THE LIFE OF MIDHAT PASHA

Midhat Pasha.

THE LIFE OF
MIDHAT PASHA

A RECORD OF HIS SERVICES,
POLITICAL REFORMS, BANISHMENT,
AND JUDICIAL MURDER

DERIVED FROM PRIVATE DOCUMENTS AND
REMINISCENCES
BY HIS SON ALI HAYDAR MIDHAT BEY
WITH PORTRAITS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1903

PREFACE

As the Son of Midhat Pasha I was for fifteen years compelled to reside as an exile in Smyrna, but finding the physical and moral sufferings to which I was there subjected greater than I could endure, I succeeded in quitting the territories of the Sultan, and came to take up my residence in this hospitable land, and among this great and free people.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to carry out a duty which has long been incumbent on me, by letting the public, and especially the English public, know the true story of my father’s career, and of his death.

The record is based mainly on documents and notes left by him. In obedience to requests from high quarters I abstain from publishing certain documents and correspondence which, bearing as they do on International affairs, might be calculated to cause embarrassment and do harm.

It is possible that some of my father’s papers which I have now printed, and which were written in Turkish, may have lost some of their original brightness in the process of translation, but at least, most scrupulous care has been taken to give the sense of them accurately.

There can be no doubt that at the present time Turkey is suffering from a Reign of Terror, and is in a state of anarchy. I hope that the narrative contained in these pages may afford some evidence of the methods by which this condition of affairs has been produced.

My readers will learn how the Sovereign of the Ottoman Empire, in order to carry out his own system of Government, has suppressed every effort for reform, and has removed those men, who by their force of character, by their uprightness, and by their popularity, seemed capable of thwarting his designs, and amending the condition of the country and of the people.

I wish to state here that I have a profound respect for the Imperial Throne, and it is this consideration alone, I repeat it, and the honour of my country, which makes me regard it as a duty to humanity to expose the nefarious system of Sultan Abdul Hamid.

In conclusion, I would beg to offer my thanks to the Proprietors of the Times newspaper for giving me permission to reprint the excellent report of my father’s trial which appeared in their columns.

ALI HAYDAR MIDHAT.

Eastbourne, August 6, 1903.

CONTENTS

MIDHAT PASHA

CHAPTER I
EARLY HISTORY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

It would be inconsistent with the general plan of this book to give more than a very summary and cursory view of the early history of the Ottoman Empire before the time of Midhat Pasha; but it will not be inappropriate, and may possibly aid in elucidating the history of his times, and throw light on his work of reform, if the main features of that history be here drawn in outline, and some of the phases traced through which the Turkish Empire passed during the four centuries that elapsed between the taking of Constantinople by Mehemet II. and the Crimean War.

It has sometimes been objected to Midhat Pasha and the Constitution of 1876, by those who have given a very superficial study to the subject, or who have a political object in depreciating all reforms in Turkey, that, however admirable the Constitution may have been in itself, it was prematurely and precipitately introduced, and ill adapted to the peculiar conditions of the Ottoman people. One of the aims of this book is to show that, so far from this being the case, the reforms associated with the name of Midhat Pasha were conceived in the very spirit of the early Ottoman Constitution, and were expressly suggested by the wants and requirements of that country as revealed in the course of its administration to a succession of statesmen, who found themselves in practice hampered at every turn, and their best efforts continually thwarted by the absence of the very checks and safeguards which Midhat’s Constitution endeavoured to impose. Within half a century of the taking of Constantinople (1454) by Mehemet II., Bulgaria, Servia, Moldavia, Wallachia and large portions of Hungary and Poland were added to the Ottoman dominions. It was (as all impartial writers now admit) as much by virtue of the simplicity and purity of its creed, and the force of propagandism that it in consequence possessed, as by the force of arms, that Islam made such astounding progress in those days. If extensive provinces and important kingdoms yielded with slight resistance before the advance of the Ottoman armies, and if large masses of the conquered populations adopted the religion of the conquerors, it was because their moral conquest was effected before their political subjection was attempted.

The reputation, too, for justice and moderation enjoyed by the early Ottoman sovereigns was no insignificant factor in conciliating the goodwill and blunting the opposition of nations, who might under different conditions have opposed a more serious resistance to the advance of the Ottoman armies. Sixty years before the appearance of the Turks before Constantinople, the people of the ancient kingdoms of Roumania were called upon to choose between the Magyars—who, in conformity with their traditional policy, desired to Magyarise Wallachia—and the Ottoman sovereign, who offered the inhabitants the enjoyment of their religious and civil liberty. They did not hesitate between the two, and Mircea signed, with the Sultan Bayazid, the first capitulation of Roumania (1393). Twenty‐six years later, in 1419, the Servian ruler Brankovich, pressed by John Hunyadi, ruler of Hungary, to join him in an alliance against the Turks, invited him to state the policy in respect to religion that he proposed to adopt, in the event of victory attending their joint military efforts. Hunyadi answered without periphrasis, that the Servians would have to adopt the Catholic worship. Brankovich then addressed a similar question to Mehemet I. “I propose,” replied the latter, “to build a church next to every mosque, and proclaim that every one shall be at liberty to follow his own worship and religion.” Brankovich rejected the Hungarian alliance, and declared himself the vassal of the Turkish Sultan.

But, it has been contended, the condition of the Christian populations (Raias) of the countries actually conquered by Islam was very different; and there is even a widespread popular belief that these populations were forced to “opt” (to use a modern phrase) between the religion of the conquerors and death, the poll‐tax (kharadj) being the money composition imposed in commutation of the death sentence. Nothing can be more erroneous. The kharadj was the tax imposed on the Christian population in lieu of the military service and other similar duties from which they were exempted, disabilities generally regarded by them as privileges, and in consequence of which they have increased and multiplied and become rich and prosperous in the land. An entirely false interpretation has been given to a passage in the Koran, which was even quoted by the Austrian plenipotentiaries at the Conference of Niemirow, in 1737, in support of the “Death or Koran” theory here referred to. The true answer, which indeed is obvious from the context, was given by the Ottoman negotiators on this occasion, viz., that the text quoted applied only to idolaters and not to the “people of the Book.” Anyone who knows anything of the religion of Mahomet is aware of the important distinction recognised therein between the “people of the Book” (kitabi) and idolaters (medjous), and knows that whereas little mercy, it is true, was shown to the latter, the former were included in the Dar‐ul‐Islam (the house of Islam), where they formed an integral portion of the empire, and that the true Mahomedan was taught, with respect to the latter, that “their substance is as our substance, their eyes as our eyes, and their souls as our souls.” The fable, too, that the murder of a Christian by a Mahomedan was considered by the Cheri (sacred law) as a trivial offence, and was visited by a lighter punishment than the same crime committed on the person of a Mussulman, is disposed of by the Fetva delivered by the Mufti (Supreme Judge of the Sacred Law), and quoted by Cantimer[1] in answer to the question, “What should be the penalty if eleven Mussulmans murdered one Christian?” “If the Mussulmans were one thousand and one in number, instead of only eleven, they should all be put to death.”

So far indeed is it from being historically true that the conquered Christian populations were forced by the sword to adopt the religion of Mahomet, that when Selim I. desired, for reasons of what he considered long‐sighted policy, so to convert the Christians of the Balkans, he was stopped short in the attempt by a Fetva of the Sheik‐ul‐Islam, Zenbilli Ali Effendi, who pronounced such a proceeding to be contrary to the Koran and the Cheri (sacred law), and the attempt was accordingly abandoned.

It may be remarked, in passing, that history does not relate that Cromwell was ever diverted from a policy similar to that from which Selim was deflected, or hampered in his enactment of the penal laws in Ireland by any such scruples or protests on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities of his day. However that may be, the policy of the Ottoman sovereigns with reference to the conquered Raias was the exact opposite to that popularly supposed. Nor was the policy actually adopted the result of any idiosyncracy or peculiar generosity on their part. It was in strict obedience to the injunctions of the Prophet, and in conformity with the policy pursued by himself in the “letters patent,” accorded to the Christians (nassara) on the 4th day of Moharem of the year 11 of the Hegira. It was in fact the fixed and settled policy of the Mussulman political system.

In proof of this position some European authorities, by no means particularly inclined to the Ottoman cause, Montesquieu for example, may be quoted. This author bears testimony to the happy change effected in the condition of the Greek population of the empire after the occupation of their capital by the Turks: “The people,” he says, “in place of that continued series of vexations which the subtle avarice of the Byzantine Emperors had devised, were now subjected to a simple tribute, easily paid and lightly borne, happy in having to submit to even a barbarous nation (sic) rather than to a corrupt government under which they suffered all the inconveniences of a fictitious liberty with all the horrors of a real servitude.”

The reports of the Venetian ambassadors, and the narratives of travellers in the sixteenth century, like La Motraye, offer concurrent testimony to the tolerance and moderation of this “barbarous nation.” “The other (i.e. the Christian) subjects of the Empire,” says La Motraye, “enjoy all the liberty of conscience that they can desire. They go to the churches and pilgrimages and practise all the rights of their religion, without fear or molestation. The same thing applies to their commerce and temporal affairs. They have no dread of being deprived of the fruits of their labours, which they enjoy without let or hindrance.”[2]

Compare with this condition of the Greek Raias of the Ottoman Empire that, for instance, of the Greek population of Chio under Genoese domination, as described by Genoese writers themselves, and quoted by Mr Fustel de Coulanges, where the unfortunate population, in addition to daily exactions and injustices, were compelled four times a year, at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the Feast of the Circumcision, to attend a ceremony, best described as “a feast of humiliation,” at which their clergy and chief citizens were summoned to the palace of the Podesta, where a herald, mounted on a stand, with a wand in his hand, read four prayers for the Pope, the Emperor, the Republic of Genoa, and the family of the Justiniani, and obliged the assembled Chiotes, at the end of each prayer, to answer in responsive and quasi‐enthusiastic acclamations; these poor Chiotes being thus compelled to acclaim and pray for the Pope—their greatest enemy—the Emperor they knew nothing about, the Republic that had subjected them, and the family of the Justiniani whom they detested, representing as it did the “Maona” (a financial company) that ruthlessly pillaged them.

Take again the case of the Candiotes under the domination of the Venetians, in which the Greek population of the island did not hesitate to conspire with the Turkish besiegers in order to deliver their capital into their hands, and thus free themselves from the oppression of the Italian Republic.[3]

Even the Greeks of the Morea complained bitterly of the religious persecution of the Venetians, whereas, said they, “the Turks allowed us all the liberty we required.”[4]

These quotations, which could be multiplied ad infinitum, will probably suffice. It was indeed the universal cry of all the Christian population in the East, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth—“A thousand times rather the Turks than the Latins.”

That corruptions gradually grew up in the land of the Osmanli; that perversions of the law crept into its practice, and that prejudices, engendered by ignorance, created abuses which in earlier days were sternly repressed, it is not intended here to deny. Indeed it is the contention of this book that such perversions, the causes of which it will be its purpose to trace, did spring up, as rank weeds, in the Ottoman system; but what is strenuously asserted, and what will, it is hoped, be proved, is that they formed no part or parcel of the original Ottoman Constitution, but were, on the contrary, excrescences in that system, violations of its spirit and essence; and further, that the efforts of the reforming party in the nation, from the days of Selim III. to the accession of Abdul Hamid II., through an apostolic succession of patriots and statesmen—including the Keuprulu Mehemets, the Reshids, the Aalis, the Fuads and the Midhats—were directed to the end of restoring the spirit of that Constitution, with such adaptation of it to the requirements of the day as the experience, science and political conditions of the world required.

Mehemet II., from the moment he sheathed his sword on victory being assured, manifested his determination that the lives and properties of the conquered populations should be respected, and, in order to give weight to his orders to that effect, took immediate measures to offer a conspicuous example of respect for the religion of his new subjects by his conduct as its hierarchical chief. He summoned the Greek Patriarch (Roum milleti patriki) to a solemn Divan, stepped down from his throne, and breaking through all established usage, advanced ten steps to meet him, took him by the hand, and seated him next to himself in the place of honour, delivering into his hands, as a symbol of power, a golden sceptre, which to this day is carried in processions on occasions of great ceremonies, investing him with unlimited authority over all Orthodox schools, monasteries and churches, and with judicial and administrative functions over all his co‐religionists.

Such a delegation of power was the nearest approach to the establishment of an imperium in imperio as is afforded in history, with, let it be added, all the weakness that attaches to such a régime, as was subsequently too clearly proved by the pernicious use made of these privileges by a foreign Power, in founding on them a claim to interfere in the internal affairs of the empire, and in using them as a lever to overthrow it.

But wise or unwise, such at any rate was the policy adopted by the Sultans of Turkey towards their Christian subjects, and the legend of conversion by the sword must be relegated, with so many similar fables with respect to Turkey, to the mythology of history.

From the foundation of the empire, and under the ægis of its government, the Hellenisation of the Raias, under the authority of the Patriarch of the Phanar, proceeded apace throughout the country. So effectually indeed was this taking place, that the very name of Slav, or Bulgarian, implying as it did an inferior social status, was gradually falling into disuse, and the prouder appellation of “Roum,” or Greek, substituted for it.

It is probable that another half‐century of this process would have blotted out the very name of Slav, had not a new Power appeared on the world’s stage, introducing a new factor in the Eastern problem, and profoundly modifying its conditions. This was the rise of Russia as a world Power, under the rule of that extraordinary man of genius, Peter I. After finally breaking the power of Sweden at the great battle of Pultava, and after adding Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, Finland, and Lithuania to his already vast dominions, and founding a capital with a maritime outlet on the Northern Seas, he turned his ambition to the sunny lands of the South, which the legend of the marriage of a Byzantine princess with a Russian Kneze had already annexed in imagination to the Empire of Moscovy.

This is the place to refer to an historical event which has more than a passing interest, as it may be said to be the source and origin of the undeviating policy of Russia in her dealings with Turkey. At the historical interview between Peter the Great and Cantimir, Voivode of Moldavia, the latter initiated the Russian Czar into the secret of the Eastern problem, and explained to him the profit that might be derived from taking adroit advantage of the privileges of self‐government enjoyed by the Christians in the East, and from the steady pursuit of a policy exploiting this autonomy to the best advantage.

The lesson here learnt was never forgotten, and the political strategy here determined on became henceforth the very keystone of Russia’s policy in regard to Turkey.

Whether the famous will of Peter the Great be apocryphal or not, as historically speaking it probably is, there is no doubt that it expresses, with prophetic instinct at any rate, the great lines of policy that have ever since been pursued with reference to Turkey by all Peter’s successors.

Two distinct phases have marked the manner of Russia’s dealings with the Christians of the East, although those dealings have been undeviating in their aims and in general plan of attack on the Ottoman Empire.

The first phase was marked by a close alliance with a Greek Patriarch and his Metropolitans, and a general identification of views between the Russian and Greek propaganda.

The Greek liturgy and the Greek priesthood were accepted without a question, whilst portraits of the Czar, with the superscription “Emperor of the Greco‐Russians,” were freely circulated by the Greek clergy among their flocks. Colonel Repnin’s plot, in 1837, took place in connivance with the Greek Patriarch, and a few years later Marshal Munich was received by the peasants of Moldavia with the Greek archbishop and his clergy marching at their head. The convents and monasteries in Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, and Montenegro were used as dépôts for arms, and monks were not the least audacious of the leaders of the revolutionists. Piccolo Stefano in Servia and Montenegro, Papazoglou in Greece, and Gamana in Wallachia, put themselves at the head of armed bands, that were joined by others from across the frontier. This alliance continued until Russia, having by her victories and prestige acquired the position of the recognised leader of the anti‐Turkish movement, was strong enough to dispense with the Greek alliance and to champion the cause of pure Slavism undiluted with Hellenism.

The second phase of Russian policy in the Slav provinces was marked by the feverish activity of the Panslavic Committees of Bucharest, Kischnoff, Moscow and Kieff, the cynical intrigues of the Russian ambassadors at Constantinople, and the fanatical articles of Katkoff in the Moscow Gazette, the aim of all which was to give a national direction to the Slavic movement in the Turkish provinces. The nationalisation of the religion of the people, the substitution of the authority of national Exarchs as heads of their churches, in the place of the Greek Patriarch, and of a native clergy educated in Russia in the place of that nominated at the Phanar, were the measures called for, and successively adopted, to stimulate a movement that now embraced all Slav dependencies of Turkey in its action. The pretext of protecting and securing the privileges of the Christian communities in the Turkish Empire was finally dropped, and the liberation of the oppressed nationalities of the South‐West of Europe became the watchword of the new propaganda.

All the machinery of the heavily subsidised Panslavic Committee was set in motion; band after band was raised and sent across the frontier; rebellion was openly preached, and the ignorant peasantry were deluded, by arguments which they did not understand, to complain of grievances which they did not feel.

The answer to the question of how such an encroaching and cynically pursued policy, violating as it did every principle of international law and comity in its dealings with a neighbouring nation, was possible—in a century, too, that was roused to indignation against a not dissimilar but entirely unofficial raid in South Africa—must be sought in the unfortunate condition and weakness of the Ottoman Empire that exposed it, almost defenceless, to the attacks of its powerful neighbour, and dispensed the latter from even the decencies of international intercourse as practised among civilised nations.

This weakness in its turn was the result, as this work is specially intended to show, of corruptions and perversions that had crept into an originally admirable Constitution, and had produced a paralysis of all its important functions, placing its nation almost as much at the mercy of its enemies as had the Liberum Veto the fair land of Poland.

The successive steps of these innovations must now be rapidly traced. When the conquering energies of the new empire were exhausted, and its victorious armies checked under the walls of Vienna by Sobieski and his Poles, and the maritime power of its fleet broken by Don John of Austria’s victory at Lepanto, a new phase was entered upon in which internal re‐organisation took the place of external conquest.

