Edward S. Creasey on Mahmud II and the Birth of Modern Turkey, 1808-1839

[From Edward S. Creasy, Turkey. New York: P. F. Collier and Sons, 1905]

Peril from Russia, peril from England, peril from France, peril from mutinous Janissaries and factious Ulemas, peril from manyheaded insurrection among Wahabites, Mamelukes, Servians, Albanians, Greeks, Druses, Kurds, Syrians, and Egyptians, peril from rebellious Pashas, who would fain have founded new kingdoms on the ruins of the house of OthmanÑsuch were some of the clouds that hung over the reign of Mahmud, the second Sultan of that name and the thirtieth sovereign of his dynasty. He braved them all. Though often worsted by fortune he never gave up the struggle, and his memory deserves the respect of those who are capable of judging historical characters according to the rule laid down by Demosthenes, the great statesman of antiquity, according to the principle of giving honor to sage forethought and energetic action, whether favored by prosperous or baffled by adverse circumstances. The evils that Mahmud saw around him were gigantic, and he gave up the repose of his seraglio to grapple with them in the true heroic spirit. It would be absurd to assert that he fell into no errors, it would be rash to maintain that he was sullied by no crimes, but take him on the whole he was a great man, who, amid difficulty, disappointment, and disaster, did his duty nobly to the royal house whence he was sprung and to the once magnificent empire which it was his hard lot to govern.
It is observable in the early part of Mahmud's reign that two formidable classes of his enemies were swept away by the instrumentality of a high officer, who afterward became himself the most formidable of all the foes who crossed the Sultan's path The Mamelukes were destroyed and the Wahabites completely conquered by Mahmud's Egyptian Pasha, Mohammed Ali, one of the most remarkable men that the Mohammedan world has produced in modern times.
Mohammed Ali was born in Macedonia about the year 1765. He served in the Turkish army against the French in Egypt and learned there the superiority of the arms and tactics of Western Europe over those of the Turks and Mamelukes. He afterward distinguished himself greatly in the repulse of the English expedition against Egypt in 1807. Having attained the rank of Pasha of the province he strove sedulously to free the country and himself from the lawless tyranny of the Mamelukes. He effected this in 1811 by a stroke of the vilest treachery and most ruthless cruelty. Under the show of reconciliation and hospitable friendship he brought those formidable cavaliers to his palace, and then caused them to be shot down by his Albanian guards while cooped helplessly together in a narrow passage between high walls.
The Mamelukes were effectually exterminated by this atrocious massacre, and Mohammed Ali rapidly consolidated his power within his province and also extended it beyond the Egyptian territory. His armies, under his sons, carried on a series of campaigns against the Wahabites in Arabia, at first with varying success, but at last the power of those fierce sectaries was completely broken. The holy cities and the rest of Arabia were recovered, and Abdullah Ibn Saud, the last Emir of the Wahabites, was made captive. Mohammed sent him to Constantinople, where he was beheaded on November I9, 18I9. The Egyptian Pasha next conquered Nubia and Sennaar and annexed those regions to his dominions. He had formed an army on the European model, trained and officered by European military adventurers, chiefly from France, whom the cessation of the great wars in Christendom after I 8 I 5 set at liberty and who were tempted to Egypt by the high pay and favor which Mohammed offered. Equal care was taken in preparing and manning a naval force, in the improvement of harbors, the construction of docks and roads, and all those other territorial improvements which are at once the emblems and the engines of what is called enlightened despotism. The people of Egypt suffered bitterly under Mohammed's imposts and still more under the severe laws of conscription by which he filled the ranks of his army. But arbitrary and oppressive as was Mohammed's system it succeeded in gaining him the great object of his heart, a permanent and efficient military force, as was well proved when he aided the Sultan against the Greeks and still better proved at a later period in the campaigns which Mohammed's son, Ibrahim Pasha, conducted against the generals of the Sultan himself.
Before, however, we consider these last-mentioned events we must revert to the affairs of Servia and the other northern provinces of European Turkey. It has been observed how vague and unsatisfactory were the stipulations respecting the Servians that were introduced in the Treaty of Bucharest. One natural result of this was that Kara George and the other Servian chiefs were desirous of having some definite provisions made for the security of their people before the Turks took possession of the fortresses, whereas the Sultan's officers insisted on Belgrade and the other strongholds being given up to them immediately. While these and other differences were pending Molla Pasha of Widdin, who (like the former chief of that Pashalic, Pasvan Oglu) was in active rebellion against the Sultan, proposed to the Servians that they should ally themselves with him against the Porte. The Servians declined this offer in compliance with the advice of the Russians, who were endeavoring to induce Turkey to join the confederation against France (Napoleon not yet having been completely overthrown), and were consequently at that time desirous of saving the Porte from embarrassment. The disputes between the Turks and Servians continued to increase, and in 18I3 Turkish armies assailed and overran the country. Kara George (who had made himself absolute ruler of the Servians and from whom at least the example of courage was expected) now betrayed his selfassumed trust. He buried his treasure, which was considerable, and fled across the frontier into Austria. Once more Servia seemed hopelessly bowed down beneath the Turkish yoke, but the gallantry of one of her Kneses, Milosh Obrenovich, once more preserved her. Animated and guided by him, the Servians rose in arms in 18I5, and before the close of the year the Turkish troops that had occupied the country were broken and dispersed, though the fortresses remained in the occupation of the Sultan's garrisons. Two formidable Ottoman armies advanced upon Servia in the succeeding year, but instead of overwhelming her they halted on the frontier and offered to negotiate. This hesitation on the part of the Ottomans was caused by the universal excitement then prevailing throughout the Christian populations of Turkey, who expected an intervention in their behalf to be made by the confederate sovereigns of the Holy Alliance and were ready to rise throughout the empire at the first signal of encouragement. The Porte also had watched with anxiety and alarm the proceedings of the Congress at Vienna to which no representative of the Ottoman Empire was admitted, and the league of the three sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, as " Holy Allies," seemed eminently menacing to the excluded Ottomans. Under these circumstances the Sultan was averse to entangling and risking his whole available military force in a war against the Servian Rayas. No absolute attempt was made to conquer Servia, but a series of embassies and treaties occupied several years, during which Milosh made himself absolute ruler of the Servians much after the manner of his predecessor, Kara George. Kara George himself, who ventured to return to his country, was seized and shot by the commands of Milosh on the requisition of the Turks. [This assassination has given rise to a bitter feud between the descendants of Kara George and Milosh, which has recently given proof of its activity in the terrible murders at Belgrade, I903] Milosh observed the external semblance of obedience to the Porte, which had reason at that period to be content that a chief should rule the Servians who would keep them in control, and whose self-interest would deter him from joining in revolutionary projects for the total overthrow of the Ottoman Empire. But it is not probable that after the Holy Alliance had clearly shown its disinclination to interfere in the affairs of the East Mahmud would long have acquiesced in the real independence of the Grand Knes of Servia had it not been for the grave difficulties that were brought' upon the Sultan by the Greek insurrection and other circumstances connected with that celebrated event.
