“The urgency of this matter and the fact that this movement is daily gaining strength and spreading with extraordinary rapidity being taken into consideration by the Government, I submit, prompted by my loyalty, that the time for either measures of persuasion or those of force and severity have passed, and that, in order to obviate a still worse state of things, other more effective measures, more consonant with the times, should be adopted. I am awaiting your commands.”
The plan of the Palace was to crush the revolt with a great force of troops from Anatolia; but as straightforward methods by themselves never sufficed the Sultan’s advisers, underground devices were also employed. The Greek element in Macedonia on previous occasions had been found willing to join hands with the Turkish Government in the suppression of Bulgarian rebellions, so Munir Pasha, who had for some years been the Turkish Ambassador in Paris, was now sent to Athens to arrange for the organisation of Greek bands to attack the Moslem and Christian supporters of the Committee of Union and Progress. The Palace also attempted, by offers of full pardons, gifts, and promotions, to withdraw army officers from the revolutionary movement, and so leave the disorganised followers of the Committee of Union and Progress an easy prey for the forces that were to be brought against them. The thirty-eight young officers who had been arrested in Salonica and were imprisoned in the capital were released and pardoned. Thousands of officers in the army and navy were astonished to find themselves suddenly promoted, and decorations were distributed wholesale. The Palace entertained the foolish belief that every man has his price; but all this hypocritical benevolence was of no avail and only served to lay bare to the world the incompetence and panic of the Camarilla in the hour of danger.
It was decided to despatch no less than forty-eight battalions from Anatolia to overpower the disaffected Macedonian army, and had these Asiatic troops proved staunch there would have been a terrible shedding of blood. Twenty-seven of these battalions were transported by sea from Smyrna to Salonica, where they disembarked on July 16. The efforts of Dr. Nazim Bey and other agents of the Young Turk party had already, to a large extent, inoculated these troops with the revolutionary doctrines before they left Asia Minor, and from the moment of their embarkation at Smyrna the emissaries of the Committee were at work among them, testing the officers to find out who were of the revolutionary party and using persuasive arguments with the rank and file. Some of the regiments on reaching Salonica refused to proceed to Monastir and were isolated from the rest. The remaining regiments were marched to Monastir, and with them went officers who were initiates of the secret society, disguised as sherbet sellers, mollahs, and so forth, ever winning over adherents to the cause. It soon became clear that the bulk of the officers and men of this force were in sympathy with the troops whom they had been sent to slaughter, and that they would never fire upon their comrades of the Third Army Corps. These battalions that entered Monastir were soon persuaded to take the oath of allegiance to the Committee of Union and Progress.
The state of affairs in the third week in July may therefore be summed up as follows: The Government still nominally ruled and administered the three Vilayets of Monastir, Salonica, and Kosovo, but its authority had been reduced to impotence. In the chief military centre, Monastir, General Osman Pasha was in command, but, knowing the temper of his men, hesitated to attempt decisive action to crush the insurrection. The men of the Second and Third Army Corps, and of the regiments that had been brought from Anatolia, were either adherents of the Committee or wavering in their allegiance to the Government. It was unlikely that more than a small proportion of the troops would be found willing to fight the battles of the Palace. The Moslem and Bulgarian peasants, among whom arms had been distributed by the Committee of Union and Progress, were awaiting the word to take part in the general rising. Ten thousand Albanian warriors were in arms, eager to fall upon the supporters of the Despotism.
The one doubtful element of the population was the Greek. It appears that the Palace had not only sent Munir Pasha to Athens to seek the assistance of those intriguing subjects of King George who used to equip the brigand bands that had been the curse of Macedonia; but it also issued instructions to General Osman Pasha in Monastir to persuade the Greek bands within his district, by means of what bribes or promises I cannot say, to hunt down and capture Niazi and the other leaders of the insurrection. It is undoubtedly the fact that the Greek bands, assisted by hired Mussulman desperadoes, were displaying great activity at this period, and that the Greek clergy were directing a vigorous persecution of the Bulgarian exarchists. The Committee of Union and Progress dealt firmly with this one disturbing element in an otherwise peaceful and united country. For example, the Committee carried away the Greek Bishop of Vodena as a hostage and let it be known that he would be put to death in three days unless by that time all the bands in that neighbourhood had been broken up.
On July 22, by which time, as I shall show, the young Turk leaders had come boldly into the open to demand from the Sultan his abdication or a Constitution, the Committee of Union and Progress in Monastir issued a manifesto, of which copies were sent to the Greek Committee in Athens, the spiritual head of the Greek community in Monastir, and to the chiefs of the various Greek bands in the neighbourhood.
This manifesto, after stating that “the Yildiz, in opposition to the will of the people, had attempted to bring about a diversion against the Young Turk movement by effecting a union between the Hellenes and the Patriarchate, and with that object had sent Munir Pasha to stir up feeling in Greece against the Committee, and that this scheme had been attended with some success,” proceeded as follows: “You know that our Committee of Union and Progress, having worked in secret for the welfare of all races and creeds in Turkey, has now come forth to openly proclaim its aim—the winning of liberty for the nation. The tyrannical Government has sown the seeds of sedition and has brought about conflicts and bloodshed between the various races and creeds in the land. We being all brothers, working together for the salvation and happiness of the country, ask of you, our Greek fellow-countrymen, that you no longer use differences of race and creed as an excuse for the shedding of blood. If your real object is to obtain equality, well-being, and liberty, be with us and seek no outside advice; be even as our Bulgarian brothers, who by their sincerity and by their deeds have proved their sympathy for our high aims. If you will not unite with us, we ask of you at least to remain neutral, and we call upon you in the name of humanity to cease this shedding of blood. We warn you against the dangers of Hellenism. If you Greeks in the Monastir Vilayet do not put a stop to your Hellenic agitation, your brother Greeks in Anatolia, who are much more numerous than yourselves, will suffer as well as yourselves. Secret negotiations between the Yildiz and the Patriarchate will lead, not to your happiness, but to your injury and destruction. We advise our Greek brothers not to be deceived by these shameless artifices which the Yildiz has oftentimes practised. We ask that the Greek bands should no longer go hither and thither shedding blood in their mistaken racial and religious zeal. Let the Hellenes among them return to their homes in Greece. Let them scatter. It is also intolerable to us that these bands have low Moslems in their pay who commit atrocities. We will find out and kill these Moslems if they do not at once abandon the Greek bands. We call upon you to have these Moslems sent away, else with you will be the responsibility for the blood that will be shed, and you will be condemned by the civilised world. With much affection we invite our Greek compatriots to unite with us in striving for our main objects—the restoration of our Constitution and the gaining of equality for all. We cannot doubt that God, who has created us all, will grant success to those only who work for humanity and civilisation.”
