What could be more aggravating to a greedy impressionist than to have sat nearly two years in Constantinople, to have watched the amicable revolution of 1908, to have been one of a privileged few to assist at the reopening by Abd ül Hamid of the parliament he suppressed thirty-two years ago, and then to have been caught in an ignoble Florentine pension, among ladies passionate after pictures, when the mutiny of April 13 broke out in Stamboul? And nothing, from the meagre Italian telegrams, was more difficult to make out than the origin of that mutiny. Had the Committee of Union and Progress made the mistakes their friends had feared? Had the opposition liberals been unconsciously playing into the hands of reactionaries? Had the Sultan, who appeared to swallow the revolution in so lamblike a manner, merely been lying low? The only thing was to go back and find out, and to get what reparation one could by seeing the end of the affair—if end there were. For it must be recorded against the sagacity of impressionists, or of one particular impressionist, that he thought nothing at all might happen.

The first hint of anything to the contrary came from a Neue Freie Presse, obtained at a Croatian railway-station, which announced that by the 19th a Macedonian army would concentrate at Chatalja, some twenty-five miles from Constantinople. The 19th was the next day, and I was due in Stamboul on the morning of the 20th. There might, then, be sights to see on the way. I had a further hint of them after getting into the Constantinople sleeper that night at Belgrade. Two men were already in bed in the compartment, and before morning I became conscious of the porter telling one of them in Turkish that he must change for Salonica in twenty minutes. I told myself that he must be a Young Turk hurrying back from Europe to take part in—what? I had the strangest sense, as we whistled through the dark toward Nisch, of forces gathering silently for an impending drama.

We spent the next day crawling through Bulgaria, along that old highway of the empire where Janissaries march behind the sacred banner of the Prophet no more. Being no master of Slavic languages, I was dependent on our polyglot porter for news. This gloomy individual, a Greek from Pera, gathered assurance with each kilometre—and they were not few, for the philanthropic Baron Hirsch, who was paid for each one, put in as many of them as he could—that his family had been massacred. He looked for confirmation of his fears at Moustafa Pasha. We reached that humble frontier station about ten o’clock that night. There was no news, but there were soldiers of a new kind, sturdy fellows in moccasins and white leggings, who strode up and down between tracks with a businesslike air entirely different from the usual Moustafa Pasha military. I was to see more of those white leggings.

I got up early the next morning, in order to steal a march on the lavatory. The porter, gloomier than ever, assured me that I need not have taken the trouble. We had been delayed by troop trains and could not reach Constantinople much before noon. That began to look interesting. I must confess, though, that the interest paled as we stood still—and breakfastless—at a small way station for something over an hour, with no apparent reason. The reason became apparent at the station following, where we overtook a long train of freight-cars. Their freight consisted of horses, of camp baggage, and notably of soldiers, many of them in moccasins and white felt leggings bound with black. Many others wore the strong pointed slippers of the country, with the counter turned under their heels, and white felt Albanian skull-caps. All of them were friendly, curious as to a train so much more comfortable than their own, and good-humouredly willing to be photographed. A whitecap who led a party of inspection through our sleeping-car explained to his companions why I could not instantly present them with their portraits. He did a little photography himself, he told me; also that he was by profession a municipal clerk in Macedonia, although for the moment a volunteer. I asked him, in my ignorance, what side he was on and what he was going to do. “We are for liberty,” he answered gravely. “We are going to kill Sultan Hamid. In Stamboul the great men sit and eat pilaf while we starve. We have had enough.” And that was the general chorus. “Papa Hamid is finished,” said a young officer whom I later met again in Stamboul. It was clear what the Macedonians thought of the situation. The Sultan had had his chance and he had lost it.

