and Character.-His Views in regard to the Rev- - ers, which is not adopted.-Victory of the Poles HISTORY OF EUROPE. 1. CHAPTER XIII. ASIA MINOR AND GREECE: THEIR SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND STATISTICAL STATE-TURKEY. Wars of Revolution in the West, Is the stationary nations of Western Europe, the European race in the New. If we would where the inhabitants have in a find a parallel to the vast swarms of Celts, manner taken root in the soil, and Scythians, Goths, Huns, Saxons, Arabs, and the broad Atlantic alike forbids the Turks, who have successively invaded Euentrance, and for long precludes the rope and Africa from the eastward, and continand of Race further migration of man, the con- ued their devastating advance till they were in the East. tests of the species are chiefly social stopped by the waves of the Atlantic, we must or religious. It is difference of faith or of po- come down to the present day, when still greatlitical privileges which arms one part of the er hosts of civilized emigrants issue annually people against the other; and foreign wars, not from the harbors of Great Britain and Germany, less than internal discord, arise chiefly from the to seek in Transatlantic wilds or Australian efforts which one part of the nation makes to steppes the means of livelihood and the pleasalter the creed or shake off the institutions ures of independence, till they are stopped by which have been imposed upon it by the other. the waters of the Pacific. But the inroad of civBut in the Eastern states, and where nations ilized is more fatal to the original inhabitants have been exposed in successive ages to the in-than that of savage man; the fire-water of the roads of different tribes, issuing from that great | Christian destroys the species more effectually nursery of migratory man, the table-land of than the cimeter of the Osmanli. The last Central Asia, the case is widely different. Ex-spares some, and permits in the end a mingled ternal wars, not less than internal convulsions, there arise, for the most part, from the violent superinduction of one race of men upon another of a new horde upon the original settlers. The attempt to effect this induces, in the first instance, the most terrible wars of invasion; for what will men not do to prevent the inroad of a barbarous invader into their lands, their hearths, their temples?-in the last, the not less frightful civil dissensions in the efforts which a long course of oppression at length rouses the subjected people to make, to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. "Proud of the yoke, and pliant to the rod, 2. Effect of ent passions in ef And sees far off, with an indignant groan, Her native plains and empires once her own."* The two great moving powers of mankind are the unseen but constantly acting springs of all these changes. Provithese differ- dence, to carry out the work of human progress and the dispersion of fecting the mankind, has impressed, in an equaldispersion ly indelible manner, upon the tribes of man- of Central Asia, the passion for migration, and upon the inhabitants of Western Europe the love of freedom. From the first has arisen the peopling of Europe and the dispersion of the Asiatic race through the Old World; from the last, the civilization of America and Australia, and the settlement of * GRAY, kind. VOL II-A race of victors and vanquished to spring up together on the conquered lands; the first utterly extirpates the original race, and leaves only its remains, like those of the mammoth, to excite the wonder of future generations of men. From these passions acting with equal force, and with the same consequences, 3. upon distant lands in different stages They have of human existence, have arisen the produced the greatest greatest and most renowned wars, the wars remost melancholy devastations, the corded in greatest impulse to exertion, which history. have formed the subject of poetry and history from the earliest ages to the present time. From the time when the genius of Homer first sung the effort of Greece to repel the predatory inroads of Asia, and Iphigenia offered herself a willing sacrifice, that the Grecian maidens might sleep in peace, secure from the Eastern ravishers, to these times, when, after a frightful but glorious struggle, the classic land of Hellas has been again liberated from its oppressors, and the Athenian damsels are secure from the slavery of the Turkish harems, the greatest struggles of mankind have been be*"Das ganze grosse Griechenland hat jetzt Die Augen auf mich Einzige gerichtet. SCHILLER, Iphigenie in Aulis, Act. v. scene 5. 