Chapter XXIV: Conclusion: The Capture Epoch-Marking; Alarm in Europe;

DISASTROUS RESULTS; UPON CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS AND ON EASTERN
CHURCHES; DEMORALISATION OF BOTH; POVERTY THE PRINCIPAL
RESULT; DEGRADATION OF CHURCHES: TWO GREAT SERVICES RENDERED
BY THE CHURCHES; RESULTS ON TURKS: POWERLESS TO ASSIMILATE
CONQUERED PEOPLES OR THEIR CIVILISATION.

The capture of Constantinople marked an epoch in the world’s history. The dispersion of its scholars and its treasures of learning leavened Western thought; the lessons gained from Turkish warfare, from the discipline of the Janissaries and the mobility of the army were learned by European states. These results entitle the event to be regarded as of importance, but another, the conviction, namely, brought home to Europe of the significance of the capture, helps still further to entitle it to be regarded as epoch-marking. The Slavic and Teutonic as well as the Greek and Latin races had been developing for centuries, unchecked by any external influence, in the direction of human progress which we understand by the word ‘civilisation.’ From Ireland to Constantinople and even to the banks of the Euphrates all the peoples had accepted Christianity, a religion which had not been substantially changed either in dogma or discipline by any of the various races included in the above area, a religion which had aided them to develop the morality, the habits and customs, the thoughts and ideals, which are comprehended in the modern conception of civilisation. The capture of Constantinople was the intrusion into this Christian area of a foreign force, with a different morality, and with a tendency hostile to the habits, customs, and aspirations which it encountered. The capture was the latest step in a series of successful efforts to detach a large mass of territory from the area of European civilisation. As large sections of the empire had during successive centuries been lost, Constantinople came to stand in her loneliness as the representative of European ideals of Christianity. When the city was taken, Western statesmen were compelled to recognise that the remaining European area of civilisation was face to face with an Asiatic, a non-Christian, and a necessarily hostile movement. The European peoples, for the first time during centuries, were awakened from their dream of security and saw the possibility of the advance of races professing the creed which had been held by those who in the early days of Islam had utterly rooted out the civilisation and Christianity of North Africa. The shock and alarm were universal.

[Sidenote: Alarm created in Europe.]

The military reputation of the Turk was enormously increased by the capture of Constantinople. Hallam justly observes that though the fate of the city had been protracted beyond all reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence operated like that of a sudden calamity. ‘A sentiment of consternation, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled to the heart of Christendom.’[561] Those who knew what the progress of the Turks had been and how numerous and mobile were the hordes at the disposal of the sultan were the most anxious regarding their further progress. The podestà of Pera, writing within a month after the capture, declares that Mahomet intended to become lord of the whole earth and that before two years were over he would go to Rome and ‘By God, unless the Christians take care, or there are miracles worked, the destruction of Constantinople will be repeated in Rome.’[562] Other contemporary writers express the like dismay. Aeneas Sylvius, in the presence of the diet of Frankfort, pointed out that by the capture of Constantinople Hungary lay open to the conqueror, and declared that if that country were subdued Italy and Germany would be open to invasion.

The rapid extension of their power by sea as well as by land was soon a constant source of anxiety to the nations whose territory bordered on the Mediterranean. Piratical expeditions upon their shores with the object of carrying off slaves kept them in perpetual alarm. When Don John of Austria, in 1571, defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, the dread of the victorious Turk was so acute and the relief at the completeness of his victory so great that the Venetians congratulated each other with the cry that the Devil was dead, and the pope commemorated the great triumph by preaching from the text ‘There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’

From the capture in 1453 until John Sobieski relieved Vienna, upwards of two centuries later, the universal topic of European politics, quiescent for a few years but constantly becoming paramount, was the progress made by the Grand Turk. During the whole of this period he had continued to be the terror of Europe.

