I Said in my last Lecture, that we are bound to judge of persons and
events in history, not by their outward appearance, but by their inward
significancy. In speaking of the Turks, we may for a moment yield to
the romance which attends on their name and their actions, as we may
admire the beauty of some beast of prey; but, as it would be idle and
puerile to praise its shape or skin, and form no further judgment upon
it, so in like manner it is unreal and unphilosophical to interest
ourselves in the mere adventures and successes of the Turks, without
going on to view them in their moral aspect also. No race casts so
broad and dark a shadow on the page of ecclesiastical history, and
leaves so painful an impression on the minds of the reader, as the
Turkish. The fierce Goths and Vandals, and then again the Lombards,
were converted to Catholicism. The Franks yielded to the voice of St.
Remigius, and Clovis, their leader, became the eldest son of the
Church. The Anglo-Saxons gave up their idols at the preaching of St.
Augustine and his companions. The German tribes acknowledged Christ
amid their forests, though they martyred St. Boniface and other English
and Irish missionaries who came to them. The Magyars in Hungary were
led to faith through loyalty to their temporal monarch, their royal
missioner St. Stephen. The heathen Danes reappear as the chivalrous
Normans, the haughty but true sons and vassals of St. Peter. The
Saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture, withered away at the end
of 300 or 400 years, and had not the power, though they had the will,
to persevere in their enmity to the Cross. The Tartars had both the
will and the power, but they were far off from Christendom, or they
came down in ephemeral outbreaks, which were rather those of
freebooters than of persecutors, or they directed their fury as often
against the enemies of the Church as against her children. But the
unhappy race, of whom I am speaking, from the first moment they appear
in the history of Christendom, are its unmitigated, its obstinate, its
consistent foes. They are inexhaustible in numbers, pouring down upon
the South and West, and taking one and the same terrible mould of
misbelief, as they successively descend. They have the populousness of
the North, with the fire of the South; the resources of Tartars, with,
the fanaticism of Saracens. And when their strength declines, and age
steals upon them, there is no softening, no misgiving; they die and
make no sign. In the words of the Wise Man, “Being born, they forthwith
ceased to be; and have been able to show no mark of virtue, but are
consumed in wickedness.” God's judgments, God's mercies, are
inscrutable; one nation is taken, another is left. It is a mystery; but
the fact stands; since the year 1048 the Turks have been the great
Antichrist among the races of men.
I say since this date, because then it was that Togrul Beg finally
opened the gates of the North to those descents, which had taken place
indeed at intervals before, but then became the habit of centuries. In
vain was the power of his dynasty overthrown by the Crusaders; in vain
do the Seljukians disappear from the annals of the world; in vain is
Constantinople respited; in vain is Europe saved. Christendom in arms
had not yet finished, it had but begun the work, in which it needed the
grace to persevere. Down came the savage hordes, as at first, upon
Sogdiana and Khorasan, so then upon Syria and its neighbouring
countries. Sometimes they remain wild Turcomans, sometimes they fall
into the civilization of the South; but there they are, in Egypt, in
the Holy Land, in Armenia, in Anatolia, forming political bodies of
long or short duration, breaking up here to form again there, in all
cases trampling on Christianity, and beating out its sacred impression
from the breasts of tens of thousands. Nor is this all; scarcely is the
race of Seljuk quite extinct, or rather when it is on its very
death-bed, after it had languished and shrunk and dwindled and
flickered and kept on dying through a tedious two hundred years, when
its sole remaining heir was just in one obscure court, from that very
court we discern the birth of another empire, as dazzling in its rise,
as energetic and impetuous in its deeds as that of Togrul, Alp, and
Malek, and far more wide-spreading, far more powerful, far more lasting
than the Seljukian. This is the empire of the great (if I must measure
it by a human standard) and glorious race of Othman; this is the
dynasty of the Ottomans or Osmanlis; once the admiration, the terror of
nations, now, even in its downfall, an object of curiosity, interest,
anxiety, and even respect; but, whether high or low, in all cases to
the Christian the inveterate and hateful enemy of the Cross.
1.
There is a certain remarkable parallel and contrast between the
fortunes of these two races, the Seljukian and the Ottoman. In the
beginning of the twelfth century, the race of Seljuk all but took
Constantinople, and overran the West, and did not; in the beginning of
the fifteenth, the Ottoman Turks were all but taking the same city, and
then were withheld from taking it, and at length did take it, and have
it still. In each case a foe came upon them from the north, still more
fierce and vigorous than they, and humbled them to the dust.
These two foes, which came upon the Seljukian Turks and the Ottoman
Turks respectively, are names by this time familiar to us; they are
Zingis and Timour. Zingis came down upon the Seljukians, and Timour
came down upon the Ottomans. Timour pressed the Ottomans even more
severely than Zingis pressed the Seljukians; yet the Seljukians did not
recover the blow of Zingis; but the Ottomans survived the blow of
Timour, and rose more formidable after it, and have long outlived the
power which inflicted it.
