THE RUSSIANS AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1878.. [TO TiM EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR:]
SIR,—I should like to back your plea for generous dealing with Russia. I was in Constantinople in the summer of 1878,. and saw the Russian soldiers with the city in their grip, and their officers in uniform walking in the streets of Pera. It was as if they lay at Wimbledon and Hampstead Heath. It. seemed impossible that they would go back. I rode up from the Golden Horn into the Turkish lines and saw Baker Pasha,, who was in command. His men would have fought splendidly, as they had fought already in covering the retreat of Suleiman ; but the common opinion was that, were the armistice broken, the Russians could take the city any day between dawn and dusk, though with considerable loss. Conceive, after so great labours and so great loss of life, after Plevna and the passage of the Balkans, the bitterness of yielding the final prize, of going back from the ancient city of their hopes !
it any wonder that even after eighteen years, and after all the- resources of diplomacy, there remains some Russian bitterness. against the people who compelled this great renunciation ?
It is likely that the British policy at the time was right._ The Russian success had been so quick since the fall of Plevna that it is no wonder that the other nations of Europe,. and England most of all, were alarmed by the possible con- sequences of her gathering there and then the full fruits of victory. But even to the man in the street, to the mere tourist innocent of diplomacy, it was plain enough that the rot of the Turkish Empire had gone too far for permanent cure. It might be necessary to keep it alive for a few years;. but one hoped that from that time every effort of diplomacy was directed to arranging with Russia what was to follow the final and inevitable collapse of Turkey in Europe. It is- rather sad to find that no progress has been made towards. such an understanding during eighteen years.
The state of Turkey was there, under one's eyes, under one's nose. Two Sultans had been deposed, one probably mur- dered; and the present ruler was shut up his palace, and in an agony of terror, one was told—that terror which is the parent of cruelty. His victorious foes were encamped about. his city. His Generale, if they had not sold the passage of the Danube, had stolen without doubt the pay of their owns troops. The governors of his provinces paid themselves by pocketing taxes ; and that which taxation left to the wretched peasant of Syria was wrung from him by usurers, of whom many, having naturalised themselves as Europeans, used the- power of half-breed Vice-Consuls to extort the monstrous in- terest of their loans. The method of dealing with a subject. race, if warlike and dangerous, was to plant a colony of another race upon its confines, that, when the fighting began, they might haply neutralise each other, like the cats of Kil- kenny. These were not accusations hurled against Turkey by fanatical opponents, but facts mentioned by sober European residents as of common knowledge and beyond controversy- A man who with his own eyes saw the Russians there in that summer of 1878 with the city at their feet, must realise more. than another how natural is their present hostility, and how, well we can afford to go a great way if we may mitigate it a. little. Almost any arrangement with a powerful and im- proving Empire must be better than to be chained longer to a corpse. It is the vividness of my impressions of that
that is my only excuse for adding to so many letters
on this matter.—I am, Sir, &c., JULIAN STURGIS.
Previous page