The troop train left us to meditate for two or three hours on a siding, but toward noon we renewed acquaintance with it—at Chatalja. That name had yet to become a household word. Nevertheless I looked with considerable interest at Chatalja, where the rumoured concentration should by this time have taken place, where already existed the line of fortifications that was to save Constantinople in 1912, and where of old a Byzantine wall ran from sea to sea. Of Byzantine walls however, of modern fortifications, or of concentrating armies, there was no sign. There was merely a red-brown wooden station, a dusty road, a scarce less dusty coffee-house beyond it, a group of quarantine shanties farther away, and on a low rim of green that lifted itself against the April blue something that looked like a ruined watch-tower. For the study of this simple mise en scène not less than five hours were afforded us. The slightest incident, accordingly, assumed a grave importance. A plump person in shoulder-straps rattled down the dusty road in an ancient landau. Was he the generalissimo of the investing army? I later had occasion to learn that he was not. A naval officer appeared from somewhere and was fervently embraced by the officers of our troop train. He might be bringing them assurance of the loyalty of the fleet. In fact, I believe he did. Two individuals in black robes and white turbans were brought in under guard of a new kind of soldier, smart fellows in lightish blue. I was told that the priests were agitators who had been caught trying to corrupt the soldiers, while their captors belonged to the famous Macedonian gendarmerie. And after our troop train had gone another one came, gaily decorated with boughs and flags. The men were all volunteers—Albanians, Bulgars, Greeks, Jews, Vlachs. But there was nothing of the tyro in the way they carried their rifles and cartridge belts. I have no doubt that many of them were ex-brigands and komitajis, turned into patriots by the mutiny at Constantinople. And excellent patriots they made, poor fellows, many of whom were killed four days later in the city to which they went so light-heartedly.

So the day passed, with long stops, with short advances, with pangs of hunger which a disgusted Orient Express—itself some nine hours late—reluctantly consented to appease, with melodramatic rumours of battle, and with a final sight of soldiers making a thin black ant trail over a bare hill. Night came upon us in the green valley of Sparta Kouleh, at the end of which a gleam of the Marmora was visible, and the Bithynian Olympus ethereal with snow. A bonfire reddened the twilight in front of us, soldiers were singing not far away, frogs or tree-toads made a silver music in the distance. To what grim things, I wondered as we so mysteriously waited, did nature make this soft antithesis? At last a long train, fifty-seven empty freight-cars, rumbled out of the dark from the direction of the city. We then started on again, stopping only to take on and let off officers at way stations, and reached town, fourteen and a half hours late, at half past ten.

Expectation, after a checkered approach, had been raised to a pitch. But Constantinople proved a most singularly beleaguered city. I perceived that when I saw a couple of Macedonian officers get off the train with me. I perceived it again when I passed the customs with an unaccustomed ease and drove away through streets that gave no hint of siege. Still more clearly did I perceive it during the three long days that followed my arrival. Beleaguering there was, for rumour peopled the fields of Thrace with advancing thousands, and Hüsseïn Hüssnü Pasha, commander of operations at the front, issued manifestoes. To the garrison he offered immunity on condition of their taking a solemn oath of obedience before the Sheï’h ül Islam. To those of the populace not implicated in the late uprising he promised security of person and property. And both apparently made haste to put themselves on the right side. Deputation after deputation went out to the enemy’s camp in token of surrender. The War Office made plans for provisioning the invaders. Parliament assembled at San Stefano in the shadow of the Macedonian camp, and the fleet followed suit. At the same time the air was tense with the feeling that first came to me when the porter of my sleeping-car called that unknown passenger at Nisch. What was going to happen? It was an indication of the colour of people’s thoughts that the outgoing steamers were crowded during those days, and panics ran through the town like rumours. Some one would shout: “They are coming!” The streets would instantly fill with the rush of feet, the clang of closing shutters.

On Friday, the 23d, I went to Selamlîk. I also wrote a last will and testament before doing so, which I left with careless conspicuousness on my desk, for there was much talk of bombs and depositions. So much was there that in the diplomatic pavilion, to which I was admitted by courtesy of our embassy, no heads of missions were present. There were also fewer general spectators than usual, and they were kept at a greater distance. Otherwise the ceremony took place with its old pomp. I missed the handsome white Albanian and the blue Arab zouaves, recently expelled from the imperial guard; but the dark-blue infantry, the black-and-red marines, the scarlet-pennoned lancers, the matched cavalry of Daoud Pasha, a brown battalion of sappers, and even a detachment of the Salonica sharpshooters, marched up the hill with sounding brass. Before they had quite banked up the approaches to the Palace and the mosque the sun, breaking from morning clouds, brought out all the colour of that pageant set for the last time. Toward noon five closed court carriages of ladies drove slowly down the avenue, surrounded by solemn black eunuchs, and turned into the mosque yard. A group of officers in gala uniform took their places in line opposite the diplomatic pavilion. At their head stood Prince Bourhan ed Din, the Sultan’s favourite son. His presence excited no little interest, for it had been reported that he had run away. He looked unusually pale. Suddenly the müezin’s shrill sweet cry sounded from the minaret and the bands began to play the Hamidieh March. Then the Sultan’s cortège—of brilliant uniforms on foot, of trusty Albanian riflemen, of blue-and-silver grooms leading blooded chargers—emerged from an archway in the Palace wall. Abd ül Hamid, in a hooded victoria drawn by two beautiful black horses, sat facing Tevfik Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the moment, and his son Abd ür Rahim Effendi. He looked bent and haggard, the more because his sunken cheeks were so palpably rouged. As he passed under the terrace of the diplomatic pavilion he glanced up to see if any of the ambassadors were there. The fact that none of them were was afterward said to have irritated him intensely. He did not betray it, at all events, as he passed down the avenue, saluting right and left to his cheering soldiers. After leaving his carriage at the mosque door, where his little son Abid Effendi waited quaintly in the uniform of an officer, he turned and saluted again before going up the steps.

