Chapter IV: Part 4

While in Jerusalem, Kirimian was shadowed by the Sultan's detectives; but about three years ago he was elected Catholicos by the Armenians, and the Russian Czar (not the present one, but his father, Alexander), sanctioned his election. The Armenians are proud of him, for he is worthy of his office. He is a great scholar, and the author of several books which are worthy of translation into English. His book Traghti Endanik (the family of Paradise), is the best book I ever saw or read in any language on family life. In it he describes the first holy family, which was created in the Garden of Eden, in Armenia, and then goes on to describe a holy family, the ideal family, a true home. It is full of the Holy Spirit. Catholicos Kirimian was married and had a family, and really his family was a holy family and he had an ideal home,--therefore Armenians call him Kirimian Hayrig or "father," and he is worthy of the title; but his wife died. He is also a great orator, preaching fiery gospel sermons as our greatest revivalists preach them. He loved the American missionaries in Constantinople, and they returned the feeling. Kirimian was born in Van April 16, 1820; therefore he is now 76 years old, but full of life and vigor. I hope he will live longer, to see his beloved nation and country saved from the oppressions of the cruel Turkish Sultan. I could write a book on the life of Kirimian and his great deeds in Armenia, for the Armenians; how he opened schools and established printing presses; how he went to the Congress in Berlin and championed the Armenian cause; and all his noble works. But this is not the place.

THE PAKRADOONIAN DYNASTY.

For a century after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, the fortunes of Armenia were apparently at their lowest ebb, and as a country it almost disappears from history; but by one of the compensations of nature, which provides that human force, like other force, cannot be extinguished, but if suppressed will find an outlet elsewhere, its people began a career of brilliancy and power unequaled in its history, and broadened from the rule of a tormented buffer-state to that of the great Byzantine Empire itself. The Saracen torrent flowed over Armenia's lowlands and up to the base of its mountain fortresses, but never overcame them; generation after generation the contending forces battled together, surging back and forth, and filling the beautiful valleys with fire and blood, but Armenia proper was never added to the list of Saracen conquests, never made a part of the Mohammedan Empire or strengthened Mohammedanism till four centuries later through Byzantine greed and folly. Internally it was all in feudal anarchy again so far as concerned any one central focus of government. Even the Persian satraps had gone from the Persian side, and with them the half-control they had kept over the turbulent baronage; on the Roman side from early in the seventh century to early in the eighth, the throne of Constantinople was filled with weak and unstable monarchs, fighting for Anatolia against the Saracens, and unable to exercise any effective control over Armenia, to which indeed they looked as a frontier defense against those very foes.

But let us not attach too harsh a meaning to "anarchy." There were a hundred rulers, it is true, great dukes and barons, each supreme in his own district; but because they held power by the sword against a savage enemy, their subjects had to be a strong, independent race, with arms in their hands, which they would use against their chiefs as well as the foreigners if there was great oppression. In this fiery school, Armenia learned the sternest lessons of self-help and discipline. With no interference from outsiders to fear, and no help from them to be got, it became even more confirmed in its own independent isolated ways, a world to itself as it has been ever since. Its cultivators tilled their fields as they had done for so many centuries, and its scholars read such books as they had, and wrote such as their own minds furnished. But vast numbers of its hardy sons took service in the Greek armies, and became the bone and sinew of the defense of Asia Minor against the caliphs; not only so, but they rose by hundreds to the highest commands in the empire, both civil and military. They formed the best "society" in Constantinople itself; and to crown all, a score of emperors and empresses in four different lines, including the most illustrious ones that ever sat on the throne from Constantine down, and who ruled the empire for two hundred and seventy-seven years, were Armenians.

It is within the truth, and can be justified from the greatest of English historians, to say that for four centuries the Byzantine Empire was not a Greek but an Armenian empire. Armenians by blood filled all the great offices of state, commanded the armies, occupied the throne for nearly three hundred years, preserved the empire from external invasion and internal disintegration. It was the accession of an Armenian dynasty that turned it from a decaying power to one that expanded steadily for two centuries, from one falling into anarchy to one the glory of the world for scientific organizations; and it was the final overthrow of Armenian influence that ruined the empire, being followed almost at once by the loss of half its territory and the richest part, and the break-up of its system of civil administration. Everywhere in the time of Byzantine glory you find the list full of Armenian names. The appearance of "Bardas" as the name of generals or civil magnates is always proof of Armenian blood, and that name is monotonously common; it is the Greek form of "Vartan," though now and then they make it "Bardanes." One of the greatest conquerors in Byzantine history, John Kurkuas, was an Armenian, from a family which supplied three generations of statesmen and generals, and two great emperors. And this is part of what the immortal historian of "Greece Under Foreign Domination," George Finlay, has to say:--

"At the accession of Leo III (717), the Hellenic race occupied a very subordinate position in the empire. The predominant influence in the political administration was in the hands of Asiatics, and particularly of Armenians, who filled the highest military commands. Of the numerous rebels who assumed the title of emperor, the greater part were Armenians. Artabasdos, who rebelled against his brother, Constantine V, was an Armenian. Alexios Mousel, strangled by order of Constantine VI, in the year 790; Bardan called the Turk, who rebelled against Nicephorus I; Arsaber [Arshavir] the father-in-law of Leo V, convicted of treason in 808; and Thomas, who revolted against Michael II, were all Asiatics, and most of them Armenians. Many of the Armenians in the Byzantine Empire belonged to the oldest and most illustrious families in the Christian world; and their connection with the remains of Roman society at Constantinople, in which the pride of birth was cherished, was a proof that Asiatic influence had eclipsed Roman and Greek in the government of the empire. An amazing instance of the influence of Asiatic prejudices at Constantinople will appear in the eagerness displayed by Basil I, a Sclavonian groom from Macedonia, to claim descent from the Armenian royal family." (But I shall show that he was an Armenian.)