Many causes combined to originate and to sustain the Greek War of Independence. The first and the most enduring were unquestionably those feelings which are among the noblest of our nature, and which the national historian of modern Greece refers to when he claims peculiar glory for his country, " because from the very commencement of the struggle, her purpose, proclaimed before God and man, was to break the yoke of the stranger and to raise again from the dead her nationality and her independence. She took up arms that she might by force of arms thrust out of Greece a race alien to her in blood and in creed, a race that had by force of arms held her captive for ages and that regarded her to the last as its captive and as subject to the edge of its sword." To these public feelings were added, in the bosoms of many, the remembrance and the sense of intolerable private wrong. Moreover, the general diffusion of knowledge among the Greeks and the impulse that had been given to education and literary pursuits since the time of Selim III. powerfully contributed in arousing the courage as well as the intelligence of a long-oppressed and much enduring people. Many also of the Greeks had acquired both wealth and habits of energetic enterprise by the advancing commerce of their nation, and the insular and seafaring population of the country had generally shown the greatest activity and skill in availing themselves of the opportunities which the state of Europe for the first fifteen years of the century gave them for securing a large share of the carrying trade of the Levant. While Greece thus possessed admirable materials for a national maritime force she had also better resources for an immediate military struggle on land than nations which have been subject to others for centuries can usually command. Her bands of Klephts, or robbers, were numerous, well-armed, and brave, and such an occupation in a country in the condition of Greece before the revolution implied no greater degree of discredit than was attached in England during the early Norman reigns to the " bold outlaws " of Sherwood, or in Greece herself in the Homeric ages to the avowed sea-rover and pirate. There was also in central and northern Greece another important class of armed natives, forming a kind of militia, which had been originally instituted and sanctioned by the Turks themselves for the purpose of maintaining order and repressing the Klephts. These national guards (as they might be termed) were composed exclusively of Greeks and were officered by Greeks, but they acknowledged the authority of the Pashas of their respective districts. They frequently consisted of Klephts who had come in from the mountains and made terms with the government, and who were thenceforth denominated " Tame Klephts," but the regular name of the defensive troops was the Armatoli. The Porte had for some years before the Greek revolution been jealous of the numbers and organization of the Armatoles, and violent efforts had been made to reduce their strength, which chiefly resulted in driving them into open rebellion and increasing the power of the armed, or wild, Klephts. Another circumstance which favored still more the insurrection of Greece was the density and homogeneousness of its Christian population, far exceeding the usual proportions to be found in the Turkish Empire. Napoleon had remarked in one of his conversations at St. Helena on the subject of the East that the Sultans had committed a great fault in allowing so large a mass of Christians of the same race to collect together and in such numerical preponderance above their masters, as in Greece, and he predicted that " sooner or later this fault will bring on the fall of the Ottomans." 2 Such were the impulses and resources which Greece possessed within herself for her War of Independence which must, however, have been ultimately unsuccessful (notwithstanding the gallantry with which it was waged) had it not been for the sympathy which the Greek cause excited among all the nations of Europe.
Ever since the ineffectual rising with Russian help which took place in I770 the Greeks had been incessantly scheming fresh attempts. Toward the close of the century Rhigas, their national poet, whose lyrics powerfully contributed to keep up the flame of freedom in the hearts of his countrymen, formed the project of uniting the whole Greek nation in a secret confederacy for the overthrow of their Turkish masters. Thus was originated and first organized the celebrated Het¾ria. It made rapid and extensive progress under Rhigas, but it decayed after his death in I798. It was revived in 1814 among the Greeks of Odessa by Nicholas Skophas. He termed it the Society (or Het¾ria) of the Philikoi, and by engrafting it on a literary society which was flourishing at Athens he obtained the means of spreading it with rapidity among the most intelligent Greeks, and at the same time of masking it from the suspicion of the Turks. The association soon comprised many thousand members. A great number of officers in the Russian service were enrolled in it, and it was supposed to identify Russian policy and Greek interests more closely than really was the case, a supposition highly favorable to its advancement, as the belief that they were acting under Russian authority and were sure to receive Russian aid in time of need naturally increased the numerical strength and boldness of the confederates. The association had its hierarchy, its secret signs, and its mysterious but exciting formalities. Its general spirit may be judged of by the oath administered to the initiated in the third of its seven degrees: " Fight for thy Faith and thy Fatherland. Thou shalt hate, thou shalt persecute, thou shalt utterly destroy the enemies of thy religion, of thy race, and of thy country." The Het¾ria had its branches and agents in every province of European Turkey, in the chief cities of Asia Minor, and in every foreign state where any number of Greeks had settled. Early in 1820 its chiefs were making preparations for a general insurrection which could not have been much longer delayed. But the event which was the immediate cause of the rising was the war between the Sultan and Ali Pasha, which broke out in the spring of that year and offered the Greeks the advantage of beginning their revolution while the best troops of the Porte were engaged against a formidable enemyÑagainst one who long had been himself one of the strongest and cruelest oppressors of the Greek race, but now seemed driven by self-interest to become its most valuable ally.
Nothing certain at this time was known in the Divan at Constantinople of the danger that was gathering against the Ottoman power in the Het¾ria of the Greeks, and Sultan Mahmud had determined on commencing one of the many difficult tasks of his reign, that of effectually putting down the over-powerful and rebellious vassals who had long maintained their empires within his empire and who overshadowed the majesty of his throne. None of these was more insolently independent, or had given juster cause of alarm or offense to the Porte, than Ali of Epirus, the Pasha of Janina, whose name has already often occurred to us, but who requires more special notice in considering the recent history of the Ottomans and their subject-races.
Ali Pasha was an Albanian, and his family belonged to one of the tribes that had long embraced Mohammedanism. His ancestors had, for several generations, been hereditary chiefs of the little fortified village of Tepelene, where Ali was born about the year 174I. His father (who died before Ali was fourteen) had been deprived of nearly all the possessions of the family in a series of unsuccessful feuds with the neighboring chieftains. Ali's mother, Khamko, trained the lad up to make revenge and power the sole objects of his existence. He formed a band of freebooters, at the head of which he sometimes won plunder and renown, and sometimes experienced extreme reverses and peril. On some occasions he sought refuge in the mountains, where he wandered as a solitary Klepht, or robber, till he again gathered comrades and struck for power as well as for existence. After some years of romantic but savage adventures Ali had recovered the greater part of the territories of his family and had acquired fame throughout Albania as a bold and successful chieftain. He did good service in the armies of the Porte against the Austrians in 1788, and partly by the reputation thus gained, but still more by bribery, he obtained from the Divan the Pashalic of Trikala, in Thessaly. By unscrupulous and audacious craft and crime he afterward made himself Pasha of Janina, in Epirus, which thenceforth was the capital of his dominions. Gifted with great sagacity and embarrassed by no remorse and little fear, Ali triumphed over rival Begs and Pashas, and almost accomplished the subjugation of the neighboring mountain tribes, though he experienced from them, and especially from the gallant Suliotes, a long and obstinate resistance. Every forward step of Ali's career was stained by the foulest treachery and the most fiendish cruelty. But the cities and lands under his rule obtained peace, security, and commercial prosperity. Ali watched eagerly the conflicts and changes of which nearly all Europe was the scene for many years after the breaking out of the first French Revolution. He had frequent negotiations with Napoleon and other rulers of the West, who substantially, though not formally, recognized him as an independent potentate. It is said that " his scheme was to make himself master of all Albania, Thessaly, Greece, and the Ionian Islands, and the Gulf of Arta, a bay with a narrow entrance, but spacious enough to contain the united fleets of Europe, was to become the center of this new empire. His Albanians were the best soldiers in Turkey, the forests of Janina and Delvino abound with excellent timber, and Greece would have furnished him the most enterprising sailors in the Mediterranean." Ali never could realize this project, but he maintained and increased his dominion until 18I9, when the acquisition of Parga was his last triumph. Mahmud had long resolved to quell his insubordinate Pasha, whose haughty independence was notorious throughout Europe, and a daring crime committed by Ali in February, 1820, gave the immediate pretext for his destruction. Two of Ali's agents were detected in Constantinople in an attempt to assassinate Ismail Pasha, who had fled from Janina to avoid the effects of the Pasha's enmity, and had been employed in the Sultan's own court. A fetwah was forthwith issued by which Ali was declared Fermanli (or outlaw), and all loyal Viziers and other subjects of the Padishah were ordered to make war upon the rebel. In the conflict which ensued Ali had at first some success, but Mahmud inspired his generals with some portion of his own energy, and by sternly declaring that he would put to death anyone who dared to speak in favor of the outlaw, the Sultan checked the usual efficacy of the bribes which Ali dispensed among many members of the Divan. Cooped up in Janina Ali prolonged his resistance till the beginning of I822, when he was lured into the power of his enemies by pretended terms of capitulation, and put to death by Kurshid Pasha, who commanded the besieging army.
