Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) / The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive Christianity

5.

4. In these failures, however, should they turn out to be such, the vis inertiæ of habit is not the whole account of the matter; an antagonistic principle is at work, characteristic of the barbarian, and intimately present to the mind of a Turk—national pride. All nations, indeed, are proud of themselves; but, as being the first and the best, not as being the solitary existing perfection, among the inhabitants of the earth. Civilized nations allow that foreigners have their specific excellences, and such excellences as are a lesson to themselves. They may think too well of their own proficiency, and may lose by such blindness; but they admit enough about others to allow of their own emulation and advance; whereas the barbarian, in his own estimate, is perfect already; and what is perfect cannot be improved. Hence he cherishes in his heart a self-esteem of a very peculiar kind, and a special contempt of others. He views foreigners, either as simply unworthy of his attention, or as objects of his legitimate dominion. Thus, too, he justifies his sloth, and places his ignorance of all things human and divine on a sort of intellectual basis.

Robertson, in his history of America, enlarges on this peculiarity of the savage. "The Tartar," he says, "accustomed to roam over extensive plains, and to subsist on the produce of his herds, imprecates upon his enemy, as the greatest of all curses, that he may be condemned to reside in one place, and to be nourished with the top of a weed. The rude Americans ... far from complaining of their own situation, or viewing that of men in a more improved state with admiration or envy, regard themselves as the standard of excellence, as beings the best entitled, as well as the most perfectly qualified, to enjoy real happiness.... Void of foresight, as well as free from care themselves, and delighted with that state of indolent security, they wonder at the anxious precautions, the unceasing industry, and complicated arrangements of Europeans, in guarding against distant evils, or providing for future wants; and they often exclaim against their preposterous folly, in thus multiplying the troubles, and increasing the labour of life.... The appellation which the Iroquois give to themselves is, 'The chief of men.' Caraibe, the original name of the fierce inhabitants of the Windward Islands, signifies 'The warlike people.' The Cherokees, from an idea of their own superiority, call the Europeans 'Nothings,' or 'The accursed race,' and assume to themselves the name of 'The beloved people....' They called them the froth of the sea, men without father or mother. They suppose that either they have no country of their own, and, therefore, invaded that which belonged to others; or that, being destitute of the necessaries of life at home, they were obliged to roam over the ocean, in order to rob such as were more amply provided."[83]

It is easy to see that an intense self-adoration, such as is here suggested, is, in the case of a martial people, to a certain point a principle of strength; it gives a sort of intellectual force to the impetuosity and obstinacy of their attacks; while, on the other hand, it is in the long run a principle of debility, as blinding them to the most evident and imminent dangers, and, after defeat, burdening and precipitating their despair.

Now, is it possible to trace this attribute of barbarism among the Turks? If so, what does it do for them, and whence is it supplied? You will recollect, I have not been unwilling in a former Lecture to acknowledge what is salutary in Mahometanism; certainly it embodies in it some ancient and momentous truths, and is undeniably beneficial so far as their proper influence extends. But, after all, looked at as a religion, it is as debasing to the populations which receive it as it is false; and, as it arose among barbarians, it is not wonderful that it subserves the reign of barbarism. This it certainly does in the case of the Turks; already three great departments of intellectual activity in civilized countries have incidentally come before us, which are forbidden ground to its professors. The first is legislation; for the criminal and civil code of the Mahometan is unalterably fixed in the Koran. The second is the modern system of money transactions and finance; for "in obedience to their religion," says an author I have been lately quoting,[84] "which, like the Jewish law, forbids taking interest for money, the Turks abstain from carrying on many lucrative trades connected with the lending of money. Hence other nations, generally the Armenians, act as their bankers." The third is the department of the Fine Arts for, it being unlawful to represent the human form, nay, any natural substance whatever, as fruit or flowers, sculpture loses its solitary object, painting is almost extinguished, while architecture has been obliged to undergo a sort of revolution in its decorative portions to accommodate it to the restriction. These, however, are matters of detail, though of very high importance; what I wish rather to point out is the general tendency of Mahometanism, as such, to foster those very faults in the barbarian which keep him from ameliorating his condition. Here something might be said on what seems to be the acknowledged effect of its doctrine of fatalism, viz., in encouraging a barbarian recklessness of mind both in special seasons of prosperity and adversity, and in the ordinary business of life; but this is a point which it is difficult to speak of without a more intimate knowledge of its circumstances than can be gained at a distance; I prefer to show how the Religion is calculated to act upon that extravagant self-conceit, which Robertson tells us is so congenial to uncivilized man. While, on the one hand, it closes the possible openings and occasions of internal energy and self-education, it has no tendency to compensate for this mischief, on the other, by inculcating any docile attention to the instruction of foreigners.

6.

To learn from others, you must entertain a respect for them; no one listens to those whom he contemns. Christian nations make progress in secular matters, because they are aware they have many things to learn, and do not mind from whom they learn them, so that he be able to teach. It is true that Christianity, as well as Mahometanism, which imitated it, has its visible polity, and its universal rule, and its especial prerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. But, with a divine wisdom, and contrary to its human copyist, it has carefully guarded (if I may use the expression) against extending its revelations to any point which would blunt the keenness of human research or the activity of human toil. It has taken those matters for its field in which the human mind, left to itself, could not profitably exercise itself, or progress, if it would; it has confined its revelations to the province of theology, only indirectly touching on other departments of knowledge, so far as theological truth accidentally affects them; and it has shown an equally remarkable care in preventing the introduction of the spirit of caste or race into its constitution or administration. Pure nationalism it abhors; its authoritative documents pointedly ignore the distinction of Jew and Gentile, and warn us that the first often becomes the last; while its subsequent history has illustrated this great principle, by its awful, and absolute, and inscrutable, and irreversible passage from country to country, as its territory and its home. Such, then, it has been in the divine counsels, and such, too, as realized in fact; but man has ways of his own, and, even before its introduction into the world, the inspired announcements, which preceded it, were distorted by the people to whom they were given, to minister to views of a very different kind. The secularized Jews, relying on the supernatural favours locally and temporally bestowed on themselves, fell into the error of supposing that a conquest of the earth was reserved for some mighty warrior of their own race, and that, in compensation of the reverses which befell them, they were to become an imperial nation.

