relations of the Venetians with the Levant. The Russian ambassador discountenanced the wishes of the Grand Vizier and of the Seraskier, who applied to the Prussian ambassador, Count Königsmark, with a request for Prussian officers to be sent out, in view of a reorganisation of the army. A chance occurrence decided the matter. The "Iron Soldier" Khosrev Pasha discovered the existence of a new world of military science, in the course of conversation with the Prussian staff officers Von Berg and Helmuth von Moltke, who then happened to be staying in Constantinople; at Khosrev's proposal the Sultan applied to Berlin with a request that Moltke's stay in Constantinople might be extended. Frederick William III, who was then as reluctant to oblige the Turks, as the other powers were importunate, granted for the moment an extension of leave for three months; even this, however, secured that remarkable influence of the Prussian military reorganisation upon the Turkish army, which continues at the present day. Moltke, under the title of "Baron Bey," accompanied the Sultan in 1837 on his journey through European Turkey, where the royal reformer was everywhere received with enthusiasm; he drew up a memorial concerning the possibility of applying the Prussian landwehr system to the Osman Empire, examined the most important fortresses in the Dardanelles, and from the height of the Seraskier tower, built by Mahmud, he completed a great plan of Constantinople and its environs. Together with the officers Heinrich von Mühlbach, Karl Freiherr von Vincke-Olbendorf, and Friedrich Leopold Fischer he accompanied General Mehmed Hafiz Pasha during the summer of 1837, when this officer was occupied in completing the pacification of Kurdistan, which Reshid Pasha had begun. This expedition and the following against Mehemed Ali have been brilliantly described by Moltke in his memorable "letters" (1841).

In 1837 the first bridge over the Golden Horn was built, between Unkapau and Asabkapusi; not until 1845 and 1877 was the new bridge constructed which is known as the Valide, after the mother of Abd ul-Mejid. On August 16, 1838, the English ambassador Ponsonby secured the completion, in the house of Reshid Pasha at Balta-Nin on the Bosphorus, of that treaty respecting trade and customs duties, which has remained the model of all succeeding agreements. By way of recompense the English fleet accompanied the Turkish fleet, during all its manoeuvres in the Mediterranean, until its secession to Mehemed Ali. War was declared upon him by Sultan Mahmud in May, 1839, when the Druses had revolted against the Syrian authorities in the Hauran. However, the Sultan died on July 1, before he could receive the news of the total defeat of his army at Nisib (June 24), and the desertion of his fleet in Alexandria (July 14). At a later period, after his return to the Sublime Porte, Moltke vindicated the capacity which Hafiz Pasha had shown in face of the lack of discipline prevailing in his army, although the Seraskier had treated the suggestions of the Prussian officers with contempt. Ibrahim did not pursue his master's troops, as his own soldiers were too exhausted to undertake any further movements.

Mahmud II died a martyr to his own ideas and plans; even his greatest reforms remained in embryo; however, his work lives after him; he was the founder of a new period for Turkey, as Peter the Great, with whom he liked to be compared, had been for Russia. The difficulty of the political situation, the incapacity of his predecessors, the slavery imposed by the domestic government and by court etiquette, were the real support of those obstacles which often caused him such

despondency, that he sought consolation in drunkenness, to the wilful destruction of his powers.

C. THE FIRST HALF OF THE REIGN OF ABD UL-MEJID (1839-1850)

ABD UL-MEJID (1839-1861; see the plate facing page 149), the son of Mahmud, undertook at the age of sixteen the government of a State which would irrevocably have fallen into the power of the Pasha of Egypt had not the ambitious plans of France been thwarted by the conclusion of the Quadruple Alliance on July 15, 1840 (England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia). The interference of the alliance forced the victorious Pasha Mehemed Ali to evacuate Syria; after the conclusion of peace he obtained the Island of Thasos, the cradle of his race, from the Sultan, as an appanage of the viceroys of Egypt, in whose possession it still remains. An important advance is denoted by the Hatti-sherif of Gülhane (November 3, 1839), which laid down certain principles, on which were to be based further special decrees or tansimati hairije (beneficial organisation). The reformation proclaimed as law what had in fact long been customary, the theoretical equality of the subjects of every nation, race, and religion before the law. It must be said that in the execution of this praiseworthy decree certain practical difficulties came to light. Reshid Pasha, the creator of the "hat," was not inspired by any real zeal for reform, but was anxious simply to use it as a means for gaining the favour of the Christian powers. As early as 1830, for example, a census had been undertaken, the first throughout the whole Turkish Empire, the results of which were valueless. official would venture to search the interior of a Moslem house inhabited by women and children. It was, moreover, to the profit of the revenue officials to represent the number of houses and families in their district as lower than it really was, with the object of filling their pockets with the excess. On this account Moltke expressed an idea of great weight at that time (1841) which is still conditionally in force at the present day. The Porte, unable to secure the obedience of the Syrians by a strong government like the military despotism of Ibrahim, was equally unable to win over the country by justice and good administration, for lack of one necessary condition, an honest official service. It was not to the "hat" of Gülhane of 1856, nor yet to the later Hatti-humayun, that reform was due, but to the European powers associated to save the crescent. These powers suggested the only permanent solution by supplying the watchword "A la franca;” and urged the Turks to acquire a completer knowledge of the West, to learn European languages and sciences, to introduce the institutions of the West. Herein lies the transforming power of the "beneficial organisation."