Let us note the Armenian sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire. First the great Iconoclast house, of Leo the so-called Isaurian, the saviour and restorer of the empire, which reigned from 716 to 797. Leo considered himself an Armenian, and he ought to have known best, and he married his daughter to an Armenian. He saved Constantinople from capture by the Saracens, causing the destruction of the finest Mohammedan army ever got together; of its 180,000 men only 30,000 got back home, according to the Mohammedan historians. Twenty-two years later another great Moslem army was annihilated by Leo, and for two centuries the Saracens scarcely troubled the empire again. But not only so, he remodeled the whole administration so effectively that no serious break-down occurred for three centuries, and he put new life into the whole society, so that it began to outgrow its enemies, as well as outfight them. After his able dynasty ended, another Armenian, Leo V, reigned seven and a half years, from 813 to 820. About half a century later began the Basilian dynasty, under which the laws were codified, and Bulgaria destroyed. Basil was born in Macedonia, but the name of his brother, Symbatios, Armenian Simpad, shows that he was of an Armenian family, the colonies of Armenians having spread all over the civilized world. His line reigned without a break from 867 to 963, when the beautiful widow Theophano was pushed aside for sixteen years by another Armenian house, Nikephoros Phokas and his nephew John Zimiskes, two of the ablest generals and statesmen ever on the throne, descendants of a brother of the great commander, John Kurkuas, before spoken of; then Theophano's son, Basil II--Boulgaroktonos, the Bulgarian slayer, and the ultimate destroyer of Armenia as well--took the throne, 979, and the dynasty continued till 1057, when it had run to dregs, and had just before finally ruined Armenia, and by so doing ruined the empire.

To go back to Armenia itself. The reason a feudal anarchy always ends in a military monarchy, no matter how able or self-willed every one of the separate chiefs may be, is that this very class most interested in perpetuating it grow weary of it. The stronger barons oppress and plunder the weaker, who are always superior in numbers, and in united strength if they will act together. A small lord may like to be free from control by the king's officers as well as a great one; but if he can only have that privilege by letting his overbearing neighbor be free from it too, and rob him, he finds it does not pay, and sighs for a law that will control everyone alike, and a strong ruler to enforce it. So if a chief in such a community comes to be known as having a hard hand and letting no one be above the law but himself, the small landholders flock under his banner; he grows into a prince, and eventually some prince of such a family will make himself king, with the goodwill and help of all but a few great houses, who feel able to take care of themselves and desirous of taking care of others.

This happened in Armenia. In 743, a century after the battle of Nehavend and four years after Leo's crushing defeat of the second great Saracen army, we find that a chief named Ashod, of the family of Pakrad or Bagrat, claiming descent from the ancient Jews (see the Haigian dynasty in this book), had managed to win control over central and northern Armenia; how long it had been exercised, or what it grew from, no one knows. Ashod I is the first known founder of the Pakradoonian dynasty, though it is counted as beginning from the recognition of its independence by the caliphs over a century later. He recovered some parts of Armenia proper, and fought hard for Lesser Armenia. The family had vigorous blood in it, and somewhere in the ninth century--885 is the date fixed--it was recognized by the caliphs as an independent house of kings, and Armenia as a kingdom. But it had really been so for over a hundred years before.

Ashod II, "the Iron," gained his title from his stern military power; he beat back the Arabs and gave the land peace for a considerable time. He left no son, and his brother Appas succeeded him; another brave and wise ruler, who brought back the Armenian captives held in bondage by the Saracens. He made the city of Kars his capital. It is now owned by Russia, having been captured by her forces in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878. He greatly improved the city, and built a beautiful cathedral there. After a reign of twenty-four years he died in peace, and his son succeeded him as Ashod III.

This was the glory of the line in prowess and generosity; he reminds one of Alfred the Great, in England. He was the terror of his country's enemies; not one of them--Arab, Greek, or Persian--dared to invade Armenia, and they sent presents to conciliate his friendship. It was under him that the country became formally independent again. He filled it with fortified places. He gave all his personal income in charity, and established almshouses and state charities. He was so benevolent and so interested in the destitute that he was called The Merciful. He ruled over Armenia twenty-six years, and was succeeded by his son Simpad. This was neither a good man nor good ruler; corrupt, cruel, and ambitious only for selfish purposes. He made the city of Ani, on the north side of Mt. Ararat, the royal capital, built strong walls and lofty towers around it, and is said to have erected 1001 churches in it--which he might do, and still be a bad man. The extent of its still existing ruins of palaces, churches, towers, and castles testifies that it was one of the great cities of the world, like Babylon and Antioch.