What a contrast is presented to us by these different ideas of a universal empire! The distinctions of race are indelible; a Jew cannot become a Greek, or a Greek a Jew; birth is an event of past time; according to the Judaizers, their nation, as a nation, was ever to be dominant; and all other nations, as such, were inferior and subject. What was the necessary consequence? There is nothing men more pride themselves on than birth, for this very reason, that it is irrevocable; it can neither be given to those who have it not, nor taken away from those who have. The Almighty can do anything which admits of doing; He can compensate every evil; but a Greek poet says that there is one thing impossible to Him—to undo what is done. Without throwing the thought into a shape which borders on the profane, we may see in it the reason why the idea of national power was so dear and so dangerous to the Jew. It was his consciousness of inalienable superiority that led him to regard Roman and Greek, Syrian and Egyptian, with ineffable arrogance and scorn. Christians, too, are accustomed to think of those who are not Christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which possesses them, that they have what others have not, is obviously not open to the temptation which nationalism presents. According to their own faith, there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind; there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by their religion to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he come, would stand on their very level, as if he had ever been there. Such accessions to their body they continually receive, and they are bound under obligation of duty to promote them. They never can pronounce of any one, now external to them, that he will not some day be among them; they never can pronounce of themselves that, though they are now within, they may not some day be found outside, the divine polity. Such are the sentiments inculcated by Christianity, even in the contemplation of the very superiority which it imparts; even there it is a principle, not of repulsion between man and man, but of good fellowship; but as to subjects of secular knowledge, since here it does not arrogate any superiority at all, it has in fact no tendency whatever to centre its disciple's contemplation on himself, or to alienate him from his kind. He readily acknowledges and defers to the superiority in art or science of those, if so be, who are unhappily enemies to Christianity. He admits the principle of progress on all matters of knowledge and conduct on which the Creator has not decided the truth already by revealing it; and he is at all times ready to learn, in those merely secular matters, from those who can teach him best. Thus it is that Christianity, even negatively, and without contemplating its positive influences, is the religion of civilization.

7.

But I have here been directing your attention to Christianity with no other view than to illustrate, by the contrast, the condition of the Mahometan Turks. Their religion is not far from embodying the very dream of the Judaizing zealots of the Apostolic age. On the one hand, there is in it the profession of a universal empire, and an empire by conquest; nay, military success seems to be considered the special note of its divine origin. On the other hand, I believe it is a received notion with them that their religion is not even intended for the north of the earth, for some reasons connected with its ceremonial; nor is there in it any public recognition, as in intercessory prayer, of the duty of converting infidels. Certainly, the idea of Mahometan missions and missionaries, unless an army in the field may be considered to be such, is never suggested to us by Eastern historian or traveller, as entering into their religious system. Though the Caliphate, then, may be transferred from Saracen to Turk, Mahometanism is essentially a consecration of the principle of nationalism; and thereby is as congenial to the barbarian as Christianity is congenial to man civilized. The less a man knows, the more conceited he is of his proficiency; and, the more barbarous is a nation, the more imposing and peremptory are its claims. Such was the spirit of the religion of the Tartars, whatever was the nature of its tenets in detail. It deified the Tartar race; Zingis Khan was "the son of God, mild and venerable;" and "God was great and exalted over all, and immortal, but Zingis Khan was sole lord upon the earth."[85] Such, too, is the strength of the Greek schism, which there only flourishes where it can fasten on barbarism, and extol the prerogatives of an elect nation. The Czar is the divinely-appointed source of religious power; his country is "Holy Russia;" and the high office committed to him and to it is to extend what it considers the orthodox faith. The Osmanlis are not behind Tartar or Russ in pretending to a divine mission; the Sultan, in his treaties with Christian Powers, calls himself "Refuge of Sovereigns, Distributor of Crowns to the Kings of the earth, Master of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and shadow of God upon earth."

We might smile at such titles, were they not claimed in good earnest, and professed in order to be used. It is said to be the popular belief among the Turks, that the monarchs of Europe are, as this imperial style declares, the feudatories of the Sultan. We should smile, too, at the very opposite titles which they apply to Europeans, did they not here, too, mean what they say, and strengthen and propagate their own scorn and hatred of us by using them. "The Mussulmans, courteous and humane in their intercourse with each other," says Thornton, "sternly refuse to unbelievers the salutation of peace." Not that they necessarily insult the Christian, he adds, by this refusal; nay, he even insists that polished Turks are able to practise condescension; and then, as an illustration of their courtesy, he tells us that "Mr. Eton, pleasantly and accurately enough, compared the general behaviour of a Turk to a Christian with that of a German baron to his vassal." However, he allows that at least "the common people, more bigoted to their dogmas, express more bluntly their sense of superiority over the Christians." "Their usual salutation addressed to Christians," says Volney, "is 'good morning;' but it is well if it be not accompanied with a Djaour, Kafer, or Kelb, that is, impious, infidel, dog, expressions to which Christians are familiarized." Sir C. Fellows is an earnest witness for their amiableness; but he does not conceal that the children "hoot after a European, and call him Frank dog, and even strike him;" and on one occasion a woman caught up a child and ran off from him, crying out against the Ghiaour; which gives him an opportunity of telling us that the word "Ghiaour" means a man without a soul, without a God. A writer in a popular Review, who seems to have been in the East, tells us that "their hatred and contempt of the Ghiaour and Frangi is as burning as ever; perhaps even more so, because they are forced to implore his aid. The Eastern seeks Christian aid in the same spirit and with the same disgust as he would eat swine's flesh, were it the only means of securing him from starvation."[86] Such conduct is indeed only consistent with their faith, and the untenableness of that faith is not my present question; here I do but ask, are these barbarians likely to think themselves inferior in any respect to men without souls? are they likely to receive civilization from the nations of the West, whom, according to the well-known story, they definitively divide into the hog and the dog?

