Memorials and Other Papers — CompleteDe Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Complete
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
Precisely in this year commenced the Grecian revolution. Concurrently
with the decay of her oppressor the Sultan, had been the prodigious
growth of her patron the Czar. In what degree she looked up to that
throne, and the intrigues which had been pursued with a view to that
connection, may be seen (as we have already noticed) in Eton's Turkey--
a book which attracted a great deal of notice about thirty years ago.
Meantime, besides this secret reliance on Russian countenance or aid,
Greece had since that era received great encouragement to revolt from
the successful experiment in that direction made by the Turkish
province of Servia. In 1800, Czerni George came forward as the asserter
of Servian independence, and drove the Ottomans out of that province.
_Personally_ he was not finally successful. But his example
outlived him; and, after fifteen years' struggle, Servia (says Mr.
Gordon) offered "the unwonted spectacle of a brave and armed Christian
nation living under its own laws in the heart of Turkey," and retaining
no memorial of its former servitude, but the payment of a slender and
precarious tribute to the Sultan, with a _verbal_ profession of
allegiance to his sceptre. Appearances were thus saved to the pride of
the haughty Moslem by barren concessions which cost no real sacrifice
to the substantially victorious Servian.
Examples, however, are thrown away upon a people utterly degraded by
long oppression. And the Greeks were pretty nearly in that condition.
"It would, no doubt," says Mr. Gordon, "be possible to cite a more
_cruel_ oppression than that of the Turks towards their Christian
subjects, but none _so fitted to break men's spirit_." The Greeks,
in fact (under which name are to be understood, not only those who
speak Greek, but the Christian Albanians of Roumelia and the Morea,
speaking a different language, but united with the Greeks in spiritual
obedience to the same church), were, in the emphatic phrase of Mr.
Gordon, "the slaves of slaves:" that is to say, not only were they
liable to the universal tyranny of the despotic Divan, but "throughout
the empire they were in the habitual intercourse of life subjected to
vexations, affronts, and exactions, from Mahometans of every rank.
Spoiled of their goods, insulted in their religion and domestic honor,
they could rarely obtain justice. The slightest flash of courageous
resentment brought down swift destruction on their heads; and cringing
humility alone enabled them to live in ease, or even in safety."
Stooping under this iron yoke of humiliation, we have reason to wonder
that the Greeks preserved sufficient nobility of mind to raise so much
as their wishes in the direction of independence. In a condition of
abasement, from which a simple act of apostasy was at once sufficient
to raise them to honor and wealth, "and from the meanest serfs gathered
them to the caste of oppressors," we ought not to wonder that some of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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