La Brocquière, who had noted the traffic in Christian slaves by the Turks and the oppression of their Christian subjects, remarked that it was a shame and scandal to Europe to allow herself to be terrorised by such a race. A succession of travellers from the West, who, one after another, observed the sufferings of the Christians, the misgovernment of the Turkish empire, its rapid increase, and the widespread terror of the Turkish name, vainly endeavoured to show how the Turks might be defeated; but their victorious progress was unchecked until 1683.[563]

The results of the destruction of the empire were of a uniformly disastrous character. Constantinople, which had been the heart of the empire and for centuries the great bulwark of European civilisation, became the stronghold of the professors of a hostile creed. After aiding Europe by resisting the long encroachments of the Turks, it had first become an isolated outpost of Christianity surrounded by hostile hordes, and then, after a century of struggle, not altogether inglorious, had been overwhelmed by them. By its capture Europe lost all that its citizens might have contributed to civilisation. The philosophy, art, theology, and jurisprudence which had emanated from its schools had, happily, leavened Western lands--happily, because after the conquest the city ceased to exercise any influence on European thought. Under the rule of its new masters it was destined to become the most degraded capital in Europe, and became incapable of contributing anything whatever of value to the progress of the human race. No art, no literature, no handicraft even, nothing that the world would gladly keep, has come since 1453 from the Queen City. Its capture, so far as human eyes can see, has been for the world a misfortune almost without any compensatory advantage.

[Sidenote: Results upon Christian subjects.]

The disastrous results of the conquest fell with greatest force upon the conquered subjects of the empire. The great cry which went up from the Christians who had fallen under Turkish rule, and which has never ceased to be justified among their descendants to the present hour, was that the new rulers failed in the primary duty of government--to render life and property secure. Tried by a higher standard of good government, as an institution which should secure to its subjects justice, the rule of the Turk fell immeasurably short. The Christians became _rayahs_ or cattle, and as such were legally incapable of possessing the same rights as Moslems. While an analogy to such inequality might be found in other countries, in Turkey the Christians found that the rights which even the law of the conquerors accorded them were denied. Their property was arbitrarily seized. They were constantly harassed and pillaged by their Mahometan neighbours and no redress could be obtained in the law courts, for Christian testimony was not admissible against the word of a Moslem. The effects of this legal inequality were soon apparent and have continued to the present day. The Christians were tillers of the ground, artificers, or merchants. Their earnings exposed them to the envy of their Moslem neighbours, who, being less experienced in agriculture or less skilful in trade, less energetic and less intelligent, were unable, as they are still, to compete with them successfully. Their superior power of creating wealth, rather than the fanaticism of a hostile creed, has from the time of the conquest led to fierce outrages upon the Christians and to raids upon their property, and when combined with such fanaticism has produced the periodical massacres which have occurred during nearly every decade in Turkish history.

The difficulties of the Christian traders and agriculturists were greatly increased by the conduct of the conquerors in allowing the great roads and bridges to get out of repair. Turkish ignorance, contempt for industry and commerce, belief that such matters were only of interest to unbelievers, led even the governing class to allow the public works which they had found in the country to fall into ruin. The traveller in Asia Minor and in European Turkey finds everywhere the remains of roads once well constructed and well preserved, which the Turks have made few or no efforts to maintain, reconstruct, or replace. The destruction or decay of the means of communication coupled with the want of security soon made it useless for the Christian tiller of the soil to engage in agriculture or even increase his flocks and herds. The surplus over what was necessary to supply his own wants could not be taken to market. Abundance of evidence shows that the Christians in almost every part of the empire had possessed large flocks and herds of cattle. These, indeed, formed a special temptation to the Turks, who at all times since their entry into Asia Minor and Europe were given to making raids on neighbouring Christian lands. After the conquest it soon became useless for the Christians to attempt to keep a form of property which was so easily carried off. Those who in spite of all obstacles contrived to save a few hundred aspers became objects of envy to their Moslem neighbours and carefully hid their little savings. The want of security and the absence of roads were evils which the Christian shared, though to a less extent, with the Turk. All inducements to the accumulation of wealth, but especially for Christians, were removed, till at length all alike ceased to save or do more work than was necessary to keep body and soul together. Nor can it be said that the condition of the population under Turkish rule has in this respect greatly improved at the present day. In the interior of the empire the man who has acquired a little wealth is careful not to appear better off than his neighbours. In the capital and a few seaports, Christians had a somewhat better chance, but even there the practice of squeezing a wealthy Greek or Armenian merchant and stripping him of his property lingered into the last century and is even yet not altogether extinct.