I have not time for more than an allusion to what is the complement of this arrogance, and is a most pregnant subject of thought, whenever the fortunes of the Ottomans are contemplated; I mean the despair which takes its place in their minds, consistently with the barbarian temperament, upon the occurrence of any considerable reverses. A passage from Mr. Thornton just now quoted refers to this characteristic. The overthrow at Lepanto, though they rallied from their consternation for a while, was a far more serious and permanent misfortune in its moral than in its material consequences. And, on any such national calamity, the fatalism of their creed, to which I have already referred, consecrates and fortifies their despair.

I have been proving a point, which most persons would grant me, in thus insisting on the essential barbarism of the Turks; but I have thought it worth while to insist on it under the feeling, that to prove it is at the same time to describe it, and many persons will vaguely grant that they are barbarous without having any clear idea what barbarism means. With this view I draw out my formal conclusion:—If civilization be the ascendancy of mind over passion and imagination; if it manifests itself in consistency of habit and action, and is characterised by a continual progress or development of the principles on which it rests; and if, on the other hand, the Turks alternate between sloth and energy, self-confidence and despair,—if they have two contrary characters within them, and pass from one to the other rapidly, and when they are the one, are as if they could not be the other;—if they think themselves, notwithstanding, to be the first nation upon earth, while at the end of many centuries they are just what they were at the beginning;—if they are so ignorant as not to know their ignorance, and so far from making progress that they have not even started, and so far from seeking instruction that they think no one fit to teach them;—there is surely not much hazard in concluding, that, apart from the consideration of any supernatural intervention, barbarians they have lived, and barbarians they will die.

LECTURE IX.

As to myself, having laid down my premisses, as drawn from historical considerations, I must needs go on, whether I will or no, to the conjectures to which they lead; and that shall be my business in this concluding discussion. My line of argument has been as follows:—First, I stated some peculiarities of civilized and of barbarian communities; I said that it is a general truth that civilized states are destroyed from within, and barbarian states from without; that the very causes, which lead to the greatness of civilized communities, at length by continuing become their ruin, whereas the causes of barbarian greatness uphold that greatness, as long as they continue, and by ceasing to act, not by continuing, lead the way to its overthrow. Thus the intellect of Athens first was its making and then its unmaking; while the warlike prowess of the Spartans maintained their pre-eminence, till it succumbed to the antagonist prowess of Thebes.

1.

I laid down this principle as a general law of human society, open to exceptions and requiring modifications in particular cases, but true on the whole. Next, I went on to show that the Ottoman power was of a barbarian character. The conclusion is obvious; viz., that it has risen, and will fall, not by anything within it, but by agents external to itself; and this conclusion, I certainly think, is actually confirmed by Turkish history, as far as it has hitherto gone. The Ottoman state seems, in matter of fact, to be most singularly constructed, so as to have nothing inside of it, and to be moved solely or mainly by influences from without. What a contrast, for instance, to the German race! In the earliest history of that people, we discern an element of civilization, a vigorous action of the intellect residing in the body, independent of individuals, and giving birth to great men, rather than created by them. Again, in the first three centuries of the Church, we find martyrs indeed in plenty, as the Turks might have soldiers; but (to view the matter humanly) perhaps there was not one great mind, after the Apostles, to teach and to mould her children. The highest intellects, Origen, Tertullian, and Eusebius, were representatives of a philosophy not hers; her greatest bishops, such as St. Gregory, St. Dionysius, and St Cyprian, so little exercised a doctor's office, as to incur, however undeservedly, the imputation of doctrinal inaccuracy. Vigilant as was the Holy See then, as in every age, yet there is no Pope, I may say, during that period, who has impressed his character upon his generation; yet how well instructed, how precisely informed, how self-possessed an oracle of truth, nevertheless, do we find the Church to be, when the great internal troubles of the fourth century required it! how unambiguous, how bold is the Christianity of the great Pontiffs, St. Julius, St. Damasus, St. Siricius, and St. Innocent; of the great Doctors, St. Athanasius; St. Basil, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine! By what channels, then, had the divine philosophy descended down from the Great Teacher through three centuries of persecution? First through the See and Church of Peter, into which error never intruded (though Popes might be little more than victims, to be hunted out and killed, as soon as made), and to which the faithful from all quarters of the world might have recourse when difficulties arose, or when false teachers anywhere exalted themselves. But intercommunion was difficult, and comparatively rare in days like those, and of nothing is there less pretence of proof than that the Holy See, while persecution raged, imposed a faith upon the ecumenical body. Rather, in that earliest age, it was simply the living spirit of the myriads of the faithful, none of them known to fame, who received from the disciples of our Lord, and husbanded so well, and circulated so widely, and transmitted so faithfully, generation after generation, the once delivered apostolic faith; who held it with such sharpness of outline and explicitness of detail, as enabled even the unlearned instinctively to discriminate between truth and error, spontaneously to reject the very shadow of heresy, and to be proof against the fascination of the most brilliant intellects, when they would lead them out of the narrow way. Here, then, is a luminous instance of what I mean by an energetic action from within.

Take again the history of the Saracenic schools and parties, on which I have already touched. Mr. Southgate considers the absence of religious controversy among the Turks, contrasted with its frequency of old among the Saracens, as a proof of the decay of the spirit of Islam. I should rather refer the present apathy to the national temperament of the Turks, and set it down, with other instances I shall mention presently, as a result of their barbarism. Saracenic Mahometanism, on the contrary, gives me an apposite illustration of what I mean by an "interior" people, if I may borrow a devotional word to express a philosophical idea. A barbarous nation has no "interior," but the Saracens show us what a national "interior" is. "In former ages," says the author to whom I have referred, Mr. Southgate, "the bosom of Islamism was riven with numerous feuds and schisms, some of which have originated from religious controversy, and others from political ambition. During the first centuries of its existence, and while Mussulman learning flourished under the patronage of the Caliphs, religious questions were discussed by the learned with all the proverbial virulence of theological hatred. The chief of these questions respected the origin of the Koran, the nature of God, predestination and free will, and the grounds of human salvation. The question, whether the Koran was created or eternal, rent for a time the whole body of Islamism into twain, and gave rise to the most violent persecutions.... Besides these religious contentions, which divided the Mussulmans into parties, but seldom gave birth to sects, there have sprung up, at different periods, avowed heresies, which flourished for a time, and for the most part died with their authors. Others, stimulated by ambition only, have reared the standard of revolt, and under cover of some new religious dogma, propounded only to shield a selfish end, have sought to raise themselves to power. Most of these, whether theological disputes, heresies, or civil rebellions, cloaked under the name of religion, arose previously to the sixteenth century."[87]

2.