Zingis and Timour were but the blind instruments of divine
vengeance. They knew not what they did. The inward impulse of gigantic
energy and brutal cupidity urged them forward; ambition, love of
destruction, sensual appetite, frenzied them, and made them both more
and less than men. They pushed eastward, westward, southward; they
confronted promptly and joyfully every peril, every obstacle which lay
in their course. They smote down all rival pride and greatness of man;
and therefore, by the law (as I may call it) of their nature and
destiny, not on politic reason or far-reaching plan, but because they
came across him, they smote the Turk. These then were one class of his
opponents; but there was another adversary, stationed against him, of a
different order, one whose power was not material, but mental and
spiritual; one whose enmity was not random, or casual, or temporary,
but went on steadily from age to age, and lasts down to this day,
except so far as the Turk's decrepitude has at length disarmed anxiety
and opposition. I have spoken of him already; of course I mean the
Vicar of Christ. I mean the zealous, the religious enmity to every
anti-Christian power, of him who has outlasted Zingis and Timour, who
has outlasted Seljuk, who is now outlasting Othman. He incited
Christendom against the Seljukians, and the Seljukians, assailed also
by Zingis, sunk beneath the double blow. He tried to rouse Christendom
against the Ottomans also, but in vain; and therefore in vain did
Timour discharge his overwhelming, crushing force against them.
Overwhelmed and crushed they were, but they revived. The Seljukians
fell, in consequence of the united zeal of the great Christian
commonwealth moving in panoply against them; the Ottomans succeeded by
reason of its deplorable divisions, and its decay of faith and heroism.
2.
Whether indeed in the long run, and after all his disappointments
and reverses, the Pope was altogether unsuccessful in his warfare
against the Ottomans, we shall see by-and-by; but certainly, if
perseverance merited a favourable issue, at least he has had a right to
expect it. War with the Turks was his uninterrupted cry for seven or
eight centuries, from the eleventh to the eighteenth; it is a solitary
and singular event in the history of the Church. Sylvester the Second
was the originator of the scheme of a union of Christian nations
against them. St. Gregory the Seventh collected 50,000 men to repel
them. Urban the Second actually set in motion the long crusade.
Honorius the Second instituted the order of Knight Templars to protect
the pilgrims from their assaults. Eugenius the Third sent St. Bernard
to preach the Holy War. Innocent the Third advocated it in the august
Council of the Lateran. Nicholas the Fourth negotiated an alliance with
the Tartars for its prosecution. Gregory the Tenth was in the Holy Land
in the midst of it, with our Edward the First, when he was elected
Pope. Urban the Fifth received and reconciled the Greek Emperor with a
view to its renewal. Innocent the Sixth sent the Blessed Peter Thomas
the Carmelite to preach in its behalf. Boniface the Ninth raised the
magnificent army of French, Germans, and Hungarians, who fought the
great battle of Nicopolis. Eugenius the Fourth formed the confederation
of Hungarians and Poles who fought the battle of Varna. Nicholas the
Fifth sent round St. John Capistran to urge the princes of Christendom
against the enemy. Callixtus the Third sent the celebrated Hunniades to
fight with them. Pius the Second addressed to their Sultan an apostolic
letter of warning and denunciation. Sixtus the Fourth fitted out a
fleet against them. Innocent the Eighth made them his mark from the
beginning of his Pontificate to the end. St. Pius the Fifth added the
“Auxilium Christianorum” to our Lady's Litany in thankfulness for his
victory over them. Gregory the Thirteenth with the same purpose
appointed the Festival of the Rosary. Clement the Ninth died of grief
on account of their successes. The venerable Innocent the Eleventh
appointed the Festival of the Holy Name of Mary, for their rout before
Vienna. Clement the Eleventh extended the Feast of the Rosary to the
whole Church for the great victory over them near Belgrade. These are
but some of the many instances which might be given; but they are
enough for the purpose of showing the perseverance of the Popes.
Nor was their sagacity in this matter less remarkable than their
pertinacity. The Holy See has the reputation, even with men of the
world, of seeing instinctively what is favourable, what is
unfavourable, to the interests of religion and of the Catholic Faith.
Its undying opposition to the Turks is not the least striking instance
of this divinely imparted gift. From the very first it pointed at them
as an object of alarm for all Christendom, in a way in which it had
marked out neither Tartars nor Saracens. It exposed them to the
reprobation of Europe, as a people, with whom, if charity differ from
merciless ferocity, tenderness from hardness of heart, depravity of
appetite from virtue, and pride from meekness and humility, the
faithful never could have sympathy, never alliance. It denounced, not
merely an odious outlying deformity, painful simply to the moral sight
and scent, but an energetic evil, an aggressive, ambitious, ravenous
foe, in whom foulness of life and cruelty of policy were methodized by
system, consecrated by religion, propagated by the sword. I am not
insensible, I wish to do justice, to the high qualities of the Turkish
race. I do not altogether deny to its national character the grandeur,
the force and originality, the valour, the truthfulness and sense of
justice, the sobriety and gentleness, which historians and travellers
speak of; but, in spite of all that has been done for them by nature
and by the European world, Tartar still is the staple of their
composition, and their gifts and attainments, whatever they may be, do
but make them the more efficient foes of faith and civilization.