AND now the hour was drawing near when Niazi was to be called upon to do the deed that would bring the insurrection to a head and send the Despotism tumbling down like a house of cards. Leaving Istarova on July 17, Niazi and his band of fedais set out for Resna. After a fatiguing march across the mountains (in the course of which the provisional administration was introduced into several friendly Moslem and Christian villages, and some détours had to be made in order to avoid collision with a battalion of chasseurs, whose officers and men, being strangers to the country and not members of the Committee, were likely to be dangerous) the band entered Labcha, the first village, it will be remembered, that Niazi had visited and organised on the day of his setting out from Resna. Here, as in Istarova, the fedais were among staunch friends and were enabled to sleep in security; there was no necessity for sending out patrols or for posting sentries, for these duties were performed by the villagers themselves, who were proud to guard the saviours of the nation as they rested. The village was also protected by a detachment of troops which, like many another little garrison in the three Vilayets, had mutinied, its officers and men becoming the sworn associates of the Committee.
On the following day, July 19, there was a great gathering of people in Labcha, wild hillmen, shepherds, deserters from the army, and others, who had come in to see Niazi and his band and to declare their readiness to take up arms for the Committee. Niazi addressed the people, told them how successful had been the mission of his own and of the other bands, and assured them that the sand had all but run out of the glass, and the day was very near when the Despotism would fall and liberty prevail. That glad day was indeed nearer than Niazi himself imagined; for that very evening there came a messenger into the village with a letter for Niazi from the Ochrida Centre of the Committee of Union and Progress. In this letter the Committee informed him that very important and grave intelligence had been received from Monastir, and ordered him to set out at once for Ochrida. He was to leave his band outside that town and come in alone to confer with the Committee and receive his instructions.
So soon as Niazi had read this letter he collected his men and made a forced march throughout the night, for all were eager to learn the nature of the duty which they were to be called upon to perform. Before dawn—July 20—the outskirts of Ochrida were reached, and Niazi, leaving his band, entered the town and went to the house of his brother, where the members of the Committee came to meet him. It was then explained to him that he and Eyoub Bey were to collect two thousand men from Ochrida and Resna, form them into two bands, and march on Monastir without delay. The detailed instructions as to what he was to do would be delivered to him before he reached that town.
As Niazi learnt later, the Committee of Union and Progress had decided that the time had arrived for it to make its great coup. The plan was simultaneously to proclaim the Constitution at Monastir and send an ultimatum to the Sultan, who would have to choose between constitutional government, abdication, and a bloody civil war. In the first place it was necessary for the Committee to secure the possession of Monastir, the head-quarters of the Government’s military strength in Macedonia, where General Osman Pasha, an able man who exercised a greater moral influence over his troops than did his predecessor, Shemshi Pasha, was still in command. The bulk of the troops in Monastir were adherents of the Committee, but there were also many ready to obey the orders of the General. It was realised that if Osman Pasha could be got out of the way the supporters of the Government would be demoralised, and the Committee might then be able to establish its authority without bloodshed. The killing of each other by Turkey’s Moslem soldiers was a calamity to be avoided. It was therefore decided to entrust to Niazi and Eyoub Beys the special duty of removing Osman Pasha from Monastir as suddenly and quietly as possible, so as to allow no time for the organisation of opposition.
To collect the necessary two thousand men was no difficult matter. In the first place it was decided to employ the very troops who had been the first to pursue Niazi and his band after the raising of the standard of revolt at Resna. This was a battalion of redifs of the Ochrida district which had been disbanded after its fruitless chase of the revolutionary leader, because the authorities rightly suspected that most of the men were adherents of the Committee of Union and Progress. So messengers were sent to the neighbouring villages to summon these disbanded soldiers—who had not yet given up their arms to the Government—to assemble at an appointed place outside Ochrida. Niazi with his band marched into his own country to collect the men of Resna, Persepe, and Labcha. Throughout the night of the 20th and throughout the following day he traversed the mountainous countryside, his band being ever increased by the accession of fresh volunteers who came to him generally in threes and fours, but occasionally in bodies of from forty to fifty men. Whenever the band passed through a village it was received with extraordinary enthusiasm, and the villagers brought presents of bread and cheese until each man was provided with two days’ rations, the supply which Niazi deemed to be necessary.
In the morning of July 21 Eyoub Effendi, with his Ochrida band of disbanded redifs and others, a thousand men in all, joined Niazi’s band at Labcha, and now the column formed by the two united bands set off in the direction of Monastir. After dark, as they were approaching their appointed night’s halting place, an incident occurred which is interesting as illustrating the manners and customs of the wild Albanian hillmen. The stillness of the night was suddenly broken by the sound of rifle-fire on the mountainside above the road; so Niazi sent out scouts to ascertain what was happening. It turned out that the Faragas and the Quapris, between which two tribes there had existed for ages a deadly blood feud, had each sent a band of about one hundred men to join Eyoub Bey’s battalion; these two bands met in the mountain, and what happened may be best described in Niazi’s own words: “It was indeed a sight worth witnessing—this meeting of the men of these two tribes, between whom there had been so intense an enmity, but who were now united, as with one heart, ready to die together for the sake of the same ideal. These tribesmen, who for two centuries had hated to see each other’s faces or to hear each other’s voices, and who had ever pursued each other with rifle-shots, had now, on meeting on the hillside, saluted each other with rifle-shots, and were eager, standing together as comrades, to use rifle-shots against the traitors and enemies of the fatherland.”
The column passed the night in the village of Gauchar, where many volunteers from the surrounding country joined the battalions of Niazi and Eyoub, bringing the force up to the strength of over two thousand men. The people gathered from the countryside to crowd the village streets throughout the night to honour and entertain the fedais with simple refreshments. All these people were prepared to risk everything in the civil war, the immediate outbreak of which they considered as inevitable.