Such is that internal peculiarity, the presence of which constitutes a civilized, the absence a barbarous people; which makes a people great, and small again; and which, just consistently with the notion of their being barbarians, I cannot discern, for strength or for weakness, in the Turks. On the contrary, almost all the elements of their success, and instruments of their downfall, are external to themselves. For instance, their religion, one of their principal bonds, owes nothing to them; it is, not only in substance, but in concrete shape, just what it was when it came to them. I cannot find that they have commented upon it; I cannot find that they are the channels of any of those famous traditions by which the Koran is interpreted, and which they themselves accept; or that they have exercised their minds upon it at all, except so far as they have been obliged, in a certain degree, to do so in the administration of the law. It is true also that they have been obliged to choose to be Sunnites and not Shiahs; but, considering the latter sect arose in Persia, since the date of the Turkish occupation of Constantinople, it was really no choice at all. They have but remained as they were. Besides, the Shiahs maintain the hereditary transmission of the Caliphate, which would exclude the line of Othman from the succession—good reason then the Turks should be Sunnites; and the dates of the two events so nearly coincide, that one could even fancy that the Shiahs actually arose in consequence of the Sultan Selim's carrying off the last of the Abassides from Egypt, and gaining the transference of the Caliphate from his captive. Besides, if it is worth while pursuing the point, did they not remain Sunnites, they would have to abandon the traditional or oral law, and must cease to use the labours of its four great doctors, which would be to bring upon themselves an incalculable extent of intellectual toil; for without recognized comments on the Koran, neither the religion nor the civil state could be made to work.

The divine right of the line of Othman is another of their special political bonds, and this too is shown by the following extract from a well-known historian,[88] if it needs showing, to be simply external to themselves: "The origin of the Sultans," he says, "is obscure; but this sacred and indefeasible right" to the throne, "which no time can erase, and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation." Here we have on the one hand the imperial succession described as an element of the political life of the Osmanlis—on the other as an appointment over which they have no power; and obviously it is from its very nature independent of them. It is a form of life external to the community it vivifies.

Probably it was the wonderful continuity of so many great Sultans in their early ages, which wrought in their minds the idea of a divine mission as the attribute of the dynasty; and its acquisition of the Caliphate would fix it indelibly within them. And here again, we have another special instrument of their imperial greatness, but still an external one. I have already had occasion to observe, that barbarians make conquests by means of great men, in whom they, as it were, live; ten successive monarchs, of extraordinary vigour and talent, carried on the Ottomans to empire. Will any one show that those monarchs can be fairly called specimens of the nation, any more than Zingis was the specimen of the Tartars? Have they not rather acted as the Deus è machinâ, carrying on the drama, which has languished or stopped, since the time when they ceased to animate it? Contrast the Ottoman history in this respect with the rise of the Anglo-Indian Empire, or with the military successes of Great Britain under the Regency; or again with the literary eminence of England under Charles the Second or even Anne, which owed little to those monarchs. Kings indeed at various periods have been most effective patrons of art and science; but the question is, not whether English or French literature has ever been indebted to royal encouragement, but whether the Ottomans can do anything at all, as a nation, without it.

Indeed, I should like it investigated what internal history the Ottomans have at all; what inward development of any kind they have made since they crossed Mount Olympus and planted themselves in Broussa; how they have changed shape and feature, even in lesser matters, since they were a state, or how they are a year older than when they first came into being. We see among them no representative of Confucius, Chi-hoagti, and the sect of Ta-osse; no magi; no Pisistratus and Harmodius; no Socrates and Alcibiades; no patricians and plebeians; no Cæsar; no invasion or adoption of foreign mysteries; no mythical impersonation of an Ali; no Suffeeism; no Guelphs and Gibellines; nothing really on the type of Catholic religious orders; no Luther; nothing, in short, which, for good or evil, marks the presence of a life internal to the political community itself. Some authors indeed maintain they have a literature; but I cannot ascertain what the assertion is worth. Rather the tenor of their annals runs thus:—Two Pachas make war against each other, and a kat-sherif comes from Constantinople for the head of the one or the other; or a Pacha exceeds in pillaging his province, or acts rebelliously, and is preferred to a higher government and suddenly strangled on his way to it; or he successfully maintains himself, and gains an hereditary settlement, still subject, however, to the feudal tenure, which is the principle of the political structure, continuing to send his contingent of troops, when the Sultan goes to war, and remitting the ordinary taxes through his agent at Court. Such is the staple of Turkish history, whether amid the hordes of Turkistan, or the feudatory Turcomans of Anatolia, or the imperial Osmanlis.

3.

The remark I am making applies to them, not only as a nation, but as a body politic. When they descended on horseback upon the rich territories which they occupy, they had need to become agriculturists, and miners, and civil engineers, and traders; all which they were not; yet I do not find that they have attempted any of these functions themselves. Public works, bridges, and roads, draining, levelling, building, they seem almost entirely to have neglected; where, however, to do something was imperative, instead of applying themselves to their new position, and manifesting native talent for each emergency, they usually have had recourse to foreign assistance to execute what was uncongenial or dishonourable to themselves. The Franks were their merchants, the Armenians their bankers, the subject races their field labourers, and the Greeks their sailors. "Almost the whole business of the ship," says Thornton, "is performed by the slaves, or by the Greeks who are retained upon wages."

