EASTERN QUESTION, THE

ABBOTT, J. S. C.
Putnam’s Magazine
Volume 13, Issue 16
April 1869

About five hundred years ago the Turks in Asia, a ferocious, blood-thirsty people, and then the most formidable military power upon the globe, resolved to bring all Christendom under their sway. Mohammed II, with a land force of three hundred thousand men and six hundred vessels, laid siege to Constantinople. For fifty-three days the storm of war beat upon the doomed city. Then the Turks, rushing through the breach, with gleaming scimetars, cut down sixty thousand of the helpless inhabitants.

Thus fell the Greek empire. The crescent waved proudly over the city of Constantine, and the whole of the Peloponnesus was subjected to the Moslem sway. The conqueror, boasting that he would grain his horse from the altar of St. Peter’s, in Rome, crossed the Adriatic, took Otranto, and nothing but his sudden death saved Italy from the doom of Greece.

But the Moslem sweep was still onward. For three centuries the valley of the Danube was the arena of almost incessant conflicts between the Christian and the Turk. The Moslem banners were borne triumphantly to the gates of Vienna. All Christendom trembled. Only about two hundred years ago there was a general fear that the Turks would conquer the whole of Europe.

But gradually another gigantic power arose in the north of Europe, which began to press resistlessly down upon the Turkish frontier. Let us contemplate, for a moment, this Russian power as it now exists.

The Czar, it is estimated, has a population of about eighty millions, subject to his sway. He has a standing army of about a million, two hundred thousand of whom are cavalry. Accuracy in such statistics is not easily attained, since these military forces are variable; but such are the general estimates. In the struggle a few years ago at Sebas-topol, all the united energies of England, France, Sardinia, and Turkey were combined against Russia alone, and yet it was long doubtful upon whose banners victory would alight.

The territory of Russia occupies, about one seventh of the habitable globe, extending from the Baltic Sea across the whole breadth of Europe and of Asia to Behring’s Straits, and from the eternal ices of the North Pole down to the sunny clime of the pomegranate and the fig. For the last century Russia has been advancing in population, power, and absorption of territory with such a sweep of manifest destiny as to appal most of the nations of Europe.

It is now, and has been since the days of the Empress Catharine, the great object of Russian ambition to gain possession of Constantinople, which would give her command of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Let us briefly refresh our minds with the geography of those regions. At the mouth of the straits called the Hellespont, which connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Marmora, there are four strong Turkish forts, called the Dardanelles. Hence the Straits sometimes receive the same name. Through these serpentine Straits, which are from half a mile to a mile and a half in width, and about thirty miles long, you ascend to the Sea of Marmora.

This is a vast inland sea, one hundred and eighty miles in length and sixty in breadth. Crossing this Sea to its northern shore, you enter the beautiful Straits of the Bosphorus. But a short distance up these Straits, as you ascend them from the Sea of Marmora, sits enthroned, upon the western banks, in peerless beauty, the city of Constantinople.

The Straits of the Bosphorus, which connect the Sea of Marmora with the Black Sea, are but fifteen miles long, and about one third of a mile in average width. It is the uncontradicted testimony of all tourists, that in loveliness and sublimity of scenery it is unrivalled by any equal body of water upon the globe. An arm of the Straits reaches around the northern portion of the city of Constantinople, as with an affectionate embrace, thus forming one of the finest harbors in the world, called the Golden Horn. A beautiful river flows into it, winding down from the distant interior, whose banks are appropriately called “The Valley of Sweet Waters.” On the northern side of the harbor lies the suburb of Pera, which the Turk has insolently called, the “ Swine’s Quarter,” because there alone, in former years, would they allow any representatives of the Christian powers to reside. On the Asiatic side of the Straits lies Scutari, with its renowned cemetery, embowered in cypress groves.

The Straits of the Bosphorus conduct to the Euxine, or Black Sea. This is a vast inland ocean, covering an area of nearly three hundred thousand square miles. It receives into its immense reservoir the majestic Russian rivers, the Dneister, the Dneiper, the Don and the Kauban. Through these rivers navigation is opened to the almost boundless realms of the Russian Empire.

