Whilst the Turks miscarried in their expedition against Malta, Soliman was pursuing the war in Hungary, and still threatening Germany. He died on the banks of the Danube, in the midst of victories obtained over the Christians. Christendom must have rejoiced at his death, as it had rejoiced at the death of Mahomet II. Under the reign of Soliman, who was the greatest prince of the Ottoman dynasty, the Turks not only invaded a part of the German empire, but their marine, seconded by the genius of Barberossa and Dragut, made a progress that must have alarmed all the maritime powers of Europe. Selim II., who succeeded him, had neither his qualities nor the genius of most of his predecessors; but he followed not the less their projects of aggrandizement, or the views of their ambitious policy. The Ottomans, masters of the coasts of Greece, Syria, and Africa, were desirous of adding to their conquests the kingdom of Cyprus, which was then possessed by the Venetians.
After a siege of several months, the Ottoman army obtained possession of the cities of Famagousta and Nicosia. The Turks stained their victory by cruelties without example. The bravest of the defenders of Cyprus expiated in tortures the glory of an obstinate resistance; and it may be said, it was the executioners that finished the war. The barbarity of the Turks disgusted the Christian nations afresh; and the maritime countries of the West beheld with terror an invasion which threatened to exclude Europeans from every road to the East.
At the approach of the danger, Pope Pius V. exhorted the Christian powers to take up arms against the Ottomans. A confederation was formed, consisting of the republic of Venice, Philip II., king of Spain, and the pope himself, always ready to add the authority of his example to his preaching. A numerous fleet, equipped for the defence of the isle of Cyprus, arrived too late in the eastern seas, and was only able to repair the disgrace of the Christian arms. This fleet, commanded by Don John of Austria, met that of the Ottomans in the Gulf of Lepanto. It was in this sea Antony and Augustus disputed the mastership of the Roman world. The battle which took place between the Christians and the Turks reminds us in some degree of the spirit and enthusiasm of the crusades. Before the commencement of the conflict, Don John hoisted on board his ship the standard of St. Peter, which he had received from the pope, and the army saluted with cries of joy this religious signal of victory. The leaders of the Christians passed along the line of barques, exhorting the soldiers to fight for the cause of Christ. All the warriors, falling upon their knees, implored divine protection, and arose full of confidence in their own bravery and the miracles of heaven.
No naval battle of antiquity can be compared to this of Lepanto, in which the Turks fought for the empire of the world, and the Christians for the defence of Europe. The courage and skill of Don John and the other leaders, the intrepidity and ardour of the soldiers, and the superiority of the Franks in manœuvring their vessels, and in their artillery, procured for the Christian fleet a decisive victory. Two hundred of the enemy’s ships were taken, burnt, or sunk. The wreck of the Turkish fleet, whilst announcing the victory of the Christians, carried consternation to the coasts of Greece and to the capital of the Ottoman empire.
Terrified by the results of this battle, Selim caused the famous castle of the Dardanelles to be built, which to the present day defends the entrance to the canal of Constantinople. At the time of the battle, the roof of the temple of Mecca fell in, and the Turks believed they saw in this accident a sign of the anger of Heaven. The roof was of wood; and that it might become, says Cantemir, a more solid emblem of the empire, the son of Soliman ordered it to be reconstructed of brick.
Whilst the Turks deplored the first reverse their arms had met with, the whole of Christendom learnt the news of the victory of Lepanto with the greatest joy. The Venetians, who had awaited in terror the issue of the battle, celebrated the triumph of the Christian fleet by extraordinary festivities. In order that no feeling of sadness should be mingled with the universal joy, the senate set all prisoners at liberty, and forbade the subjects of the republic to wear mourning for their relations or friends who had been killed fighting against the Turks. The battle of Lepanto was inscribed upon coins, and as the infidels were defeated on the day of St. Justin, the seigneury ordered that this happy day should be every year a festival for the whole population of Venice.
At Toledo, and in all the churches of Spain, the people and the clergy offered up hymns of gratitude to Heaven for the victory it had granted to the valour of the Christian soldiers. No nation, no prince of Europe, was indifferent to the defeat of the Turks; and, if one historian may be believed, the king of England, James I., celebrated in a poem the glorious day of Lepanto.
As the pope had effectively contributed to the success of the Christian arms, it was at Rome that the strongest symptoms of delight were exhibited. Mark Antony Colonna, who had commanded the vessels of the sovereign pontiff, was received in triumph, and conducted to the Capitol, preceded by a great number of prisoners of war. The ensigns taken from the enemy were suspended in the church of Ara-Cœli. After a solemn mass, Mark Antony Mureti pronounced the panegyric of the triumphant general. Thus the ceremonies of ancient Rome were mingled with those of the modern, to celebrate the valour and exploits of the defenders of Christendom. The Church itself was desirous of consecrating a victory gained over its enemies among its festivals; Pius V. instituted one in honour of the Virgin, by whose intercession it was believed the Mussulmans had been conquered. This festival was celebrated on the 7th October, the day of the battle of Lepanto, under the denomination of “Our Lady of Victories.”
Thus a unanimous concert of prayers and thanksgivings arose towards heaven, and all Christians at the same time showed their gratitude to the God of armies for having delivered Europe from the invasion of the Mussulmans. But it was not long before this happy harmony was disturbed: ambition, reciprocal mistrusts, diversity of interests, all that had till that time favoured the progress of the Turks, prevented the Christians from deriving the proper advantages from their victory. The Venetians were anxious to pursue the war, in order to recover the isle of Cyprus; but Philip II., dreading any increase in the power of Venice, withdrew from the confederation. The Venetian republic, abandoned by its allies, hastened to make peace. It obtained it by sacrificing all the possessions it had lost during the war,—a strange result of victory; by which the vanquished dictated laws to the conqueror, and which plainly shows us to what extent the pretensions of the Turks would have been carried if fortune had favoured their arms.
