The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-06-10 00:00:00

SUICIDE OF ABDUL AZIZ.

The Times on Monday published the following, which they
had received from their own correepondent at Paris under
date June 4 :

"A telegram from Constantinople receive I this
evening announces the death of Abdul Azir. The
telegram is horrible in its brtvity. It says :

'Sultan Abdul Aziz is dead. Stabbed himself with
a dagger in the region of the heart. Will be buried
immediately.'
"Doctors of the English and other Embassies tes-
tify that the deposad Sultan commited suicide by
cutting the arteries of both arms with a pair of
scissors. He died at the Tcheragan Palace at ten
o'clock in the morning. He was buried at Mahmoud
the Second's tomb in the evening.

"It has ben generally remarked this evening as
strange that the Sultan, who has always shown him-
self so feeble, should have suddenly displayed so much
energy, and that, on the other hand, his death was of
so little importance to any one that it seemed re-
pugnant to attribute it to others."

It has been officially announced at Constantinople
that the ex-Sultan committed suicide with a pair of
scissors, and that a report signed by 19 physicians of
different nationalities certifies that death resulted
from opening the veins and arteries beneath the bend of
the left arm and of the veins of the right arm. The
funeral was performed on Sunday afternoon, when all
the Ministers were present.

The newspapers state that Abdul Aziz had several
violent fits of Madness subsequently to his deposition,
especially on the eve of the day he committed suicide.

A telegram from Vienna to the Daily News says
that an eye-witntss reports that the body of Abdul
Aziz was found almost naked. The deceased was half
leaning on the couch before the window, and seemed
as though he had bled to death in full view of the sea.
Blood was spattered also round the flior. "We were
shown," adds the writer, "a pair of scissors ten
centimetres in length, and also cuts underneath the
inner bend of the arms." Abdul Aziz for days before
had had fits of madte3s, during which he bewailed the
loss of his treasures.

A telegram to the Standard says that a number of
the late Sultan's cash boxes have been found empty.
A thorough search has resulted in the seizure of
k,8,000,000 in Consolid63, but search is still being pro-
secuted for the remainder of his treasure. According
to Mahometan law all the property of the dethroned
Sultan goes to the State. It is asserted that all the
property in the shape of money which belonged to the
mother of Abdul Aziz has also been confiscated.

In a leader remarking upon the enicide of the late
Sultan, The Times remarks :

The astounding surprises of E intern politics are crowned
to-day by an event of the most startling interest. The de-
posed Sultan Abdul Az'z has put an end to his own life by
opening the veins of his arm, or, according to another
account, by stabbing himself to the heart with a dagger.
Such, at least, is the form in which the announcement of his
death is made. The world, probably, will never know the whole
truth about the extraordinary tragedy of which this is th
closing scene. In the East there is no great interval separat-
ing deposition and death, and few believed that Abdul Az•z,
even though his life was not threatened by any power-
ful enemies, could long survive the ignominious fall
which closed his career of selfish and ruinous
degeneracy. To such a despot, whose will has
been obeyed with a subserviency unknown in civilised coun-
tries, the loss of power means the extinction of all capacity
of enjoyment. Even the possibility of leading a life of
sensual delights has no attraction for a voluptuary, who has
exhausted all pleasures, except the inexhaustible, and for
the future inaccessible, joys of caprice. The suicide of
Abdul Aziz is probably as natural a result of the Ttukish
revolution as any on which conjecture could have fixed.- It
is not the less an event which will deeply move Europe.
The suicide of a Sovereign—even of a deposed S)vereign—is
without a modern precedent, and some compassion
will be felt for the cruel reverse of fortune, not un-
deserved, hut none the more tolerable, which smote
Abdul Az'z, aed of which this despairing act is the con-
summation. It may be thought that self-destruction
is inconsistent with the placid fatalism of the Moslem ; but
it has been sufficiently evident that the late Sultan had
lost many of the characteristic qualities both of his race and
of his faith. A will debauched by unrestrained caprice can-
not rest in unshrinking submission to destiny, and this last
proof of weakness finds an iuterpretation in harmony with
the other evidence of Abdul Az z's visible and progressive
degeneration in mental and moral fibre. The unfortunate
man leaves a tangled web behind him, and, though we can
hardly believe that he had spirit or intelligence enough left
to e3timate fully the difficulties and the dangers which are
gathering around his country, some dim perception of his
fatal influence may have penetrated his soul, at first stupefied
by disaster, and have given his reason a final shock. It is
needless, at any rate, for us to go beyond the version of the
fact which is presented in the bald official announcement.
The death of Abdul Aziz removes the most formidable
element of danger, ated secures for his country, more cer-
tainly even than his deposition, the breathing space which
may give Turkey yet another chance of recovery.
. . . The whole situation has been changed by the transac-
tions of the past week crowned by the suicide of Abdul Aziz.
It becomes necessary for Russia to reconsider her policy
after events so unexpected, and which may possibly pro-
duce consequences as momentous. We can hardly doubt
that she will not only hesitate to press hardly upon the new
Government at Constantinople before its strength and its
temper have been clearly revealed, but that she will exert
her influence to prevent her partisans in Servia and
Montenegro from precipitating an international conflict, the
limits of wjaich mud be at present unforeseen. We shallexpect
therefore, to find that the alarming intelligence of aggressive
movements and preparations in Beryls and Montenegro
which come to us from Berlin will soon be contradicted
from sources of more immediate authority. There seems to
be little question about the reality and importance of thee
demonstrations, but we are well assured that they will not be
persisted in against the advice or JO auctions of Russia. The
most serious aspect of the attitude in which the Slavonic
States have placed themselves is the irritation their policy
has canted among the Orthodox Muraulmans, who regard
the deposition of Abdul Aziz as a victory over fatal foreign in-
fluences. It is not at all certain that even if Servia and Monte-
negro lending ear to Russian counsels, should exercise a pain-
tut and difficult self-restraint, a collision will be averted,- for
there are many et the new Sultan's advisers who cherish the
wild hope that a bold course would now be a prudent comae,
and that to deal a succession of blows which would crush the
insurgents in Bosnia and Bulgaria and cripple Servia and
Montenegro would enable Turkey to treat upon something
like equal terms with the Great Powers. . . .

