Beelzebul

“ Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, like a small dark cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, upon the southeastern horizon of Europe, to extend and overwhelm the budding flower of Christianity and civilization in these fairest portions of the continent, Belgrade was an important Roman fortress, and to-day its national museum and antiquarian stores are particularly rich in the treasure-trove of Byzantine antiquities, unearthed from time to time in the fortress itself and the region round about that came under its protection. ”

“ I explained to Halil that it was my great [Pg 155] desire to do myself the honour of seeing, if possible, the All-Highest War Lord, and that I wished to leave Constantinople for Belgrade. Halil Bey, in common with every other Turk, was in high spirits over the Gallipoli evacuation, and after a little judicious flattery as to his enormous powers, I succeeded in obtaining a letter to the Prefect of Police at Stamboul, and in order that he should see me instantly Halil gave me his card, which is reproduced below. ”

“ The confining of the Ottoman Empire to its Asiatic possessions, with Constantinople as a bridgehead in Europe, was a solution regarded at Berlin during the whole winter, after and even before the capture of Adrianople, as eminently acceptable. The abandonment of her European provinces, which had become a serious burden on the Ottoman Treasury, would leave Turkey free to devote all her resources to exploiting her neglected domains in Anatolia and Syria, where her real wealth lay. The Crescent would shine with more dazzling radiance in the sky of Asia. ”

“ The old city, or the Turkish quarter, as it is called, resembles a patch of Constantinople, and has the low adobe walls, the heavy tiled roofs, the deep windows and the narrow streets of all oriental cities, with long blocks of bazaars kept by Turks and Jews, who have most of their wares displayed upon the sidewalks. This is by far the most interesting section of the town to strangers. The shops are open, so that the visitor is enabled to watch the artisans at their work. ”

“ Billy and Henri were wondering just what the Turks were really going to do with them.
It was not until the following morning that the young aviators saw the marble minarets of Constantinople sparkling in the sunlight, and little reckoned then that they were soon to pass the “high door” or “Sublime porte,” the principal entrance of the sultan’s palace, which rose in grandeur on the extreme point of the promontory where the ancient city stands. Just then the boys were more inclined to the belief that locks and bars were to form the only vision coming to them for many a day. ”

“ There is said to be no actual want anywhere in Serbia now, but no nation ever had so many orphans.
At Belgrade, despite many foreign elements, the most constant impression is one of a multiplied body politic. Belgrade is said to have more cripples than any other capital of Europe. And Berlin comes second. It is a one-eyed city, a city of one-legged men, a city of men with beetling brows and contracted eyes, a city of unrelenting cobble-stones and broken houses. ”

“ It is the capital of the government or Belgerbelle of Aleppo, in Asiatic Turkey, situated 90 miles east of the Levant Sea, and port of Scanderoon, and about 300 miles west of the river Euphrates. It stands upon four hills, in the middle of a pleasant fruitful plain, being of an oval figure, and about 3 miles in circumferance, the castle being on the highest hill in middle of the city. The buildings of the town are better than in most cities in Turkey, and they have a great many stately mosques. ”

“ No doubt the Turkish peasant of Anatolia, when he is not a prey to one of those paroxysms of religious fanaticism which seize him periodically, is generally a good fellow. Very sober and long-suffering he makes an excellent soldier, but the mental apparatus of your Anatolian Turk is several centuries behind the time. ”

“ Everyone is so busy and there are so many people here that it is hardly possible to walk leisurely in the streets during the rush hours of the day. One is taken up and carried by the crowd. And the crowd is the most diversified and picturesque that one can see in any place, not even barring the proverbial bridge in Constantinople. You see, volunteers of all kinds have rushed here not only from Anatolia, but from every Turkish country, every Turkish village of the world and even from the most diversified Muslim countries of Asia and Africa. ”

“ From Berlin my road turned to south-east, past prosperous cities such as Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Breslau, towards that corner of Europe where three Empires meet on what was once part of the picturesque Kingdom of Poland, long since forced into the realm of things forgotten by those three Powers that meet here. It is a gloomy country, black and ungainly in its tense industrial existence. ”

“ The fortress of Belgrade, jutting out exactly at the point of confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or principal quarter, slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter [47] to the Danube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople. ”

“ In Constantinople one often hears the proverb: "Intellect is peculiar to Europe, riches to India, and splendour to the Ottoman." The solemn processions (alay) of the sultan and of the great nobles are alike celebrated in the East and the West, and the imposing exterior which is exhibited on such occasions is nowhere to be found so faithfully reflected as among their fellow tribes in Central Asia. An Œzbeg or Turkoman, when upon his horse, or seated in his tent at the head of his family, has the same proud bearing, the same self-consciousness of greatness and power. ”

“ The people of Turkey seldom speak of Osman's city as Constantinople, the name given it by the Christians. They prefer to call it "The Town."
"Yes, the palace and the buildings belonging to it really make a city by themselves," said his father. "It is a beautiful place, with its lovely gardens and parks. There is a lake in the midst of the park, and the Sultan sometimes sails around it in an elegant steam launch.
"The palace is of white marble, as you know, Osman. The furniture is of ebony inlaid with ivory. The curtains and carpets are of the brightest colours, and are rich and heavy." ”

“ I do not know Turkish enough to appreciate his literature, and his religion forbids him—or he imagines it does—to engage in the plastic arts. But in architecture and certain forms of decoration he has created a school of his own. It is not only that the Turkish quarter of any Ottoman town is more picturesque than the others. The old Palace of the sultans in Constantinople, certain old houses I have seen, the mosques, the medressehs, the hans, the tombs, the fountains, of the Turks are an achievement that deserves more serious study than has been given [537] them. ”

