Bismarck l p XIX w (1)

180 CHAPTER9

toki the Emperor AJecander as much. and hc took both of my hands and espressed his fuli agreement! (Russia has expcrienced this in 1853/6 and Austria in 1859 and 1866).

—CP, 1:181

93

THE BULGARIAN HORRORS

Bulgarian Horrors and the Questkm of the East, 6 September 1876 • Disraełi to Derby, 8 September 1876

In |uly 1875, Herzegovina rosę against rts Ottoman administrators. By May 1876, the insur-nectłon spread to the Bulgarian-speaking districts of the Ottoman Empire, only to be crushed, wrth appalling barbarrty, by Ottoman irregulars. The news of the Bulgarian atrocities left the British cabinet of Benjamin Disraeli quite unmoved but stirred generał outrage among the lit-

erate pubiic. FYedictably, the chief beneficiary of this ground swell was William Ewart Glad-

stooe, elder statesman of the Liberał opposition. In making himself a leading spokesman for this cause. Gladstone was animated by humanitarian considerations, but he also found in the Bulgarian issue the means to attack the Disraełi govemment. The piece de resistance in Glad-stooes campaign against both Ottoman misrule and the Disraeli cabinet was his publication, in September 1876, of a pamphlet entitłed Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. But Gladstone wavered on what was perhaps the crucial point—his prescription for the futurę of Ottoman rule in Europę. Nonethełess, sales of the pamphlet—200,000 copies in the first morrth—outpaced ali other publications on the subject and dwarfed by far even Gladstone's own folfow-up ettort of March 1877, Lessons in Massacre. '

In the course of the summer, the srtuahon in the Bałkans had become, rf anything, morę compiicated. Serbia, a sełf-goveming province of the Ottoman Empire, in June 1876 declared war against rts nominał overiord, the sułtan. Russian volunteers—most prominent among them General Chemiaev, the conqueror of Tashkent (Document 6.6)—flocked to Serbia but ooułd not ward orf a senes of devastating defeats infłicted by the Ottoman armies. But the ca-tastrophes that befelł Serbia madę it difficult for the Russian govemment to resist the increas-ing domesbc outpouring of support for Serbia. In his pamphlet, Gladstone chose to ignore this fador. In any case, this development was likeły to undermine his prediction that Russia would pfay “for the present epoch what is called the waiting gamę.'

Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, 6 September 1876

... there have bcen perpetrated. nader the immediate authority of a Govemment to which all the time we have been giving the strongest morał, and for pan of the time even materiał support, crimes and outrages, so vast in scalę as to exceed all modem eaampłe.and so unutterabły vik as we 11 as herce in character, that it passes the power of heart to conceńe, and of tongue and pen adequateły to describe them. These arc the Bulgarian horrors: and the question is, What can and shoukl be done, either to

hometanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mahometans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first en-

tered Europę, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad linę of blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion

reached, civilisation disappeared from view....

Now, as regards the tenitorial integrity of Turkey, I for one am still desirous to see jheld, though I do not say that desire should be treated as of a thing paramount to still higher objects of policy. For all the objects of polic>'. in my comiction, humanity, rationally understood, and in due relation to justice, is the first and highest....

Let theTurks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner. namely by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptichs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, elear out from the province they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the I memory of those heaps on heaps of dead; to the riolated purity alike of ma tron. of maiden, and of child; to the civilisation which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God or, if you like, of Allah; to the morał sense of mankind at large....

—William Ewart Gladstone, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London, 1876), 11-13;

51-53:61-62

Disraeli to Derby, 8 September 1876

... Gladstone has had the impudence to send me his pamphlet, tho’ he accuses me of several crimes. The document is passionate and not strong; vindictive and iii* written—that of course. indeed in that respect, of all the Bulgarian horrors, perhaps the greatest....

—Mony pen ny and Buckie, Lite of .. Disraeli. 660

9.4 THE OTTOMAN CONSTITUTION, 11/23 DECEMBER 1876

Afticle 9 of the Peace of Paris denied the powers "the right to interfere, either cołlectively or separately, in the relations of His Majesty the Sułtan with his subjects,... (or) in the Interna! Administration of his Empire' (Document 5.7). Notwithstanding this article, the powers re-sponded to the siaughter in the Ballcans with a spate of notes and suggestions. By November 1876, they had tired of the evasions and subterfuges of the Porte and finalty ordered their am-bassadors in Constantinople to meet in conference for the purpose of devising a reform proj-ect for the European proyinces of the Ottoman Empire. But as the conference wound down, the Porte upstaged the powers by promulgating a constitution. Its reasoning was that the civił and political liberties envisaged in this constitution surpassed the measures contemplated by the Constantinople conference. Hence, so went the argument, such measures had become