The war which was terminated by the battle of Lepanto, was the last in which the standard of the cross animated or rallied Christian warriors.
The spirit of the holy wars at first arose from popular opinions. When these opinions became weakened and great powers were formed, all that relates to war or peace became concentrated in the councils of monarchs. No more projects for distant expeditions were formed in public councils; no more warlike enterprises were recommended from the pulpits of the churches, or before assemblies of the faithful. States and princes, placed at the head of human affairs, even when they made war against the Mussulmans, obeyed much less the influence of religious ideas than interests purely political. From that period the enthusiasm of the multitude, and all the passions that had given birth to the crusades, were reckoned as nothing.
The alliance of Francis I. with Soliman was at first a great scandal for all Christendom. The king of France justified himself by accusing the ambition and the perfidy of Charles V. His example was quickly followed by Charles himself, and by other Christian states. Policy, disengaging itself more and more from that which was religious in it, came at last to consider the Ottoman Porte, no longer an enemy against whom it was a duty always to be fighting, but as a great power, whom it was sometimes necessary to conciliate, and whose support might be sought without outraging the Deity, or affecting the interests of the Church.
As the voice of the sovereign pontiff was always the instrument to summon Christians to take arms against the infidels, the spirit of the crusades necessarily grew weaker as the authority of the popes declined. It may be added, that the political system of Europe was making its development, and the ties and springs which were to found the equilibrium of the Christian republic had an increasing tendency to their establishment. Each state had its plan of defence and aggrandisement, which it followed with a constant activity; all were employed in endeavouring to attain the degree of power, force, and influence to which their position and the fortune of their arms entitled them. Hence those restless ambitions, those mutual mistrusts, that ever active spirit of rivalry, which scarcely ever permitted sovereigns to turn their attention towards distant wars.
Whilst ambition and the desire of increasing and defending their power detained princes in their own states, the people became attached to their homes by the blessings and the enjoyments of a rapidly-rising civilization. In the eleventh century, the Franks, the Normans, and other barbarians from the north, had not quite lost the character and habits of nomadic races, which favoured the rise and the progress of that warlike enthusiasm which had precipitated the Crusaders upon the East. In the sixteenth century, institutions consecrated by time, the precepts of Christianity better understood, respect for ancestry, love of settled property, the constantly increasing wealth of cities, with the progress of industry and of agriculture, had changed the character of the Franks, destroyed their partiality for a wandering life, and had become so many ties to attach them to their country.
In the preceding century the genius of navigation had discovered America and the passage of the Cape of Good Hope. The results of this discovery effected a great revolution in commerce, attracted the attention of all nations, and gave a new direction to the human mind. All the speculations of industry, for so long a time founded upon the crusades, were directed towards America or the East Indies. Great empires, rich climates, offered themselves all at once to the ambition or the cupidity of all who sought for glory, fortune, or adventures—the wonders of a new world made men forgetful of those of the East.
At this so memorable epoch, a general emulation arose in Europe for the cultivation of arts and of letters. The age of Leo X. produced masterpieces of all kinds.[87] France, Spain, and still more Italy, turned the newly-discovered art of printing greatly to the advantage of knowledge. The splendid geniuses of Greece and Rome were everywhere revived. In proportion as men’s minds became enlightened, the new career opened before them expanded. Another enthusiasm succeeded to that of religious enterprises; and the exploits of the heroic times of our history excited much more admiration in our romances and poets, than they created desire in people of the world to imitate them. Then the Epic Muse, whose voice only celebrates distant events, sang the heroes of the holy wars; and the crusades, for the same reason that Tasso became at liberty to adorn the recital of them with all the wealth of his imagination,—the crusades, we say, were no longer anything for Europe but a poetical remembrance.
One fortunate circumstance for Christendom is, that at the period when the crusades, which had for their object the defence of Europe, drew near to their end, the Turks began to lose some part of that military power which they had displayed in their contests with the Christian nations. The Ottomans had at first been, as we have already said, the only nation that kept on foot a regular standing army, which gave it a vast superiority over powers that it was desirous of subduing. In the sixteenth century, most of the great states of Europe had likewise armies which they could at any time bring against their enemies. Discipline and military tactics had made great progress in Christendom; artillery and marine became more perfect in the West every day, whilst the Turks, in all that concerns the art of war, or that of navigation, gathered no advantage from either the lessons of experience, or from the knowledge to which time and circumstances had given birth among their neighbours. We ought to add, that the spirit of superstition and intolerance which the Turks associated with their wars, was very injurious to the preservation and extent of their conquests. When they took possession of a province, they insisted upon making their laws, their customs, and their worship paramount. They must change everything, they must destroy everything, in the country in which they wished to establish themselves; they must either exterminate the population, or reduce it to the impossibility of disturbing a foreign domination. Thus it may be remarked, that, although several times masters of Hungary, they retired from it after every campaign, and were never able, amidst all their victories, to found a colony or make any durable establishment there. The Ottoman population which had sufficed for occupying and enslaving the Greek empire, could not people and preserve more distant countries. It was this, above everything, which saved Germany and Italy from the invasion of the Turks. The Ottomans might, perhaps, have conquered the world if they had been able to impose their manners upon it, or furnish it with inhabitants.