This brief sketch reveals the great importance of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to Russia. This gigantic Empire, in point of territory, is more than twice as large as the United States, and has a population nearly three times greater than our own. It is estimated that Russia is capable of maintaining a population of five hundred millions; that is almost half as many as the present population of the globe. And yet this great Empire has no easy access to the ocean. It is shut out, a large portion of the year, from all the benefits of foreign commerce. Its only sea ports are on the Baltic, far away amidst the ices of the north. These ports, during the winter months, are effectually sealed up.

Unless Russia can obtain an open door to the outside world, through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, her teeming millions are in a great degree excluded from the benefits of traffic with foreign nations. The Dardanelles are in reality the only gateway for the commerce of nearly the entire of European Russia. All her great, navigable rivers, without exception, flow into the Black Sea and thence through the Bosphorus, the Marmora, and the Hellespont into the Mediterranean. And yet Russia cannot send a boat-load of corn along that magnificent avenue of the world’s commerce, without bowing her flag to all the Turkish forts, which frown along its shores.

For a long period it has been constantly the object of Russian ambition and diplomacy to obtain possession of Constantinople, which would give her command of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. And it has been equally the object of the other nations in Europe to prevent this cosummation; for the acquisition of Constantinople would give Russia power which all united Europe could scarcely withstand.

The revolt of Greece against Turkey, in the year 1821, when the Greeks, after heroic struggles, succeeded in throwing off the Moslem yoke, was generally understood to be encouraged, if not incited, by the Czar. It is true that the Czar, as one of the members of the Holy Alliance, denied that he had lent any encouragement to a movement so insurrectionary; still Chateaubriand records that, in a confidential interview with the Russian Emperor, he declared that “nothing could be more for his interests, and for those of his subjects, than to aid the Greeks against the Turks.”

The ferocity of the Turk was signally displayed in this cruel conflict. Let us . briefly revert to the destruction of Scio; for it was that brutal massacre which finally constrained the European powers to intervene, and thus secured, even to their regret, the liberation of Greece. Scio was one of the largest and most beautiful of the islands of the Grecian Archipelago. Its inhabitants, about one hundred and twenty thousand in number, enriched by commerce, and refined by intellectual and social culture, presented as attractive society as could anywhere be found in the East. There were schools and richly endowed colleges upon the island, and music was almost an universal accomplishment. Many of the opulent families would have been an ornament to society upon any portion of the globe.

The young men of Scio joined the patriot Greeks in their attempt to emancipate themselves from Turkish bondage. Sultan Mahmoud resolved upon vengeance which should appal all Greece. A proclamation was issued that Scio was to be surrendered to sack and flame, and every desperado in Constantinople was invited to join in the expedition. A demoniac mob of fifteen thousand wretches, armed with all the instruments of assassination, was thus collected. Crowding ships of war, sailboats and fishing-boats, this fleet dropped down the Bosphorus upon its fiend-like mission. The whole Moslem heart beat, apparently, in sympathy with the enterprise. Benedictions were uttered by salvos of artillery from all the forts which lined the adjacent shores of Europe and of Asia. Passing through the Marmora, and gliding rapidly down the swift current of the Hellespont, they entered the Aegean Sea, and cast anchor off the harbor of Scio. It was a lovely afternoon in the month of April, 1822, when these murderous hordes poured forth upon those ill-fated shores. Scenes ensued of outrage, fire, and blood, which no imagination can conceive. Every dwelling was soon in flames. The inhabitants, old and young, were massacred without mercy. There was no restraint whatever imposed upon cruelty or lust.

For six days and nights the work of extermination continued, until the city and the island of Scio were a heap of ruins. Several thousand of the young men and young women were saved from massacre, but to endure the more dreadful doom of Turkish slavery. “The young ladies, taken from the parlors of their opulent parents from the accomplishments of highly cultivated life, who had visited in the refined circles of London and of Paris, who had been brought up as delicately, almost as intellectually, as the same classes among ourselves, became the property of the most brutal outcasts of the human race. It is said that forty-one thousand were thus carried into slavery. For weeks and months they were sold through all the marts of the Ottoman Empire. English travellers often met in the slave-shambles accomplished young ladies, offered for sale, whom they had previously met in the hospitable mansions of their opulent parents. They had to endure the agony of seeing them sold to the brutal Turk; for the haughty followers of Mohammed would allow no Christian dog to rescue a captive.”

