third part of men, and that during which the vial of the wrath of God was poured upon the great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, is strikingly illustrated in the fate of the janisaries. In the last and fatal assault, which closed the siege of Constantinople, they rose "fresh, vigorous, and invincible," and the last of the princes and nobles of the empire fell beneath their scimitars.. But the sword that was given to Mahomet and his successors was now no longer the weapon by which peace was to be taken from the earth. And the sultan sought in vain to "force on them a new system of discipline."* They revolted and rebelled, pillaged the palaces of the Porte, and committed the most frightful excesses throughout Constantinople. The Sandschack Sherif, or sacred banner of the prophet, which had not been displayed for half a century, was brought forth against them. And the faithful Moslems rallied around it. Sixty thousand men surrounded the Etmeidan, (15th July 1826), where the janisaries were all tumultuously assembled in a dense crowd, and having no apprehension of such a measure; and the first intimation many of them had of their situation, was a murderous discharge of grapeshot from the cannon of the Topghees (artillerymen.) Vast numbers were killed on the spot, and the survivors retired to their kislas, or barracks, which were close by: here they shut themselves up; and in order to dislodge them it was necessary to set the kislas on fire, as they refused all terms of surrender. The flames were soon seen from Pera, bursting out in different places; and that none might escape, the barracks were surrounded, like the Etmeidan, with cannon, and the discharges continued without intermission. It is not possible, perhaps, to * Turkey, Brewst. Encyc. vol. xviii. p. 688. conceive any situation more horrible than that in which the janisaries now found themselves; the houses in flames over their heads, and the walls battered down about them, torn to pieces with grapeshot, and overwhelmed with ruins and burning fragments. As it was determined to exterminate them utterly, no quarter was any longer offered or given, and the conflagration and discharge of artillery continued for the remainder of the day. At length, however, opposition ceased, when there was no longer any thing left alive to make it. The fire slackened and silenced, the flames were extinguished of themselves; and the next morning presented a frightful scene-burning ruins slaked in blood-a huge mass of mangled flesh and smoky ashes."* "The contests carried off, it is supposed, on both sides, about 30,000 persons."+ Every janisary taken in arms, or who was suspected of being concerned in the revolt, was strangled on the spot; and others less culpable were banished to Asia." The order of the janisaries was abolished. In "the great fire of Constantinople," in the next month, six thousand houses in the most wealthy and magnificent part of the city were destroyed.§ 66 + The battle of Navarino was fought in 1827. "It continued with unabated fury during four hours. At the end of that period, the Turkish and Egyptian fleets had disappeared; the bay of Navarino was covered with their wrecks. The carrage on board the crowded ships of the enemy was destructive. In two of their ships of the line alone, two thirds of their crews were killed or wounded."|| The combination * Walsh's Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople, pp. 88, 89. † Ibid. p. 222. Turkey, Brewster's Encyclop. ib. p. 688. § Ibid. was as new and strange as the event was " untoward," by which British and French ships of war were allied with Russian, in destroying the naval power of the Turks. The battle of Navarino was "an event unexampled in the history of nations." And the unwonted league of France and England, to the formation of which jealousy of Russia may have somewhat conspired, was, by a remarkable fatality, the deathblow of the Turkish navy, and, by giving the command of the Euxine to the Russians, led to a new series of calamities to the Ottomans. То While the policy of Europe was directed to stay the threatened war, the sultan, by an act which "cut short all intermission," gave new proof to the truth of the proverb, with illustrations of which history is full, and Bonaparte is an example,-quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat-God first deprives of reason the man whom he has devoted to destruction. call forth the fanatical fury of the Moslem population, as if to see whether Islamism had still the spirit or the fate to conquer, or was doomed to triumph or to fail in a war professedly religious, the sultan issued a despatch by the reis effendi to all the pashas of the provinces, in which he avowed that his pretended negotiations with Russia "had been only devices to delay actual hostilities, till he should be able to sustain them," and that from the beginning "every thing announced that the answer to the proposition of the Franks would at last have to be given by the sabre alone."* Russia declared war against Turkey on the 26th of April 1828. A Russian army, under Paskewitch, after having defeated the Persians and enforced peace, was in readiness on the eastern frontier of Turkey to invade its territories. Immediately on the decla * Ann. Reg. 1828, p. 222. ration of war, "the sultan was attacked in his Asiatic pachalics; a Turkish army was put to flight; four entrenched camps were attacked, and taken possession of; the fortress of Achakalaki was reduced and occupied; and the conquerors took the city of Achalzik itself by storm, after an assault of thirteen hours, in the course of which the garrison of four thousand men were put to the sword. Paskewitch next overran, with little opposition, the pachalic of Bajazet, (Bayazid,) and was preparing to march against Erzerum, in the end of October, when the approach of winter put an end to the campaign."* 66 On the north, Turkey was invaded by a Russian army of an hundred and fifteen thousand men."+ The Turks fought with their ancient fury, as if they still had been prepared to slay. After desperate and long-continued sieges, Brailow was taken, and Varna surrendered. Other fortresses along the coast of the Euxine were yielded up to the Russians, and while their partial disasters led to new exertions, a way was prepared for the more splendid successes of the following year. Li In 1829, the power of the Turkish empire was broken, though the empire itself was preserved. terally and historically, without reference to prophecy, it might be said that tidings out of the east and out of the north troubled the Porte.t On the east two Turkish armies were successively defeated; and Erzerum, the capital of Anatolia, fell into the hands of the invaders. And scarcely were these conquests won, when, after the fall of Silistria and of "the ports of the Euxine one after another," and the defeat of the grand visier, the Balkan was passed, and the head-quarters of the Russians were soon in the city of Adrianople. Experience was thus teaching the 66 * Ann. Reg. 1828, p. 222. † Ibid. p. 242. + Dan. xi. 44. Turkish government, in every direction, that it was involved in a struggle, in which continued resistance would only render ultimate ruin more inevitable and decisive." When the Ottoman government learned that the Balkan had been passed-that the Russian army was hurrying on from victory to victory, and that no force existed to bar their march to Constantinople, the true situation of their affairs was revealed to them. The capital was in consternation." The banner of the prophet, which had wrought the destruction of the janisaries, was unfurled in vain. And the sublime porte submitted to the terms of peace dictated by the Russian commander. The sultan, ere the contest began, called forth the Turks to the defence of their faith, and proclaimed a religious war which was to decide the fate of Mahometanism. But it was destined to fall without hand, and the Russians did not destroy it, or subvert the empire of the Ottomans. Consternation had indeed seized the Turkish government, from simultaneous tidings out of the east and out of the north. But as, in the fatal moment," Constantinople had been saved, when assaulted by the Turks, when the time of their preparation to slay was not complete, so, in the moment of conquest and triumph, the progress of the armies of Russia was stayed at the very time when the empire of Turkey, in Asia and Europe, seemed to be prostrated before them. And although the conquest of Constantinople had long been accounted the main object of the policy of the Czars, it fell not by foreign foes. From the testimony of a British officer who was present on the scene, who "had arrived from England to join the army in the field, and to see the + Ibid. p. 218. * Ann. Reg. 1829, p. 217. |