3.
It was said by a Prophet of old, in the prospect of a fierce
invader, “a day of clouds and whirlwinds, a numerous and strong people,
as the morning spread upon the mountains. The like to it hath not been
from the beginning, nor shall be after it, even to the years of
generation and generation. Before the face thereof a devouring fire,
and behind it a burning flame. The land is like a garden of pleasure
before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness; neither is there any
one can escape it.” Now I might, in illustration of the character which
the Turks bear in history, suitably accommodate these words to the
moral, or the social, or the political, or the religious calamities, of
which they were the authors to the Christian countries they overran;
and so I might bring home to you the meaning and drift of that
opposition with which the Holy See has met them in every age. I might
allude (if I dare, but I dare not, nor does any one dare),—else,
allusion might be made to those unutterable deeds which brand the
people which allows them, even in the natural judgment of men, as the
most flagitious, the most detestable of nations. I might enlarge on the
reckless and remorseless cruelty which, had they succeeded in Europe,
as they succeeded in Asia, would have decimated or exterminated her
children; I might have reminded you, for instance, how it has been
almost a canon of their imperial policy for centuries, that their
Sultan, on mounting the throne, should destroy his nearest of kin,
father, brother, or cousin, who might rival him in his sovereignty; how
he is surrounded, and his subjects according to their wealth, with
slaves carried off from their homes, men and boys, living monuments of
his barbarity towards the work of God's hands; how he has at his
remorseless will and in the sudden breath of his mouth the life or
death of all his subjects; how he multiplies his despotism by giving to
his lieutenants in every province, a like prerogative; how little
scruple those governors have ever felt in exercising this prerogative
to the full, in executions on a large scale, and sudden overwhelming
massacres, shedding blood like water, and playing with the life of man
as though it were the life of a mere beast or reptile. I might call
your attention to particular instances of such atrocities, such as that
outrage perpetrated in the memory of many of us,—how, on the
insurrection of the Greeks at Scio, their barbarian masters carried
fire and sword throughout the flourishing island till it was left a
desert, hurrying away women and boys to an infamous captivity, and
murdering youths and grown men, till out of 120,000 souls, in the
spring time, not 900 were left there when the crops were ripe for the
sickle. If I do not go into scenes such as these in detail, it is
because I have wearied and troubled you more than enough already, in my
account of the savage perpetrations of Zingis and Timour.
Or I might, in like manner, still more obviously insist on their
system of compulsory conversion, which, from the time of the Seljukian
Sultans to the present day, have raised the indignation and the
compassion of the Christian world; how, when the lieutenants of Malek
Shah got possession of Asia Minor, they profaned the churches,
subjected Bishops and Clergy to the most revolting outrages,
circumcised the youth, and led off their sisters to their profligate
households;—how, when the Ottomans conquered in turn, and added an
infantry, I mean the Janizaries, to their Tartar horse, they formed
that body of troops, from first to last, for near five hundred years,
of boys, all born Christian, a body of at first 12,000, at last 40,000
strong, torn away year by year from their parents, circumcised, trained
to the faith and morals of their masters, and becoming in their turn
the instruments of the terrible policy of which they had themselves
been victims; and how, when at length lately they abolished this work
of their hands, they ended it by the slaughter of 20,000 of the poor
renegades whom they had seduced from their God. I might remind you how
within the last few years a Protestant traveller tells us that he found
the Nestorian Christians, who had survived the massacres of their race,
living in holes and pits, their pastures and tillage land forfeited,
their sheep and cattle driven away, their villages burned, and their
ministers and people tortured; and how a Catholic missionary has found
in the neighbourhood of Broussa the remnant of some twenty Catholic
families, who, in consequence of repudiating the Turkish faith, had
been carried all the way from Servia and Albania across the sea to Asia
Minor; the men killed, the women disgraced, the boys sold, till out of
a hundred and eighty persons but eighty-seven were left, and they sick,
and famished, and dying among their unburied dead. I could of course
continue this topic also to any extent, and draw it out as an
illustration of the words of the Prophet which I have quoted. But I
prefer to take those words literally, as expressive of the desolation
spread by an infidel foe over the face of a flourishing country; and
then I shall be viewing the Turkish rule under an aspect addressed to
the senses, not admitting of a question, calculated to rouse the
sensibilities of Christians of whatever caste of opinion, and
explanatory by itself of the determined front which the Holy See has
ever made against it.