After the battle of Lepanto, although they had preserved the isle of Cyprus, and dictated laws to the republic of Venice, the Turks not the less lost the idea of their being invincible, or that all the world must submit to their arms. It was observed that from that time most of the leaders of Turkish armies or fleets became more timid, and felt less assured of victory, when in the presence of an enemy. Astrologers, who had till then beheld in the phenomena of the heavens the increase and the glory of the Ottoman empire, saw nothing during the reign of Soliman and following reigns but sinister auguries in the aspects of the celestial bodies. We mention astrologers, because their predictions have considerable influence upon the policy of the Turks. It is not improbable that these pretended conjurers did not confine their observations to the celestial bodies, but that they watched the manners and the opinions of the people, and the march of events and affairs. It is for this reason that their prophecies were found true, and that they belong, in some sort, to history.
The spirit of conquest, however, which had so long animated the nation, still subsisted, and sometimes fortune favoured the Ottoman banner with victory.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Turks carried war to both the banks of the Danube and to the frontiers of Persia. Among the Christian warriors who flew to the aid of Germany, the duke of Mercœur, brother of the duke of Mayenne, must not be forgotten; he was followed by a crowd of French soldiers, who had fought against Henry IV., and who went to expiate the crimes of civil war by fighting the infidels. The duke of Mercœur, to whom the emperor Rodolph II. gave the command of the imperial army, gained several advantages over the Ottomans.
Whilst the war was being carried on in Hungary, the king of Persia sent an embassy to the emperor of Germany and the princes of the West, to persuade them to form an alliance with him against the Turks. The Persian ambassadors repaired to the court of the sovereign pontiff, and to those of several Christian powers, conjuring them to declare war against the Ottomans. This embassy of the king of Persia, and the exploits of the French on the Danube, created great uneasiness in the Divan, and an ambassador was sent to the king of France, as the most to be feared of the Christian princes. The letters of credit of the Turkish envoy bore this title: “To the most glorious, magnanimous, and greatest lord of the faith of Jesus, pacificator of the differences which arise among Christian princes, lord of greatness, majesty, and riches, and glorious guide of the greatest, Henry IV., emperor of France.” The sultan of the Turks conjured the French monarch, in his letter, to bring about a truce between the Porte and the emperor of Germany, and to recall from Hungary the duke of Mercœur, whose valour and skill brought victory to the banners of the Germans. Henry IV. interrogated the Ottoman ambassador, and asked him why the Turks dreaded the duke of Mercœur so much. The ambassador replied, that a prophecy, credited by the Turks, declared that the sword of the French would drive them from Europe, and overthrow their empire. Henry IV. did not recall the duke of Mercœur: this able captain continued to beat the Ottomans, and having covered himself with glory in the war against the infidels, he was seized, whilst on his return to France, by a purple fever, “which,” says Mezerai, “sent him to triumph in heaven.”
In their wars against the Christians, the Turks often found themselves on the defensive, which was for them a sign of decline. History remarks that at no period did their reverses cause them more alarm, or their victories more surprise and joy. Their defeats were almost always a signal for sedition and revolt, which the decline of power rendered bold.
And yet the Ottoman empire still carried on war, and advanced like a storm ready to burst. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the isle of Chio, which had belonged to the Genoese, was added to its maritime possessions, and the Turks directed their victorious arms towards Candia, an important colony of the Venetians. At the same time an Ottoman army entered Transylvania, and greatly alarmed Austria.
Pope Alexander VII., pressed by the emperor Leopold I. and by the Venetian senate, endeavoured to form a league among the princes and states of Christendom, and addressed the king of Poland, the king of Spain, and more particularly the king of France, to implore their succour against the Turks.
Louis XIV. yielded to the prayers of the sovereign pontiff, and sent to Rome an ambassador charged to announce to his holiness, that he entered into the confederation of the Christian princes. On the other side, the states of the Germanic empire, which were the allies of France, assembled at Frankfort, and engaged to raise money and troops, promising to unite their efforts with those of the French monarch, for the defence of Christendom.
This generous forwardness on the part of the king of France and his allies merited, no doubt, the gratitude of Leopold; but, what is difficult to be believed, the zeal they showed for the common cause, and which exceeded what was first hoped for, only awakened the jealous uneasiness of the emperor. We have even reason to think that this uneasiness extended to the sovereign pontiff; for his holiness welcomed the propositions of Louis XIV. very coldly; and when the resolutions of the Germanic body reached Rome, Alexander received with indifference news for which any other pope, say the memoirs of the time, would not have failed to go and return solemn thanks in the church of St. Peter or of St. John of the Lateran. The king of France could not dissemble his surprise; and in a letter, which he caused to be written to his ambassador, are these remarkable words: “For the rest, it is more an affair of his holiness than ours; it will suffice for his majesty, for his own satisfaction and his duty towards God, to have made all the advances with respect to this league, that a king, the eldest son of the Church, and the principal defender of religion, could do in a danger imminent for Christendom.”
It was soon known that the Turks were making progress, and had penetrated into Moravia. The emperor Leopold, at their approach, quitted his capital. The pope then consented to resume the suspended negotiations. But they were resumed with a sentiment of jealousy and reciprocal mistrust, that left no hope of a happy result. Louis XIV., nevertheless, omitted nothing to prove the frankness of his intentions, or to forward the formation of a league. It was then believed that an enterprise against the Turks was the business of all Christendom, and that, in this case, one Christian power alone, ought not to decide for peace or war.
We enter into some details here, because these details have not been hitherto generally known, and that present circumstances may give them additional interest. We know, likewise, in the days in which we live, we must search for examples in old remembrances, and often for our true titles to glory likewise.
