TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PLEVNA.
OSMAN PASHA has brought a gallant defence to a splendid end. We have no sympathy with his cause, which is not the defence of a country, or even of a creed, but only of an oppressive caste, and we abhor his callous indifference to the condition of his own wounded ; but up to his own lights, and judged by his own rules of conduct, Osman Pasha must be allowed by enemies as well as friends to have deserved right well of the Turks. With 80,000 regulars, and 15,000 con- scripts hastily drawn together, he has for three months detained 120,000 Russians on the frontier, has completed works which proved impregnable, has repulsed two terrible assaults, and has forced his enemy to provide against his efforts to break out, as carefully as if he had commanded a French or a German army. He has induced troops many of whom must be the wildest barbarians to endure the extremity of privation, to face a storm of shells such as never rained into Metz, and to spend their lives wholesale in efforts to recapture redoubts taken from them only by giving three lives for one. And finally, when all hope of relief was gone, and he had received his Sultan's order to break out—the despatch of this order was men- tioned in all accounts from Constantinople, but passed un- noticed—he broke out at the head of all his remaining force, carried by sheer desperate fighting the first line of Russian en- trenchments, and only surrendered when Plevna had been taken in his rear, and his army, hopelessly outnumbered and en- feebled by privation, was entirely surrounded by its foes. It was a daring deed, worthy of a true soldier, Our sympathy, as we have said, is not for him, but for the great Empire and the gallant little State whose devoted valour and perseverance have brought about his defeat, and who are upholding in arms the cause which to-day, as at Marathon, at Tours, at Lepanto, and before Vienna, is the grandest cause the world has ever de- fended,—the rescue of a European community from a petri- fying Asiatic domination ; but nevertheless, Osman has even in our minds a place among the bravest of the brave who have died for the injury of man. That a race so gifted for war should have used its gifts for four hundred years only for destruction is one of the mysteries which the keenest minds only think they fathom ; but so it is, and the world must accept alike the fact and its consequences, one of which is the horrible slaughter amid which the Turks, like the Tartars who conquered Russia and the Moors who reigned in Southern Spain, seem determined to go down. All this valour, all this loss of life, all this devoted self-sacrifice—for in the men on both sides there is at least that claim to moral grandeur—is mere waste, does not retard, but rather hastens the inevitable end. Osman has " delayed the Russian army five months," and in delaying it has tripled its effective strength, has compelled its chiefs to fight as if for existence, has reor- ganised its Staff, and has given time to an Empire which covers half two continents to draw together its enormous strength. 'Nothing in the whole struggle has impressed us, and in one way appalled us, like the silent swiftness with which this part of the Russian machine has worked,—the noiseless, almost effortless persistence with which all material loss has been repaired before it had been felt. In Europe, as in Asia, every week has shown its ghastly tale of slaughter, its heavy loss in mat6riel expended ; yet every week the Russian armies have grown stronger, till to-day Russia has in Bulgaria 80,000 men more than in August, and the rain of shells into Plevna on December 10 exceeded in weight and fury the hail upon the day of the first assault. Or if there be anything more impressive than this, it is the stubborn courage with which, after three months of partial failure, incessant alarms, and bitter privation, the " Siberian Regiment" bore the brunt of the last fiery charge, and perished to give time to supports, who forced the Turks back step by step upon their already taken citadel, Russia has done nothing for the world yet save this campaign, but if there is hope in valour exhibited on the right side, there must be hope in Russia. Plevna is taken, and the true subject for thought now is the impact which that catastrophe will make upon the Turks, or rather upon their chiefs in Constantinople. We do not care about the immediate details of the campaign, nor, if we understand the Pashas at all, will they care either. There will be no serious victories or defeats north of the Balkans. The Turks have military instinct, and must understand that If they resolve on resistance, the way to resist is to withdraw from North Bulgaria, leaving the fortresses to defend them- selves, and concentrate their strength upon the south side of the Passes and the defence of Adrianople. Any soldier would tell them now to block the road to Constantinople, and give themselves time to call up and arm their last Asiatic reserves, and the interest of the Pashas corresponds with the advice they will receive. Their first fear of all is for the safety of Constantinople. They all, whether advocates of peace or belonging to the party of war to the last ditch, whether sceptical voluptuaries or Mahommedan fanatics, know thoroughly what Europe does not yet know, that the Empire is threatened from• within nearly as much as from without, that the Ottoman is hated in many of the non-Christian provinces, that the Turkish Ad- ministration has since the destruction of the Janissaries been centralised in the capital to the last possible point, and that if Constantinople fell, the bonds of the whole Empire might