[Sidenote: Population impoverished,]

Poverty as the consequence of misgovernment is the most conspicuous result of the conquest affecting the population of the empire. Lands were allowed to go out of cultivation. Industries were lost. Mines were forgotten. Trade and commerce almost ceased to exist. Population decreased. The wealthiest state in Europe became the poorest; the most civilised became the most barbarous.

[Sidenote: and demoralised.]

The demoralisation of the conquered people and of their churches resulting from the conquest and especially from the poverty it produced were not less disastrous than the injury to their material interests. The Christians lost heart. Their physical courage lessened. In remote districts, and especially in mountainous regions, where the advantage of natural position counterbalanced the enormously superior numbers of the enemy, the Christians continued to resist. The Greeks in Epirus gave a good account of themselves during centuries, while the Armenians round about Zeitoun and the inhabitants of Montenegro even continued to keep something like independence. But the Greek, Bulgarian, and Armenian populations, all of whom had fought well in resisting the Turks, became less virile. Grinding poverty and constant, though usually petty, oppression even more than the periodical massacres took away from them much of their manliness.

[Sidenote: Degradation of Church.]

The influence of the conquest upon the Orthodox Church was purely mischievous. The ecclesiastical revenues were seized. The priests had to eke out a living on the miserable pittances they could obtain from performing the services of the Church for an impoverished people, and soon came to be chosen from the peasant class. Poverty of the flock meant poverty throughout the hierarchy. Learning declined and disappeared. The parish priest knew his office by heart, but in course of time hundreds of priests were unable to understand the classic words and phrases with which the liturgy of Chrysostom and others employed in the Eastern Church abound. The most commodious churches were transformed into mosques. The libraries perished. Thousands of precious manuscripts were destroyed. The means of obtaining an educated clergy no longer existed. The voice of the preacher was regarded with suspicion, and the Orthodox Church as a power for the education of its congregations became almost valueless. There were no longer any heresies or dissensions which invited discussion, for people and clergy were alike sunk in ignorance. The art of preaching was forgotten. Religious teaching or expression of thought in or out of the Church almost ceased to exist. The Church of Chrysostom was condemned to silence. To all appearances, there was little or no consciousness of lofty ideals or aspirations towards them. Piety, as understood in the West, seemed for centuries to be unknown. A book like the ‘Imitatio’ or even the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ would have been unintelligible. Churches as well as people had become sordid and destitute of aspiration. Ignorance and other causes, due to the conquest, reduced the Churches to a stagnant level of uniformity, superstition, and spiritual death.

With the substitution of an ignorant for a learned priesthood the influence of the Church upon Western Europe ceased. Down to the conquest it had not only claimed an equality with the Latin Church, but its learning was respected by popes, cardinals, and scholars, who recognised that it merited gratitude for its guardianship of Christian learning and for the succession of scholars who had expounded the treasures of its literature.

[Sidenote: Benefits conferred by Church.]

Yet amid all the meanness and debasement of the Christian Churches it should ever be remembered that they rendered to their people two inestimable services. They helped to preserve family life and to keep the great mass of their members from abandonment of the Christian profession. However abject the Church, however subservient at times its leaders became to the Ottoman rulers, and however we of the twentieth century may despise priestly pretensions and the claims of any body of men to have a supernatural commission, it is a duty to recognise that the service rendered by the Churches to the Christian subjects of the sultan, and indeed to humanity, in preserving the habits of family life was immeasurably great. One may fully admit that the priests were ignorant, and that the Church became more than ever saturated with pagan superstition; but it safeguarded the idea of Christian marriage based upon the union of the husband for life with one wife. Children were reared in the companionship of a father and mother to each of whom chastity and the necessity of forsaking all others was not merely a tradition and an ideal, but a duty enjoined by the universal teaching of the Church. The results of the education of children amid such teaching, tradition, and environment can only be appreciated when they are compared with those which are produced among their Moslem neighbours, where, under a system fatal to family life, the mother holds a position immeasurably inferior to that of the father.

[Sidenote: Inducements to renounce Christianity.]