When the bowed figure disappeared it was as if a spring were suddenly let go. Guards and spectators alike relaxed from a tension. There had been no bomb. There had been no irruption of invading armies. There had been no sign of disloyalty among troops who were supposed to have gone over to the Macedonians. Indeed, they had cheered as I never heard them except at the Selamlîk after the re-establishment of the constitution. It did not look very much as if Papa Hamid were finished, to quote my Macedonian officer. It looked, on the contrary, as if what an aide-de-camp whispered might be true—that Papa Hamid took the famous beleaguering as a bluff, and proposed to call it. The situation became more equivocal than ever.

In the meantime big English tea baskets were brought up the avenue, and the soldiers were served with tea, coffee, and biscuits at the expense of a paternal sovereign. Then a bugle sounded and they jumped to attention, gulping down last mouthfuls as the imperial carriage left the mosque. The Sultan returned with the same ceremony as before, except that Bourhan ed Din Effendi accompanied him. After he had entered the Palace the troops dispersed in review order, marching up one side of the avenue to the Palace gate and marching down the other. When most of them were gone the Sultan appeared for a moment at a window overlooking the terrace of the diplomatic pavilion. Again he was enthusiastically cheered.

It was for the last time. But the situation seemed to clear. That afternoon Mahmoud Shefket Pasha, generalissimo of the Macedonian forces, whom I did not see at Chatalja, issued the first of a notable series of manifestoes. He announced his assumption of command at the front and his intention to punish only those responsible for the late disturbance. One phrase attracted particular attention. He said: “Certain intriguers, in fear of punishment, have spread the rumour that the above-mentioned forces have arrived in order to depose the sovereign. To these rumours I oppose a formal denial.” Every foreign correspondent in Constantinople thereupon telegraphed to his paper that the Salonica troops would make a peaceful entry into the city and that Abd ül Hamid would remain on the throne.

The next morning, Saturday, I was roused before six o’clock by a member of our country household. “I don’t know,” he said, “but do you hear anything?” I listened. I heard a light air in the garden trees, a pervading twitter of birds. Then it seemed to me that I heard something else in the distance, something faintly crackling, followed occasionally by something more deeply booming. It sounded like firing, and I suddenly remembered my friends of the white leggings. Yet the morning was so delicious, the sky was so soft, the garden so full of birds. By the time I got down to the wharf a few people were gathered there, talking gravely in low voices. The shots we heard did not altogether break the tension of the last few days. My friend the ticket seller gave me serious advice. “Go back to your house,” he said. “Sit in your garden, and be at peace. Lead falls into the sea like rain at Beshiktash. No steamers run. They have all been sent back.” I was disinclined to believe him. It seemed incredible that anything particular was happening—on such a day, after so many overtures to the Macedonians. Among those at the scala I saw Habib the boatman, whom all men know for a liberal and a reader of papers. “Habib,” I said, “let us row to the city. It is necessary for me to go, and there seem to be no steamers. I will pay you a dollar.” Habib regarded me as one might regard a lunatic for whom one entertains friendly sentiments. “Effendim,” he replied, “what do you say? They are fighting at Yîldîz, and not for one or for many dollars will I go. What have you to do in town to-day?” I began to be rather annoyed. I had to get some films, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t, if they were fighting at Yîldîz. It didn’t occur to me that there could be trouble anywhere else in the town. But neither boat nor boatman could be induced to go down the Bosphorus.