“ Cities.—Capital, Belgrade (Biograd, “White Fortress”) at the confluence of the Save and Danube, is now a modern city, with electric railways and light, and wide streets, containing the university, national museum and library, and the old Turkish citadel. Population (1910) 91,000. It lies opposite Semlin, at the confluence of the Save and Danube, two hundred and fifteen miles southeast of Budapesth. The walls disappeared in 1862; the last and finest of the five gates was demolished in 1868. Year by year the town is losing its old Turkish aspect, becoming more modern, more European. ”

“ People escape from the burning atmosphere, and an exposed unsheltered street, to this retreat. It then resembles a subterranean city, crowded with a busy population of many thousand persons, bustling, buying, and selling in the cool and dim twilight. But the fair sex form by far the majority. It seems a privileged place, where the ordinary distinction of sect or caste is laid aside, and the Turk, Frank, and Raya, all mix and chat and bargain together without restraint; and it seems the only place where the pride and taciturnity of the Osmanli is laid aside. ”

“ The kiosk of the harem was a temporary wooden building; pitched, and repaired with unpainted timber. And, had I been on my way to Constantinople, instead of from it, my pre-conceived and highly-wrought ideas of Oriental splendour would have inevitably suffered utter prostration at the sight of this “princely” establishment.
The Fortress of Belgrade, which is the most extensive, as well as the strongest military position possessed by the Turks, is garrisoned only by four hundred men, or rather men and boys, for a portion of them are mere youths ”

“ For the Truth is, the Ottomans are herein not unlike to great Rivers, whose Swelling Waves, if they break down any part of the Bank or Jitty, that keeps them in, spread far and near, and do abundance of Mischief; so the Turks, but far more perniciously, having once broke through the Obstacles that stopt them, make a vast spoil where-ever they come. But to return to Belgrade, that I may prosecute the rest of my Journey to Constantinople. ”

“ The Turks were not long in making their purpose evident. Within two years after the fall of Constantinople they were on the march again, and had laid siege to Belgrade, the first obstacle in their pathway to universal conquest. The Turkish cannons were thundering at the doors of Europe. Belgrade fallen, Vienna would come next, and the march of the barbarians might only end at the sea. ”

“ Yet one other illusion concerning Turkish stamps has been shattered of recent years. We are told now that the Crescent, so long an emblem of the Sublime Empire, owes nothing to the moon. The barking of dogs on the appearance of the moon at the siege of Byzantium may have saved the city, and the partial eclipse of the orb of night may have aided the Turks at the capture of Constantinople, but the Turkish Crescent is no memorial thereof, merely a horse-shoe or an amulet. ”

“ The soldiers, incensed beyond control, rushed upon the little town, and, with the loss of a hundred men, massacred every Hungarian in the place. Then they sat down to enjoy themselves for five days. The people of Belgrade, panic-stricken on hearing of the fate of Semlin, fled all with one accord, headed by their 150governor, and hurriedly carrying away everything portable; and Peter, before the King of Hungary had time to collect an army to avenge the taking of his city, managed to transport everything to the other side of the Danube, and pitched his camp under the deserted walls of Belgrade. ”

“ We crossed a shaky draw-bridge, and, passing under an old mouldering gateway, found ourselves in the Turkish town—in the real region of true believers—not modern Turks, such as are now mostly seen in Constantinople, in Frank dresses and polished boots, but amongst grave, old-fashioned Moslems, arrayed in the flowing robes and large decorous turbans of days gone by. ”

“ Born in the desert where they are reared and loved so well, he imbibes from childhood a regard for the full blooded barb, that falls little short of reverence; and being once possessed of one, no money can part them. The two Bedouins stealthily watched the Turk as he rode slowly along, and were evidently only awaiting a favorable moment to attack and overcome him.
By an ingenious movement they doubled a slight hillock that lay between them and the woods of Belgrade, and as they came up on the other side, placed themselves directly in the path of the horseman. ”

“ In the quotation given she is writing about the women of Constantinople, but what she says of them can, ceteris paribus, be asserted of their sisters in other parts of the Ottoman Empire:
It is a great fallacy [she declares] to imagine that Turkish females are like birds in a cage or captives in a cell;—far from it; there is not a public festival, be it Turk, Frank, Armenian or Greek, where they are not to be seen in numbers sitting upon their carpets or in their carriages, surrounded by slaves and attendants, eager and delighted spectators of the revel. ”

“ Niazi Bey, the young officer who was the first to raise the standard of revolt, was a good example of the men who were forthcoming in numbers at this period of Turkey’s great danger, men who proved to the world the stubborn virtues of the old Ottoman stock, intensely patriotic, brooding over the sorrows of their country, seeking a plan for her134 deliverance, and, that plan once found, devoting themselves, with the passionate zeal of men obsessed by a fixed idea, to the carrying out of their high aim. ”

“ No one can doubt that it will enormously intensify zeal in the fight for the existence of the Turkey of the future, freed from its jingoistic outgrowths, once more come to its senses and confined to its own proper sphere of activity, Anatolia, the core of the Empire. ”

“ Others took their places, Turkish peasants like himself, middle aged, bearded, solemn—but from districts farther South and West.
They, too, had heard that Islam was in danger, that the Russian was at the door.
Came more fighting, through many, weary months. Then a defeat, a rout, a debacle; the ground littered with their dead and dying, amongst them the colonel of the Seventeenth, Moustaffa Sheffket Bey; and talk of treason in exalted places, of a renegade Saloniki Jew by the name of Enver Bey throttling the ancient Osmanli Empire and handing it over, tied hand and foot, to a Potsdam usurper. ”