On the following morning, July 22, the column marched under a blazing sun by the steep zigzag tracks that cross the precipitous ranges of Mount Pelista. At ten o’clock a halt was made, and the “National Battalion of Ochrida” under Eyoub Bey, and the “National Battalion of Resna” under Niazi Bey, were arranged in their roll-call order. There were twenty companies or bands in all, under twenty commanders, who included among them one lieutenant-colonel, several majors and captains, one doctor of medicine, and leading Beys of the Macedonian and Albanian land-owning class. Up to that moment these National troops had not been informed of their destination or of the object of the expedition. So now, while Eyoub enlightened his battalion, Niazi addressed the men of his own command. He explained how, in order to serve the beneficent Committee which was working for the salvation of the country, the men of his band had cheerfully given up comfort, and their wives and families, and had been ready to sacrifice their lives. “But now,” he said, “these hardships and troubles will soon be a thing of the past, and they have achieved their purpose well. Relying upon the success which God gives and the inspiration of the Prophet, we are now on our way to the head-quarters of the Vilayet of Monastir to carry into execution a most important command of the Committee. Within a few hours, if we are successful, we shall have delivered our country from its afflictions. Without hurting a hair of his head we shall take the Mushir (Field Marshal), Osman Pasha, from his residence so as to prevent him from carrying into effect the injuries which it is in his mind to inflict upon the Committee and the fatherland. May God enable us to perform this duty with complete success. It is therefore necessary, my comrades, that you should carry out the orders which you will receive, literally and implicitly. The strictest order and discipline must be maintained.”
The men rejoiced to hear what they were called upon to do, and, despite their fatigue, when the order to resume the march was given, they proceeded along the rough roads at the double, eager to reach Monastir as soon as possible. While the column was on its way, there came to it a most acceptable mascot in the shape of a young roebuck. It was accompanying a half-dozen or so of bashi-bazouks, who had with them a letter from the Committee at Monastir ordering that they should be admitted into Niazi’s band. They had found the roebuck in the hills, and as all Turks, even if they be savage bashi-bazouks, are fond of animals and are invariably kind to them, they caressed the creature and gained its confidence so well that it had followed them along the road. So this roebuck now became the pet of the column and marched at the head of it, fulfilling, says Niazi, the function of a guide, “for by some instinct it always ran on in the direction we had to go.” Niazi’s description of this incident well illustrates the kindly and religious sentiment of the Turks. “The soldiers,” he tells us, “caressed and blessed it, and thanked God who had sent us this beautiful animal, which fascinated all with its charming ways. We regarded its presence as a propitious sign, a divine message of approval of our enterprise.”
In the evening, the column, after an extraordinary forced march, reached a village which was within a few miles of Monastir. A halt was called so that the men could have a meal and rest; and here, as had been arranged, there arrived from Monastir Lieutenant Osman Effendi with fifty men, bringing a sealed letter for Niazi which contained the Committee’s detailed instructions for the execution of the plan. Once more Niazi impressed the necessity of silence, steadiness, and obedience on the men; the order was given to march, and the eager fedais hurried along the road, sandal-shod, and therefore almost noiselessly, at the double, and covered the few miles that lay between them and their destination in a very short time. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and there were but few citizens in the streets, when the column came to the outskirts of Monastir. Here the main body remained while eight hundred men, divided into several detachments, and guided by members of the Monastir Committee, passed into the town by various routes and quickly and silently approached and surrounded the group of buildings which contained the Government House, the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, and the official residence of General Osman Pasha. At the same time agents of the Committee cut the telegraph wires and so prevented the General from holding any communication with the Yildiz or with his own staff. The sentries guarding the General’s residence were quickly disarmed; only one man offered resistance, but he was pinioned before he could fire his rifle and give the alarm. Then two officers and some of the men of Niazi’s band broke into the room where the General was in bed sleeping, and he was awakened, not unnaturally furiously angry, to find himself the prisoner of the revolutionaries. In the meanwhile other bodies of men discovered and placed under arrest the Chief of the Staff, the Officer in Command of the Zone, and some other officers who were known to be no friends of the Committee of Union and Progress.
His captors assured Osman Pasha that his life was in no danger, but, while addressing him with all the respect due to his high rank, they courteously explained to him that their instructions were to escort him with all marks of honour to Resna, where he was to remain for a short time as the guest of the Committee of Union and Progress. Then they handed him a letter which had been drawn up by the Committee. It opened with the correct ceremonial salutations: “In the name of the most merciful and compassionate God. To His Excellency, Mushir, Osman Pasha. Peace be on you and the mercy of God. May God guide us and you.” Then the letter proceeded—in terms so polite and flattering that one wonders whether the Committee was indulging in sarcasm—to point out that the courage and ability with which God had endowed His Excellency ought to be used to direct armies to crush the enemies of the fatherland, and not to attack the nation itself; but that, unfortunately, His Excellency’s official appointment and the extensive powers and instructions that had been given to him by the Yildiz were calculated to induce him—no doubt against the dictates of his own conscience—to commit acts that might be injurious to the fatherland and cause the repetition of such regrettable events as occurred in Erzeroum (the Armenian massacres). His Excellency’s life, the letter explained, was precious to the country; when the Despotism had been changed for constitutional government his services might be required for the reform and reorganisation of the army. Consequently the Committee proposed to rescue His Excellency from his present awkward situation, and ventured to beg him to consent to become the Committee’s honoured guest; it trusted that he would not regard this as in any way bringing disgrace upon himself, and assured him that everything had been arranged that could safeguard his dignity and contribute to his comfort. It reminded him that opposition to the Committee’s will could not avail, for his house was surrounded, all officers on whose obedience he could rely were under arrest, while the troops in the town and all the inhabitants were adherents of the Committee.
Osman Pasha read this document without making any comment upon its contents, and asked whether he might go into the adjoining room to put on his clothes; but the two officers, fearing lest he might attempt suicide, were present while he dressed. Then the General left the house and, mounting a horse, was escorted by Niazi and his National Battalion of one thousand men to Resna, which was reached the following night, and here Osman was confined as an honoured prisoner in the house of one of the notables of the place.
On that day, July 23, Macedonia and Albania threw off the Despotism, and even as Niazi’s men were marching to Resna with their prisoner they heard behind them, far off, the sound of the cannon in Monastir that were saluting the Constitution. Niazi and his fedais had sworn not to return to their homes until their country had won its freedom, and now, having faithfully observed their oaths, he and many of his followers rejoined their rejoicing wives and families in Resna. Throughout the following day, July 24, Resna, like every other town and village in Turkey, presented an extraordinary spectacle. The people seemed to be mad with enthusiasm and delight. Turks, Bulgarians, Greeks, Servians, Wallachs were all as brothers. Several Bulgarian and Greek bands, one of the former led by the redoubtable Cherchis himself, tramped into Resna that day to take part in the universal jollification and fraternisation. Banners bearing the device, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Justice,” and national flags innumerable waved in the breeze, and all day long the people were shouting themselves hoarse with cries of “Long live the Nation!” “Long live the Army!” “Long live the Committee!” After a twenty-four hours’ halt in Resna, during which he was occupied in receiving the Christian band leaders and administering the oath to them, and making arrangements in case of a levée en masse of the people (for it was uncertain yet whether the Sultan would submit or plunge the country into civil war), Niazi, by order of the Committee, marched back to Monastir with the two hundred original fedais of his band, accompanied by Cherchis and other leaders of the Christian bands.