When the fleet returned to Constantinople from this expedition, the whole population of the city was eager to witness its triumphant entrance. As the fleet, ship after ship, rounded a headland, which brought it into view of the thronging metropolis, captive Greeks in large numbers, with ropes around their necks, were run up to the yard-arms, struggling in the agonies of death. Such were the trophies of this barbarian triumph. The revolting spectacle was greeted with thunders of applause, while the adjacent shores trembled beneath explosions of artillery.

Thus far the sympathies of the European governments had been undeniably with the Turks. They had not been willing that Turkey should be weakened by the loss of Greece, as that would only render the conquest of Constantinople more easy for Russia. But these and similar outrages so shocked the humanity of Europe, such a cry of popular indignation was raised against the fiendlike deeds, that the governments could no longer refuse to intervene. The Turkish fleet of two hundred and fourteen vessels was encountered by the combined Russian, French, and English fleet in the bay of Nava-rino. In a brief conflict of three hours, the whole Turkish squadron was sunk.

But scarcely was the heroic deed performed, ere the governments of France and England regretted the act as a mistake. The result of the conflict was just what the Russian Czar manifestly desired it to be. Alexander Ypsilanti, who first raised the banner of Grecian revolt, had been an officer in the Russian army. It was confidently asserted that he encouraged the Greeks to rise, by promising them the support of the Czar. It is certain that Nicholas, as he saw the Turkish armies cut up, their fleet annihilated, and their resources exhausted, rejoiced in the conviction that Russia had taken a long stride toward the possession of the Dardanelles.

The battle of Navarino liberated Greece from the Ottoman sway, and humbled the Turks as they had never been humbled before. Since that hour the crescent has been upon the wane. Turkey, so long the terror of Europe, now exists as an European power only through tolerance. Its name will inevitably soon be added to the list of ruined empires.

Let the Emperor of Russia have possession of Constantinople, and the Dardanelles, and he is invulnerable. No power can gain access to his majestic empire. It frowns upon Europe, from its inaccessible position, prepared to pour down its forces upon any province it may wish to command. The anxiety with which the encroachments of Russia in this direction are contemplated by England in particular, may be inferred from the following extracts from one of the British reviews:

“The possession of the Dardanelles would give Russia the means of creating and organizing an almost unlimited marine. It would enable her to prepare, in the Black Sea, an armament of any extent, without its being possible for any power in Europe to interrupt her proceedings, or even to watch or discover her designs. Our naval officers of the highest authority have declared that an effectual blockade of the Dardanelles cannot be maintained throughout the year.

“Even supposing, therefore, that we could maintain permanently in those seas a fleet capable of encountering that of Russia, it is obvious that, in the event of war, it would be in the power of Russia to throw the whole weight of her disposable forces on any point in the Mediterranean without any probability of our being able to prevent it. And the power of thus issuing, at any moment, would enable her to command the Mediterranean Sea for a limited time, whenever it might please her to do so. Her whole southern empire would be defended by a single impregnable fortress. The road to India would be open to her, with all Asia at her back. The finest materials in the world for an army destined to serve in the East, would be at her disposal. Our power to overawe her in Europe would be gone; and by even a demonstration against India, she could augment our national expenses by many millions annually, and render the government of the country difficult beyond all calculation.”

Such is the view which England takes of the subject which we are now contemplating. Las Casas gives the following interesting account of the remarks of Napoleon upon this question at St. Helena. It was in the evening of the 6th of November, 1816, when the companions of his captivity had gathered around him, in the miserable hut at Longwood.

“He dwelt,” says Las Casas, “particularly on Asia; on the situation of Russia, and the facility with which the latter power might make an attempt on India, or even on China, and the alarm which she might therefore justly excite in the English. He calculated the number of troops which Russia might employ, their probable points of departure, the route they would be likely to pursue, and the wealth they would obtain in such an enterprise. On all these subjects he made the most curious and valuable remarks.