4.
The Catholic Church was in the first instance a wanderer on the
earth, and had nothing to attach her to its soil; but no sooner did
persecution cease, and territory was allowed to her, than she began to
exert a beneficent influence upon the face of the land, and on its
cultivators. She shed her consolations, and extended her protection,
over the serf and the slave; and, while she gradually relaxed his
fetters, she sent her own dearest children to bear his burden with him,
and to aid him in the cultivation of the soil. Under the loving
assiduity of the Benedictine Monk, the ravages of war were repaired,
the plantation throve, the river diffused itself in rills and channels,
and hill and dale and plain rejoiced in corn land and pasture. And when
in a later time a world was to be created, not restored, when the deep
forests of the North were to be cleared, and the unwholesome marsh to
be drained, who but the missionaries from the same great Order were to
be the ministers of temporal, as well as spiritual, benefits to the
rude tribes they were converting? And then again, when history moved on
into the era of the first Turkish outbreak, who but St. Bernard, the
very preacher of the Crusade, who but he led on his peaceful
Cistercians, after the pattern of his master, St. Stephen, to that
laborious but cheerful husbandry, which they continue in the wild
places of the earth even to this day? Never has Holy Church
forgotten,—abhorrent, as she is, from the Pantheistic tendencies which
in all ages have surrounded her,—never has she forgotten the interests
of that mighty mother on whose bosom we feed in life, into whose arms
we drop in death; never has she forgotten that that mother is the
special creature of God, and to be honoured, in leaf and flower, in
lofty tree and pleasant stream, for His sake, as well as for our own;
that while it is our primeval penalty to till the earth, she lovingly
repays us for our toil; that Adam was a gardener even in Paradise, and
that Noe inaugurated his new world by “beginning to be a husbandman,
and by planting a vineyard.”
Such is the genius of the true faith; and it might have been
thought, that, though not Christians, even of very gratitude, the
barbarous race, which owed a part of whatever improvement of mind or
manners they had received to the fair plains of Sogdiana, would, on
seizing on their rich and beautiful lands on the north, east, and south
of the Mediterranean, have felt some sort of reverence for their
captive, and, while enjoying her gifts, would have been merciful to the
giver. But the same selfish sensuality, with which they regard the
rational creation of God, possesses them in their conduct towards
physical nature. They have made the earth their paramour, and are
heartless towards her dishonour and her misery. We have lately been
reminded in this place of the Doge of Venice[48] making the Adriatic
his bride, and claiming her by a ring of espousal; but the Turk does
not deign to legitimatize his possession of the soil he has violently
seized, or to gain a title to it by any sacred tie; caring for no
better right to it than the pirate has to the jurisdiction of the high
seas. Let the Turcoman ride up and down Asia Minor or Syria for a
thousand years, how is the trampling of his horse-hoofs a possession of
those countries, more than a Scythian raid or a Tartar gallop across
it? The imperial Osmanli sits and smokes long days in his pavilion,
without any thought at all of his broad domain except to despise and to
plunder and impoverish its cultivators; and is his title made better
thereby than the Turcoman's, to be the heir of Alexander and Seleucus,
of the Ptolemies and Massinissa, of Constantine and Justinian? What
claim does it give him upon Europe, Asia, and Africa, upon Greece,
Palestine, and Egypt, that he has frustrated the munificence of nature
and demolished the works of man?
5.
Asia Minor especially, the peninsula which lies between the Black
Sea, the Archipelago, and the Mediterranean, was by nature one of the
most beautiful, and had been made by art one of the most fertile of
countries. It had for generations contained flourishing marts of
commerce, and it had been studded with magnificent cities, the ruins of
which now stand as a sepulchre of the past. No country perhaps has seen
such a succession of prosperous states, and had such a host of
historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various
distributions of territory. It is memorable in the beginning of history
for its barbarian kings and nobles, whose names stand as commonplaces
and proverbs of wealth and luxury. The magnificence of Pelops imparts
lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. The name of
Croesus, King of Lydia, whom I have already had occasion to mention,
goes as a proverb for his enormous riches. Midas, King of Phrygia, had
such abundance of the precious metals, that he was said by the poets to
have the power of turning whatever he touched into gold. The tomb of
Mausolus, King of Caria, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. It was the same with the Greek colonies which were scattered
along its coasts; they are renowned for opulence, for philosophy, and
for the liberal and the fine arts. Homer among the poets, Thales among
philosophers, Herodotus, the father of history, Hippocrates, the oracle
of physicians, Apelles, the prince of painters, were among their
citizens; and Pythius, who presented one of the Persian Kings with a
plane-tree and a vine of massive gold, was in his day, after those
kings, the richest man in the known world.