The latter half of the sixteenth century was devoted to attempts to organise the empire on quasi‐feudal principles. It was divided into timars and zeamets (fiefs), represented by the great feudatories, the Derebeys. This was the first serious innovation, involving a perversion of the cardinal principle of the Ottoman Constitution, which was in spirit and essence purely democratic; and when the counter‐revolution took place, and the Sultans determined to get rid of the Derebeys, so as to establish their own exclusive power, the mischief was already done, for the old principle of democracy, as understood by the companions of Othman, was by this time seriously impaired by the long disuse of its ancient rights and functions; so that this counter‐revolution, instead of restoring the old order of things, only redounded to the exclusive profit of autocracy. Nothing but the Porte (that is the Government), and the traditional authority it exercised, now stood in the way of the complete absolutism of the Sultan, and, owing to the veneration of the Ottoman people for their sovereigns—a veneration founded partly on religious, partly on secular, sentiments, and due in no small measure to the exceptional merits of their early rulers—the Sultans entered on the struggle for absolutism equipped with superior advantages. Having no fear of popular encroachments before their eyes, or of popular passion directed against their persons, they could devote their entire thoughts and energies to the task of dominating the Porte and monopolising power in the State.

The struggle of these two contending forces, the Palace and the Porte, continued for a long time, with alternate preponderance on either side, a strong Sultan and a weak vizier inclining the scales towards autocracy, whilst a strong vizier with a weak or luxurious Sultan, redressed the balance to the other side. The Keuprulu Mehemets, Reshids, Aalis and Fuads left the impress of their minds on the Ottoman policy and administration, whilst a host of so‐called Grand Viziers—whom it would be superfluous to name singly, inasmuch as their collective name is legion—were the mere registers of the will, and instruments of the caprices, of their masters. The Sultan Abdul Medjid counted with Reshid Pasha, and Abdul Aziz with Aali and Fuad, as long as they were alive; but it was reserved for his successor, after he had suppressed a Constitution that he had sworn to observe as the very condition of his mounting to the throne, to brush all checks and counterpoises of every kind aside, and to set up a pure, unmixed despotism, based on caprice and corruption alone. Such a system of government had been hitherto unknown to the Ottoman Constitution, was emphatically denounced by the prophets, was contrary to the express provisions of the Sacred Law, was repudiated by Mehemet II. and all the early Sultans as well as Caliphs of Islam, and ran counter to all the traditions of the Ottoman people.

Simultaneously with the beginning of this fatal perversion and this gradual absorption by the Sultans of all power in the State, another change was taking place, closely connected with it, and aggravating all its worst effects.

The high character of the early Sultans of Turkey—to which all contemporary authorities, Christian and Mahomedan alike, bear testimony—had, as has been said, profoundly affected the Ottoman character. Their fervid loyalty to their rulers sprang in no small measure from the lessons inculcated by their early history and their most cherished traditions. Now, up to the reign of Selim II., the Sultan of Turkey received a very superior education. They were not merely patrons of learning, but often themselves men of letters of no mean order. Mehemet II., the conqueror of Constantinople, was a distinguished poet; Selim I., a poet and a litterateur, prided himself, above all his prerogatives, on being the patron of men of letters and of science. This pursuit of science and learning was, moreover, in strict conformity with the spirit and letter of the Koran. “Seek science, even if it be in China”; “The wise and learned are the heirs of the Prophet,” are not isolated texts in a book teeming with passages of a similar kind. The early Caliphs, too, of Bagdad and Cordova, the Abdur Rahmans, Solimans, and Haroun el Reshid, were living proofs and typical examples of enlightened Mahomedan teaching.

But from the middle of the seventeenth century a change came over the spirit of the Sultanate in Turkey. Instead of identifying themselves with the life of their people and priding themselves on being the light that guided them, the Sultans now retired into the harems and gave themselves up to a life of ease and indulgence utterly foreign to the habits and principles of their great predecessors. They surrendered the reins of government into the hands of their Kizlar‐Agassi (chiefs of eunuchs), or Bostandji Bashi, and as one favourite succeeded another, or one palace clique displaced another, so vizier followed vizier in rapid and bewildering succession. All the corrupt and turbulent elements in the State were now unchained, justice was sacrificed to private interests, the muscles of the State were relaxed, and its most vital interests neglected and ignored. To such a pass had things come in this “State of Denmark,” that when at last a reforming Sultan arose in the person of Selim III., he had to pay with his life his reforming ardour, and leave to his successor, Mahmoud II., a task almost beyond human strength to accomplish. The reigns of the next three Sultans after Selim are the history of honest, though intermittent, struggles against the fatal legacies of the past two centuries, and of many abortive attempts to grapple with the evils that a departure from the primitive Constitution of the Empire had entailed on it, aggravated as these evils were by revolutions organised across its borders, and the systematic intrigues and almost uninterrupted hostility of its nearest neighbours.

But in following the evolution of the struggle between autocracy and the Ottoman people, and endeavouring to trace its origin, we have been anticipating the chronological order of events. We must now return to the narrative of the military movement of the eighteenth century, from the time that Peter the Great turned the energies of his diplomacy and his armies in the direction of the Ottoman provinces.

The first collision between the armed forces of Turkey and Russia ended unfavourably for the latter. By the treaty of Falksen (1711), Russia was compelled to restore Azov, that she had seized, and to undertake to abstain from meddling in the affairs of Poland. But for the treachery of Baltadji Mehemet Pasha, it is probable that this first campaign would have ended still more disastrously for Russian arms, and possibly the final partition of Poland would have been averted. That unhappy country found, at this crisis of her history, in the Sultan of Turkey her sole champion and defender among the sovereigns of Europe, and her name figured for the last time in history in a public instrument in which her rights were safeguarded by a Mahomedan sovereign against the deadly machinations of her Christian neighbour.

It was certainly unfortunate for the Ottoman Empire—and it may possibly not have been altogether fortunate for the rest of Europe—that the rise of the power of Russia should have been synchronous with the period of the greatest weakness of Turkey. Russia’s principal attacks on the integrity and independence of Turkey were skilfully timed so as to coincide with the moment when that empire was in the throes of internal revolution, and could offer the least resistance to an external foe. At the time of Mahmoud II.’s accession to the throne, after the murder of Selim III., the accumulation of difficulties and dangers that beset the empire were such that it seemed as if nothing short of a miracle could prevent its complete destruction. It required at any rate some very potent principles of internal strength and cohesion to resist the centrifugal forces in full activity at that crisis. Servia was in open revolt under Michel Obrenowitz, Egypt was in the hands of the able and ambitious Mehemet Ali, Arabia was in the effervescence of a Wahabee rising, the Pasha of Janina had raised the standard of revolt, and the Governor of Widdin, the famous Pasvan Oglou, had proclaimed his independence, and—most serious danger of all—the insurrection of Greece, supported by a consensus of enthusiasm in Europe, threatened the integrity of the empire; all this, too, at the very moment when the military forces of the empire were undergoing the complete reorganisation which Selim had begun, and Mahmoud was resolved to carry out. This revolution, for it was nothing less, consisted in the abolition of the ancient corps of Janissaries and the substitution for it of a regular force (the Nizam) drilled and organised on the European model.

The Janissaries from being a redoubtable corps d’élite recruited from Christian youths, who embraced the military as a life‐long profession, and were imbued with a military spirit which proved its worth on the hard‐fought fields of Mohacs, Nicopolis and Cossovo, had become through successive relaxings of the bonds of discipline and the ruin of its military esprit de corps, nothing but an unruly Pretorian Guard, a greater terror to the sovereign and to peaceful citizens than to the enemies of the empire. The gratuities that they were accustomed to receive on the accession of a new Sultan, and the licensed pillagings that invariably ensued on these occasions, were irresistible temptations to them to render this event as frequent as possible, and they consequently deposed sovereigns and proclaimed new ones almost at their will. The privileges, moreover, that they wrested from the terrified sovereigns, especially after the death of Soliman I.—such as the right to marry, to desert barrack life (their odjaks), and to pursue trades and industries—completely changed and deteriorated their martial character, and from the victorious soldiery that they were in the days of Ilderim Bayazid they became nothing but a turbulent militia. At last the scandal caused by their depredations and violence became intolerable, and their disbandment was loudly demanded by public opinion in all classes of the population. Selim III. determined to suppress them, and, as a necessary preliminary, commenced the re‐organisation of the naval and military forces of the empire by inviting French engineers to build ships of war, and French officers to drill and discipline a new army on European principles. Unfortunately Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt, and the declaration of war that ensued between France and Turkey, recalled these military instructors before the work of instruction and re‐organisation was half completed. It was these threatened Janissaries who, on their return to Constantinople from an expedition to Syria, willingly lent themselves as instruments of the ambition of the Sultan’s brother, Mustafa, and who deposed and finally murdered Selim. But the deposed sovereign, in his retirement and before his death, found time and opportunity thoroughly to imbue with his reforming enthusiasm his cousin Mahmoud, and he, on ascending the throne, determined, as the only means of saving the empire from ruin, and in spite of the menacing attitude of the new Czar Nicholas of Russia—who inaugurated his accession by sending an Ultimatum to Constantinople—to carry out unflinchingly the whole programme of reforms conceived by Selim. At a Grand Council (Divan) assembled in 1826, a unanimous vote was passed in favour of the total suppression of the Janissaries, and shortly afterwards, the decree being resisted by the mutinous soldiery, they were surrounded and overpowered, and in the massacre that ensued this famous Pretorian Guard finally disappeared.

The organisation, however, of the regular forces (Nizam), which were to take their place, being only half complete, it was just at the moment when the military organisation of the empire was undergoing a radical transformation that the new Sultan was called upon to face all the complications of internal revolution and foreign wars that confronted him on his accession. Mahmoud, however, set resolutely about the task, and a certain measure of success attended his first efforts. The Pashas of Widdin and Janina were successively reduced to subjection, and by the help of the Pasha of Egypt who had not yet thrown off his allegiance, the Morea was reconquered by the troops of Ibrahim Pasha, and Greece would undoubtedly have been restored to her position as the Western horn of the Ottoman Crescent but for the forcible interference of Europe and the military expedition of Marshal Maison.

By a protocol, signed at St Petersburg, on 4th April 1826, Greece was declared an autonomous and vassal State; but after the rejection by the Sultan of the collective mediation of the four Great Powers (5th February 1827), Austria, France, Great Britain and Russia (Protocol of London), and the destruction by the allied forces, without the formality of a declaration of war, of the Turkish fleet at Navarino (1827), immediately followed by a declaration of war on the part of Russia, and the campaigns of Diebitch in Europe, and Paskiewitz in Asia Minor, terminating in the disastrous Treaty of Adrianople (14th September 1829), Mahmoud had no choice but to consent in the following year (1830) to the creation of Greece into an independent kingdom, an arrangement confirmed by the Treaty of London on the 13th July 1841.

The still more serious revolt of Mehemet Ali—imperilling as it did not only the integrity of the empire, but the solidarity of Islam—immediately followed. On the Ottoman sovereign refusing to concede the government of Syria to Mehemet Ali, in return for his services in the campaign against Greece, the latter, picking a quarrel with the governor of the coveted province, quickly invaded Syria, and, defeating the Ottoman troops in a great battle at Konia, compelled the Sultan to agree to a truce (credited with the name of peace), whilst both sides prepared for an early resumption of hostilities. When this took place the Egyptian troops were again successful in a decisive battle at Nezib (24th June 1839), which placed the whole of Syria, up to the walls of Acre, in the possession of the victorious Pasha of Egypt.

Russia was, of course, too alert in following the traditional policy in regard to Turkey not to profit by these distractions, and it was at this mortal crisis of the Ottoman Empire that she stepped in and secured the secret clauses of the Treaty of Unkiar Iskelessi (8th July 1833), by which she bound Turkey to an offensive and defensive alliance that was to last for eight years, and to exclude all flags but her own from passing through the Bosphorus.

These events, however, at last brought England and Austria into the field, and an English fleet under Napier appeared before Alexandria, and an English force under Sydney Smith before Acre (Saint Jean d’Acre). Mehemet Ali, who was now deserted by France, was thus obliged to sign the Convention of Alexandria, by which Egypt was restored to the suzerainty of the Sultan, with, however, the viceroyalty of the country made hereditary in his family. By the Treaty of London (13th July 1841), this arrangement became part of the public law of Europe, and at the same time the clauses of the Treaty of Unkiar Iskelessi were revised, and the neutrality of the Straits was solemnly reaffirmed.

Six days after the disastrous battle of Nezib (June 25, 1839), the Sultan Mahmoud died, and was succeeded by his son, Abdul Medjid. The youthful sovereign, who was only seventeen years old, in spite of the misfortunes that had befallen his country, or, perhaps, rather on account of them, resolved to persevere steadily in the course of reform initiated by his two predecessors. Fortunately he possessed in Reshid Pasha a great Minister, who shared and seconded, and perhaps prompted, the reforming ardour of his master; and on the 3rd November 1839 an Imperial Rescript, the famous Hatti Humayoun of Gulhané, proclaimed the following reforms for the whole empire:—

This great charter was certainly not intended by its author to be a dead letter. It was, on the contrary, an earnest attempt to grapple with the new conditions of the empire, and to restore the spirit of its ancient Constitution, whilst reconciling it to the new requirements of the day.

This double purpose was clearly manifested in every line of the new decree, the preamble of which ran as follows:—

“Every one knows that when the Empire was first founded, its laws and precepts, which were of a high standard, were scrupulously obeyed. Therefore the Empire grew in strength and grandeur, and all its subjects, without distinction, attained to a high degree of ease and prosperity. For the last five hundred years a succession of accidents and divers causes have brought it about that men have ceased to conform to the sacred code of laws and regulations that flow from it, and therefore the force and prosperity of former days have been converted into weakness and poverty—for a nation always loses all stability when it ceases to observe its laws. These considerations have been ceaselessly present to our mind, and since the day of our accession to the throne the thoughts of the common weal, the amelioration of the condition of the provinces, and the lessening of the burdens of the people, have been the subjects of our constant preoccupation. Moreover, if the geographical position of the Empire; the fertility of its soil; the aptitude and intelligence of its inhabitants; be considered, they will lead to the conviction that if a ruler applies himself diligently to discover the efficacious means to effect necessary reforms, the results that we hope to attain, with the help of the Almighty, may be achieved in the course of a few short years. Therefore, full of trust in the help of the Almighty, and leaning on the intercession of our Prophet, we consider it right and proper to set about, by the help of new institutions, procuring for the provinces of our Empire the blessings of a sound administration.”

Reshid Pasha, by order of the Sultan, set himself earnestly to the task of translating the general principles enunciated in the Hatti Humayoun, with special laws and regulations that should reduce them to practice, and four years after its promulgation at Gulhané, the Tanzimat, or regulations for the organisation of all the branches of administration, was published throughout the empire. Under the four general heads:—

it gave the most elaborate directions for the organisation of each branch of the public service. Considering the condition of confusion into which the administration of the country had fallen in the course of ages, and the absence of any guiding principle in it, the Tanzimat must be considered one of the most remarkable efforts of administrative organisation ever displayed in any country, and a monument of the genius of Reshid Pasha. It is not altogether without reason that he has been called the “Richelieu of Turkey.”

But it does not suffice to decree great changes; it is in the endeavour to reduce them to practice that the chief difficulty arises. And no great wonder if in a country like Turkey, where vested interests had grown around the old order of things; where conservative prejudices, as in every country in the world, obstruct the path of reform; where trained civil servants did not exist but had to be created, that the execution of these important and all‐embracing reforms should not have taken place by decree as by a magician’s wand, but required time and patience for their realisation. Events, too, were taking place in Europe which were destined to change the aspect of things and divert the minds of statesmen from internal organisation to the necessities of defending the existence of the national independence. The revolutionary movement of 1848–1849 in Europe afforded a little respite to a country outside the sphere of this movement, and it was just at this disturbed period of the rest of Europe that Turkey enjoyed the greatest peace and made the greatest progress in the work of re‐organisation. But scarcely had the revolutionary effervescence calmed down in Europe, and the fears connected with it been laid to rest, when the Emperor Nicholas—who had finally suppressed the Magyar insurrection and restored Hungary to the House of Hapsburg—turned his attention once more to Turkey, and resolved on decisive action. To suppose that the progress in organisation that was being effected in that country was not entirely unconnected with this determination would be only to deny that the arguments and reasons of State put forward by Pozzo di Borgo, in 1828, were operative in the mind of the Emperor Nicholas twenty years later:

“When the Imperial Cabinet examines the question as to whether the moment had not arrived to take up arms against the Porte, some doubt might possibly have existed as to the urgency of such a measure in the minds of those who had not sufficiently meditated on the effects of the sanguinary reform (destruction of Janissaries) that the Ottoman ruler had just executed with such terrible force. Now, however, the experience that we have just had ought to enlist the sympathy of all in favour of the course that we have adopted. The Emperor has put the new Turkish system to the proof, and His Majesty has discovered in it a commencement of moral and physical organisation which it never possessed before. If the Sultan has been enabled to oppose to us a more spirited and regular resistance than before, whilst scarcely able to put together the elements of his new plan of reform and amelioration, how much the more formidable should we have found him if he had had the time to give it more solidity.”[5]

However that may be, hardly had the Russian troops withdrawn from Hungary than the Emperor Nicholas, addressing Sir Hamilton Seymour, the English Ambassador at St Petersburg, dwelt on the moribund condition of the Turkish Empire, and proposed to him its partition. Crete and Egypt were to be the spoils of England, whereas Servia, Montenegro, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria were to fall to the share of Russia. This offer was duly reported to the Cabinet of St James, and categorically declined by it. The state of Europe at the time was not unfavourable to the Czar’s designs. Austria was bound to Russia by gratitude for important services rendered, and only Metternich suspected her to be then capable of “stupendous ingratitude.” Prussia was united to the Czar by ties of near kindred, and by her traditional indifference to the affairs of the East. France having fallen into the hands of a sovereign capable of reviving Napoleonic traditions, was as much an object of suspicion to all the crowned heads of Europe as by his coup d’état he was to liberal opinion throughout the world. The last thing that seemed likely, or even possible, was a coalition between Napoleonic France and the England of Lord Aberdeen. The omens seemed favourable for striking a decisive blow.