at once be dissolved. Egypt and Arabia, Bagdad, and the islands, would at once be independent, and it would take twenty years and three armies like Osman's to restore even apparent order. If they resist, they will fight their next cam- paign south of the Balkans, and the point to be ascertained is,—will they resist or no ? Our strong impression is that they will. The Sultan is terribly afraid of dethronement by the War party, which has the. Softas with it. The Pashas are terribly afraid of being massacred by the mob, or subdued by a military dictator acting in Murad's name. The people—including in that term only Turks—are terribly afraid of humiliation before their Christian rivals. All are profoundly indifferent to personal comfort, and all can see perfectly well that nothing but per- sonal comfort is lost by making one more desperate stand before Adrianople falls. The Times keeps telling the Pashas of their rashness, and urging them to make terms, because if they still hold out they may lose everything ; and that argument would' be powerful if addressed to a European Power, but it will fall powerless upon the ears of Turks. They want to keep their• ascendency, not to haggle for this and that acre of a lost dominion. If they are to govern "justly," according to Western ideas, amid perpetual worry from Consuls and with Law sub- stituted for their own volition, they do not want to govern at all. If they are to accept equality—and that must be the effect of any treaty of peace concluded now—they may as well accept it after Adrianople has fallen, and after they have ascertained that Fate, or force—which, after all, is divine—has pronounced against their claims. They have looked forward to this for years, have buried their dead in Asia, and have, we can scarcely doubt, a distinct notion of what to do if the worst should arrive. Let us do them some little justice. There is no people in the world which, fairly driven to the wall, will accept the situation like the Turk, will abandon so quickly the tradi- tion of comfort and city life, and will resolve itself once more into a cruel and dangerous, but brave, frugal, and perfectly organised fighting horde, ready to make for itself a new posi- tion on the Asiatic continent.
Our distinct impression is that the Turks will fight, that they will not be appalled by the fall of Plevna, but that they will defend their second line with what, if theiecause were a better one, we should describe as admirable tenacity. But we frankly admit there is an element in the question about which neither we nor probably any other Europeans know anything whatever, but which may prove in the coming crisis the most important factor in the decision. Which way will the House of Othman go It is nearly impossible—not quite, for there is another branch in existence—for the War party to set aside that House, for in so doing they would break the main-spring of their power, the profound conviction of every Turk that Fate has linked the fortunes of this great family with the fortunes• of Islam as a ruling creed. They can kill it off to the last man, as has happened once before, but they must obey him. The House, therefore, can always through its ruling member exercise a control equivalent at least to a veto over any policy to be tried, and nearly always enforce its own, and it is not clear yet that it has resolved to fight. The Generals, or some of them, suspect that it will not, and sometimes are given to strange utterances about plans for marching south and re- arranging the Government. The people suspect that it will not, and threaten death in placards. The Pashas suspect that it will not, and intrigue against the Palace as vigorously as against each other. And each of these powers has this to say in favour of suepicion, —that in modern times the House of Othman when beaten has always resolved to yield. It has never refused a treaty supported by adequate force—the fact upon which Mr. Gladstone—as we think, too sanguinely—relied when he pressed for a Grand Remonstrance from all Europe. It is quite conceivable that if the Sultan can keep his throne, or if any Sultan succeeds him except Murad,—behind whom may stand an energetic dictator,—the Sultan may prefer his ease as lord of a vassal State covering Roumelia and Western Asia, and may have the power to compel his counsellors and his army to agree to a peace—which in this case would be, of course, a private peace—with Russia. The Softas could not act against the garrison, the garrison would have difficulty in acting without either the Softas or a producible Dictator, and both are hampered by the Sultan's power, if the smallest arrangement fails, of taking refuge in the Fleet. Men play with their heads in Turkey when they make Revolutions, and if the Sultan were a determined man, familiar with the ways of troops, instead of being what he is, an escaped prisoner, transferred from a lifelong though lenient confinement to a throne, Revolution would be impossible. As it is, however, the Sultan will probably think it safest to follow popular feeling, the " Palace " apart from him has no strength whatever, and the Government, in perfect unityand amid the loud applause of all English and Hungarian friends of Turkey, with the full support alike of the soldiery and the mob, will decide for war. The Empire, and not its provinces, will be placed upon the table, and will be disposed of by the victor and his allies. The prediction may be falsified by the action of the Sultan, but the strong probability is that the war will be fought out to the end, that the Turks will be defeated, and that when the war is finished the Sultanet will as a European Power have ceased to be.
Previous page
