IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT IN THE EAST, THE

ANDERSON, Thomas M.
Galaxy, The
Volume 24, Issue 5
November 1877

History is again repeating itself. The northern wave once more surges down on southern Europe. What an endless historical procession is formed by the various nations that have attacked Byzantium or Constantinople—Scythians, Parthians, and Dacians, Huns and Lombards, Avars and Persians, Arabs and Tartars—tribes and leaders whose names and titles are forgotten or rarely read in the pages of history! one chagan coming down through the passes of the Balkans and demanding as a tribute one Roman virgin and a golden bed; another chagan coming a hundred years later, and, in alliance with the Persians, besieging Constantinople by sea and land, and this time demanding and obtaining “one thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins.” It is a matter of great doubt whether Abdul Hamid could pay any part of this tribute except perhaps the thousand horses.

The crusaders next appear upon the scene: Franks, Germans, and Venetians, old blind Dandolo jumping on the sea wall from his galley. Then the Turks came from the Golden mountains to the Golden Horn to have their turn of conquest and defence. Gibbon tells us that when the Turks first issued from the fastness of the Altai or Golden mountains (A. D. 545), they had a military axiom from which they have since widely departed. Like the Spartans, they forbade their cities to be walled. “Should we,” thus ran their saying, “confine ourselves within the walls of cities, the loss of a battle would be the ruin of our empire. In the field, if strong, we advance and conquer; if feeble, we retire.” Lastly the Russians appear upon the scene. This is their seventh invasion since the days of Czar Peter. The tide seems destined to be endless.

so flows the ceaseless current of invasion: war, ceaseless war about the fatal straits, for there, since Xerxes’s time, enough blood has been shed to turn “the Black sea red.”

Nearly all wars may be traced to difference of race or difference of religion. This is a statement of a fact rather than a cause. Why should differences of race or religion cause people to kill each other? Is religion only a cloak in such wars, with ambition, selfishness, and greed behind as exciting causes? The answer is evident. Religion is generally a pretext with rulers, but a sufficient cause with ignorant multitudes for intolerance and hate. The dispute which nominally led to the Crimean war was about the keys of the church of Bethlehem. An old iron key of the main door of the chapel had been transferred from the Greek to the Latin Christians. This gave rise to the first altercations. But the key that was really fought for was the key to the Bosporus. Constantinople is a place of great commercial and strategic importance. Nevertheless, by a strange combination of circumstances, a religious element has entered into almost all the wars that have been waged for its possession. The dwellers in this luxurious land have never been famous for the sanctity of their lives from Helen’s time till now; yet it has ever been among them that the odium theologicum has borne its bitterest fruit. In the time of Troy, “’twas Juno’s wrath that was the spring of woes unnumbered.” And now we have the Czar proclaiming a crusade and the Sultan a sacred war.

Russia, in all wars against the Turks, has always, among other allegations, proclaimed the never-ending pretext of protecting the Greek Catholics from persecution. Czar Alexander having proclaimed to all the world that the present war has not been initiated on his part with any desire of territorial aggrandizement, the religious element enters as usual as an important factor in our speculations as to its results. Before making any military criticisms, we wish to make a few observations on the Greek and Mohammedan religions, which must supply the combatants with the fanaticism which is giving color and character to the war. If the moral is to the physical as four is to one, any calculation of resources would be useless which omitted the motive power.

Greek Catholicism, as everybody knows, differs from Roman Catholicism only in a few points of doctrine and practice. But the two churches are as wide as the poles asunder, as the Greeks do not acknowledge the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope. Yet they claim infallibility for their church none the less; for, like the Roman Catholics, they teach that outside of their church there is no salvation. Now, mark this. The Mohammedans believe and proclaim for themselves this very thing. Only their statement of it is in the affirmative and not in the negative form— “that all infidels are damned.” The important thing with them is, not that God is God, but that Mohammed is his prophet, and that they are his followers. People who believe that out of their church there is no salvation necessarily believe that outsiders will be damned; and the conclusion is a just and pious one, that they ought to be. This reasoning easily takes the form of the good old Puritan syllogism, that this world was made for the saints, with the consolatory conclusion derived therefrom that it was made for us. Good Christians once believed “that some should be saved, yet so as by fire,” and acted on this by burning heretics. But in Christian countries this argument is no longer pressed to its logical conclusion. In the first place, Christ was not, like Mohammed, a prophet of the sword ; and in the next place, the general study of philosophy and political economy among western nations has made them more tolerant. They are not so dreadfully certain as your infallible people. But our average Turk of to-day is just as sure his enemy is doomed to damnation as ever John Knox was. The Turk and the Jew are the only consistent Unitarians. To them all others are pagans and infidels. They must, therefore, be uncompromising in matters of faith. The Turk is more uncompromising than the Israelite, because the one is a cosmopolite and the other is not. There are other reasons for the Turks’ lack of progressiveness besides their religion: first, they are polygamists; secondly, they are slaveholders; and thirdly, they are not, as a people, agriculturists. No people who do not cultivate their own lands can ever take root. The Turks are only camping in Europe. For five hundred years they have only held military possession. It is not feudalism, for feudalism finally takes root in farming. The Turk is too lazy to farm; he is not too lazy to fight. He can yet fight terribly. The old saying, to fight like a Turk, was founded on fact. A Mohammedan is a fatalist, and a fatalist should be brave. Personal courage is not so decisive an element in modern war as in the days of Godfrey and Saladin; yet, after a good many years’ experience in the business, I am confirmed in the belief that it still constitutes by far the most important element in successful soldiering. No advantage in arms, no amount of training, can make up for it. Zeal and enthusiasm are scarcely less essential now than at the time of the crusades. Long marches must be made, hunger, heat, and cold endured, hard work done with pick and spade, while brain and nerve are put under much greater strain than ever before. It is about a thousand miles from Tiflis, the Russian base of operations in the Caucasus, to Constantinople. The Taurus range of mountains average nine thousand feet in height. A better idea of the country can be got from Xenophon’s “Anabasis” than from any modern book. Pompey, Croesus, and Mithridates, and other classical gentlemen, fought over the country in which Ivan Paskevitch made his last campaign against the Turks, and in which General Melikoff is now trying his fortune. The bloodiest battle of which we have any record was fought at Angora between Tamerlane and Bajazet. It is in this country of fine military positions that the decisive campaign will be fought, if the contest becomes a death struggle between the Russian and the Turkish races.

