Part 26

In the meantime Diebitsch had advanced with the main army in the direction of Schumla. Reschid Pasha, who had replaced Hussein Pasha as Grand Vizier and Seraskier, issued from Schumla with forty thousand men, and on June 18th a great battle took place at Kulewtska. The Turks were utterly defeated by a very inferior force of Russians. They had begun the battle with an impetuous charge, but they could not sustain it against the serried ranks of the Russian veterans. Some ammunition wagons exploded and, as often happened with the Turks, a wild panic ensued. They fled from the field of battle and dispersed in all directions. All their artillery fell into the hands of the Russians. Reschid escaped at the head of six hundred men and found his way to Schumla, where there were ten thousand Turks, and where a large number of fugitives from the battle eventually found refuge. This victory at Kulewtska had far-reaching effects. It was the first great battle in which the new troops of Mahmoud were tested. It showed that the Russian soldiers had an overwhelming superiority.

Silistria fell on July 13th. The Russians who had been engaged in the siege then joined Diebitsch before Schumla. The general thereupon decided on the bold and even perilous course of crossing the Balkans, without previously capturing Schumla and its army. Leaving ten thousand men to mask that fortress, where a much greater force of Turks was now assembled, consisting largely of men demoralized by the recent defeat, Diebitsch commenced his march with such secrecy that for some days the Turks were not aware of it. Reschid Pasha, expecting an attack on Schumla, and thinking his force insufficient for its defence, had called in the various corps who were posted for the defence of the mountain passes. Diebitsch therefore met with no opposition. He crossed the mountains in nine days of forced marches fraught with great hardship to his troops. When south of the mountain range, he deflected his route to the Black Sea and got into communication with the Russian fleet, under Admiral Greig, which assisted in the capture of Bourgas and other ports along the coast, and afforded supplies to Diebitsch’s army.

Three battles were fought south of the mountains, at Aidos, Karnabad and Slivno, where small divisions of Turks were defeated and dispersed. After three weeks from crossing the Balkans, Diebitsch arrived in front of Adrianople, a city of eighty thousand inhabitants, with a garrison of ten thousand men. His army was by this time reduced to less than twenty thousand men. Its appearance before Adrianople caused wild panic. Never before had a hostile army crossed the southern range of the Balkans. It was thought to be impossible. It was confidently believed that the Russian army numbered over one hundred thousand men. The city and its garrison surrendered without making a show of fight. Everywhere on its route through Bulgaria the Christian raya population had received the invaders with acclamation and the Turks had thrown away their arms and fled. The campaign of 1829 in Asia had been almost equally disastrous to the Turks. Paskiewich had defeated them in a pitched battle and had captured Erzerum. He was now approaching Trebizond, after dispersing an army on the way.

When news reached Constantinople of the crossing of the Balkans and the capture of Adrianople, there was consternation and dismay among Turks of all classes. The Sultan almost alone maintained his presence of mind. He issued a proclamation calling on all the Turks in the city to join in its defence. He announced his intention to take command in person. The sacred banner of the Prophet was unfurled. But when, at the first review of the forces, the Sultan appeared in a carriage and not on horseback, this “unheard of and indecorous innovation” chilled the enthusiasm of the volunteers, and undid the good which was expected from his action.

There was no great zeal for the defence of the capital. The chief ministers of the Porte were unanimous in advising the Sultan to sue for terms of peace. They were quite ignorant of the weakness of the Russian army. They believed the stories that more than a hundred thousand men were advancing on the capital. There were no troops at Constantinople, they said, able to meet this army. The ambassadors of England and France, who had recently returned to Constantinople, at the invitation of the Sultan, backed up the ministers, and urgently advised him to come to terms with the enemy. We now know that all this advice and these alarms were founded on false information and that there was no real justification for them. In fact, the real position of the Russian army was one of extreme danger. It had suffered great losses on the battlefields and from the hardships of the forced marches, and was also being decimated by disease. There was no possibility of its being reinforced. Retreat across the Balkans was almost impossible. The Turkish army at Schumla was now reinforced. On its flank there was an army of twenty thousand Albanians, under the rebellious Pasha of Scotra, who had refused aid to the Porte in the earlier part of the campaign, but who, now that the existence of the Empire was threatened, might confidently be expected to come to its aid. Advance to Constantinople might also be dangerous, if not impossible. It was distant one hundred and forty miles. Its garrison of thirty thousand men, supplemented by fresh volunteers, might be relied on to meet the Russians, now reduced to much less than twenty thousand. These difficulties of the Russian army, however, were not known to the Porte.