A quarrel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, between Greek and Latin monks, afforded the desired pretext. After some diplomatic haggling between the Porte and France, in which the latter first put forward and then withdrew claims which would have afforded a precedent and pretext for Russian pretensions, Prince Mentchikoff suddenly appeared, with much bluster, at Constantinople, as the bearer of an Ultimatum demanding the assent of the Porte, within the space of five days, to a Russian protectorate over all the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan in his dominions. Europe, startled by the brusqueness of this action, as well as the serious import of the demand, endeavoured immediately to interpose her mediation to avert a crisis. Sir Strafford de Redcliffe and Mr de la Cour, who happened to be absent from Constantinople on the arrival of Prince Mentchikoff, returned precipitately to their posts, and, seconded by the Austrian Ambassador, Prince Leiningen, spared no effort that ingenuity could devise to give effect to their conciliatory instructions. But as no compromise could possibly be found between the pretensions put forward in the Ultimatum and what the Porte was willing to concede, Prince Mentchikoff had the escutcheon removed from the Russian Embassy at Pera, and with his whole suite quitted Constantinople.

Three weeks after this (31st May 1853), Count Nesselrode despatched another Ultimatum reiterating the same demands, and giving the Porte eight days within which to execute them. The only answer vouchsafed to this document was the proclamation by the Sultan, on the 6th June, of a new Hatti Cherif confirming the rights and privileges of all the Christian subjects of the empire. The combined French and English fleets, at the same time, received orders to sail to Besika Bay, and although war was not formally declared, the Emperor Nicholas gave orders for his armies to cross the Pruth and to seize the Danubian principalities as a “material guarantee” for compliance with his demands.

It was not till 28th September that war was formally declared between Russia and Turkey, and that Omar Pasha received orders to summon the Russian Commander to evacuate the principalities. The interval between this period and the date of Prince Mentchikoff’s mission had been employed by a lively diplomatic correspondence between Lord Clarendon and Mr Drouyn de Lluys, on one side, and Prince Gortchakoff on the other, relative to the interpretation of the seventh clause of the Treaty of Kainardje, on which Russia based her claims to interfere with the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The destruction of a Turkish squadron by a superior Russian fleet in the harbour of Sinope at last terminated this diplomatic interlude, and brought the armed forces of England and France into the field. On the 27th December the allied fleets entered the Black Sea, and an expeditionary force was sent to Varna and the Dobrutcha.

Here is the place to note the influence exercised on the course of events by the action of Austria.

It was one of the principal aims of English and French diplomacy at this period to secure the co‐operation of the Middle Empire. By her geographical position and the revived force of her empire, as well as by the magnitude of her interests in the Eastern Question, she seemed called upon to exercise a preponderant influence on the issue of the coming struggle. It was even generally taken for granted that, could her active co‐operation be secured, such powerful pressure could be brought to bear on Russia as would secure the objects of the Western nations without actual recourse to arms; and, at any rate, that if Russia were still to persist in her policy of encroachment, the military forces at the command of the coalition would be so overwhelming as to compel her rapidly to retreat from the position she had taken up. Austria was generally considered to hold the key of the situation.

There was no lack of political motive on the part of Austria to bring her into line with Western Powers. The free navigation of the Danube, the arrest of the dangerous Panslavic propaganda of Russia, the curbing of limitless ambition of her colossal neighbour, were undoubtedly objects of State policy of the first magnitude. On the other hand, strong dynastic sympathies, and the obligations of gratitude for important services recently rendered, weighed heavily in the opposite scales. The result of these conflicting motives was a line of conduct which, whilst diplomatically supporting the contentions of the allied Cabinets, seriously hampered their military resolutions.

Had Austria not placed her veto on the march of the allied armies into Poland, that country would have become the battle‐field between the forces of the East and West, and as far as human forecast can determine, the whole face of Europe would have been changed, the Eastern Question would have been settled for ever, and the nightmare of Cossack preponderance lifted once for all from the shoulders of Western civilisation.

Instead of prosecuting the war on the continent of Europe, an expedition to the Crimea was resolved upon, and a French and English army landed at Eupatoria, and after a victorious advance across the Alma, and making a flank march to the south side of Sevastopol, they invested that portion of the great arsenal of Sevastopol which after two years’ siege and the taking of the fortress of Malakoff, at last surrendered to the allied army.

On the 25th February 1856, a congress was assembled at Paris, and on the 30th March the Treaty of Paris was signed by the plenipotentiaries of Russia, Turkey, England, France, Prussia and Italy, by which Turkey was admitted into the full benefits of international law, and into the Concert of Europe, and all right of interference in her internal affairs was expressly disclaimed and repudiated by all the Signatories. Russia and Turkey were expressly debarred from maintaining any armed forces in the Black Sea, and a small strip of Bessarabia was ceded by Russia to the Danubian principalities.

This was followed by the proclamation of a new Hatti Cherif on the part of the Sultan, which closed this particular chapter of the history of Europe.

Before concluding this short epitome of the history of the Ottoman Empire, and proceeding with the narrative of the life of Midhat Pasha, the incidents of whose career begin at this point to be interwoven with the general history of his country, it will be useful to cast a glance at the state of Europe and the general trend of events and alliances that succeeded the settlement of 1856.

The death of the Sultan, Abdul Medjid (1861), and the character of his successor were the chief factors, as will shortly be seen, that influenced the direct destinies of Turkey. Unfortunately, in a country where absolutism had gradually become the established form of government, this was, and could only be, the determining element in the problem of government

Russia, defeated but not humiliated, or even seriously crippled in a war which had, however, strained her resources, and absorbed by the great measure of the emancipation of her serfs, which inaugurated and rendered illustrious the reign of the successor of Nicholas, was, to employ the now classic phrase of Prince Gortchakoff, “collecting herself” (La Russie se recueille). This did not, however, prevent her giving a free hand, and even officious support, to the Panslavic Committees of Moscow and of Kieff, that now, through the promptings and under the direction of Katkoff and his school, entered upon a militant career, and the crafty Ignatieff was sent to Constantinople to defend and support the machinations of these committees, and to play with consummate astuteness on the weaknesses and vices of a sovereign who possessed none of the qualities of his three predecessors, but was remarkable only for an inordinate passion for expenditure and a morbid jealousy of his autocratic power. His perfect sanity, moreover, became more and more questionable.

With respect to France, from the first meeting of the plenipotentiaries at Paris, in May 1856, it became evident that a change had come over the spirit of the Court of the Tuileries. The representatives of France no longer showed themselves as irreconcilable to the views of Russia as was the case when Mr Drouyn de Lluys penned his famous despatches two years before, and in the discussions that took place at the Congress, and still more in the various Commissions appointed to settle the details of the articles of peace, the envoys of France were found to be constantly ranged on the side of Russia, whereas the views and contentions of England and Turkey were invariably supported by the representatives of Austria.

This new orientation of French politics, which continued to the time of the Polish insurrection in 1862, was further emphasised by the exceptional pomp and circumstances attending the French mission to St Petersburg, on the occasion of the coronation of the new Czar. The matrimonial and political rapprochement, too, between the House of Savoy and the Napoleons, culminating in the war of 1859, was a further cause of estrangement between France and Austria.

In compensation, however, for the gradual parting of the ways of French and English diplomacy in the East, the Cabinet of Vienna seemed to have reverted frankly to what may be called the normal policy of Austria with reference to Turkey, and the policy of Metternich and Castlereagh was for a time steadily and consistently followed by Buol and Palmerston. This state of things continued until the double election of Prince Couza in the Danubian principalities caused a rift in the alliance.

To Austria everything connected with the free navigation of the Danube and the political status of the provinces bordering on that great artery is, and must ever be, State interests of the first magnitude.

To England, apart from their indirect bearing on the integrity and independence of Turkey, these questions were only matters of sentimental interest founded on academic sympathy with the general principle of nationalities. This sentiment, however, called into activity by the events unrolling themselves in Italy, was particularly strong in England at the time when the question of the principalities presented itself as a practical problem to the statesmen of Europe, and found in the Prime Minister of the day, Mr Gladstone, one of its keenest and most enthusiastic partisans. England completely severed her policy on this occasion from that of Austria. Whether such conduct, with reference to a branch of a much larger problem, was quite consistent with an Eastern policy considered as a whole, and whether such a deviation from the obligation of loyalty to an indispensable ally was or was not responsible for much of what subsequently occurred, is perhaps too delicate a question to be discussed here. Certain, however, is it that the desertion of Austria on this occasion by the ally she counted on in Eastern matters to maintain intact the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, and the instability of English foreign policy that it revealed, made a profound impression on the minds of the Austrian Emperor and his counsellors, and justified in their view the revolution that subsequently took place in the Eastern policy of Austria. Placed as the Middle Empire is—between jealous rivals and powerful neighbours, and with enormous and vital interests to safeguard—it is obliged to lean on one system of alliance or another, and what has been called “la politique du Cascole” is, as it were, a necessity of her position, and even a condition of her existence. When the events connected with the Herzegovinian insurrection come to be narrated in these pages, the part taken in them by Austria, and the rôle played by her statesmen throughout the long negotiations preceding the Russo‐Turkish War and during its continuance, until the final act of the comedy enacted at Berlin, will have to be clearly set forth in detail, for it was Austria that played the chief part in all of them, and that finally secured the chief part in the spoil.

This chapter, which only seeks to point out the particular circumstances that determined a change of policy on Eastern matters on the part of this empire, must be considered rather as an apology for, than an indictment of Austria with respect to Turkey. Moreover, it is the author’s aim throughout this work to narrate and explain events according to the lights vouchsafed to him, rather than to accuse any nation of bad faith or unjustifiable aggression with respect to his country. A nation worthy to exist at all must exist by its own strength and vigour, and not by the sufferance of its neighbours; and indeed the only indictment which will be proclaimed in this book will be against the descendants of the Othmans, Orkhans, Solimans, Bayazids and Mahmouds who have turned their backs on the traditions of their faith, and have allowed the muscles of the nation to be relaxed, and its heritage to become the prey of the spoiler.

CHAPTER II
MIDHAT’S EARLY YEARS

Midhat was born at Constantinople in 1822. His father, Hadji Ali Effendi, was a native of Rustchuk, and gave his son the usual education provided by the local schools, until he was of an age to follow him in his different displacements, first to Widdin and Lofdja, and afterwards to Constantinople in 1836. A few years after this he obtained a position in the Secretariat of the Grand Vizier’s office, whence he was promoted to superior employment in the provinces. He remained two years at Damascus, and then, after a short interval spent in Constantinople, he proceeded, in 1844, to Konia, as secretary to Sami Bekir Pasha’s Council. In 1849 he was nominated to the Presidency of the Medjlissi‐Vala (Grand Council of State) and promoted to the rank of Sanie, which is the first rank in the Ottoman hierarchy, and in 1851 to that of Mutemaiz, with the functions of First Secretary to the Grand Council.

Soon after this, difficulties in the provinces of Damascus and Aleppo, connected with the Custom House, and with the conduct of the Commander‐in‐Chief of the Army of Arabia, Kibrissli Mehemet Pasha, necessitated the despatch of a public functionary with full power to inquire into the irregularities, civil and military, which were notorious in those provinces. Midhat was chosen for this important and confidential mission. In the space of six months he settled the question of the Customs in favour of the Government, by which the sum in dispute, £T150,000, was restored to the Ottoman Treasury, and a further surplus of £70,000 was secured. He further fixed the responsibility for the insurrection of the Druses on the Commander‐in‐Chief, Kibrissli Mehemet Pasha, and recommended his recall.

The courage and capacity of which Midhat gave proof in this mission attracted to him the attention of the Grand Vizier of the day, the famous Reshid Pasha, who appointed him to a confidential post in the Superior Council of the State, which he occupied during the successive Grand Vizierates of Reshid, Aali, and Great Rifat Pashas. This may be considered the initiation of Midhat into political, as distinguished from administrative, life. It was in this post that he assisted, in 1852, at the historical interview between Rifat Pasha, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Prince Mentchikoff, the special envoy of the Emperor Nicholas, in the negotiations that preceded the Crimean War.

In 1854, Kibrissli Mehemet Pasha, who in consequence of Midhat’s report had been dismissed from the command of the Syrian Army Corps, became Grand Vizier. He now charged Midhat with the difficult and delicate mission of pacifying the disturbed provinces of Adrianople and the Balkans, and clearing them of the brigandage that infested them. The organising genius of Midhat proved equal to the task. He suppressed brigandage with a strong hand, and by restoring tranquillity in this district he deprived the neighbouring States of all pretexts for chronic complaints. To prevent the return of trouble he further elaborated a whole plan of re‐organisation, which he submitted to the approval of the Government at Constantinople, where Reshid Pasha had again become Grand Vizier. The draft of this plan arrived at the very time that Reshid and Aali Pashas were engaged in drawing up regulations for the government of the Eyalets (provinces), with a view to their decentralisation. Midhat’s plan was accepted, and it was decided that he should be nominated to the governorship of the important province of the Danube (Bulgaria), when suddenly another change of Ministry at Constantinople delayed the execution of the whole plan of reform. In the meantime an appalling earthquake at Broussa had caused terrible damage in that important city and much misery among its inhabitants. Midhat was now despatched thither with a mission to succour sufferers and to help to restore confidence among the terrified inhabitants.

On his return from Broussa he was despatched as special commissioner to inspect the provinces of Widdin and Silistria, which were in open rebellion against the central authorities. Here Midhat, as he had previously done in Syria, made a detailed report, pointing out the faulty administration of the provinces, and fearlessly inculpating the two Valis (governors).

This discharge of a public duty was met by the usual manœuvres of inculpated Pashas. Their friends at the Palace bestirred themselves in their favour, and induced the Sultan to reject the proposals of Midhat, and to send a well‐known Ulema at Constantinople, Haireddin Effendi, to the two vilayets in question, to make a further report in verification or contradiction of that of Midhat. To the confusion and disappointment of the friends of the incriminated Valis, Haireddin Effendi made a report in every way confirming the views and recommendations, and emphasizing the accusations of Midhat.

At this time (1858) Reshid Pasha died, and Aali Pasha, his successor, obtained six months’ leave of absence for Midhat, to be spent in travelling in Europe, with a view to the study of certain points of European administration with which he desired to make himself acquainted. Paris, London, Vienna, and Brussels were successively visited in this short period of time, and much valuable information obtained, both as to the spirit and working of European governments.

Midhat had by this time already acquired a certain reputation as a successful provincial governor and whenever trouble in the empire declared itself, his name recurred as a fit and proper person to be despatched as special envoy or governor to pacify the province in question. Kibrissli Mehemet Pasha had now again become Grand Vizier, and as trouble of a serious kind had for some time been brewing in the vilayet of Nish (Servia), where, in spite of the presence of an imposing force of regular and irregular troops, insecurity of life and property was rampant, and an alarming emigration of the inhabitants was taking place, he nominated Midhat to the Governorship of this important province (1861).

Midhat resolved to make an attempt to pacify the province without the use of armed force, and to gain the confidence of the Bulgarians by the redress of their just grievances. His first step was to invite the notabilities of the different districts to conferences, to state their complaints, and attentively examine with him the remedies that should be applied. These grievances practically resolved themselves into two: (1) the entire absence of roads and other means of intercommunication, which made it impossible for the inhabitants—exclusively cultivators of the soil—to find markets for their produce; (2) the rampant brigandage that everywhere existed, rendering life and property insecure. These two causes, it was, that induced the emigration into Servia, which was assuming large proportions, where the Bulgarians found among their fellow‐Slavs both greater security and more favourable conditions of labour.

Midhat readily acknowledged the justice and reasonableness of these complaints, and proceeded to strike a bargain with the notables. They were to undertake to use their influence to pacify the country and discourage emigration for two years, and Midhat engaged within this time to carry out the reforms and improvements that were mutually agreed upon between them. Midhat strictly carried out the terms of this agreement. He ordered the troops back to their barracks, commenced the great high road between Nish and Sofia with the byroads connected with it, and by means of military patrols sent out in every direction, brigandage very soon entirely disappeared from the country. Roads were now being laid out in every direction, and bridges constructed over the Morava and other rivers, so as to meet the requirements of an agricultural population, and facilitate the outlet for their produce. An elaborate system of block‐houses all along the Servian frontier put an end to the incursions of armed bands of Servians, which had long fostered and sustained disturbance in the province, and many Bulgarian families who had emigrated into Servia now began to return to their former habitations. Concurrently with these material ameliorations, Midhat occupied himself with the solution of other economical and moral problems that concerned the well‐being of the community. The relations between proprietors and tenants of the soil had long been in an unsatisfactory condition. Midhat convoked representatives of both these classes to a conference, and with much pains, and after long discussions, he succeeded in finding a means of reconciliation between their opposing pretensions, to the satisfaction of both parties.

At Prisrend, in that part of the provinces inhabited by the Arnauts, he was confronted with problems of a peculiar nature. Here a vendetta (similar to the Corsican vendetta) existed among the unruly mountaineers of Albanian descent. Midhat, faithful to his system of working hand in hand with the inhabitants themselves, convoked an assembly of notables of the district, and with their co‐operation, and by their own initiative, instituted a permanent commission to settle money compositions for bloodshed, and by this means he succeeded in suppressing a vendetta that had existed for centuries among this brave but unruly people. He further induced them to give up the practice of carrying arms, and, for the first time in the history of the provinces, to submit to Imperial conscription; he further organised a gendarmerie, secured the peaceful collection of taxes, and put an end to all religious persecution; schools, too, were established, and hospitals for members of all religious denominations without distinction. Thus the vilayets of Nish and Prisrend gradually recovered the full enjoyment of tranquillity and peace, and Christians and Mussulmans alike began to enjoy the prospect of returning prosperity.