No

Literature also had to follow this intellectual change. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a poet endowed with the powers of the ancient East had appeared in Ghalib, and a court poet in the unfortunate Selim III. Heibet ullah Sultana, a sister of the Sultan Mahmud II, and aunt of the reforming minister Fuad, also secured a measure of popularity. These writers were, however, unable to hinder the decay of old forms, or rather the dawn of a new period, the Turkish "modern age." The study of the languages of Eastern civilization became neglected in view of the need of the study of the West. The new generation knew more of La Fontaine, Montesquieu, and Victor Hugo than of Osman Baki (died 1599), the Persian Hafiz (died 1399), the Arab Motenebbi (Mutanabbi; died 965). The

political need of reform made men ambitious to secure recognition for the drafting of a diplomatic note rather than for the composition of a Kassited, or of a poem with a purpose. In the East as well as in the West medieval poetry became a lost art.

It must be said that the new generation, though educated on Western principles, did not immediately adopt the honourable character of European bureaucracy. The place of the Janissary militia was now occupied by the bureaucracy, which with no less power, and with almost military determination, secured the monopoly of home administration. This aristocracy of the effendis of Stamboul, like the official nobility of the Roman Empire during its decline, formally laid down the principle that the son of a State official must himself become an official; any other occupation, no matter what its name, was regarded as aïb (disgrace). The bureaucracy remained a permanent barrier between the Sultan and the people, between the Sultan and other nations, ever ready to empty the coffers of the State, and to plunder the subjects, regardless of their creed. Such were the calamitous results of the "beneficial organisation."

By the Dardanelles convention, which was concluded with the great powers in London on July 13, 1841, the Porte consented to keep the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus closed to foreign ships of war in the time of peace. By this act the Turkish government gave a much desired support to Russian aims at predominance in the Black Sea. In the same year it was necessary to suppress revolts which had broken out in Crete and Bulgaria. The cruelties of the Albanian troops on that occasion threw a lurid light upon the principles of the "hat" of Gülhane. In consequence of the incursions of Mehmed Shah into the Arabian Irak, Suleimanieh, Bagdad, Kerbela, and Armenia (Van) a war with Persia was threatened, and the dispute was only composed with difficulty by a peace commission summoned to meet at Erzeroum. Within the Danubian Principalities the sovereign rights of the Porte were often in conflict with the protectorate powers of Russia. In Servia Alexander Karageorgevitch was solemnly appointed Bashbeg, or high prince of Servia, by the Porte on November 14, 1842; Russia, however, succeeded in persuading Alexander voluntarily to abdicate his position, which was not confirmed until 1843 by Russia, after his re-election at Topchider, near Belgrade. The Roman Catholic (uniate) Armenians, who had already endured a cruel persecution in 1828, now at the instigation of their Gregorian co-religionists, secured toleration for their independent church in 1835 (Millet) and a representative of their own (vekil). A similar persecution, supported by Russia from Etshniadsin, also broke out against the Protestant Armenians in 1845. It was not until November, 1850, that their liberation was secured by the energetic ambassador Stratford Canning; in 1853 they were definitely recognised as a Millet.

Even more dangerous was the diplomatic breach between the Porte and Greece (1847). This young State had grown insolent by reason of the favour and jealousy of Europe; supported by the Russian party which dominated the Chamber of Deputies, Greece had availed herself of the helplessness of the Porte against Mehemed Ali, at the time when Abd ul-Mejid began his reign, to send help to the Cretans, and had inflicted repeated losses upon the Osman Empire by the marauding raids of the klephts on the boundaries of Epirus and Thessaly. In his parliamentary speeches the prime minister Kolettis (1844-1847; cf. p. 177) had repeatedly demanded the general union of the Greeks. Even Moltke had

defended the following principle in 1842: "Our opinion is that the only natural and the only possible solution of the Eastern question is the creation of a Christian Byzantine empire in Constantinople, the restoration of which has been already begun by Hellas with the support of Europe." At the same time the far-seeing military writer had decidedly opposed the partition of Turkey between the powers, before whom he held out the example of Poland as a warning. "The partition of Turkey," he exclaimed, "is a problem like the division of a diamond ring,— who is to obtain Constantinople, the costly single stone?" In short continued friction ended in 1846 with a collision between the Turkish ambassador and the Greek king, with the breaking off of diplomatic relations, and with a revenge taken by the Porte upon his Greek subjects, which might almost have ended in war between Greece and Turkey, England and France. Not until September, 1847, was an understanding between the two neighbours secured, by the intervention of the Czar on the personal appeal of King Otto.