And here Niazi passes out of this story. I have given a somewhat full account of his wanderings, as the narrative will make clear the nature of the work that was done all over the country by those whose mission it was to gain the adherence of the civil population to the revolutionary cause; and I think that it also shows that those virtues without which no people can be great or worthy of any respect—patriotism, and the readiness to sacrifice self for a high ideal—are possessed in a high degree by the Moslem Turks. Niazi was the first young officer to take to the mountains, and it was to his lot that the most important work fell; but it needed many others like him to make the insurrection so universal as it was. Enver Bey and dozens of other young officers were doing the same work as Niazi and with like success in other parts of the country. The local Committees, too, appear to have been wonderfully organised and to have been directed by single-minded patriots of great ability who kept ever in the background, their names unknown, and took no part in the public rejoicings when the victory was won. Thus the Committees in Uskeb and Janina, by their diligent propaganda, respectively won over the allegiance of the Northern Albanians and the Southern Albanians at the same time that Niazi was gaining that of the Western Albanians. Niazi is essentially the soldier, simple and straightforward and not a politician, and, now that his mission at the time of his country’s peril has been successfully accomplished, he is back in his own province quietly fulfilling his military duties in the midst of troops who would follow him to hell, as our own private soldiers would put it.
ON the night of July 22, so soon as Osman Pasha had been made a prisoner, the members of the Monastir Centre of the Committee of Union and Progress proceeded to take over the government of the city and to secure the position that had been gained by Niazi’s coup. In the first place, the Committee sent a telegram to the Sultan himself (to the Presence of His Sacred Majesty, the Caliph), beseeching him to command the practical application of the Fundamental Law (the Constitution of 1876) in order that the loyalty and devotion of his subjects might remain unimpaired; and informing him that, unless an Iradé ordering the opening of the Chamber of Deputies was issued by the following Sunday—July 26—events would “occur contrary to your Royal will and pleasure.” The telegram concluded with the words: “The civil authorities, the officers of the army, the soldiers, the ulema, and sheikhs, the people great and small, of various creeds, within the Vilayet of Monastir, all united to work for one cause by an oath made upon the Unity of God, await your commands.” Another telegram was despatched to inform the head-quarters of the Committee in Salonica that the coup had been made with success, and during that night young officers posted manifestos on the walls in that city calling upon the people to co-operate with the Committee and overthrow the Despotism.
On the morning of July 23 the citizens of Monastir woke up to find that all signs of the Government’s authority had vanished, and that the Committee had become the undisputed master of the Vilayet. It was a day of frenzied rejoicings. The fifty thousand inhabitants of this city and thousands of people from the surrounding country packed the streets to cheer and sing the songs of liberty. Sometimes a narrow way would be opened through the dense crowd to allow the passing of companies of Anatolian troops joyfully marching to some appointed spot where they were to be sworn in on the Unity of God as adherents of the Committee; or of a body of citizens carrying aloft on their shoulders the fedais, the members of the Moslem bands that had saved Turkey, the heroes of the hour.
And ever and again there rose a roar of “Long live the Committee!” and the people went about seeking the members of the Committee, eager to do them honour and give them an ovation as they had done with the fedais. But the mysterious and invisible Committee was nowhere to be found. An absorbing curiosity got hold of the people. Who were the men, they asked themselves, who had acted on the executive of the Committee, the secret leaders who had issued the manifestos and orders, who had organised the movement with such skill and daring? But it was impossible to obtain any answer to this question. It was not until some days after the Sultan had granted the Constitution that Niazi himself was given the names of those who composed the Monastir Executive, and then he found that among them were some of his most intimate friends.
But on this wonderful day, July 23, the executive body of the Committee was too busily engaged on most important work to come forward and receive the congratulations that were its due; for much had yet to be done. The Committee decided not to await the Sultan’s reply to its demand, but to proclaim the Constitution that very day in Monastir, and it was held that the most fitting person to make this announcement to the people would be the Governor of the Monastir Vilayet himself, the Vali, Hifzi Pasha. The Vali, as we have seen, had been bold enough, a few days earlier, to tell the Palace the exact truth concerning the state of affairs in Macedonia. In reply to this the Grand Vizier had telegraphed to rebuke him for lack of zeal and to give him certain instructions. On this the Vali had sent in his resignation to the Grand Vizier on the ground that he would not be responsible for the bloodshed and outrages which must follow the execution of such orders. It was well known to the Committee that the Vali was a just and upright man whose sympathies were rather with the friends of liberty than with the Despotism which he served.
On the morning of the twenty-third the Vali openly joined the revolutionary party. He sent telegrams to the Sultan and the Grand Vizier informing them of the capture of Osman Pasha, and stating that the entire military force in Monastir and 3500 armed men from among the inhabitants were now the sworn adherents of the Committee. In the afternoon the Vali read out the Committee’s proclamation of the Constitution in the presence of tens of thousands of enthusiastic Moslems and Christians, and the garrison of Monastir; and then the cannon thundered out a salute that told the surrounding country that Turkey was to be made free at last.
On this same day the Central Committee in Salonica and the branch Committees in other towns came forward to give clear proof to the people that the domination of the Palace was over. The Constitution was proclaimed in Resna, Dibra, and other towns in Macedonia and Albania at the same hour that it was proclaimed in Monastir. In Salonica the Central Committee, which here, too, had the garrison on its side and the Government at its mercy, decided that it would be to the interest of the revolutionary cause to make as short as possible the period of uncertainty as to whether it was to be civil war or peace; the enemies of liberty must be allowed no time for preparation or intrigue. Accordingly, at an early hour on June 23, the Committee telegraphed its ultimatum to the Sultan, informing His Majesty that unless he granted the Constitution within twenty-four hours the Second and Third Army Corps would march upon Constantinople.
