Which wafted far above, where angels dwelt, The deep-toned organ pealed its last rich note, Her breast, and kneeling, cried out, " I have sinned!" One storm-tossed spirit gathered to the fold Was saved, the angels knew; and every voice Joined in the anthem, till at length it rolled In waves of music; and the word "Rejoice!" Was echoed round the great white throne, and grew In grander chorus, and in cadence rare; While through the star-gemmed atmosphere, like dew, Something unseen descended-something unseen, but felt; The darkness vanished, clouds of doubt were riven. E'en on that night the outcast, as she knelt, Knew that her pardon had been won in heaven. THE REFUGEES IN TURKEY. BY F. R. GRAHAME, AUTHOR OF "Science, Art, and LITERATURE IN RUSSIA." IN 1873 a Conference assembled at Brussels, at the suggestion of the Emperor of Russia, to consider various ways of ameliorating the miseries of war, particularly by the adoption of a general agreement for the neutralization of the civilians and of their property in an invaded country. Perhaps it was viewed with the more distrust, as it was the fashion to distrust every Russian proposal, but Great Britain refused to have anything to do with the Conference, which was closed in consequence of the absence of European unanimity, and it was much ridiculed by our press. Among other reasons put forward against such a neutrality, it was stated that a nation would lose one great means of self-defence if its peasantry were prohibited from taking up arms, and if wars were only to be waged by the regular soldiers on both sides. France having endured the sad experience of three foreign invasions in sixty years, was perhaps more competent to judge on such a matter than Great Britain, who has enjoyed a happy exemption from a foreign hostile foot for many centuries; and even the Journal des Debats, a republican organ, edited by a Polish Jew, and therefore very anti-Russian, observed that if such proposals as were put forth at the Congress on the part of Russia had been agreed upon in 1870, it would have prevented much suffering inflicted by the franc-tireurs on the civil population in France. Indeed, those who objected to them on the score of crippling the resources of an invaded country must have been unacquainted with actual warfare; the real difficulty in such agreements would be that a belligerent is too apt to consider might as right, and that on the plea that all is fair in war, might infringe it on one side when it had been honestly kept by the weakest. The writer was in France during a part of the German war, and was a witness of the devastation and robberies frequently caused by the franc-tireurs, or armed civilians, who under the garb of patriotism plundered, and even sometimes shot, their own 2 B VOL. XXVI. countrymen. Even if these people had been always disinterested patriots, old guns in unpractised hands were no match for Prussian rifles and artillery; and they were not recognised as belligerents by the enemy, who sternly executed every man or woman who was captured with arms. Irregular troops (and such armed civilians would be nothing else) are generally a greater curse to their own people than to the enemy, for they take up arms for the sake of plunder, and when loaded with spoil will not risk its loss by going within reach of shot. Such are the Bashi-bazouks in Turkey, who have the further disadvantage of being collected from remote parts of the Empire, which look upon the European Turks, Christians or Mussulmans, as aliens, and are often most hostile to them, and still more the Circassians; and the presence of these savage franc-tireurs accounts for much of the misery caused by the late Eastern war. All authorities agree that the Christian population of Roumelia and Bulgaria were the most industrious and thriving of the agricultural inhabitants. They were plundered by the Circassian settlers, and by the Turkish police and tax-gatherers, and their wives and children were liable to be carried away to Turkish harems; they lived among an armed Mahometan population, while they were not permitted to possess any weapon of defence; but they barred their doors and windows, and kept their wives and children indoors as much as possible, and still worked on and prospered by frugality; while their Turkish neighbour, when he could procure the means, drank strong coffee and smoked all day, leaving his family in rags and semistarvation. The Christians longed for schools, and pinched themselves to give their children some education, but where were the schoolmasters and books to be found? for the Turks sternly prohibited the sale of books in the Bulgarian dialect, or of the New Testament to the orthodox Bulgarians; and a bookseller who endeavoured to start a shop for that purpose in Salonica was obliged to close it by the authorities. Yet a schoolmistress was brought at much expense from Bohemia, and the priests obtained their education in Russia. An English traveller some years ago in those parts was much struck by the pleasure with which one or two New Testaments he had for sale were bought by the people, and how eagerly he was asked if he had