“‘Russia,’ said the Emperor, ‘has a vast superiority over the rest of Europe in regard to the immense physical powers she can call up for the purpose of invasion, together with the physical advantages of her situation, under the pole; and backed by eternal bulwarks of ice, which, in case of need, will render her inaccessible. Russia can only be attacked during one third or one fourth of the year, while she can, throughout the whole twelve months, maintain attacks upon us. Her assailants must encounter the rigor and privations of a frigid climate and a barren soil, while her troops, pouring down upon us, would enjoy the fertility and charms of our southern region. To these physical circumstances may be added the advantage of an immense population, brave, hardy, devoted, and passive, including those numerous uncivilized hordes to whom privation and wandering are the natural state of existence.’

“Who can avoid shuddering at the thought of such a vast mass, unassailable either on the flanks or in the rear, descending upon us with impunity—if triumphant, overwhelming every thing in its course; or, if defeated, retiring amid the cold and desolation, that may be called its forces of reserve, and possessing every facility of issuing forth again at a future opportunity. Is not this the head of the hydra, the Antaeus of the fable, which can only be subdued by seizing it bodily and stifling it in the embrace? But where is the Hercules to be found? France alone could think of such an achievement; and, it must be confessed, we made but an awkward attempt of it.

“Should there arise an Emperor of Russia, valiant, impetuous, and intelligent, in a word, a Czar with a beard on his chin (this he pronounced very emphatically), Europe is his own. He may commence his operations on the German territory, at one hundred leagues from the two capitals, Berlin and Vienna, whose sovereigns are his only obstacles. He secures the alliance of one by force, and, with his aid, subdues the other by a single stroke. He then finds himself in the heart of Germany, amid the princes of the second rank, most of whom are either his relations or dependents. In the meanwhile, he may, should he think it necessary, throw a few firebrands across the Alps on the soil of Italy, ripe for explosion, and he may then march triumphantly to Paris, to proclaim himself the new liberator. I know, if I were in such a situation, I would undertake to reach Calais in a given time, and, by regular marching stations there, to become the master and arbiter of Europe.”

Then, after a few moments’ silence, he added, “Perhaps, my dear Las Casas, you may be tempted to say, as the minister of Pyrrhus said to his master, ‘and after all, to what purpose?’ My answer is, To establish a new state of society, and to avert great misfortunes. This is a blessing which Europe expects and solicits. The old system is ended, and the new one is not consolidated, and will not be so until after long and furious convulsions.”

The Emperor was again silent. After measuring, with a pair of compasses, the distance on the map, he said, “Constantinople is, from its situation, calculated to be the centre and seat of universal dominion.”

On the 14th of February, 1819, O’-Meara breakfasted with Napoleon. The conversation turned upon Russia. O’-Meara asked if it were true that Alexander had intended to seize upon Turkey. Napoleon answered,

“All his thoughts are directed to the conquest of Turkey. We have had many discussions about it. At first I was pleased with his proposals, because I thought it would enlighten the world to drive those brutes, the Turks, out of Europe. But when I reflected upon the consequences, and saw what a tremendous weight of power it would give to Russia, on account of the numbers of Greeks in the Turkish dominions, who would naturally join the Russians, I refused to consent to it, especially as Alexander wanted to get Constantinople, which I would not allow, as it would have destroyed the equilibrium of power in Europe. I reflected that Prance would gain Egypt, Syria, and the Islands, which would have been nothing in comparison with what Russia would have obtained. I considered that the barbarians of the North were already too powerful, and probably, in the course of time, would overwhelm all Europe, as I now think they will.

“Austria already trembles. Russia and Prussia united, Austria falls, and England cannot prevent it. France, under the present family, is nothing, and the Austrians are so mean-spirited, that they will be easily overpowered. They are a nation that may be ruled with blows. They will offer little resistance to the Russians, who are brave and patient. Russia is the more formidable, because she can never disarm. In Russia, once a soldier, always a soldier—barbarians, who, one may say, have no country, and to whom every country is better than the one which gave them birth. When I am dead and gone, my memory will be esteemed; and I shall be revered, in consequence of having foreseen and endeavored to put a stop to that which will yet take place. It will be revered, when the barbarians of the North will possess Europe, which would not have happened had it not been for your Sirs Englishmen.”

