Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
An interesting ascent it had been, first of all through that Eastern Switzerland around the pretty town of Broussa, and then over the snow and rocky debris to the summit, whence a matchless panorama is to be seen. The squadrons, one French and one English, forming a strong force of ships, were at that time on guard at the mouth of the Dardanelles.
Suddenly, like some beast of prey, he managed to leap the mountain heights which separated the Greek Province from the Mahomedan conquests, and he pitched himself in Broussa, in Bithynia, which remained from that time the Turkish capital, till it was exchanged for Adrianople and Constantinople.
He made interest with the Captain Bashaw, the Kislar Aga, and the Grand Vizier himself. The services I had rendered to the Great Turk by suppressing the Insurrection at Broussa were taken into consideration; and it was at length agreed, that if I would convey myself away privately, and take my Wife with me, no more should be said about the matter.
I bought five or six pounds' worth of Broussa silks for the womankind, in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the rich Armenian who sold them begged for three-halfpence to pay his boat to Galata. There is something naif and amusing in this exhibition of cheatery this simple cringing and wheedling, and passion for twopence-halfpenny.
It was given out at Broussa that I had been appointed to another and more distant Government; and he who had been Vizier to the unlucky Fat Man got his much-coveted Preferment, and, I have no doubt, was very happy in it, till the inevitable Tartar came, and he was Bowstrung, like his predecessor.
In contemplating the state of degradation and impotency into which have fallen Syria, and that vast Peninsula which extends westward of the Euphrates, after having occupied so proud a place in the page of history, from the earliest traditionary periods down to the time when the Turkish Sultans abandoned Broussa for Adrianople, we naturally inquire what has become of the intellectual inheritance which the ancient inhabitants of these countries left behind them?
I might remind you how within the last few years a Protestant traveller tells us that he found the Nestorian Christians, who had survived the massacres of their race, living in holes and pits, their pastures and tillage land forfeited, their sheep and cattle driven away, their villages burned, and their ministers and people tortured; and how a Catholic missionary has found in the neighbourhood of Broussa the remnant of some twenty Catholic families, who, in consequence of repudiating the Turkish faith, had been carried all the way from Servia and Albania across the sea to Asia Minor; the men killed, the women disgraced, the boys sold, till out of a hundred and eighty persons but eighty-seven were left, and they sick, and famished, and dying among their unburied dead.
Among these Pagans, as is well known, Polygamy is permitted; but that is neither here nor there; and I was now an Old, Old Man. 'Tis ten years since, namely, A.D. 1770, that a great Insurrection against the Authority of the Porte, or rather of the Bashaw of the Province, who had been laying on the Taxes with somewhat too heavy a hand, broke out in Broussa.
The crowd was amusing, as all the European householders had negroes or Arabs following them, laden with their purchases. We found some lovely flowers in a street near the market, and then we went on to the big gold and silver bazaar, and to the Turkish and Syrian bazaars, where we saw all the specialities of Constantinople, and Broussa, Damascus, and Jerusalem laid out before us.
Indeed, I should like it investigated what internal history the Ottomans have at all; what inward development of any kind they have made since they crossed Mount Olympus and planted themselves in Broussa; how they have changed shape and feature, even in lesser matters, since they were a state, or how they are a year older than when they first came into being.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking