But though the traces of that predominance still survive in a considerable number of place-names, the Slavs were gradually absorbed by the superior civilisation of the Greeks, and thus the older race reasserted its pre-eminence. The late Sir Richard Jebb put this matter in its just proportions. The 'modern Greek nation . . . contains, as all would allow, a large 'infusion of Slavonic blood; but it is a fact equally well estab'lished that the strain of Hellenic blood has been perpetual, ' and that the Hellenic element is that which has determined 'the type of the modern nationality.' * The same distinguished authority has indicated two further links which, apart from language and blood, connect the modern with the ancient Greeks. The first is ' A marked aptitude for ' city life, as distinguished from rural life on the one hand, and on the other from the life of a larger political organism.' With this partiality for city life we may connect perhaps the aptitude of the modern Greek, at any rate, for commerce. The second feature is the devotion of the Greeks at all periods of their history to mental culture, 'not merely from a perception 'that knowledge is power, but also, and more, for the sake of 'the intellectual and moral pleasure which literature and art 'bestow.' † The cultured classes of the two great nations of the West were, then, powerfully attracted towards the Greek cause by the imperishable memories of the past. But Philhellenist sentiment did not rely exclusively upon the past for sustenance. It happened to harmonize with two forces destined to influence most powerfully the political future of Europe. When the Greeks in 1821 raised the standard of insurrection against the Turks they did so in the name of freedom and nationality. They enjoyed, therefore, the advantage of a further coincidence. At that date Europe was beginning to appreciate the reasons which had from the first made the Holy Alliance suspect in the eyes of English statesmen. However benevolent the purpose which had inspired the original scheme of the Czar Alexander, it was soon stripped of its idealism when Metternich assumed control of its practical operations. The ideas of *Modern Greece, pp. 52, 53. liberalism and nationality, ignored or suppressed in the settlement of 1815, were by 1821 reasserting their influence amid the orgy of reaction into which many of the restored Princes plunged after the triumph of 'legitimacy' at the Congress of Vienna. Thus the Greek revival came at the psychological moment for disappointed liberalism both in France and England. In the former country, the influence of the Count of Artois, the ultraclericals and the Emigrés was making rapid headway against the moderate constitutionalism' of Louis XVIII and the Duc de Richelieu. In England Lord Liverpool's Government was attempting to allay a mass of accumulated suffering and discontent by the repressive legislation embodied in the 'Six Acts.' In both countries the tide of liberalism was, consequently, rising fast, and with the idea of liberalism was closely associated that of 'nationality.' Napoleon had worked better than he knew. Purely selfish in his aims, he had given, alike in Germany, in Italy, in Poland, in Switzerland and in Spain a powerful impulse to the development of nationalism. In the Turkish Empire national sentiments had remained for more than four centuries completely submerged beneath the Ottoman flood. But they were never wholly extinguished. In Serbia, for example, the memory of a sometime national independence had been sustained mainly by the ballad literature of a freedom-loving peasantry. Even in the eighteenth century there were sporadic insurrections among the Southern Slavs, and in 1804 there was a rising under 'Black George' which might almost be described as national. But Europe was preoccupied and the Serbian revolt attracted little attention, though some concessions were made to Serbia in the treaty which in 1812 was concluded at Bucharest between the Sultan and the Czar. Much more important, from the international point of view, was the insurrection of the Greeks in 1821. That insurrection plainly intimated to the European diplomatists that a new factor had entered into a problem already sufficiently difficult and complicated. Europe had indeed been confronted with that problem, in one form or another, ever since the Ottoman Turks had first crossed the Bosphorus (1356), had destroyed the kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria and, finally, by the conquest of Constantinople (1453), had extinguished the last feeble remnant of the Greek or Byzantine Empire. But the problem had now assumed a new aspect. For two centuries after his initial conquests the rapid advance of the Turk brought terror to the Christian States of Europe. During the two following centuries, on the other hand, his equally rapid decadence involved them in embarrassIf the sick man was really on the verge of dissolution, upon which of the Powers would his inheritance devolve, or how would it be partitioned among them? The Habsburgs had been constantly at war with the Turks for the best part of three centuries. Russia had joined in the fray in the eighteenth century, and in 1774 had concluded with the Porte a treaty, that of Kutchuk-Kainardji, which seemed to suggest that henceforward the 'Eastern Question' was to be regarded as the special, if not the exclusive, concern of the Romanoffs. That suggestion was strengthened by the Treaty of Jassy (1792) and by the Czar Alexander's dealings with Napoleon at Tilsit and Erfurt. The Greek insurrection came, therefore, as a sharp reminder to European diplomacy that before the advent of the