Tillinghast, a commentator who wrote over 200 years ago, and quoted in Elliott’s notes, in exposition of this vial says, “By the river Euphrates we are to understand the Ottoman or Turkish empire. It is called the great river because of the multitude of people and nations therein. The people who at the present time are of all others accounted the greatest are the Turks; who therefore, and no other, are here to be understood; especially as the Euphrates in Apoc. 9, under the sounding of the sixth trumpet, by general consent of expositors, has reference to the Turkish power”.
The revolutionary wars of Europe, which had darkened the kingdom of the Beast, and scorched the worshippers of his Image with great heat, had passed away without seriously injuring the power of the Turks. It is true, that under the operation of the second vial, the French had conquered Egypt in 1798; but they were expelled by the British in 1801, who gave up the country to the Sultan; so that the political state of the Little Horn of the Goat’s dominion became as before. This was so manifest that a Protestant writer in the year after, in speculating upon this vial, expressed his wonder how the prophecy was to be fulfilled; and a dominion, still so mighty in arms and population, could be wasted and dried up. “By what means,” says he, “the Turkish empire shall be reduced to this helpless state (an empire formerly distinguished for its enthusiastic loyalty, ferocity and valor; and which is even at this day — 1802 — as populous as any other upon earth, the Chinese excepted), is not intimated in this verse; and will perhaps remain concealed until the events themselves shall remove the veil. However, this is certain, from the evident purport of the text, that a very extraordinary indifference or disaffection in the people to the government must take place to fulfil this part of the prophecy”.
Affairs continued generally prosperous with the Turks till the commencement of 1820. “That year”, it has been remarked, “the Ottoman empire, by unwonted good fortune, found itself freed at once from foreign war and domestic rebellion”. But before the year was closed, the scene was wonderfully changed; and causes of exhaustion and distress were then introduced, which have continued their incessant operation, until at length the mighty empire of the Osmanlis, which used to make the heart of Babylon to faint, and her knees to tremble, has passed into a proverb as “the Sick Man,”$ soon to give up the ghost, and to leave the fragments of his estate to others.
The first cause that operated thus, was, as had been surmised, internal revolt and insurrection. The terminal epoch of the 1290 was now on hand. In the summer of 1820, Ali Pasha of Yanina asserted his independence; and by his revolt, the Greek insurrection, which had been for some time silently progressing, was precipitated. The inhabitants of the Greek islands called in their merchant ships; and in November, the t In the early 1830’s Russia had implemented the policy that the maintenance of a weak Turkey was safer than the creation of new strong independent states in the Balkans, but by 1841 she had abandoned her policy of bolstering up Turkey and became convinced that the Turkish Empire would soon break up. Tsar Nicholas I referred to Turkey as “the sick man of Europe”, and ex-
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ressed the opinion that his possessions should be shared to avoid war when he finally expired — Publishers.
Suliote Greeks returned to their country from the Ionian islands, and raised the standard of revolt against the Sultan, in alliance with Ali Pasha, their former oppressor. In February, 1821, Chourshid Pasha of Tripolizza, having marched from thence against Yanina, leaving the Morea almost destitute of Turkish troops, the Moreote Greeks broke out into insurrection, which quickly extended to the iEgean Isles and districts of Northern Greece, Epirus, and Thessaly; while, at the same time, the standard of revolt was raised also in the trans-Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia.
The progress and successful issue of the Greek insurrection is well known. This result was favored by an eruption of the Persians into the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1821 and 1822, when the Turks were subjected to heavy loss. The Greeks held the country in the Morea, while the Turks were shut up in the fortresses; and a Turkoman army of
- that entered to reconquer it, having been destroyed in detail in 1823, the freedom of the Peninsula was nearly completed by the insurgents. The insular Greeks were attended by almost uniform success in their maritime encounters with superior Turkish and Egyptian fleets, especially in their victorious engagements of September, 1824, in which the Turks lost twelve frigates, twenty brigs, and more than eighty transports. At length the sympathies of the European Babylon were awakened in their behalf, by the dreadful massacres perpetrated by the Turks, who spared neither men, women, nor children, in their terrible and remorseless warfare. In the Morea, Ibrahim Pasha being successful in reaching Patras, indulged in the indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, and in the commission of irreparable and wanton devastation, by destroying the olive-trees and vineyards, and other productions of the soil. At this crisis, the tide of success seemed to be turned in favor of the Turks by Ibrahim’s Egyptian government, which had almost completed the reconquest of the Morea. But, the decree of Heaven was against the Euphratean power; and the prophecy which the Greeks could not accomplish singlehanded, England, France, and Russia, in contravention of all their principles of policy, interposed to fulfil. Their friendly mediation between the belligerents being obstinately and persistently rejected by the Sultan, they determined to put a stop to his butcheries by force. They sent a fleet of twenty-six sail to Navarino, where they found the Turco-Egyptian armament of seventy sail drawn up in order of battle to receive them. The allies sought to avoid a conflict by friendly conference with the Turkish admiral; but the messenger was wantonly put to death, and a shot of defiance sent booming at the Asia, an English ship of the line. The salutation was promptly returned, and in a little time the action became general. The bloody and destructive bat-
General Allenby walking through the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem after taking possession of the city in 1917.