The Turkish Empire, Its Growth and Decay

by Baron G. Shaw-Lefevre Eversley

not only were they reduced to abject poverty by the Dahis (the leaders of the Janissaries), but they were attacked in their religion, their morality, and their honour. No husband was secure as to his wife, no father as to his daughter, no brother as to his sister. The Church, the cloister, the monks, the priests, all were violated. Art thou still our Czar? then come and free us from these evildoers, and if thou wilt not save us, at least tell us that we may decide whether to flee to the mountains and forests, or to seek in the rivers a termination of our miserable existence.[31]

The Sultan was willing to listen to these grave complaints, and to put down the turbulent Dahis and their attendant Janissaries, not so much out of sympathy for the rayas as in order to restore his own authority in the province and as a first step towards the reformation or suppression of the Janissaries elsewhere throughout his Empire. He began by threatening the Dahis. If they did not mend their ways, he would send an army against them. These ruffians, knowing that the Sultan could not venture to employ a Moslem force against them, came to the conclusion that he meant to arm the rayas of the province. They determined to anticipate this by a general massacre. If no resistance had been offered to this, the whole Christian population of Serbia would have been exterminated. The rayas, however, were no longer the submissive and patient people they had been reduced to by servitude for two hundred and fifty years under the Turks, during which no one of them had been allowed to carry about him a weapon of defence. As has been already stated, they had been invited to rebel by the Austrians in their last war with the Turks, had been armed by them, and had given valuable assistance. Great numbers of them had been trained as soldiers, and retained their arms when the Austrians retired from the country, after the peace of Sistova, which provided no adequate security for these unfortunate people.

They now, in 1807, rose in arms against their oppressors, who were bent on exterminating them. They elected as their leader George Petrowitsch (Kara George, as he is known in history), a peasant like themselves, a most brave man, who had served in the Austrian army, and who soon showed great qualities as a general. Under his leadership the rayas succeeded in driving the Dahis and Janissaries out of the country districts.

The Sultan at the commencement of this servile war lent his assistance to the rayas. The Pasha of Bosnia was instructed to support them with an armed force. The local Spahis also, who were still in the country and had not been driven away by the Dahis, lent assistance. On the other hand, the Dahis received assistance from the fanatical part of the Moslems in the towns. They had also the sympathy and aid of Passhwan Oghlou, the mutinous Pasha of Widdin. It was, however, almost wholly due to the efforts of the Serbian rayas that the Dahis were completely defeated. Most of them were slaughtered, and the world was well rid of them. When this was achieved, the whole of Serbia was practically in the hands of the Christian rayas, with the exception of Belgrade and a few fortresses, which were garrisoned by the Sultan’s troops.

At this stage the Sultan, when all that he really aimed at was achieved—namely the suppression of the local Janissaries—summoned the insurgent rayas to lay down their arms and to resume their position as subjects of the Porte and as rayas under the yoke of the local Spahis as of yore. The war, however, had evoked a national spirit among the Christian population, which would not be content with the old condition of servitude. They sent a petition to the Russian Government claiming assistance on the ground that they were members of the Greek Church. The Czar, in reply, advised them to present their claims at Constantinople, and promised to give his support to them at the Porte. They then sent a deputation to the Sultan, and boldly claimed that Belgrade and the other fortresses should be given up to them, and asked that arrears of taxes and tribute should be remitted. The first of these was the most important, for it virtually meant a claim for autonomy under the suzerainty only of the Sultan.

These demands caused the greatest indignation among the Moslems of the capital, and the Sultan forthwith rejected them. He ordered the members of the deputation to be imprisoned. He directed the Pasha of Nisch to invade Serbia and reduce the contumacious rayas to their former condition. He threatened them with death or slavery. Kara George met this force on the frontier of Serbia and defeated it. He also defeated two other armies which the Sultan sent against him, and he was able, unaided by any external force, to capture Belgrade and the other fortresses and expel the Turkish garrisons. Thus it happened that the native Christians of Serbia, by their own heroic efforts, without any foreign assistance, achieved a virtual independence of Ottoman rule, an event of supreme importance in its effect on other Christian communities under servitude to the Turks.

Meanwhile important events were developing at Constantinople. It was the scene of a violent diplomatic struggle between Russia and England on the one hand, and France on the other, for the support of the Porte in the war then raging in Europe. The Emperor Napoleon sent as ambassador there General Sebastiani, formerly a priest, now a soldier and able diplomat. His demands were supported by the great victory of the French over the Austrians at Ulm. The recent acquisition by France of Dalmatia and a part of Croatia brought that Power into close relation with Turkey. Sebastiani pressed for the support of Turkey with great insistence.

On the other hand, Russia was equally cogent in its demands, and even more threatening. It insisted on an alliance, offensive and defensive. It demanded that the Sultan should recognize the Czar as the protector of all the Christians in Turkey professing the Greek religion, and that the Russian Ambassador should have the right of intervention on their behalf. The Sultan, conscious of the inferiority of his military force, could only temporize.

Moslem pride and fanaticism was greatly excited by the demands of Russia. Sebastiani, working on this, persuaded the Sultan, by way of retort to Russia, to depose the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia, on the ground that they were suspected of being pensioners of Russia. The Czar treated this as a gross breach of the engagement entered into by the Porte, in 1802, under which the Hospodars of the two principalities were only to be removed from their posts with the consent of Russia. He thereupon ordered an army of thirty-five thousand men, under General Michelsen, to invade Moldavia. The army entered Jassy and, a little later, Bucharest before the Porte was able to make any resistance.

The British Government at the same time gave full support to Russia. Its Ambassador, Mr. Arbuthnot, insisted on the Porte joining the alliance of England and Russia against France. The Sultan refused to do so. Mr. Arbuthnot thereupon sailed away in a frigate and joined the British fleet lying off the island of Tenedos, under the command of Admiral Duckworth, which consisted of seven battleships and two frigates. This fleet, favoured by a fair wind, then forced the Dardanelles against the Turkish batteries on February 19, 1807, with little damage, and made its appearance in the Sea of Marmora. It there destroyed a Turkish battleship and four corvettes.