But while the " old Lion of Janina " (as Ali was called) thus long held at bay the Sultan's forces and detained one of the ablest, though most ferocious, of the Sultan's generals, almost all Greece had risen and beaten back the Ottomans, and a similar insurrection had been for a time successfully attempted in the trans-Danubian provinces. In February, 1821, Ipsilanti, a Greek who had obtained high distinction in the Russian army and who was then the chief of the Hetaeria, crossed the Pruth into Moldavia with a small band and called on his countrymen throughout the Turkish Empire to take up arms. Unhappily, the very first acts of the Greek liberators (though Ipsilanti was not personally responsible for them) were the cruel and cowardly murders of Turkish merchants in the towns of Galatz and Jassy. The tidings of these things, with the addition of much exaggeration and many false rumors, soon reached Constantinople. The consequent indignation, and the alarm of the Mohammedans at the widespread confederacy of their Rayas against them, which was now suddenly revealed, produced a series of savage massacres of the Greek residents in the capital, and these were imitated or exceeded by the Turkish populations, and especially the Janissaries in Smyrna and other towns. Indeed, throughout the six years' war that followed the most ferocious and often treacherous cruelty was exhibited on both sides. But many acts of heroism worthy of the best days of ancient Greece cast a luster on the cause of the insurgents and added to the sympathy with which the peoples of Christian Europe regarded their efforts, sympathy which was shown in the accession of frequent volunteers to the Greek armies and in liberal contributions by individuals and private societies to their funds before the kings of Christendom interfered in the conflict. In Moldavia and Wallachia the Turks destroyed Ipsilanti's force and put an end to the insurrection at the battle of Drageschan, on June I9, 1821. But in Greece and on the Greek seas the bands and light squadrons of the insurgents were generally victorious over the Turkish armies and fleets, until in I825 Sultan Mahmud summoned to Greece the forces of his Egyptian Pasha, Mohammed Ali. The effect of superior arms and discipline was at once apparent. Ibrahim Pasha at the head of his father's regular battalions defeated the Greeks in every encounter, laid waste their territory at his will, and gradually reconquered the cities and fortresses which had been won from the Turks, Missolonghi (which was regarded as the great bulwark of western Greece) falling after a noble resistance, on April 22, I826, and Athens surrendering in the June of the following year.
While the Egyptian troops were thus maintaining a decided superiority by land the squadron sent by Mohammed Ali had combined with the Turkish, and a powerful fleet of heavily-armed and well-manned ships was thus collected under the Sultan's flag in the Greeks waters, with which the lighter vessels of the insurgents were utterly unable to cope. The usual curses of a liberal cause, when the fortune of arms goes against itÑdisunion and civil warÑ now raged among the Greek chiefs, and despite the general gallantry of the nation and the high abilities and boundless devotion displayed by some of the leaders, Greece must have sunk in I827 if the forces of the three great powers of Christian Europe had not appeared with startling effect on the scene.
Before, however, we consider the final catastrophe of the Greek war we must revert to the intervening transactions between the Porte and the court of St. Petersburg on the subject of Servia and the principalities, and also to the bold measures by which the Sultan, in I826, struck down the long-hated and long-dreaded power of the Janissaries and revolutionized the military system of his empire. The destruction of the Janissaries is the greatest event of Mahmud's reign. While considering the state of Turkey in the first years of Selim III. we have seen how indispensably necessary it had become, both for the internal amelioration of the empire and for strengthening it against attacks from without, that there should be a thorough change in the composition, the organization, the discipline, and the arms of the regular troops. We have seen how obstinately the Janissaries resisted all improvements and the savage fury with which they destroyed the sovereign and the statesmen who endeavored to effect the requisite alterations. Since those events the worthlessness of the Janissaries in the field had been further proved, not only in the campaigns on the Danube in 1810 and 1811, but still more conclusively in their repeated failures against the Greek insurgents. On the other hand, the victorious progress of the Egyptian troops in Greece demonstrated that the European discipline could be acquired by Mohammedans as well as by natives of Christendom, and that the musket and bayonet were as effective in the hands of a Copt or Arab as in those of a Muscovite or Frank. The comparison between the troops sent from his Egyptian provinces and those supplied by other parts of his empire was at once inspiriting and galling to the Sultan. He saw that Mohammed Ali had realized in Egypt the very projects which had hitherto been beyond the power and almost beyond the daring of the Padishahs of the Ottoman world. Mahmud determined that this contrast should cease to shame him and that the Janissaries should no longer survive the Mamelukes. But he knew well the numerical strength and the unscrupulous violence of the body which he was about to assail. Scarcely a year of his reign had passed in which some part of his capital had not been destroyed by fires caused by malcontent Janissaries, or in which it had not been necessary to make some concession to their turbulent demands. It was impossible to collect and destroy them by any stratagem, such as Mohammed Ali had used against the Mamelukes, nor, indeed, is there any act of Mahmud's life which justifies us in suspecting that he would have been willing to employ such treacherous artifices, even if they could have availed him. Mahmud foresaw that a battle in the streets of Constantinople must decide the question between him and the Janissaries, and he diligently strengthened himself in the arm of war which is most effective in street contests. It is said that when he heard of the manner in which Murat, in 1808, used cannon to clear the streets of Madrid of the insurgent populace, it made such an impression on the Sultan's mind that it never was forgotten. He sedulously improved the condition of his own artillery force and by degrees officered it with men on whose loyalty and resolution he could rely. When, in the eighteenth year of his reign, he made ready for the final struggle with his Janissaries, he had increased the force of Topidjis, or artillerymen, in and near Constantinople to 14,000, and he had placed at their head an officer of unscrupulous devotion to his sovereign's will. This general of Turkish artillery was named Ibrahim, but his conduct on the day of the conflict and his swarthy complexion made him afterward known by the grim title of Kara Djehennin, or " Black Hell." Mahmud also had taken an opportunity to appoint as Aga of the Janissaries themselves Hussein, who was ready to carry out all the Sultan's projects. The Grand Vizier was staunch to his sovereign and a man of spirit, and a large body of trustworthy Asiatic troops was encamped at Scutari, which could be brought into action at the fitting moment. Mahmud also reasoned, not unsuccessfully, with the leading Ulema on the folly of their abetting by their influence the obstinate disloyalty of the Janissaries, who might once have been the truest champions, but were now clearly the worst enemies of Islam. He had a little before this time raised to the dignity of Chief Mufti a man who would support him, and he determined to proceed in strict accordance with every recognized formality and law so as to throw upon the Janissaries the odium of being the first to appeal to brute force. In a great council of Viziers and Ulema held in June, 1826, it was resolved that only by encountering the infidels with a regularly-disciplined army was it possible for the Moslems to regain the advantage over them, and a fetwah was drawn up and signed by all the members of the council which ordered a certain number out of each Orta of the Janissaries to practice the requisite military exercises. After some murmurings and partial tumults the whole body of the Janissaries of the capital assembled on June I5, 1826, in the Atmeidan, overturned their camp-kettles, the well-known signal of revolt, and advanced upon the palace with loud cries for the heads of the Sultan's chief ministers. But Mahmud was fully prepared for them. He unfurled in person the Sacred Standard of the Prophet and called on all true believers to rally round their Padishah and their Caliph. The enthusiasm of the people was roused into action on his side, and he had ready the more effectual support of his artillerymen and Asiatic troops. As the Janissaries pressed forward through the narrow streets toward the Serail, " Black Hell " and his gunners showered grape on them, and round shot cut lanes through their struggling columns. They fell back on the Atmeidan and defended themselves there with musketry for some time with great steadiness and courage. After many had perished the remnant of the sons of Hadji Begtasch retired in good order to their barracks, which they barricaded, and they prepared themselves to offer the most desperate resistance to the anticipated assault. But Mahmud and his officers risked no troops in such an encounter. The Sultan's artillery was drawn up before the barracks and an incessant storm of shot and shell was poured in on the devoted mutineers. Some of the most daring of them sallied out, saber in hand, but were all shot or cut down as they endeavored to escape. Some few begged for mercy, which was sternly refused. The artillery of Kara Djehennin continued to thunder upon the buildings till they were set on fire and utterly destroyed, and the last of the Janissaries of Constantinople perished among the blazing and blood-stained ruins.