In the provinces of Widdin and Silistria the problem of pacification was complicated by a factor which rendered the solution far more difficult. Here the continued and systematic interference of Russia by means of her consuls and agents, supported by the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, working hand in hand with the agents of the Slav Committees, who were overrunning the country and preaching the gospel of rebellion, created quite a new set of problems to be dealt with. It was no longer local grievances to be redressed, but a political propagandism to be faced.

Aali and Fuad Pashas, the successors of Reshid Pasha, appreciating the administrative and reforming talents of Midhat, summoned him in 1864 to Constantinople, to consider with them a general organic law for the government of the provinces of the empire (loi des vilayets), and it was there resolved that the vilayets of Silistria, Widdin, and Nish should be combined into a single government under the name of the “Vilayet of the Danube,” and entrusted to Midhat. The Imperial sanction to this appointment and to the organic reforms proposed was obtained (in 1865) in spite of the opposition of the reactionary party in Constantinople, headed by the Sheik‐ul‐Islam of the day, Saadeddine Effendi, strenuously backed by Sourrouri Effendi Naib, an avowed enemy of the new Vali, whom we shall meet with later on figuring, as a reward for his zeal, and in acknowledgment of his impartiality, as the President of the tribunal that tried and condemned Midhat. But the influence of Fuad Pasha was sufficient to overcome all such opposition, and Midhat forthwith entered upon his new and important functions.

It will be sufficient to give a summary account of the radical reforms introduced by the new Vali in the government of this important province.

The whole vilayet was divided into seven distinct sandjaks (districts), the sandjak into cazas (cantons), and the cazas into nahies (communes), and in each of these centres councils were created for the levying of taxes and local administration of the district.

Forced labour (corvée) was abolished; bridges to the number of 1400 were constructed; and 3000 kilometres (circ. 2000 miles) of roads constructed; brigandage was effectually stamped out and a local gendarmerie raised, and agricultural banks, with a view of relieving the small farmer from the exactions of the usurer, established. The capital for these purposes was procured by an ingenious system, founded on the cultivation of the public and waste lands, by which not only was relief given to distressed and needy agriculturists, but a local fund was created for important local improvements. Agriculture, the staple industry of the inhabitants, soon began to flourish in consequence of these wise and energetic measures, and with agriculture the affiliated industries and commerce of the country. The navigation of the Danube, the great artery of the province, next engaged the attention of the Pasha, and soon two, and then four, vessels, flying the Ottoman flag for the first time, made their appearance on this river. A postal service was likewise started, and through the initiative of the governor a manufactory of carriages established at Rustchuk, which at the end of the very first year paid a dividend of 10 per cent. Charitable institutions too were not neglected, and orphan asylums for Christian and Mahomedan children alike were constructed at Rustchuk and Sofia, and the pupils initiated in trades and industries.

The key of all these reforms, and the cardinal principle of this administration, was to work hand in hand with the local authorities. By their aid the valuation of all property held in the respective districts was carried out equitably and fairly, and taxes founded on this assessment were levied without complaint; and although the salaries of responsible officials, such as the police and judges, were considerably increased, and many vexatious taxes abolished, the new revenue of the province showed a considerable and increasing surplus.

The prosperity of this large province under its new administrator could not fail to attract the attention of the authorities at Constantinople, and Midhat now received the congratulations both of the Sultan and of the Sublime Porte. An Imperial Irade, moreover, enjoined all the governors of the other provinces of the empire to apply in their respective vilayets the same reforms that Midhat had introduced in that of the Danube, a detailed plan and description of which had been forwarded to Constantinople by Rifat Effendi, the secretary of the vilayet (subsequently Grand Vizier).

So far everything seemed to go well, and a new era of prosperity seemed about to dawn for the provinces of the empire generally. It is worth while for those who really desire to obtain an inside view of the working of Turkish absolutism, and to discern the secret springs that move the Government of Turkey, and make themselves acquainted with the hidden causes that have time after time wrecked the hopes of Turkish reformers, to follow attentively what we are now about to relate, on the authority, be it noted, of one in a position, if any one was, to know the truth and put his fingers on the plague‐spot.

Midhat felt that his work would not be complete, nor would the return of material prosperity suffice to attach his province permanently to the Government of the Sultan, unless he applied himself as well to the moral side of the problem and succeeded in counteracting the manœuvres of the enemies of the empire to sow disaffection in the minds of the youth of the province. One of the most effective devices contrived by them with this view was the plan, pursued for many years, of sending large numbers of Bulgarian youths to carry on their studies at the Russian universities of Odessa, Kharkoff, and Kieff, and these, on their return, became the chiefs of the staffs of the active propagandists of Panslavic ideas among the youths of Bulgaria. These missionaries of disaffection constituted one of the most serious dangers to Ottoman sovereignty, and one of the most difficult problems to deal with. Midhat determined to grapple with it, and with this view he determined to establish in the principal centres of the province schools and universities where the Bulgarian youths, Christians and Mussulmans alike, should enjoy all the advantages of a first‐class modern education without having to seek it abroad. The incidental advantage of a fusion of Christian and Mussulman elements in the country, under the inspiring influence of a common education, at an age when friendships are most easily formed and generous sentiments evoked, did not escape the sagacity of Midhat. The whole project was explained by him in a detailed report to the Sublime Porte, the expenses being provided half by the surplus revenues of the province, and the rest by voluntary subscriptions.

When this project was made known at Constantinople, the person who most readily seized the full import of it was General Ignatieff, the Russian ambassador. It went directly counter to all the most cherished plans and projects of the Panslavic party, of which he was the moving spirit. There was nothing that he did not do to wreck the plan and upset the Pasha. Unfortunately the nature of an absolute government and the character of an Eastern autocrat afforded him ample means of action. The interference of a foreign ambassador in the internal economy of a province of the empire had nothing in it which appeared abnormal or impertinent; such interference was consecrated by long usage and had become chronic and accepted. Ignatieff began by representing to the sovereign that the spirit of the reforms effected by Midhat in his vilayet, especially the institution of local councils (which was of the very essence of the reforms introduced), were in direct opposition to the spirit of absolutism, and that the result would infallibly be that little by little the province itself would become detached from the body of the empire, and would claim its entire independence, as had already happened in the case of Egypt. It is not certain, however, that the ambassador would have gained his point, even with a sovereign so tenacious of his prerogatives as was Abdul Aziz, had not an unfortunate error of typography, eagerly seized on and exploited by Ignatieff, played into the hands of the ambassador. In a passage of the official journal of the province, the term “deputies” was inadvertently applied to the members of the chief council of the vilayet. This apparently trivial circumstance, the slip of a typographist, was sufficient to turn the scale in the Sultan’s mind and to wreck the project. Abdul Aziz refused his consent to the proposal, on the obviously insincere pretext of the expense connected with it. Thus this crowning act of Midhat’s work, the reform which above all others was calculated to attach the Bulgarians to the central government and to destroy a nest of disaffectation in the province, was defeated by a foreign ambassador playing on the ignorant susceptibilities and autocratic instincts of the sovereign of the country. If this were a single and exceptional example of the working of autocracy, it might be passed over in comparative silence, however regrettable it was in this particular instance; but the whole modern history of Turkey shows that such intervention was nothing less than a system of statecraft whereby autocracy was cunningly worked for the ruin of the country in as certain and deadly a way as was the Liberum Veto of the Polish constitution. The spontaneous caprices and whims of an autocrat are the least part of the baneful effects of autocracy; it is in the shadows that flit behind the throne, stronger than the throne itself, working systematically on the ignorance and fears of the autocrat, with settled purpose and in pursuit of settled plans, that lies, in the East at any rate, the real curse of absolutism.

Simultaneously with this diplomatic action at Constantinople, order was given to the Panslavic Committees established at Bucharest and Kichenew to prepare for action in the field. Midhat’s agents had kept him informed of the revival of agitation entertained by the agents of these committees among the Bulgarian peasants, and he lost no time in transmitting this information to the Porte.

Midhat Pasha and his Suite in the Government of the Province of the Danube.

On the 2nd May, 1867, Midhat received the following telegram from Sistovo:—“Last night numerous armed bands crossed the frontier close to Sistovo, and were immediately joined by other bands who were waiting for them on this side of the frontier, and early this morning they commenced operations by the horrible mutilation of five Mussulman children, aged from eight to twelve, who were tending sheep on the plains.”

The object and purpose of these barbarities was obvious: it was to excite reprisals on the part of the Mussulman population, which would afford a pretext to the enemies of the empire to fill Europe with an outcry against Turkish barbarity and fanaticism. The same policy, heralded by the same acts, ruthlessly pursued later on, did produce the desired effect, and Bulgarian atrocities became a proverb and byword in the world; but on this occasion the energy of Midhat, and the patience and forbearance of the Mussulman population, defeated the purpose of the conspirators. Midhat, immediately on receiving the above telegram, embarked two companies of regulars on board a steamer and despatched them to Sistovo, whither he accompanied them himself. He found the whole population, Christian and Mussulman, in a state of the greatest excitement, and his first care was to calm the effervescence and to inspire confidence in the energy and resolution of the authorities.

The plan of the insurgents was to push on as rapidly as they could to the Balkans, increasing their forces as they went along by the native levies which had been organised by the committees for this purpose, until they reached the monastery of Kapanbova, where a large dépôt of arms had been collected, and which was intended to be the headquarters of the insurrection.

The presence of four battalions of regulars at Capriova prevented the execution of this plan, and after suffering several defeats in the field, the bands dispersed in various directions, closely pursued by the troops and the local levies that had joined them. Midhat now instituted a special tribunal, composed of six Mussulmans and six Christian judges, to try the rebel prisoners, and the evidence given by the prisoners themselves, clearly demonstrated that the invading bands had been equipped and sent out by the Slav Committees of Bucharest and Kichenew, and were acting in unison with corresponding committees established throughout the province. By the unanimous vote of this tribunal, sentences of death were passed on the leaders, and penal servitude and minor punishment, according to their status and degree of culpability, on all the rebels taken in arms. By these energetic means the insurrection was effectually stamped out and tranquillity restored to the province.

An outcry, however, was quickly raised in the European Press against the “methods of barbarism” adopted to repress the insurrection, and the Pasha was accused of ultra severity against Christian insurgents and reprehensible leniency towards Mussulman offenders.

So far from this latter accusation having any real foundation, the very composition of the special tribunal appointed to deal with these troubles was a guarantee of its impartiality. Moreover, the following fact will afford an example of the impunity enjoyed by the Mahomedan criminals. In the course of these troubles two dead bodies of Christians were found in a field near Biscara; a judicial investigation was immediately ordered on the spot, and the result was that the evidence pointed to a sergeant of gendarmerie, a Mussulman of the name of Mehemet Tchavouch, as having committed the murder. Pressed by questions Mehemet made a full confession, and he was thereupon condemned to death and forthwith executed.

Midhat now turned his attention to the best means of anticipating and guarding against similar raids and insurrections in the future. He knew well that the central revolutionary committees at Bucharest and Kichenew would not disarm, but would simply watch for a more favourable opportunity to put their plans into execution. To garrison the whole frontier with regular troops would expose the province to large expenditure, and the troops, when called upon to act, to calumny and misrepresentation. He accordingly conceived the plan of organising a local militia of 40,000 men, recruited from all classes of the population, Christian and Mussulman alike, to whom the defence of their own localities should be entrusted, and they were to be indemnified if called upon to act beyond the boundaries of their district. By this means a cheap and effective force was provided against all contingencies, and at the same time the confidence reposed in the loyalty of the population generally received a conspicuous demonstration. The defence of the line of the Danube was secured in a similar manner. A succession of guard‐houses was established throughout the length of the river, and their defence confided to a river‐guard recruited equally from the Christian and Mussulman riverine population.

So ingenious was the plan of organisation, that the term of service for each guardsman did not exceed one month in ten years. The arms and equipments were provided by voluntary subscription raised from all the inhabitants of the province.

During all this time the greater the energy shown by Midhat in the organisation, development and defence of this frontier province of the empire, the greater became the determination of the Slav Committees to undo and defeat his work.

After the late exploits of these committees in Bulgaria, Midhat had organised a system of surveillance at the headquarters of these committees, and information having reached him that emissaries had been despatched from Galatz to Belgrade in order to organise a new raid into Bulgaria, he ordered these emissaries to be closely watched and followed in all their movements. On their embarkation at Rustchuk, on board the Austrian vessel Germania, he sent photographs of them to the Austrian Consul, with a request that the Ottoman authorities should be allowed to examine the passports of the passengers. Accompanied by an Austrian Consular Agent the Turkish authorities accordingly proceeded on board, where they were immediately received by shots from revolvers on the part of the two suspected agents, who had barricaded themselves in the saloon of the vessel, and had determined to resist arrest. After an indescribable scene of confusion among the panic‐stricken passengers aboard, the Turkish gendarmerie, acting with the consent of the Consul, succeeded in effecting the capture of the agents, who were both mortally wounded in the encounter.

The capture of these revolutionary agents made a great noise in Europe. General Ignatieff at Constantinople, seized on the circumstance as a pretext to demand the recall of Midhat, accompanying the Servian Agent to the Palace in the audience accorded to the latter, whose complaints were founded on the fact that one of the captured agents was a Servian. Midhat’s influence, however, was still in the ascendant, and these intrigues remained for a time without effect.

Other means failing, a desperate and criminal attempt was now made to get rid of this too energetic Pasha. Two attempts to assassinate him followed in quick succession, the first at Rustchuk, where the overseer of the training school fired a shot, fortunately without effect, on the Pasha as he was walking in the school enclosure; and the other by a Servian, who attempted to enter his service with the view to assassinating him, and who made a full confession seriously compromising two important personages in Servia. He was sent to Constantinople, tried, and condemned to penal servitude for life, in spite of the strenuous efforts of General Ignatieff in his favour.

Not very long after these stirring events (1868) Midhat was summoned to Constantinople, where he was placed at the head of the Council of State, and he was succeeded in the governorship of the province, for which he had done so much, by Sabri Pasha, the deputy‐governor of Nish.

As President of the Council, Midhat marked his short tenure of that office by the institution of a school of Arts and Sciences at Sultan Ahmed, in Stamboul, and by the establishment of a bank for loans, with the special purpose of relieving small employers from the tyranny of usurers. This bank (Emniet Sandighie) still exists. It soon, however, became obvious to Midhat that his system of usefulness in his new ministerial position was strictly limited; his authority in matters pertaining to his own office was constantly overruled on important matters, especially those concerning finance, by the Grand Vizier, acting on the authority of the Sultan, and this incompatibility of views culminated on the question of Turkish railways, whereupon Midhat insisted on resigning. Just at this time Nakieddine Pasha was dismissed from the governorship of the province of Bagdad, and Midhat was appointed Vali of Bagdad (1869).

Hardly had the new Vali reached his post, when he found himself confronted with some difficult problems of quite a different order from those he had dealt with on the Danube, but of a not less serious description. The question of recruiting was the most urgent, and called for immediate solution. The Arab tribes, turbulent and independent by nature, had always shown themselves refractory to enlistment, and were now in open revolt against its enforcement. One of the difficulties of the situation consisted in the fact that the military authority in the province was separated from the civil, and was in the hands of the commander of the 6th Army Corps, Samih Pasha, whereas the situation required all authority, military as well as civil, to be concentrated in the hands of a single strong central authority. Midhat did not hesitate at such a crisis to assume the full responsibility of this concentration, and took immediate military steps to suppress the insurrection by force. He ordered the city of Bagdad to be surrounded by cavalry, and sent infantry and artillery to protect the foreign Mission Houses and the non‐Mussulman quarters from the fanaticism of the Arabs. He at the same time ordered the bridge over the Tigris to be cut, so as to prevent intercommunication among the rebels; and when these energetic measures had fairly intimidated the Arabs, he offered them a general amnesty on condition of immediate surrender. These conditions were now accepted, and the insurrection suddenly collapsed, and no further resistance was offered to the recruiting. The promptitude with which this dangerous rebellion was suppressed was appreciated by the Porte, and a telegram was received from Constantinople approving the measures he had taken, and placing officially the supreme command of the 6th Army Corps in his hands.

The next serious difficulty was connected with the levying of taxes. This had always been a difficult operation among the nomad tribes, of which the population in a great measure consisted, and was the cause of continual disputes and insurrections. Matters had, however, now reached a crisis, for a colonel at the head of a battalion of regulars sent to Divanie and Dogara to collect the tithes was surrounded by tribesmen to the number of ten thousand men, and himself killed and his troops killed or dispersed. The new Vali seized at once the seriousness of the situation, for the encouragement which this success afforded the tribesmen threatened to give rise to a general insurrection of all the surrounding nomads.

It was necessary to avenge the defeat at once and to make a signal example of the tribesmen concerned. Midhat accordingly ordered a large force, consisting of seven battalions of infantry, four thousand cavalry, with a complement of artillery, to proceed directly to Dogara, under the command of Samih Pasha, whilst with three thousand chosen troops he hastened himself to the disaffected district. A pitched battle now took place between the Arabs and the troops, which resulted in the complete defeat of the former and the capture of their chief. A not unusual incident accompanied the close of the battle. A Shiite Sheik, Abdul Kerim, was marching at the head of a considerable force of tribesmen from the Shiite districts of Urfa and Aleppo to join the rebels, when he received the news of their defeat. Pretending that he was on the road to offer his services to the Government, he joined his forces to those of the Vali, and accompanied the victorious troops on their entry into Bagdad. A military tribunal was at once instituted to try the rebels; the rebel chiefs were condemned and executed, but the tribesmen, on the promise of future good behaviour, were released.