4. tween the invading and conquering East and the defensive but indomitable West. Defeated at Salamis and Platea, long kept at bay by the discipline of the Legions, Lasting con- pierced to the heart by the strength quests of the of the Empire, the East in the end East over asserted its superiority over the the West. West, and resumed its place as the great aggressive and conquering power. Its swarms, long pent up, at length burst forth; the Goths broke through the barriers of the Danube and the Rhine, and fixed their lasting abode in the decaying provinces of the Roman empire; the Arabs issued from their fiery deserts with the Koran in one hand and the cimeter in the other, penetrated through Africa and Spain into the heart of France, and were only arrested by the enthusiasm of the Crusades on the shores of Palestine; the Huns and Sclavonians spread over Eastern Europe, and settled themselves in the plains of Poland and Hungary; the Turks stormed Constantinople itself, and subdued the finest provinces of the Eastern Empire. Europe may boast its courage, its freedom, its energy, and every quarter of the globe attests its industry or its prowess; but history tells a different tale, and points to Asia as the cradle of the lasting conquerors of mankind. It required the genius of Alexander to advance his phalanx into the centre of Asia, the energy of England to urge her standards into the mountains of Cabul; but neither were able to effect a permanent settlement in the regions they had overrun; while, without military genius, discipline, or warlike resources, the Eastern tribes have in every age settled themselves as permanent conquerors in the European fields. Where will the traveler find, in the Asiatic realms, a trace of the European race-where, in the European, are the descendants of the Asiatic not to be found? From this ceaseless pressure of the East on the West has arisen not merely wars of invasion, but social conflicts, in races in the the east of Europe, entirely different east of Eu- from those which have divided the Western nations. The barbarians who, issuing from Asia, succeeded in establishing themselves in Europe, formed permanent settlements, appropriated the land in whole or part to themselves, and transmitted it, as they hoped, in peace to their descendants. But they were not permitted to remain in quiet possession of their new acquisitions; another swarm followed in their footsteps, and they were themselves overwhelmed by the waves of conquest. Thence succeeded the fiercest and most enduring conflicts which have ever divided mankind—those where different conquering races settled in the same territories, and contended with each other for its government, its lands, its revenues, its women. The strife of RACES is more lasting, their enmity more inveterate, their hostility more persevering, than that of parties. The animosity of the Magyar against the German, of the Pole against the Russian, of the Italian against the German, of the Celt against the Anglo-Saxon, of the Greek against the Turk, is more fierce and indelible than that of the democrat against the aristocrat, or the republican against the royalist. Like the color of the hair or the tint of the 5. Wars of rope. visage, it is transmitted unchanged from generation to generation; unlike the fleeting fervor of cities, which is readily diverted by new objects of pursuit, it slumbers undecayed in the solitude of rural life, and, after the lapse of centuries, bursts forth with undiminished fury, when circumstances occur which fan the embers into a flame. The most animating and heartstirring events which are recounted in the succeeding pages have arisen from the conflict of races, which, as more wide-spread and lasting, have in a great degree superseded that of social change. pire. 6. Placed on the confines of Europe and Asia, the regions which formerly formed part of the Byzantine, and now Strife of races compose the TURKISH EMPIRE, have peculiarly vein every age been the chief seat of hement in the these frightful contests. The coasts Turkish emof the Euxine, the isles of the Archipelago, the shores of the Danube, the mountains of Greece, have from the earliest times been the battle-field between Europe and Asia. When the vast stream of the Crusaders poured across the Hellespont, they wound unconsciously around the tombs of Achilles and Ajax; they trod the fields of the Scamander, they drank at the fountain at the Seæan gate. The environs of Jerusalem have been the theatre of the greatest and most heart-stirring conflict which has occurred since Titus drew his trenches round the devoted city. The plains of Bessarabia, broken only by the Scythian tumuli, are whitened by the bones of those swarms of warriors whose names, as a Russian poet expresses it, "are known only to God;" the walls of Byzantium, which for a thousand years singly sustained the fortunes of the Empire, yielded at length to the fierce assault of the Osmanlis; the island of Rhodes has witnessed the most glorious conflict that ever occurred between the enthusiasm of the East and the heroism of the West; the straits of The mopyle have in our day been signalized by second acts of devotion; the Agean Sea has reddened with other conflagrations than that of Salamis; the Russians and the Turks are now combating on the banks of the Danube, at the same spots where, fourteen hundred years ago, the hordes of the Goths broke into the decaying fields of Roman civilization. 