The Constantinople Correspondent ot the Daily Telegraph,
writing on Saturday, says :

"All classes here, without exception, are delighted
at the accession of the new Sultan. The mosques,
palaces, ships, and residences of the different pashas,
were brilliantly illuminated last night, and many dis-
plays of fireworks took place, Hussein Avni's palace,
which is near Scutari, exceeding all others in point of
splendour. FrOm the ships which lay out in the
Bosphorus bright streams of limelight were darted
across the water with immense effect, and the flashes
thus sent were responded to by limelight apparatus
from the top of the minarets of the mosques.
"I am informed that the hoarded treasures of the
late Sultan, which may be said to have been at the
bottom of a great deal of the trouble that eventually
overtook Abdul Aziz, and which are variously esti-
mated at several millions sterling, will be applied to
national purposes. Upon this sum of money there
will be large demands in the shape of arrears of pay for
the troops and the civiiian officers of the Empire. At
present, however, nothing is definitely stated with
regard to the uses to which it will be put."

The Special Correspondent of The Times, writing
from Pera on May 30, says :
About a month ago, as I walked with an American
friend from Candilly to the summit of Boolgoorloo, I found
on this latter spot, famous for the panorama it exhibits of
the Bosphorus and of a vast extent of the Sea of Marmora,
a Turkish officer of high rank reclining there on the grass
with two younger men—one in uniform, the other in plain
clothes, in such garb RS is now c ‘rnmon among the young
s'urients or Softas of La Jeltne Turquie. The officer who
had come up with these two sons iron his quarters at
B4lerbey welcomed us with true Arab hospitality, gave us
a drink of water, and we had with him a lorg conversa-
tion, which revealed in him a well-educated and travelled
gentleman, able to convey his ideas in excellent French.
Oar talk turned on a variety of subjects, chiefly political,
and we lamented the condition of the country, which it was
natural to impute to misgovernment, all ag eting that mat-
ters could not proceed on the present footing without bring-
ing about the utter ruin of the Ottyrnan Emp,re. 'YES,' said
our friendly Bey, "there must be reform, and there roust be
violent—atnhde,i•amtharokf
Mayyoti,
old Style, and see what happens then." We tried—or I
gentiemen, w Pialctdaio-fieoyr. Wait till change, whether
littebllo
ey
American friend tried—to obtain
my inquisithe
,
should say,
hecy •, but the good Osmanli
pwould tell nothing more.
some explanation of this so positive and particular pro.
'Look out for that day, he again and again repeated,
'the 18t1i of May—old Greek and Itirldsb Atli; the 300 lii

your Latin Calendar—and you shall see what you shall see;'
and he requested me to take down the date in my memo-
randum-book. The man who bad been pleasant and humor-
ous up to this moment became now grave and earnest, as U
most anxious to impress upon us that he was neither jesting
oor attempting to hoax us, and I observed that the son who
wore no
,uniform eviddeal some confusion and turned pale, as
If alarmeel s4l' his father's fiasprudent communicativeness. I
need not aXvert to the fact that this is the 30th, or, accord-
ing to Eastern reckoning, the 18th of May. . . .
"That the Sultan should not be allowed to live, or at least
not allowed to reign, is what Turks, Greeks, and people of
all classes and conditions, and even members of the present
Cabinet, have been for a long time proclaiming openly
almost at every street corner. As I telegraphed to you
yesterday, the Sultan himself had been for a long time in ex-
pectation of the fate which awaited him, and endeavoured
to evade it by perpetually shifting his residence, by avoiding
the necessity of appearing before the public on his way to
Mosque on Fridays, or by putting off his attendance from noon
to a later hour, and by hiding as he best could in the most
secret apartments of his Palace. He had also taken the
precaution of shutting up Murad Effendi and all his other
nephews, and keeping a close watch upon their movements,
though lavishing upon them all demonstrations of honour
and affection, possinly with intent to do away with them
whenever an occasion to save himself by sacrificing their
lives might arise. Fortunately for these Princes, the Sultan
had neither guards nor servants on whose fidelity he might
rely, and those who laid hold of him were in all probability
the same who set his prisoners at liberty.
"One of the devices by which the conspirators hoped to
rid themselves of the Sultan consisted in enticing him on
board one of his ironclads, and steaming away with him to
some distant region where efforts would be made to induce
him to abdicate by the strong bribe of an annuity of
£200,000."