[Illustration:  MAP OF THESSALY.]

This successful war against Greece raised the prestige of Turkey and added fuel to the flames of Mohammedan bigotry.  These, as we have seen, had been assiduously fanned by Abdul Hamid II. ever since the year 1882, when a Pan-Islam movement began.  The results of this revival were far-reaching, being felt even among the hill tribes on the Afghan-Punjab border (see Chapter XIV.).  Throughout the Ottoman Empire the Mohammedans began to assert their superiority over Christians; and, as Professor Ramsay has observed, “the means whereby Turkish power is restored is always the same—­massacre[183].”

[Footnote 183:  Impressions of Turkey, by W.M.  Ramsay, p. 139.]

It would be premature to inquire which of the European Powers must be held chiefly responsible for the toleration of the hideous massacres of the Armenians in 1896-97, and the atrocious misgovernment of Macedonia, by the Turks.  All the Great Powers who signed the Berlin Treaty are guilty; and, as has been stated above, the State which framed the Cyprus Convention is doubly guilty, so far as concerns the events in Armenia.  A grave share of responsibility also rests with those who succeeded in handing back a large part of Macedonia to the Turks.  But the writer who in the future undertakes to tell the story of the decline of European morality at the close of the nineteenth century, and the growth of cynicism and selfishness, will probably pass still severer censures on the Emperors of Germany and Russia, who, with the unequalled influence which they wielded over the Porte, might have intervened with effect to screen their co-religionists from unutterable wrongs, and yet, as far as is known, raised not a finger on their behalf.  The Treaty of Berlin, which might have inaugurated an era of good government throughout the whole of Turkey if the Powers had been true to their trust, will be cited as damning evidence in the account of the greatest betrayal of a trust which Modern History records.

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NOTE.—­For the efforts made by the British Government on behalf of the Armenians, the reader should consult the last chapter of Mr. James Bryce’s book, Transcaucasia and Mount Ararat (new edition, 1896).  Further information may be expected in the Life of Earl Granville, soon to appear, from the pen of Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice.

CHAPTER X

THE MAKING OF BULGARIA

“If you can help to build up these peoples into a bulwark of independent States and thus screen the ‘sick man’ from the fury of the northern blast, for God’s sake do it.”—­SIR R. MORIER to SIR W. WHITE, December 27, 1885.

The failure which attended the forward Hellenic movement during the years 1896-97 stands in sharp relief with the fortunes of the Bulgarians.  To the rise of this youngest, and not the least promising, of European States, we must devote a whole chapter; for during a decade the future of the Balkan Peninsula and the policy of the Great Powers turned very largely on the emancipation of this interesting race from the effective control of the Sultan and the Czar.