Kitabı oku: «The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10», sayfa 20
Something remains to be said about Moltke the correspondent. The letters preserved or published fully justify his being ranked among the best letter writers in German literature. Here, more than elsewhere, the subtle and finer characteristics of the man, the son, the brother, the friend, the gentle and always kindly responsive nature of a thoroughly human and Christian soul are revealed. Above all, however, and side by side with Bismarck's noble letters to his fiancée and wife, stand Moltke's charming and devoted letters to Mary Burt von Moltke. I shall not venture to describe their wealth of sentiment, of charm, of love, of interest in matters big and small. One of the long series, however, stands conspicuous among them; it is addressed to his fiancée, dated Berlin, February 13, 1842. Charming in its combination of a protective, paternal, and instructive attitude with that of the lover and prospective husband, it is unique also because of the advice given about the gentle art of writing letters, an art in which the great modern strategist excelled.
LETTERS AND HISTORICAL WRITINGS OF MOLTKE
* * * * *
THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY CONDITIONS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN 1836
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D
[Moltke spent four years, from 1836 to 1839, in Turkey, and, as was his habit, sent detailed accounts of his experiences to his family. After his return to Prussia, he collected his material, revised it, omitted all intimate family references, and published it under the title Letters Concerning Conditions and Events in Turkey. The book contained sixty-seven letters. The following is the tenth letter, dated from Pera, April 7, 1836.]
For a long time it was the task of the armies of western Europe to set bounds to the Turkish sway. Today the powers of Europe seem anxious to keep the Turkish state in existence. Not so very long ago serious concern was felt lest Islam gain the upper hand in a great part of the West, as it had done in the Orient. The adherents of the prophet had conquered countries where Christianity had been rooted for centuries. The classic soil of the apostles, Corinth and Ephesus, Nicea (the city of synods and churches), also Antioch, Nicomedia, and Alexandria had yielded to their strength. Even the cradle of Christianity and the grave of the Saviour, Palestine and Jerusalem, did homage to the Infidels, who held their possessions against the united armies of the western knights.
It was left to the Infidels to put an end to the long existence of the Roman Empire, and to dedicate St. Sophia, where Christ and the saints had been worshipped for almost one thousand years, to Allah and his prophet. At the very time when people were wrangling about religious dogmas in Constance, when the reconciliation between the Greek and the Catholic churches had failed, and the defection of forty million people from the rule of the Pope was threatening, the Moslems advanced victoriously to Steiermark and Salzburg. The noblest prince of Europe at that time, the Roman King, fled from his capital before them; and St. Stephen in Vienna came near being turned into a mosque, like St. Sophia in Byzantium.
At that time the countries from the African desert to the Caspian Sea, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, obeyed the orders of the Padisha. Venice and the German Emperors were registered among the tributaries of the Porte. From it three quarters of the coastlands of the Mediterranean took their orders. The Nile, the Euphrates, and almost the Danube had become Turkish rivers, as the archipelago and the Black Sea were Turkish inland waters. And after barely two hundred years this same mighty empire reveals to us a picture of dissolution which promises an early end.
In the two old capitals of the world, Rome and Constantinople, the same means have been employed to the same ends, the unity of the dogma to obtain unrestricted power. The vicar of St. Peter and the heir of the calif have fallen thereby into identical impotency.
Since Greece has declared her independence, and the principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia are offering only a formal recognition to the Porte, the Turks are as if banished from these, their own provinces. Egypt is a hostile power rather than a subject country; Syria with her wealth, Adana (the province of Cilicia), and Crete, conquered at the cost of fifty-five attacks and the lives of seventy thousand Mussulmans, have been lost without one sword-thrust, the booty of a rebellious pasha. The control in Tripolis, hardly recovered, is in danger of being lost again. The other African states of the Mediterranean have today no real connection with the Porte; and France in her hesitation whether she should keep the most beautiful of them as her own is looking to the cabinet of St. James rather than to the Divan at Constantinople. In Arabia finally, and in the holy cities themselves, the Sultan has had no actual authority for a long time.
Even in those countries which are left to the Porte the supreme power of the Sultan is often restricted. The people on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris show little fidelity; the Agas on the Black Sea and in Bosnia obey the dictates of their personal interests rather than the orders of the Padisha; and the larger cities at a distance from Constantinople are enjoying oligarchical municipal institutions, which render them almost independent.
The Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot.
The diplomacy of Europe has long engaged the Porte in wars which are not in its interest, or has forced it to make treaties of peace in which it has lost some of its provinces. During all this time, however, the Ottoman Empire had to deal with an enemy at home who seemed more terrible than all the foreign armies and navies. Selim III. was not the first Sultan to lose his throne and his life in his struggle against the Janizaries, and his successor preferred the dangers of a reformation to the necessity of trusting himself to this society. Through streams of blood he reached his end. The Turkish Sultan gloried in the destruction of the Turkish army, but he had to crave the help of an all-too-powerful vassal in order to suppress the insurrection on the Greek peninsula. At this juncture three Christian powers forgot their ancient feuds. France and England sacrificed their ships and men to destroy the Sultan's fleet, and thus laid open to Russia the way to the heart of Turkey, and brought about what they had most wished to avoid.
The country had not yet recovered from these many wounds, when the Pasha of Egypt advanced through Syria, threatening destruction to the last descendant of Osman. A newly levied army was sent against the insurgents, but the generals fresh from the harem led it to destruction. The Porte applied to England and France, who were calling themselves its oldest and most natural allies, but received from them only promises. At this juncture Sultan Mahommed invoked the help of Russia, and his enemy sent him ships, money, and an army.
Then the world saw the remarkable spectacle of fifteen thousand Russians encamped on the Asiatic hills overlooking Constantinople, ready to protect the Sultan in his seraglio against the Egyptians. Among the Turks dissatisfaction was rampant. The Ulemas saw their influence wane; the innovations had hurt countless interests, and the new taxes incommoded all classes. Thousands of Janizaries, who were no longer permitted to call themselves such, and the relatives and friends of thousands of others who had been throttled, drowned, or shot down, were scattered through the country and the capital. The Armenians could not forget the persecution which they had recently suffered, and the Greek Christians, who constituted half of the populace of the original Turkish empire, looked upon their rulers as their enemies, and upon the Russians as fellow-believers in the same religion. Turkey at that time could not raise another army.
And just then France was laboring with her great event, England was carrying a load in her public debts, while Prussia and Austria had attached themselves more intimately than ever before to Russia, compelled to do so by the conditions of Western Europe.
Foreign armies had brought the empire to the brink of destruction; a foreign army had saved it. For this reason the Turks wished above everything else to possess an army of their own of seventy thousand regular troops. The inadequacy of this force for the protection of the extensive possessions of the Porte is apparent after one glance at the map. The very dimensions preclude the concentration of the troops, scattered through so many places, when one particular spot is in danger. The soldiers in Bagdad are 1,600 miles distant from those at Ushkodra in Albania.
This shows the great importance of establishing in the Ottoman Empire a well arranged system of militia. It presupposes, of course, that the interests of those who rule and those who are ruled are not at variance.
The present Turkish army is a new structure on an old and battered foundation. At present the Porte would have to look for its safety to its treaties rather than to its army; and the battles which will decide the survival of this State may as well be fought in the Ardennes or in the Waldai Mountains as in the Balkans.
The Ottoman monarchy needs above everything else a well ordered administration, for under present conditions it will scarcely be able to support even this weak army of seventy thousand men.
The impoverished condition of the country shows only too clearly in the lessened income of the State. In vain a number of indirect taxes have been introduced. A kind of tax on meat and meal is levied in a very primitive way on the street corners of the capital. The fishermen pay 20 per cent, of the catch in their nets. Weights and measures must be stamped anew every year; and all products of industry, from silverware and shawls to shoes and shirts, are stamped with the imperial seal. But the proceeds from these taxes are enriching only those who collect them. The riches melt before the avaricious eye of the administration, and the ruler of the most beautiful lands in three continents is drawing water with the leaky pots of the daughters of Danaus.
For the payment of its necessities the government must rely on the confiscation of property, as it passes to new heirs or outright, on the sale of offices, and finally on presents and the miserable means of adulterating the currency.
