Historical Sketches.

by John Henry Newman.

Volume I.

TO THE

RIGHT REVEREND DAVID MORIARTY, D.D.

BISHOP OF KERRY.

MY DEAR LORD

If I have not asked your Lordship for your formal leave to dedicate this Volume to you, this has been because one part of it, written by me as an Anglican controversialist, could not be consistently offered for the direct sanction of a Catholic bishop. If, in spite of this, I presume to inscribe your name in its first page, I do so because I have a freedom in this matter which you have not, because I covet much to be associated publicly with you, and because I trust to gain your forgiveness for a somewhat violent proceeding, on the plea that I may perhaps thereby be availing myself of the only opportunity given to me, if not the most suitable occasion, of securing what I so earnestly desire.

I desire it, because I desire to acknowledge the debt I owe you for kindnesses and services rendered to me through a course of years. All along, from the time that the Oratory first came to this place, you have taken a warm interest in me and in my doings. You found me out twenty-four years ago on our first start in the narrow streets of Birmingham, before we could well be said to have a home or a church. And you have never been wanting to me since, or spared time or trouble, when I had occasion in any difficulty to seek your guidance or encouragement.

Especially have I cause to remember the help you gave me, by your prudent counsels and your anxious sympathy, when I was called over to Ireland to initiate a great Catholic institution. From others also, ecclesiastics and laymen, I received a hearty welcome and a large assistance, which I ever bear in mind; but you, when I would fill the Professors' chairs, were in a position to direct me to the men whose genius, learning, and zeal became so great a part of the life and strength of the University; and, even as regards those whose high endowments I otherwise learned, or already knew myself, you had your part in my appointments, for I ever tried to guide myself by what I had gained from the conversations and correspondence which you had from time to time allowed me. To you, then, my dear Lord, more than to any other, I owe my introduction to a large circle of friends, who faithfully worked with me in the course of my seven years of connexion with the University, and who now, for twice seven years since, have generously kept me in mind, though I have been out of their sight.

There is no one, then, whom I more intimately associate with my life in Dublin than your Lordship; and thus, when I revive the recollections of what my friends there did for me, my mind naturally reverts to you; and again in making my acknowledgments to you, I am virtually thanking them.

That you may live for many years, in health, strength, and usefulness, the centre of many minds, a blessing to the Irish people, and a light in the Universal Church, is,

MY DEAR LORD, The fervent prayer of Your affectionate friend and servant,

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

BIRMINGHAM, _October 23, 1872._

I.

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE TURKS,

IN THEIR RELATION TO EUROPE.

PREFATORY NOTICE.

The following sketch of Turkish history was the substance of Lectures delivered in the Catholic Institute of Liverpool during October, 1853.

It may be necessary for its author to state at once, in order to prevent disappointment, that he only professes in the course of it to have brought together in one materials which are to be found in any ordinarily furnished library. Not intending it in the first instance for publication, but to answer a temporary purpose, he has, in drawing it up, sometimes borrowed words and phrases, to save himself trouble, from the authorities whom he has consulted; and this must be taken as his excuse, if any want of keeping is discernible in the composition. He has attempted nothing more than to group old facts in his own way; and he trusts that his defective acquaintance with historical works and travels, and the unreality of book-knowledge altogether in questions of fact, have not exposed him to superficial generalizations.

One other remark may be necessary. Such a work at the present moment, when we are on the point of undertaking a great war in behalf of the Turks, may seem without meaning, unless it conducts the reader to some definite conclusions, as to what is to be wished, what to be done, in the present state of the East; but a minister of religion may fairly protest against being made a politician. Political questions are mainly decided by political expediency, and only indirectly and under circumstances fall into the province of theology. Much less can such a question be asked of the priests of that Church, whose voice in this matter has been for five centuries unheeded by the Powers of Europe. As they have sown, so must they reap: had the advice of the Holy See been followed, there would have been no Turks in Europe for the Russians to turn out of it. All that need be said here in behalf of the Sultan is, that the Christian Powers are bound to keep such lawful promises as they have made to him. All that need be said in favour of the Czar is, that he is attacking an infamous Power, the enemy of God and man. And all that need be said by way of warning to the Catholic is, that he should beware of strengthening the Czar's cause by denying or ignoring its strong point. It is difficult to understand how a reader of history can side with the Spanish people in past centuries in their struggle with the Moors, without wishing Godspeed, in mere consistency, to any Christian Power, which aims at delivering the East of Europe from the Turkish yoke.

I.

THE MOTHER COUNTRY OF THE TURKS.

LECTURE 1.

_The Tribes of the North._

1.