not more. American and Scottish missionaries have been permitted to settle in Eski-zagra, and near Constantinople, to try and convert the Bulgarians to Protestantism, although death to the convert and expulsion to the missionary was the penalty of a conversion from Mahometanism, for the Turks knew well the advantage politically of dividing a part of the nation from its fellows; and they also hoped that it was a step towards Mahometanism, whereas they have very rarely obtained a convert from the members of Eastern Catholicism. We may mention here, in passing, that Petko, who for years has been a ferocious brigand, was once a highly respectable inhabitant of Salonica, but a Turkish pasha carried off some of the female members of his family, and he has ever since vowed vengeance against every Mahometan. The spiritual starvation to which the Christians in Turkey have been subjected by their Government is likely enough to develop characters such as the Jewish captives in Assyria, who sang the 137th Psalm, rather than the patient and forgiving followers of the New Testament. Their position has been much like that of the children of Israel in Egypt, and, like those Hebrews, they have been entreated evil for 400 years. Such was the state of things when the massacre of 1876 took place, and the circumstances being fully investigated by Mr. Schuyler, Mr. Baring, and other commissioners, it was decided by the European Powers that certain reforms and guarantees to prevent such excesses for the future should be demanded from the Turkish Government; but the Sultan and his ministers threw away the last opportunity of preserving their Empire in its integrity, and preferred to accept the chances of war. . For many months after the outbreak of hostilities between Turkey and Russia the inevitable cost of war, and far more than the usual amount of suffering it entails, fell on the Christian population of Turkey. A colonel in the Turkish service wrote in October, 1877:-" Their arabas, bullocks, and they themselves to drive them, are requisitioned for months together, their cattle are taken to feed the army, their hay and barley to feed the horses of the cavalry the Government are daily, by their treatment of the loyal, showing what the rebels may expect if they return to their loyalty. It is the fashion just now to run down the wretched Bulgarian, but I pity him from my soul. He has 400 years of oppression written on his hardened face" (Russell and the other newspaper correspondents during the Crimean War described exactly the same state of things in 1854). The colonel pitched his tent in a Bulgarian farmyard, and found "the woman who owned it in bitter trouble. I was told that her husband had been taken by the authorities, and was in prison in Phillipopolis. He was probably at that moment hanging from one of the gibbets we had seen; for it is a short shrift they get, and to be suspected I fancy is to be condemned." The pass of Eski-zagra he found "literally strewn with bodies of dead Bulgarians," among them. a great many women horribly treated. This province, as we have heard from a Scottish eye-witness, was the scene of a second massacre almost equalling that of 1876. A detachment of Russians under General Gourko crossed the Balkans, and took possession of the town of Eski-zagra, and while they were there the same eye-witness stated that order was preserved, the chief Bulgarians were formed into a municipality, and the life, freedom, and property of all classes, including Jews and Mahometans, were perfectly safe; but the Russian vanguard being unsupported, it was obliged to retreat. Some of the Bulgarians followed it, but others, hoping that as they had never borne arms, the colony of American and Scottish missionaries who remained there would be a sufficient protection, stayed behind. The Turkish army entered, preceded by the Circassians and Turkish irregulars, and the place was quickly converted into a howling wilderness. No opposition was offered to the Turks, but they slaughtered indiscriminately, and the wives and children of the missionaries were only saved by some foreign officers in the Turkish service at the risk of their own lives. At the same time the Mahometan villagers to the south of the Balkans were supplied with arms and ammunition, and under the name of Bashi-bazouks (i. e., rascals) they carried on the work of massacre and pillage. Consul Fawcett himself wrote on August 25, 1877 :-" When Suleiman Pasha arrived in the Tundja valley, he hung every Bulgarian he could catch. The Bashi-bazouks and Circassians are carrying on the work of reprisals in their own bloodthirsty manner." This was upon the women and children, and on some of the Mahometans; for, as we have been told by two very different witnesses, all the Christian native male population were sentenced to death by Suleiman's orders and 1,500 were hung, the rest escaping to the mountains. With the cunning which has always characterized the Turks, they tried to alienate the sympathies of Europe from the Bulgarian cause by reporting barbarities on the part of the Russians and native Christians, and suppressing telegrams from |