In regard to the confiscation of money inherited by State officials, the present Sultan has declared that he will do without it. This edict, however, instead of abolishing the practice, acknowledges the correctness of the principle. Formerly the edicts of confiscation were accompanied by the death warrants of those who were to be robbed. Today there are gentler means in use for relieving people of the surplus of their wealth.
The sale of offices continues to be the chief source of income of the State. The candidates borrow the money at a high rate of interest from some Armenian business house, while the government permits these "lease-holders" to recoup themselves by the exploitation of their provinces to whatever extent they wish. Withal, they must fear either a higher bidder, who leaves them no time to get rich, or the State, if they happen to have grown rich. The provinces know beforehand that the new pasha has come to rob them. They, therefore, prepare themselves. Interviews are held, and if no agreement is reached, war is waged, or if an agreement is broken a revolution takes place. As soon as the pasha has settled with the Agas, he stands in fear of the Porte. He, therefore, combines with other pashas for mutual protection, and the Sultan must negotiate with the future neighbors of a new pasha before he can appoint him. In a very few pashaliks, to be sure, the beginning of a better order of things has been made, the administrative and military powers have been separated, and the taxpayers themselves have agreed to higher taxes, provided they are permitted to pay them directly into the State treasury.
Presents are as customary here as everywhere in the Orient. Without a present the man of lower station is not permitted to approach his superior. If you ask justice of a judge you must take him a gift. Officials and officers in the army are given tips, but the man who receives most presents is the Sultan himself. The expedient of adulterating the currency has been used to the point of exhaustion. Twelve years ago the Spanish dollar was worth seven piasters; today it is bought for twenty-one. The man who then possessed one hundred thousand dollars has discovered that today he has only thirty-three thousand. This calamity has hit Turkey worse than it would have affected any other country, because very little money is here invested in land, and most fortunes consist of cash capital. In the civilized countries of Europe a fortune is the result of having created something of real worth. The man who wins his wealth in this way is increasing at the same time the wealth of his State. His money merely represents the abundance of goods at his disposal. In Turkey the coin itself is the thing of value, and wealth is nothing but the accidental accumulation of money within the possession of an individual. The very high rate of interest, which is here legally 20 per cent, is far from indicating any great activity of capital. It only indicates the great danger of letting money out of one's immediate possession. The criterion of wealth is the ease of its removal. The Rajah will probably buy jewelry for one hundred thousand piasters in preference to investing his money in a factory, a mill, or a farm. Nowhere is jewelry better liked than here, and the jewels which, in rich families, even children of tender years are wearing are a glaring proof of the poverty of the country.
If it is one of the first duties of every government to create confidence, the Turkish administration leaves this task entirely unperformed. Its treatment of the Greeks, its unjust and cruel persecution of the Armenians, those faithful and rich subjects of the Porte, and other violent measures, are so fresh in everyone's memory that no one is willing to invest his money where it will pay interest only after many years. In a country where industry is without the element on which it thrives, commerce also must largely consist of the exchange of foreign merchandise for raw home products. The Turk actually gives ten occas of his raw silk for one occa of fabricated silk, the material for which is produced on his own soil.
Agriculture is even in a worse state. One often hears the complaint that the cost of all the necessities of life has increased in Constantinople fourfold since the annihilation of the Janizaries, as if heaven had decreed this punishment on those who exterminated the "soldiers of Islam." The fact, while true, should probably be explained differently, for, since the events referred to, the great granaries of the capital, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Egypt, which formerly had to send half of their harvests to the Bosphorus, have been closed. In the interior nobody will undertake the growing of grain on a large scale, because the government makes its purchases according to prices of its own choosing. The forced purchases by the government are a greater evil for Turkey than her losses by fire and the plague combined. They not only undermine prosperity, but they also cause its springs to dry up. As a result the government must buy its grain in Odessa, while endless stretches of fertile land, under a most benignant sky and at only an hour's distance from a city of eight hundred thousand people, lie untilled.
The outer members of this once powerful political body have died, and the heart alone has life. A riot in the streets of the capital may be the funeral procession of the Ottoman Empire. The future will show whether it is possible for a State to pause in the middle of its fall and to reorganize itself, or whether fate has decreed that the Mohammedan-Byzantine Empire shall die, like the Christian-Byzantine Empire, of its fiscal administration. The peace of Europe, however, is apparently less menaced by the danger of a foreign conquest of Turkey than by the extreme weakness of this empire, and its threatened collapse within itself.