This question of race involves another general principle no less important. It is the lack of homogeneity between the Turks and the other races under the rule of the Sultan, on the one hand, and the supposed tendency of all the Slavic tribes to coalesce, on the other.

The principle of national unification, carried to its logical consequences, would end in some striking revolutions. It would reestablish Poland and Ireland, and break up Austria and Turkey. Should Russia proclaim a Pan-Slavic war, Austria would have to take part against her at once. The Czar evidently feels that he cannot fight against these odds, to gain the active cooperation of all the Slavs in the Turkish empire. Even if he were strong enough to fight Austria and Turkey combined, he could not secure his foothold beyond the Balkans until he had crushed the military power of Austria, for the plain reason that a Russian force invading Turkey is taken by the power of Austria in reverse.

Kinglake, in the first volume of his “Invasion of the Crimea,” has a diagram illustrating the straits in which the Czar placed himself by attempting to maintain a hostile occupation of the Danubian principalities without the assent of Austria. This he does by very tapering lines of a current starting large from Moscow and Warsaw, and running down to a very fine arrow-head on the Danube; “showing,” he says, “the hourly decreasing strength of an invader who operates at a vast distance from his main resources.” Transylvania intrudes like a corner bastion of a fortress between Russia and Turkey, and a small force stationed there, either with hostile or uncertain purpose, would paralyze an invading force marching south.

The only very successful war the Russians have ever made against the Turks was in 1828-1829, when Diebitsch advanced to Adrianople and Paskevitch to Erzerum and Trebizond. But the Turks at that time fought under every disadvantage. Their old army of Janissaries had revolted and been exterminated. The force that had. been hastily organized in their place was simply a raw and undisciplined levy. The power of the Turks had been crushed by the allied powers in the Greek revolt. Their fleet had been destroyed at Navarino; and the Russian armies, advancing in Europe and Asia, had this vast advantage. The Russian navy dominated the Black sea. Now, however, this condition is reversed. The Turks control the sea, and the Russian armies, advancing in Europe and Asia, have to do so with a flank exposed. Not only can they get no help from water transportation, but their adversaries, if enterprising, can annoy them by naval expeditions against their exposed seacoast on the Euxine.

In this history may repeat itself. When General McClellan transported his army by water from Alexandria, Virginia, to Fort Monroe, it was spoken of as quite a novel expedient in the art of war. Yet the Emperor He-raclius twice resorted to the like expedient: first, to drive back the Persians, who were advancing on Constantinople through Anatolia, when fearing, as Gibbon says, a defeat in his capital, he embarked his army, sailed down the Hellespont, passed completely around the peninsula of Asia Minor, and landed his army at Issus, in rear of his enemies and on their line of communications. His campaign was successful; the Persian armies were defeated. This was in the year 622. Two years later, when Constantinople was again attacked by the Persians from the Adriatic side, and the Avars from the north, Heraclius again transported his army by sea, this time to Trebizond, near the southeast corner of the Euxine; once again flanking his adversaries, and carrying the war into Persia, but leaving the Avars to enjoy the gold, and silver, and silks, and virgins before referred to. This same Heraclius was the first to feel the sharpness of the prophet’s sword. All his skill availed but little against the first fierce burst of Moslem zeal.

To return at once to our own day, we are bound to admit the great advantages the Turks have in their defensive war. Their greatest advantage is, that for offensive war the Russians are only third-rate soldiers. Their generals lack imagination and resource; their common soldiers intelligence and dash. Their organization seems too cumbersome, their units of command too large. In the next place, the advantage they have in the power of concentration is neutralized in Bulgaria by the natural and artificial advantages possessed by their adversaries. These are the Balkan range of mountains, their four great fortresses, and the command of the sea. As the Russians cannot, or think they cannot, pass through the Turkish quadrilateral, they have, so to speak, to reach around a corner to strike a blow. Their single line of communication, a single-track railroad through Bucharest, binds them, like an umbilical cord, to one line of operations.