The emperor could not be reassured by the demonstrations of the French monarch; and the rancour which he retained on account of the treaty of Westphalia, made him forgetful of his own dangers and of those of the Germanic body. Louis XIV. engaged to set on foot an army of twenty thousand men, and the confederates of Germany offered as many. Leopold feared this army on his own account. In the end, Louis satisfied himself with furnishing six thousand soldiers, under the command of the count de Coligny and the marquis de la Feuillade. The pope, not to remain neuter in a war against the Mussulmans, granted the emperor a subsidy of 70,000 florins, and the faculty of levying tenths upon all the ecclesiastical property in the Austrian states. All the united succours of Germany, the king of France, and the other confederate states, formed an army of thirty thousand men. This army marched to Hungary. When united to the troops of the emperor, they gained many advantages over the Turks, and defeated them completely at the battle of St. Gothard. The Ottomans solicited a suspension of arms, and the jealous passions which had at first prevented the war being carried on with vigour, allowed the Divan to conclude an advantageous peace.
The Ottomans, thus delivered from a formidable war, were able to direct all their strength against Candia, which Venice, now left alone, was not strong enough to defend. A great number of French warriors then flew to the succour of a Christian city besieged by the infidels: among the knights whom the love of glory led to this perilous and distant war, history takes pleasure in naming the marquis de Fénelon, whose care had brought up the archbishop of Cambrai, and whom his age considered as the model of gallant gentlemen. His young son, whom he took with him, was wounded in an affair against the Turks, and died of his wounds. France, in the same expedition, had to lament another hero, the young duke of Beaufort; Mascaron, who pronounced the funeral oration of this new Maccabeus, thus describes his death: “After the flight of all the others, yielding rather to number than to strength, he fell upon his own trophies, and died the most glorious death that a Christian hero could wish, sword in hand against the enemies of his God and his king, in the sight of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and more than all that, in the sight of God and his angels.” Louis XIV., always considering it consistent with his glory to protect the Christian states, sent fresh succours to Candia: four French vessels appeared before the isle; but they arrived too late; the city of Candia, after a siege of two years and four months, had just capitulated.
This conquest revived the courage of the Turks, and their power, sustained by the genius of Kiouprouli, whom the Mussulmans called the great destroyer of the bells of impiety, might have still rendered themselves formidable to the Christian nations, if their policy had not been governed by a foolish pride. Intoxicated with some trifling successes, the Turks resumed their project of invading Germany. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, they made a last attempt, and the capital of Austria beheld beneath its walls an army of two hundred thousand infidels.
Germany was exhausted by the thirty years’ war. The king of Poland, urged by the pope to come to the succour of the Germanic empire, hastened with his Polish cavalry to the scene of action, and revived the courage of the Germans and the garrison of Vienna. The Turks, upon being attacked with impetuosity, abandoned their camp, their artillery, and their baggage. The wreck of the Ottoman army did not rally till they reached the banks of the Raab, where they encamped around the tent of the grand vizier, the only one that had not fallen into the hands of the conquerors. John Sobieski entered in triumph into the city he had saved by his courage. This happy event was celebrated throughout Germany by public rejoicings; and, as had been done after the victory gained by Don John of Austria, amidst the ceremonies of the Church, these words from Scripture were repeated: “There was a man sent from God, named John.”
The defeat of Vienna was for the Turks a signal for the greatest reverses. The vengeance of the people and the army pursued the grand vizier, who had conducted the war; and the sultan, Mahomet IV., fell from the throne at the report of these sanguinary disasters, the effects of which were felt to the very heart of the empire. The famous treaty of Carlowitz testifies the losses that the Ottoman nation had undergone, and the incontestable superiority of its enemies. The decline of Turkey, as a maritime power, had commenced at the battle of Lepanto; its decline as a military or conquering power, dates from the defeat of Vienna. History has two things to remark in the negotiations of Carlowitz. Hungary, which had for so long a time resisted the Turks, weakened at length by civil discords and foreign wars, and given up at the same time to the emperors of Germany and the sultans of Constantinople, then lost its national independence, and became united to the possessions of the house of Austria. Among the states and princes who signed the treaty, the czars of Muscovy, who were destined, at a later period, to inflict such terrible blows upon the Ottoman empire, appeared for the first time as a power interested in the Christian struggle against the infidels.
We have described the origin and progress of the Turks; it only remains for us now to speak of the causes of their decline.
The Turks were only constituted to contend with a barbarous people, like themselves, or with a degenerate people, like the Greeks. When they met with nations that were not corrupted, and were not deficient in bravery or patriotism, their career was checked. It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that they were never able to make an impression upon any of the nations of the Latin Church; the only nation that was separated from Christendom by the conquests of the Turks was one that had separated itself from it. When the Ottomans were no longer able to prosecute their scheme of general invasion, all the passions which had stimulated them to conquest only served to disturb their own empire; which is the ordinary destiny of mere conquering nations.
The wars they prosecuted at the same time against Christian Europe and Persia, were the principal causes of the decay of the military power of the Turks. The efforts they made against the Persians, diverted their forces from their expeditions against the Christians; and their expeditions against the Christians crippled their means for the wars in Asia. In these two kinds of war they had a very different manner of fighting. After having for any length of time contended with the warriors of the Oxus or Caucasus, they were incapacitated for making war in Europe. They were never able to triumph completely over either Persia or the Christian nations; and remained at last pressed between two enemies, equally interested in their ruin, and equally animated by religious passions.