For more than a century Armenia flourished and grew rich; then it disappeared once more under the hammer and anvil of Byzantine and Saracen, aided by internal disruption--the traitorousness of its great nobles, who hated the kings for controlling their lawlessness. Let us take in just its situation. It included the heart of the Armenian highlands; but it had not the extent of old Armenia, several Armenian districts being independent of it, and either free or tributary to the Byzantine Empire. Ani was its seat; but the district around Kars, fifty miles northwest, had split off into a separate principality, the boundary between the two being the Aras; on the east was Vaspourakan, another princedom; on the west Sebaste, another; on the north Iberia, and Abkhasia or Abasgia or Albania, the realms of the Georgians; and one or two others not quite certain,--but all these ruled by Armenian princes, mostly of the Pakradoonian house. Though Armenia was in fragments, therefore, the pieces formed a sort of family confederacy, and often acted together, as they did to their eventual ruin. Their folly paved the way for the destruction of Armenian national existence, and the worse folly of a Byzantine emperor accomplished it. About 1020 the Seljuk Turks were pressing so hard on Vaspourakan that the prince, Sennacherib, was unable to hold out, and ceded his dominion to Basil II of Constantinople in return for the sovereignty of Sebaste, which he agreed to hold as a Byzantine governor; great numbers of his subjects went with him. Something about this transaction roused the Armenian national feeling to resentment; for John Simpad, king of Armenia (known at this time as the Kingdom of Ani, from its capital), joined with George the Pakradoonian king; of Iberia, to promise help to a couple of discontented generals, one at least an Armenian, who were to raise the standard of revolt in Cappadocia and call on all Armenians to rise. It was to have been a general revolt of all eastern Asia Minor. But the mighty Basil, conqueror of Bulgaria, and nearing the end of his half-century's reign, first crushed the rebellion by buying up one of the generals and getting him to assassinate the other (the Armenian), and then crushed the league of Bagratian kings. The king of Armenia, as the price of retaining his throne, was compelled to sign a treaty ceding the kingdom to the Byzantine Empire after his death.

John Simpad was succeeded by his nephew Kakig, an able ruler and good general. But in 1042 there was placed on the Byzantine throne the fourth husband of the despicable old female (Zoe), whose male creatures, married or not married to her, misgoverned the empire for nearly thirty years. The reign of Constantine Monomachos stands out black in the history of the world; it not only destroyed Armenia, but it fatally wounded the Greek Empire; it gave Asia Minor to the Turks; it was the first great step towards subjecting Eastern Christianity to the Mohammedans; it began the Eastern Question. The sack of Constantinople by the Turks, four centuries later, was directly due to it. Almost never has sheer contemptible negative good-for-nothingness produced such awful results. He was a worthless man and an utterly incapable statesman; a libertine without decency, a spend-thrift without generosity or taste, a ruler without sense of responsibility. Having spent on debauchery or his favorites, or diversions, or palaces in Constantinople, or other selfish, short-sighted gratifications, or on the church to win its indulgence for them, all the money he could wring from his subjects without risking his throne, he bethought himself of another resource. The provinces on the frontiers of Iberia, Armenia, and Syria, were exempted from taxation, and the small dependent states in that region from tribute, in consideration of maintaining bodies of militia to defend their territories, and save the central government from keeping regular troops there. The emperor ordered the militia disbanded, and the taxes and tribute collected and remitted to Constantinople as from other places. This monstrous piece of imbecility laid the southeastern frontier open to the Turks at once; and the money was quickly wasted in the emperor's pleasures. But even this was not enough, and he cast his eyes on Armenia as a rich country to squeeze taxes out of, and sent word to Kakig to fulfill his uncle's will, and yield up his kingdom. Kakig refused. Constantine formed an alliance with the Saracen emir of Tovin (on the east flank of Armenia), and sent an army to attack Ani; and a number of the great Armenian nobles turned traitors and joined the Byzantine forces. Kakig could not make head against the three allies with the slender forces left him; and choosing to yield to Christians rather than Saracens, though Constantine evidently had no such scruples, surrendered Ani to the imperial forces (1045), and went to Constantinople to plead his cause with the emperor. Constantine would not yield, and Kakig resigned his kingship for a magistracy, and large estates in Cappadocia. The emperor forced the Catholicos to leave Ani and live at Arzen, then at Constantinople; finally the Comnenian house allowed him to settle in Sebaste among his people. The princedom of Kars alone preserved its independence against both Christians and Saracens, and thus the Armenian life still beat; but as a kingdom, Armenia perished and the Pakradoonian dynasty with it when Ani surrendered.