The Turks have a line of communication parallel with their base. This is the most convenient line possible, both for concentration and supply, if it is safe. They are, to use the technical term, forming front to a flank. Nothing can be more dangerous than this, if the line is exposed to attack. In the present war the Russians can only reach the Turkish line of communication with Constantinople by taking or masking three fortresses and passing the Balkans.

A railroad along this base line of communication has so far more than made up for the interior lines the Russians possess. The greatest strategic danger the Turks are in is from an attack on their inner flank. But the Russians cannot make such an attack without taking Shumla or getting the command of the sea. An attack on the Turkish outer or left flank would be no disadvantage to them. Their danger lies in the possibility of their enemy’s penetrating their centre. A defeat near Adrianople would be ruinous. But the Russians to gain such an advantage must make sure of victory. Marmont forced Wellington to fight with his front to a flank at Salamanca. Thi3 would have been fatal to Wellington if he had been defeated; but he was not. On the contrary, he won the battle and turned the tables on his adversary.

It is probable, however, that notwithstanding all the advantages which the Turks may have in a defensive war, the Russians will whip them if their money holds out. This is the great question. It must be to them a terribly expensive war. It is about as far from Moscow to Constantinople, via Silistria, as from Washington to Denver. By the Asiatic route by Tiflis, Erzerum, and Asia Minor, it is as far as from Washington to Portland, Oregon. It will cost Russia nearly as much to carry on this war as it would cost us to contend with the whole power of Great Britain concentrated in British Columbia. It is reported that at the conclusion of the Crimean war there was a dead horse or a broken wagon for every yard of the road from Moscow to Se-bastopol. It was this that broke down the power of Russia; not the loss of a town, or even the disgraceful defeats of Alma and Inkerman.

But let us suppose the Czar is entirely successful; that the Greek cross is placed over St. Sophia, and that the double eagle and not the dove lights on Mount Ararat. Cui bono? Will the condition of the people in the Ottoman empire be in any way improved? If the military power of Turkey is crushed, the present dynasty exterminated, and a Russian satrap rules in every province from Scutari to Bassorah, what then? Have the Russian Asiatic departments been so well governed as to lead us to conclude that Russian despotism is a very civilizing influence? Will they or can they abolish polygamy and slavery? Can they make lazy people work, or transform knaves into honest men? It should be remembered, also, that polygamy and slavery are not an outgrowth of Mohammedanism. They are Oriental vices, that long antedate the birth of the prophet. How hard they are to eradicate we know by our own recent experience. “We have some reformers in these lines, who are now out of business, whom we might lend to the Czar should he seriously undertake the task of reconstruction. Israel lent to Egypt a Joseph, to Assyria a Mordecai. Athens lent generals to Syracuse, rhetoricians to Rome. Prance gave Ireland a St. Patrick and lent us a Lafayette. Why should we not generously loan to Russia a Phillips, a Beecher, and a Wade? Even this is not the hardest task. To reform Turkey they must abolish the Turks. They were once a pastoral people who turned land pirates. The first shepherd did the first murder and became a vagabond. Shepherd tribes have always shown the same tendency. Even our Texa3 cow-boys, short as has been their pastoral experience, will die before they will dig. The Turk has not been pastoral for centuries. His vagabondism has taken a worse type. He is a military interloper, an effete despot. There are five or six millions of these people west of the Dardanelles. Can they be converted, reformed, or removed? The exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the most considerable of which we have any reliable record. According to the Biblical estimate, there were about four millions of them. Their migration had to be helped out by many miraculous interpositions, which can hardly be expected in favor of the Turks.

The invasions of the Roman empire by northern hordes are generally spoken of as the military migrations of populous nations. The historian Robinson has conclusively shown that their numbers have been greatly exaggerated. They were barbarous tribes who lived mainly by hunting and fishing, and it is simply impossible that they should have been very numerous. But these speculations are more curious than profitable. It is not probable that an entire people will ever again be forced into an involuntary emigration from their homes.

Mr. Thomas Carlyle says that Russia is a great missionary nation. Yes, but what is her mission? Centralization? order enforced by power? organization by proclamation? There is a class of people who believe that the passing of laws and the issuing of edicts is a cure for all evils. To such persons the Russian government, viewed from a distance, seems quite admirable. But it gives but little play to spontaneous development, but little chance for endogenous growth. Centralization, when the result of natural or even cultivated affinities, is an excellent thing. When the result of force alone, it is worse than a Procrustean bed. The responsibility of local self-government is the best educator, and military rule the worst. It may seem like a strange assertion for a soldier to make, yet I believe it is true, that this Turkish problem cannot be solved by the arbitrament of war. “Whether Russian kill Turk, or Turk kill Russian, or each do kill the other,” the cause of civilization will not be advanced one iota. But the daily press hastens to add honest Iago’s conclusion, “that every way makes our gain.” This may be true in dollars and cents; but as the world will lose a large part of its wealth by absolute destruction, we too will have to pay a certain share in general average.