I climbed Hissar hill again, to warn the rest of a town-going household of the situation and to collect recruits for a forced march of seven miles across country. They were not difficult to obtain. Three of us were starting for a last reconnaissance of the scala, when we heard a steamer whistle. We were just in time to jump triumphantly on board. So the croakers were mistaken, after all! The passengers were few, however. At the next station of Bebek, where a considerable English colony lives, a number of friends joined us. At the station below that the captain threw up the sponge. An up-bound steamer was there, which had turned back. We told our captain he was a fool, a coward, and as many other uncomplimentary things as we could think of, but he refused to budge. We accordingly got off and took the stony street following the shore to the city. People stared at us as Habib had stared at me. The tide of travel was all the other way. There were carriages full of Turkish women, with eunuchs on the box. There were Armenians, Greeks, and Jews of the lower classes—the last distinguishable by the furred robes of the old men—hurrying northward on foot, with babies and bundles in their arms. There were, more notably, soldiers of the garrison, singly, in groups, with or without rifles. We stopped the first we saw and asked what was up. They all declared that they knew nothing, showing much haste to be on. We afterward realised that they were running away. We saw some of them bargaining for boats to take them to the Asiatic side.

There had been no firing for some time, and the sight of row-boats so much nearer the scene of action than Hissar convinced me anew of a false alarm. The Macedonians had probably come into town at last. The Palace guard might very well have made a row. Perhaps even the Sultan had been deposed, and had objected to it. But how was it possible that there should be any general fighting? At Orta-kyöi, next to the imperial suburb of Beshiktash, six of us got in to two sandals. We soon separated. The boat in which I sat had not gone far toward the harbour before firing broke out again. There was no doubt about it this time. The crack of musketry, intensely sharp and sinister in the clear spring morning, would be followed by the deeper note of a field-piece. But we could see nothing. The roofs of Yîldîz nestled serene as ever among their embosoming gardens. The imperial flag still floated from its accustomed staff. Not a cloud, not a puff, indicated the direction of the firing. It was uncanny. What could have happened? We skirted the artillery magazines of Top Haneh, passed the embassy despatch-boats, and began rounding into the harbour. Suddenly the man in the stern of the boat uttered a quick “By Jove!” and ducked. A bullet had whizzed behind his ear. Another splashed the water off our bow. A third sang over our heads. I began to think that they had not been wrong at Roumeli Hissar when they advised me to sit in my garden and be at peace. I was far from being at peace and I decidedly wished that I were in my garden. The next best place seemed to be the bottom of the boat. In the face of public opinion, however, as represented by two Englishmen and a Turk, the only course left a scared impressionist was to continue taking uncomfortable impressions in as erect a posture as possible and be shot like a gentleman. The sole satisfaction I had was in meditating of my last will and testament, providently made the day before, and of its eventual discovery. But it was never discovered and none of us were laid low. While a few more bullets spattered around us, we were soon out of range alongside Galata quay.

The first thing I saw there was a pair of white leggings on guard at a gate. I went up to the sunburned soldier who wore them as to a long-lost brother, and asked for news. My reception, I regret to confess, was not too cordial. “Do not stop,” admonished the Macedonian. “If you have business, do it and go. There is no danger, but the bridge is closed and boats do not run. To-morrow everything will be the same as yesterday.” In one respect, at least, he was right. The bridge was closed. Access not only to Stamboul but to the great street of Galata was cut off by white leggings. There was, accordingly, no chance of making the tunnel to Pera. As my friends were divided as to their projects, I explored certain noisome alleys leading back from the quay to see if I could reach the street of steps climbing past the Genoese tower. On the way I met a party of American tourists, hurrying for their steamer in charge of an embassy kavass. They amusingly looked to an impressionist forgetful of his partiality for the bottoms of boats as if they doubted whether they would escape with their lives. Step Street luckily proved open. The shops, however, were shut, and pedestrians were remarkably scarce. Moreover most of them wore white leggings, or grey-blue ones. Young gentlemen so apparelled, with rifles slung across their backs and cartridges festooned about them, strolled up and down the streets or lolled in front of public buildings. There was an engaging negligence about these picturesque persons, who had an air of keeping an eye on things in spite of manifold cigarettes. Rifles might pop desultorily in the distance, but there was no doubt what had happened. The Macedonians had captured Constantinople.

I went to the American Embassy to obtain details as to this historic event. I found the gate guarded by cadets of the War College and Macedonian Blues. One of the latter smoked cigarettes on the sidewalk and scrutinised every one who passed. At a sign from him an approaching group of marines was stopped and searched. A Turkish hoja was even more roughly handled, for his honourable cloth had been a favourite disguise for political agitators. No one suspected of carrying weapons was let by. The man in blue, it transpired, was one of many officers who escaped during the mutiny and came back with the invading army as privates, or so dressed for strategic reasons. As for news, it was remarkably meagre. The Macedonians had occupied both banks of the Golden Horn early in the morning and had encountered resistance at some of the barracks. There were conflicting reports of the first shots being due to a mistake and of treacherous flags of truce. At all events, the affair was not finished, for every now and then we heard firing. But so far as any one knew there had been no fight at Yîldîz.