This piece of wanton foolishness and criminality had its immediate reward; it laid all Asia Minor open to the Turks--for the Armenians after they had lost their independence would not fight for their oppressors as they had fought for themselves; and the Turks were ready. Three years before the capture of Ani, a Turkish chief, cousin of Togrul Beg, flying after a defeat, had asked the Byzantine governor of Vaspourakan to let him pass through that district; on being refused, he attacked the imperial troops, routed them, captured the governor, and on reaching Turkish ground sold him as a slave, and urged Togrul to invade the Byzantine territories, as they were of matchless fertility and wealth, and the troops not formidable. Togrul sent his nephew Ibrahim to do so in 1048; the timid Byzantine commanders, after defeating a detachment of his troops, waited for reinforcements before encountering the main body, and Ibrahim, finding the movable wealth mostly stored up in fortresses, assailed the rich, unfortified city of Arzen, with 300,000 people, who had neglected to transfer their possessions to Theodosiopolis, the nearest fortress. It was one of the chief seats of Asiatic commerce, full of the warehouses of Armenian and Syrian merchants. They defended themselves for six days with such desperation that Ibrahim, giving up the hope of plunder, and wishing at once to secure his rear from attack while retreating, and to injure Byzantine resources, set fire to the city, and reduced it to ashes. Few such conflagrations have ever been witnessed on earth; perhaps Moscow and Chicago are the only things comparable. It is said that 140,000 persons perished in the fire and in the massacre by the Turks that followed, and the prisoners taken were such a multitude that the slave markets of Asia were filled with ladies and children from Arzen. This was the first of the many such calamities that have dispersed the Armenians all over the world, like the Jews, have reduced one of the richest and most populous countries on the earth to a poor and thinly populated one, and turned Asia Minor practically into a desert. The next year Kars was overrun; but in 1050 an attack on Manzikert failed, and after an unsuccessful invasion again in 1052, the Turks retired for a while, but only for a more terrible onslaught.

Before going on to the next dynasty, I will finish the story of Kakig. In his Cappadocian magistracy he was still called King Kakig and honored as a king. One day he heard that a Greek bishop had called his dog "Armen" to insult the Armenians, and went to his house to make sure, and to exact vengeance if it were true. They drank heavily together, and Kakig ordered the bishop to call his dog; the bishop, too drunk to know what he was about, called him "Here, Armen." Kakig, in a rage, ordered his retainers to put the bishop and his dog into a bag together, and then beat the dog till he bit his master to death. The church was too powerful for even a king to murder a bishop with impunity, and Kakig was hanged on a castle wall. This gave rise to the Turkish proverb, "Kart Giavour musliman almaz, Room Ermenie dost almaz" (An infidel never becomes a Moslem, a Greek never loves an Armenian). The Turks have always acted on this, and used the Greeks against the Armenians; but the old hate has died out now under common oppression.

THE RUPENIAN DYNASTY.

The imbecile policy of the Byzantine Court continued after the suppression of the line of Pakrad, and with even worse results. Having destroyed the interest and even the right of Armenia to keep up an army of her own, and confiscated her revenues applied to that purpose, the loss of defenders should have been made good as far as possible, by keeping a large regular army there in their place; but the same corrupt and profligate court avarice which had caused the one, prevented the other. Not only did Constantine X (1059-67) actually reduce the number of his army, leave it unprovided with arms and ammunition and other supplies, let the frontier fortifications fall out of repair, and leave the garrison unpaid, to save money for his overgrown court of costly favorites (the Byzantine court a little later cost $20,000,000 a year by itself), and let the officers put civilians on the rolls, and made artisans and shop-keepers of their real soldiers to pocket fraudulent pay for themselves, as the Persians do now, but he used to disband most of his army after every campaign to save paying them, letting them have free quarters on the citizens. The Seljuks were prompt to take advantage of this. In 1060 Togrul sacked Sebaste. In 1063 his greater nephew Alp Arslan began a series of raids that soon reduced Iberia and Northern Armenia almost to a waste. The systematic policy of the Turks was to make any country they invaded impossible of civilized habitation again, by obliterating all the results and "plant" of civilization which many ages of labor and money had enriched it with. They deliberately cut down all the vineyards, orchards, and olive groves, wrecked the aqueducts, filled up the wells and cisterns, broke up the bridges, and in short made the land (except for a few fortresses) a mere desert pasture ground to feed their cattle on. They were only nomad shepherds and cattle-men, despised cities as at best necessary evils, and did not care for tilling the soil. Whatever spot the Turk has set his foot on, he has blasted like a breath from hell, turning to naught the labors of thousands of years at a blow; and he has never put anything of his own in place of what he has destroyed. Where are the Turkish great cities developed by them, the Turkish flourishing agricultural regions, the Turkish manufactures, the Turkish literature or art? At most they have not quite been able to exterminate others' progress, because they must perish themselves in doing it.

The Armenian king of Iberia had to submit; the Armenian prince of Lorhi close by had to give his daughter's hand to Alp Arslan; and at last the royal city of Ani, though strongly situated on a rocky peninsula and protected on two sides by a rapid river and a deep ravine, was left without help by the Byzantines, and in spite of a heroic defense, was taken by storm, June 6, 1064. This convinced the Armenian prince of Kars (another Kakig), that he could not hold out; he surrendered his province to the Byzantine Empire for the appanage of the district of Amassia. This removed the last Armenian prince from the old seats of the race, which were now all occupied by the Turks; and the Armenians emigrated in vast numbers to the districts west and south (old Cappadocia and Cilicia), where their native princes were living as great Byzantine dukes and governors. A number of semi-independent vassal principalities were soon formed, making as before an Armenian wall between the Turks and the empire; but only part way, and far weaker, having left its impregnable mountains, and being much poorer, and having lost heart. The upper part, through Old Armenia, was left wholly open; and the Seljuks poured into Asia Minor like a flood, ruining the country beyond reparation as they went. Within a dozen years from the capture of Ani, the Seljuk dominion reached to Nicaea, fifty miles from Constantinople, and the seat of the first Christian church council. Its lands could be seen from St. Sophia; the Byzantine Empire retained only a strip of Asia Minor along the sea-coast.

