SEC. II.1 EXEMPLARY VIRTUE OF BULGARIANS.

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Bulgarians. Let one quotation suffice: Both sexes are comfortably and solidly dressed, and evince, as well as their apartments, that sense of order and neatness is the principal rule of their households. Their behaviour is no less laudable. License, intemperance, and other vices, the appendici of over-civilization, are almost unknown among them. As far as my experience goes, I consider the Bulgarians to be, on the whole, a shrewd, active, and industrious people, ranking in capacity and intelligence with any other of the European races. They require only the full development of their good qualities for attaining a high accomplishment in modern civilization. Unlike the Greeks, who mean to improve their social position by the politics of the coffee-houses, the Bulgarians put their hands to work and try the solution of the national economical questions in the true practical way.'1

:

Such being the esteem in which female virtue is held among the Christians of South-eastern Europe, let us see how it fares under Turkish rule. The evidence which I am about to quote, let it be remembered, does not belong to any of those periodical massacres which occur in Turkey with almost the regularity of a natural law it illustrates the rule, not the exception, of the life to which the Christian subjects of Turkey are doomed. And here again my first witness shall be one of her Majesty's Consular Agents. The Turkish police,' says Major Cox, 'live at the expense of the inhabitants; and such is the moral influence they possess over the minds of the Christian peasants that there is nothing which they may not do with impunity in some of the remote villages. I believe all that can

1 Consular Reports of 1867, p. 44.

be said as to the violation of females may be said under this head it is simply that, as a rule, the women will not offer any resistance to a Mussulman-they are treated with so little respect by their own husbands that but a small sense of morality exists among them. The husband is not ashamed to confess that he goes to sleep in the stable, and leaves his Mussulman guest to do as he pleases with his wife and daughters.' 1

This is a specimen of the rash generalisation of the British traveller in Turkey. I gather from the Blue Book that Major Cox was not employed as a regular Consul; but that, travelling through the country, and being an intelligent man, he was asked by the British Ambassador at Constantinople to send to our Foreign Office the benefit of his observations on the condition of the Christians in Bulgaria. His report evinces diligence, and the facts which he states are for the most part so abundantly confirmed from other sources that they may be accepted as trustworthy. That the same cannot be said of his inferences, the specimen given above sufficiently proves. The facts are as Major Cox states them. Turkish officials, from the lowest to the highest, quarter themselves on the Christian population, turning the men out of the house; but not the women, or the boys if they are good-looking-wvnévta σuvéTOIOI. And no resistance is offered, says Major Cox, because 'the moral influence' of the Turk is so extraordinary. But the truth is that the only resistance that men, women, or boys can offer is flight or concealment, which is not always possible; and the 'moral influence' which seemed to Major Cox so extraordinary will appear simple enough when we learn the very practical

1 Consular Reports of 1860, p. 60.

SEC. II.]

A NOVEL MORAL INFLUENCE.'

75

means by which it is in the habit of asserting itself. A few examples will suffice :-

When he has

'Besides the wholesale robbery of the great Turks, there is the petty oppression of the little Turks. One of them, with his belt full of pistols, walks up to a Rayah's house. He calls out the master, who perhaps is the head man of the village, and bids him hold his horse. He walks in, sits down, and makes the women light his pipe. The girls all run away and hide in the outhouses, or among the neighbours. finished his pipe, he asks for a fowl. He is told there is none. A few blows bring one out; a few more bread and wine. What is the source of this insolence? That he is armed, and that he is the only person in the village who is so. . . . If the Rayahs were armed, or the Turks were disarmed, there would be none of this petty oppression.' 1

...

'The scarlet cap and the well-known garb of a Turkish irregular,' says Mr. Layard in his Nineveh and its Remains, are the signals for a general panic. The women hide in the innermost recesses to save themselves from insult; the men slink into their houses, and offer a vain protest against the seizure of their property.'

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Dr. Badger tells, as a fact within his own personal knowledge, of women throwing themselves into the Tigris to escape dishonour,' while the Turkish Government was averse to any coercion or strong measures being adopted against' the miscreants who thus embitter the lives of a virtuous population.2

1A Journal kept in Turkey and Greece. By Nassau W. Senior, Esq., pp. 139-140.

2 The Nestorians and their Rituals. By the Rev. George Percy Badger, vol. i. p. 278.

'It is not in wild frenzy that the Turk destroys,' says Mr. Wright, but in calm blood, and in strict accord with his habits, and laws, and creed. The tendency of his rule is to corrupt, torment, destroy. The cruelties in Bulgaria disclose to me no new facts. I have known Christians beaten for claiming their own cattle from Mohammedan robbers. I have known Christian husbands murdered for protecting their own wives. My own house was the refuge of a lovely Christian bride, who in the full gaze of the village was hunted there like a gazelle by a Turkish Governor, who spoke French and affected civilization in general. I have seen a Christian murdered under the eye of a Turkish sentry, who would not put forth a hand to stay the assassin. There is scarcely a village in the Turkish Empire without its tragic tale. There is scarcely a Christian family without a hideous remembrance too horrible for thought or word."

Dr. Sandwith states the following facts on his personal knowledge:

'For some time past' (this was written in 1864), the Porte has established in several Nahies, as those of Nish, Zaplagna, Vragna, &c., a species of police, consisting of armed bands, commanded by a Krs-serdar, charged with maintaining order in the country. Among these Krs-serdars there was one called Deli Mehmet. The latter arrived on the 8th December, 1859, at the village of Mateivtzé, near Nish, at the head of twenty seimens. His first act was to drive from his home the curé of the village and all the males, and to instal himself in it with his troop, which was lodged and boarded at the expense of the house for three days. During

1 Slaves and Turks, pp. 118-9. Mr. Wright succeeded Dr. Porter as head of the Irish Presbyterian Mission in Damascus.

SEC. II.]

'MORAL INFLUENCE' EXPLAINED.

77

those three days he obliged the wife of the curé and the other women of the house 1 After having satisfied his brutal appetites he invited a Krsserdar in the neighbourhood, named Arbar Bairakdar, to come to the priest's house with his twenty seimens. The latter arrived, and all the females in the house were placed at the disposal of this second band

Here are some of the experiences of the French engineer already quoted. He relates them as incidents in the ordinary life (en temps ordinaire) of the Bulgarian Rayah. For the truth of all these he personally vouches as an eye-witness, though powerless to help the victims, except in the last case :

A Yeni-Han des zaptiés furieux (fanatisés par les prédications des muftis et des ulémas) se jetèrent brusquement sur un grand nombre de femmes et de jeunes filles de la campagne qui s'étaient rendues au bourg à l'occasion de la foire; ces pauvres gens s'enfuirent en poussant des cris d'épouvante; mais les zaptiés les serrèrent de près, et, à grands coups de sabre et de kandjiar, en blessèrent une vingtaine. Le caïmakan ou gouverneur ne fit rien; les zaptiés et quelques jeunes gens turcs qui s'étaient joints à eux dans cette affaire purent assouvir leurs passions brutales sur huit ou dix jeunes filles qui avaient demandé grâce.'

'Dans un autre village les zaptiés chargés de percevoir les dîmes arriérées commirent des actes beaucoup plus atroces. Ils réunirent une dizaine de femmes, et, après les passions assouvies, ils s'amusèrent de la sorte: l'une des femmes devait regarder fixement le soleil, sans fermer les yeux; à chaque mouvement, occasionné par la douleur, elle recevait un coup de sabre

1 For the rest of the sentence I must refer the reader to Dr. Sandwith's narrative. Hekim Bashi, vol. ii. p. 276.