The Committee’s next step was to approach the Inspector-General, Hilmi Pasha (who was made Grand Vizier in February last), and to call upon him, as the highest Government official in Macedonia, to proclaim the Constitution to the people. Hilmi had been a good servant of the Sultan, but at heart he hated the corrupt Palace and its ways, and recognised the justice of the Young Turkey cause which he had been instructed to persecute, but had persecuted so half-heartedly that he had drawn upon himself the rebukes of the Grand Vizier, Ferid Pasha. Hilmi’s attitude was now correct and courageous. He told the Committee that though his sympathies were with the Young Turkey party, he was still the servant of the Sultan, and consequently could not proclaim the Constitution unless ordered to do so by his sovereign. Upon this the Committee informed him that unless he proclaimed the Constitution within twenty-four hours he would have to suffer the penalty—that is, to be put to death—that the telegraph lines were at his disposal and it behooved him, within the given time, to persuade the Sultan that resistance to the will of the people would be of no avail, and that His Majesty could only retain his position on the throne by the immediate restoration of the Constitution.
So Hilmi Pasha now sent telegram after telegram to the Palace to explain the exact state of affairs. He exposed the absolute hopelessness of the cause of the old régime—the two Pashas on whom the Sultan had relied to destroy the Committee of Union and Progress, Hilmi and Osman, were the prisoners of the Committee; the Anatolian troops that were to have stamped out the rebellion had become the sworn adherents of the Committee; the Second and Third Army Corps now formed the army of the Committee; of the First Army Corps in Constantinople itself the Palace Guards alone were above suspicion; there was no time to arouse the fanaticism of the Arabs and other Asiatics against the Young Turks; the action of the Anatolian regiments that had been brought to Salonica had proved that the Army Corps in Asia Minor had also been brought round to the side of the reformers; and lastly, from all over the Empire the news was coming in that Valis of provinces and other high officials had deserted the Palace Camarilla for the constitutional party.
That day the people of Turkey were rejoicing in their newly found liberty; but it was a twenty-four hours of suspense and anxiety for the men who knew that it rested on the decision of one old man as to whether it was to be peace or civil war. The ultimatum of the Committee and the telegrams of Hilmi Pasha were submitted to the Sultan by his terrified courtiers; but in the council chambers of the Yildiz, almost up to the last moment, there was hesitation and a conflict of opinions as to the course that should be adopted by the Government. There were, of course, members of the Camarilla, Izzet Pasha among them, who advocated resistance at any cost to the demands of the Committee, for these men, conscious of the evil they had wrought, knew that the Constitution would mean for them ruin and exile, and perhaps death.
But, in the meanwhile, the Sultan had dismissed his Grand Vizier, Ferid Pasha, and had summoned to his Palace Said Pasha and Kiamil Pasha, the two oldest, most experienced, and upright statesmen of his reign, both of whom, though no admirers of Palace methods, had been Grand Viziers, and both of whom had been in disgrace and danger of their lives through the monarch’s caprice and the jealousy of corrupt courtiers. The Sultan now appointed Said Pasha Grand Vizier in the place of Ferid Pasha. Throughout the day there had been fear and wrath and hesitation in the Yildiz, but on the evening of the twenty-third all the ministers were summoned to the Palace, and there was held the famous last State Council under the old régime. There was a long and anxious discussion, and to and fro between the Council and the Sultan went the Chief Chamberlain and other messengers, keeping His Majesty informed of the progress of the debate—a mere matter of form as laid down by the etiquette of the Palace, for, as every one there knew, the Sultan was in the adjoining chamber sitting on the other side of the curtain which alone divided him from his consulting ministers, and could hear every word that was spoken.
The night passed by, the morning was near, and the ministers were still debating. Said and Kiamil urged the necessity of yielding, and there were others who agreed with them; but Abdul Hamid inspired as much fear as ever in his advisers, and each of these, knowing of what things that listening man was capable when in a fit of anger, was afraid to be the first to utter the long-forbidden name “Constitution”; and the question was discussed in that ambiguous and circuitous fashion that Orientals understand so well how to employ. At last there was brought in to the Council Chamber on a litter the bedridden old Arab Court Astrologer, Abdul Houda, a favourite of the Sultan, who has recently died. He boldly put into plain words what was in the minds of all. Then Said Pasha asked the ministers whether it was their decision that the Sultan should be advised to grant the Constitution. To this they made no reply, and averted their eyes when he looked from one to another. Then, after a pause, Said quoted a Turkish proverb which is the equivalent of our own “Silence gives consent.” The Sultan was forthwith informed of the decision of his ministers, and to the relief of all he agreed without any demur to restore the Constitution; for the shrewd monarch had by now fully realised the position and had made up his mind.
So on the morning of July 24 the great news was telegraphed to every corner of the Ottoman Empire, and everywhere there were the same extraordinary demonstrations of popular joy. In Constantinople huge crowds, composed of Moslems, Christians, and Jews, flocked to the Yildiz to cheer the Sultan. On the broad quay of Salonica, Hilmi Pasha, to whom the Sultan’s decision had meant the withdrawal of his death warrant, read out the proclamation of the Constitution to tens of thousands of exulting citizens.
The Sultan had promised the Constitution, and all that remained to be done now was for him to issue the Iradé that should confirm that promise and to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Some days passed, and his Majesty had taken no steps to perform these necessary formalities. The ever-vigilant Committee of Union and Progress therefore saw to it that there should be no further delay, and issued its orders. Some Macedonian troops were hurriedly brought up to the capital and were placed outside the Yildiz, while a man-of-war was stationed in the Bosphorus immediately below the Palace, with its guns directed on it. Then some young officers belonging to the Committee demanded an audience of the Sultan and explained to him that he must sign the Iradé there and then, else the Macedonian troops would overpower the Palace Guard and seize his Majesty’s person. The Sultan yielded, the Iradé was signed, and shortly afterwards the Sheikh-ul-Islam administered to Abdul Hamid the oath by which he bound himself to restore, and to observe faithfully, the Constitution which he had violated thirty years before.
THE victory had been won; the Young Turkey party was triumphant; the Ottoman people had gained their liberty. There was complete individual liberty and liberty of the press; there were no more spies, no more domiciliary visits, no more oppression. In short, the Turks, who for a generation had been groaning under the crudest of Oriental despotisms, in one day became as free as the people of England, indeed in some respects considerably freer than them. Peace came of a sudden to this troubled land which had for so long been an inferno of implacable racial hatreds, all men went about in security, and the peasants were able to sow their fields knowing that they themselves would be the reapers. This was not as other revolutions; for though for a time there was no law in the land and no administration, there was no anarchy, there were no cruel reprisals, there were no excesses; the conduct of the entire population was admirable.