But the Armenian courage and national spirit, and the political and military ability which had governed the Eastern Empire so many centuries, were not extinct. The heart of the nation, forced out of its immemorial lands, still beat strongly, and animated their mass of dukedoms, now forming a compact body in the center of Asia Minor, with a common life and national instinct, which was soon to weld them into a new Armenian kingdom, as true and real a one as the old, Armenians under an Armenian prince, but in a wholly different territory, south and southwest of the former. Among the great barons of this district was one Rupen (Reuben), a relative of the slain Kakig; it is said that he saw him hanged. At any rate, no sooner was the deed accomplished than he retired to the mountains of Northeastern Cilicia, and raised the standard of Armenian independence, with himself as king. There was absolutely no reason why it should not be gained; the Seljuk conquests had cut the Armenian districts wholly off from the Greek Empire, so that a Greek army could not come upon them to punish them for revolt without traversing at least a hundred miles of Turkish or other Mohammedan territory. The Armenian settlements were an island in a sea of Mohammedanism. The new kingdom of Cilicia or Lesser Armenia grew with a rapidity that would seem miraculous, only it was a mere coalescing of the fragments of Armenia into their old unity; in no long time it had spread east to the Euphrates, taking in Melitene (Malatia), and Samosata, north fully half way to the Black Sea, and south to the Mediterranean, occupying the coast from Tarsus almost to Antioch. This kingdom played a part of the first importance in the history of Asia Minor for close on three centuries; its territories were gradually whittled away by Turks and Mongols, but it kept the Eastern Mediterranean open for Christian action against the Mohammedans to the last. To their shame, the Byzantine emperors were much more hostile to it than to the Turks, with whom they often allied themselves against it; for some years it was vassal to the Byzantine Empire; later it was overwhelmed by the Mameluke deluge from Egypt, and allied itself with Jenghiz Khan's Mongol hordes against them; but the Mongols passed and the Mamelukes remained, and exacted a terrible vengeance, putting an end to the kingdom with the usual horrors of Oriental conquest in 1375.

Rupen's son Constantine succeeded him. It was by his help that the leaders of the first crusade captured Antioch. Constantine was succeeded by his two sons, Leo and Theodore jointly, but finally Leo reigned alone; he was an able prince, fought the Saracens with success, and much enlarged his kingdom, and at last made a naval attack on Isaurian Seleucia, the frontier fortress of the Byzantine Empire in this part, and an important seaport. This brought "Handsome John," the ablest of the Comnenian line of Byzantine Emperors, into the field; he stormed the Cilician seaports, and then reduced the chief interior fortresses; Leo fled to the Taurus Mountains, but was captured, and died in captivity at Constantinople. His son Rupen had his eyes put out on a charge of treason, and died of it; but his other son, Toros, escaped, and after John's death restored the Cilician kingdom, which had temporarily been made vassal by John. Toros is the glory of the whole Rupenian line; he was of the first rank, both as a general and a statesman. He scarcely ever suffered a military reverse. He beat the Byzantine armies in campaign after campaign, and the Seljuks as well; under him the new Armenia was almost a match for all its enemies combined, and no one of them dreamed of attacking it single-handed. Levon was another able ruler, who maintained the power and prosperity of the kingdom; he was an ally of the great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the Third Crusade, assisted him in capturing Iconium (1190), and both Frederick and the Greek Emperor Alexius III sent him crowns,--the second no great honor, as Alexius was one of the most contemptible of human beings. In Levon's time the capital of the kingdom was Cis, where there is now a great Armenian monastery with rare manuscripts, the residence of a Catholicos. The changes in the extent of the kingdom are very curious; perhaps most curious of all (since the Armenians were always a race of inland and highland farmers, not seamen), the new kingdom was gradually crowded down on the north and lost two-thirds of its territory in that direction, but steadily extended along the coast until it came to include not only all Cilicia but all of old Isauria clear to its western mountain barrier; hundreds of miles of seaboard, from close to Antioch on the one side, to far west of Cyprus on the other, being indeed a strong maritime power. At the end it had lost these western coast extensions, but still had an area larger than that of the Crimea now, a very considerable power to hold the northeast corner of the Mediterranean.

It was during these times that the hard-pressed Armenians received promises from the Popes to help them against their enemies if they would use the Roman ritual and ceremonial, and submit themselves to the papacy. The country never did accept Romanism, though some churches introduced the ritual and images, and conformed to the Roman fashion; and of course it never did get any help from the popes, who had nothing to give but recommendations, which the temporal powers paid no attention to.

Levon VI was the last of the line. He was a weak, easy-going man, handsome and popular, but not of much ability; perhaps he could not have saved his country if he had been. I have told of the Mamelukes and their invasion; they overran the country, and treated the people as the Turks have done lately, striking terror to them by terrific massacres, satiating their lust on the women, and carrying off many thousands of captives for wives or slaves. Levon was taken captive also; after some years in Egypt, he was permitted to go free, wandered through Europe for a dozen years, and finally settled in Paris, where he died in 1393. He was buried by the high altar of the Church of the Celestine; the following epitaph is on his monument, which still exists to-day:

Here lies Levon VI, the noble Lousinian Prince,
the King of Armenia,
who died 1393, A.D., Nov. 23d, in Paris.