5. THE CRIMEAN WAR AND ITS RESULTS FOR TURKEY (THE THIRD QUARTER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY)

(a) The Omens of the Struggle (1848–1853). —1848, a year of revolution, which shook Western Europe with its conceptions of freedom, had left Turkey almost untouched. Shekib Effendi held a formal conference with Pope Pius IX, in Rome, 1848, under commission from the Sultan, who would have been glad to hand over to the Pope the protectorate of the Catholics in the East; the Holy Father had sent out the Archbishop Ferrieri, with an appeal to the Oriental communities, which, however, did not end in that union which the Porte and the Pope had hoped for. The revolt of the Boyars and of the Polish fugitives in Moldavia and Wallachia speedily resulted in the strengthening of the hospodar Mich. Sturdza, and of the appointment of Kantakuzen in place of Bibeskos. The Hungarian rising, on which the Porte had staked its hopes for the infliction of a blow on Austria, came to nothing, on the capitulation of Vilagos (Vol. VIII, p. 207). On the other hand the Sultan, encouraged by the presence of an English fleet in the Dardanelles, declined to hand over the Hungarian fugitives.

Austria and Hungary thereupon avenged themselves by taking advantage of a claim for damages, which France had now set up. Two parties, the Catholics and the Greeks, were quarrelling about the Holy Places in Palestine. The powers protecting the Catholics were invariably France or the Pope, while the Greeks had been under a Russian protectorate since 1720. It was to deliver these Holy Places, where the Redeemer had worked and died, from the hands of the Moslems that the Crusades had been undertaken. Saladin (Vol. III, p. 362) had permitted the Latin clergy to perform service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1187, while Robert of Anjou had purchased the Holy Places from the caliph in 1342 (op. cit. p. 708). After the conquest of the Holy City by Sultan Selim, 1517, the Georgians secured part of Golgotha, all the other remaining places being reserved expressly to the Sultan in 1558. This title was further confirmed by the capitulations of France with the Sultans (1535, 1621, 1629, and 1740; cf. p. 168). Violent outbreaks of jealousy took place between the Armenians, Greeks, and Catholics concerning these marks of favour, and especially concerning the possession of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1808 the Greeks, after the Church of the Holy

Sepulchre had been destroyed by fire, actually reduced the tombs of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin to ruins. The Greeks, aided by Russian money, restored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; meanwhile the Latins, whose zeal was supported by France, gained possession of two chapels in 1820.

In the year 1850 the Pope and the Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem applied first to France, and joined France in a further application to the Porte, to secure protection against the Greeks. Fear of Russia induced the Porte to decide almost entirely in favour of Greece, and the only concession made to the Catholics was the joint use of a church door in Bethlehem. The emperor Nicholas had a short time previously (May 1, 1849) obtained a political triumph by means of the compact of Balta-Liman regarding the Danubian Principalities and the Dardanelles ; relying upon the thirty-third article of the convention, concluded in 1740, he now declared that this measure had deeply wounded the religious feelings of the Orthodox Russians. Austria, labouring as we have seen under insults from the Porte, joined with Russia in demanding and securing through Count Christian Leiningen-Westerburg in Stamboul, on February 14, 1853, the withdrawal of the Turkish troops from the scene of the revolt in Montenegro and the empire, fulfilment of certain demands affecting the private interests of her subjects. When the emperor Nicholas demanded guarantees for the unconditional supremacy of the Greek Church through the ambassador Prince Menshikoff, the refusal was answered by a declaration of war upon Turkey in the manifesto of October 20 (November 1), 1853, which ran as follows: "No other measure remains open to us except an appeal to force of arms in order to oblige the Ottoman government to observe the treaties, and to give satisfaction for the insults by which it has answered our highly moderate demands, and our legitimate care for the protection of the Orthodox faith in the East, which is also the faith of the Russian nation." The Sultan then removed from the Seraglio point to the imperial palace of Dolma Bagche, constructed in 1853; since that date the building situated in Stamboul has been known as the Old Seraglio. Once again a venerable tradition had been broken, and all succeeding Sultans have resided on the shores of the Bosphorus.

(b) The Course of the War; the Congress of Paris; the "Hat" of 1856. On July 2, 1853, forty thousand men advanced into the Danube Principalities under Michael Gortchakoff. Thereupon the Sultan, under pressure from the excited Mohammedan population, declared war, and on November 4 Omar Pasha (see Fig. 3 of the plate facing page 188) defeated the Russians at Oltenitza. The united French and English fleets left the Bay of Besika, and entered the Bosphorus by the Dardanelles. After the Turkish fleet had been destroyed by the Russians at Sinope on November 30, and the Czar Nicholas had rejected the proposals for peace from the Vienna conference, the Western powers sent their fleets into the Black Sea, recalled their ambassadors from St. Petersburg, and on March 18, 1854, concluded an alliance against Russia with the hereditary "enemy of Christianity." Such are the changes brought about by time. Russia found no supporters. Servia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria remained pacific; only in the Bay of Arta did a revolt break out. Austria and Prussia demanded the evacuation of the Danube Principalities, and threatened war in the event of the Russians passing the Balkans. The Russians retreated beyond the Danube, when the Western powers.