These revolutionaries, unlike those in some other lands, did not hasten, so soon as they had freed themselves of one despotism, to cast upon the country the still more galling chains of democratic tyranny. The people who made this revolution were the educated men in Turkey, all that was best in the country; and thus from the beginning this had been the most conservative of revolutions. There was nothing approaching to socialism or anarchism in this movement. The Young Turks, as I have already explained, have no theories about the reconstruction of society; they have no schemes for the benefiting of one class by the spoliation of another; they do not believe that one man is as good as another, or that manhood suffrage will bring the millennium. Like the English revolution of 1688, this one came from above and not from below. That the ignorant masses did not usurp the direction of the movement, and by discrediting it prepare the way for the restoration of the despotic power, was largely due to the fact that Turkey, fortunately for herself, has had her revolution before she has arrived at that stage of economic and industrial development when what we term the working-classes think out political and social theories or, rather, accept the views of the mischievous demagogues who mislead them. There is no class hatred in Turkey; there are no large manufacturing industries to produce hordes of discontented people in the big cities, and, so far, there are no agrarian questions to trouble the minds of the simple and pious Turkish peasantry.
Of the seventy thousand exiles who returned to Turkey from Europe and America after the proclamation of the Constitution there were of course some who had mixed with Russian anarchists, with internationalists and other political extremists, and had absorbed their theories; but these are in a small minority and exercise no appreciable influence. The same may be said of a certain set of well-to-do exiles who for years were idle Paris flaneurs, lost some of their Ottoman virtues, became poor patriots, and have now returned as dilettante politicians, some of them to join the party which advocates a thorough-going home rule all round for the various races of Turkey—a programme detestable to the more earnest Young Turks, who realise that such a policy would lead to the certain disintegration of the Empire.
But it is of the attitude of the people themselves and not of the politicians that I wish to speak in this chapter. When the Ottomans of all races and creeds suddenly found themselves free they became filled with an exceeding joy, a new sentiment of brotherhood, and a profound gratitude to the saviours of the country, the Committee of Union and Progress, that took the practical form of implicit obedience to the Committee’s mandates, so that it had little difficulty in preserving order. All over the country there were great demonstrations and rejoicings of enthusiastic and good-natured crowds, that touched foreign spectators of these scenes and compelled the sympathy even of the cynically inclined. In the streets and cafés and tramcars of the capital, wherein men had been wont to meet in silence, each suspecting the other, strangers, united by a common joy, now spoke to each other freely and in kindly fashion. It was a reign of universal amity, and it seemed as if all that is best in human nature had come to the top. European witnesses have described the wonderful fraternisations of men of all races and creeds: how Turks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Jews harangued sympathetic crowds in the streets of the capital, preaching peace and good will among men; how even in Beyrout, notorious for the massacres of Christians under the late régime, Christian priests and turbanned mollahs embraced publicly before fraternising mobs of Moslems and Armenians; how in the same city the Turkish commander with his officers and troops attended a service in the Armenian church to lament over the massacres of their Christian fellow-countrymen; and how, with the same object, crowds of Moslems in Stamboul went to the Armenian cemetery to pray and place flowers upon the graves of those who had been slaughtered by the orders of the Palace. It was the same in Jerusalem, where the various Christian sects—hitherto kept from flying at each other’s throats by the bayonets of the Moslem soldiery—now made friends and joined in processions with Mussulmans and Jews.
In Salonica, the head-quarters of the revolution, there were scenes of intense national rejoicing that astonished European observers. The Bulgarian, Greek, and other leaders of bands, the Albanian brigand chiefs, and all their followings of ferocious outlaws of the hills, on whose heads there had been a price for years, men of different races who since boyhood had been burning each other’s villages and killing each other’s women, flocked into the town to submit to the Committee, to be reconciled to one another, and to become the friends of the Moslem Turks. Sandansky himself, the king of the mountains, the most formidable of the Bulgarian leaders of bands, came in, harangued the crowds on liberty, fraternity, and justice, and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. All these fighting men, who had spread terror through Macedonia and Albania, clad in the picturesque dress of Europe’s wildest and least known regions, forgot civil war and blood feuds, fraternised with each other and with the Turkish soldiery, marched down the streets roaring the songs of liberty, hobnobbed together over cups of coffee, and sometimes mastic and raki, in the cafés, embraced each other, and swore to be brothers.
I was in Salonica four months after Turkey had won her freedom, and the national jubilation had not yet subsided; it was everywhere exultation and good-fellowship. Here, in this city of many races, I found myself surrounded by a refreshing atmosphere of joyous delight in the new-found liberty. From the window of my hotel I looked out upon the busy quay and the blue sea that stretched to the snows of Olympus. Along this quay passes most of the life of the town, and at frequent intervals something happened in front of me to remind me of the revolution and of the keenness of the people. Now it was a procession of Christians and Mussulmans fraternising and singing patriotic songs on their way to the railway station to cheer a newly elected Deputy who was starting for Constantinople; now it was a body of troops of the Macedonian army marching through crowds which hailed them as their liberators; now a battalion paraded on the quay to be exhorted by some general before embarking for Constantinople, for at that time the Young Turks were despatching more of their faithful troops to the capital, determined to be in readiness should the forces of reaction reassert themselves; now it was the return from over the water of some exile of despotism to the friends and relatives who had not seen him for years. Thus one morning I saw a flag-decorated tender come off from a newly arrived steamer and land on the stage in front of me the Albanian General, Mehmed Pasha, just freed from a long exile in Baghdad; he was welcomed with shouts and clapping of hands by the large crowd of Albanians and others who had come to escort him to his house.
There were most affecting sights, too, to be seen in those early days of liberty. When it was decreed that political prisoners should be liberated, the gates of the prisons were thrown open, and out poured, in their thousands, the captives of the Despotism, to be received by crowds of deeply moved sympathisers. Many of these unfortunate men had been confined for years in cells but twelve feet square, and came out into fresh air and sunshine dazed and weak in mind, like the prisoner of the Bastille in Dickens’ famous story, to be led home by relatives and friends. Here one would see outside the prison door a husband and wife greet each other with tears of joy after years of separation, and here some poor wretch, with spirit long since tortured out of him, weeping miserably as he wandered to and fro because no dear ones had come to meet him, and he realised that they had died while he was in captivity.