Again, on the 27th of May, 1817, O’Meara records that the Emperor remarked, on this interesting topic, “In the course of a few years, Russia will have Constantinople, the greatest part of Turkey, and all Greece. This I hold to be as certain as if it had already taken place. Almost all the cajoling and flattering which Alexander practiced toward me, was to gain my consent to effect this object. I would not consent, foreseeing that the equilibrium of Europe would be destroyed. In the natural course of things, in a few years, Turkey must fall to Russia. The greatest part of her population are Greeks, who, you may say, are Russians. The powers it would injure, and who could oppose it, are England, France, Prussia and Austria. Now, as to Austria, it would be very easy for Russia to engage her assistance, by giving her Servia and other provinces, bordering upon the Austrian dominions, reaching near to Constantinople. The only hypothesis that France and England may ever be allied with sincerity, will be in order to prevent this. But even this alliance would not avail. France, England, and Prussia united cannot prevent it. Russia and Austria can at any time effect it. Once mistress of Constantinople, Russia gets all the commerce of the Mediterranean, becomes a great naval power, and God knows what may happen. She quarrels with you, marches off to India an army of seventy thousand good soldiers—which to Russia is nothing—and a hundred thousand canaille, Cossacks, and others, and England loses India. Above all the other powers, Russia is the most to be feared, especially by you. Her soldiers are braver than the Austrians, and she has the means of raising as many as she pleases. In bravery, the French and English soldiers are the only ones to be compared to them. All this I foresaw. I see into futurity further than others; and I wanted to establish a barrier against those barbarians, by reestablishing the kingdom of Poland, and putting Poniatowski at the head of it as king. But your imbeciles of ministers would not consent. A hundred years hence I shall be praised, en-cense, and Europe, especially England, will lament that I did not succeed. “When they see the finest countries in Europe overrun, and a prey to those Northern barbarians, they will say, ‘Napoleon was right.’”

These remarks show clearly how long and how intensely this subject has engrossed the attention of the cabinets of Europe. Meneval, the private secretary of the first Emperor, records in his Vie Prive de Napoleon, that in one of the interviews between the Emperor and Alexander, the Czar offered to cooperate with the Emperor in all his plans, if Napoleon would allow him to take possession of Constantinople. After a moment’s hesitation, the Emperor replied, “Constantinople—never! It is the empire of the world.” Still, for half a century, Russia has been making constant conquests in that direction, and is every year approaching apparently nearer to the possession of the prize. The statesmen of France and England watch with intense solicitude the yearly encroachments of this gigantic power. They see Russia continually annexing new territory to her already vast domains ; the half of Sweden at one time, a large part of Poland at another. The advance-towards Constantinople, in the annexation of province after province, is still more appalling.

It is manifestly for the interest of the other leading nations in Europe, in view of what is called the balance of power, to check the growth of a nation thus threatening to overshadow all Europe. But what are the means to be attempted to secure this end? The plan of Napoleon I. we give in his own words:

“The European nations will yet find,” said Napoleon, “that I had adopted the best possible policy, at the time that I intended to reestablish the kingdom of Poland, which will be the only effectual means of stopping the increasing power of Russia. It is putting a dike to that formidable Empire, which it is likely will yet overwhelm all Europe.”

I have before me the letter of a distinguished American scholar, who is very familiar with this subject, and which so fully and yet so concisely unfolds its nature and its difficulties, that I cannot refrain from quoting it:

“The key to the whole matter,” says the writer, “is the fixed determination of Russia to get possession of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which are the natural and only outlet for the Russian Empire. Sooner or later she must and ought to have them. She can no more afford to have this outlet in foreign hands, than our West could let any other power have the mouths of the Mississippi.

“Of course, all Europe must league together to prevent this, if they can; for within a generation after this is done, Russia will become not only the great military, but naval power of Europe, with a population equal to France and Germany combined. The Black Sea will form the most admirable naval entrepot in the world. The Straits could easily be fortified, so that all the navies of the earth could not force an entrance, nor prevent a fleet of Russian iron-clads from coming out and annihilating the commerce of any hostile power.

“Look at the question in the light of physical geography, and the future can be prophesied. Of course, the matters of race and religion enter considerably into the question, and these are all in favor of Russia. If we live to threescore and ten, we shall see the Ottoman driven out of Europe. Quite probably a new kingdom, which we may call the Romanian, may be set up, composed of European Turkey and the Principalities, with perhaps the addition of Hungary ; and it will, for a time, hold the Straits. But this can be only temporary. The Russians will sooner or later have them, and the seat of the Russian power will be the great basin of the Volga, with, most likely, Constantinople for the capital.”