7. minions. From this peculiarity in their geographical history has arisen the great variety of different races who now inhabit Variety of the vast provinces of the Turkish races in the empire, and the inextinguishable ha- Turkish dotred with which they are animated against each other. The Persians, the Romans, the Goths, the Russians, the Arabs, the Vandals, the Franks, the Venetians, the Christians, the Mohammedans, have at different times contended, and alternately obtained the mastery in its vast dominion. They have all left their children in the land. Besides the descendants of the original Greeks, whom the King of Men ruled at the siege of Troy, or Alexander led to the conquest of Asia, there are now to be found in it the bold Wallachian, who has fearlessly settled in the land which has been desolated by the wars of three thousand years; the free and independent Servian, who has never ceased to contend, even amidst Turkish bonds, for the freedom of his native steppe; the patient and industrious Bulgarian, who has often found pro- | and conquering mankind to pacify and bless tection and happiness in the recesses of the Bal- them, like the legions which followed the eakan; the fierce and indomitable Albanian, who, gles of Rome to the extremities of the earth. since the days of Scanderbeg, has maintained a It is more akin to the establishment and sysdesultory warfare with his oppressors in his tem of government of the Normans in England, native mountains; the effeminate Syrian, who where the people were not only conquered, but bows his neck, as in ancient days, to every in- retained in subjection by force, and sixty thouvader; the unchanging Israelite, who has pre- sand horsemen annually assembled at Winchesserved his faith and usages inviolate since the ter to overawe and intimidate the subject realm. days of Abraham; the wandering Arab, whose Their number is small compared to the entire hand is still against every man, and every man's population of the country. Three millions of against him; the passive and laborious Egyp- Osmanlis in Europe are thinly scattered over a tian, who toils a slave on the banks of the Nile, territory containing twelve or thirteen millions from whence his ancestors, under Sesostris, is- of Christian subjects; but they are all armed, sued to conquer the world. And over all are and ready to become soldiers; they are in posplaced as rulers the brave and haughty Osman- session of the whole fortresses, harbors, and lis, who govern, but do not cultivate the land, strongholds of the kingdom; they have the and who, in Europe, not more than three mill- command of the government, the treasury, the ions in number, maintain their sway over four capital, and the great cities: the Christians are times that number of impatient and suffering scattered over the country, and depressed by subjects. centuries of servitude; the Turks are concentrated in towns, and rendered confident by the long exercise of power. 8. Division of mans. Turkey ren. To govern dominions so vast, and inhabited by so great a variety of different and hostile nations, must, under What renders the government of the Christhe Christians any circumstances, have been a tians, though so superior in number, 10. and Mussul- matter of difficulty; but in addi- by the Mohammedans more easy in Division tion to this there was superadded, Turkey, is the variety of tribes and of races in in the case of Turkey, a still more fatal and in- races of which the subjected popu- ders governdelible source of discord, which was the differ-lation is composed, their separation ment more ence of RELIGION. Turkey, even in Asia, is not, from each other by mountains, seas, easy. properly speaking, a Mohammedan country. and entire want of roads, and the complete uniThe Seven Churches were established in Asia ty of action and identity of purpose in the domMinor in the days of the Apostles; the Empire inant race. The Greeks are not only a different of the East had embraced the faith of the Gos- race, but speak a different language from the pel four centuries before Christianity had spread Bulgarians: the Servians are a separate tribe in Western Europe. We are accustomed, from from the Wallachians, the Albanians from both. its ruling power, and its position in the map, to The Greek of the Fanar* has nothing in common consider Turkey as a Mohammedan state, for- with the peasant of Roumelia; the Armenian getting that Christianity had been established with the Syrian; the Egyptian with the Capover its whole extent a thousand years before padocian; the Jew with the Albanian. These Constantinople yielded to the assault of Moham- different nations and tribes have separate feelmed, and that the transference to the creed of ings, descent, and interests; they are severed Mohammed was as violent a change as if it were from each other by recollections, habits, instinow to be imposed by foreign conquest on France tutions; vast ranges of mountains, in Greece, or England. Even at this time, after four centu-Macedonia, and Asia Minor, part them; roads, ries of Mohammedan rule, Christianity is still the faith of three-fourths of the whole Turkish empire in Europe, and one-fourth in Asia. Cast down, reviled, persecuted, the followers of Jesus, from generation to generation, have adhered to the faith of their fathers: it still forms the distinguishing mark between them and their oppressors: more even than difference of race it has severed the two great families of mankind; and when the Greek revolution broke out, the ery was not "Independence to Greece," but "Victory to the Cross." 