I have been dealing here with the special kingdom of Armenia, under a regular king; but it must not be forgotten that the older sections, ruled by Greek or Turk, were Armenia still, inhabited largely by Armenians, in spite of emigration and Turkish settlement, and their fortunes really part of this history. Under both Jenghiz Khan and his successors, and Timour, every horror was let loose on the unhappy lands. For nearly a century the first Tatar invasion cursed and devastated it; hundreds of villages were destroyed, the inhabitants slain or at the mercy of the savages, and vast numbers emigrated in despair. Among others, the cities of Ani and Erzeroum were captured, and every inhabitant put to the sword, each soldier being given his portion to kill, so that none should escape. Timour compelled all whom he spared to become Mohammedans. When he took the city of Van, he threw the inhabitants from the castle walls until the dead bodies reached to the height of the walls. A great famine followed, and many thousands died of it; the starving wretches sometimes ate their children or parents to sustain life a little longer. The reader will see later whether the modern Turks have any superiority over the hordes of the thirteenth or fifteenth century.

IV.

RULERS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

SULTANS OF THE PAST.

The Ottoman Empire begins with Othman, born 1258 A.D.; the dynasty is usually counted from the time of his being given a local governorship by the last of the Seljuk Sultans, in 1289. The tribe was simply one small group of families when we first hear of it; Othman's father Ertogrul entered the Seljuk dominion not many years before that date with only four hundred tents, say two thousand people in all, counting women and children. They had been driven from their homes in Central Asia by the Mongols. The Seljuk Sultan Ala-ed-din III made Othman governor of Karadja-hissar (Melangeia). Now Othman, though a plundering marauder like other tribal chiefs, turbulent and cruel, knew some things that better men never find out. He knew that impartial justice is a greater strength to a state and a greater lure to draw others to it than anything else; he made the fair at Karadja-hissar a model of business equity for all races and religions, it was thronged with traders, and other Turkish tribes soon flocked to the banner of the man who never broke his promises and dealt out even-handed justice. The lying Greeks never learned the lesson in all their history. In a dozen years he was able to collect an army of 5,000 soldiers, beat a Byzantine force sent against him, overrun a large province of Asia Minor, and with the plunder greatly increased his following. He realized too that education and thorough practical training and moral discipline were the foundations of success; most of us know that now, but few understood it then. But the wild and barbarous Turks could not be educated and disciplined as he wished,--would not stand it and were incapable of profiting by it,--and so he or his son Orkhan developed the terrible system which for centuries made the "Turks" irresistible, which made the "Turks" seem to increase rapidly, and makes the "Turks" to-day appear numerous while in fact not one drop in ten of the blood in their veins is Turkish at all. This was to exact from the Christian population--Greek or Armenian chiefly--a regular tribute of boys as well as money. These were taken from their parents at about eight years old, educated and trained in the household of the Ottoman Sultan himself, of course drilled in the Mohammedan religion, and gradually inducted into the highest posts, civil or military, if fit for them, or made into a special body guard for the Sultan. These were called "yeni cheri" (new soldiers), which is familiar to everybody in the form "Janissaries." From that day to this, the Turkish system has been built up by foreign blood, and outside of the Sultanate pretty much entirely by foreign brains; it was the constant infusion of fresh civilized Christian ability and moral character into it that kept its inherent defects and vices from bringing it to an end long ago. Finally the system partly rotted out and partly became impossible to enforce for fear of revolution (Sultan Mahmoud ended it in 1826); but never outside of this has a tribe of barbarians ever succeeded so completely in impressing into its own service the powers of a higher race. It is as though horses should have regularly broken and driven teams of men for centuries; even more usefully to the Turks, because intermarriage (largely by force on their part) has filled their own veins with civilized Armenian and other blood. As soon as this reinforcement stopped, the Turks began to decay.

I cannot enter even in outline into the political history of the Armenians during the next few centuries. The country has been torn into fragments, and each fragment has a history so separate that there would be no unity between them. One section of what was once Armenia would be governed by Persian officials; another occupied by the savage Kurds; another mis-governed and oppressed by the Turks; another under the rule of Russia; and so on. Persia, when she recovered her national being, held and still holds a small part of the eastern section, as I stated earlier in the book, Russia the north; but the heart of old Armenia is in Turkish hands. The Sultans have succeeded in mixing themselves with the natives and occupying their confiscated lands till the Armenians are put in a minority in their own country.