The collision between Russia and Turkey, which at present engages public attention, is only one scene in that persevering conflict, which is carried on, from age to age, between the North and the South,--the North aggressive, the South on the defensive. In the earliest histories this conflict finds a place; and hence, when the inspired Prophets[1]

denounce defeat and captivity upon the chosen people or other transgressing nations, who were inhabitants of the South, the North is pointed out as the quarter from which the judgment is to descend.

Nor is this conflict, nor is its perpetuity, difficult of explanation.

The South ever has gifts of nature to tempt the invader, and the North ever has multitudes to be tempted by them. The North has been fitly called the storehouse of nations. Along the breadth of Asia, and thence to Europe, from the Chinese Sea on the East, to the Euxine on the West, nay to the Rhine, nay even to the Bay of Biscay, running between and beyond the 40th and 50th degrees of latitude, and above the fruitful South, stretches a vast plain, which has been from time immemorial what may be called the wild common and place of encampment, or again the highway, or the broad horse-path, of restless populations seeking a home. The European portion of this tract has in Christian times been reclaimed from its state of desolation, and is at present occupied by civilized communities; but even now the East remains for the most part in its primitive neglect, and is in possession of roving barbarians.

It is the Eastern portion of this vast territory which I have pointed out, that I have now, Gentlemen, principally to keep before your view.

It goes by the general name of Tartary: in width from north to south it is said to vary from 400 to 1,100 miles, while in length from east to west it is not far short of 5,000. It is of very different elevations in different parts, and it is divided longitudinally by as many as three or four mountain-chains of great height. The valleys which lie between them necessarily confine the wandering savage to an eastward or westward course, and the slope of the land westward invites him to that direction rather than to the east. Then, at a certain point in these westward passages, as he approaches the meridian of the Sea of Aral, he finds the mountain-ranges cease, and open upon him the opportunity, as well as the temptation, to roam to the North or to the South also. Up in the East, from whence he came, in the most northerly of the lofty ranges which I have spoken of, is a great mountain, which some geographers have identified with the classical Imaus; it is called by the Saracens Caf, by the Turks Altai. Sometimes too it has the name of the Girdle of the Earth, from the huge appearance of the chain to which it belongs, sometimes of the Golden Mountain, from the gold, as well as other metals, with which its sides abound. It is said to be at an equal distance of 2,000 miles from the Caspian, the Frozen Sea, the North Pacific Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal: and, being in situation the furthest withdrawn from West and South, it is in fact the high capital or metropolis of the vast Tartar country, which it overlooks, and has sent forth, in the course of ages, innumerable populations into the illimitable and mysterious regions around it, regions protected by their inland character both from the observation and the civilizing influence of foreign nations.

2.

To eat bread in the sweat of his brow is the original punishment of mankind; the indolence of the savage shrinks from the obligation, and looks out for methods of escaping it. Corn, wine, and oil have no charms for him at such a price; he turns to the brute animals which are his aboriginal companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to be a grazier rather than to till the ground. He feeds his horses, flocks, and herds on its spontaneous vegetation, and then in turn he feeds himself on their flesh. He remains on one spot while the natural crop yields them sustenance; when it is exhausted, he migrates to another. He adopts, what is called, the life of a _nomad_. In maritime countries indeed he must have recourse to other expedients; he fishes in the stream, or among the rocks of the beach.[2] In the woods he betakes himself to roots and wild honey; or he has a resource in the chase, an occupation, ever ready at hand, exciting, and demanding no perseverance.

But when the savage finds himself inclosed in the continent and the wilderness, he draws the domestic animals about him, and constitutes himself the head of a sort of brute polity. He becomes a king and father of the beasts, and by the economical arrangements which this pretension involves, advances a first step, though a low one, in civilization, which the hunter or the fisher does not attain.

And here, beyond other animals, the horse is the instrument of that civilization. It enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion and shifting location and independence of the soil define the idea, and secure the existence, both of a household and of personal property. Nor is this all which the horse does for him; it is food both in its life and in its death;--when dead, it nourishes him with its flesh, and, while alive, it supplies its milk for an intoxicating liquor which, under the name of _koumiss_, has from time immemorial served the Tartar instead of wine or spirits. The horse then is his friend under all circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast.

Hence it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the Catholic ritual measures intervals by "a Miserere," and St Ignatius in his Exercises by "a Pater Noster," so the Turcomans and the Usbeks speak familiarly of the time of a gallop. But as to houses, on the other hand, the Tartars contemptuously called them the sepulchres of the living, and, when abroad, could hardly be persuaded to cross a threshold. Their women, indeed, and children could not live on horseback; them some kind of locomotive dwelling must receive, and a less noble animal must draw.

The old historians and poets of Greece and Rome describe it, and the travellers of the middle ages repeat and enlarge the classical description of it The strangers from Europe gazed with astonishment on huge wattled houses set on wheels, and drawn by no less than twenty-two oxen.

3.