In view of the strong pressure brought to bear upon him, the Sultan, for once in his life, gave way, and agreed to send plenipotentiaries to Adrianople to discuss terms of peace. Diebitsch well knew the danger of his position, and was anxious to make peace, but he maintained an attitude of firmness and confidence. He was ready, he said, to discuss terms, but he was equally willing to advance with his army against the capital. Already a part of his army was pressed forward. It occupied a line from the Black Sea at Kilia to Enos in the archipelago—a distance of over one hundred miles, much too long for his weak force. It is recognized by Moltke and all military authorities that if the Porte had stood firm and had refused to agree to terms, Diebitsch could not have made good his threatened attack on the capital. In the history of war there has never been a more successful case of ‘bluff.’ The Porte gave in to unreasoning and ill-informed fear, and on September 19th peace was concluded between the two Powers and the treaty of Adrianople was signed.

It is certain [said Moltke] that this treaty released Diebitsch from a position as perilous as could well be conceived, and which, if prolonged for a few more days, might have caused him to be hurled down from the summit of victory to the lowest depth of ruin and destruction.[33]

The terms of peace agreed to were moderate, so far as Russia itself was concerned, though very serious in their effect on the Ottoman Empire. The Czar had proclaimed at the outset of the war that he had no desire for territorial aggrandizement. He fully adhered to this promise. With two comparatively small exceptions, Russia gave up all the territory which it had conquered in the war, both in Europe and Asia. It retained only a small part of Moldavia which gave access to the Sulina mouth of the Danube, a position of great importance to it in the future. In Asia, Kars and Erzerum were given back to Turkey. In Europe, the Pruth continued to be the boundary of the two States. But Moldavia and Wallachia, though nominally restored to the Ottoman Empire, were practically freed from it. They were to enjoy complete autonomy. The Hospodars, in future, were to be appointed for life. The two States were to be allowed to raise armies independent of the Porte. The tribute payable in future was to be fixed, and could not be increased. Religious and commercial freedom were to be secured to them. The Sultan was to be their suzerain and nothing more. This meant practical independence. The same privileges were secured for Serbia, with the exception that the Porte was to be permitted to garrison the fortresses of Belgrade and Orsova. The Turks were required to depart from all other parts of the country. Silistria was to be returned to Turkey, but other fortresses on the Danube were to be razed. That river, therefore, ceased to be the first defence of the Turkish Empire to the north. An indemnity of eleven and a half million ducats, equal to five millions sterling, was to be paid by Turkey for the expenses of Russia in the war. The payment was to be spread over ten years, and the territory occupied by Russia was not to be wholly surrendered till this was effected.

As regards Greece, the treaty embodied and made obligatory on the Sultan the provisions of the treaty of London of July, 1827, between the three Powers, and the further protocol between them of March 1829, which defined the future limits of Greece. Under the protocol, the boundary line was to run from the Gulf of Volo to the Gulf of Arta, so as to include the greater part of Thessaly. The country south of this was to be subject to a monarchical government, hereditary in a Christian prince to be chosen by the three Powers, with the consent of the Porte and under the suzerainty of the Sultan, and with an administration best calculated to ensure its religious and commercial liberty. This proposal had been submitted to the Sultan by the ambassadors of England and France on March 22, 1829. He had then obstinately refused to have anything to say to it. When the Russians had crossed the Balkans, the Sultan, in the hope of propitiating England and France, offered to the ambassadors to agree to an autonomous Greece under a Hospodar, limited, however, to the Morea. This the ambassadors refused. The Porte, under the treaty with Russia, now agreed to their full demand.

The Governments of England and France appear to have taken umbrage at the action of Russia in dealing with the subject of Greece in a separate treaty with the Porte. It was thought that the Czar wished to get all the credit of liberating Greece from Turkish rule. They therefore informed the Russian Government that the execution of the treaty of London of 1827 did not belong to the Czar alone, but was to be the work of the three Governments. In consequence of this a further conference took place in London, at which it was decided that the suzerainty of the Sultan over Greece was to be abolished, and complete independence was to be secured to the Greeks. They also came to the unfortunate decision that the line of boundary of the new kingdom was to be greatly restricted, and instead of running from the Gulf of Volo to the Gulf of Arta, was to be drawn from the mouth of the Archilous to the mouth of the Sperkius, thus excluding from the new kingdom the whole of Acarnania and the greater part of Thessaly, where the population was almost wholly Greek. They also decided that Crete was not to be included, but was to be restored to Turkish rule. Mr. Finlay says of this: “Diplomatic ignorance could not have traced a more unsuitable boundary.”[34]

The Sultan agreed to this new project. He probably preferred a smaller Greece with complete independence to a larger one with full autonomy, subject to his suzerainty. Greece was accordingly recalled into national existence with a greatly reduced area, leaving outside large districts with completely homogeneous Greek populations. This was fraught with grave difficulties in the future. One effect of it was that Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who, later, as King of the Belgians, proved to be one of the most able rulers of his day, refused to accept the throne of Greece on the ground that its area was too restricted, and Otho, a son of the King of Bavaria, was selected by the Powers for the post, and proved to be a most incompetent and reactionary ruler. It would seem that Lord Aberdeen, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in England at the time, and who was mainly responsible for these changes, was anxious to restrict the kingdom of Greece to the smallest possible area.