What made me realise more sharply than anything else the seriousness of the affair was the further news that Frederick Moore, of the New York Sun, whom I had often met during the last six months, had been badly wounded. I started up Pera Street to see what I could see. More people were about by that time, but the shops were shut and no cabs or trams were running. All the embassies, legations, and consulates were guarded, like ours, by cadets and Macedonian gendarmes. Other Macedonians, they of the white caps and white leggings, they of the careless Mauser and the casual cigarette, mingled informally with the crowd. As an inhabitant of a captured city, it was interesting to note the friendliness of captives and captors. A rare shot was the sole reminder that there might be more than one side to this question. By the time I reached the vicinity of the Taxim artillery barracks, however, there were other reminders. I saw an iron shutter neatly perforated by dozens of small round holes. The windows of houses in otherwise good repair were riddled and broken. Walls were curiously pockmarked, and I saw a shell embedded in one. These phenomena were particularly visible about the local guard-house, which I was told had only just surrendered. Several stretchers passed me, carrying soldiers in contorted attitudes. A man went into the guard-house with a ridged pine coffin on his back, followed by two of the dervishes who wash the bodies of dead Mohammedans. I didn’t count how many more coffins and dervishes I saw go into that guard-house.

I followed one of the stretchers into the adjoining French hospital, in hope of hearing from Moore. The resources of the place were evidently overtaxed, and I took the liberty of going farther to verify the information given me by a white-winged sister of charity. At a hospitable English house across the street I found Mrs. Moore. Mr. Graves, of the London Times, who had been reported as dead, was also there, and two English officers of the Macedonian gendarmerie. They had come up unofficially from Salonica to see how their men acquitted themselves. It seemed they and Mr. Booth, of the Graphic, had been with Moore that morning. They ran into the firing before they knew it, thinking, as other people did, that the action was taking place around Yîldîz. Their position was the more awkward because the Macedonians were determined to prevent the soldiers of the garrison from getting down into Pera, and there was cross-firing from side streets. The two correspondents were wounded almost at the same moment, Booth getting a bullet that grazed his scalp, and Moore being shot clean through the neck. A Greek behind him was killed, apparently by the same ball. The officers got Booth into an adjoining house, but by a regrettable misunderstanding they left Moore lying in the street, whence he was rescued by a young Greek sculptor.

The streets grew more animated until the Grande Rue de Pera assumed the appearance of a Sunday afternoon. But another aspect of the situation was presented to me when I bearded the Blues of the telegraph office for Mrs. Moore, and heard clerks politely regretting that all wires were down except those to Europe by way of Constantza. I concluded that Shefket Pasha, who did not trouble Yîldîz until he was sure of the city, proposed to leave no loophole for reactionary telegrams to the provinces. Returning to the Taxim for further reconnaissance, I was taking snap-shots when shots of another kind began to snap again. They were neither near nor many, but they caused an extraordinary panic. People ran wildly back into Pera, the women screaming, the men tucking those near and dear to them under their arms or abandoning them to the mercy of the foe as their motor centres dictated. I, seeing some soldiers grin, waited in the lee of a tree. When the street was clear I went on to the artillery barracks that had given so much trouble in the morning. The big building was quiet enough now, under the afternoon sun that made jagged black shadows in the holes torn by Macedonian shells. Beyond, at the far corner of the Taxim Garden, I saw a group of white leggings. A bugle blew, and some of them crept around the wall into the side street. As I came nearer a soldier ran toward me, brandishing his rifle. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. I replied as politely as I could that I was taking photographs. “Is this a time to take photographs?” he vociferated. “We are killing men. Go back!” If other argument were needed I had it in the form of renewed shots that banged behind him, where I could see through trees the yellow mass of Tash Kîshla. I went back less rapidly than I might have done, remembering the people who had just run away. Opposite the garden was the parade-ground of the barracks, bounded on its farther side by stables and a strip of wall behind which heads bobbed. I began to repent of my retreat, also to thirst for human companionship, and I resolved to join those comfortably ensconced spectators. As I strolled toward them across the great empty space of sun they hailed me from afar. I then perceived with some embarrassment that they wore white caps, à la macédonienne, and that a portentous number of rifle barrels were gaping at me. They were, in fact, reserves posted for the afternoon attack on Tash Kîshla.

