Abdur Rahmans, Solimans, and Haroun el Reshid, were living proofs and typical examples of enlightened Mahomedan teaching.
But from the middle of the seventeenth century a change came over the spirit of the Sultanate in Turkey. Instead of identifying themselves with the life of their people and priding themselves on being the light that guided them, the Sultans now retired into the harems and gave themselves up to a life of ease and indulgence utterly foreign to the habits and principles of their great predecessors. They surrendered the reins of government into the hands of their Kizlar‐Agassi (chiefs of eunuchs), or Bostandji Bashi, and as one favourite succeeded another, or one palace clique displaced another, so vizier followed vizier in rapid and bewildering succession. All the corrupt and turbulent elements in the State were now unchained, justice was sacrificed to private interests, the muscles of the State were relaxed, and its most vital interests neglected and ignored. To such a pass had things come in this “State of Denmark,” that when at last a reforming Sultan arose in the person of Selim III., he had to pay with his life his reforming ardour, and leave to his successor, Mahmoud II., a task almost beyond human strength to accomplish. The reigns of the next three Sultans after Selim are the history of honest, though intermittent, struggles against the fatal legacies of the past two centuries, and of many abortive attempts to grapple with the evils that a departure from the primitive Constitution of the Empire had entailed on it, aggravated as these evils were by revolutions organised across its borders, and the systematic intrigues and almost uninterrupted hostility of its nearest neighbours.
But in following the evolution of the struggle between autocracy and the Ottoman people, and endeavouring to trace its origin, we have been anticipating the chronological order of events. We must now return to the narrative of the military movement of the eighteenth century, from the time that Peter the Great turned the energies of his diplomacy and his armies in the direction of the Ottoman provinces.