Then come the many splendid cities founded by the successors of
Alexander, through its extent; and the powerful and opulent kingdoms,
Greek or Barbarian, of Pontus, and Bithynia, and Pergamus—Pergamus,
with its library of 200,000 choice volumes. Later still, the resources
of the country were so well recognised, that it was the favourite prey
of the Roman statesmen, who, after involving themselves in enormous
debts in the career of ambition, needed by extortion and rapine to set
themselves right with their creditors. Next it became one of the first
seats of Christianity; St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles relates to
us the apostolic labours of St. Paul there in town and country; St.
John wrote the Apocalypse to the Churches of seven of its principal
cities; and St. Peter, his first Epistle to Christians scattered
through its provinces. It was the home of some of the greatest Saints,
Martyrs, and Doctors of the early ages: there first, in Bithynia, the
power of Christianity manifested itself over a heathen population;
there St. Polycarp was martyred, there St. Gregory Thamaturgus
converted the inhabitants of Pontus; there St. Gregory Nazianzen, St.
Gregory Nyssen, St. Basil, and St. Amphilochius preached and wrote.
There were held three of the first four Councils of the Church, at
Chalcedon, at Ephesus, and at Nicæa, the very city afterwards profaned
by the palace of the Sultan. It abounded in the gifts of nature, for
food, utility, or ornament; its rivers ran with gold, its mountains
yielded the most costly marbles; it had mines of copper, and especially
of iron; its plains were fruitful in all kinds of grain, in broad
pastures and luxuriant woods, while its hills were favourable to the
olive and the vine.
Such was that region, once celebrated for its natural advantages,
for its arts, its splendour, as well as for its gifts of grace; and the
misery and degradation which are at present imprinted on the very face
of the soil are the emblems of that worse ruin which has overtaken the
souls of its children. I have already referred to the journal of Dr.
Chandler, who saw it, even in its western coast, overrun by the hideous
tents of the Turcomans. Another traveller of late years[49] tells us of
that ancient Bithynia, which runs along the Black Sea, a beautiful and
romantic country, intersected with lofty mountains and fertile valleys,
and abounding in rivers and forests. The luxuriance of the pastures, he
says, and the richness of the woods, often reminded him of an English
gentleman's park. Such is it as nature has furnished it for the benefit
of man; but he found its forests covered with straggling Turcomans and
numerous flocks of goats. As he was passing through Phrygia, the
inhabitants smiled, when he asked for ruins, assuring him that the
whole country was overspread with them. There too again he found a
great part of its face covered with the roving Turcomans, “a boisterous
and ignorant race, though much more honourable and hospitable,” he
adds, “than the inhabitants of the towns.” Mr. Alison tells us that
when the English fleet, in 1801, was stationed on the southern coast,
some sailors accidentally set fire to a thick wood, and the space thus
left bare was studded all along with the ruins of temples and palaces.
A still more recent traveller[50] corroborates this testimony.
Striking inland from Smyrna, he found “the scenery extremely beautiful,
and the land,” he continues, “which is always rich, would be valuable,
if sufficiently cultivated, but it is much neglected.” In another part
of the country, he “rode for at least three miles through a ruined
city, which was one pile of temples, theatres, and buildings, vying
with each other in splendour.” Now here, you will observe, I am not
finding fault with the mere circumstance that the scenes of ancient
grandeur should abound in ruins. Buildings will decay; old buildings
will not answer new uses; there are ruins enough in Europe; but the
force of the argument lies in this, that in these countries there are
ruins and nothing else; that the old is gone, and has not been replaced
by the new. So was it about Smyrna; and so too about Sardis: “Its
situation,” he says, “is very beautiful, but the country over which it
looks is now almost deserted, and the valley is become a swamp. Its
little rivers of clear water, after turning a mill or two, serve only
to flood, instead of draining and beautifying the country.” His
descriptions of the splendour of the scenery, yet of the desolation of
the land, are so frequent that I should not be able to confine my
extracts within bounds, did I attempt to give them all. He speaks of
his route as lying through “a rich wilderness” of ruins. Sometimes the
landscape “so far exceeded the beauty of nature, as to seem the work of
magic.” Again, “the splendid view passed like a dream; for the
continual turns in the road, and the increasing richness of the woods
and vegetation, soon limited my view to a mere foreground. Nor was this
without interest; on each projecting rock stood an ancient sarcophagus;
and the trees half concealed the lids and broken sculpture of
innumerable tombs.”
The gifts of nature remain; he was especially struck with the trees.