I cannot say that they received me too civilly. Grace, however, was given me to appreciate that the moment was not one for civilities, especially from men who had been under action for twelve hours. I also appreciated the opportunity, urged without forms upon me, of studying their picturesque rear. Tired soldiers smoked or slept on a steep grass slope, and a mule battery lurked in the gully below. Wondering if it might not yet be possible to see what was going on, I approached a young man who stood at the door of a house behind the artillery stables and asked him in my best French if he objected to my ascending to a balcony I saw on the top story of his house. He, being a Greek, replied in his best English that he would be happy to accompany me thither. On the way up he pointed out to me, at a broken window of the opposite stable, the figure of an artilleryman, his rifle across his knees, sitting dead and ghastly against a wall. And he told me about the engagement of which he had been an uncomfortably close witness: how the Macedonians marched in from the valley of the Golden Horn early in the morning; how the first of them were allowed to pass the artillery barracks, and were even cheered; how another lot, who scrambled up the gully from Kassîm Pasha, saw a white flag flying from the artillery stables, advanced more confidently, and were met by a treacherous fire; how they then retired for reinforcements, brought up machine guns and field-pieces, and took stable, barracks, and guard-house after a nasty little fight of five hours.

From the balcony we had a perfect view of the last operations around Tash Kîshla. That great yellow barracks will be memorable in the annals of the Turkish revolution. Many an officer is said to have been tortured there on suspicion of being connected with the Young Turks. It was there that a detachment of the imperial guard fired on the first sharpshooters brought up from Salonica to replace them. And there a battalion of those same sharpshooters, who had been corrupted into fomenting the late revolt and who knew how little quarter they might expect from their old comrades, held out desperately, long after the other barracks had given in. The last act of the tragedy looked less real than a stage tragedy on that divine spring afternoon while we watched, as from a box at the play, the white-legged figures crouching behind their wall, the farther figures stealing up the side of a sunny road, the sortie of the last handful of sharpshooters from their shot-riddled stronghold. They took refuge in a garden before the barracks, where rifles blazed and men dropped until a desperate white handkerchief fluttered among the trees.

The surrender of Tash Kîshla—the Stone Barracks—practically completed the occupation of the city. But the tension was not over. There were yet three days of uncertainty, of waiting, of a strange sense in the air of contrast between the April sunlight and dark forces working in silence. For Yîldîz, as ever, remained inscrutable. From the top of Pera we could see, across the valley of Beshiktash, the scene of Friday’s Selamlîk. No sign of life was visible now at the archway in the Palace wall, on the avenue leading to the mosque. Had the Sultan surrendered? Had he abdicated? Had he fled? All we knew, until the end, was that white flags floated over two of the imperial barracks and that white leggings nonchalantly appeared on Sunday morning at the Palace gates. In the meantime Shefket Pasha, the man of the hour, continued to secure his position. The redoubtable Selimieh barracks, scene of Florence Nightingale’s work in Haïdar Pasha, he took on Sunday with half a dozen shells. On the same day he proclaimed martial law. No one was allowed in the streets an hour after sunset, weapons were confiscated, suspicious characters of all sorts were arrested, and the deserters of the garrison were rounded up. Thousands of them were picked out of row-boats on the Bosphorus or caught in the open country. The poor fellows were more sinned against than sinning. The most absurd stories had been spread among them: that the invaders were Christians come forcibly to convert them; that the son of the King of England intended to turn Abd ül Hamid off the throne in order to reign himself; that if taken they would all be massacred. Dazed by all that had been told them, lost without their officers, worn out by the excitement and confusion of the last ten days, their one idea was to get back to their Asiatic villages. On Monday morning several hundred of them, including the remnant of the Tash Kîshla sharpshooters, were marched away to the court martial at Chatalja. The rest, who were merely the victims of an ignorant loyalty to their Caliph, were sent to Macedonia for lessons in liberalism and road making.