The number of those who fell on this memorable day has been variously estimated. The most accurate calculation seems to be that which gives 4000 as the number of the Janissaries killed in the battle. Many thousands more were put to death afterward in the various cities of the empire, for Mahmud followed up his victory with unremitting vigor and severity. The Janissary force throughout the Ottoman dominions was abolished, their name was proscribed, their standards destroyed, and the assemblage of new troops on a new system was ordered, which were (in the words of the Sultan's proclamation) to sustain the cause of religion and of the empire under the designation of the " Victorious Mohammedan Armies."
At this point in Sultan Mahmud's career it was not without reason that he was " aroused into courageous self-confidence and animated with high and promising hopes." The endurance and the preparations of eighteen years had gained their reward. He had accomplished the task which had baffled so many of his predecessors; he had swept away the military tyranny under which the empire had groaned for centuries. At last the Sultan felt real freedom for himself and real sovereignty over his kingdom. He now formed an army of upward of 40,000 men, clothed, armed, and disciplined after the European system. It was expected that this force would by degrees be raised to the number of 250,000. True it is that Mahmud found no adequate aid from among enlightened members of his own nation, that nearly everything had to be done " by the Sultan's own iron will." But that will had already worked wonders, and each success gave him tenfold means for achieving others. In the provinces the most formidable of the rebellious Pashas who had set at nought the authority of the throne in the beginning of his reign were now dead or deposed, and, above all, the head of Ali of Janina had been shown by Mahmud himself, in stern triumph, to his submissive Divan. The Wahabites were crushed, the Mamelukes exterminated. Mohammed Ali had hitherto committed no overt act of insubordination. Rebellion had been trodden out in Moldavia and Wallachia, and though it had blazed more fiercely and more enduringly in Greece, it seemed about to be extinguished there also by the victorious Turko-Egyptian forces of Ibrahim Pasha. All that Mahmud now required from fortune was immunity from attack by foreign powers during the period of transition through which it was necessary for Turkey to pass between the abolished old and the yet uncreated or immature institutions under which he designed her to flourish. In the opinion of Count von Moltke, one of the ablest historians of Mahmud's reign, " if Turkey had enjoyed ten years of peace after the destruction of the Janissaries, Sultan Mahmud's military reforms might in that time have gained some strength, and, supported by an army upon which he could depend, the Sultan might have carried out the needful reforms in the administration of his country, have infused new life into the dead branches of the Ottoman Empire, and made himself formidable to his neighbors. All this was prevented by Russia, which nipped the Sultan's military reforms in the bud." And the strongest possible proof of the wisdom with which Mahmud's measures were planned, of the beneficial effects which they actually produced in Turkey, and far greater benefits which they would have conferred if Russia had not hastened to attack her while those measures had scarce begun to ripen, is to be found in the dispatches of the chief statesmen of Russia during the war of 18281829, in which they take credit for their sagacity in discerning in Mahmud s reforms the necessity for prompt hostilities on the part of Russia, and in which they own that Turkey had displayed, under the stern guidance of Mahmud, a degree of energy and power higher than she had long previously possessed, and they felicitate themselves in not having waited until the new Turkish forces, which even in their infancy were so hard to conquer, had acquired consistency and mature strength.
It was singularly unfortunate for Sultan Mahmud that only a few months before he struck the decisive blow which destroyed the principal old military force of Turkey, there was a change of emperors at St. Petersburg. In Alexander I. the abhorrence of revolution had predominated over every other sentiment. He therefore kept aloof from the side of the Greek insurgents, and in the latter part of his life, which was clouded with melancholy 0 and sickness, he was indisposed to the energetic action which wars of conquest require in a sovereign. But on December 24, 1825, he was succeeded on the Russian throne by Nicholas, a prince of many high merits, but a genuine representative of Russian national feeling, and, as such, ready and willing for a war in support of the Christians of the Greek Church against the " old archenemy " of Muscovy. Moreover, the civil strife which had broken out at St. Petersburg on the accession of Nicholas, at the end of 1825, and the disquiet which had not ceased to pervade the Russian nation, and especially the army, made the statesmen of St. Petersburg consider a Turkish war most desirable for their own empire's internal security. The negotiations which had been long pending between Russia and the Porte respecting Servia, the principalities, and other matters, were resumed in a far more peremptory tone by the ministers of Nicholas than had previously been employed toward the Ottomans. In August of 1826 (two months after the destruction of the Janissaries) the Russians insisted that the Porte should forthwith give up certain fortresses in Asia, which were alleged to have been ceded by the treaty of Bucharest, that the Moldavians and Wallachians should be restored to their full privileges, as before the revolt of 182I, and that the confirmation of the political rights of the Servians should be no longer delayed. The Turks at first received these demands with avowed indignation, but in the utterly unprepared state of Turkey at that crisis of internal change, the Sultan felt himself obliged to give way, and on October 7, 1826, the very last day which Russia had allowed for deliberation, the Treaty or Convention of Akerman was signed.
It ratified the Treaty of Bucharest, and ordained that the Moldavians and Wallachians should thereafter enjoy all the privileges conferred by the fifth article of that treaty, and also those bestowed by the hattisherif of 1802. The future Hospodars of the provinces were to be elected by the Boyars from among their own body for a period of seven years. No Hospodar was to be deposed by the Porte without the consent of Russia. The Moldavian Boyars, who had been implicated in the insurrection of 182I, and obliged to take refuge in Russia, were now to be at liberty to return and to resume their rank, estates, and possessions. With respect to Servia the Porte and a body of deputies from the Servian nation were to settle the necessary regulations for the future government of the province, which were to be forthwith published in an imperial hattisherif, and become part of the treaty between Russia and Turkey. It was stated that among the privileges of the Servians which were to be thus guaranteed were religious liberty, free choice of their chiefs, independent internal self-government, the reunion of the districts that had been detached from Servia, the consolidation of the various imposts in a single charge, freedom of commerce, the establishment of hospitals, schools, and printing-offices, and an edict that no Mohammedans should be allowed to reside in Servia except those belonging to the garrisons of the fortresses. The Treaty of Akerman contained many other stipulations, all to the disadvantage of Turkey, such as that the Porte should be obliged to indemnify Russian merchants for depredations committed by the Barbary corsairs, and that in granting the free navigation of the Black Sea to nations which had not vet obtained the right, the Porte would do so in such a manner as to cause no injury to Russian commerce.