The plan adopted by France and England, for the last quarter of a century, has been to attempt to bind together the crumbling and discordant elements of the Ottoman Empire, so that sufficient vigor may be infused into the Turkish Government to enable it to resist the encroachments of Russia. This has had momentary success. But it can be of no more permanent avail than would be the endeavor to galvanize an aged and dying man into the health and energy of youth. The Empire of the Sultan, in all its parts, exhibits unmistakable evidence of imbecility and decay. And there is something, also, revolting to humanity, in the very idea of Christian nations combining to strengthen the grasp of the Turk upon the throat of the Christian.

There are, it is said, fifteen millions of nominal Christians in the Turkish Empire—members of the Greek Church, subject to the Moslem yoke. The Emperor of Russia, who is virtually the Pope of the Greek Church—for the Patriarch at Constantinople of himself is powerless—claims the right to protect these Christians. England and France justly understand this to be merely one of the measures, and a very potent one, to aid him in his march upon Constantinople. They therefore combine to rivet the chains by which the Moslem holds the Christian. Hence, in brief, the late sanguinary struggle of the Crimea. This, however, was manifestly but a transient check. The attitude of Russia every year becomes more menacing and formidable. Nicholas is represented by Schnitzler as saying, “I know that I, or my successors, must have Constantinople. You might as well arrest a stream in its descent from a mountain, as the Russians in their advance upon the Hellespont.”

In the year 1844, the Emperor Nicholas made a visit to the Court of Queen Victoria, under circumstances which, at the time, attracted much attention. His visit was attended with the most ostentatious display of regal pomp. He was very lavish of his gifts of jewelry among the ladies of the British court. It has been said that the Czar Nicholas was the handsomest man in the world. When we add to this that he was the absolute monarch of eighty millions of people, in the possession of wealth and power such as no other mortal then enjoyed, it may well be imagined that his presence created a sensation even in the stately halls of Windsor Castle. It was apparently the object of the Czar so to dazzle the eyes of Europe by the glare of pageants, which he himself despised, as to divert their attention from the real object of his visit. It was, however, afterwards revealed by the memorandum of Count Nesselrode, Minister of the Czar, that he had visited the Court of St. James on a private mission, to bribe England and Austria to allow him to drive the Turks out of Europe, promising to divide the conquered territory between the three coalescing powers.

Seldom before have bribes so brilliant been presented to ambitious courts. The inheritance occupied by the Turks in Europe was indeed princely, being twice as large as the Island of Great Britain. Out of a population of fourteen millions, only three millions are Mahommedans, the rest belonging to various Christian sects. The plan, according to Count Nesselrode, which Nicholas at this time proposed, was for the three powers to divide Turkey in Europe between them. Russia was to take the three splendid provinces of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria. The Czar was also to be permitted to establish a Greek power in Romelia, under Russian protection, with Constantinople as its capital.

Austria was to receive, as the reward of her assent to this arrangement, the rich and fruitful provinces of Servia and Bothnia, bordering her frontiers on the south of the Danube. She was also to be permitted to advance her lines along the shores of the Adriatic, so as to embrace nearly the whole of the eastern coast of that important sea.

England was to receive that gem of the Mediterranean, the Island of Cyprus. This beautiful Isle, one hundred and forty-six miles long and sixty-three broad, enjoys as lovely scenery, as delicious a clime, and as fertile soil as can anywhere else be found upon our planet. In addition to this, England was to be put in possession of the whole of Egypt, where the Turkish Government held but feeble sway, and from which it could be easily expelled. This would give England the command of the canal, which was then about to be constructed, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. From England to Bombay, by this route, is less than seven thousand miles; by the Cape of Good Hope it is fourteen thousand. And England has in Asia one hundred and fifty millions of subjects.

Such was the bribe Nicholas proffered. France had fallen so low, under the inefficient reign of Louis Philippe, that the consent or opposition of that Government was not deemed worthy of being taken into consideration. Why was not this bribe accepted? There certainly were no conscientious scruples in the way. It was because the arrangement, in reality, surrendered Constantinople to Russia. And this would make Russia so potent in territory, population, and all the elements of military power, as to constitute her, immediately, the undisputed monarch of the Eastern world.