From the age of Job, the horse has been the emblem of battle; a mounted shepherd is but one remove from a knight-errant, except in the object of his excursions; and the discipline of a pastoral station from the nature of the case is not very different from that of a camp. There can be no community without order, and a community in motion demands a special kind of organization. Provision must be made for the separation, the protection, and the sustenance of men, women, and children, horses, flocks, and cattle. To march without straggling, to halt without confusion, to make good their ground, to reconnoitre neighbourhoods, to ascertain the character and capabilities of places in the distance, and to determine their future route, is to be versed in some of the most important duties of the military art. Such pastoral tribes are already an army in the field, if not as yet against any human foe, at least against the elements. They have to subdue, or to check, or to circumvent, or to endure the opposition of earth, water, and wind, in their pursuits of the mere necessaries of life. The war with wild beasts naturally follows, and then the war on their own kind. Thus when they are at length provoked or allured to direct their fury against the inhabitants of other regions, they are ready-made soldiers. They have a soldier's qualifications in their independence of soil, freedom from local ties, and practice in discipline; nay, in one respect they are superior to any troops which civilized countries can produce. One of the problems of warfare is how to feed the vast masses which its operations require; and hence it is commonly said, that a well-managed commissariat is a chief condition of victory. Few people can fight without eating;--Englishmen as little as any. I have heard of a work of a foreign officer, who took a survey of the European armies previously to the revolutionary war; in which he praised our troops highly, but said they would not be effective till they were supported by a better commissariat. Moreover, one commonly hears, that the supply of this deficiency is one of the very merits of the great Duke of Wellington. So it is with civilized races; but the Tartars, as is evident from what I have already observed, have in their wars no need of any commissariat at all; and that, not merely from the unscrupulousness of their foraging, but because they find in the instruments of their conquests the staple of their food. "Corn is a bulky and perishable commodity," says an historian;[3] "and the large magazines, which are indispensably necessary for the subsistence of civilized troops, are difficult and slow of transport." But, not to say that even their flocks and herds were fitted for rapid movement, like the nimble sheep of Wales and the wild cattle of North Britain, the Tartars could even dispense with these altogether. If straitened for provisions, they ate the chargers which carried them to battle; indeed they seemed to account their flesh a delicacy, above the reach of the poor, and in consequence were enjoying a banquet in circumstances when civilized troops would be staving off starvation. And with a view to such accidents, they have been accustomed to carry with them in their expeditions a number of supernumerary horses, which they might either ride or eat, according to the occasion.

It was an additional advantage to them in their warlike movements, that they were little particular whether their food had been killed for the purpose, or had died of disease. Nor is this all: their horses' hides were made into tents and clothing, perhaps into bottles and coracles; and their intestines into bowstrings.[4]

Trained then as they are, to habits which in themselves invite to war, the inclemency of their native climate has been a constant motive for them to seek out settlements and places of sojournment elsewhere. The spacious plains, over which they roam, are either monotonous grazing lands, or inhospitable deserts, relieved with green valleys or recesses.

The cold is intense in a degree of which we have no experience in England, though we lie to the north of them.[5] This arises in a measure from their distance from the sea, and again from their elevation of level, and further from the saltpetre with which their soil or their atmosphere is impregnated. The sole influence then of their fatherland, if I may apply to it such a term, is to drive its inhabitants from it to the West or to the South.

4

I have said that the geographical features of their country carry them forward in those two directions, the South and the West; not to say that the ocean forbids them going eastward, and the North does but hold out to them a climate more inclement than their own. Leaving the district of Mongolia in the furthermost East, high above the north of China, and passing through the long and broad valleys which I spoke of just now, the emigrants at length would arrive at the edge of that elevated plateau, which constitutes Tartary proper. They would pass over the high region of Pamer, where are the sources of the Oxus, they would descend the terrace of the Bolor, and the steeps of Badakshan, and gradually reach a vast region, flat on the whole as the expanse they had left, but as strangely depressed below the level of the sea, as Tartary is lifted above it.[6] This is the country, forming the two basins of the Aral and the Caspian, which terminates the immense Asiatic plain, and may be vaguely designated by the name of Turkistan. Hitherto the necessity of their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but now they may diverge, and have diverged. If they were to cross the Jaxartes and the Oxus, and then to proceed southward, they would come to Khorasan, the ancient Bactriana, and so to Affghanistan and to Hindostan on the east, or to Persia on the west. But if, instead, they continued their westward course, then they would skirt the north coast of the Aral and the Caspian, cross the Volga, and there would have a second opportunity, if they chose to avail themselves of it, of descending southwards, by Georgia and Armenia, either to Syria or to Asia Minor.

Refusing this diversion, and persevering onwards to the west, at length they would pass the Don, and descend upon Europe across the Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the Danube.