TURKISH REGULARS IN 1878.
[To TIM EDITOR OF TER " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In late May or early June of 1878 I rode up from the -end of the Golden Horn to the very front of the Turkish troops who lay encamped about the city. My companion was the editor of an Indian newspaper, who, after an adventurous ride up the valley of the Euphrates, had come on to Con- -atantinople with a letter of introduction to Baker Pasha. It was a lovely morning, and we cantered up green slopes which reminded me of the downs of Sussex. After a time we began to be stopped by Turkish sentries, who each in turn let us pass, grinning in a wide, friendly manner at the voluble assurances of our guide. I do not know what dignities or
titles he bestowed upon ns ; but they opened the way before us till we came in due course to a high ridge of the downs, where in a trench and under an awning of green boughs sat three or four fezed Generals in council. Baker Pasha was very courteous ; but yet it was plain that we ought to have been stopped long before. We had ridden into the very front of his position ; and clear in the bright sunshine, and, as it seemed, on the next line of downs, were the tents of the Russians. It was the extreme good-nature of those grinning Turkish soldiers which had brought us plump upon a council of war in the very first ditch.
So my impression of the common soldiers of Turkey has been always a pleasant one. They were splendid men. They were like French Zouaves, not taller, but more strongly built. Firm and active on their feet, they showed shoulders and chests of an amazing spread and power. Their faces were of a healthy, brick-dust colour, and all had the same look of honesty and kindliness. These were European Turks, and soldiers of the regular army ; and from all that I heard of them my impression was justified. They were sharply distinguished by those who had been with them in the war from the irregular troops, who in the day of battle were as likely as not to be off on plundering expeditions of their own. They had a good character for discipline and conduct, and a supreme reputation for fighting whenever they could trust their leaders. Under Baker, for instance, a small force of these men, covering the retreat of Suleiman from the Balkans, had performed a prodigy of war.
And now mark the irony of popular argument ! To speak well of the European private of the Turkish regular army, as of the Roumelian peasant, his brother, is taken as a defence of 'Darkish rule. No men had a stronger case against their rulers than those dumb, kindly men whom I saw on that summer morning. Their pay, or so much of it as had ever left Stamboul, had been stolen from them by their own Turkish Generals. It was said and believed by many that they had been sold to defeat; and if the passage of the Danube and of the Balkans were not sold by Turkish Pashas, their most extravagant champions can only defend them from the charge of sacrificing their gallant men to their mutual jealousies by insisting on their almost incredible incapacity. The poor Turks of Europe have not been massacred directly by their rulers ; so much they owe them, and no more. Twenty years ago they were the one sound element in a rotten State. They have been swindled and sacrificed. Is it possible that their discipline and loyalty are
still unimpaired P—I am, Sir, &c., JULIAN STURGIS.
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