SOME OF THE "IRREGULARS."
The result acted as medicine on the "Sick Man." Propped up on each side by the western powers, he raised his head and endeavored to feel himself again. He has had several relapses since that period, one notably in 1877-8, when the Russian troops encamped within view of Constantinople. Great Britain again came to his rescue, and prevented some of the amputations planned by the Muscovite—amputations which would surely have led to his demise from sheer loss of blood. For this good service England did a little amputating on her own account, and added to her dominions the fertile island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean. The "Sick Man" thus obtained another lease of life, but recent events would indicate that his end is at last approaching—as one writer has put it, from sheer inner putrition; and this time there is no sympathizing friend to stretch a helping hand, none to ward off his well-merited fate!
Even those Englishmen who have been most bitterly opposed in the past to a conciliatory policy toward Russia are beginning to recognize the mistake of upholding Turkish rule in Europe. As one English religious journal recently remarked, while advocating the substitution of the Russian for the Turkish flag in Constantinople, "The Czar's rule is bad enough, but there is in the hearts of the Russian people the seed of better things." And it really seems an anomaly that England, of all countries—England, the land of John Howard, of William Wilberforce, of David Livingstone—should have been instrumental in maintaining that pestiferous charnel-house on the banks of the Bosporus! Better a thousand times that the Turkish government should be abolished!
YILDIZ KIOSK, THE SULTAN'S PALACE.
The recent massacres in Armenia and Constantinople are but repetitions of the events of former years. When the Russian troops crossed the Danube in 1853 they found many Bulgarian villages pillaged and their inhabitants massacred by the irregular Turkish troops. The horrible stories that are being told to us daily from Armenia are the same as those told in 1853 from Bulgaria. Towns were burned to ashes, and the inhabitants were burned with them or were killed in attempting to escape from them. Nevertheless, the innate barbarity of the Turk did not prevent the western powers from coming to his help in those days!
In 1861 there were other terrible massacres in the Ottoman Empire, the Christian Maronites of the Lebanon being the victims this time. In the course of a few days five thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered in and around Damascus. This pill was even too much for the Sultan's complacent western friends, and that potentate was obliged to submit to the landing of a French army of intervention in Syria. The many thousands of murders in the Lebanon district were avenged by the execution of about fifty Mussulman ringleaders, after which the French withdrew, with colors flying, to the time of "Partant pour la Syrie."
TURKISH ZOUAVES.