History of the Balkans by Ferdinand Schevill

Author:Ferdinand Schevill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ozymandias Press

CHAPTER XVIII. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

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IN ITS EARLY STAGES AT least, the movement, called the French Revolution, was essentially a movement of ideas which, summarized in the magical watch-words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, proposed nothing less than the destruction of the inherited feudal world of privilege and the fullest possible realization of the program of democracy. Ideas so alluring to the oppressed and downtrodden classes of society were sure to win converts by the thousands in every section of Europe, especially as France did not rest content with words but set a flaming example by putting its faith to the test of practice. However, the conservative forces, opposed to change and content with things as they were, proved strong enough, even in France, and so overwhelmingly strong outside of France as to develop a resistance which, drawing ever wider circles, ended by assuming the staggering proportions of a world-war. Old and New Europe locked horns and for a whole generation, down to the congress of Vienna in 1815, that is, throughout the period concerned with the issues raised by the French Revolution, strained and tugged and bled in mortal combat.

So universal a movement could not possibly leave unaffected the Ottoman empire, remote though it was from the central scene of action. True, its backward, barbarous peoples, both Moslems and Christians, had hardly arrived at the level of civilization required to make the democratic message intelligible. More particularly the Asiatic-minded Ottomans would find nothing either significant or desirable in the French program. They would meet it simply with a closed mind, and if certain leaders of the rayahs, vaguely quickened by its sounding promises, would feel the flutter of a new hope, the misery of the mass of the Christians was such that it would require the patient educational labor of decades to lift these victims of oppression out of their centenary stupor. However, it is certain that the doctrine of popular rights proclaimed by the Revolution began, as the eighteenth century came to a close, to circulate gropingly in the benighted areas of Balkania, throwing stray rays of light into the gloom and starting a social and political ferment which ultimately achieved an enormous importance. To this domestic commotion we shall in due time give our attention. By way of introduction, it will be well first to occupy ourselves with the relation of the government of the Ottoman empire to the Revolution as incarnated in its champion, France.

In order fully to understand the form which the relations of France and Turkey assumed in the era of the French Revolution, it will be necessary to review the policy pursued by France toward the Sublime Porte during the preceding centuries. We have taken note of the intimacy struck up between Francis I and Sultan Solyman and commemorated by the famous Capitulations of 1535. Although this agreement gave France commercial and religious privileges in the Ottoman dominion far beyond those of any other European power, it was looked upon by the prudent French government as no more than an entering wedge.

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