A TRIP TO BRUSSA
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D
[This is the fourteenth of the Letters Concerning Conditions and Events in Turkey. It is dated from Pera, June 16, 1836.]
Yesterday I returned from a short excursion to Asia, which I really should describe for you in poetry, because I ascended Mount Olympus. But since I did not reach the summit, and did not climb farther than the foot, or more properly speaking the toe, of the giant you will get off with prose.
I embarked on the eleventh, in the afternoon, in a small Turkish vessel, and a fresh north wind carried us in four hours to the rocky promontory of Posidonium (today Bosburun, the point of ice), a distance of eight miles. Here the sea was running very high, and our reis, or helmsman, who was squatting on the high and delicately carved stern of the ship, was beginning to chant his Allah ekber—God is merciful—when the wind died down so completely toward dusk that we did not reach Mudania before eight o'clock next morning.
The horses were soon ready, and up to Brussa I passed through a country that was doubly charming after the lonesomeness of Roumelia, which had been all I had seen for six months. Everything is under cultivation, planted less with corn than with vines and mulberry trees. The latter, which serve as food for the silkworms, are trimmed low like bushes, with the crowns cut off, as we do with willows. Their large bright green leaves cover the fields far and wide. The olive trees grow here in groves of no mean size, but they have to be planted. The whole richly cultivated country reminds one of Lombardy, especially of the hilly landscape near Verona The distant view is as magnificent as the foreground is lovely. On one side you see the Sea of Marmora and the Princess Islands, and on the other the glorious Mount Olympus, whose snow-clad peak rises above a broad girdle of clouds. The flowering vineyards filled the air with rich scent, assisted by caprifolium blossoms in luxuriant growth, and a yellow flower the name of which I do not know.
When we had crossed a ridge of low hills, we saw Brussa stretched out before us in a green plain at the foot of Mt. Olympus. It is indeed difficult to decide which one of the two capitals of the Ottoman rulers is more beautifully situated, the oldest or the newest, Brussa or Constantinople. Here the sea and there the land bewitches you. One landscape is executed in blue, the other in green. Relieved against the steep and wooded slopes of Mt. Olympus, you see more than one hundred white minarets and vaulted domes.
The mountain rises to the regions of almost perpetual snow, and supplies the inhabitants of Brussa with wood to warm themselves in winter and with ice for their sherbet in summer. A river, called Lotos, winds its course through rich meadows and fields of mulberry trees, where giant nut trees with dark foliage and light green planes, white minarets and dark cypress trees rise to the sky. Vines climb up the mighty trunks and attach themselves to the branches, whence they droop again to earth, while Caprifolium plants and thriving creepers superimpose themselves on the vines. Nowhere have I seen such a wide and thoroughly green landscape, except from the tower of Lübbenau, overlooking the woods along the Spree. But here you have in addition the richer vegetation and the glorious mountains which surround the plain. The abundance of water is surprising; everywhere brooks are rushing along and springs are gushing from the rocks, ice cold and boiling hot, side by side. In every part of the city, even in the mosques, water is bubbling from countless fountains.
As is the case with all Turkish cities, the beautiful picture vanishes the moment you enter Brussa. The smallest German town surpasses Constantinople, Adrianople, or Brussa in the charm of its buildings and still more in comfort. Only the mosques and the Hanns, or caravansaries, the fountains and public baths are magnificent. In the earlier times of the Ottoman monarchy no ruler was permitted to build a mosque before he had won a battle against the infidels. The mosques in Brussa are smaller and less beautiful than those which were built later, but they possess the added interest of historical memories. There you find such names as Orchan, Suliman, Murad, in short, all the heroes of the victorious period of Islam.
The mosque of Bajasid attracted me most because of its excellent architecture. Bajasid is the man whom the Turks call Ilderim, or the Lightning. The monument of the mighty conqueror, who himself was conquered and died in a cage according to the legend, stands alone in the shadow of mighty cypress trees. The largest of the mosques used to be a Christian cathedral. It is lighted from above, the middle vault having been left open. The beautiful Asiatic starry sky itself has become its vault. The opening is covered with a wire screen, and below it in a wide basin a fountain is playing.