Bitter as was the humiliation which the necessity of accepting the Treaty of Akerman imposed upon Mahmud, he was soon to experience heavier blows from the same quarter and also from powers which he had hitherto regarded as sure friends. On July 6, 1827, a treaty was signed at London between Russia, England, and France, the object of which was declared to be to stop the effusion of blood and to effect the reconciliation of the Turks and the Greeks.
The mediation of the three high contracting powers was offered for this purpose, and the basis of pacification was to be the practical independence of Greece, the Sultan retaining only a nominal sovereignty and receiving a fixed annual tribute to be collected by the Greeks themselves. An armistice was to be insisted on before the discussion of terms, and if the Porte rejected this intervention the three powers were to form international relations with the Greeks by sending and receiving consuls, and thereby recognizing the insurgent province as an independent state. The offer of these terms was eagerly accepted by the Greeks, then in their extreme distress, but indignantly rejected by Sultan Mahmud. He stated that the country which it was proposed to withdraw from his rule had for centuries formed part of the Ottoman Empire, and that those whom powers professing friendship to the Porte designed to treat with and recognize as a Greek government were mere brigands and rebels to their lawful sovereign. The Sultan appealed to history as offering no example of such interference in violation of all principles of legitimate authority, and also to the law of nations, by which every independent power has a right to govern its own subjects without the intervention of any foreign power whatever. He declared finally his inflexible resolution never to renounce his rights.
The statesmen of Christendom who interposed on behalf of the Greeks had great difficulty in justifying their intervention under any generally recognized principle of the law of nations, especially after the forcible manner in which the chief continental Christian potentates had lately concurred in upholding the legitimate right of ancient sovereignty against the revolutionists of Italy and Spain. They shrank from openly professing a broad general principle that it is lawful and laudable to aid the oppressor against the oppressed. The main ground on which the intervention was vindicated was the alleged necessity of affording protection to the subjects of other powers who navigated the seas of the Levant in which for many years atrocious piracy had been exercised, while neither Turkey nor revolted Greece was, de facto, either able or willing to prevent the excesses springing out of this state of anarchy. But, unfortunately for the validity of this pretext, the three powers intervened at the very crisis when the Sultan had acquired a decided ascendency in the war, and when it was clear that in a short time the contest would be over and the condition of the Levant restored to what it had been for centuries. Moreover, if the suppression of piracy in the Turkish waters had been the genuine object of England, France, and Russia, they might have effected it with a tenth part of the force employed at Navarino, and in order to effect it there was not the least occasion for them to burn the Sultan's men-of-war, or to land troops to reduce his fortresses in the Morea.
On October 20, 1827, the combined squadrons of England, France, and Russia entered the Bay of Navarino, in which the Turko-Egyptian fleet was moored. The avowed object of the allies was to compel Ibrahim Pasha to desist from further hostilities against the Greeks. Their force amounted to ten ships of the line, ten frigates, and some smaller vessels. It was much superior to that of the Sultan, which, though it comprised a large flotilla of small barks and nineteen frigates, presented only five line-of-battle ships. It is probable that the ministers of England and France (who could have no wish to see Turkey weakened for purposes of Russian ambition) hoped to the very last that such an imposing demonstration of force would awe the Sultan or his officers into submission and that Greece might thus be saved without her old masters being further injured. But the stern, unbending spirit that nerved Sultan Mahmud was fully shared by his admirals, the Capudan Pasha, Tahir Pasha, and Moharem Beg. An engagement was the inevitable result of the entrance of the allied fleet into Navarino, an engagement in which the Turko-Egyptians fought for four hours with desperate valor, until the whole of the Sultan's magnificent armament was destroyed, except a few insignificant barks that were left stranded on the shore. The consequences of the battle were immense, far, indeed, beyond what the conquerors either designed or desired. It was not merely that the Greek question was virtually decided by it. Ibrahim gladly retiring from the Morea to Egypt with the chief part of his army, and a division of French troops, under Marshal Maison, completing the deliverance of the Greek territory, but Turkey was by this " untoward event," as the Duke of Wellington termed it, left defenseless before Russia. Men said that " the Sultan had destroyed his own army, and now his allies had destroyed his navy. Still Mahmud and his people would not bend to the stranger and to the rebel, nor would the Divan, even after Navarino, accept the Treaty of London, which the ministers of the three powers, especially of Russia, now pressed in more and more peremptory tone. But the Turkish statesmen knew their peril and endeavored to induce the ambassadors to remain at their posts and to communicate to their respective courts the offers of the Porte respecting the future treatment of Greece. These were a complete pardon and amnesty, a remission of all arrears of taxes and tribute, a restoration of confiscated property, a re-establishment of all privileges, and, finally, a pledge of milder government. The ambassadors refused to accept any terms but those of the treaty, and on December 6 left Constantinople. An attempt was made by the Reis Effendi to reopen negotiations, but the Russian minister, to whom the communication was sent, returned no answer. Though Russia was nominally at peace with all the world (her Persian war having ended by a convention in November) she was calling out new levies of conscripts, concentrating troops in Bessarabia, and collecting military stores and transports in her harbors in the Black Sea in readiness for an invasion of the Ottoman dominions. There were also many topics of dispute between the Sultan and the emperor as to certain Asiatic fortresses retained by Russia and those never failing sources of difference, the affairs of the principalities and of Servia. Convinced that his great enemy intended to attack him in the spring, the Sultan took the bold step of being the first to declare war, and a hattisherif was issued on December 20, in which, addressing the Pashas and Ayans of his empire, the Sultan recited the wrongs which he had endured from Russia, among which he classed the unjust extortion of the Treaty of Akerman, and he called on all true Mussulmans to show again the determined valor with which the Ottomans had in ancient times established in the world the true religion, and to resist the foe whose object was to annihilate Islam and tread the people of Mohammed under foot.
In the ensuing war the vigor shown by Mahmud astonished both friends and foes. Russia employed in the first campaign about 100,000 troops of all arms in European Turkey. The number might easily have been greater, but she judged it prudent to retain large armies in Poland, Finland, and the Ukraine, and a far less spirited resistance on the part of the Turks was expected than that which was actually encountered. In Asia, her general, Count Paskievitch, led an army 30,000 strong into the Turkish provinces besides having a reserve of I6,000 more. At sea her superiority was incontestable. She had sixteen line-of-battle ships in the Black Sea besides frigates and smaller vessels, and in the Archipelago she had the fleet which had aided in destroying the Turkish navy at Navarino. Throughout the war this command Of the sea was of infinite importance to her, and in particular the operations against Varna in 1828, and the decisive movements of Diebitch in 1829 were only rendered possible by her uncontrolled possession of the Euxine. Mahmud had only been able to collect an army of about 48,000 troops trained on the new system. These were principally mere lads who were selected in the hope that their prejudices against the Frankish innovations would not be so violent
as generally prevailed among the elder Turks. The Prussian general Baron Von Moltke [The famous Prussian chief of staff in the Franco-German War of 1870], who served with the Turks throughout the war, describes vividly the disheartening spectacle which this infant force presented and its difference from the aspect of the old Ottoman troops. " The splendid appearance, the beautiful arms, the reckless bravery of the old Moslem horde had disappeared," but the German writer adds, " yet this new army had one quality which placed it above the numerous host which in former times the Porte could summon to the fieldÑit obeyed." Besides these troops the Sultan was obliged to call together the feudal and irregular forces of his empire, chiefly from Asia, for throughout European Turkey the deepest discontent with their sovereign's reforms prevailed among the Ottomans. Bosnia, a remarkably warlike and strongly Mohammedan province, sent no troops at all, and many of the officers whom he was obliged to employ were attached to the old order of things and were almost as bitter in their disaffection to the Sultan as in their antipathy to the Russian Giaours. But the artillery force was numerous and loyal, and the armed Turkish inhabitants of the towns which the enemy assailed showed as usual the greatest spirit in self-defense and contributed greatly to the prolongation of the war, which was, in its first campaign at least, principally a war of sieges.