“We traversed the coast,” he says, “through woods of the richest trees,
the planes being the handsomest to be found in this or perhaps any
other part of the world. I have never seen such stupendous arms to any
trees.” Everything was running wild; “the underwood was of myrtle,
growing sometimes twenty feet high, the beautiful daphne laurel, and
the arbutus; and they seemed contending for preëminence with the vine,
clematis, and woodbine, which climbed to the very tops, and in many
instances bore them down into a thicket of vegetation, impervious
except to the squirrels and birds, which, sensible of their security in
these retreats, stand boldly to survey the traveller.” Elsewhere he
found the ground carpeted with the most beautiful flowers. A Protestant
Missionary,[51] in like manner, travelling in a different part of the
country, speaks of the hedges of wild roses, the luxuriant gardens and
fruit-trees, principally the cherry, the rich soil, the growth of
beech, oak, and maple, the level meadows and swelling hills covered
with the richest sward, and the rivulets of the purest water. No wonder
that, as he tells us, “sitting down under a spreading walnut-tree, by
the side of a murmuring mill stream, he was led by the charming
woodland scenery around to reflect upon that mysterious Providence, by
which so beautiful a country has been placed under such a blighting
government, in the hands of so ignorant and barbarous a people.”
The state of the population is in keeping with the neglected
condition of the country. It is, down to the present time, wasting
away; and that there are inhabitants at all seems in the main referable
to merely accidental causes. On the road from Angora to Constantinople
there were old people, twenty years since, who remembered as many as
forty or fifty villages, where now there are none; and in the middle of
the last century two hundred places had become forsaken in the tract
lying between those two cities and Smyrna.[52]
This desolation is no accident of a declining empire; it dates from
the very time that a Turk first came into the country, from the era of
the Seljukian Sultans, eight hundred years ago. We have indirect but
clear proof of it in the course of history following their expulsion
from the country by the Crusaders. For a while the Greeks recovered
their dominion in its western portion, and fixed their imperial
residence at Nicæa, which had been the capital of the Seljukians. A
vigorous prince mounted the throne, and the main object of his
exertions and the special work of his reign was the recovery of the
soil. We are told by an English historian,[53] that he found the most
fertile lands without either cultivation or inhabitants, and he took
them into his own management. It followed that, in the course of some
years, the imperial domain became the granary and garden of Asia; and
the sovereign made money without impoverishing his people. According to
the nature of the soil, he sowed it with corn, or planted it with
vines, or laid it down in grass: his pastures abounded with herds and
flocks, horses and swine; and his speculation, as it may be called, in
poultry was so happy, that he was able to present his empress with a
crown of pearls and diamonds out of his gains. His example encouraged
his nobles to imitation; and they learned to depend for their incomes
on the honourable proceeds of their estates, instead of oppressing
their people, and seeking favours from the court. Such was the
immediate consequence when man coöperated with the bountifulness of
nature in this fruitful region; and it brings out prominently by its
contrast the wretchedness of the Turkish domination.
6.
That wretchedness is found, not in Asia Minor only, but wherever
Turks are to be found in power. Throughout the whole extent of their
territory, if you believe the report of travellers, the peasantry are
indigent, oppressed, and wretched.[54] The great island of Crete or
Candia would maintain four times its present population; once it had a
hundred cities; many of its towns, which were densely populous, are now
obscure villages. Under the Venetians it used to export corn largely;
now it imports it. As to Cyprus, from holding a million of inhabitants,
it now has only 30,000. Its climate was that of a perpetual spring; now
it is unwholesome and unpleasant; its cities and towns nearly touched
one another, now they are simply ruins. Corn, wine, oil, sugar, and the
metals are among its productions; the soil is still exceedingly rich;
but now, according to Dr. Clarke, in that “paradise of the Levant,
agriculture is neglected, inhabitants are oppressed, population is
destroyed.” Cross over to the continent, and survey Syria and its
neighbouring cities; at this day the Turks themselves are dying out;
Diarbekr, which numbered 400,000 souls in the middle of last century,
forty years afterwards had dwindled to 50,000. Mosul had lost half its
inhabitants; Bagdad had fallen from 130,000 to 20,000; and Bassora from
100,000 to 8,000.
If we pass on to Egypt, the tale is still the same. “In the
fifteenth century,” says Mr. Alison, “Egypt, after all the revolutions
which it had undergone, was comparatively rich and populous; but since
the fatal era of Turkish conquest, the tyranny of the Pashas has
expelled industry, riches, and the arts.” Stretch across the width of
Africa to Barbary, wherever there is a Turk, there is desolation. What
indeed have the shepherds of the desert, in the most ambitious effort
of their civilization, to do with the cultivation of the soil? “That
fertile territory,” says Robertson, “which sustained the Roman Empire,
still lies in a great measure uncultivated; and that province, which
Victor called Speciositas totius terræ florentis, is now the
retreat of pirates and banditti.”
End your survey at length with Europe, and you find the same account
is to be given of its Turkish provinces. In the Morea, Chateaubriand,
wherever he went, beheld villages destroyed by fire and sword, whole
suburbs deserted, often fifteen leagues without a single habitation. “I
have travelled,” says Mr. Thornton, “through several provinces of
European Turkey, and cannot convey an idea of the state of desolation
in which that beautiful country is left. For the space of seventy
miles, between Kirk Kilise and Carnabat, there is not an inhabitant,
though the country is an earthly paradise. The extensive and pleasant
village of Faki, with its houses deserted, its gardens overrun with
weeds and grass, its lands waste and uncultivated, and now the resort
of robbers, affects the traveller with the most painful
sensations.”[55] Even in Wallachia and Moldavia the population has been
gradually decreasing, while of that rich country not more than a
fortieth part is under tillage. In a word, the average population in
the whole Empire is not a fifth of what it was in ancient times.