Midhat Pasha clearly discerned that if an end was to be put to these chronic troubles, and these nomad tribes were to be reduced to anything like permanent order, it was not sufficient to defeat them in battle, and that a radical change had to be brought about in their general status, and especially the conditions of land tenure in the country. The Arab cultivator, for the most part, held his lands from the State on the condition of giving three‐fourths of the produce to the State, retaining one‐fourth for himself. Such a system naturally discouraged agriculture and rendered all improvements in cultivation impossible. The consequence was that, for the most part, the Arab shunned the soil, preferring predatory to industrial modes of gaining his living. Midhat determined to attach him to the soil by giving him rights of proprietorship, and divided large tracts of land into plots, which were offered for sale on easy and advantageous terms, special provision being made against accumulation of plots into single hands. The success of this policy was remarkable, and whereas the revenues of the State increased, the turbulence of the tribesmen, and the risings which had become chronic, greatly diminished.

The agricultural prosperity that resulted from these measures stimulated other branches of industry and rendered it necessary to provide outlets for the newly created surplus of the country. The first step in this direction was to render navigable the Tigris and Euphrates, the great arteries of the country, and to improve or create the means of communication between their two banks, and between the different towns situated along their course. The only service of the kind that existed consisted of the boats of an English company plying between Bagdad and Bussora. Midhat determined to start a service of Turkish boats to supply adequately the needs now felt, in the same way that he had formerly done on the Danube when he was Governor of Bulgaria. He ordered the existing vessels to be repaired, new vessels of a larger tonnage to be constructed, and coal dépôts to be formed at Mascat, Aden, Bender and Bushire; and now, for the first time in history, steamers under the Ottoman flag were to be seen periodically in the Suez Canal, on their way to Constantinople. The Babel, one of these vessels, which had originally cost £T88,000 for construction, was bought for the sum of £T33,000 from a bankrupt company, and on its very first voyage between Constantinople and Bussora, which coincided with the time of the pilgrimages, it cleared £T35,000—more than sufficient to cover its purchase price. A net surplus of £T1000 a month resulted from this improved river navigation, and Midhat now determined on extensive dredging works, with a view to extending the navigation northwards and adapting it to vessels of a larger tonnage. Chakir Bey (afterwards Marshal and Ambassador to St Petersburg, and one of Midhat’s faithful partisans) was despatched north with a company of engineers, and reported favourably on the enterprise. Thereupon dredging and other engineering works were immediately ordered to be undertaken.

The periodical overflow of the waters of the Euphrates had converted large tracts of country into marshes, and marsh fevers in consequence becoming endemic, rendered them uninhabitable. Drainage works on a large scale, with a view of reclaiming these lands and of curing the insalubrity, were also undertaken. Irrigation works were likewise started, and much attention was devoted to this subject by the Pasha, with a view to gradually restoring the system introduced by the first Arab conquerors, which had converted this country into the Garden of the East, and rendered the Caliphate of Bagdad proverbial for its wealth and prosperity. A tramway, too, between Bagdad and Kiazimie was constructed, and its entire length, 7 miles, completed within a year. A textile manufactory, too, was started, and an engine of 70‐h.p. ordered in France, the despatch of which was only delayed by the breaking out of the Franco‐German War (1870).

Whilst energetically pursuing these material improvements, Midhat Pasha was far from neglecting the moral side of the problem of Reform. Schools were opened in every district; hospitals, refuges for old age, and loan banks everywhere arose, and a printing‐press established where the newspaper Zora was published, and municipal institutions for lighting and watering and other local purposes were instituted in all the principal centres. A petroleum spring discovered in the vilayet was immediately utilised for public purposes. It was not too much to hope that a decade of such enlightened government would have repaired the neglect of centuries and restored their ancient prosperity to the rich valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.

In 1870 the Shah of Persia, accompanied by a numerous suite, came to visit the holy places of Nejef and Kerbela, and although the province had to support the whole expense of this costly visit, amounting to over £T30,000, Midhat Pasha determined to give the royal visitor a reception worthy of his exalted rank, and to profit by the occasion by settling some vexed questions long pending between the two neighbouring Mahomedan countries. The circulation of depreciated Persian money in the province had long disturbed the value of exchanges and created confusion in commercial transactions. The exchange value of this currency, and the amount of it to be issued in the future, were now agreed upon. The incursions and depredations of nomad Kurds, the Hamavends, Sendjabi, etc., shifting their camping‐ground from Persian to Turkish territory, and vice versa, so as to evade taxation and elude the authorities of either nation, whilst plundering indiscriminately the peaceful inhabitants of both, had long been a scandal, creating a state of affairs on the frontier difficult to cope with. A better understanding and a combined policy of surveillance between the Persian and Turkish authorities on the frontier were now established, and block‐houses on the model of those successfully introduced on the Servian frontier were constructed, to the infinite relief of the agricultural population of both nations, situated on the entire length of this extensive line. Midhat Pasha failed, however, to obtain the sanction of the Persian authorities to a scheme which he had long cherished, and which he trusted to this occasion to be able to put into execution.

At Nejef, one of the sacred places to which periodical pilgrimages were made, there were rich treasures, the proceeds of the offerings of Indian and Persian devotees of the Shiite sect during centuries past, which, on the invasion of the Wahabites, had been hidden in a cave. Midhat Pasha had ordered the cave to be opened and an official inventory to be made of the treasures that it contained. This inventory revealed treasures of diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other precious stones, to the value of no less than £T300,000, and Midhat proposed a public sale of the treasure and the appropriation of its proceeds to works of public utility, such as a railway between Persia and Bagdad, or, if such an appropriation of a sacred treasure appeared too secular, at least to the creation of such much‐needed institutions as hospitals and refuges and caravanserai for the pilgrims on the route of their pilgrimages to the holy places. Even this reasonable proposal, however, was vetoed by the Persian Ulemas, and the whole scheme falling through, Midhat ordered the treasure to be carefully deposited again in the cave from which it had been taken, and its entrance secured with the official seals of the Turkish and Persian authorities.

Certain events now took place having a bearing beyond the boundaries of the province and of a quasi‐international character. The town of Bussora, important on account of its geographical position as the terminus station of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, suffered from the inconvenience of an extremely unhealthy climate, resulting from the stagnant waters of the Achar, a branch of the river Shat‐el‐Arab, on which it was built. Midhat determined to remove the site of the township on to the main river, and with that view built a Governor’s house and Government buildings on the new site as a nucleus for a new city. Outside this enclosure, the township of Nassrieh was laid out on plans furnished by the Pasha, to become the capital of the sandjak of Muntefik, and to replace the old town of Suk esh‐sheyuh which was falling into ruins, and was deficient in all the necessaries of civilisation.

Sixty miles from Bussora, and on the coast of Nedjed, is situated the little town of Koweit of six thousand houses, the inhabitants of which are all Mussulmans. Midhat Pasha’s predecessor, Namik Pasha, had endeavoured to bring this population within the influence of his jurisdiction, but they successfully resisted all attempts at imposing taxation upon them, and had maintained their quasi‐independence under their own chiefs, the descendants of one Sabah who had come with this tribe of “Moutayer” from Nedjed five hundred years before, and had maintained ever since with practical independence a republican form of government, choosing by election their own judges (cadis) and the professors of their religious schools (medresses). Owing to the restricted extent of their territory, the inhabitants, like those of Venice, took chiefly to maritime pursuits, and upwards of two hundred small vessels of various tonnage traversed in every direction the Indian Ocean, as far as the coasts of Zanzibar, and practically monopolised the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf. Although they had adopted a special flag of their own, they occasionally hoisted a Dutch or English flag, to secure certain privileges accorded to these flags by the capitulations. It seemed highly desirable to Midhat Pasha to put an end to this equivocal status of the inhabitants of Koweit, and to regularise their position. He accordingly entered into negotiations with them, and offered the full enjoyment of their autonomy and privileges under the government of their own Sheik Sabah, provided they recognised themselves as forming part and parcel of the Ottoman empire, and adopted the Ottoman flag as their national ensign. These conditions were accepted by the people of Koweit, and their territory became a sandjak of the vilayet of Bagdad. A formal treaty to that effect was drawn up and signed and confirmed by berats (writs of investiture) from Constantinople, and new schools and mosques arose in Koweit.

After the settlement of Koweit, Midhat’s attention was turned to the conquest of the Nedjed, the most important event that marked his governorship of Bagdad.

The Nedjed is the geographical denomination of an extent of country including about a quarter of the Arabian peninsula. Soliman, the conqueror, after defeating the Portuguese squadron in the Persian Gulf, had annexed it to his empire, and had despatched a special governor from Constantinople to administer the province of Hassa. A century after this, the inhabitants rose in revolt and formed themselves into a separate State, which included the island of Bahrein in its limits. On the first breaking out of these troubles, the Egyptian troops sent out to repress the revolt had been successful, and had defeated the rebels at Riad and Derayeh, forcing the Wahabites to recognise the authority of the Sultan, but the Ottoman Government, whose attention was now turned elsewhere, neglected to follow up this success, and the Nedjed gradually regained its independence under the dynasty of Wahab.

In the time of Midhat Pasha, the reigning Sheik, Abdul Fazil, whilst in the enjoyment of quasi‐independence himself, had never dreamt of encroaching on the neighbouring territories under the authority of the Sultan, nor of exciting revolt among their inhabitants by preaching among them the particular tenets of Wahabism; but his brother Saood, under the instigation of certain counsellors, with a view to supplanting him in the government of the country, declared war on him, and succeeded in dethroning him.

Abdul Fazil now had recourse to the intervention of Midhat Pasha, whom he warned of the probable consequences that would follow the victory of his brother with respect to the propagandism of Wahabite ideas among the surrounding tribes. Midhat determined to act, but before entering on a campaign that might prove an arduous undertaking, he took measures to ascertain the exact forces that Saood had at his disposal, as well as the topography of the country where military operations would have to be carried out. With this view, spies and agents disguised as merchants were sent in various directions, and soundings were taken of different parts of the coast. A full report as to the situation of the Nedjed in all these respects was in due course furnished to Midhat, who in the meantime had requested and obtained the necessary authorisation from the Grand Vizier, Aali Pasha, for the projected campaign.

Midhat was aware that certain delicate international questions might arise in the course of the expedition. The policy of England, as represented by its Indian Government, had always been to favour rather than to discourage the desire of independence on the part of the Arab chiefs in this part of the world. A serious and systematic attempt, therefore, to suppress their independence and to attach these distant members permanently to the body of the Ottoman Empire might seem to run counter to the policy of the Indian Government on the shores of the neighbouring Persian Gulf. Midhat had always been a stout and consistent supporter of the English Alliance, but he was by no means inclined for that reason to sacrifice to that alliance the essential interest of the Ottoman Empire; and while resolved to proceed with tact and due considerateness for the interests and susceptibilities of a friendly Power, he did not hesitate, in spite of a certain amount of sympathy manifested by England towards Saood, to proceed with the expedition he had resolved upon.

The most populous province of Nedjed was Hassa, with its port Elkatif. Thirty‐two hours distant from this port are situated the townships of Elhofuf and Elmuberez, surrounded by fortified walls. Six hours distant from Elkatif is the port of Ras Tannurah, offering favourable conditions for a disembarkation of troops. Securing his communications between Bussora and Elkatif, a distance of 360 miles by sea, by means of the proffered co‐operation of Abdullah Elsabah, Sheik of Koweit, who put his flotilla at the disposal of the Pasha for that purpose, Midhat embarked five battalions of regular troops with a complement of artillery under the command of Nafiz Pasha, General of division, for the port of Ras Tannurah, whence they immediately marched to Elkatif, which after a faint resistance capitulated to the Ottoman troops. The surrender of Elmuberez and other strategical points in the Wahabs’ country followed in quick succession, and in a very short space of time the partisans of Saood were dispersed and the whole country brought under Imperial rule.

Midhat was now about to start himself for the Nedjed, with a view to organise the country as a province of the Ottoman Empire, when his attention was called by the Governor of Diarbekir, Kurd Ismail Pasha, to the suspicious movements in the neighbourhood of Urfa of Sheik Abdul Kerim, of the tribe of Chamar, the same, it will be remembered, who, on the occasion of the revolt of the Dogara tribesmen, arriving too late to assist the defeated rebels, turned round and offered his services to the victorious Pasha.

Thinking the present occasion more favourable for carrying out his cherished policy, he was marching straight on Bagdad, killing and pillaging on his route. Warned by Kurd Ismail, Midhat took immediate steps to crush him. Abdul Kerim had divided his forces into three parts, the first advancing on Zor, the second on Mosul, and the third, under his own command, marching on Bagdad. On this information reaching him, Midhat ordered two battalions of regulars to reinforce Kurd Ismail, whilst General Echeref Pasha was directed to fortify Zor and other strategical points on the Tigris and Euphrates. These troops coming into collision with the first division of Abdul Kerim’s army in the neighbourhood of Zor, easily dispersed them, whilst Kurd Ismail himself, attacking the second division of the rebels in the neighbourhood of Mosul, completely routed it. On learning of the successive defeats of the two wings of this invading army, Abdul Kerim quickly abandoned all idea of advancing, and took measures to secure his own safety. His retreat by the desert being cut off by the droughts prevailing at this season, he made for his own native country, the Chamar, but Midhat threatening Sheik Ibn Reshid, chief of the tribe Djebel, if he ventured to offer refuge to the rebel, diverted Abdul Kerim’s retreat to the direction of Muntefik by Hilah and Kerbela, where he fell in with Nassir Pasha, and in the fight that ensued was wounded and taken prisoner. After a regular trial for armed rebellion and treachery, he was condemned to death, and the sentence being approved of by the authorities at Constantinople, he was in due course hanged at Mosul. His brother, Ferhan Pasha, now received the chieftainship of the tribe Chamar, with an increase of territory and a regular monthly subsidy, whilst the turbulent tribesmen acknowledged the authority of the Imperial Government and consented to pay the taxes. This settlement was followed by a resumption of agricultural pursuits on the part of the inhabitants, and the general pacification of the country.

But troubles in these parts did not end with the conquest of the Nedjed and the defeat of Abdul Kerim. Abdullah Fazil—who had by means of Ottoman arms been restored to the government of Elkatif, with the Turkish title of Mutessarif, in the new vilayet of Nedjed—once freed from all apprehension respecting the ambition of his brother Saood, began to manifest restlessness under Turkish regular administration. Discontent, too, with Turkish fiscal arrangements was felt by the tribesmen, and affairs began again to assume a threatening aspect. Midhat determined to inquire into the causes of this discontent, and finding that exemption from all taxation, save that sanctioned by the Mussulman law, viz. the tithe, had been consecrated by secular usage among them, and that the neighbouring tribes who had come under English protection, Oman, Mascat, etc., fully enjoyed the privilege of this exemption, determined to satisfy the population of Elkatif in this respect, and forthwith consented to limit their liability to taxation to the regular payment of the tithe.

There remained the island of Bahrein, the conquest of which, on account of the importance of its position on the Persian Gulf, Midhat now determined to effect. In order to superintend operations himself, and in case of any international friction demanding his presence, Midhat started for the Nedjed. Abdullah Fazil hearing of this, and fearing that his own equivocal conduct was the cause of the journey, fled from Elkatif to Riad, and in spite of the Pasha’s assurances, refused to return. His dismissal from the Government was thereupon pronounced, and the district converted into the sandjak of Hassa, and together with the command of the troops, was entrusted to Nafiz Pasha. A friendly interchange of views now took place between Midhat Pasha and the Government of India, the result of which was that the island of Bahrein was officially annexed to the Mutessarifat of Hassa. Two Turkish corvettes, the Libnan and the Iskenderoun, under the command of Arif Bey, sailed for the island, followed by two English gunboats under Commander Pelly, and the Turkish and English vessels exchanged salutes and other friendly courtesies in the port. When the Turkish sailors disembarked on the island they were received with the most indescribable enthusiasm by the islanders, who had not seen the Turkish ensign flying on a man‐of‐war for two centuries past. The Sheik of the island offered an appropriate piece of land to be used as a dépôt for coals for Turkish vessels, and offered to place the resources of the island at the disposition of the Turkish authorities if necessity should arise. On weighing anchor from Bahrein the two corvettes were joined by the vessel that had Midhat Pasha on board, and the little flotilla sailed together to Koweit. Here the same scenes were enacted that had distinguished the visit to Bahrein, and nothing occurred to mar the cordiality that existed between the Ottoman and British forces that met in these Eastern ports. The convention which had been previously agreed upon between Midhat and the British authorities prevented any friction between them.

The re‐establishment of Imperial authority in these regions justified, and indeed necessitated, a considerable increase in the Turkish flotilla in these waters. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, Turkey only possessed the two corvettes the Boursa, and the Ismir, neither of which was in a sea‐going condition. Midhat sent the Boursa to Bombay to undergo repairs, and added the Libnan, Iskenderoun, Deniz, Babel, Ninova, Nedjed, and Assour, besides ten vessels of light draught for river police, and to reinforce the Bagdad squadron. The port of Bussora, no longer adequate to the naval requirements of the province, was enlarged and improved, and works for an inner harbour capable of anchoring vessels of 10‐feet draught were commenced at Kut‐el‐Frenghi on the river Shat‐el‐arab.

All these various improvements and reforms, and the general advance in the political and administrative status of this important province, were highly appreciated by the Government of the Porte, which was now under the enlightened guidance of Aali Pasha, who addressed the following letter to Midhat Pasha:—

“Excellency,—The very weak state of health from which I have been for some time suffering has been the cause of the delay that has occurred in answering your letters concerning the voyage of His Majesty the Shah. Pray accept my most sincere excuses. I beg to congratulate you in a very especial manner, on your brilliant successes in the Nedjed. Everything seems to indicate that, thanks to the tact with which you have brought about the pacification of the Provinces of Assir, the political importance of which is so considerable, the whole Arabic peninsula will soon return to its ancient status. By your services you have merited the glorious title, ‘Haremein Muhteremein.’