The Turks, like all the hordes from the north of Asia, brought with them the feudal government. The first thing to be done by all nomadic nations, who established themselves in conquered countries, was the division of the lands, with certain conditions of protection and obedience. From this division naturally emanated feudalism. The difference, however, which existed between the Turks and the other barbarians who conquered the West, was, that the jealous despotism of the sultans never allowed fiefs to become hereditary, or that an aristocracy should grow up round it, as in the monarchies of Christendom. Thus in the Turkish empire nothing was to be seen on one side, but the authority of an absolute master; and on the other, nothing but a military democracy. The Ottoman monarchy was thus built upon that which is weakest in political societies—the will of a single man, or that of the multitude.
The Turks have been compared to the Romans. Both nations began in the same manner; for both were nothing but bands of brigands. What distinguishes them in history is, that the Turks have remained the same as they were in their origin; whilst the Romans, in their conquests, never rejected the knowledge, the customs, or even the gods of the people they conquered. The Turks, on the contrary, took nothing from other nations, and made it their pride to continue barbarians.
We have said above, that hereditary aristocracy has never been established by the side of despotism; and this is, perhaps, the reason why the Ottoman nation has remained in a state of barbarism. They who have studied the march of human societies know that it is by the aristocracy that the manners and morals of a people are formed, and that it is in the middle classes that knowledge has its birth, and civilization begins.[88] The absence of an aristocracy in oriental governments, not only explains to us the fragility of those governments, but it assists us also in explaining why progress has not been made in a country where nothing distinguished the men from each other, where no one had sufficient influence to guide the crowd, or was sufficiently elevated to serve as an example or model.
In consequence of the indifference of the Turks for the arts and sciences, the labours of industry, agriculture, and navigation, were confided to their slaves, who were their enemies. As they held in horror everything new, or that they had not brought from Asia with them, they were obliged to have recourse to foreigners for everything that was invented or perfected in Europe. Thus the sources of prosperity and power, the strength of their armies and their fleets, were not at all in their own hands. Every one knows what the Turks have lost by neglecting to learn or to follow the progress of the military tactics of the Europeans. At the battle of Lepanto, disorder was introduced into their fleet entirely from their having promised liberty to their sailors, who were all Christians.
Some modern writers, seeking everywhere for similitudes, have compared the janissaries to the pretorian cohorts. This comparison has nothing exact in it: among the Romans, the empire was elective, and the pretorians got possession of it for the purpose of putting it up to sale. Among the Turks, the idea of choosing their prince never suggested itself to the minds of either the people or the soldiery. The janissaries contented themselves with disturbing the government, and keeping it in such a state of disorder, that they could never be dismissed, and might always remain masters. All their opposition consisted in preventing any amelioration whatever in discipline or military usages. The abuses and prejudices the most difficult to be destroyed in a nation, are those which adhere to a body or a class in which power happens to be placed. All-powerful despotism was never able to overcome the opposition of the janissaries and spahis; and those redoubtable corps, which had so effectively contributed to ancient conquests, became the greatest obstacle to the making of new ones.
The Turks established in Greece had more respect for old usages and old prejudices, than they had of love for the country they inhabited. Masters of Stamboul, they had their eyes constantly fixed upon the places of their origin, and appeared to be but travellers, or passing conquerors of Europe. They preserved the manners of Asia, the laws of Asia, the remembrances of Asia; and the West was, in their estimation, less a country than a theatre for their exploits.
Amidst their decline, nothing was more fatal to the Turks than the memory of their past glory; nothing was more injurious to them than that national pride which was no longer in harmony with their fortune, or in proportion with their strength. The illusions of a power that no longer existed prevented them from foreseeing the obstacles they were likely to meet with in their enterprises, or the dangers with which they were threatened. When the Ottomans made an unsuccessful war, or an unfavourable treaty, they never failed to lay the blame on their leaders, whom popular vengeance devoted to death or exile; and whilst they thus immolated victims to their vanity, their reverses became the more irreparable, from their persisting in mistaking the true causes of them.
Tacitus somewhere expresses the joy he felt in seeing barbarians making war upon one another; and we experience something of this joy when we see despotism threatened by its own institutions, and tormented by the very instruments of its power. Another spectacle, no less consoling to all who love humanity and justice, is to behold this family of fierce despots, before whom the entire East trembled, devouring itself. It is well known what victims each sultan, on ascending the throne, was compelled to offer to the suspicious genius of despotism. But Heaven does not permit the most sacred laws of nature to be constantly violated with impunity; and the Ottoman dynasty, in expiation of so many crimes against family ties, sunk at last into a species of degradation. The Ottoman princes, brought up in subjection and fear, lost the energy and the faculties necessary for conducting the government of a great empire. Soliman II. only increased the evil by decreeing a constitutional law, that no son of the sultan’s should command armies or govern provinces. From that time none but effeminate princes, timid and senseless men, occupied the Ottoman throne.
If the will of the prince became corrupt, it was quite sufficient to render the corruption general. In proportion as the character of the sultans degenerated, everything degenerated around them. A universal apathy displaced the noisy activity of war and victory. To the passion for conquests succeeded cupidity, ambition, selfishness, and all the vices that signalize and complete the decline of empires. When states rise and march on towards prosperity, there is an emulation to increase their powers; when they decline, there is also an emulation to urge on their destruction, and take advantage of their ruin.
