Risings in Crete and the Balkans marked the reign of this,
the 32nd sultán of his dynasty, a despot whose mind was vacuous, whose
recklessness was extreme, whose extravagance knew no bounds. The Eastern
Question entered upon an acute phase. His gross misrule gave rise to movements
which were to exercise far-reaching effects upon his realm, while his continual
and enormous borrowings, leading to a state of semibankruptcy, introduced the
principle of foreign control over the finances of his empire. A conspiracy,
leading to a palace revolution, finally deposed him. A fatvá of the muftí
denounced his incapacity and extravagance. Four days later he was assassinated,
and was succeeded by his nephew, Murád V, whose mind had been reduced to a
nullity by intemperance and by a long seclusion in the Cage. Declared to be
imbecile, he, after a reign of three months, was deposed and was succeeded by
the subtle, the resourceful, the suspicious, the tyrannical ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd II
who “proved to be the most mean, cunning, untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of
the long dynasty of Uthmán.” “No one knew,” it was written of him, “from day to
day who was the person on whose advice the sultán overruled his ostensible
ministers, whether a favorite lady of his harem, or a eunuch, or some fanatical
dervish, or an astrologer, or a spy.” The Bulgarian atrocities heralded the
black reign of this “Great Assassin,” which thrilled Europe with horror, and
were characterized by Gladstone as “the basest and blackest outrages upon
record in that [XIX] century.” The War of 1877–78 accelerated the process of
the empire’s dismemberment. No less than eleven million people were emancipated
from Turkish yoke. The Russian troops occupied Adrianople. Serbia, Montenegro
and Rumania proclaimed their independence. Bulgaria became a self-governing
state, tributary to the sultán. Cyprus and Egypt were occupied. The French
assumed a protectorate over Tunis. Eastern Rumelia was ceded to Bulgaria. The
wholesale massacres of Armenians, involving directly and indirectly a hundred
thousand souls, were but a foretaste of the still more extensive bloodbaths to
come in a later reign. Bosnia and Herzegovina were lost to Austria. Bulgaria
obtained her independence. Universal contempt and hatred of an infamous
sovereign, shared alike by his Christian and Muslim subjects, finally
culminated in a revolution, swift and sweeping. The Committee of Young Turks
secured from the Shaykhu’l-Islám the condemnation of the sulṭán. Deserted and friendless,
execrated by his subjects, and despised by his fellow-rulers, he was forced to
abdicate, and was made a prisoner of state, thus ending a reign “more
disastrous in its immediate losses of territory and in the certainty of others
to follow, and more conspicuous for the deterioration of the condition of his
subjects, than that of any other of his twenty-three degenerate predecessors
since the death of Soliman the Magnificent.”