It was pleasant to observe the confidence and pride of the population in the Young Turk leaders, who had sacrificed so much for liberty and justice. The patriotism of the people of Salonica was then being displayed in various ways. Large sums were being collected to supply comforts to the troops who throughout the winter were to guard the northern frontier against any attack on the part of Turkey’s enemies, and a movement had also been started in the town, which, if it spreads far enough, may relieve the Government of some of its embarrassments. Officers of the garrison and civil servants of all grades, reading of the depleted treasury and the heavy burden of the floating debt, were abandoning their claims to their arrears of pay, because, as they said, their country needed the money. Deputies, also, were refusing to accept their travelling allowances.
For one who knew Turkey under the old régime it was very interesting, in Constantinople, to observe the outward signs of the great change which had come to the country, and to note the attitude of a population which found itself suddenly in the enjoyment of the widest liberty. In most countries, after such a revolution, the people would have been intoxicated with their new freedom; the forces of disorder would have been let loose; there would have been, for a while, a condition approaching anarchy. But Constantinople is not like other European capitals, and it took its revolution in a sensible fashion. All the old restrictions had been swept away; but liberty had not broken into license. Though there was no longer a censorship of printed matter, the Turkish press observed a dignified moderation in its tone. For the first time the comic papers were free to publish political caricatures in which the highest personages were represented; but if one might judge from such as were exhibited in the windows of the newspaper shops, there was nothing offensive in these somewhat crude pictures. Large crowds attended political meetings in the capital; but there was no disturbance of the peace and there was no need for the presence of the police or the troops, save when the Greeks, who are never happy unless they have some real or imaginary grievance to make a noise about, made demonstrations during the elections. People now enjoyed the right to form themselves into associations, but one heard of no anarchical societies; and apparently the first result of this new privilege was that the Turkish temperance reformers availed themselves of it to establish a total abstinence league in Cæsarea.
But, as might be expected, the interregnum between the withdrawal of the authority of the old régime with its severe code and its armies of spies, and the reorganisation of the police and other departments by the Young Turks was taken advantage of to some extent by the ignorant and lawless. At the beginning of the revolution all prisoners, including the criminals, were released from the gaols—probably because it was impossible in many cases to ascertain whether the offence for which a man had been confined was a political one or otherwise. The restrictions on the sale and carrying of fire-arms were also removed, with the result that revolvers in tens of thousands poured into the city and were at once bought up. A large proportion of the population carried revolvers and also let them off; men practised with them in the streets; accidents were frequent; and in some quarters of the city, especially in the poorer Greek quarters, it was not unusual to hear a regular fusillade going on at night, generally in honour of something or other, or to spread the news that a house was on fire. Robbery with violence in the streets certainly increased after the revolution. But, notwithstanding all this, it could not be fairly said that Constantinople was a dangerous place to walk about in at any hour; and indeed, when it is remembered what a lot of cosmopolitan blackguardism there is in that city of over a million inhabitants, it is astonishing that there was so large a measure of security for life and property.
It was natural, too, that Turks of the poorer and more ignorant class should be under the impression that this new constitutional liberty meant that each man was free to do what he liked—a common error which before long was eradicated from the minds of this naturally law-abiding people by the Young Turk administration. Thus many thought that the Constitution wiped out the liability to pay any private debts incurred before the revolution. In the country, peasants came to the conclusion that they would no longer be called upon to pay taxes; in the towns the contrabandists sold their smuggled tobacco openly; and in Constantinople itself the popular conception of liberty produced some amusing results. The firewood sellers were to be seen calmly chopping up their logs in the middle of a busy thoroughfare; pavements were often blocked with the wares of the hawkers; and others in like manner carried on their avocations in public; so that the narrow, crowded streets and the Galata Bridge, difficult enough to traverse in the days of the old régime, became almost impassable. This sums up the inconveniences of the interregnum; they were wonderfully few and trifling when one bears in mind what a revolution this had been.
It was, of course, difficult for the Young Turks to reorganise the police and carry out administrative reforms until Parliament met; for the provisionary Ministry was naturally disinclined to accept much responsibility. But in the meanwhile, though there was a little license in small matters, the people were made to understand clearly that the Committee would stand no nonsense. This was proved at the time of the coaling strike in Galata not long after the proclamation of the Constitution. The men, having struck once and obtained the concession of their demands, came to the conclusion that under the new Constitution they were free to extort what they pleased and terrorise the population; so they struck again for a prohibitive rate of wage which would have closed the port to commerce. It was a critical time: the Young Turks were on their trial; their movement had been represented by their enemies as anarchical; their cause would be lost were they to fail to preserve order among the populace. It must be remembered that this was not only the question of a strike, but of probable rioting of so serious a nature that it might have caused European intervention; for these labourers who coal the ships at Galata belong to that rabble of Kurds and other Mussulmans of the lowest class which is only too ready, on a hint from the Palace, to set about massacring Armenians and other Christians.
It therefore behooved the Young Turks to prove that they could rule men, and they did so. Two young officers rode boldly, unescorted, into the middle of a dangerous crowd of the strikers, and by their firm attitude compelled the men to listen to them. First they tried persuasion, and pointed out to the strikers that by their action they were prejudicing the cause of freedom which they had so loudly acclaimed but a few days before. But the men would not be persuaded and refused to go back to their work. Then the two officers changed their attitude. One, drawing his revolver, reminded the men that under the old régime the soldiers would have been sent to throw them into the water or cast them into prison! “And as you are conducting yourselves as friends of the old régime, so shall you be treated,” he exclaimed. “I will come down here to-morrow and ask you to return at once to your work. I will with my own hand shoot down the first man who refuses to do so, and the rest of you will be swept into the sea or into prison.” The next morning the two officers rode to the quay followed by a body of cavalry. The strikers knew that what had been said was meant, and quietly went off to work, and there has been no trouble since with this dangerous element of the population.
Indeed, the Committee, by its firmness and justice, made itself loved of the people, who at last came to obey its orders without question. Thus, when the Committee enjoined the strict boycott of Austrian trade, while at the same time forbidding the populace to molest or insult Austrian subjects, a wonderful thing happened. The Austrians were able to go about the streets in perfect safety; and the Austrian shops remained open, but no one would buy of them, however cheaply they offered their goods. The rough and ignorant Kurds who do the coaling and also earn their living as lightermen and as porters in Galata, and the poor Jews who do the same work in Salonica, to a man enforced the boycott, though it meant for them a great falling off in their small wages, and short commons for their families. Thus no Constantinople boatman would take a passenger off to an Austrian steamer, or carry him on shore from it when he reached his destination. These steamers had to use their own launches for the embarkation and disembarkation of passengers; and the person who had sailed under this tabooed flag sometimes found himself in a sorry plight even after he had been landed on a Turkish quay, no porter being willing to carry his baggage. But in February last, so soon as the Governments of Turkey and Austria had arranged their differences, the Committee of Union and Progress gave the word that the boycott should cease; and cease it did within an hour of this order: the boatmen, porters, lightermen, and dock labourers in every port in Turkey coming out as one man to work again for the Austrians.