The empire had always a numerous army; but that army, in which discipline every day degenerated, was only formidable in time of peace. A crowd of Thimariots, or possessors of fiefs for life, having nothing to leave to their families, passed over the lands that were given to them like locusts, which, in the plains where the winds have wafted them, destroy even to the germs of the harvests. The pachas governed the provinces as conquerors. The wealth of the people was for them like the booty which conquerors distributed among themselves on the day of victory. Such as could amass treasures were able to purchase impunity. Such as had armies proclaimed their independence. Subalterns everywhere followed the example of the leaders. In the government, as well as in the army, everything was put up to sale, everything was subject to pillage. Thus this empire, which had displayed such energy, fell like a prey into the hands of all those whom fortune or the favour of the prince called to authority; and if we may be permitted to employ a not very elevated comparison to express the degree of abasement of a nation, the Ottoman power no longer presented any aspect but that of those lifeless bodies in which we can perceive no motion but in the insects that are devouring them.
The sultans of Constantinople, while slumbering in their seraglios, were often awakened by the thunder of popular revolts. Violences of the army or the people were the only justice able to reach despotism. But this justice itself was one calamity the more, and only assisted in precipitating the general decline.
Although the successors of Othman, after the reign of Selim, were the pontiffs of the national faith, this important dignity added nothing to their power. The Mussulman faith, which commanded with severity the observance of many minute practices, did not at all repress the passions of the multitude. A religious belief which permitted a prince to commit fratricide could be no safeguard for either the authority or the life of the prince. A religion always ready to consecrate the triumph of force, could find no motives in its moral code for the condemnation of revolt, particularly when the revolt happened to be crowned with success.[89]
But what is remarkably singular, the Turks, when they rose against a prince of the Ottoman dynasty, preserved a profound veneration for that dynasty. They immolated the tyrant to their vengeance, and were ready to immolate themselves for the tyranny. Thus license, in its greatest excesses, always respected despotism; and what carried disorder to its highest pitch was, that despotism in its turn respected license.
The Turks lived in this state of decline as in their natural condition. Nothing is more remarkable in history than the carelessness of a nation in the midst of a revolution that is dragging it down to its ruin; and this revolution with the Turks was not brought about by new ideas, but by old ideas, not by love of liberty, but by habits of slavery. They respected the causes of their ruin, because these causes were connected with the history of barbarous times; and religion, by constantly repeating to them that “he who is in the fire ought to be resigned,” prevented them from seeking a remedy for the ills they suffered.
Among nations which incline towards destruction, in the very bosom of corruption a certain politeness, a certain polish or elegance of manners, may be observed. The Turks, on the contrary, had a brutal and savage corruption, and their empire grew old without the nation’s losing anything of that fierceness of character, of that proud roughness, which belong to the infancy of society.
We shall be asked why Christendom did not take advantage of this decline of the Turks to drive them back again into Asia. We have seen in this history, that the nations of Christian Europe were never able to combine and agree for the defence of Constantinople, when it was attacked by the Turks; and they showed no more inclination to combine to deliver it after it was taken. We may add that the less redoubtable the Turks became, the fewer were the efforts made to conquer them. They inspired, besides, no jealousy in the commercial nations of Christendom. It was in vain that fortune placed them between the East and the West; that she rendered them masters of the Archipelago, of the coasts of Africa, of the ports of the Black Sea and the Red Sea: their finest provinces were deserts, their cities were abandoned. Everything perished in the hands of an indolent and unpolished people. The Turks were spared, because they made no use of their advantages; and because they were, to employ an expression of Montesquieu’s, the men the most fit to hold great empires carelessly.
Before we terminate this rapid sketch of the Turkish empire in the seventeenth century, we beg to be allowed to add some reflections which circumstances may cause to be appreciated. Nothing was more monstrous than the presence, upon the same territory, of two nations and two religions that hated and cursed each other reciprocally. Spain had presented a similar spectacle; but the energy and the magnanimous constancy of the Spaniards triumphed over an adverse people and an adverse religion; and at the very time at which the Turks established themselves in Greece, the Moors, carrying with them their foreign worship, abandoned their conquests and returned to Africa, from whence they came. The Greeks, after the invasion of the Ottomans, neither showed the same energy nor the same courage; although their patriotism ought to have been constantly animated by the soil they trod on, and by their very name, of which the conqueror had not been able to deprive them.
Nevertheless, amidst their abasement and their misery, they were still able to place their hope in the ascendancy of religious ideas, and in the wish for civilization, which acted as a tie between all Christian societies. Whilst the manners and the worship of Islamism rendered the Turks foreign and even odious to Christendom, the religion of Christ and the remembrances of history placed the Greeks in relation with the other nations of Europe.
In proportion as the knowledge derived from antiquity made progress among the Franks, Greece became for them a sacred country. The language of Plato and Demosthenes, in which the charms of liberty had been celebrated with so much eloquence, became more dear to them than their own maternal tongue. The poetical sites of Greece, which the love of letters rendered so familiar to the studious class, were for us like places in which we had passed our infancy. Europe had not a scholar in whom the city of Aristotle, that of Lycurgus, or that of Epaminondas, did not inspire something resembling the sentiments we feel for our own country. If the Greeks were degenerated; if they viewed with indifference the ruins of their country, ancient Greece still lived for every enlightened man, and was ever present, wherever a taste for the arts or a love of learning existed.