The most remarkable instance of this reluctance to develop from within—remarkable, both for the originality, boldness, success, and permanence of the policy adopted, and for its appositeness to my purpose—is the institution of the Janizaries, detestable as it was in a moral point of view. I enlarge upon it here because it is at the same time a palmary instance of the practical ability and wisdom of their great Sultans, exerted in compensation of the resourceless impotence of the barbarians whom they governed. The Turks were by nature nothing better than horsemen; infantry they could not be; an infantry their Sultans hardly attempted to form out of them; but since infantry was indispensable in European warfare, they availed themselves of passages in their own earlier history, and provided themselves with a perpetual supply of foot soldiers from without. Of this procedure they were not, strictly speaking, the originators; they took the idea of it from the Saracens. You may recollect that, when their ancestors were defeated by the latter people in Sogdiana, instead of returning to their deserts, they suffered themselves to be diffused and widely located through the great empire of the Caliphs. Whether as slaves, or as captives, or as mercenaries, they were taken into favour by the dominant nation, and employed as soldiers or civilians. They were chosen as boys or youths for their handsome appearance, turned into Mahometans, and educated for the army or other purposes. And thus the strength of the empire which they served was always kept fresh and vigorous, by the continual infusion into it of new blood to perform its functions; a skilful policy, if the servants could be hindered from becoming masters.

Masters in time they did become, and then they adopted a similar system themselves; we find traces of it even in the history of the Gaznevide dynasty. In the reign of the son of the great Mahmood, we read of an insurrection of the slaves; who, conspiring with one of his nobles, seized his best horses, and rode off to his enemies. "By slaves," says Dow, in translating this history, "are meant the captives and young children, bought by kings, and educated for the offices of state. They were often adopted by the Emperors, and very frequently succeeded to the Empire. A whole dynasty of these possessed afterwards the throne in Hindostan."

The same system appears in Egypt, about or soon after the time of the celebrated Saladin. Zingis, in his dreadful expedition from Khorasan to Syria and Russia, had collected an innumerable multitude of youthful captives, who glutted, as we may say, the markets of Asia. This gave the conquerors of Egypt an opportunity of forming a mercenary or foreign force for their defence, on a more definite idea than seems hitherto to have been acted upon. Saladin was a Curd, and, as such, a neighbour of the Caucasus; hence the Caucasian tribes became for many centuries the store-houses of Egyptian mercenaries. A detestable slave trade has existed with this object, especially among the Circassians, since the time of the Moguls; and of these for the most part this Egyptian force, Mamlouks, as they are called, has consisted. After a time, these Mamlouks took matters into their own hands, and became a self-elective body, or sort of large corporation. They were masters of the country, and of its nominal ruler, and they recruited their ranks continually, and perpetuated their power, by means of the natives of the Caucasus, slaves like themselves, and of their own race.

"During the 500 or 600 years," says Volney, "that there have been Mamlouks in Egypt, not one of them has left subsisting issue; there does not exist one single family of them in the second generation; all their children perish in the first and second descent. The means therefore by which they are perpetuated and multiplied were of necessity the same by which they were first established." These troops have been massacred and got rid of in the memory of the last generation; towards the end of last century they formed a body of above 8,500 men. The writer I have just been quoting adds the following remarks:—"Born for the most part in the rites of the Greek Church, and circumcised the moment they are bought, they are considered by the Turks themselves as renegades, void of faith and of religion. Strangers to each other, they are not bound by those natural ties which unite the rest of mankind. Without parents, without children, the past has nothing to do for them, and they do nothing for the future. Ignorant and superstitious from education, they become ferocious from the murders they commit, and corrupted by the most horrible debauchery." On the other hand, they had every sort of incentive and teaching to prompt them to rapacity and lawlessness. "The young peasant, sold in Mingrelia or Georgia, no sooner arrives in Egypt, than his ideas undergo a total alteration. A new and extraordinary scene opens before him, where everything conduces to awaken his audacity and ambition. Though now a slave, he seems destined to become a master, and already assumes the spirit of his future condition. No sooner is a slave enfranchised, than he aspires to the principal employments; and who is to oppose his pretensions? and he will be no less able than his betters in the art of governing, which consists only in taking money, and giving blows with the sabre."

In describing the Mamlouks I have been in a great measure describing the Janizaries, and have little to add to the picture. When Amurath, one of the ten Sultans, had made himself master of the territory round Constantinople, as far as the Balkan, he passed northwards, and subdued the warlike tribes which possessed Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and the neighbouring provinces. These countries had neither the precious metals in their mountains, nor marts of commerce; but their inhabitants were a brave and hardy race, who had been for ages the terror of Constantinople. It was suggested to the Sultan, that, according to the Mahometan law, he was entitled to a fifth part of the captives, and he made this privilege the commencement of a new institution. Twelve thousand of the strongest and handsomest youths were selected as his share; he formed them into a military force; he made them abjure Christianity, he consecrated them with a religious rite, and named them Janizaries. The discipline to which they were submitted was peculiar, and in some respects severe. They were in the first instance made over to the peasantry to assist them in the labours of the field, and thus were prepared by penury and hard fare for the privations of a military life. After this introduction, they were drafted into the companies of the Janizaries, but only in order to commence a second noviciate. Sometimes they were employed in the menial duties of the palace, sometimes in the public works, sometimes in the dockyards, and sometimes in the imperial gardens. Meanwhile they were taught their new religion, and were submitted to the drill. When at length they went on service, the road to promotion was opened upon them; nor were military honours the only recompense to which they might aspire. There are examples in history, of men from the ranks attaining the highest dignities in the state, and at least of one of them marrying the sister of the Sultan.

This corps has constituted the main portion of the infantry of the Ottoman armies for a period of nearly five hundred years; till, in our own day, on account of its repeated turbulence, it was annihilated, as the Mamlouks before it, by means of a barbarous massacre. Its end was as strange as its constitution; but here it comes under our notice as a singular exemplification of the unproductiveness, as I may call it, of the Turkish intellect. It was nothing else but an external institution devised to supply a need which a civilized state would have supplied from its own resources; and it fell perhaps without any essential prejudice to the integrity of the power which it had served. That power is just what it was before the Janizaries were formed. They may still fall back upon the powerful cavalry, which carried them all the way from Turkistan; or they may proceed to employ a mercenary force; anyhow their primitive social type remains inviolate.