I must correct here a notion fostered by historical writers, that the Turks are very brave. They may have been once, though I doubt it and there is no proof of it; but they certainly have gotten over it now. In the last Turko-Russian war (1878), they ran by thousands to Christian houses for protection. They are just like wild dogs: savage and ferocious, but not brave. Nor are they wise: they have some low cunning, but no practical sagacity--that too is a thing of the past. As to industrial talents they have simply none whatever; they depend on foreigners for everything: they will not learn and indeed cannot learn, and never try to learn. They have never made a cannon or even a gun, they never built a war vessel and very few if any other kinds, they make neither powder nor shot; all come from Europe or America. Nor have they even decent military talent, the very thing they pretend is their special business: their best generals are Germans, their admiral for a long time was the Englishman Hobart, I think the Englishman Woods is so now. As to civil ability, their best administrators have always been Armenians. Bezjian Amira was Sultan Mahmoud's adviser; Haroun Dadian, another Armenian, is the chief adviser in foreign affairs of the present Sultan. His personal treasurer is an Armenian, Portucalian Pasha. Is this inconsistent with what I have said of his hating the Armenians for their intelligence? Not in the least: he employs them in spite of his hatred, because he can trust no others: the Turks are too stupid and all others too unsafe.

LIST OF OTTOMAN SULTANS AND DATE OF ACCESSION.

A.D. | A.D. 1. Othman I, gazi, 1299 | 18. Ibrahim I, 1640 2. Orkhan I, gazi, 1327 | 19. Mohammed IV, 1648 3. Murad I, gazi, 1360 | 20. Suleyman II, 1687 4. Bayazid I, yelderim, 1389 | 21. Ahmed II, 1691 5. Mohammed I, chelebi, 1413 | 22. Mustafa II, 1695 6. Murad II, gazi, 1421 | 23. Ahmed III, gazi, 1702 7. Mohammed II, fatih, 1451 | 24. Mahmud I, gazi, 1730 8. Bayazid II, gazi, 1481 | 25. Othman III, 1754 9. Selim I, yavouz, 1512 | 26. Mustafa III, gazi, 1757 10. Suleyman I, kanooni, 1520 | 27. Abdul Hamid I, gazi, 1773 11. Selim II, gazi, 1566 | 28. Selim III, 1789 12. Murad III, gazi, 1574 | 29. Mustafa IV, 1807 13. Mohammed III, gazi, 1595 | 30. Mahmud II, adil, 1808 14. Ahmed I, gazi, 1603 | 31. Abdul Mejid I, gazi, 1839 15. Mustafa I, 1617 | 32. Abdul Aziz I, 1861 16. Othman II, guendj, 1618 | 33. Murad V, 1876 17. Murad IV, gazi, 1622 | 34. Abdul Hamid II, gazi, 1876

Some of the above Sultans have special titles, like our "William the Conqueror," "Charles the Bold," "Henry Beauclerk," etc. Thus, gazi and fatih mean conqueror; adil, righteous; guendj, young; yavouz, brave; kanooni, law-giver; yelderim, lightning; chelebi, gentleman. Most of them have the title gazi, or conqueror; the present Sultan bears it because he fought with Russia. He was beaten, to be sure, but he took the title all the same.

Sultan Mohammed II, who captured the city of Constantinople, established an Armenian Patriarchate there in 1461 A.D. The first Patriarch was Hovaguem, the Bishop of Broosa, a friend of the Sultan. Mohammed II had two motives in this: first, to have an Armenian ecclesiastical center in Constantinople for the nucleus of a strong Armenian settlement there, to play off against the Greeks from whom the city was taken and who might be dangerous, whereas the feud between Armenians and Greeks would make each weaken the other; second, to have a hostage for the Armenians, responsible for their not breaking into revolt; not at all for the benefit of the Armenians, but for that of the Sultan. The same reason obtains to this day. If there was no Patriarch, their cause would be much better off. After the establishment of this Patriarchate the Armenians had no more kings or princes; their political head was the Patriarch. Even after the Patriarchate was established they were not safe. They yielded to the Sultans, they became slaves to the Sultans, but the Persian Mohammedans were foes of the Turkish Mohammedans, and Armenia, as of old in Roman times, was the battle-ground. In the time of Sultan Ahmed and Shah Appas, the latter overran Armenia and carried away the people to captivity, besides killing hundreds of thousands. Then it was retaken by the Turks. Then a part of it was captured by the Russians. Historians write of the Huguenots and their sufferings; of the conflicts in Europe between the Catholics and the Protestants. How many centuries were the Protestants persecuted and martyred? How many millions were killed by the Roman Catholics? Do all the Protestant martyrs in Europe number as many as the Armenian martyrs? I doubt it.

And let it not be said that these were not religious martyrs, but merely victims of the fortunes of war or political conflicts. The wars were three times out of four based on real if not nominal grounds of religious antagonism,--Mohammedan or Zoroastrian against Christian,--or claims of religious protectorate, as Russia over the Armenian Christians; the political exigencies which called or formed a pretext for the massacre of myriads of men and old women, the outrage of the young brides and maidens, the enslavement of the children, were without a single exception created by the resistance of Christians to forced conversion, or the fear of Mohammedan rulers that as Christians they meant to revolt, or sheer blind hatred to men of another creed. The victims were truly martyrs to Christianity.

THE PRESENT SULTAN, HAMID II.

This is the thirty-fourth Sultan in the Ottoman line, and probably the worst, the least, and the last. It is not likely the Turks will ever have another Sultan, for this one is pretty sure to bring the Sultanate to an end. His days are numbered, he knows it well, and the Turks know it well too. Before his life and his kingdom are finished, he has resolved to end the Armenian nation; that, however, will not be ended, the people will not be exterminated; when the Turkish Empire is abolished the remaining Armenians will have freedom.