I wondered whether it were by accident that the prisoners sent to Chatalja marched down the hill by which their captors had entered Pera, as preparations were being made on the same height, since named of Perpetual Liberty, for the funeral of the first volunteers killed. A circular trench was dug on the bare brown hilltop, and in it fifty ridged deal coffins were symmetrically set toward the east, each covered with the star and crescent and each bearing a fez at the head. Then a long double file of whitecaps drew up beside it, and a young officer made a spirited address. Not knowing, in my ignorance, who the officer was or much of what he said—he turned out to be the famous Nyazi Bey of Resna—I wandered away to the edge of the bluff. A few tents were still pitched there, overlooking the upper valley of the Golden Horn. Seeing a camera and hearing a foreign accent, the men were willing enough to be photographed. They were from Cavalla, they said, where an American tobacco company maintains a factory. One of them offered me his tobacco-box in English. He had lived two years and a half in New York. When I got back to the trench the soldiers had gone and the coffins were almost covered. One officer was left, who made to the grave-diggers and the few spectators a speech of a moving simplicity. “Brothers,” he said, “here are men of every nation—Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews; but they died together, on the same day, fighting under the same flag. Among us, too, are men of every nation, both Mohammedan and Christian; but we also have one flag and we pray to one God. Now, I am going to make a prayer, and when I pray let each one of you pray also, in his own language, in his own way.” With which he raised his hands, palms upward, in the Mohammedan attitude of prayer. The other Mohammedans followed his example, while the Christians took off their caps or fezzes and crossed themselves; and a brief “amin” closed the little ceremony.

By Tuesday, parliament having returned to town the day before, and having sat in secret session with no outward result, people began to say again that the Sultan would keep his throne. As the morning wore on, however, there began to be indications of a certain nature. In Pera Street I encountered a long line of open carriages, each containing two or three black eunuchs and a Macedonian soldier. The odd procession explained itself. The eunuchs were from the Palace. Some of them looked downcast, but the majority stared back at the crowd with the detachment supposed to be of their nature, while a few of the younger ones appeared to be enjoying an unaccustomed pleasure. It was not so with a procession I saw later, crossing Galata Bridge. This was composed of the lower servants of the Palace, on foot, marching four and four between a baker’s dozen of sardonic Macedonians. There was no air of palaces about them. Some were in stamboulines, frock coats with a military collar, that looked the worse for wear. Others wore a manner of livery, coarse black braided with white. Others still were in the peasant costume of the country. They were followed by the last of the Palace guard, shuffling disarmed and dejected between their sharp-eyed captors. A few jeers were raised as they passed, but quickly died away. There was something both tragic and prophetic about that unhappy company.

Returning to Galata, I found the approaches of the Bridge guarded by soldiers, who kept the centre of the street clear. The sidewalks were packed with people who waited—they did not know for what. More soldiers passed, with flags and bands. It began to be whispered that a new sultan was going over to Stamboul that afternoon. The rumour was presently confirmed by an extra of the Osmanischer Lloyd, an enterprising Franco-German paper, which was the first in Constantinople to publish the news of Abd ül Hamid’s dethronement and the accession of his brother. But still people could not believe the news they had been expecting so long. They continued to wait, to see what would happen. I met some friends who suggested going to the vicinity of Dolma Ba’hcheh Palace, the residence of the heir presumptive. If he went out that afternoon we should be surer of knowing it than if we joined the crowds in the city. At the junction of the Pera road with the avenue behind Dolma Ba’hcheh we were stopped by a white-legginged Albanian with a Mauser. This tall, fair-haired, hawk-nosed, and serious young man saw no reason why we should occupy better posts than the rest of the people—happily not many—he held at bay. We accordingly waited with them, being assured by the inexorability of the Albanian and by the presence of gunners mounting guard beyond him that we should not wait in vain.

In front of us a wide paved space sloped down to the Bosphorus, pleasantly broken by fresh-leaved trees and a stucco clock-tower. To the left ran a tree-shaded perspective cut off from the water by the white mass of Dolma Ba’hcheh. Before long we saw three steam-launches pass close in front of us, making for the harbour. A few minutes later a cannon banged. Another banged after it, another, and another, till we could doubt no longer that what we had been waiting for had really happened at last. Then, before we had time to taste the rushing emotion of new and great things, a small-arm cracked in the distance. That sharp little sound caused the strangest cold sensation of arrest. More rifles cracked. People looked at each other. The soldiers began feeling for their cartridges, their eyes on their officers. As the firing became a fusillade, and drew nearer, one of the latter made a sign to our Albanian. “Go back!” commanded that young man fiercely, thrusting his musket at us. There was an instant retreat. Could it be that reactionaries had chosen this moment to make an attack on the new Sultan, that there had been a reply, and that battle was beginning again in the streets? We had not gone far, however, before we saw men shooting revolvers into the air and laughing. So we returned, not without sheepishness, to our places. We were just in time to see our Albanian discharge his rifle with the delight of a boy. The volley that followed did not last long. “Who told you to fire?” demanded the officer who had been so uneasy a moment before. “Eh, the others are firing,” replied the Albanian. “Never mind what the others do,” retorted the officer sharply. “We came here to show that we know how to obey orders. Now, stop firing.” His soldiers did, although the city was by that time one roar of powder.