Reverting to the treaty of Adrianople, it is to be observed that while Russia acquired a very insignificant extension of territory, and was content with the prestige of having dictated its terms, and with having acquired a position such that it might insist on its behests to the Porte, as regards its Christian subjects, being obeyed in the future, Turkey lost very greatly. It was said that the Sultan, after signing the treaty, shut himself up in his palace at Therapia for weeks in gloomy despair. There was much cause for this. The treaty was a complete surrender of all that he had been contending for since his accession to the throne. It was humiliating to himself and his Turkish subjects. It was the inevitable precursor of much that was to occur to other parts of his Empire. His grief and indignation must have been greatly aggravated when he came to know the real condition of the Russian army at Adrianople and to appreciate that, if he had stood firm in resisting the advice of his ministers and of the ambassadors, the Russian army would have been quite unable to make an advance against Constantinople. This, however, should not lead us to forget the supreme error which Mahmoud committed in refusing to come to terms with the three Powers as regards Greece after the treaty of London. If in 1827, the Sultan had been willing to make concessions in the direction of autonomy to Greece, it is nearly certain that there would have been no declaration of war on the part of Russia, and in the event of war he would not have been wanting in allies. His fleet would not have been destroyed at Navarino, and time would have been afforded to him to reorganize his army and to make it effective against those of the Christian Powers. As it was, not only did he lose all real hold over Moldavia, Wallachia, and Serbia, not only did Greece gain its independence, but he was soon to lose all real authority in Egypt, a Moslem country, except the barren right of suzerainty of the Sultan and a fixed tribute in money.

It has already been stated that when, in 1824, the Sultan invited the aid of the Pasha of Egypt to crush rebellion in Greece, Mehemet Ali only consented to lend his army and fleet on the express promise that the Pashalics of Syria, Damascus, Tripoli (in Asia), and Crete would be given to him, in addition to that of Egypt. But when in 1827, after the destruction of the Turko-Egyptian fleet at Navarino and the expulsion of the Egyptian army from the Morea, Mehemet Ali pressed for the performance of this promise, he met with a blank refusal, except as regards the island of Crete, the Pashalic of which alone was conferred on him. Mehemet was very indignant at this breach of promise, and determined to seize by force the provinces which he coveted. He set to work with great resolution to build another fleet, in place of that which had been burnt or sunk, and to improve and strengthen his army.

By 1832 he completed these preparations for war. He then picked a quarrel with the Pasha of Syria and, pretending to make war against him and not against the Sultan, sent an army, under Ibrahim, across the desert into Syria. It captured Gaza and Jerusalem without difficulty, and then marched to Acre, where the Egyptian fleet met it and co-operated in a successful attack on that fortress. After this success Ibrahim marched with his army to Aleppo and Damascus, defeating two Turkish armies. He then crossed the mountains into Asia Minor, and fought another great battle at Konia on October 27, 1832, and defeated a large Turkish army. He then marched to Brusa.

These disasters caused the greatest alarm at Constantinople. There was no other Turkish army in the field capable of resisting the march of Ibrahim’s army to the Bosphorus. In his peril the Sultan appealed to the British Government for aid against the Egyptians, offering a close alliance for the future. He met with a refusal, at the instance of Lord Palmerston, who did not then appear to value a Turkish alliance, though the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning, strongly advised it. Mahmoud then appealed for aid to the Emperor of Russia, who gladly availed himself of the opportunity of increasing his influence in Turkey and of effecting a virtual protectorate over it. For a second time, within recent years, a close alliance was formed between the Czar and the Sultan, and in February, 1833, a Russian fleet issuing from Sebastopol conveyed an army to the Bosphorus for the defence of Constantinople.

For a time the influence of Russia became predominant. None but Russians had access to the Sultan. Russian troops and sailors were seen everywhere, and Russian officers were employed to drill and command the Turkish battalions. This state of things caused great alarm to the British and French Governments. They were both concerned in preventing Russia obtaining possession or control of Constantinople. They felt it was necessary to stay the advance of Ibrahim’s victorious army, which was the excuse for the presence of the Russians at Constantinople. They offered, therefore, to the Sultan that if he would insist on the withdrawal of the Russian army from his capital, they would guarantee him against the further invasion of Mehemet Ali’s army. France, though always very friendly to Mehemet Ali, and in favour of his independence as against the Sultan, had no wish to see Constantinople in the hands of Russia.