“The effect of the Shah’s visit on the Shiite population in the province was the subject of considerable preoccupation with us, but the good intentions and loyalty manifested on both sides, have smoothed over many difficulties and brought about highly desirable results.... It is quite certain that Nevab Ikbal Eldevle, being a just and upright man, will blame and discourage any flagrant departure from justice and equity on the part of his co‐religionists.

“Be good enough to thank him in my name, when the occasion offers, for the seal in agate, the engraving and inscription on which are very fine.

“Prince Abbas Mirza has arrived here, and he has twice been received in Audience by his Majesty.... He seems a polished and intelligent person, but I have not yet had any opportunity to form an estimate of his character.

“I am,

“(seal) Mehmed Emin Aali.

“23 Djemaziel Evel, 1288 (1871), Hegira.”

By the same courtier the Sultan Abdul Aziz sent Midhat Pasha a sword of honour set with diamonds, with the inscription “Nedjed” engraved on it. This was the closing scene of Midhat’s governorship of Bagdad, and with it closed the first half of his career, viz., as Provincial Governor. Circumstances were occurring at Constantinople destined to bring him on the scene there, to play his part in the important political events about to occur in the metropolis.

But a change of a portentous nature had taken place at Constantinople. Fuad Pasha and Aali Pasha, whose prestige and popularity had gained an ascendancy over the Sultan, and had, since his accession, practically monopolised power, and who had strenuously supported Midhat in all his reforming measures both on the Danube and the Euphrates, died within a few months of each other. The disappearance of these two able and powerful Ministers synchronized with the return of Abdul Aziz from a tour in Europe, when symptoms of an ominous character began to reveal themselves in the sovereign. He showed himself impatient of contradiction or advice of any kind, expressing openly his relief at being freed from the incubus of his former Grand Viziers; he completely changed the etiquette of the Court, imposing on the occasion of audiences an antiquated ceremonial, accompanied by unwonted prostrations to be observed on entering the Imperial presence, and he directed that henceforth he should be addressed in inflated language, strange even to the forms of Oriental adulation. But what was more serious than these triflings of Imperial vanity, was the fact that he now launched out, careless of the resources of the budget, on the most lavish expenditure of every kind both of a public and private nature. Fleets of costly ironclads were ordered and equipped without regard to their cost; marble palaces rose, as by enchantment, on the banks of the Bosphorus, and every whim and caprice on his own part or that of the Palace had to be gratified without stint or delay. He found in Mahmoud Nedim a compliant Grand Vizier, who, in return for the retention of power, undertook to find the ways and means for the gratification of all his master’s wishes.

The reflex action of this state of things at headquarters was felt in the most distant provinces. When the exactions of the Palace had expropriated the balance of the sums destined to the various services of the State, recourse was had to the provinces to make good the deficiencies by extraordinary “benevolences” and remittances. Works of public utility or necessity were accordingly suspended, and the funds necessary for their completion diverted to the metropolis. Incompetent favourites arrived from Constantinople with orders to the Vali to provide them with lucrative posts, and by these means the whole fabric of the new administration, painfully and patiently built up, was dislocated and deranged. Midhat, recognising the impossibility of governing in such conditions, resigned his Governorship and set out for Constantinople.

THE FIRST GRAND VIZIERATE OF MIDHAT PASHA.

On his arrival in Constantinople, Midhat found that an order had been issued for his banishment from the capital, under cloak of nominating him to the government of Adrianople. Insisting, however, on the exercise of his right of audience with the sovereign before setting out for his new post, he made such strong representations to the Sultan with respect to the general situation of the empire, that Abdul Aziz thereupon abruptly dismissed Mahmoud Nedim, and appointed Midhat Grand Vizier in his place (1873).

As soon as he had filled the principal offices of State with the best material he could find—Chirvani Rushdi Pasha, Djémil Pasha, and Sadik Pasha—the first and most pressing necessity that confronted him was to endeavour to put the Finances in order. This was no easy task. The public accounts presented were entirely fictitious. His first discovery was to the effect that whereas the budget showed a surplus of half a million (£T), there was in point of fact a deficit of three millions. The actual appropriation of the sums debited in the accounts presented another difficulty. A sum of £T100,000 disbursed by the Treasury was not accounted for at all. Midhat insisted on a full inquiry, and, discovering that this sum had been appropriated by the late Grand Vizier, directed an investigation into the matter before the members of the Council of State, who ordered its immediate restitution by Mahmoud Nedim, and recommended his banishment. He, however, alleging in private that this sum in question although nominally attributed to him was really allotted to the Palace, found in the Valide Sultan and her entourage most powerful allies in his duel with Midhat. Banished by the insistence of the Grand Vizier, first to Adrianople and then to Trebizond, he soon obtained permission to return to Constantinople.

Two distinct parties began now to stand out in clear relief. On the one side was Midhat, warmly supported by public opinion in the capital and in the provinces, and by all that was most enlightened among the Softas and Ulemas, headed by Chakir Effendi, and on the other side the whole army of corruption, headed by Mahmoud Nedim and protected by the Valide Sultan and the Palace Camarilla. Another powerful ally of the late Grand Vizier was General Ignatieff, who by the most ingenious and persistent methods—condescending even to the resources of the stage—worked on the mind of the Sultan in order to restore Mahmoud Nedim to power.

An incident soon occurred which brought matters to a crisis. The Khedive of Egypt, desirous of changing the order of succession in his family and of obtaining various privileges and prerogatives from his suzerain, was in the habit of making periodical visits to Constantinople, carrying away with him each time, by judicious payments, some shred of the sovereign rights of the Porte. These visits became a regular source of income and emolument to the Palace and all its myrmidons. Arriving at Constantinople on the occasion of one of these visits he found Midhat Pasha installed as Grand Vizier, and to his surprise and disappointment, and to the discomfiture of the Palace clique, he was obliged this time to return to Alexandria with his presents, re infectâ.

It soon became apparent that one of two things must happen: the Sultan would either have to change the whole régime and scale of expenditure of the Palace, or change his Grand Vizier; and as he never really contemplated the former course, he adopted the latter. The determining cause was Midhat’s action with reference to certain scandals—incidents connected with Baron Hirsch’s railway schemes.

It is only in a despotic country, where State contracts are signed in the dark, and cahiers de charge are examined by carefully chosen experts and passed by complaisant accountants, that such a scandal as the Hirsch railways is possible or conceivable. If the cynicism of the whole transaction had not become notorious, and thus excited as much laughter as its nefariousness caused indignation, it would be worth while to set out in detail all the circumstances of this stupendous business.

To obtain a contract giving unlimited control over the richest forests in the world, on the pretext of cutting sleepers, is in itself a pretty smart stroke of business. To stipulate for payment of railways according to the mileage executed, irrespective of topographical considerations or local requirements, is a triumph of contracting skill; but to claim payment for work done in the plains only, on the basis of an average calculated for working through plains and mountain‐chains alike, is the very glory of financial genius. The secret, too, of the art was as simple as the result was lucrative. Backsheesh in adequate amounts, distributed at appropriate moments in the right quarters, was the alpha and omega of the business.

Midhat, in his determination to strike at the root of the whole system of corruption, irrespective of persons or of consequences, having discovered that the highest person in the land was himself a recipient of the largesses of the Austrian baron, insisted on the restitution of the sums received. The Sultan listened to the advice tendered, returned the money, and dismissed his Grand Vizier.

CHAPTER III
DEPOSITION AND DEATH OF ABDUL AZIZ

After an honourable exile as Governor of Salonica, Midhat obtained leave to return to Constantinople, and after a brief tenure of the office of Minister of Justice and of the Presidency of the Council of State, he handed in his resignation in the following terms, and retired to his Konak in the neighbourhood of the capital and awaited developments:

To Midhat Pasha, President of the Council of State.

“I beg that your Highness will be good enough to instruct me as to the reply I am to make to His Majesty, in case he should question me as to the motives for your resignation.

“Hafiz Mehemed

“Head Chamberlain (of Sultan Aziz).”

Reply.

“Excellency,—My request is not based upon any personal motives. I have nothing but praise for all my colleagues, both high and low; but the motives which have forced me to this decision are, as I have already set out in my petition, the difficulties of the position in which we are placed, that is to say, our finances are in a hopeless condition, the civil administration is utterly disorganised, and the state of the army is beyond description; all this compromised the security and credit of the country, and the non‐Mussulman element loudly proclaims the intention that it long ago formed of placing itself under foreign protection. While the faults and mistakes made twenty years ago have prepared the way for the disasters which are now showing themselves in rapid succession, and which are sufficient to employ all our time, our foreign policy has also been misdirected, the feelings of the Powers have changed towards us, and they entertain hostile intentions towards our country to such a degree that the most friendly Power has lost all confidence in us. It is impossible for us not to deplore the unfortunate results which this line of conduct cannot fail to produce for Turkey, and for the faithful servants of His Majesty—that of being unable to see the future clearly before them. In view of the attitude adopted by His Highness the Grand Vizier, which gives reason to hope that this state of affairs may be remedied, I feel compelled to devote my feeble efforts and support to those duties which are specially incumbent on me in the existing crisis through which the Ministry is passing. But as I have explained in the petition which I have already sent in, I have passed the greater portion of my life in provincial service, and have never taken part in such delicate and complicated affairs, and am therefore compelled to ask you to have the goodness to intercede with His Majesty to accept my resignation.

“I am, etc.,

“Midhat.

“29 Cheval, 1291 (1874).”

In the meantime things went from bad to worse in the affairs of the State. Grand Viziers one after the other were appointed and dismissed. Mehemet Rushdi Pasha, Essad Pasha, Chervani Rushdi Pasha, held office for a few months only, and with the best of intentions were utterly unable to grapple with the situation, and the “villain of the piece,” Mahmoud Nedim, was at last recalled to office. The finances of the country were fast getting beyond all remedy. Although it was only twenty years since the fatal secret of a national debt had been learnt in Turkey, bankruptcy was already staring the country in the face. So palpable was this to the best friends of Turkey, that Mr Yorke in the British Parliament, in the interests of a long‐standing ally of Great Britain, and of the alliance itself, called attention to the state of Turkish finances, and summoned the British Government to intervene through its ambassador at Constantinople to endeavour to ward off impending catastrophes. Three months after this warning the Turkish Treasury suspended payment on half the amount of the coupons of the public debt.

The outcry caused by this measure throughout Europe, not only in strictly commercial and financial circles, but in every class of the community, was indescribable. Tempted by the high rate of interest, and confiding in the assurances of financiers interested in floating successive loans that “Turkey always has paid and therefore always would pay” the coupons of its debts, the petite bourgeoisie and the small investor had largely placed their savings in Turkish bonds, and the “tightness” and misery caused by the suspension was undoubtedly very great (1875). Meetings of indignant bond‐holders were held in every capital and large city in Europe, and the Turkish Government and the Turkish nation, the Pasha and the people, were confounded in a common anathema. The ground was admirably prepared for an explosion of political passion directed against Turkey. The occasion for this was not long in presenting itself.

During the second Vizierate of Essad Pasha, certain movements of a suspicious nature took place on the Montenegrin frontier which would have arrested the attention of a more vigilant Government. A party of sixty Slav peasants from the village of Nevesinje in the Commune of Mostar, on some trivial quarrel with the local authorities, emigrated in a body across the frontier into Montenegro. In a short time, through the good offices of the Russian Ambassador, they obtained leave to return to their homes; but very soon, in concert with their Montenegrin friends, they organised a razzia on the lands of the neighbouring Mussulmans. Instead of nipping this incipient rebellion in the bud and enquiring into its cause, the local authorities temporised with its leaders and awaited instructions from Constantinople as to how they were to proceed. Encouraged by this impunity, and with the assurance of external support, the insurgent bands rapidly increased in numbers, and when at last the Government determined to act, it found itself in presence of a serious rebellion. Essad Pasha, well‐intentioned but weak, and preoccupied with the serious outlook of affairs generally, accepted the insidious offer of the Russian and Austrian Ambassadors to intervene between the leaders of the bands and the Supreme Government. No policy could have been more fatal. It afforded the greatest possible encouragement to the rebels, who considered the step an acknowledgment by the Government of its own inability to deal with the movement; it practically conceded belligerent rights to the rebels, and it encouraged the habit and consecrated the principle of interference by foreign governments in the internal affairs of the empire.

The hollowness of the offer was apparent the moment the terms of surrender came to be discussed, and the net result of this diplomatic comedy was, as was no doubt intended, that what was at first an insignificant rising of a handful of peasants was raised to the dignity of a recognised rebellion that could negotiate on equal terms with the Imperial Government through the medium of foreign consuls and ambassadors.

Mahmoud Nedim had now succeeded Essad Pasha as Grand Vizier (1875), and as no effective measures were taken to suppress the rising, it went on spreading from village to village and district to district till the contagion was caught in Bulgaria. There, in the beginning of 1874, a commencement of unrest showed itself in the districts of Drenova, Kazanlik, and Zagra; but the local authorities (warned by what had taken place in the Herzegovina through the neglect of initial precautions) had all the leaders of the movement arrested. Thereupon General Ignatieff made such energetic representations to the Porte, that orders arrived not only for the release of the imprisoned malcontents, but for the dismissal of all the functionaries concerned in their arrest.[6]

The effect of this novel and original mode of dealing with an insurrection was soon apparent in the effervescence and excitement it caused among the Mussulman population throughout the province. They saw rebel bands, the leaders of which were patronised and supported by foreign consuls and diplomatists, being organised without disguise and approaching their own hearths, whereas all defensive measures on the part of their own natural leaders were discountenanced and punished. They thereupon resolved to take the matter into their own hands, and formed vigilance committees and organised local bands under the command of retired zaptiés throughout the province.

In such psychological conditions an explosion of popular passions was certain sooner or later to take place. The occasion for this was furnished by an incident that occurred at Salonica on the 5th May 1875. This incident was, with the Bulgarian insurrection and the Berlin Note, one of the external difficulties that confronted the Government, and placed it in a very critical position. A young Bulgarian girl had come by rail to Salonica from a neighbouring village on the evening of the 5th May, accompanied by a hoadja, with a view to making a declaration of conversion to Mahomedanism before the Grand Council of Salonica—a formality required by the law, as a preliminary to her being married to a young Mahomedan of her village. On her arrival at the station she was met by a mob of Greeks and Bulgarians who pulled off her yashmak and feradje (mantle and veil), and forcing her into a carriage, in spite of the efforts of four zaptiés who came up in the middle of the disturbance, drove her at a gallop to the American Consulate, where the brother of the Vice‐Consul (a Bulgarian), who had arranged the abduction, concealed her during the night. The next day he had her removed to the house of a friend, so that all trace of the girl should be lost. But early next morning a Mussulman mob, comprising (as in such occurrences is certain to be the case) the worst and most violent sections of the population, had assembled at the Konak and loudly demanded the restoration of the girl and her appearance before the Grand Council. As their demands were not complied with, they retired to the Saatli Mosque, adjacent to the Governor’s Konak, where they reiterated their demands for the restoration of the girl. Unfortunately, by some fatality which was never satisfactorily explained, the German and French Consuls found their way into the mosque in the very midst of excited Mussulmans. Whether they went there of their own accord to remonstrate and argue with the people, or approaching the scene of the demonstration were hustled into the mosque, was never cleared up. But once they appeared there, the frenzy of the mob burst all bounds, and the most violent amongst them, pursuing the Consuls into one of the apartments of the Muderris (Academy) in connection with the mosque, fell on them with iron bars hastily snatched from the windows of the mosque, and murdered them on the spot. The English Consul, Mr Blunt, accompanied by his cavass, seems to have been the only one who kept his head on this occasion and acted with presence of mind and sagacity; for, at the risk of his own life, he forced his way to the Konak, and when he found that the Governor could not effect the restoration of the girl, which was the only way to calm the mob and rescue the Consuls, he sent to the American Vice‐Consulate to apprize Mr Lazaro, who was the cause of the whole disturbance, of the perilous situation of his colleagues, the French and German Consuls, and to implore him to restore the girl. Unfortunately, Mr Lazaro at first procrastinated and pretended that he did not know where the girl was, and so precious time was lost; and when subsequently, on a further appeal from Mr Consul Blunt, he delivered up the girl, it was too late, for the crime against the foreign Consuls who had intervened had been accomplished.

Although the Ottoman Government took immediate steps to punish the authors of this crime—the six principal leaders of which were immediately executed, and the remainder punished with severe terms of penal servitude—the effect of the outrage on the public opinion of Europe, in the existing state of feeling in regard to Turkey, can easily be conceived. It excited indignation everywhere; but the anti‐Turkish Press, now pretty numerous, seized on it with avidity and pointed to it as irrefragable evidence of the incorrigible fanaticism of the whole Mussulman population of the empire, and called for various coercive measures, amounting in some cases to a combined crusade, to protect the Christians in the country, now threatened with wholesale massacre.[7]

It was in vain that Europeans who had lived all their lives in the country, and were acquainted from personal experience with the feelings and opinions of the inhabitants, protested against these exaggerations and deprecated their vain terrors. Colonel James Baker, an English resident for twenty years in the neighbourhood of Salonica, where he had been farming on a large scale, and whose occupation had brought him in contact with all sorts and conditions of men, Christian and Mahomedan alike, wrote a book ridiculing these apprehensions, and communicating his experiences of the harmony and good fellowship existing among the adherents of both religions, with whom he had for twenty years been brought into contact.

But the experience of people living on the spot could not stem the torrent of hostile prejudice fortified by such dramatic examples as the murder of the Consuls at Salonica. General Ignatieff, whose plans were being admirably served by events, was not slow in lending the weight of his authority to the propagation of these imaginary terrors. He embodied 300 Montenegrin workmen at Constantinople to serve as a body‐guard of his Embassy, to the amusement of his more sensible colleagues, who were quite aware of the baselessness of the fears that were the pretext of these ostentatious precautions. But the mise en scène contrived by the ingenious ambassador was not the less effective, and these picturesque mountaineers as they lounged about the streets of Pera, in their handsome national costume, bristling with multifarious arms in their embroidered sashes, were striking advertisements of the terrible dangers that threatened all Christians in the fanatical land of the Osmanli.