In the operations of 1828 in Europe the Russians occupied the principalities with little opposition and crossed the Danube early in June, Braila was taken on June I 5, but not till after an unexpectedly long and obstinate defense which cost the invaders 4000 men and much valuable time. The Russians then advanced on Shumla and Varna. Before Shumla they gained no advantage, and suffered several severe blows. But Varna fell after a gallant defense, which was, however, ultimately tarnished by the treachery of Yussuf Pasha, the second in command, who went over to the enemy with nearly 5000 men. Silistria repulsed the Russian corps that besieged it, and altogether, at the close of the European campaign, the position of the combatants was such that in the words of the ablest military critic of the war, " If we consider the enormous sacrifices that the war cost the Russians in 1828 it is difficult to say whether they or the Turks won or lost it. It remained for a second campaign to decide the value of the first."
In Asia the genius of Paskievitch had gained far less checkered advantages for the Russian emperor. Besides Anapa (which was captured by the Russian armament that afterward cooperated in the. siege of Varna) the Turks lost in Asia during 1828, Kars, Akhalkhaliki, Hertwitz, Akhaltzikh, and other important fortresses. 'They were beaten also in a pitched battle, and Paskievitch obtained an admirable position for an advance into Asia Minor in the following year. But it was to the Danube and the Balkan that the statesmen of Europe looked most attentively, and the general feeling (especially in Austria) was that Russia had been overrated, that the Sultan was unexpectedly powerful, and that the war was likely to be prolonged without any heavy catastrophe to the Turkish Empire. Russia herself felt keenly the need of recovering her prestige by more signal success in another campaign, which she resolved to make a decisive one.
Accordingly, in 1829, more numerous and better appointed forces crossed the Danube, and they were led by Marshal Diebitch, a general who thoroughly entered into the spirit in which his imperial master wished the war to be conducted and concluded. " He besieged one fortress and fought one battle, but this brought him into the very heart of the hostile empire. He arrived there followed by the shadow of an army, but with the reputation of irresistible success." Such is the expressive eulogy in which Baron Von Moltke epitomizes the Turkish campaign of Marshal Diebitch, thence surnamed Sabalskanski, that is to say, the Crosser of the Balkan. In Asia the Emperor Nicholas was equally well served by the genius and bravery of Marshal Paskievitch, the victor of the battle-field of Akhaltzikh and the captor of Bayezid, Khart, and Erzerum.
The main Turkish army of Shumla, emboldened by the partial successes of the last year, commenced operations in 1829 by attempting, May 17, to recover Pravadi from the Russians. While the Grand Vizier's army was engaged in this enterprise (which was conducted with great valor but little skill and admirably opposed by the Russian generals Roth and Rudiger) Marshal Diebitch, who had commenced the siege of Silistria on May 18, moved the greater part of the Russian force from before that fortress, and by a series of rapid and brilliant movements placed himself in connection with Roth and Rudiger in a position between Pravadi and Shumla. This brought on the battle of Kulevtcha on June 11. in which, after several fluctuations of fortune, the Turks were entirely defeated, but the Russian victory was caused more by the superiority of Diebitch as a general to Reshid Pasha, the Turkish Grand Vizier, than by any inferiority of the Turkish troops to the Russians. The Grand Vizier reassembled some of the fugitives at Shumla, but his force there was, in his judgment, so inadequate to defend the place that in the belief that the Russian general designed to capture Shumla before attempting any forward movement, the Turkish commander called in the greater part of the detachments which were watching the passes of the Balkan, a fatal error, which left Diebitch at liberty to break through the hitherto impenetrable barrier. As soon as Silistria fell, which was on June 26, Diebitch was joined by the Russian corps which had previously been detained before that important fortress and he now prepared for the daring march which decided the war. But even with the advantages which the Russian marshal's generalship had secured the march across the Balkan would not have been hazarded if the Black Sea had not then been a Russian lake, and if friendly fleets had not been stationed both in that sea and in the Aegean ready to cooperate with such troops as the generals of the Emperor Nicholas might lead across the mountains to either coast. Sizeboli on the western shore of the Euxine and to the south of the Balkan chain had been surprised and occupied by a Russian armament in February, and in July a squadron of the imperial fleet under Admiral Greig, with a great number of vessels carrying stores and provisions, cast anchor in the Bay of Burgas, so that Diebitch's army might move lightly equipped and unincumbered by wagons through the mountains, and when it came down from them find all things that were necessary for its support and a secure basis for further operations. The losses of the Russians during the campaign had been so enormous (far more perishing by privation and disease than in battle) that after leaving 10,000 men to watch the Grand Vizier in Shumla, Diebitch could not muster more than 30,000 for his advance through the Balkan on the Turkish capital. But he reckoned justly on the moral effect already caused by the battle of Kulevtcha and the capture of Silistria, and on the still greater panic which the sight of a Russian army to the south of the trusted barrier would produce. It was known that the greatest excitement and disaffection prevailed in Constantinople and the other great Turkish cities, and among the commanders of the troops in Albania and Rumelia. Emboldened by these considerations, Diebitch suddenly and secretly moved his columns on July 11 from the neighborhood of Shumla upon the gorges of the Balkan, and in nine days he reunited his force to the south of the mountains. The feeble Turkish detachments which were encountered in the passes offered but a desultory and trifling resistance. As the Russian soldiers came down from the heights of the eastern Balkan and saw " the flags of their ships flying over the broad shining surface of the Bay of Burgas," a general shout of joy burst from the ranks. Their progress was now one continued triumph, but a triumph rendered very hazardous by the ravages of dysentery and plague which the invaders brought along with them and which reduced their numbers by hundreds and by thousands. But this weakness was unknown to the Turks, who believed that at least 100,000 men had crossed the Balkan and that they must have destroyed the Grand Vizier's army before they left Shumla. An officer whom the Pasha of Missivri sent forward to reconnoiter Diebitch's force came back with these words: " It were easier to count the leaves of the forest than the heads of the enemy." Missivri, Burgas, and the important post of Aidos were occupied by the Russians almost without opposition. Striking inland toward Adrianople Diebitch pursued his resolute career, and on August 20 the ancient capital of European Turkey capitulated to a pestilence-stricken and exhausted army of less than 20,000 Russians. With admirable judgment, as well as humanity, Diebitch, in his occupation of the Turkish cities and throughout his march in Rumelia, took the most effectual measures for protecting the inhabitants from the slightest military violence. The Christian population received the Russians with enthusiasm, and even the Moslems returned to their peaceable occupations when they found that there was full protection for property, person, and honor, and that neither their local self-government nor their religious rites were subjected to interruption or insult. Diebitch thus saved his sickly and scanty army from being engaged in a guerrilla warfare in which it must inevitably have been destroyed, and he continued to impose upon the terrified enemy by the appearance of -strength and by well-simulated confidence, amid rapidly increasing weakness, and the deepest and most serious alarm. He could not hope to keep up the delusion of his adversaries about the number of his army if he advanced much nearer to the capital, and the amount of the Turkish troops now collected in Constantinople, the strength of the fortifications of that city, and the fanatic bravery of its armed population (which the appearance of a Russian army would be sure to rouse into action) made all hope of an ultimate success by main force utterly chimerical. Moreover, in his rear the Vizier's army that held Shumla was superior to the Russian corps of observation left in front of it, and on his flank there was Mustapha, the Pasha of Scodra, with 30,000 excellent Albanian troops. This officer had hitherto refused to obey orders from the Porte, but it was impossible for Diebitch to reckon on the continuance of such insubordinate inactivity. The only alternatives for Diebitch were to obtain a peace or to be destroyed, and in order for him to obtain peace it was necessary to keep up the boldest semblance of waging war. Fortunately for him, not only were the panic and disorder at Constantinople extreme, but both the Turkish statesmen and the ministers of the European powers there knew nothing of the real state of his army. An insurrection of the partisans of the Janissaries had been organized, but Sultan Mahmud was beforehand with them, and it was suppressed by Khosru Pasha, his chief of the police, by a wholesale execution, with but little heed as to how many hundreds of innocent persons suffered, provided only the guilty did not escape. But though discontent was thus silenced, it was known to be widespread and intense, and a general outbreak was daily expected in which it was too probable that Constantinople would be destroyed by her own populace, aided by the mutinous bands of soldiery who had escaped to the capital from the defeated armies and captured fortresses. Even the European ambassadors at Pera believed that Diebitch was at the head of 60,000 efficient troops, and they joined the Sultan's ministers in urging him to save the empire from total destruction by negotiating instantly with the Russian general and obtaining peace at almost any sacrifice. Mahmud is said long to have resisted their pusillanimous advice, and well would it have been for him and his empire if a single faithful friend had then been near him to support his sovereign with manly counsel. At length the Sultan yielded to the importunities of all around him, and plenipotentiaries were sent to the Russian camp, who concluded with Marshal Diebitch on August 28, 1829, the Treaty of Adrianople.