7.
Here I am tempted to exclaim (though the very juxtaposition of two
countries so different from each other in their condition needs an
apology), I cannot help exclaiming, how different is the condition of
that other peninsula in the centre of which is placed the See of Peter!
I am ashamed of comparing, or even contrasting, Italy with Asia
Minor—the seat of Christian governments with the seat of a barbarian
rule—except that, since I have been speaking of the tenderness which
the Popes have shown, according to their means, for the earth and its
cultivators, there is a sort of fitness in pointing out that the result
is in their case conformable to our just anticipation. Besides, so much
is uttered among us in disparagement of the governments of that
beautiful country, that there is a reason for pressing the contrast on
the attention of those, who in their hearts acknowledge little
difference between the rulers of Italy and of Turkey. I think it will
be instructive, then, to dwell upon the account given us of Italy by an
intelligent and popular writer of this day; nor need we, in doing so,
concern ourselves with questions which he elsewhere discusses, such as
whether Italy has received the last improvements in agriculture, or in
civil economy, or in finance, or in politics, or in mechanical
contrivances; in short, whether the art of life is carried there to its
perfection. Systems and codes are to be tested by their results; let us
put aside theories and disputable points; let us survey a broad,
undeniable, important fact; let us look simply at the state both of the
land and of the population in Italy; let us take it as our gauge and
estimate of political institutions; let us, by way of contrast, put it
side by side of the state of land and population, as reported to us by
travellers in Turkey.
Mr. Alison, then, in his most diligent and interesting history of
Europe,[56] divides the extent of Italy into three great districts, of
mountain, plain, and marsh. The region of marsh lies between the
Apennines and the Mediterranean; and here, I confess, he finds fault
with the degree of diligence in reclaiming it exerted by its present
possessors. He notices with dissatisfaction that the marshes of
Volterra are still as pestilential as in the days of Hannibal;
moreover, that the Campagna of Rome, once inhabited by numerous tribes,
is now an almost uninhabited desert, and that the Pontine Marshes,
formerly the abode of thirty nations, are now a pestilential swamp. I
will not stop to remind you that the irruptions of barbarians like the
Turks, have been the causes of this desolation, that the existing
governments had nothing to do with it, and that, on the contrary, they
have made various efforts to overcome the evil. For argument's sake, I
will allow them to be a reproach to the government, for they will be
found to be only exceptions to the general state of the country. Even
as regards this low tract, he speaks of one portion of it, the plain of
the Clitumnus, as being rich, as in ancient days, in herds and flocks;
and he enlarges upon the Campagna of Naples as “still the scene of
industry, elegance, and agricultural riches. There,” he says, “still,
as in ancient times, an admirable cultivation brings to perfection the
choicest gifts of nature. Magnificent crops of wheat and maize cover
the rich and level expanse; rows of elms or willows shelter their
harvests from the too scorching rays of the sun; and luxuriant vines,
clustering to the very tops of the trees, are trained in festoons from
one summit to the other. On its hills the orange, the vine, and the
fig-tree flourish in luxuriant beauty; the air is rendered fragrant by
their ceaseless perfume; and the prodigy is here exhibited of the fruit
and the flower appearing at the same time on the same stem.”
So much for that portion of Italy which owes least to the labours of
the husbandman: the second portion is the plain of Lombardy, which
stretches three hundred miles in length by one hundred and twenty in
breadth, and which, he says, “beyond question is the richest and the
most fertile in Europe.” This great plain is so level, that you may
travel two hundred miles in a straight line, without coming to a
natural eminence ten feet high; and it is watered by numerous rivers,
the Ticino, the Adda, the Adige, and others, which fall into the great
stream of the Po, the “king of rivers,” as Virgil calls it, which flows
majestically through its length from west to east till it finds its
mouth in the Adriatic. It is obvious, from the testimony of the various
travellers in the East, whom I have cited, what would be the fate of
this noble plain under a Turkish government; it would become nothing
more or less than one great and deadly swamp. But Mr. Alison observes:
“It is hard to say, whether the cultivation of the soil, the riches of
nature, or the structures of human industry in this beautiful region,
are most to be admired. An unrivalled system of agriculture, from which
every nation in Europe might take a lesson, has long been established
over its whole surface, and two, and sometimes three successive crops
annually reward the labours of the husbandman. Indian corn is produced
in abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords
subsistence for a numerous and dense population. Rice arrives at
maturity to a great extent in the marshy districts; and an incomparable
system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of
the Alps to every field, and in some places to every ridge, in the
grass lands. It is in these rich meadows, stretching round Lodi, and
from thence to Verona, that the celebrated Parmesan cheese, known over
all Europe for the richness of its flavour, is made. The vine and the
olive thrive in the sunny slopes which ascend from the plain to the
ridges of the Alps; and a woody zone of never-failing beauty lies
between the desolation of the mountain and the fertility of the plain.”