It was not long after three o’clock. We still had nearly four hours to wait before Sultan Mehmed V should land at Seraglio Point, proceed to the War Office for the first ceremonies of investiture, return to the Seraglio to kiss the mantle of the Prophet, and then drive past us to his palace. I could not help thinking of the other palace on top of the hill from which the servants had been taken that morning. The boom of saluting guns, the joyous crackle accompanying it, must have gone up with cruel distinctness, through the still spring afternoon, to the ears of one who had heard that very sound, on the supplanting of a brother by a brother, thirty-three years before. As the time wore away our Albanian grew less fierce. The light, unfortunately, did likewise, until all hope of snap-shots failed. I then took my place at the edge of the avenue. Finally, toward seven o’clock, a piqueur galloped into sight from behind the wall that hid the right-hand stretch of the street. Behind him, in the distance, rose a faint cheering. It came nearer, nearer, nearer, until a squadron of dusty cavalry clattered into sight. After the cavalry clattered a dusty brougham, drawn by two black horses, and in the brougham an elderly man with a double chin bowed and smiled from the windows as the crowd shouted: “Padishah’m chok yasha-a-a!” I shouted with them as well as I could, not stopping to inquire why anything should impede the throat of an indifferent impressionist from oversea, at the spectacle of a fat old gentleman in a frock coat driving out between two disreputable columns of cavalry. They made a terrific dust as they galloped away through the young green of the avenue toward the white palace—dust which a condescending sun turned into a cloud of glory.

During the days and nights of flags and illuminations that followed there were other sights to see. One of them was the Selamlîk of the ensuing Friday. It took place at St. Sophia, whither Mehmed II rode to pray after his conquest of Constantinople, and where popular opinion willed that a later Mehmed, after this memorable recapture of the town, should make his first public prayer. About this ceremony was none of the pomp that distinguished the one I had witnessed the week before. A few Macedonian Blues were drawn up by the mosque, a few Macedonian cavalrymen guarded the gates of the Seraglio, and they were not all in place by the time the Sultan, in a new khaki uniform, drove slowly through the grounds of that ancient enclosure. Again, on the succeeding Monday, we beheld the grisly spectacle of those who fomented the mutiny among the soldiers, and who, in long white shirts, with statements of their names and deeds pinned to their bosoms, swung publicly from great tripods at the scene of their several crimes—three at the Stamboul end of the Bridge, five in front of Parliament, and five in the square of the War Department. And the new Sultan was once more the centre of interest on the day he was girded with the sword of Osman. He went to the sacred mosque of Eyoub with little of the pageantry that used to celebrate that solemn investiture—in a steam-launch, distinguishable from other steam-launches only by a big magenta silk flag bearing the imperial toughra. From Eyoub he drove round the walls to the Adrianople Gate, and then through the city to the Seraglio. His gala coach, his scarlet-and-gold coachman, his four chestnut horses, his blue-and-silver outriders, and his prancing lancers were the most glittering part of that long procession. The most Oriental part of it was the train of carriages bearing the religious heads of the empire, white-bearded survivors of another time, in venerable turbans and green robes embroidered with gold. But the most significant group in the procession was that of the trim staff of the Macedonian army, on horseback, headed by Mahmoud Shefket Pasha. Not least notable among the conquerors of Constantinople will be this grizzled, pale, thin, keen, kind-looking Arab who, a month before that day, was an unknown corps commander in Salonica. His destiny willed that hardly more than four years after that day he should even more suddenly go again into the unknown. His fate was a happy one in that it overtook him at the height of power a Turkish subject may attain, when he was at once Field-Marshal, Minister of War, and Grand Vizier, and that it left in suspense the colder judgment of his time with regard to the actual degree of his greatness. Legends and hatreds naturally gathered around such a man. I do not know whether it was true that he took the city before he was ready, with barely fifteen thousand men, on a sudden night warning that the desperate Sultan plotted a massacre for the next day. Neither was I there to see whether he actually sent back to the new Sultan his present of a magnificent Arab charger, saying that he was a poor man and had no stable for such a steed. The crucial test of the Balkan War he had no opportunity to undergo. But less than any other personality discovered by the Turkish revolution does he need the favouring kindness of uncertainty. At the moment when if he chose he might have been dictator, he did not choose. And the decision, the promptness, the tact, the strategic ability with which he grasped the situation of the mutiny and threw an army into Chatalja before the blundering mutineers knew what he was about, made for him the one clear and positive record of that confused time. They say he suffered from an incurable disease, and captured cities for distraction.