The warmer that the interest for the Greeks became, the more barbarous the Turks appeared. The Ottoman nation came and established itself in the richest countries of Europe, and remained in sight of all European people, without becoming acquainted with their languages, their laws, or their policy; like those troops of wild animals which sometimes stop in the neighbourhood of the dwellings of man, ignorant of that which is going on in these places, and having no means to seize their prey or defend themselves, but their activity, their natural strength, and the means which a gross instinct gives them. This state of things was opposed both to the laws of society and the laws of nature, which do not permit men or nations to live together and in the same place, except when they possess similar qualities, and are able to employ their faculties in common. The Turks may have been protected, at first by the fortune of their own arms, and afterwards by the policy of certain cabinets; but what real support could they have in the West, when they were repulsed by the manners, feelings, and opinions of the European nations, to whom they became every day more foreign?
On one side, the antipathy entertained for a barbarous people; on the other, the relations which united nations civilized by Christianity, were likely, sooner or later, to revive that spirit of fraternity which produced the crusades; and God has willed that this spirit, from which the holy wars were born, should manifest itself in the same century which had for a long time refused to acknowledge the effects or to admire the prodigies of them.
At the moment in which we are finishing this history, the Greeks have thrown forth a cry of alarm, and this cry has resounded throughout the Christian world. Is the moment of their deliverance arrived? When we examine the present state of Europe, we find a much greater force than would be necessary to conquer Byzantium; but on the other side, the diversity of interests and opinions will not permit the Christian republic to unite for this great enterprise. We have seen that the Turks really possess nothing but the soil of their vast empire; the riches that are there produced belong to the nations of Christendom, and these nations are for the Turkish provinces, which they cultivate to their profit, that which an active and industrious farmer is for the fields he ploughs and reaps. Add to this, that most of the Christian powers appear to fear that the displacing of a great empire may break the ties of the European confederation; they do not, as formerly, dread the strength of the Ottomans, but the difficulties and divisions that the conquest would produce. That which may add to their fears is that impatience for change, that ardent passion for novelty, which is spread all at once among the nations like a contagious fever; whilst the Greeks are imploring Europe for their liberty, restless and dissatisfied spirits look to the East for I do not know what signal for a revolution in Europe. Thus Christendom, divided by its various interests, tormented by a thousand different passions, and fearing for its own repose, awaits with anxiety the events that are preparing, and appears to recoil from victories which the superiority of her intelligence and her armies hold out to her.
What will be the issue of all the warlike demonstrations and all the pacific negotiations of which fame informs us every day? There is no doubt the cross will again arise in the East, and the fate of Christians residing there will receive some amelioration; but are we arrived at the moment which is to render Europe entirely Christian? Will the Ottoman empire, whose weakness now appears so great, yield to the power of its enemies, or will it hasten its own ruin? Will Greece, so long enslaved, resume that rank among nations from which she formerly descended so ingloriously, or will she fall into the hands of her liberators? A thousand other questions present themselves to the mind; but we will not forestall events; above all, we will avoid multiplying conjectures and hypotheses, or producing here the brilliant reveries of philosophers and poets, which the severity of history rejects. When we set a high value upon truth, and have sought it for a length of time in all that the remembrances of the past contain that is most positive, we learn to speak of the future with much circumspection and reserve.
It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon the Ottoman empire; but the origin of that empire, its progress and its decline, are connected with all the events we have had to describe. The sketch we have traced of it may have been sometimes serviceable in making our readers acquainted with the spirit and the character of the wars against the infidels; and is this view our labour has not been useless.
At the period we have now gained, the passions which had given birth to the prodigies of the crusades had become speculative opinions, which occupied the attention of writers rather than that of kings or nations. Thus the holy wars, with their causes and effects, became the objects of the discussions of doctors and philosophers. We may remember the opinion of Luther; and although he had partly disavowed or retracted his first opinion upon the war against the Turks, most of his partisans continued to evince a great aversion for the crusades.
The minister Jurieu goes much further than Luther. That ardent apostle of the Reformation, far from thinking that war ought to be made against the Mussulmans, did not hesitate to consider the Turks as auxiliaries of the Protestants, and said that the fierce sectaries of Mahomet were sent to “labour with the Reformers in the great work of God,” which was the ruin of the papal empire. After the raising of the last siege of Vienna, in 1683, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the same Jurieu was afflicted at the disgrace of the Reformers and the defeat of the Turks; adding, at the same time, “that God had only abased them, in order to raise them together again, and make them the instruments of his vengeance against the popes.” Such is the excess of blindness to which the spirit of party or sect has power to carry us, when misled by hatred, and irritated by persecution.
Other writers, however, celebrated for their genius, and who also were connected with the Reformation, maintained that wars against the infidels ought to be carried on: they deplored the indifference of Christendom, and the wars that were breaking out daily among Christian nations, whilst they left in peace a people, a foe to all other peoples. Chancellor Bacon, in his dialogue de bello sacro, employs all his logic to prove that the Turks are excluded from the law of nations. He invokes, by turns, natural right, the rights of nations, and divine right, against the barbarians, to whom he refuses the name of a people, and maintains that war should be carried on against them as against pirates, anthropophagi, or wild animals. The illustrious chancellor quotes, in support of his opinion, maxims from Aristotle, maxims from the Bible, with examples from history, and even from fable. His manner of reasoning savours a little of the policy and philosophy of the sixteenth century, and we do not feel ourselves called upon to repeat arguments, of which many would not be of a nature to convince minds of the present century.