Such is the strange phenomenon, or rather portent, presented to us by the barbarian power which has been for centuries seated in the very heart of the old world; which has in its brute clutch the most famous countries of classical and religious antiquity, and many of the most fruitful and beautiful regions of the earth; which stretches along the course of the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile; which embraces the Pindus, the Taurus, the Caucasus, Mount Sinai, the Libyan mountains, and the Atlas, as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and which, having no history itself, is heir to the historical names of Constantinople and Nicæa, Nicomedia and Cæsarea, Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineveh and Babylon, Mecca and Bagdad, Antioch and Alexandria, ignorantly holding in possession one-half of the history of the whole world. There it lies and will not die, and has not in itself the elements of death, for it has the life of a stone, and, unless pounded and pulverized, is indestructible. Such is it in the simplicity of its national existence, while that mode of existence remains, while it remains faithful to its religion and its imperial line. Should its fidelity to either fail, it would not merely degenerate or decay; it would simply cease to be.

4.

But we have dwelt long enough on the internal peculiarities of the Ottomans; now let us shift the scene, and view them in the presence of their enemies, and in their external relations both above and below them; and then at once a very different prospect presents itself for our contemplation. However, the first remark I have to make is one which has reference still to their internal condition, but which does not properly come into consideration, till we place them in the presence of rival and hostile nations and races. Moral degeneracy is not, strictly speaking, a cause of political ruin, as I have already said; but its existence is of course a point of the gravest importance, when we would calculate the chance which a people has of standing the brunt of war and insurrection. It is a natural question to ask whether the Osmanlis, after centuries of indulgence, have the physical nerve and mental vigour which carried them forward through such a course of fortunes, till it enthroned them in three quarters of the world. Their numbers are diminished and diminishing; their great cities are half emptied; their villages have disappeared; I believe that even out of the fraction of Mahometans to be found amid their European population, but a miserable minority are Osmanlis. Too much stress, however, must not be laid on this circumstance. Though the Osmanlis are the conquering race, it requires to be shown that they have ever had much to do, as a race, with the executive of the Empire. While there are some vigorous minds at the head of affairs, while there is a constant introduction of foreigners into posts of authority and power, while Curd and Turcoman supply the cavalry, while Egypt and other Pachalics send their contingents, while the government can manage to combine, or to steer between, the fanaticism of its subjects and the claims of European diplomacy, there is a certain counterbalance in the State to the depravity and worthlessness, whatever it be, of those who have the nominal power.

A far more formidable difficulty, when we survey their external prospects, is that very peculiarity, which, internally considered, is so much in their favour—the simplicity of their internal unity, and the individuality of their political structure. The Turkish races, as being conquerors, of course are only a portion of the whole population of their empire; for four centuries they have remained distinct from Slavonians, Greeks, Copts, Armenians, Curds, Arabs, Jews, Druses, Maronites, Ansarians, Motoualis; and they never can coalesce with them. Like other Empires, they have kept their sovereign position by the insignificance, degeneracy, or mutual animosities of the several countries and religions which they rule, and by the ruthless tyranny of their government. Were they to relax that tyranny, were they to relinquish their ascendancy, were they to place their Greek subjects, for instance, on a civil equality with themselves, how in the nature of things could two incommunicable races coexist beside each other in one political community? Yet if, on the other hand, they refuse this enfranchisement of their subjects, they will have to encounter the displeasure of united Christendom.

Nor is it a mere question of political practicability or expedience: will the Koran, in its laxest interpretation, admit of that toleration, on which the Frank kingdoms insist? yet what and where are they without the Koran?

Nor do we understand the full stress of the dilemma in which they are placed, until we have considered what is meant by the demands and the displeasure of the European community. Pledged by the very principle of their existence to barbarism, the Turks have to cope with civilized governments all around them, ever advancing in the material and moral strength which civilization gives, and ever feeling more and more vividly that the Turks are simply in the way. They are in the way of the progress of the nineteenth century. They are in the way of the Russians, who wish to get into the Mediterranean; they are in the way of the English, who wish to cross to the East; they are in the way of the French, who, from the Crusades to Napoleon, have felt a romantic interest in Syria; they are in the way of the Austrians, their hereditary foes. There they lie, unable to abandon their traditionary principles, without simply ceasing to be a state; unable to retain them, and retain the sympathy of Christendom;—Mahometans, despots, slave merchants, polygamists, holding agriculture in contempt, Europe in abomination, their own wretched selves in admiration, cut off from the family of nations,[89] existing by ignorance and fanaticism, and tolerated in existence by the mutual jealousies of Christian powers as well as of their own subjects, and by the recurring excitement of military and political combinations, which cannot last for ever.

5.

And, last of all, as if it were not enough to be unable to procure the countenance of any Christian power, except on specific conditions prejudicial to their existence, still further, as the alternative of their humbling themselves before the haughty nations of the West whom they abhor, they have to encounter the direct cupidity, hatred, and overpowering pressure of the multitudinous North, with its fanaticism almost equal, and its numbers superior, to their own; a peril more awful in imagination, from the circumstance that its descent has been for so many centuries foretold and commenced, and of late years so widely acquiesced in as inevitable. Seven centuries and a half have passed, since, at the very beginning of the Crusades, a Greek writer still extant turns from the then menacing inroads of the Turks in the East, and the long centuries of their triumph which lay in prospect, to record a prophecy, old in his time, relating to the North, to the effect that in the last days the Russians should be masters of Constantinople. When it was uttered no one knows; but it was written on an equestrian statue, in his day one of the special monuments of the Imperial City, which had one time been brought thither from Antioch. That statue, whether of Christian or pagan origin is not known, has a name in history, for it was one of the works of art destroyed by the Latins in the taking of Constantinople; and the prediction engraven on it bears at least a remarkable evidence of the congruity in itself, if I may use the word; of that descent of the North upon Constantinople, which, though not as yet accomplished, generation after generation grows more probable.