Servia, too, was preparing to enter the lists. Although without the shred of a grievance against the suzerain Power, nor indeed alleging any, Prince Milan, moved by the sole ambition to convert his principality into a kingdom, had easily allowed himself to be drawn into the conspiracy of a concerted attack on the Ottoman Empire. All the reserves of his army were called out and armed with newly imported rifles; and trains full of Russian officers of all grades and ranks, from Generals of divisions to corporals and sergeants, arrived daily at the capital to organise this militia into a fighting machine, and to drill the raw peasants into soldiers. The whole country, in fact, from Belgrade to Alexinatz, was an armed camp.

Everything portended important developments for the ensuing spring (1875). Early in the year, information reached the Porte that a serious outbreak would take place in Bulgaria in the month of April, and that the districts of Philippopolis, Eski‐Zagra, and Tirnova would be the scene of the explosion. The information which was very detailed and supported by evidence as to its accuracy, was accompanied by an earnest request by the authorities of the threatened districts that a body of regular troops should be despatched to the spot to inspire confidence in the inhabitants and to protect the lives and property of peaceful citizens. General Ignatieff again interfered, and in the capacity of amicus curiæ, insisted that the presence of regular troops would only inflame the passions of the population and precipitate a crisis. Mahmoud Nedim allowed himself to be persuaded by the Russian Ambassador, and persisted in turning a deaf ear to the reiterated requests of the local authorities for the despatch of a regular force.

Three weeks before the appointed day (16th April 1875) the anticipated rising took place. It was accompanied by exactly the same incidents that had characterised every previous rising that obeyed a mot d’ordre from outside. The armed bands fell on the first Mussulmans they met with, and massacred them all, regardless of age or sex, with the obvious aim of provoking reprisals that should play into the hands of the enemies of Turkey.[8] These reprisals did, in fact, take place, and were, no doubt, of a sanguinary and wholesale character. It is not intended here to defend or condemn the atrocities that took place on this occasion; but human nature being what it is, and the provocation endured by the Mussulman population being taken into account, and due allowance being made for the contagion of passion and panic, it is no great wonder if scenes were enacted in Bulgaria that have marked revolution and jacqueries in all ages in every part of the world; and perhaps still less if a confessedly and bitterly hostile Press in Europe denounced “methods of barbarism” with little sifting of evidence and with much dramatic exaggeration. Party spirit has occasionally not scrupled to apply exactly the same terms without much reason to the methods of warfare of its own regular troops. One fact was clearly and conclusively established by the various commissions subsequently sent to prosecute enquiries on the spot, viz., that not a single instance occurred of an unarmed Christian being injured, or of a Christian village being destroyed whose inhabitants had not actually risen in armed rebellion. Fanaticism, in the strict acceptation of the term, is not so discriminating.

Matters had now come to such a pass that a general cataclysm was to be apprehended. Bulgaria, Montenegro and Herzegovina in flames, Servia arming to the teeth under the supervision of competent foreign officers, Roumania preparing to move in the same direction, a bankrupt treasury at home, a Grand Vizier whose sole resource seemed to be in the promises and counsels of a perfidious ambassador, the arch‐enemy of his country, and a sovereign wholly unconscious, or careless, of the condition of the empire, provided his own extravagant caprices were gratified—such was the aspect of affairs in Turkey in the spring of 1876. But that was not all.

Under the spur of public opinion, and moved by secret springs in the same direction, European diplomacy was meddling with the matter. Rulers of State and masters of many legions were holding meetings to discuss the situation in the East, and “Notes” and “Memorandums” were flying about the Chancellories of Europe. The diplomatic outlook was quite as menacing as the situation at home was critical.

It was in such a condition of affairs that counsel was being taken in Midhat’s Konak, among a few patriots who did not yet despair of their country, as to the best mode of saving the empire. But before the events that led up to the deposition of the Sultan Abdul Aziz are detailed, it will be useful to cast a glance at what was passing in the diplomatic world in Europe.

The first and most important event in this respect, inasmuch as it was the key of all that subsequently occurred, was the meeting of the Czar and the Emperor of Austria at Reichstadt, 8th July 1876.[9]

The outcome of that interview, with respect to Turkey, is no secret to‐day, but twenty‐five years ago it was certainly ignored in London, otherwise the negotiations that took place between the English and Austrian Governments relative to the contingency of an armed intervention in the Turko‐Russian War—carried on through the Austrian Embassy in London in the significant absence of the Ambassador, which went so far as to discuss the terms of a guaranteed war loan—would certainly not have occurred. The acumen of the English Government on this occasion would seem to have been somewhat at fault, and the information that came to it from Vienna strangely unreliable; for it acted, throughout negotiations extending over two years, in undisturbed reliance on the bonâ fides of the Austrian Chancellor’s assurances, and apparently in a secure trust in the force of his Magyar prejudices with respect to Russia. The fact is patent to‐day—and was well known at Berlin, and was not ignored in Paris—that Austria was, if not the actual instigator of the Herzegovinian rising—which is by no means certain—the Power that was determined to profit by it, and that her whole policy and diplomatic action with respect to the events that were taking place in the South‐East of Europe was governed by this determination.

The turning‐point of Austrian policy with respect to Turkey has already been indicated: the abandonment by England of Austria’s interests on the Danube left her free, or even compelled her to have regard to what she considered her own exclusive interests; and the meeting of the two Emperors, at the breaking out of the Herzegovinian disturbances, was the confirmation of this change of policy.

Two assurances seem to have been given by the Czar at this now historic interview. First, that whatever might be the outcome of events in Turkey, he would not seek for Russia any territorial aggrandisement in Europe; and secondly, with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina, that in the contingency of the continuance of disturbances there he would not oppose the occupation of those provinces by Austria if sanctioned by the rest of Europe.

If this agreement had not been a secret one, and the terms of it had been known or suspected in London, does any one imagine that events would have followed the course they did, or that the “Notes” and “Memorandums” coming from Vienna and Berlin would have been taken seriously by the English Cabinet? The pact between the two Emperors, sealed at Reichstadt, was quite as much at the expense of England in Asia as of Turkey in Europe. It was a practical corollary of Prince Bismarck’s avowed Eastern policy.

There is only an academical interest now in pointing out the rôle that the personality of Count Andrassy and his reputed Magyar sentiments played in all these transactions, and it is not necessary to interrupt the course of this narrative by dwelling on them.

After the Andrassy Memorandum had prepared the Cabinets of Europe for some sort of diplomatic interference in the affairs of Turkey, and familiarised them with the idea, the natural course of events in the Turkish Empire did the rest. The ball set going at Vienna was taken up at Berlin. The comparatively colourless diplomatic Memorandum concocted in the first‐named capital was followed by a far more coercive Note emanating from the latter. The former contained recommendations, the latter added external sanctions to them. The policy intended to be pursued with reference to Turkey was contained in germ in this remarkable “Note,” and the diplomatic strategy to be employed was herein clearly revealed. The “Conference,” which was to impose the conditions and insist on the sanction, was already on the tapis, and formed the subject of an interchange of views between the various European governments; and it was, as it were, under the shadow of this menace to the integrity and independence of the country that the friends of Midhat now hastened their deliberations.

As early as the winter of 1875, Midhat, with a view of profiting by the lights, and seeking the advice of the eminent diplomatist who represented the Court of St James at Constantinople, paid a visit to Sir Henry Elliot, the purpose of which can best be described in the words of the Ambassador himself.[10]

“In the beginning of December 1875, I was informed by one of Midhat’s partisans, a Pasha who had filled some of the highest offices of the State, that the object of his party was to obtain a ‘Constitution.’ This was more than a year before its promulgation, when it was declared to have been invented only to defeat the Conference then sitting at Constantinople.... A few days later Midhat himself called upon me and explained his views more fully than he had ever done before, though I was acquainted with their general tenor. The Empire, he said, was being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption had reached a pitch that it had never before attained; the service of the State was starved, while untold millions were poured into the Palace, and the provinces were being ruined by the uncontrolled exertions of governors who purchased their appointments at the Palace, and nothing could save the country but a complete change of system. The only remedy that he could perceive, lay, first, in securing a control over the sovereign by making the Ministers—and especially as regarded the finances—responsible to a national popular Assembly; and secondly in making this Assembly truly national, by doing away with all distinctions of classes and religions, and by placing the Christians on a footing of entire equality with the Mussulmans; thirdly, by decentralisation and by the establishment of provincial control over the governors. It must surely be admitted that these were enlightened and statesmanlike views, deserving of every encouragement.... He dwelt repeatedly on the value that the sympathy of the British nation would be to the reformers, and on the manner in which his countrymen were now looking to England as the example they hoped to follow. I told him in reply that I could not doubt that measures framed upon the lines he had laid down must command the approval and ensure the good wishes of every Englishman who, like myself, had faith in the advantages of constitutional checks upon arbitrary power. I gave him this assurance confidently and in good faith; for certainly the very last thing that I anticipated was that those who in this country make the greatest parade of their devotion to constitutional principles would be the first to heap contumely upon men who were trying to introduce it into theirs, and to hold up their proposals to ridicule....”

The first of the many incidents that soon after this conversation began to follow each other closely, took place on the 10th May 1876, when an assemblage of several thousand Softas stopped Prince Izzeddine, the Sultan’s eldest son, on his way to the Seraskierat (Ministry of War), desiring him to return to the Palace, and to inform the Sultan that they demanded the dismissal of Mahmoud Nedim, the Grand Vizier and of Hassan Fehmi Effendi, the Sheik‐ul‐Islam. The Sultan did not venture to reject the demand. Mahmoud and Hassan Fehmi were dismissed, the latter being replaced by Hassan Hairullah Effendi, who enjoyed a high and exceptional reputation for learning and enlightenment. Mehemet Rushdi Pasha, an old man universally respected, was named Grand Vizier; and as he insisted on Midhat joining his Cabinet (although holding no specific office), it was believed that he would be the guiding spirit, and general satisfaction was felt. Sir Henry Elliot proceeds to say:

“This general satisfaction did not last long. The Sultan quickly showed his determination to resist all reforms by appointing to high posts several of the worst of the old school of Pashas, and it then became so evident to me that an attempt to depose him would certainly very shortly be made, that on the 25th May I put my conviction on record in a despatch in which I wrote that the word ‘Constitution’ was in every mouth; that the Softas, representing the intelligent public opinion of the Capital, knowing themselves to be supported by the bulk of the Nation—Christian as well as Mahomedan—would not, I believed, relax their efforts till they obtained it, and that should the Sultan refuse to grant it, an attempt to depose him appeared almost inevitable; that texts from the Koran were circulated proving to the faithful that the form of Government sanctioned by it was properly democratic, and that the absolute authority now wielded by the Sovereign was an usurpation of the rights of the people and not sanctioned by the Sacred Law; and both texts and precedents were appealed to to show that allegiance was not due to a Sovereign who neglected the interests of the State. The disaffection, I said, now ran through every class, and from the Pashas down to the porters in the streets and the boatmen on the Bosphorus, no one thought any longer of concealing his opinions.... Within a week after my reports were written, the deposition had been effected....”

The two moving spirits in the deposition of Sultan Abdul Aziz were undoubtedly Midhat Pasha and Hussein Avni Pasha, the Minister of War (seraskier). The latter, a thorough soldier and a sterling patriot, distinguished for the great energy and decision of his character as well as the impetuosity of his temper, had occupied the highest military posts in the country, and had been repeatedly exiled from Constantinople by the Sultan. He was particularly feared and disliked by Mahmoud Nedim, who had procured his banishment each time that he had been made Grand Vizier. Although not sharing all Midhat’s constitutional views and professing more confidence in the efficacy of the sword than in the saving grace of popular institutions, he had lent a willing and energetic support to his colleague’s views as to the indisputable necessity of deposing the Sultan as a preliminary to any attempted amelioration in the condition of the State.

As soon as the final resolution of Ministers was arrived at, and before any commencement of execution could be given to it, it was indispensable to obtain a Fetva (authoritative decree) of the Sheik‐ul‐Islam, Hassan Hairullah, the highest authority and mouthpiece of the Sacred Law, in order to give legal validity to the act of deposition. Accordingly the following Fetva was issued for the deposition:—

“If the Chief of the Faithful gives proof of mental derangement; if he displays ignorance of State matters; if he employs the public revenues for his personal expenditure, beyond what the Nation and the State can support; if he introduces confusion into political and spiritual concerns, and if his continuance in power becomes injurious to the nation, may he be deposed?”

Answer: “The Cheri pronounces ‘Yes.’

“Signed by the humble

“Hassan Hairullah,

“To whom God grant His indulgence.

“Djemaziel Evel, 1293, Hegira.”
xxxxx(30th May 1876.)

Armed with this Fetva, Ministers decided on the immediate execution of their plans, the details of which, it was agreed, should be left to the Grand Vizier, to Midhat, and to the Minister of War.

There was a slight divergence of views between Midhat and the Seraskier with reference to the form of procedure which should accompany the deposition. Hussein Avni inclined to a simple military pronunciamento, whereas Midhat wished to give the consecration of popular sanction to the act. For this purpose he proposed that the Softas and the population of Stamboul should be convoked en masse to the Noure‐Osmanieh Mosque, where they should set forth the griefs of the nation and demand a change of régime; and that on this demand being refused or ignored, they should proceed at once to the execution of the decree of deposition. The majority of Ministers inclined to this latter method of proceeding; but a circumstance occurred which necessitated a change of plans and determined the abandonment of the proposal for a popular demonstration.

The 31st May was chosen for the execution of the plan agreed upon. On the eve of that day information reached Midhat from a woman of the Palace that the Sultan had had wind of the affair, and that the whole plot was about to be discovered. This was corroborated by the fact that twice that same day Hussein Avni had been peremptorily summoned to the Palace, although on the first summons he had pleaded illness as a reason for disregarding it.

It was decided thereupon by the Ministers to anticipate the hour fixed upon, and to proceed at once with the execution of their design.

At midnight accordingly, of the 30th of May, Mehemet Rushdi and Midhat, accompanied each by a single attendant carrying a lamp, proceeded to Sirkedji to embark on a caïque[11] for Pachalimani on the Bosphorus, the residence of Hussein Avni. It was a pitch‐dark night with rain falling in torrents, and it was with some difficulty that they reached the place of rendezvous. Here they found Hussein Avni anxiously waiting for them, and after a hurried interview in which the final dispositions were made, they separated to their respective posts. Hussein Avni started for the palace of Dolma‐Bagtche, whilst Rushdi and Midhat proceeded to the Seraskierat.

It had been decided that the Ministers and high civil and military dignitaries should assemble at the War Office and await the arrival of Prince Murad, whom Hussein Avni had undertaken to conduct there in person; and that as soon as he should arrive, the proclamation and investiture of the Prince as the new Sultan should take place. It was further arranged that immediately on the arrival of the Prince a bonfire should be lit on the tower of the Seraskierat, as a signal to the fleet of what was taking place, and thereupon a Royal salute should be fired by Kaisserli Ahmed’s ironclads, to announce to the whole city the commencement of a new reign.

Hussein Avni, proceeding in the direction of the Palace, was, according to preconcerted arrangement, met by Suleiman Pasha, to whom the delicate task of executing the measures necessary to be taken at the Palace had been entrusted.

Suleiman Pasha, marshal in the army and director‐in‐chief of the school of military cadets at Pancaldi, the trusted lieutenant and right‐hand man of Hussein Avni, himself a strong partisan of Midhat Pasha and the young hope of the Reform Party, was the very man to carry out an operation requiring careful preparation and unflinching resolution for its successful execution.

The troops in the barracks of Tash‐Kishla and Kumuch‐Suyou had already received their orders from Redif Pasha, the commander of the corps d’armée of Constantinople, and had been so posted as to blockade all approaches by land. The fleet of ironclads under the personal command of Kaiseli Ahmed, the captain Pasha, had taken the same precautions by sea, so that nothing remained but to disarm the sentinels and corps de garde along the immediate approaches to the Palace. Suleiman, taking with him a selected body of military students from Pancaldi, under the command of Ahmed Bey (colonel) and Bedry and Rifat Beys (captains), after successfully performing, without disturbance but not without some opposition, the delicate operation of disarmament, hastened to the apartments of Prince Murad. Although the Prince had been made aware of the intentions of the Ministers, and had acquiesced in their general arrangements, it had been found impossible to acquaint him with the change of date resolved upon. He, therefore, fearing some surprise or treachery, hesitated for some time before he could be induced to comply with Suleiman’s urgent request that he should immediately join Hussein Avni, who was waiting for him in a carriage at the gates of the Palace to drive him to the Seraskierat, where his proclamation and investiture as the new sovereign were to take place. At one moment it looked as if the solemn drama about to be enacted would have to be played out with the part of the “Prince of Denmark” omitted.

Having surmounted this unexpected difficulty and despatched Murad on his way to the Seraskierat, Suleiman proceeded to discharge the second and more distasteful part of the mandate confided to him. Making his way to the Imperial apartments, and overcoming the hesitation of the attendants by presenting an order signed by all the Ministers, he peremptorily demanded to be immediately led into the presence of the Sultan. The demand being at last complied with, he proceeded to communicate to Abdul Aziz the justification of his intrusion, and read to him the fetva of the deposition. Whilst the Sultan and Suleiman were engaged in parleying, the big guns of Ahmed’s ironclads were heard booming in the distance. Abdul Aziz at once took in the import of the firing, and from that moment yielded to the inevitable. He prepared to comply with the order communicated to him to quit the Palace of Dolma‐Bagtche for that of Top‐Kapou, which had been assigned as a residence for him.

