What Turkey has Lost.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 12 June 1914, Page 2

What Turkey has Lost.

ONCE OWNED NEARLY HALF OF EUROPE. The "Terrible Turk," who may be taken as typifying the Empire of the Sultans, holds one record at least which he is not likely to be deprived of. He has won and lost mor* territory than any other na- | tion. There was a time when the Sul- ! tan whs the bug-bear of the world. Evei; I'ttle children in our own country shook in their shoes when they heard his name mentioned, and | thoae people who lived anywhere i oea-r him dared not call their lives i their own. \ But at last the Hde turned. The j Turk bftffan to lose, and one great >*rißf<vrtune followed another. was the first big bit of the Turkish Empire to break free. I '""he Moors, wlio were subject and ; paid tribute to the Sultan, were I driven from province after province, < until at length they were cooped up in the solitary Kingdom of Granada. The last Moorish king to reign in Spain was Boabdil-el-Chaco, or P.oabdil the Unlucky. In 1482 Ferdinand and Isabella, the King j and Queen of Arragon and Castile, ' declared war on him, and in 1492 he had to surrender everything. RUSSIA MAKES A GRAB. Hungary, which now forms half of the dual monarchy of the Emperor Francis Joseph, was a province of the Sultan for a hundred and fifty years. Then it was torn from him by the sword. After this came the turn of the Tsars. The Russians, whom he once despised, have been the Turk's worst enemies. They have either robbed him themselves or encouraged others to rob him. Peter the Great set the example, but was not, on the whole, very suecpssfu] in his wars against the Moslems. At one time the Turks ■.•ould have captured and massacred Peter and his army, but were frustrated by the slave girl Catherine, whom Peter had married. Catherine the Great tore the Crimea from the unhappy Turk, together with thousands of square miles of territory along the shores of the Caspian. In 3 821 the Greeks, who had been slaves of the Sultans for many centuries, rose "in rebellion and drove the Turks out of the country. But then the Greek leaders began to quarrel among themselves, and civil war followed. The Turk took the opportunity to seize the country once more. But the massacres and other, horrors which followed aroused Europe. In 1827 the Turkish fleet was deBtroyecV at Navarino. The combined fleets of Britain, France, and Russia took part in this operation. In 1828 Greece was acknowledged ns a free and independent kingdom, with a king of its own. For nearly a century Egypt, which the Turk conquered in 641, has been part of the Sultan's Empire in little more than name, and since 1882, when we occupied Pharoah's country, after Arabi Pasha's rebellion, the Turk has had practically nothing to do with Egypt. The Moorish corsairs who had their lair in,, the pirate city of Algiers acknowledged the Sultan as their suzerain, but were defiantly independent as regarded all the rest of the world. Their swift-sailing dhows preyed on the commerce of all Europe, and, from start to finish, they seized many thousands of white captives, some of whom they ransomed, while others they doomed to slavery. When asked to keep his piratical subjects in order, the Sultan declared himself helpless to do anything. The freebooters went on doing as they liked for a long time. Then France became weary of patience, and forcibly took possession of the city in 1830. Since then she has annexed 307, 980 square miles of Algerian territory once subject to the Sultan. THEN AISTRTA, ITALY, AND THE BALKAN STATES. j Then came the Turk's worst time. Russia made war on him, and the Balkan States, which had been held i us provinces by Turkey for hua--11 reds of years, revolted, flew to firms. and did everything they could on the side of Russia. [-hid the Tsar been left to himself the Turkish Empire would have been practically destroyed. The other great Powers, ■• however, were a sin id to see Russia too powerful. They insisted on summoning the (.'ungress of Berlin. Hv the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, the Turk was almost swept out of Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria to keep in order. Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro were decleared absolutely independent of him. Bulgaria was created into a principality, nominally under the Sultan's suzerainty, but in reality free. Then in the autumn of 1908 Austria nearly precipitated a European conflagration by formally annexing Bosnia, and Herzegovina, provinces which, though nominally belonging to the Sultan, she had governed since 1878. The Ottoman bird shed a further feather- as a result of the war with Italy and Tripoli, and now the confederated Balkan States, at immeasurable cost of blood and treasure, have stripped it of all its remaining possessions in Europe. with the exception of Constantinople and a small strip of country adjacent to it. — "Spare Moments. "