Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/110

74 relentless disposition, to the city. As soon as he had arrived, attempts were made to assassinate him. Continual plots were formed against his life, which he escaped by the energy and activity of his movements. One by one, he brought the leaders of the factions into his power, and secretly despatched them. As soon as they were gone, the danger was past, and he continued the work of beheading at his leisure, until every vestige of the insurrection was suppressed and removed. The city is now more completely under the authority of the Sultan than it has been for a century past. The Pasha was just introducing the new order of the military, and the manner in which it was received, was a fair specimen of the feeling with which it was met, at the outset, in every part of the empire. As soon as it was announced that the Pasha was about to make his first enlistment of soldiers, the city was thrown into an indescribable panic. Officers were walking through the streets in search of men. Thousands fled and hid themselves in secret places in the city, or escaped to the mountains. The Pasha ordered every gate to be closed, excepting one, through which none were allowed to go out without a passport. The bazaars were closed, and deserted by all but a few old men, and the streets appeared as if the pestilence were abroad. As I passed along, [ 1838,] I heard the cries and lamentations of women in the houses from which one or more had been taken. Fathers and mothers were to be seen about the palace imploring for their children who had been seized."

In the course of a few years Mohammed Pasha had a well-organized army at his command, by the aid of which he entirely suppressed the inroads and depredations of the Arabs, Coords, and Yezeedees, and rendered this province one of the safest in the empire. The spirit and firmness which these reforms exhibited would have been far more praiseworthy had they been accompanied with less barbarity and fewer exactions. But he was a man of cruel and grasping disposition, and a perfect adept in intrigue and cunning. The refusal of the Yezeedees in Singar to pay the amount of taxes which he demanded of them, as well as some disturbances which arose in that district, were visited by him with summary chastisement. Several hundreds were