By dint of great diplomatic pressure, in which Lord Palmerston took the leading part with the greatest ability, a double arrangement was effected. On the one hand, Mehemet Ali, perceiving that he would be powerless to attack Constantinople against the opposition of Russia, England, and France, was induced to come to terms with the Sultan. A convention was signed between them in 1833, and a firman was issued by the Porte under which Mehemet was confirmed as the Pasha, not only of Egypt, but of Syria, Damascus, Adana, Tripoli, and Crete, an immense accession of dignity and power to him. The Sultan was to be suzerain and the Pashalics were conferred on Mehemet Ali only for his life, and there was no promise that they would be continued to his son Ibrahim or other descendants. The concession, however, as it stood, was most humiliating to the Sultan. On the other hand, Russia agreed with the Porte to withdraw its troops from Constantinople and the Bosphorus, but only on the promise, embodied in the treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi, that Russian ships of war should have the privilege of passing through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, at any time, without obtaining the consent of the Porte, a privilege which was to be denied to the ships of other Powers, unless with the previous consent of Russia. It also secured to Russia the right to send an army to the Bosphorus and land it there whenever the exigencies of the Turkish Empire made it expedient to do so. The firman to Mehemet Ali was dated May 5, 1833, and the treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi was agreed to with Russia on July 8th of the same year. By these two measures, the result of a great diplomatic struggle, the menace of Mehemet Ali against Constantinople, which at one time seemed likely to involve all the Powers in Europe in war, was brought to an end. The Egyptian army was withdrawn into the provinces added to the Pashalic of Mehemet Ali, and the Russian troops were recalled by the Czar from Constantinople.

After this settlement, very favourable both to Russia and Egypt, but humiliating to Turkey, a period of a few years’ repose was accorded to the Sultan, so far as his relations with the Emperor Nicholas and Mehemet Ali were concerned. But there were frequent internal troubles and outbreaks, which were put down by Mahmoud, not without some difficulty. Both Mahmoud and Mehemet Ali spent the interval in making preparations for another encounter. Mahmoud could not acquiesce in the virtual independence of so large a part of his Empire under Mehemet Ali. The latter was determined to convert his Pashalic into an hereditary one and to attain virtual independence of the Porte. He had ambitions also to supplant Mahmoud as the head of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan, during this time, employed a large number of Prussian officers, under Colonel von Moltke—later to become so famous in the Franco-German War of 1870 in command of the German army—to train his army, while Mehemet Ali again employed French officers for the same purpose. Five years elapsed before war again broke out between them.

In 1838 Mehemet Ali, having completed all his arrangements for war with his suzerain, announced his intention to pay no more tribute in the future to the Porte. This amounted to a declaration of independence and a renunciation of allegiance. Mahmoud, on his part, was determined to crush his rebellious vassal, and collected an army on the Euphrates for the invasion of Syria. The opportunity seemed to be a favourable one, as the population of Syria was in revolt against Mehemet Ali, whose government had proved to be almost as oppressive and tyrannical as that of the Sultan. Early in 1839 Mahmoud declared war and gave directions to his army to invade Syria. He also fitted out a fleet, consisting of nine ships of the line and twenty-four smaller vessels, and directed it to proceed to Syria and to co-operate with his army advancing from the Euphrates.

Both these expeditions of the Porte came to grief. The army which invaded Syria met the Egyptians, again under command of Ibrahim, at Nazeb on June 25, 1839. The two armies were about equal in number, each of them about forty thousand. The Turks were completely defeated. Many of their battalions deserted on the field of battle and went over to the enemy; the remainder were routed and dispersed. Six thousand of them were killed and wounded; ten thousand were taken prisoners. One hundred guns and great masses of stores fell into the hands of the Egyptians. The Turkish army in these parts ceased to exist.

The great Turkish fleet had sailed from the Bosphorus on July 6th amid many popular demonstrations. It was under the command of the Capitan Pasha, Achmet, who proved to be a traitor. After passing through the Dardanelles, instead of following his instructions by making his course to the coast of Syria, Achmet sailed direct to Egypt, and there entered the port of Alexandria with flying colours and handed over the fleet to the enemy of the Sultan, the rebellious Pasha Mehemet Ali, a proceeding without precedent in history. It was only accomplished, we may presume, by profuse bribery on the part of the crafty Pasha.