Ottoman Porte

“ The Porte declared war against the French, and, entered into an alliance with Russia and England (12th August) . A Russian fleet sailed from Sebastopol, and blockaded the Ionian Islands; the English vessels found every Turkish port open to them, and gained possession of the Levant trade, to the detriment of France. Thus the failure of the Egyptian expedition delivered the Ottoman Empire into the hands of two Powers, the one intent upon its dismemberment, the other eager to make itself master of its commerce; it gave England the supremacy in the Mediterranean ”

“ It was with forces thus constituted that the Ottomans extended their Empire up to and beyond the Danube. The conquests of the larger part of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, were also effected, by composite forces, to which Serbia and Wallachia sent contingents by virtue of treaties with the Porte. The greater number of Ottoman generals who distinguished themselves in these early days of conquest were not of Turkish race, but were Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Italians, who had embraced Islam or whose forbears had done so. ”

“ The weakest principality had nothing to fear in the nineteenth century from Turkish invasion, but the most powerful states had realised that it would be a formidable task to make the Porte comply with the concert of Europe—such is the quality of genuine vis inertiæ. Nevertheless the real guarantee for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire had come to be—not her army and fleet, nor the fervour of her Moslem subjects—but the mutual jealousy and suspicion existing between other Powers regarding the disposal of Ottoman territory. ”

“ CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. No. X. THE SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA.
The Ottoman empire, exhausted by its strenuous and long-continued efforts in the death-struggle of Candia, had need of peace and repose to recruit its resources; but the calm was not of long duration. A fresh complication of interests was now arising in the north, which, by involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. ”

“ There is no coronation in Turkey; instead the Sultans gird on the sword of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty, which is kept in the mosque of Ayoob, in Constantinople. When a Sultan is proclaimed, he goes to that mosque with great pomp, and all the members of the Sublime Porte, the civil officers, the generals, commanders, soldiers, patriarchs of different religions, and the Sheik-ul-Islam, the Mohammedan religious head, follow him. ”

“ XXVII. The Sublime Porte undertakes not to punish in any manner, or allow to be punished, those Ottoman subjects who may have been compromised by their relations with the Russian army during the war. In the event of any persons wishing to withdraw with their families when the Russian troops leave, the Ottoman authorities shall not oppose their departure [8] . ”

“ That in recording by Article IV of the said Convention the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire, by virtue of which it has been at all times forbidden to foreign vessels of war to enter within the Straits of the Dardanelles and of the Bosphorus, the Sublime Porte reserves to itself, as heretofore, to deliver passes to light vessels under flag of war, which may be employed according to custom for the service of the correspondence of the Legations of friendly Powers. ”

“ As regards the title, “The Sublime Porte,” this has a different origin. In the earlier days of Ottoman rule, the reigning sovereign, as is still the case in some parts of the East, held courts of justice and levees at the entrance of his residence. The palace of the Sultan is always surrounded by a high wall, and not unfrequently defended by lofty towers and bastions. The chief entrance is an elevated portal, with some pretensions to magnificence and showy architecture. It is guarded by soldiers or door-keepers well armed ”

“ The Ottoman forces shall not enter the places to be restored to the Sublime Porte, and the Sublime Porte cannot begin to exercise its authority there until notice of each fortress and province having been evacuated by the Russian troops shall have been given by the Commander of these troops to the officer appointed for this purpose by the Sublime Porte. ”

“ No troops ever more powerfully affected the imagination of friends and foes. Among the Turks they were always the leaders, the forlorn hope. Among Christians the terror of their name spread over Europe. In every war they gained new laurels, and from the moment when they stormed the walls of Constantinople they began to be, slowly but certainly, the sole strength of the Ottoman power. At first the absolute servants of the Sultan, before two centuries were over they became his masters. ”

“ In the bazaars and the narrow streets Turks and Greeks, Armenians and Kurds, Arabs, Georgians, full-blooded negroes, go about their business with the utmost unconcern, as if Europe were not face{100}{99} to face with epoch-making changes which affect the Ottoman Empire in Europe, and especially this City, its heart. Yet here in Constantinople, so full of memories of the great Christian Empire which shielded Europe’s development against the Pagan armies of the East for so many centuries, there is a feeling, subconscious but ever present, that the Turk is only in temporary possession. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And though such part of the native populations as is not of use to Germany may be starving, Turkey’s value as a military, an industrial, and an economic asset is vastly greater to-day than it ever has been, for Germany has set the Ottoman house in order since it is an annexe in the plans of her own world-wide palace, and Anatolian soldiers are a wheel in the great German war-machine, which shall Juggernaut its way over the entire globe. ”

“ Now-144a-days any one can go there, and many who do so come away quite unimpressed; but of one thing we may be quite certain, and that is that when centuries shall have elapsed, when possibly the Ottoman power will be only a memory in Europe, and that exquisite hill be crowned by the busy streets of a new and populous city, no traveller will pass through them without seeing again, in fancy, the imperial kiosks of former days, and thinking enviously of us in the nineteenth century who can still behold the speaking, breathing records of that storied habitation of the Ottomans. ”