8.
Such is his language concerning the cultivation at present bestowed
upon the great plain of Italy; but after all it is for the third or
mountainous region of the country, where art has to supply the
deficiencies of nature, that he reserves his enthusiastic praises.
After speaking of what nature really does for it in the way of
vegetation and fruits, he continues: “An admirable terrace-cultivation,
where art and industry have combined to overcome the obstacles of
nature, has everywhere converted the slopes, naturally sterile and
arid, into a succession of gardens, loaded with the choicest vegetable
productions. A delicious climate there brings the finest fruits to
maturity; the grapes hang in festoons from tree to tree; the song of
the nightingale is heard in every grove; all nature seems to rejoice in
the paradise which the industry of man has created. To this
incomparable system of horticulture, which appears to have been unknown
to the ancient Romans, and to have been introduced into Europe by the
warriors who returned from the Crusades, the riches and smiling aspect
of Tuscany and the mountain-region of Italy are chiefly to be ascribed;
for nothing can be more desolate by nature than the waterless
declivities, in general almost destitute of soil, on which it has been
formed. The earth required to be brought in from a distance, retaining
walls erected, the steep slopes converted into a series of gentle
inclinations, the mountain-torrent diverted or restrained, and the
means of artificial irrigation, to sustain nature during the long
droughts of summer, obtained. By the incessant labour of centuries this
prodigy has been completed, and the very stony sterility of nature
converted into the means of heightening, by artificial means, the heat
of summer.... No room is lost in these little but precious freeholds;
the vine extends its tendrils along the terrace walls ... in the
corners formed by their meeting, a little sheltered nook is found,
where fig-trees are planted, which ripen delicious fruit under their
protection. The owner takes advantage of every vacant space to raise
melons and vegetables. Olives shelter it from the rains; so that,
within the compass of a very small garden, he obtains olives, figs,
grapes, pomegranates, and melons. Such is the return which nature
yields under this admirable system of management, that half the crop of
seven acres is sufficient in general for the maintenance of a family of
five persons, and the whole produce supports them all in rustic
affluence. Italy, in this delightful region, still realizes the glowing
description of her classic historian three hundred years ago.”
The author I have quoted goes on next to observe that this diligent
cultivation of the rock accounts for what at first sight is
inexplicable, viz., the vast population, which is found, not merely in
the valleys, but over the greater part of the ridges of the Apennines,
and the endless succession of villages and hamlets which are perched on
the edge or summit of rocks, often, to appearance, scarcely accessible
to human approach. He adds that the labour never ends, for, if a place
goes out of repair, the violence of the rain will soon destroy it.
“Stones and torrents wash down the soil; the terraces are broken
through; the heavy rains bring down a shapeless mass of ruins;
everything returns rapidly to its former state.” Thus it is that parts
of Palestine at present exhibit such desolate features to the
traveller, who wonders how it ever could have been the rich land
described in Scripture; till he finds that it was this sort of
cultivation which made it what it was, that this it was the Crusaders
probably saw and imported into Europe, and this that the ruthless Turks
in great measure laid waste.
Lastly, he speaks of the population of Italy; as to the towns, it
has declined on account of the new channels of commerce which nautical
discovery has opened, to the prejudice of the marts and ports of the
middle ages. In spite of this, however, he says, “that the provinces
have increased both in riches and inhabitants, and the population of
Italy was never, either in the days of the Emperors, or of the modern
Republics, so considerable as it is at the present moment. In the days
of Napoleon, it gave 1,237 to the square marine league, a density
greater than that of either France or England at that period. This
populousness of Italy,” he adds, “is to be explained by the direction
of its capital to agricultural investment, and the increasing industry
with which, during a long course of centuries, its inhabitants have
overcome the sterility of nature.”
Such is the contrast between Italy under its present governments and
Asia Minor under the Turks; and can we doubt at all, that, if the Turks
had conquered Italy, they would have caused the labours of the
agriculturist and the farmer to cease, and have reduced it to the level
of their present dominions?
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Vid. a beautiful passage in Cardinal Wiseman's late lecture at
Liverpool.
[49] Vid. Murray's Asia.
[50] Sir Charles Fellows.
[51] Vid. Smith and Dwight's Travels.
[52] Eclectic Review, Dec., 1839.
[53] Gibbon.
[54] Alison on Population, vol. i. p. 309, etc.
[55] Vol. i., p. 66, note.
[56] Alison, ch. xx., § 28.