I will not say that even the largest mosques, the Sultan Selim, for instance, in Adrianople, or Sulamanich in Constantinople, make the same impression or inspire the same reverence as St. Stephan's in Vienna, or the cathedrals of Freiburg and Strassburg. But every mosque, even the smallest, is beautiful. There is nothing more picturesque than the semi-circular, lead-covered domes and the slender, white minarets rising above the mighty planes and cypresses. When the Ottomans conquered the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire they preserved the Greek Church architecture, but they added the minarets, which are of Arabian origin.
The Hanns are the only stone dwelling-houses to be found. They are built in the shape of rectangles with an open court. Here, at least in the larger ones, you will find a mosque, a fountain, a small kiosk for noble travelers, and a few mulberry trees or plane trees. All about the court there is a colonnade with pointed arches; and, beyond that, rows of cells, each one with its individual vault. A mattress of straw is the only furniture for the traveler, who finds neither service nor food in these Hanns.
We dined in thoroughly Turkish fashion at the Kiebabtshi. After our hands had been washed we sat down, not at but on the table, where my legs were terribly in the way. Then the Kiebab, or small piece of mutton, broiled on the spit and rolled in dough, was served on a wooden platter. It is very good and tasty. It was followed by salted olives, which are wonderful, by the helva, i. e., the favorite sweet dish, and by a bowl of sherbet. This consists of water poured over grapes and thoroughly iced. The whole dinner for two hearty eaters cost one hundred and twenty paras, or five shillings.
The comforts of the Turkish baths I have described to you in an earlier letter. The baths of Brussa are distinguished, because they are not artificially but naturally heated, and so much so that you would not think it possible, at first, to enter the great basin of clear water without being parboiled before you could leave it again. From the terrace of our bath we had a beautiful view, and it was so comfortable there that we hated to leave.
On the thirteenth we rode to Kemlik, at the end of the Bay of Mudania, where there is a dockyard. This is the most beautiful spot I have seen. The clear surface of the sea is lost here between the high and steep mountains, which leave just enough space for the little town and the olive woods. Twilight is very brief in this country, and night had come when we reached the town gate, but what a night! Although the moon happened to be new, objects were distinguishable at a considerable distance, while the evening star shines here so brightly that shadows are cast by its light.
At three o'clock in the morning we were again in the saddle, riding toward the East through a valley and between high mountains, along the same road which Walther von Habenichts once followed with his twelve thousand crusaders. The hills were covered with olive trees and flowering bushes filled with nightingales. At sunset we reached the extensive lake of Isnik. The gigantic walls and towers on the opposite shore used to protect a powerful city, for which the crusaders often fought. Today they surround the few miserable huts and rubbish heaps which centuries ago were Nicea. It was here that an assembly of one hundred learned bishops expounded the mystery of the Trinity, and decided to burn all who held a different view. What would these proud prelates have said if a man had prophesied to them that the time would come when their rich and mighty city would be a rubbish heap, and their cathedral the ruins of a Turkish mosque; when the empire of the Greek emperors would be destroyed, and their own exegesis, yes, even their entire religion, would have disappeared from these parts, and when for hundreds of miles and through hundreds of years the name of the camel-driver of Medina would be the only one in the mouths of the people.
The Moslems, who abhor all pictures, have covered with whitewash the paintings in the Greek churches. In the Cathedral of Nicea, where the famous council was held, there glistens even today through the white coating of the wall, where the high altar used to be, the proud promise, I.H.S. (in hoc signo, i. e., under this sign, the cross, you will win). But directly over it is written the first dogma of Islam, "There is no God but God." There is a lesson of tolerance in these faded inscriptions, and it seems as if Heaven itself wished to listen as well to the Credo as to the Allah il allah. One of the chief pursuits of the honest Turks is what they call Kief etmek, literally "creating a mood." It consists of drinking coffee in a comfortable place and smoking. Such a place par excellence I found in the village where we made a stop. Imagine a plane which extends its colossal branches horizontally for almost one hundred feet, burying in its deep shadow the nearest houses. The trunk of the tree is surrounded by a small terrace of stone, below which water is gushing from twenty-seven pipes in streams as thick as your arm, and rushing off as a lively brook. Here, with their legs crossed, the Turks sit, practising—silence.