“ The hesitating and fearful Ottoman, feeling his way cautiously amid the mazes of European diplomacy, and seeking opportunities to find an advantage for himself in the divided counsels of the European powers, gave place to an upstanding, almost dashing figure, proud and assertive, determined to live his own life and absolutely contemptuous of his Christian foes. ”

“ The beaten remnant of Ottoman power in Europe, huddling behind the lines of Chatalja, was to emerge from hiding, march over the Bulgarians up the Valley of the Maritza, relieve famine-stricken Adrianople, and enter Sofia in triumph. Yet another Ottoman army was to march south through Thessaly, retake Saloniki, cross into Epirus, and dictate the Sultan’s terms to Greece in Athens. This has been told me seriously by several Turks, those who are interested in the war. What is more, they are firmly persuaded that this can and will happen. ”

“ At a time when the Eastern Question looms like a huge shadow over Europe, and when the very existence of the Turkish Empire is once more threatened, may I hope that this story of the military virtues of the Ottoman troops may not be found without real interest? ”

“ The Ottoman Empire is made up of Turkey in Europe—the strip of territory stretching across from the Black Sea to the Adriatic—Turkey in Asia, which includes Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and provinces in the isles of Samos and Cyprus are also under the sultan’s rule. ”

“ The religious prestige of the Ottoman power as the repository of caliphial authority and trustee for Islam in the Holy Land of Arabia, is an asset almost impossible to estimate. Would a death struggle of the Osmanlis in Europe rouse the Sunni world? Would the Moslems of India, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, and Malaya take up arms for the Ottoman sultan as caliph? ”

“ A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to a long prevalent opinion, the Osmanlis are a Turkish race who achieved the conquest of Asia Minor before they invaded Europe and before they became masters of the Byzantine Empire. The fact is they had subjugated the entire Balkan peninsula before they obtained possession of more than the northwest corner of Anatolia, and had maintained Adrianople as the Ottoman capital eighty-seven years before Mohammed II, after the conquest of Constantinople, transferred it to its present location on the Bosphorus. ”

“ When Turkey has finally jettisoned those encumbrances, the European vilayets, and withdrawn to Asia Minor, the Ottoman Empire will probably gain considerably in strength by consolidation, and by carrying out many social and economical reforms which have been kept in abeyance during the constant trouble caused by the war-clouds that hung over Eastern Europe. A strong Turkish Empire in Asia Minor, real control over the tribes in Syria, strict surveillance of the eastern and north-eastern frontiers, will mean some prospect of peace in those very unsettled regions. ”

“ They owed their greatness mainly to a long line of able sultans, who gradually absorbed the neighbouring Turkish tribes and used this consolidated strength for ambitious conquests both to east and west. In 1453 the Osmanli extinguished the old Byzantine Empire by taking Constantinople, and within a century thereafter they had conquered the Moslem East from Persia to Morocco, had subjugated the whole Balkan Peninsula, and had advanced through Hungary to the walls of Vienna. Unlike their Mongol cousins, the Ottoman Turks built up a durable empire. ”

“ He left us in the vestibule, and we mounted a handsome marble staircase to a suite of apartments above, communicating with the sultan’s private gallery. The carpets here were richer, and the divans with which the half dozen saloons were surrounded, were covered with the most costly stuffs of the East. The gallery was divided from the area of the mosque by a fine brazen grating curiously wrought, and its centre occupied by a rich ottoman, whereon the imperial legs are crossed in the intervals of his prostrations. ”

“ Kaleidoscopic indeed have been the changes in the Near East since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The economic and political power of Germany in Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia has been completely destroyed. The Ottoman Empire has disappeared, and in its place has risen a republican Nationalist Turkey. ”

“ We here turn aside for a brief hour from the stream of historical narrative to consider some of the results of Ottoman misrule which has for more than four centuries controlled an empire in Eastern Europe almost as large as France, in one of the most delightful and beautifully varied regions on the continent and which yet holds its peoples in the relentless grip of the Dark Ages. ”

“ The King of Hungary, the Princes of Servia, Bosnia, Wallachia, formed a league intended to drive the Osmanli out of Europe; they collected their armed forces and marched towards the East, crossing the Maritza about two days’ march from Constantinople. There was no force of equal strength available to Lalashahin, then in command of the Ottoman forces in Europe, for the allied Princes{172} disposed of some twenty thousand men, and the Turkish army was scattered about in various garrisons. ”

“ In spite of all efforts, the Ottoman Power is rapidly wasting away. The life of the Orient is nerveless and effete; the native strength of the race has died out, and all attempts to resuscitate it by the adoption of European institutions produce mere galvanic spasms, which leave it more exhausted than before. The rosy-colored accounts we have had of Turkish Progress are for the most part mere delusions. The Sultan is a well-meaning but weak man, and tyrannical through his very weakness. ”

“ A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary yielded up their independence as Christian states. ”