It is so essential to the civilization of Russia that she should have some southern maritime port, which will give her access to commerce, that it is not easy to withold our sympathies from her, in her endeavor to open a gateway for her vast territories through the Dardanelles. “When England, France, Sardinia, and Turkey combined to batter down Sebastopol and burn the Russian fleet, that Russia might be still barred up in her northern wilds, there was an instinct in the American heart which carried their kind wishes to the Russian banners.

What little deed can the Turk show to the city of Constantine ? None but the dripping scimetar. The annals of war can tell no sadder tale of woe than the rush of the barbarian Turk into Christian Greece. He came a merciless robber, plundering, burning, butchering; dragging shrieking maidens into his harem, and, by the thrust of his sword, compelling Christian boys to adopt the Moslem faith and to enlist in the Moslem armies.

When we recall to mind the march of the Turk across the Hellespont, the siege and sack of Constantinople, the massacre of countless numbers of Christians, the blazing cities, the violence and outrage which may not be named, the blood, the woe; when we recall to mind what Moslem insolence has been for five hundred years, ever denouncing the Christian a dog; ever treating him more insultingly than he treats the most hateful cur, whom he encourages to pursue the Christian through the streets of Constantinople, snarling at his heels; when we recall to mind the barbarism with which the Turk has deformed the beautiful shores of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, with the debasement of woman, imprisoned in the gloomy seraglio, the despotism of the scimetar, the death of literature, science, and art, the reign of a superstition marvellous in its powers of degradation and cruelty,—we confess that we cannot look with regret upon the advances of a Christian power, gradually reclaiming the soil where Paul once preached and where Christianity was once, without a rival, enthroned.

But wherever our sympathies may be, the doom of the Ottoman Porte is apparently sealed. The lazy Turk, stupefied with tobacco and opium, knowing no joys but those of a mere animal existence, with a religion whose doctrines deaden the intellect and paralyze the energies, can never keep pace with the nations of Christendom.

The insurrection in Crete, which is now arresting the attention of the world, is but one of the acts in this great drama of the Eastern Question. Crete is one of the most important islands of the Turkish Empire, situated about eighty miles from the southern extremity of the Morea. It is one hundred and sixty miles long, and from fourteen to fifty broad. The population is estimated at three hundred thousand. Of these, two hundred and twenty thousand belong to the Greek Church; eighty thousand are Moslems; and even these Moslems are Greeks by race and in language, but have been compelled by Moslem persecution to adopt the Islam faith. The Cretans are anxious to escape from the oppressive dominion of the Turk, and to unite themselves with the Government of their fellow Christians in the kingdom of Greece. But these Islands alone are by no means strong enough to resist the power of Turkey.

Greece is, of course, in sympathy with the insurgents; so also is Russia. The successful revolt of these Islands would weaken Turkey, strengthen Greece, and very decidedly aid Russia in her designs upon Constantinople. The British Government has consequently manifested no sympathy with the struggling Cretans, but has given all her moral influence against them. France has manifested a kindly feeling in behalf of their sufferings. In reply to the declaration of the Turkish ambassador, Fuad Effendi, that the insurrection was not the result of Cretan discontent, but of foreign intrigues, the Emperor of France urged that the question of remaining with Turkey or union with Greece should be submitted to a popular vote. Fuad Effendi promptly responded, that nothing but another Navarino would force Turkey to, cede Crete to Greece. Thus the matter now stands. A dreadful, merciless war ravages the Island of Crete. Christendom is appalled in view of its horrors. England and France could terminate the conflict at once, by a declaration of their intention to support the insurgent Cretans. But from this intervention they shrink, mainly probably, because, by thus intervening, they weaken that power, to sustain which, but a few years ago, they sacrificed at Sebastopol thousands of lives and countless treasure.

Russia could not openly intervene, without so palpably expressing her designs as again to arouse Europe in arms against her. The poor Cretans are consequently left to struggle unaided. Such are the complications with which the Eastern Question is involved. It is now agitating all the courts of Europe, and ever threatens to embroil the Continent in a general war. At the time of writing this article, the results of the recent Conference in Paris are not fully known. But it is scarcely possible that those results can accomplish any thing more than a brief retardation of the march of Russia towards Constantinople.