In the cities and in the countryside all seemed to be going well with the cause of the Young Turks; but foreigners who observed this harmonious opening of the new régime and this extraordinary fraternisation of men of different races and creeds hitherto irreconcilable asked themselves how long this reign of universal friendship could last, and whether this falling into each other’s arms of Turks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and others was due to any sentiment more deep and permanent than the joyous intoxication caused by this unaccustomed wine of liberty. Like other Englishmen in Turkey at that time, I came to the conclusion that the Young Turks were quite sincere; that they were honestly desirous to have done with internal strife, to give equality to all the elements of the population, and to live in peace and friendship with their non-Moslem fellow-countrymen. The Armenians and Jews have proved their sincerity by cooperating loyally with the Young Turks throughout the parliamentary elections and since. Of the Macedonian Christians the bulk had become weary of bloodshed and the internecine conflict that had brought nothing but suffering and ruin to the population; and there was no insincerity about the friendly relationship that sprang up between the sturdy Bulgarian leaders of fighting bands and their former foes, the Turkish officers, for they respected each other. The civil warfare in Macedonia had been deliberately fomented by the machinations of the Palace gang, to whom the doctrine of divide et impera was ideal statesmanship, and to the intrigues of Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece. There is no reason why, if left alone, these peoples might not dwell together in peace. A short time since a mollah, addressing the people, said, “Before the reign of Abdul Hamid the Moslem and Christian mothers used to nurse each other’s children.” But will these Macedonian peoples be left alone by Palace agents of reaction, by those Great Powers whose interests are opposed to the creation of a strong and independent Turkey, and by the greedy little neighbouring states?
It is, of course, too much to hope that constitutional government has put a sudden end to the religious and racial strife in Macedonia. The Greeks in the country have already demonstrated the illusiveness of such an expectation. The Greeks, like the others, welcomed the Constitution and fraternised with their Ottoman fellow-countrymen. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment they may have been sincere in their protestations of brotherhood, but one suspects that the mental reservations were at the back of their brains all the while. If one misjudges them in this, then their own actions and the utterances of their press belie them. In the hour of national jubilation they supplied the one discordant note. One of the first uses that they made of the freedom which the Young Turks had won for them was to boycott and insult the Bulgarians in Salonica, and the news came that the Greek clergymen in the interior were once more persecuting the Bulgarian exarchists, and had drawn up prescription lists of the leading Bulgarians with a view to getting them assassinated. The Greek element of the population, as might be expected, was the first to express dissatisfaction with the policy and administration of the Young Turks. The intolerant and often mischievously active Greek Patriarchate in Constantinople, which denied the Bulgarians the use of their own language, supported the Greeks in clamouring for much more than was their due. Their idea of Ottoman citizenship, so far as themselves were concerned, was to avoid all the obligations of that citizenship, while enjoying all the rights conferred by it and retaining all their special privileges intact. They seemed to think that the government of Turkey should be in their hands. During the elections it was they alone who provoked rioting and at Smyrna they created a dangerous disturbance with their armed mobs.
DURING the four months’ interregnum between the granting of the Constitution and the opening of Parliament, the Committee of Union and Progress was the undisputed ruler of Turkey. It dictated to the monarch what his decrees should be, it moved armies, it removed and appointed ministers, governors of provinces, and other high officials. These untried young men who formed the Committee, while introducing a new order of things and protecting their country against the numerous dangers that threatened to destroy the newly gained liberty, displayed a wisdom, tact, moderation, shrewdness, and foresight that were astonishing to foreign observers. They maintained order with firmness, greatly assisted in this by the dignified self-control and patriotism of the people themselves. Though they and thousands of others had suffered much from the cruelty and rapacity of the Despotism and its parasites, they displayed no vindictiveness; they punished only the most guilty of these; removed only those who showed by their actions that they were a source of danger to the Constitution; and they frankly forgave the others. The relations of Turkey with foreign Powers were directed by them with a tactful and resourceful statesmanship. Their mistakes were remarkably few.
From the beginning they showed their fitness to rule. The avowed object of the Young Turks had been to depose the Sultan, and when they offered him the alternative of acceptance of the Constitution or abdication, they had little expectation that he would submit to their conditions. But when the astute Sultan did submit in a very graceful manner, protesting that he was a believer in a constitutional form of government, and posing as if he and not the revolutionary party had brought the boon of liberty to his subjects, the Young Turks showed their statesmanship by as graciously accepting the situation, and became once more the loyal subjects of a constitutional monarch, whose cleverness and diplomatic experience, if he would now use them rightly, might be of great service to his country and his people. The Sultan is the Commander of the Faithful to millions of Mussulmans, and had the Committee attempted to depose him at that critical time a long civil war might have resulted. So Abdul Hamid was left on the throne of Othman, nominally ruling, to outward seeming popular with the people, who cheered him enthusiastically whenever he appeared in public. But the Young Turks had not forgotten how Abdul Hamid, in 1878, destroyed the Constitution which he had sworn to uphold, so that power behind the throne, the Committee of Union and Progress, remained ever watchful, as the strong guardian of the people’s liberties.
I will now briefly sum up the results of the Committee’s energetic action during the few weeks immediately following the proclamation of the Constitution. In the first place it had to make itself as strong as possible so as to combat the reactionary intrigues that were working for the restoration of the Despotism. It therefore set itself to establish its hold on the army, to obtain the sanction of the Moslem religion, and to complete the pacification of Macedonia. It took the precaution of removing from the Second and Third Army Corps all officers suspected of reactionary views, and concentrated the bulk of the troops loyal to the Constitution at Adrianople, within striking distance of the capital, where, at any rate, a considerable portion of the First Army Corps and the Sultan’s Prætorian Guard only needed the word from the Palace to become the instrument of the reactionaries. Later on the Committee was able to obtain the removal of most of the battalions of the Imperial Guard from Constantinople and to replace them with troops from Salonica, thus securing the Committee’s domination in the capital.