Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/128

122 "blessed" class (Moslem), while the Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, Maronites, Jews, Druzes and Europeans belong to the Condemned party (non-Moslem).

Being led by the necessities of affairs, and often enforced by the commanding requests of the European Powers, the Turkish sultans apparently adopted and even officially proclaimed some religious and civil reforms for their non-Moslem subjects; but these schemes of toleration did not go further than the waste-basket. Sultan Mohamet II., the capturer of Constantinople, seeing that the population of the great capital had been thinned out by the sword, by flight and captivity, issued a general proclamation assuring the Greeks who chose to become settlers "that they would be protected in their lives and liberties, in the free exercise of their religion, enjoying certain privileges relative to their commercial pursuits; that they were to elect their own patriarchs, subject to approval of the supreme power and were to enjoy the same honors and ranks that had belonged to their predecessors in the ecclesiastical office," etc.; while another sultan, the grandfather of the present one, being informed of the existence of a conspiracy among the Greek subjects abroad, gave way to frantic rage and let loose the passion of his Moslem subjects against the Greek Christians in the capital and the provinces. Thousands of innocent victims were sacrificed to their vengeance, many of them without even knowing why they were slain. On Easter day the Gregorian patriarch of Constantinople was