The Church also helped to prevent the Christian population from abandoning their religious belief, and, to the philosophical student of religions hardly less than to Christians, this result should be regarded as pure gain. The Christians were permitted to have their own religious services, and the attempt was seldom made forcibly to convert them to Mahometanism. The teaching of Mahomet that the ‘People of the Books’ were not to be molested so long as they submitted and paid tribute, usually secured a contemptuous toleration of their worship. There was little formal interference with their religious practices. Their processions, rites, and ceremonies only encountered opposition from the fanatical brutality of individuals, though Christian worshippers were constantly exposed to petty persecutions from persons in authority who expressed their dislike and loathing of Christianity in a thousand different ways. But it must always be remembered to the credit of the Christians that abandonment of their faith would at any time have saved them from all persecution and have placed them on an equality with their conquerors. The singularly democratic creed and practice of Islam at once open every preferment to the convert. The negro, the Central Asiatic, no less than the Christian rayah, once he has pronounced the _Esh-had_, is on an equality in theory and in practice with the descendant of the Prophet. Turkish history abounds with instances of renegades or their sons rising to the highest positions in the state. A Christian who accepted Islam had every career open to him. The Christian subjects of the empire have always been aware of their own superiority in intellectual capacity to their Turkish neighbours. This superiority is manifest in every country where Moslems and Christians live side by side. It is mainly due to the inferior position assigned in practice in every Mahometan country to woman, a position illustrated by the custom of repudiation--which the husband may exercise in lieu of divorce--by the lack of family life in which children are nurtured in the companionship of both parents, and even by the absence of a family name.[564]

It would indeed have been remarkable if with the unspeakable advantages of family life on their side the Christians had not been superior in capacity to their neighbours. But, in spite of their lively consciousness of such superiority and of the advantages to be gained by perversion, few Christians became renegades.

[Sidenote: Degradation of people.]

But, notwithstanding the fact that their refusal to abandon a higher for a lower form of religion must be accounted to them for righteousness, the Christians passed into a Slough of Despond. Disarmed and oppressed, they became demoralised and lost self-respect. Their progress and development, material, intellectual, and moral, was arrested. They fell back upon deceit and cunning and the other vices with which a subjugated people seeks to defend itself against its oppressors and which are the usual characteristics of a people held in bondage. The most disastrous result of the conquest upon the people was to create a low standard of morality, and, as in the course of time habits form character, this result endured and continues to the present day. Dishonesty, unfair dealing, bribery, and untruthfulness came to be regarded among all the Christian races of the Ottoman Empire as venial offences or as pardonable blunders. This deterioration of character was not, and is not, confined to laymen. The environment of all classes has been powerful for evil, and the standards in particular of commercial honesty generally prevalent in Christian nations have neither been preserved nor attained.

Under Turkish rule punishment often failed to follow detection. In some cases--notably, for example, bigamy--the conquering race recognises no offence and therefore awards no punishment. The Christians had and have so little confidence in their chance of obtaining justice that it is the exception to prosecute an offender. A man will rather suffer loss than waste his time in appealing to a court where he knows that he will certainly incur expense and inconvenience and that the offender, provided he can pay, can escape condemnation. It is to this impossibility of obtaining justice that must be ascribed more perhaps than to any other cause the lowering of the morals of Eastern Christians. Those who know them best, from Arab Christians in Syria to the Greeks and others in Constantinople and the Balkan Peninsula, and whose sympathies are entirely with them in the persecution they have undergone, and in their desire to shake off the oppressor’s yoke, have regretfully to confess that the reputation which they have acquired in Western Europe for untrustworthiness and untruthfulness is not undeserved. Happily, in Greece and other countries which have been freed from Turkish misrule there are abundant signs of an awakening to the necessity of regarding offences from a loftier standpoint and of presenting in the Churches a higher ideal of morality; signs, too, of the public opinion which is bringing these countries into line with Western states.[565]

[Sidenote: Effect of conquest on Turks.]