Turk there had been in South-Eastern Europe 'nations' which, though quiescent and dumb under the tyranny of the Ottoman, had never forgotten the greatness which had once been theirs, and through the long centuries of suffering, had never surrendered the hope that they might some day reassert their independence and might again in the future play in the affairs of men a part not unworthy of their past. It is the purpose of the pages that follow to disengage from 'that shifting, intractable and interwoven tangle of conflicting interests, rival peoples and antagonistic faiths that is veiled ' under the easy name of the Eastern Question,'* the single thread which has become known as the 'Hellenic factor'; to put that factor into proper perspective, and to estimate its significance relatively to the other factors which combine to make up the problem of the Near East. In March 1821 a band of Greeks under Prince Alexander Hypsilanti raised the standard of revolt in Moldavia. At that *The phrase is Lord Morley's. moment the Holy Allies were in conference at Laibach, summoned thither by Metternich to consider what measures should be taken to suppress the revolutionary outbursts which had lately followed each other with alarming rapidity in Spain, Portugal and Southern Italy. The news from the Balkans fell upon the diplomatists as a bolt from the blue. The Moldavian rising proved in the event to be a mere flash in the pan, but it was the opening prelude of a movement which did not halt until it had added a new nation-the kingdom of the Hellenes-to the European Commonwealth. Though the Greek rising came as a surprise to European diplomatists, it was in reality far from being sudden or unprepared. Any close observer might have discerned symptoms of Hellenic revival during the previous half-century.* Turkish methods of government had themselves contributed in no small degree to maintain among the subject peoples, and particularly among the Greeks, some elements of independence. The Turk is a born fighter, but for the dull work of administration he has never shown the slightest aptitude. Hence he was always content, provided the tribute of money and children was forthcoming, to leave a large measure of local self-government in the hands of his Christian subjects. More than this. He drew into the service of the central government a large number of shrewd Greeks, some of whom rose to the position of Grand Vizier. The offices of Dragoman of the Porte,' the head of the diplomatic service, and of 'Dragoman of the Fleet,' first instituted in the seventeenth century, were almost invariably filled by Greeks, and from the beginning of the eighteenth century Greeks were appointed to be Hospodars, or Provincial Governors of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. These high officials naturally secured the appointment of compatriots to the subordinate posts, and in this way a Greek bureaucracy gradually made itself indispensable to the Ottoman administration. The existence of a local Christian militia, the Armatoli, though the force was reduced in the eighteenth century, was another element in the preservation of Greek nationality. The survival of a hardy race of mariners on the sea-board of the Peloponnesus and in the islands of the Ægean contributed to the same end, while the • Cf. Gladstone: Gleanings from Past Years, iv. p. 274 seq. conspicuous success of the Greeks in commerce and the formation of numerous joint-stock companies promised material assistance to a national struggle for independence. By the commercial treaty concluded between Russia and Turkey in 1783, the Greeks obtained the privilege of trading under the Russian flag. But infinitely more important than all other causes in combination was the part played by the Orthodox Greek Church, and in particular the singular devotion exhibited, both in a pastoral and in a political sense, by the parish priests. As to the general position of the Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule, Sir Charles Eliot has plausibly argued that the Turkish conquest was actually beneficial to its interests. From the first the conqueror Mohammed II. (1451-1481) betrayed a curious anxiety to maintain the ecclesiastical traditions of Byzantium; he wanted the Byzantine Church to look to him as its patron and protector against the Church of the West, and he gave to the Greek Patriarch in Constantinople a quasi-papal position by putting the whole of the Orthodox Church in the Turkish dominions under his jurisdiction. In this way the Patriarch became the representative not only of the Greek Church but of the Greek nation, 'the recognised intermediary 'between them and the Ottoman Government.'* Synods still met, after the Turkish Conquest as before, in Constantinople; the Ecclesiastical courts exercised their wonted jurisdiction and enforced their judgments by excommunication and by the imposition of other spiritual penalties. When we seek the reasons for the survival of the Hellenic nationality, the peculiarly privileged position so long enjoyed by the chief official of the Orthodox Church must not be ignored. To these causes, many of them of long standing, must be added two more which began to operate only towards the end of the eighteenth century. The first was a literary revival of the Greek language,† and the second was the outbreak of the Revolution in France. There can be no doubt that the French Revolution stirred long dormant feelings in the minds of many educated Greeks, and in 1814 a secret society-the Philiké Hetairia, or association of friends-was founded with the avowed object of expelling the Ottomans from Europe and * Turkey in Europe, p. 242 seq. |