You are doubtless already acquainted, by means of the newspapers, with the details of the execution of the Armenian, Serkiz Papazoghlou, lately put to death at Constantinople for having renounced the Mahomedan faith, which he had embraced some time before. In truth, the letter of the Koran inflicts the punishment of death upon all those who abandon Mahomedanism, but for some time past custom had mitigated the rigour of a law so little in harmony with the precepts of civilization, and for a number of years no execution of this kind had taken place. That of the unfortunate Serkiz must therefore be considered as a sad return to the barbarity of Mahomedan fanaticism. It must be so much the more so because, on the one hand, the energetic intercession of Sir Stratford Canning in behalf of the victim was fruitless; and because, on the other, the Turkish authorities, in leading Serkiz, although he was an Armenian, in the Frank costume and with a cap upon his head to execution, seem to have wished to give to this bloody spectacle the character of a public defiance offered by the old Mahomedan cruelty to the influence of European manners and Christian civilization.
Setting out from this view of the case and looking upon the catastrophe which has just taken place as a fresh symptom of the retrograde, and it may be said anti-European, tendency from which it is important that the Turkish Government should, in its own interest, be diverted, the Representatives of the Five Great Powers at Constantinople thought that a joint representation, at once kind and earnest, which those Powers should make for this purpose to the Sublime Porte, would produce a salutary impression upon it. They, therefore, and at the special request of Sir Stratford Canning, applied to their respective Courts for the instructions necessary to enable them to take the step in question, and the English Ambassador wished moreover to propose to Lord Aberdeen to communicate in the same sense with the Cabinets of Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and St. Petersburgh.
I have not yet received any communication upon this subject from the Principal Secretary of State; but I lost no time in replying by the despatch of which I inclose a copy, to that which the Envoy of the King at Constantinople addressed to His Majesty respecting this affair.
Have the goodness, Sir, to communicate it, as well as this despatch, to Lord Aberdeen, and to express to his Lordship, on my part, the hope that I have in this manner anticipated the overtures which he would perhaps have caused to be made to me with reference to the step proposed by the Five Representatives at Constantinople, but especially suggested by the English Ambassador.
Accept, &c.,
(Signed) BULOW
Inclosure 2 in No. 3.
Baron Bülow to M. Le Coq.
Monsieur, Berlin, ce 20 Septembre, 1843.
Vos rapports au Roi, &c., &c.