It is now a thousand years since this famous prophecy has been illustrated by the actual incursions of the Russian hordes. Such was the date of their first expedition against Constantinople; their assaults continued through two centuries; and, in the course of that period, they seemed to be nearer the capture of the city than they have been at any time since. They descended the Dnieper in boats, coasted along the East of the Black Sea, and so came round by Trebizond to the Bosphorus, plundering the coast as they advanced. At one time their sovereign had got possession of Bulgaria, to the south of the Danube. Barbarians of other races flocked to his standard; he found himself surrounded by the luxuries of the East and West, and he marched down as far as Adrianople, and threatened to go further. Ultimately he was defeated; then followed the conversion of his people to Christianity, which for a period restrained their barbarous rapacity; after this, for two centuries, they were under the yoke and bondage of the Tartars; but the prophecy, or rather the omen, remains, and the whole world has learned to acquiesce in the probability of its fulfilment. The wonder rather is, that that fulfilment has been so long delayed. The Russians, whose wishes would inspire their hopes, are not solitary in their anticipations: the historian from whom I have borrowed this sketch of their past attempts,[90] writing at the end of last century, records his own expectation of the event. "Perhaps," he says, "the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of a rare prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable." The Turks themselves have long been under the shadow of its influence; even as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, when they were powerful, and Austria and Poland also, and Russia distant and comparatively feeble, a traveller tells us that, "of all the princes of Christendom, there was none whom the Turks so much feared as the Czar of Muscovy." This apprehension has ever been on the increase; in favour of Russia, they made the first formal renunciation of territory which had been consecrated to Islam by the solemnities of religion,—a circumstance which has sunk deep into their imaginations; there is an enigmatical inscription on the tomb of the Great Constantine, to the effect that "the yellow-haired race shall overthrow Ismael;" moreover, ever since their defeats by the Emperor Leopold, they have had a surmise that the true footing of their faith is in Asia; and so strong is the popular feeling on the subject, that in consequence their favourite cemetery is at Scutari on the Asiatic coast.[91]

6.

It seems likely, then, at no very remote day, to fare ill with the old enemy of the Cross. However, we must not undervalue what is still the strength of his position. First, no well-authenticated tokens come to us of the decay of the Mahometan faith. It is true that in one or two cities, in Constantinople, perhaps, or in the marts of commerce, laxity of opinion and general scepticism may to a certain extent prevail, as also in the highest class of all, and in those who have most to do with Europeans; but I confess nothing has been brought home to me to show that this superstition is not still a living, energetic principle in the Turkish population, sufficient to bind them together in one, and to lead to bold and persevering action. It must be recollected that a national and local faith, like the Mahometan, is most closely connected with the sentiments of patriotism, family honour, loyalty towards the past, and party spirit; and this the more in the case of a religion which has no articles of faith at all, except those of the Divine Unity and the mission of Mahomet. To these must be added more general considerations: that they have ever prospered under their religion, that they are habituated to it, that it suits them, that it is their badge of a standing antagonism to nations they abhor, and that it places them, in their own imagination, in a spiritual position relatively to those nations, which they would simply forfeit if they abandoned it. It would require clear proof of the fact, to credit in their instance the report of a change of mind, which antecedently is so improbable.

And next it must be borne in mind that, few as may be the Osmanlis, yet the raw material of the Turkish nation, represented principally by the Turcomans, extends over half Asia; and, if it is what it ever has been, might under circumstances be combined or concentrated into a formidable Power. It extends at this day from Asia Minor, in a continuous tract, to the Lena, towards Kamtchatka, and from Siberia down to Khorasan, the Hindu Cush, and China. The Nogays on the north-east of the Danube, the inhabitants of the Crimea, the populations on each side of the Don and Wolga, the wandering Turcomans who are found from the west of Asia, along the Euxine, Caspian, and so through Persia into Bukharia, the Kirghies on the Jaxartes, are said to speak one tongue, and to have one faith.[92] Religion is a bond of union, and language is a medium of intercourse; and, what is still more, they are all Sunnites, and recognize in the Sultan the successor of Mahomet.

Without a head, indeed, to give them a formal unity, they are only one in name. Nothing is less likely than a resuscitation of the effete family of Othman; still, supposing the Ottomans driven into Asia, and a Sultan of that race to mount the throne, such as Amurath, Mahomet, or Selim, it is not easy to set bounds to the influence the Sovereign Pontiff of Islam might exert, and to the successes he might attain, in rallying round him the scattered members of a race, warlike, fanatical, one in faith, in language, in habits, and in adversity. Nay, even supposing the Turkish Caliph, like the Saracenic of old, still to slumber in his seraglio, he might appoint a vicegerent, Emir-ul-Omra, or Mayor of the Palace, such as Togrul Beg, to conquer with his authority in his stead.

But, supposing great men to be wanting to the Turkish race, and the despair, natural to barbarians, to rush upon them, and defeat, humiliation, and flight to be their lot; supposing the rivalries and dissensions of Pachas, in themselves arguing no disaffection to their Sultan and Caliph, should practically lead to the success of their too powerful foes, to the divulsion of their body politic, and the partition of their territory; should this be the distant event to which the present complications tend, then the fiercer spirits, I suppose, would of their free will return into the desert, as a portion of the Kalmucks have done within the last hundred years. Those, however, who remained, would lead the easiest life under the protection of Russia. She already is the sovereign ruler of many barbarian populations, and, among them, Turks and Mahometans; she lets them pursue their wandering habits without molestation, satisfied with such service on their part as the interests of the empire require. The Turcomans would have the same permission, and would hardly be sensible of the change of masters. It is a more perplexing question how England or France, did they on the other hand become their masters, would be able to tolerate them in their reckless desolation of a rich country. Rather, such barbarians, unless they could be placed where they would answer some political purpose, would eventually share the fate of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America; they would, in the course of years, be surrounded, pressed upon, divided, decimated, driven into the desert by the force of civilization, and would once more roam in freedom in their old home in Persia or Khorasan, in the presence of their brethren, who have long succeeded them in its possession.

Many things are possible; one thing is inconceivable,—that the Turks should, as an existing nation, accept of modern civilization; and, in default of it, that they should be able to stand their ground amid the encroachments of Russia, the interested and contemptuous patronage of Europe, and the hatred of their subject populations.

NOTE

on page 109.

Cardinal Fisher, in his Assert. Luther. Confut., fol. clxi., gives the following list of Popes who, up to his time, had called on the Princes of Christendom to direct their arms against the Turks:—Urban II., Paschal II., Gelasius II., Calistus II., Eugenius III., Lucius III., Gregory VIII., Clement III., Cœlestine III., Innocent III., Honorius III., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., Alexander IV., Gregory X., John XXII., Martin IV., Nicolas IV., Innocent VI., Urban V.