The conquest of Constantinople had but little effect on the mass of the Turkish population. The Turks ceased to be mainly a nomadic people, and great numbers of them took possession of the arable lands of the conquered races. But in other respects their habits and characteristics remained unchanged. They had and have their virtues. They are brave and hardy, and, except when under the influence of religious fanaticism, are hospitable and kindly. Their religion inculcates cleanliness and sobriety. While its teaching must stand condemned in regard to the treatment of non-Islamic peoples and, judging by the universal experience of Moslem countries, in regard to the position, fatal to all progress, which it assigns to woman, it has nevertheless helped to diffuse courtesy and self-respect among its adherents. Unhappily, the Turkish race has never had sufficient continuous energy to be industrious nor enough intelligence to desire knowledge.

Fortunately for the populations under the rule of the Turk, his religious intolerance has only become virulent at intervals; for when his fanaticism is awakened, corruption and cruelty in the administration of government show themselves at their worst. It is so in Morocco now, where the fiercest Moslem intolerance and perhaps the most cruel and corrupt government in the world co-exist. It has been so at various periods under Turkish rule. Sultans have alternated in their government between periods of lethargy, sloth, and sensuality and those of spasmodic activity. But the periods of fanaticism have been those not only of massacre and exceptional cruelty but of want of patriotism, and the worst corruption in the administration of government.

In Greece and Italy more vigorous physical races in earlier times had triumphed over peoples further advanced in civilisation. But the conquerors profited by the civilisation of the vanquished and the latter became more virile. The two races coalesced and formed a united people. No such results followed 1453. The Turkish nation was unable to assimilate the civilisation of the peoples it subdued, and its work has been simply to destroy what it could not take to itself. It has fallen so far short of reconciling the conquered races and welding them to itself so as to form one people that the assertion may safely be made that every century since 1453 has widened the gulf between it and the Christians.

In one respect only has the Turk been able to appreciate the progress made by his neighbours and, in part at least, to appropriate their development--namely, in the art of war. He knows and cares nothing about art, science, or literature. He has made a miserable failure of government. His civil administration is probably more corrupt than it was four centuries ago. He admits that, since his defeat at Lepanto in 1571, Allah has given the dominion of the seas to the Giaours. But as a soldier he has always been ready to learn from European nations.

That the heavy weight of misrule has hindered and still continues to hinder the progress of the Christian races is attested by all who are acquainted with Turkey. Condemned to constant persecution and a sordid poverty which leaves on travellers an overpowering sense of human misery, and living amid a hopeless and dispiriting environment, they passed into the blackest night which ever overshadowed a Christian people. It is true that they were not utterly destroyed, as other Christian nations have been, but, except for the feeling of solidarity arising from community of race and of religious belief and for the hope which the Churches aided them to keep alive, their night was without a single ray of light. They and their countrymen who had escaped into foreign lands looked in despair and in vain for the signs that the night would pass. It is barely a century ago since the keener-sighted watchmen observed indications of dawn. The daylight has arisen upon Roumania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and other countries once under Turkish rule, and signs of dawn are visible, though with indications of blood-red, in Macedonia and Armenia. Sooner or later, but as surely as light overcomes darkness, the Christian and progressive elements in the Turkish empire will see the day and rejoice in it.

The friends of the liberated territories have often complained of the vagaries, the inconstancy, and the slow rate of progress of the re-established states. They are apt to forget that to shake off the effects of centuries of bondage is a task which has never been accomplished in a single generation. All historical precedents, from the time when Moses led the children of Israel into the desert, teach the same lesson. But it is satisfactory to note that while each of the states that have obtained emancipation was, a century ago, far behind the civilisation even of Constantinople, it is now far ahead of it. If the traveller who eighty years ago spoke contemptuously of the collection of mud huts which fanatics are pleased to call Athens, while they refer to their barbarian occupants as Greeks, could now be placed on the Acropolis, he would see the well-built and prosperous capital of a country which, in spite of financial difficulties, is flourishing in agriculture, trade, and commerce; the chief city of a people which has recovered its self-respect, is full of patriotism, of zeal for education, and of intellectual life, and whose Church has awakened to the necessity of an educated priesthood and a higher standard of morality. A like prosperity could be noted in every other land which has escaped from Turkish bondage. Wherever, indeed, the dead weight of Turkish misrule has been removed, the young Christian states have been fairly started on the path of civilisation and justify the reasonable expectations of the statesmen, historians, and scholars of the West who have sympathised with and aided them in their aspirations for freedom.

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