By this treaty Russia obtained the sovereignty of part of the left bank of the Lower Danube and of the Sulina mouth of that river. She was thus enabled to control that important artery of the commerce of Central Europe, especially of Austria. Her other European conquests were restored, and also those in Asia, with the material exception that the Russian emperor retained as part of his dominions the important fortresses of Anapa, Akhaltzikh, Akhalkhaliki, and several valuable districts, and the treaty recognized, by way of recital, that " Georgia, Imeritia, Mingrelia, Gouriel and several other provinces of the Caucasus, had long been annexed in perpetuity to the Empire of Russia." A separate article (but declared to be read as part of the treaty) stipulated in favor of the Moldavians and Wallachians, that the Hospodars should be thenceforth elected for life, that no Turkish officer should interfere in their affairs, and that no Mussulman should be allowed to reside in any part of their territories. Nothing but a nominal sovereignty, and an annual tribute, was reserved to the Porte; and the tribute was not to be exacted for the two years following the war.
In behalf of the Servians, the sixth article of the Treaty of Adrianople provided that all the clauses of the separate act of the Convention of Akerman relative to Servia, should immediately be carried into effect, and ratified by a hattisherif of the Sultan, which was to be communicated to the court of St. Petersburg within a month. The passage of the Dardanelles was to be open to Russian merchant vessels; an indemnity for injuries done to Russian commerce was to be paid in eighteen months, and another sum, amounting to nearly $25,000,000, was to be paid to the Russian Government for the costs of the war. Moreover, by the tenth article of the treaty, the Sultan declared his adhesion to the stipulations of the Treaty of London, and of a subsequent convention of the three powers respecting Greece. The result of this branch of the negotiations was the erection of Greece into an independent kingdom, comprising all Continental Greece south of a line drawn from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Volo, thus leaving Thessaly and Albania as the Sultan's frontier provinces. The islands of Euboea, the northern Sporades, and the Cyclades also became members of the new state, the Ionian Islands remaining under British government, while Crete and the islands off the Thracian and Asiatic coasts were still allowed to appertain to Turkey.
In the year after the Treaty of Adrianople the French seized and occupied Algiers (July 4, 1830), which, though practically independent, had still acknowledged the titular supremacy of the Sultan, and was governed by a Dey who professed to be his officer. The injury which the conquest of a Mohammedan province by the Frankish Giaours inflicted on the general authority of Mahmud in the world of Islam was increased by the proclamation of the French general, Marshal Bourmont, who stated that he came to deliver Algeria from the yoke of the Turks. The Sultan was in no condition to interpose, or even to remonstrate, for far worse evils and convulsions in the integral parts of the Ottoman empire showed how violent was the shock which it had sustained from the Russian war, and how much the spirit of disaffection and revolt had been increased by the issue of that contest. The unfortunate are generally unpopular, and the very pride of the Turks made them impute the disasters of their sovereign to his Frankish innovations and abandonment of the old usages of the empire. The bonds of loyalty to the head of the house of Othman grew weaker in proportion to the strength of Mohammedan feeling; and, of the numerous insurrections that broke out in 1830, and the two following years, in European Turkey, none were more violent than those of the eminently warlike and fanatic Bosnians, and of the Mussulman tribes of Albania. They were quelled by the resolute spirit of Mahmud, and the abilities of his Vizier, Reshid Pasha; but they exhausted more and more the resources of the heavily-burdened state. Asia was not much less mutinous, but it was in Egypt that the most deadly storm was gathering. Mohammed Ali had resolved on founding an hereditary dominion on the ruins of the apparently doomed empire of the Sultan. He had restored his navy after its destruction at Navarino; he possessed a veteran and admirably disciplined army, chiefly officered by Frenchmen; and, above all, he had a general of science, experience, prudence, and energy, in his son, the celebrated Ibrahim Pasha. He had obtained the Pashalic of Crete from the Porte, but had been refused that of Syria. He determined to take it by force. A personal quarrel with the Pasha of Acre gave him a pretext for attacking that officer. The command of the Sultan that this civil war between his servants should cease was contemptuously disregarded, and Ibrahim besieged Acre with an army of 40,000 men, and a fleet of five ships of the line, and several frigates. The key of Syria was captured by him on May 27, 1832, and for seven years Mohammed Ali was the real sovereign of that important country. The disaffected armies of raw recruits, badly officered, and worse generaled, which the Sultan sent against the rebel Egyptian chief were beaten by Ibrahim in three great battles, at Ems, in Upper Syria, on July 6, 1832; at Beylan (in Cilicia, near the ancient battle-field of Issus), on the 29th of the same month, and at Konieh, in Asia Minor, on October 29. The positions of these places indicate the rapid progress and bold designs of the Egyptian commander, who seemed to annex Asia Minor to Mohammed's dominions with the same ease as Syria, and whose advance upon Constantinople in the coming spring appeared to be inevitable and irresistible. In this agony of his house and empire the Sultan sought aid first from England, but none unhappily was accorded, and the answer returned to the Turkish application was an expression of regret that England had not the means of supplying the required assistance. Russia was watching eagerly for the opportunity which English folly thus threw in her way. Her troops, and her transports, and her ships of war were ready at Sebastopol and Odessa, and when at last Mahmud humbled himself to express to his ancient enemy a wish for a protecting force, prompt messengers were dispatched to the great Crimean depot of Muscovite power, and a Russian squadron of four ships of the line set sail from Sebastopol and landed 6000 of the emperor's troops near the mouth of the Bosphorus, on February 20, 1833.
Meanwhile, the forward march of Ibrahim had been temporarily stayed by a messenger from Admiral Roussin, whom the French Government had sent with a fleet to aid the Sultan. A negotiation was entered into, but broken off after a few days, and in the beginning of March Ibrahim again pointed his columns toward the Bosphorus. But a second Russian armament from Odessa now had reached those straits, and on April 5, I2,000 soldiers of the Emperor Nicholas were encamped on the Giant's Mountain, near Scutari. Ibrahim felt that any further advance on his part would be madness, and occupied himself in procuring the largest possible increase to his father's power in the negotiations that followed, in which England and France (now thoroughly alarmed at the advantages gained by Russia) took part with anxious zeal.
The terms of compulsory reconciliation between the Sultan and his over-powerful vassal were embodied in a firman of May 6, 1833, by which the Porte confirmed Mohammed Ali in his governments of Crete and Egypt, and added to them those of Jerusalem, Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, and Adana. This was virtually a cession to the Egyptian of nearly all the countries which the victories of Selim I had incorporated with Turkey, besides the important island of Candia, which it had cost the Porte a twenty years' war to wrest from Venice. At such a bitter cost was Mahmud compelled to purchase the removal from Asia Minor of his insurgent Pasha; and before he could obtain the withdrawal of his equally formidable Russian friends, he was obliged to sign the Treaty of Unkiar Iskelessi on July 8, 1833, which, by its public articles, bound him to an offensive and defensive alliance with Russia, and by S still more important secret article provided that the Ottoman Porte should, when required by the Russian emperor, close the straits of the Dardanelles against the armed vessels of all other foreign powers.
It was the general opinion in Europe at this time that Turkey was irretrievably ruined, and that the attempts of her reforming sovereign to resuscitate her power had been the mere galvanizing of a corpse. Many, indeed, thought that Mahmud had accelerated the empire's downfall by destroying the lingering sparks of vitality in the old system, without being able to replace them by new life And, indeed, had Mahmud not been a man of the noblest energies and of high genius, he might well have despaired of his country after such a Cannae as Konieh. First, the foreign invader, and next, the home rebel had crushed his armies, had rent from him his dominions, and had bowed him beneath the humiliation of treaties worse even than those of Carlowitz and Kainardji. But Mahmud was one of the few really great men whom disappointment in a well judged enterprise unnerves not, but rather rouses to more vigorous exertion. He continued, amid good repute and evil repute to reorganize the troops, the fleets, and the finances of his empire, to encourage education, to promote commerce, to give security for person and property, to repress intolerant distinctions, and t() re move by degrees the most galling of the burdens and prohibitions which pressed upon his Christian subjects. The strong and almost unanimous testimony which English travelers from the East bore ill favor of the policy of the Turkish Sultan, and their statements respecting the rapid improvement of the inhabitants of his empire, caused a marked reaction in the public feeling of England with respect to Turkey. When war broke out again in 1839 between the Sultan and the Egyptian Pasha, Turkey was supported by England, not only for the sake of English interests, but with the respectful cordiality which is only felt toward those who evince a sense of self-respect, and who prove that they are ready and willing to aid themselves. This new war was caused by the indignation of Mahmud at the undisguised designs of Mohammed Ali to convert the vast provinces which he governed into an hereditary monarchy for his own family. Mohammed declined to continue the payment of tribute to the Porte, and his removal of the Turkish guards from the Prophet's tomb, and substitution of his own Arab soldiers, constituted a still more open denial of the sovereignty of the Sultan as chief of Islam. Attempts at negotiation only led to mutual complaints and recriminations, and the Sultan at last sent a final summons to the Pasha, requiring him to reestablish the Turkish guards at the tomb of the Prophet, to pay regularly his tribute, and to renounce all sovereignty over Egypt, save so far as the Sultan might concede it to him. On obedience to this being refused, Mahmud directed his generals and admirals to attack his refractory vassal. A numerous and well-appointed Turkish army had been collected at Bir on the Euphrates, and by the strenuous exertions of many years a well-disciplined and well-manned fleet of thirty-six vessels o£ different rates, twelve being ships of the line, had been formed and collected in the harbor of Constantinople. But venality and treachery baffled all the preparations of the Ottoman sovereign. When his army under Hafiz Pasha met the Egyptian under Ibrahim, at Nezib, on June 25, 1839, whole battalions and squadrons, whose officers had taken the gold of Egypt, deserted the Sultan's standard and ranged themselves with the enemy. The remainder was hopelessly routed, with the total loss of artillery, camp, baggage, and military stores of every description. Still fouler was the fate of the fleet. The Capudan Pasha, the infamous Ahmed Fevzy, on June 8 knelt before his imperial benefactor, Mahmud, received the Sultan's parting benediction, and with solemn oaths renewed his assurances of loyalty and devotion. On July 6 following the imperial fleet was seen in full sail for Alexandria, and on the 13th the traitor who commanded it brought it into the port of that city and delivered it up to Mohammed Ali. It is some consolation to know that Sultan Mahmud was spared the anguish of hearing of these calamities, especially of Ahmed Fevzy's ingratitude. His health had long been undermined by continued anxiety and toil. On July 1, 1839, before the messenger from Nezib reached Constantinople. Sultan Mahmud II died.
Before we consider the personal qualities of his successor, Sultan Abdul Medjid, it will be convenient first to trace rapidly to its conclusion the Egyptian war, which seemed to darken with such fatal disasters the opening of the young sovereign's reign. A difference of opinion as to the amount of power which should be secured to Mohammed Ali existed for a time between France and the other great powers of Europe, which at one period threatened to cause a general war. England, France, and Austria concurred as to the necessity of arranging the Turko-Egyptian question, and of not leaving to Russia an opportunity of sole intervention, such as that which she gained in 1833. But France was no party to the treaty of July I5, 1840, between Turkey, England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which defined the terms on which the disputes between the Pasha and his sovereign were to be arranged. Mohammed Ali '(who probably expected aid from France) refused for some time to accede to the requisitions of Turkey and the four powers, and an English fleet, under Admirals Stopford and Napier, proceeded to wrest from him his strongholds on the Syrian coast. Beirut was bombarded on August 29, 1840, its Egyptian garrison was expelled, and the Turkish troops, which had been conveyed on board the English fleet, took possession of the ruins in the Sultan's name. Acre was bombarded and captured on November 3. The other Syrian fortresses fell rapidly; and, aided by the British seamen and marines, and also by the native populations (which had found their Egyptian bondage far more grievous than the old Turkish rule), the Sultan's forces were, by the close of November, completely masters of Syria. Menaced in Alexandria with the fate of Acre, the Pasha at last gave way. He restored the Sultan's fleet. He withdrew his forces from Candia and from the few Asiatic districts which they still retained, and negotiations, in which :France (now directed by the wise statesmanship of Guizot) took part, were opened for the final settlement of these long-continued dissensions. The Sultan's final firman (February 13, 1841) gave and confirmed to Mohammed Ali for himself and descendants in the direct line the Pashalic of Egypt, one-fourth of its revenues to be paid as tribute to the Porte, and certain naval and military contingents to be supplied on demand. In the summer of the same year a convention of great importance with regard to the right of Turkey to control the navigation of the Dardanelles was agreed to by the representatives of England, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the Porte. The first and second articles of this convention, which was signed at London on July 13, 1841, were as follows:
"ART. I.ÑHis Highness, the Sultan, on the one part, declares that he is firmly resolved to maintain for the future the principle invariably established as the ancient rule of his empire, and in virtue of which it has at all times been prohibited for the ships of war of foreign powers to enter the Straits of the Dardanelles and of the Bosphorus; and so long as the Porte is at peace, his Highness will admit no foreign ships of war into the said straits.
"ART. II.ÑAnd their Majesties, the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, the King of the French, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of all the Russias, on the other part, engage to respect this determination of the Sultan, and to conform themselves to the principle above declared."