9. Turkish sys ment. The system of government by which the Turks for four centuries have maintained themselves in their immense dotem of govern- minions, and kept the command of so many and such various races of men, is very simple, and more suited to Oriental than European ideas. It is neither the system which distance and the extreme paucity of the ruling nation has rendered a matter of necessity to the English in India-that of conciliating the great body of the rural cultivators, and drawing from them disciplined battalions which might establish their dominion over their former oppressors-nor that of penetrating the wilds of nature with the light of civilization, or even bridges, there are none, to enable the different inhabitants of this varied realm to communicate with each other, ascertain their common wrongs, or enter into any common designs for their liberation. On the other hand, the Turks, in possession of the incomparable harbor and central capital of Constantinople, with the Euxine and the Black Sea for their interior line of communication, are a homogeneous race, speaking one language, professing one religion, animated by one spirit, swayed by one interest, and enabled, by means of the government couriers, whose speed compensates the difficulty of transit, to communicate one common impulse to all parts of their vast dominions. The example of the English in India is sufficient to show how long the possession of these advantages is capable of enabling an inconsiderable body of strangers to subdue and keep in subjection a divided multitude of nations, a thousand times more numerous. The military strength of the Turks, which was long so formidable to Europe, and more than once put Christendom within a hair'sbreadth of destruction, is derived entirely from *The quarter of Constantinople where the richest and most intelligent of the Greeks reside. 11. The military strength of the empire entirely derived from the Turks. as Gibbon observes, to overrun an empire than to cross a strait. 13. the Turks. As the Turks are thus the indolent, luxurious, dominant race, and the Greeks, Armenians, and other Christians the Great and rap laborious, hard-working, servant id increase of race, they have respectively un- the Christians dergone the usual fate of mankind compared to in such positions in society. The masters have diminished, the slaves have multiplied. The lazy rulers, with their sabres, their horses, their harems, their coffee-houses, their life of repose and enjoyment, are unable to maintain their own numbers; the despised and insulted subjects, with their plows, their shuttles, their oars, their single wives and cottages, have overspread the land with their descendants. They have increased in some places as fast, and from the same cause, as the reviled Catholic Celt under Protestant and Orange domindeed, where the horsemen of the Osmanlis have found it easy to extend their ravages, and the pachas their oppression, the human race has in many places wholly disappeared, and the mournful traveler, after traversing for days together the richest plains, studded with the ruins of ancient cities, now left without a single inhabitant, has repeatedly expressed a dread of the entire extirpation of the human species in the very garden of nature, the places in the world best adapted for its reception. But this is sometimes the result rather of a migration than an absolute diminution of inhabitants. In the mountains where the janizaries have not been able to penetrate, or the regions where the tyranny of the pachas has been exchanged for a fixed tribute-in Servia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, the fastnesses of Albania, the Taurus, and Lebanon-the human race is increasing with great the Osmanlis. It is a fundamental maxim of their government, that the Mussulmans alone are to be armed, or called on to combat either foreign or domestic enemies; the Christians are to be made to contribute to the expense of armaments, and uphold by their industry the strength of the empire, but by no means to be intrusted with the duty of defending it in the field. The former is the generous war-horse, which, sedulously trained to military exercises, is released from all toil till the glorious dangers of war commence; the latter is the humble beast of burden, which is worn out