NOTE

on Page 124, etc.

The following passages, as being upon the subject of the foregoing Lectures, are extracted from the lively narrative of an Expedition to the Jordan and Dead Sea by Commander Lynch, of the United States Navy.

1. He was presented to Sultan Abdoul Medjid in February, 1848. He says: "On the left hung a gorgeous crimson velvet curtain, embroidered and fringed with gold" [the ancient Tartar one was of felt], "and towards it the secretary led the way. His countenance and his manner exhibited more awe than I had ever seen depicted in the human countenance. He seemed to hold his breath; and his step was so soft and stealthy, that once or twice I stopped, under the impression that I had left him behind, but found him ever beside me. There were three of us in close proximity, and the stairway was lined with officers and attendants; but such was the death-like stillness that I could distinctly hear my own foot-fall. If it had been a wild beast slumbering in his lair that we were about to visit, there could not have been a silence more deeply hushed."

2. "I presented him, in the name of the President of the United States, with some biographies and prints, illustrative of the character and habits of our North American Indians, the work of American artists. He looked at some of them ... and said that he considered them as evidences of the advancement of the United States in civilization, and would treasure them as a souvenir of the good feeling of its Government towards him. At the word 'civilization,' pronounced in French, I started, for it seemed singular, coming from the lips of a Turk, and applied to our country." The author accounts for it by observing that the Sultan is but a beginner in French, and probably meant by "civilization" arts and sciences.

3. He saw the old Tartar throne, which puts one in mind of Attila's queen, Zingis's lieutenant, and Timour. "The old divan, upon which the Sultans formerly reclined when they gave audience, looks like an overgrown four-poster, covered with carbuncles, turquoise, amethysts, topaz, emeralds, ruby, and diamond: the couch was covered with Damascus silk and Cashmere shawls."

4. "Anchored in the Bay of Scio. In the afternoon, the weather partially moderating, visited the shore. From the ship we had enjoyed a view of rich orchards and green fields; but on landing we found ourselves amid a scene of desolation.... We rode into the country.... What a contrast between the luxuriant vegetation, the bounty of nature, and the devastation of man! Nearly every house was unroofed and in ruins, not one in ten inhabited, although surrounded with thick groves of orange-trees loaded with the weight of their golden fruit."

"While weather-bound, we availed ourselves of the opportunity to visit the ruins [of Ephesus]. There are no trees and but very few bushes on the face of this old country, but the mountain-slopes and the valleys are enamelled with thousands of beautiful flowers.... Winding round the precipitous crest of a mountain, we saw the river Cayster ... flowing through the alluvial plain to the sea, and on its banks the black tents of herdsmen, with their flocks of goats around them." As Chandler had seen them there ninety years ago.

5. "The tomb of Mahmood is a sarcophagus about eight feet high and as many long, covered with purple cloth embroidered in gold, and many votive shawls of the richest cashmere thrown over it.... At the head is the crimson tarbouch which the monarch wore in life, with a lofty plume, secured by a large and lustrous aigrette of diamonds. The following words are inscribed in letters of gold on the face of the tomb:—'This is the tomb of the layer of the basis of the civilization of his empire; of the monarch of exalted place, the Sultan victorious and just, Mahmood Khan, son of the victorious Abd' al Hamid Khan. May the Almighty make his abode in the gardens of Paradise! Born,' etc."

"From the eager employment of Franks, the introduction of foreign machinery, and the adoption of improved modes of cultivating the land, the present Sultan gives the strongest assurance of his anxiety to promote the welfare of his people."

San Stefano "possesses two things in its near vicinity, of peculiar interest to an American—a model farm and an agricultural school. The farm consists of about 2,000 acres of land, especially appropriated to the culture of the cotton-plant. Both farm and school are under the superintendence of Dr. Davis of South Carolina.... Besides the principal culture, he is sedulously engaged in the introduction of seeds, plants, domestic animals, and agricultural instruments. The school is held in one of the kiosks of the Sultan, which overlooks the sea."

At Jaffa, Dr. Kayat, H.B.M. Consul, "has encouraged the culture of the vine; has introduced that of the mulberry and of the Irish potato; and by word and example is endeavouring to prevail on the people in the adjacent plain to cultivate the sweet potato.... In the court-yard we observed an English plough of improved construction."

He speaks in several places of the remains of the terrace cultivation (vid. above, p. 128) of Palestine.

6. "We visited the barracks, where a large number of Turkish soldiers, shaved and dressed like Europeans except the moustache and the tarbouch, received us with the Asiatic salute.... The whole caserne was scrupulously clean, the bread dark coloured, but well baked and sweet. The colonel, who politely accompanied us, said that the bastinado had been discontinued, on account of its injuring the culprit's eyes."

... "Here," in the Palace, "we saw the last of the White Eunuchs; the present enlightened Sultan having pensioned off those on hand, and discontinued their attendance for ever."

"In an extensive, but nearly vacant building, was an abortive attempt at a museum."

"It is said, but untruly, that the slave market of Constantinople has been abolished. An edict, it is true, was some years since promulgated, which declared the purchase and sale of slaves to be unlawful; the prohibition, however, is only operative against the Franks, under which term the Greeks are included."

7. "Every coloured person, employed by the Government, receives monthly wages; and, if a slave, is emancipated at the expiration of seven years, when he becomes eligible to any office beneath the sovereignty. Many of the high dignitaries of the empire were originally slaves; the present Governor of the Dardanelles is a black, and was, a short time since, freed from servitude."

"The secretary had the most prepossessing countenance of any Turk I had yet seen, and in conversation evinced a spirit of inquiry and an amount of intelligence that far surpassed my expectations.... His history is a pleasing one. He was a poor boy, a charity scholar in one of the public schools. The late Sultan Mahmood requiring a page to fill a vacancy in his suite, directed the appointment to be given to the most intelligent pupil. The present secretary was the fortunate one; and by his abilities, his suavity and discretion, has risen to the highest office near the person of majesty."