We prefer developing some of the ideas of Leibnitz, who, in order to revive the spirit of distant expeditions, addressed himself to the ambition of princes, and whose political views have received a memorable application in modern times. At the moment in which Louis XIV. was preparing to carry his arms into the Low Countries, the German philosopher sent him a long memorial, to persuade him to renew the expedition of St. Louis into Egypt. The conquest of that rich country, which Leibnitz calls the Holland of the East, would favour the triumph and the propagation of the faith; it would procure for the Most Christian king the renown of Alexander, and for the French monarchy vast means of power and prosperity. After the occupation of Alexandria and Cairo, fortune would offer the conquerors some happy opportunity for restoring the empire of the East; the Ottoman power, attacked by the Poles and the Germans, and troubled by internal divisions, was ready to sink into ruin; Muscovy and Persia were already preparing to take advantage of its fall; if France put forth her strength, nothing would be more easy than to gather together again the immense heritage of Constantine, to dominate over the Mediterranean, to extend her empire over the Red Sea, over the Sea of Ethiopia, over the Persian Gulf, and obtain possession of the commerce of India; everything the most brilliant in the glory and grandeur of empires then presented itself to the imagination of Leibnitz; and this exalted genius, dazzled by his own idea, and allying his policy with the prejudices of his age, could see nothing greater than the conquest of Egypt, but the discovery of the philosopher’s stone: he beheld already, in a shortly distant futurity, the Christian religion flourishing again in Asia, the empire and the commerce of the East and the West divided between the king of France and the house of Austria and Spain, the world rendered peaceful, and governed by these two conquering powers!
After having developed the advantages of the vast enterprise he proposed, Leibnitz neglected none of the means that would be likely to secure the success or facilitate the execution of it. It was in this part of his memorial that he showed all the superiority of his genius; and when we read the account of the last war of the French in Egypt, we cannot but feel persuaded that Buonaparte was well acquainted with the plan of campaign addressed by Leibnitz to Louis XIV. But certainly this gigantic enterprise, whose result was likely to be more brilliant than either solid or durable, was less suited to a monarch guided in his policy by the sentiments of real greatness, than to the modern hero, always enamoured of an adventurous and romantic glory. Nevertheless, the ideas of Leibnitz, although not favourably received by the cabinet of Versailles, did not fail to produce a lively impression upon the statesmen of the seventeenth century. It is known likewise, that the king of France had already thought seriously of a war against the Turks; and we have reason to believe that Boileau alluded to all these projects of distant conquests, when he said in his epistle to the king:
Je t’attends dans six mois aux bords de l’Hellespont.[90]
The eloquence, or even the flattery of authors, could not induce princes to take up arms against the infidels; and the Crusaders finished, as they began, with pilgrimages. Among the celebrated pilgrims who repaired to the East after the holy wars, one of the most remarkable was Ignatius Loyola. He visited the holy places twice, and, like St. Jerome, would have ended his days in Palestine, if the Latin priests had not advised him to return into Europe, where he established the order of the Jesuits. As was the case before the crusades, princes mixed with the crowd of Christians who went to the Holy Land. Frederick III., before he ascended the imperial throne, went on a pilgrimage to the holy city. We still possess an account of the voyages which were made successively into Palestine by a prince of Radziwil, a duke of Bavaria, a duke of Austria, and three electors of Saxony, among whom was he who was the protector of Luther.
Pilgrims from the West were no longer received at Jerusalem, as in the early times, by the Knights of St. John, but by the Latin fathers of the order of St. Francis of Assisi, who devoted themselves to the guardianship of the holy sepulchre. Preserving the hospitable manners of ancient times, the guardian father himself washed the feet of travellers, and furnished them with the necessary assistance for their pilgrimage. Pilgrims embarked at Venice, where vessels were always ready to transport them to the coast of Syria. People could obtain all the benefits attached to the pilgrimage of the Holy Land, without quitting their homes; either by commissioning pious men who were sent beyond the seas, or cenobites who resided on the spot.
The greater part of the sovereigns of Christendom, after the example of Charlemagne, thought it consistent with their glory, not only to deliver, but to protect the city of Jesus Christ from the outrages of the Mussulmans. The capitulations of Francis I., renewed by most of his successors, contain[91] several conditions which contribute to secure peace to the Christians, with the free exercise of their religion in the East. In the reign of Henry IV., Deshayes, the ambassador from France to Constantinople, went to visit the faithful at Jerusalem, and conveyed to them the consolations of a charity worthy of royalty. The count of Nointel, who represented Louis XIV. at the court of the sultan of Turkey, also went into the Holy Land; and Jerusalem received in triumph the envoy of the powerful monarch, whose credit and renown were employed to protect the Christians beyond the seas.
Most of the princes of Christendom every year sent their tributes to the holy city; and in solemn ceremonies, the church of the Resurrection displayed the treasures offered by the kings of the West. The guardians of the holy places, who entertained and took charge of pilgrims, possessed nothing on earth; but the gifts of the faithful were for them like the manna of the desert, sent every day from heaven. By a species of miracle constantly renewed, the holy monuments of the Christian religion, for a long time defended by the armies of the West, having no longer any defence but religious remembrances, preserved themselves amidst the barbarous sectaries of Islamism: the security enjoyed by the city of Jerusalem made its deliverance less thought of. That which produced the spirit of the crusades in the eleventh century was, above all other causes, the persecution directed against pilgrims, and the state of misery in which the Christians of the East existed. When they ceased to be persecuted, and had fewer miseries to endure, lamentable accounts no longer awakened the pity and indignation of the western nations; and Christendom satisfied itself with addressing prayers to God for the preservation of peace in the places he had sanctified by his miracles. There was then a spirit of resignation[92] which took place of the enthusiasm of the crusades; the city of David and of Godfrey became confounded in the minds of Christians with the heavenly Jerusalem, and as sacred orators said, “it was necessary to pass through Heaven to arrive at the Holy Land,” it was of no use appealing to the bravery of warriors, but to the devotion and charity of the faithful.