in the meaner occupations of peace, and follows at a distance his proud compeer to the field, to bear his burdens and provide for his subsistence. As the military strength of the empire thus depends solely on the Osmanlis, it is drawn from a comparatively limited body, and depends entirely on their spirit and cour-ination did in Ireland. In the level country, age. Yet is this difference between the Turks and other homogeneous nations greater in appearance than reality. Except in periods of extraordinary excitement, when the whole nation, under the influence of an ungovernable impulse, runs to arms, the military strength of every people is derived from a portion only of its inhabitants. The military caste is seldom more than a third or a fourth of the whole number; and if, as in Turkey, that proportion is all trained to arms as a profession, and engages in no other, it is fully as much as the labor of the remainder of the people can maintain in idleness, ever ready for the toils of war. As the Turks are the military caste upon whom the whole strength in war of the OttoThe whole man empire depends, so the Christians are the industrious class upon whom ness of the its whole riches and material prosconducted perity rest. The natural and inevit"En général, pour les productions, le paysan en Turable ascendency of mind over matter, quie ne demande à la terre que ce dont fl a rigoureusement Greeks. of intelligence over strength, never besoin pour sa subsistance, et le reste est livré à l'abanappeared more strongly than in the destinies of don. La partie qui avoisine les côtes, jusqu'à une distance de quinze à vingt lieues, est plus genéralement la the Greek people. Still, as in ancient times, mieux cultivée; mais au-dela l'on marche souvent, penthey have asserted the dominion over their con- dant plusieurs heures, à travers de vastes espaces en querors; if the sword of the Osmanlis, as of the friche, remplis de broussailles et de mauvaises herbes, Romans, has subdued their bodies, their minds dont la vigueur de végétation atteste la fécondité et la richesse productive du sol. A voir ce délaissement de have again reasserted the ascendency over their l'agriculture dans la Roumélie, on serait tenté de croire à oppressors. The Greeks at Constantinople seem la realité de ce dicton, beaucoup plus commun parmi nous rather the allies than the subjects of the Turks. qu'en Turquie, que les Tures ne se considerent que comme campés en Europe, et qu'ils détachent, peu à peu, The same is the case in most of the other great leurs pensées des provinces qu'ils sentent leur échapper towns of the empire; and their presence is indis- pour les rapporter de préférence sur cette terre d'Asie, pensable, their superiority still more manifest, in qui fut le berceau de leur nation. Cependant, si nous porthe divans of all the pachas. The Turks, who tons nos regards de l'autre côté des détroits, l'aspect ne change pas: méme fertilité partout, et même désolation. long, above all things, after repose, and know Si l'on excepte quelques riches plaines de l'Asie Mineure, no excitement but love and war, leave the whole vous n'apercevez presque nulle part quelque trace de culture. De vastes solitudes, coupées à de lointains intermanagement of affairs to the Greeks: civil ad- valles par quelques tentes de tribus Kurds ou Turcomans, ministration, negotiations, pacific situations, des forêts de pins et de chênes, que le gouvernement livre letters, the arts, commerce, manufactures, in-a la discrétion de quiconque veut les exploiter, sur la rédustry, navigation, all are in their hands. The serve de trois pour cent, sur la vente du bois; le désert presque à la sortie des villes, de loin en loin échelonnés Turks command, and are alone intrusted with parfois à des distances de neuf ou dix heures de marche; military power; but the Greeks direct the com- des villages, dont le misérable aspect contraste péniblemander, often in military, always in civil affairs.ment avec la richesse de la végetation qui les entoure. Voilà ce qui s'offre à la vue du voyageur sur cette terre, The seamen of the Archipelago, skillful now as qui portait jadis tant de villes fameuses-Pergame, Sardis, when they rolled back the tide of Persian in- Troie, Nicomédie, et toutes les autres dont le nom seul a vasion in the Gulf of Salamis, have the entire tend sur un surface de 600 milles geographiques carrés, survécu. M. de Tchitchatchef mentionne une plaine qui commerce of the empire in their hands; for al- et qui offre à peine 50 milles cultivés. I.a production anthough the Turks are admirable horsemen and nuelle de céréales en Asie Mineure évaluée à 705,100,000 most formidable soldiers by land, kilogrammes, ou 9,263,000 hectolitres (5,500,000 quarthey have a superstitious aversion ters), et réprésentant une valeur de 75,000,000 francs (£2,000,000), atteindrait aisément le quintuple, et même to the sea, and often find it easier, le décuple."-UBICINI, 366, 367. 12. civil busi country is by the 1 Lam. vii. 325, 326. |