The new Sultan confirmed all his Ministers in their posts, addressing the following letter to the Porte:—

To my Grand Vizier and very patriotic Mehemet Rushdi Pasha—

“By the favour of the Almighty and the will of my subjects, we have ascended the throne of our ancestors, and by reason of your patriotism and ability in the discharge of your duties as Grand Vizier, we confirm you and all your colleagues in your former posts. The numerous difficulties experienced for some time past both in our domestic affairs and foreign relations, have produced uneasiness in the public mind, and caused detriment to the material and territorial interests of the country. The necessity of amending this state of things and of adopting remedial measures such as shall insure the happiness and secure the confidence of our subjects, imposes itself imperatively upon us; and to effect these purposes, it is absolutely necessary to organise the administration of the State on a basis of stability and justice. Our exclusive attention will be directed to this end, and for this purpose we desire that our Ministers, after due deliberation, shall submit to us for our approbation their views on the means by which, whilst respecting the laws of the Cheri and of Justice, the organisation of our Empire in accordance with the wants and requirements of our people can be effected, with the view of procuring to all our subjects alike, without distinction or restriction, the completest liberty compatible with order; and, moreover, that our Ministers shall communicate to us their views on the application of such just laws and regulations as shall be calculated to consolidate and unify the national and patriotic sentiments of all our subjects. It is clear, moreover, that in order to obtain these objects, it is indispensable to reorganise the Council of State, the Ministers of Justice, as well as of public Institutions and of the Finances, as well as other departments of State; and it is, moreover, evident that one of the principal reforms of all will consist in establishing on a sound foundation the financial situation of the Empire, and in taking steps that no expenditure shall be tolerated that shall not have been provided for by the Budget of the State, by which measures it may be hoped that public credit and confidence will be restored. In order to help to obtain this result, we hereby diminish our Civil list by the sum of £T300,000, and surrender to the State the coal‐mines of Heraclia and the other mines and manufactories appertaining to the Civil list; and we recommend that like economies shall be effected in all the various branches of the administration, so as to establish an equilibrium in our finances. Our liveliest desire is for a continuance of intimate relations with all the friendly Powers, by the strictest observance of treaty obligations, and all our efforts will be directed to this end, and we pray the Almighty to crown them with success.

“9 Djemaziel Evel, 1293, Hegira.”
xxxxxx(2nd June 1876.)

Besides the retention of their portfolios by all the Ministers, Kemal Bey (the best known and most distinguished poet and litterateur of Turkey) and Zia Bey (equally celebrated as a poet and patriot) were appointed as his private secretaries, and Sadullah Bey (well known for his liberal sympathies and opinions) made chief of the Sultan’s secretariat—important guarantees for the smooth working of the machinery of State, and security against the revival of the old pernicious intrigues of the Palace against the Ministers of the Porte. Murad had, moreover, undertaken to promulgate the Constitution prepared by Midhat and his colleagues at the earliest date compatible with the despatch of urgent public business.

So far everything seemed to favour the Reformers. A revolution of the most fundamental character, involving the destruction of autocratic power in Turkey, and carrying the promise of a Constitution which would lay the foundations at any rate of stable government in the country, effected not only without bloodshed or disturbance of any kind, but with the assent and approval of all classes and creeds in the land, and with a new sovereign on the throne known sincerely to share the views of his Ministers and the aspirations of his people, all this seemed to ensure the prospect of healing the wounds of the much afflicted land of the Osmanli, and of opening up a new era of progress and prosperity in the East.

But suddenly a cloud, not bigger than a man’s hand, lowered over the destinies of the country, and from this time the stars in their courses fought against Turkey, and violently set back the date of the promised era of prosperity.

On the eventful night of the 30th‐31st May, during the drive with Murad to the Seraskierat, Hussein Avni had perceived that the Prince was suffering from violent nervous excitement, and these symptoms were still further accentuated in the return journey to the Palace of Dolma‐Bagtche after the ceremony of investiture was over—so much so that Midhat Pasha, who accompanied him, thought it prudent to remain in the Palace, without quitting it, for three days. The physicians called in consultation did not at first take a grave view of the case, and sanguine hopes were entertained that, in a short time, by pursuing the regimen of repose and hygiene recommended by these authorities, Sultan Murad would rapidly recover his health and be able to discharge the duties incumbent on him. Dr Lamsdorf of Vienna, the celebrated specialist, made a very favourable diagnosis of the case. A happy issue of this most unfortunate and inopportune malady was now generally hoped for and expected, when two startling events occurred in rapid succession, each seriously aggravating and affecting the Sultan Murad’s nervous condition of health, and together fatally compromising the hope of rapid recovery.

The first of these tragedies referred to was enacted in the Palace of Tcheragan, five days after the dethronement of the late Sultan. Abdul Aziz, whose imperious temper could ill brook the change of destiny that had overtaken him, had already made one or two unsuccessful attempts, which were with difficulty thwarted, to throw himself out of the windows of the Palace. On the morning of the 5th June, he asked for a pair of scissors with which to trim his beard. On the attendants demurring to comply with this request, the Valide Sultan ordered the scissors to be given to her son. Shortly after this, the ladies of her suite, looking out of a window of a corridor that commanded a view on the room occupied by the late Sultan, saw him sitting quietly in an armchair with his back turned to the window; but shortly afterwards, perceiving that his head had dropped on his lap, they ran to the door and tried to open it. Finding it locked, and fearing a catastrophe, they ran screaming to the Valide Sultan and informed her of what they suspected. Orders being given to break into the room, they found Abdul Aziz sitting in the posture already described, and in a pool of blood flowing from two wounds in his arms, evidently caused by the scissors, which had fallen beside him on the floor. The physicians, who were hastily summoned, could only confirm the apprehension that life was extinct, and the Ministers, immediately apprised of the fact of the tragedy, ordered an immediate examination of the body to be made by all the available medical men in Constantinople, hastily summoned to draw up an official report on the subject. Seventeen medical men of all nationalities, comprising all the most distinguished in the city and in the Embassies of the great Powers, signed a unanimous report to the effect that death was undoubtedly due to suicide, and handed the following certificate:—

“The year 1876 A.D., on the 23rd of May, O.S., the 4th of June, N.S., or the year of the Hegira, the 11th of the month of Djemazi‐el‐ewel 1293, Sunday, at 11 o’clock A.M., we, the undersigned doctors of medicine, namely, Marco Pasha, Nouri Pasha, Julius Millingen, Caratheodori, Sotto, Dickson, Marroin, Nouridjian, Spadare, Vitalis, S. Spagnolo, Marc Markel, Jatropoulo, Miltiadi Bey, Abdinour Effendi, Mustafa Effendi, Servet Bey, Mehmed Bey and Jacques de Castro, being summoned by the ministry by order of His Imperial Majesty to ascertain the cause of the death of the ex‐Sultan Abdul Aziz, proceeded to the guard‐house situated near the Imperial Palace of Tcheragan. There we were ushered into a chamber on the ground floor and found a body lying on a mattress on the floor. The body was covered with a new white linen cloth. On removing this cloth we recognised the ex‐Sultan Abdul Aziz. All the parts of the body were cold and bloodless, pale, or covered with coagulated blood. The corpse was not rigid, the eyelids were partially unclosed, the corneæ were slightly opaque, the mouth partly open. Linen cloths, soaked in blood covered the arms and legs. On lifting the linen coverings on the arms we discovered a gash near the joint of the left arm five centimetres long and three centimetres deep. The edges of the wound were hacked and irregular. The direction of the wound was from above to below, and from inside to outside. The veins of this region were cut, and the cubital artery at its emerging point was three‐fourths severed. At the joint of the right arm we discovered a wound, slightly oblique, also hacked, two centimetres long and one centimetre deep. On this side the wounds were only in the smaller veins; the arteries were intact.

“We were shown a pair of scissors ten centimetres long, very sharp, one point of which bore a small lateral projection near its summit. The scissors were stained with blood, and we were told that the ex‐Sultan Abdul Aziz had with these scissors inflicted upon himself the wounds above described.

“We then proceeded to the residence of the late Sultan, where we were ushered into a large chamber looking on to the sea. There we found in the corner of a sofa, placed near a window, a pool of blood spread over that article of furniture, and on the matting of the floor a great quantity of coagulated blood in one mass, and further several stains spread over the room.

“From what precedes we are unanimously of opinion:—

“1. That the death of the ex‐Sultan Abdul Aziz was caused by the loss of blood produced by the wounds of the blood‐vessels at the joints of the arms.

“2. That the instrument shown to us could certainly produce such wounds.

“3. That the direction and nature of the wounds, together with the instrument which is said to have produced them, lead us to conclude that suicide had been committed.

“In witness whereof we have accordingly drawn up and signed the present minute of proceedings at the guard‐house of Tcheragan on the day, month and year aforesaid.

“Signed:

“Dr Marco, Nouri, A. Sotto, Physician attached to the Imperial and Royal Embassy of Austria‐Hungary; Dr Spagnolo, Marc Markel, Jatropoulo, Abdinour, Servet, J. de Castro, A. Marroin, Julius Millingen, C. Caratheodori; E. D. Dickson, Physician of the British Embassy; Dr O. Vitalis, Physician of the Sanitary Board; Dr E. Spadare, J. Nouridjian, Miltiadi Bey, Mustafa, Mehmed.”

The body was transferred to Top‐Kapou and buried in the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmoud.

Ten days after the tragedy at the Palace of Tcheragan the news of which had deeply affected Sultan Murad, another quickly followed, in some respects of a still more startling character, and calculated to prostrate still further a mind already unhinged.

A Circassian captain, formerly aide‐de‐camp of the Sultan Abdul Aziz, one Hassan by name, on whom certain suspicion of violent intentions rested, had been ordered to Bagdad, and on his showing signs of recalcitrancy, he was imprisoned for insubordination by orders of Hussein Avni, the Minister of War. Feigning submission, he was released after two days’ detention. On the 15th June, during a Cabinet Council which was being held at the house of Midhat Pasha, and at which all the Ministers were present, Tcherkess Hassan, armed with no less than six revolvers, forcing the consigne without much difficulty, managed to penetrate into the room where the Council was sitting, and advancing straight up to Hussein Avni, discharged a barrel of a revolver at him, and turning sharply on Reshid Pasha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, shot him dead on the spot. The Minister of Marine, Kaisserli Ahmed, threw himself on the assassin and tried to disarm him, but he was immediately stabbed with a poniard that Hassan carried in his left hand. Hussein Avni, although severely wounded, managed to make his way to the staircase, but Hassan, following him, struck at him furiously in the neck with his dagger and despatched him. Returning to the Council room he discharged his revolvers promiscuously all around him, smashing the chandelier suspended in the middle of the room, and consequently plunging the room into darkness. It was this that probably saved the lives of the remaining Ministers, for Kaisserli Ahmed, though wounded, and Mehemet Rushdi, and Halid succeeded in escaping into an adjoining boudoir, where they barricaded the door against their furious assailant, who, having despatched the War Minister, seemed chiefly bent on wreaking vengeance on the Minister of Marine. Midhat escaped by a miracle, and by slipping off his coat, the sleeve of which he left in the hand of Hassan who had seized it in the darkness. One of Midhat’s servants, Ahmed Aga, on hearing the firing, had rushed into the room and tried to seize the assassin from behind, but Hassan turned sharply on him and shot him dead. The same fate attended Chukri Bey, the aide‐de‐camp of the Minister of Marine, who also rushed in to the rescue. At last a guard of gendarmerie appeared on the scene, and a regular fusillade ensued between the Circassian at bay and the gendarmes reinforced by a picket of soldiers; it was only then, after a regular pitched battle, that this determined criminal was at length overpowered and seized.

He was very soon afterwards tried, and hanged in due course, stoutly denying to the last that he had any accomplices.

The effect of these compound tragedies on the mind of the Sultan Murad was disastrous. His recovery, sanguine hopes of which had been held out by Dr Lamsdorf, the famous specialist summoned from Vienna to give his opinion on the state of the Sultan’s health, seemed destined to be indefinitely postponed. Two parties, holding distinct views on the situation and the manner it should be dealt with, now showed themselves among the Ministers and the high Court officials. Mehemet Rushdi especially, the old experienced vizier and the majority of Ministers well aware of the favourable disposition of Sultan Murad towards the cause of reform, and very averse to taking a plunge in the dark, leant to the opinion that patience should be exercised and reasonable time given for the recovery of the Sultan’s health.

But another and very active party had in the meantime been formed, of which Damad Mahmoud Djelaleddin Pasha (the Sultan’s brother‐in‐law) was the moving spirit, and which included, together with some high Palace officials, one or two of the influential marshals, such as Redif Pasha, the commander of the Constantinople corps d’armée and under the influence of Damad Mahmoud Djelaleddin. This party—as far as it could be said to have been based on any particular political opinions, and not on the simple ground of ambition and the desire to exercise a preponderating influence in the future régime—consisted of the men who had acquiesced, and even participated, in the dethronement of the late Sultan, but did not share, and some of them were even bitterly opposed to, the constitutional views advocated by Midhat and the reforming party. Borne along by the current of events which they would have been impotent to resist, they would have constituted a helpless minority in the State without power or influence, if they had had to do with a reforming Sultan on the throne, a palace where men like Zia Bey, and Kemal Bey were the guiding spirits, and the party of reform in strong possession of the Porte. The prospect, however, of being able to change the occupant of the throne and place their own candidate upon it afforded them the precious opportunity of upsetting the whole edifice of reform, of themselves seizing the chief power of the State, and turning the revolution that had been accomplished to their own exclusive advantage. It was less a victory of reaction than a triumph of ambition.

Damad Mahmoud Djelaleddin was a very ignorant and uncultivated man, and though careless and without a conviction in respect to political opinions, he enjoyed the reputation of being neither careless nor indifferent with respect to matters of personal or pecuniary concern to himself. On the other hand, he was endowed with great, almost brutal, determination of character, and was utterly reckless as to the means of carrying out his ends. His position of Damad (brother‐in‐law to the Sultan) gave him great influence in the Palace, and at the same time secured him weight in the Councils of the State. He was the very soul of the anti‐reform conspiracy.

Having described Damad Mahmoud Djelaleddin, the character of his lieutenant, Redif Pasha, can be described in a sentence: he was Damad Mahmoud in petto. Whatever qualities distinguished the master were conspicuous in the lieutenant, and only in a less degree, inasmuch as he was physically of a somewhat less robust nature. He had, like Mahmoud, lent himself with all the weight of his military position to the dethronement of Abdul Aziz, but he viewed with an evil eye the advance of reform, and still more the triumph of the reformers.

These two men practically constituted the central power of the conspiracy, for those who co‐operated with them were scarcely admitted into the inner councils or secret plans of the Duumvirate, although themselves the willing participators in the conspiracy.

Among them was Djevdet Pasha, Minister of Justice, who, during all the stirring events of the Vizierate of Mehemet Rushdi, had been lying low in the Cabinet waiting for the opportune moment to show his colours and take part in the overthrow of the ministry.

Whilst enumerating the instruments of Mahmoud’s ambition, it would be impossible to omit the names of two other men who, although they had not yet emerged into the notoriety which they were soon to enjoy, were indispensable tools of Mahmoud’s ambition, and powerfully contributed to the success of his plans. These were the two Saïds. The one was brother‐in‐law of Mahmoud, and destined for the important post of first aide‐de‐camp to the Sultan Abdul Hamid. He was generally known as “Ingless Saïd Pasha,” for his having been educated at Woolwich, and though entirely wanting in initiative or political convictions, was naturally of a frank and loyal disposition, not deficient in energy, and an invaluable coadjutor in carrying out the views of his brother‐in‐law. With Redif Pasha he formed the third member of the Triumvirate, which Mahmoud intended should, during the succeeding reign, govern the country. The other Saïd, of whom a great deal more will have to be said hereafter, was known, on account of his small stature, as “Saïd Kutchouk” (small), and when he reaches the dignity of Pasha, it will be necessary to distinguish him from the other Saïd by this appellation. He was supposed to be the âme damnée of Mahmoud, especially by Mahmoud himself, who destined him for the important confidential post of First Secretary to the Sultan.

Without any doubt, Damad’s plans were well conceived, and his net was well spread. The post of Vice‐Sultan he reserved for himself.

Behind these were marshalled the whole phalanx of Reaction, and the Konak of Mahmoud become the Cave of Adullam of all the malcontents.

The means of action were not wanting to the conspirators in this respect; indeed, the material to their hand was only too abundant. A sovereign of unsound mind is not recognised by the Ottoman Constitution. The girding of the Padishah with the sword of Osman, as an essential part of the ceremony of investiture, was to the Ottoman sovereigns what the sacred oil of Rheims was to the kings of France, and this ceremony had not taken place.

No Sultan, moreover, had ever before absented himself from attendance at the mosque on Friday, and the Selamlik that follows. The public anxiety and excitement on the subject were genuine and universal. Public affairs, too, were suffering: the Constitution was, in a double sense, suspended; the new Constitution could not be promulgated, and the old Constitution, such as it was, could not be worked; the mainspring of the machinery of State was deranged. Foreign diplomacy, too, was beginning to take an active part in the matter. The ambassadors and envoys from foreign States were asking to whom, and when, they could present their credentials. The Russian Embassy—that seemed to have better information relative to Prince Hamid’s character than Ministers themselves—was particularly persistent and active in this respect. It was evident that the crisis could not be indefinitely prolonged.

In these circumstances, it was resolved by Ministers that Midhat should go to Muslou‐Oglou, where Prince Hamid, heir presumptive to the throne, resided, in order to ascertain by a personal interview with him whether Ministers could rely on his co‐operation to carry out the important reforms that they had in hand, should it become absolutely necessary to remove Murad from the throne, and in that event, to agree to certain clear and definite stipulations with the Prince as conditions of their support.

These stipulations were the following:—

1. To promulgate without delay the new Constitution.

2. To act in matters of State only with the advice of his responsible advisers.

3. To appoint Zia Bey and Kemal Bey his private secretaries, and to make Sadullah Bey the head of the Palace Secretariat.