From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

But this was not all. With the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II, she worked out a scheme for a restored Greek Empire, with Constantinople as its capital, the throne of which was to be given to her second grandson. And so sure was she of effectuating her plan that “the boy with sagacious prescience had been christened Constantine; he was always dressed in the Greek mode, surrounded by Greek nurses and instructed in the tongue of his future subjects. That no detail might be lacking which foresight could devise, a medal had already been struck, on one side of which was a representation of the young prince’s head and on the other an allegorical device indicating the coming triumph of the Cross over the Crescent.”[45]

At the famous conference on the raft anchored in the river Nieman, when Napoleon and Alexander I discussed plans for the division of the world’s sovereignty, the Russian monarch demanded, as his share of the partition, the City of Constantinople together with the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. For this he was willing to concede to the French Emperor the most valuable regions on the Mediterranean littoral and to aid him with money and men in his projected conquest of India. But this the ambitious dictator of Europe would not grant. Placing his finger on the map where Constantinople was indicated, he exclaimed with passionate emphasis, “Constantinople! Constantinople! Never. That would mean the empire of the world!” At St. Helena he again gave clear expression to his estimate of the value of Constantinople when he declared “Constantinople est placée pour être le centre et le siege de la dominion universelle.”[46]

Almost exactly a thousand years after the death of Rurik, Russia’s victorious army was at San Stephano within sight of the domes and minarets of the City of Constantine. “At last,” shouted the jubilant soldiers, “we have reached our goal and Czargrad”—their name for Constantinople—“is ours!” Only a few hours more, they fondly believed, and they would see the Greek cross supplanting the Crescent at the dome of Santa Sophia and the dreams of ten centuries finally realized.

But it was not to be. Russia had indeed advanced nearer the goal on which her eyes had been fixed for a thousand years, but the coveted prize, though seemingly so near, was yet far from her grasp. The Treaty of San Stephano had, it is true, established a dominant Slav state in the Balkans which it was intended should be but a simple dependency of Russia and a stepping stone to Constantinople, but the treaty was scarcely signed before England and others of the Great Powers insisted on its revision. This was done at the Congress of Berlin. Here Beaconsfield, in order “to check Russian influence in the Balkans” and to safeguard “the vital requirements of Britain’s Eastern policy,” insisted on the restoration of “the position of Turkey as a European state”—a position which had been practically lost by the treaty of San Stephano.[47]

The Turk is still in Constantinople and is there notwithstanding the loud and reiterated declarations of statesmen from Gladstone to Lloyd George that he was to be cast “bag and baggage” out of Europe for evermore, but, when one remembers that, since the days of Solyman the Magnificent, the imminent downfall of Turkey as a European power has been confidently predicted scores of times; that, since the Osmanlis reached the Bosphorus nearly six centuries ago, no fewer than a hundred plans have been made for the partition of their territory[48] and that recently the English premier, Lloyd George, made the evacuation of Constantinople by Turkey an essential condition of peace—at least until he could have time to change his opportunist mind—one asks oneself how much longer the Sultan will successfully pursue his time-honored policy of divide et impera and how much longer diplomats will continue to insist that the maintenance of the City of Constantine as the capital of the Ottoman Empire is a political necessity, and when, if ever, Russia’s persistent ambition of a thousand years will at last be realized.[49] From present indications there is little likelihood that the jealousies of the more powerful nations of Europe respecting the matchless capital of the Golden Horn will abate or that the traditional ability of Turkey’s astute rulers to play off the Great Powers one against the other will be less marked in the future than in the past.

If, however, there is to be a transfer of Constantinople to some other power than that of the Ottoman Empire, poetic justice seems to require that the aspirations of Greece should receive first consideration. Greek in language and nationality from the days of Byzas until it was lost by the fortunes of war to the followers of Mohammed, this city is claimed by the people that counts among its own a Belisarius, a Pulcheria, a Tribonian, an Anthemius, a Chrysostom, a Gregory Nazienzus—men and women who in eminence and achievement were surpassed by none of their contemporaries west of the Adriatic and who were the glories of the greatest home of art and literature and culture when Russia was yet a land of wild nomads and ignorant barbarians. And this same people claims Constantinople as theirs “by origin and by long possession, a possession which has in some sort gone on both under Frankish and under Turkish rule.”[50]

One of the most interesting and picturesque sights in Constantinople, but of a far different character from those of which I have been speaking, is to be seen on the lower bridge over the Golden Horn. Connecting Galata, the part of the city which is chiefly inhabited by non-Mussulmans, with Stamboul, which is occupied almost entirely by Turks and Moslems of various nationalities, this bridge is frequently crowded with people of every color and from every clime. But what a noisy, jostling, struggling, wrangling, cosmopolitan throng one here encounters! Here one sees representatives from all parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—bright-turbaned Turks, supple and chattering Greeks, jauntily attired dragomans, gorgeously uniformed kavasses, heavily burdened hamals, round-browed Montenegrins, white-kirtled Albanians, bronzed and sun-dried Bedouins from Arabia, shuffling and high-voiced eunuchs from Nubia and Abyssinia, and high-capped Tartars from the steppes of Russia and Central Asia—all vociferating in a score of languages and dialects, all utterly regardless of those who are round about them.

And such a variety of garbs and partial garbs! And yet they attract no attention in this motley crowd who here, as elsewhere in the East, are accustomed to seeing people appareled in garments of every conceivable style and color. “A man,” as has been observed by one who knows the Orient well, “may go about in public veiled up to the eyes, or clad, if he please, only in a girdle; he is merely obeying his own law”[51]—following a custom which has prevailed among his ancestors through countless generations.

After a tiresome climb I once found myself on the highest platform of the lofty Galata tower. From this point one has probably the best obtainable view of Constantinople and its environment. The panorama which is disclosed is certainly beautiful, superb; but I am not prepared to agree with the enthusiastic writer who declares that “nothing on this globe can surpass it—that it is incomparable in its panoramic variety and sublimity!”[52] I still contend that the palm for enchanting scenic beauty and for magnificent natural panoramas belongs to Rio de Janeiro.

I readily grant, however, that in wealth of legend, romance, and historic associations of every kind New Rome far surpasses the fascinating capital of Brazil. And I am inclined to think that most of those who descant so enthusiastically on the marvelous beauty of Constantinople unconsciously allow their judgments of the city’s present beauties to be colored by the magic and the glamour of the historic past.