Hamid II was born September 22, 1842, second son of Abdul Mejid, and wrested the throne from his brother Mourad August 31, 1876. He is not a legitimate Sultan, but a usurper. When but a little boy he manifested a savage and cruel spirit. While the Dalma Bagsh Palace, the largest in Constantinople, perhaps in the world--was going up, he went to visit it; seeing it unfinished, he called the Armenian architect and told him it must be finished by the next day. "My dear prince and lord," said the architect, "I wish I could finish it, but it is impossible; and especially not to-morrow, since it is Sunday, and we Christians do not work on Sundays." "You heathen dog, you Armenian," said the boy Hamid, "if I grow up, and some day become a Sultan, I will force all the Armenians to break the Sabbath, and if they do not, I will order the soldiers to kill them all." He is carrying out his threat. He grew to manhood without becoming any milder, and is morally corrupt besides. He has drunken bouts with worthless associates, and spent his time in all sorts of monstrous debauchery and brutality. He was such a miserable wretch that it is impossible to describe his beastly life on paper. There is no humanity in him, no grace, no sympathy, no brains, no strength; he is pale and sick, well worthy to be called the "sick man of Turkey."

This is a very different description of him from that given by General Lew Wallace and Mr. Terrell. I can only say that I know what I am talking about, and they do not. I lived in Constantinople, as a native of Turkey, and with means of knowing, seeing him often, and hear authentic stories of his doings day by day. General Wallace was invited to the palace, feasted and flattered, and his wife decorated with jewels; naturally, he thinks no ill of a man who treated him so well, and with whom he hopes for more good times when he goes back. He has done infinite harm to the cause of Armenia by his popular lectures, declaring the atrocities "exaggerated" (he evidently thinks that if a newspaper report gives ten thousand men murdered when there were only five, and all the women of a city violated when a dozen of them got away, you are entitled to dismiss the whole thing from your mind as of little account), and the Sultan a good man, incapable of such things. People are bewildered, and ask, "How can we doubt a good American who was minister there?" Why, good people, what has his ministry got to do with it? He was hundreds of miles from Armenia, and did not know any of the chief languages of Constantinople,--either Armenian, Turkish, or Romanic; and what could he tell of his host, except of the quality of his hospitality? A man usually shows his best side to those he entertains; did he suppose the Sultan was going to amuse his guests by having one Armenian disemboweled, and another emasculated or impaled on red-hot iron rods, and a couple of women ravished, as a light and playful interlude between the main dishes and the dessert? His praise of the Sultan is as valuable as his praise of the Grand Llama would be,--he knows nothing of either; and his inference from the Sultan's pleasant talk that he could not order a nation extirpated with hideous cruelties, is simply imbecile. And since he has given all this loose talk, the consular reports, from English residents among the very scenes, have been published, showing that the atrocities have not only not been exaggerated, but are even worse than reported. In this case, even the newspapers were unable to come up to the truth; their rhetoric fell short of the full measure of the awful truth.

To go back a little: Twenty years ago Abdul Aziz, uncle of the present Sultan, was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. He cared little for the country or the people; he wanted only to eat and drink, and have good times. He was a very strong and hearty man, and I was told he could eat a whole roast lamb for dinner, and think it probable. He had the innate cruelty of his family, their love of blood for its own sake. He had tigers and lions fight together; he would order a live lamb flung to a lion, and laugh to see the lion tear and devour it. He married all the handsome girls he could find, but for pure animality; he cared nothing for their education or virtue, and his several hundred wives were what you might expect. One of them fell in love with the commander-in-chief, or Minister of War, Heussein Avni Pasha, a very ambitious and daring adventurer, who had gained the confidence of the Sultan, and went often to the palace. The Sultan heard of the intrigue, went to the woman's room, kicked her fatally, and threw her out of the window. But before her death, she sent word to Heussein to avenge her on the Sultan. Heussein's position was very critical; evidently it was a race between him and the Sultan which should kill the other first. He went to Midhad, the Grand Vezir, and to Kaysereli Ahmed, the admiral, both liberal-minded pashas, in favor of establishing a constitutional (or even if they could, a republican) government, and without telling them his relations to and fears from the Sultan, persuaded them that now was the time to depose the Sultan, and establish liberal institutions, and told them it must be done that night, or the Sultan would get wind of it, and then good-by to all of them. And he clinched the argument by telling them he would order his soldiers to kill both of them if they refused to join him, and then depose the Sultan just the same; "as commander-in-chief," he said, "I can compel obedience, and I am in earnest." They consented, and while the Sultan was asleep that night the commander's soldiers and the admiral's sailors surrounded the palace by the land and sea. This was the Dalma Bagsh, the largest and handsomest palace in Constantinople. Heussein entered, saying he had important news for the Sultan. Going to the chamber where Aziz was sleeping, he awakened him, and said, "In the name of your nephew, Sultan Murad, I depose you." Then he compelled him to go down-stairs to a boat in waiting, filled with soldiers, carried him to Cheragan Palace, and imprisoned him there; after which he informed the Sultan's nephew, then Prince Murad, that his uncle had been deposed because the people would not endure him, and added, "As the oldest in the royal family you succeed him, and I, as commander-in-chief, have the honor and privilege of humbly serving my master, and leading your majesty to the throne of the Ottoman Empire."