The case of Midhat was not exceptional, except for his prominence in European circles. The same fate has overtaken many others. Fishermen in the Bosporus, every now and then, pulled up a sack in which a body was sewn, and those who reasoned might remember that it had been announced that a one time favourite at the Court had set out on a journey to London or Paris, though somehow he had mysteriously failed to arrive.
But though Midhat Pasha and others who struggled to introduce Western institutions into the borders of the East died their work lived. One by one, those suspected of having advanced ideas were degraded. A man might be Grand Vizier for a month or a week, or even for a day, and then without warning, be dismissed in disgrace. The suspicious sultan trusted no one. He set brother to watch brother, father to spy upon son, and then believed none of them, though he always guarded himself lest they might be telling the truth.
Paris received the larger number of those who fled from the clutches of Abdul the Damned. In the life of the French capital, some gave themselves up to the manifold dissipations which that city offers for her visitors. Others loosely organised, worked and watched for that better day, when the Turk should no longer be a byword among civilised peoples. A newspaper edited by Ahmed Riza was published and thousands of copies were smuggled into the dominions. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets somehow passed the Turkish frontiers and found readers, though their possession if discovered meant imprisonment and degradation, but the “Young Turks” were undismayed.
Into the harems the new ideas crept. One read to the others during the long days, and the forbidden books passed from hand to hand, and from house to house. Women high in rank, the daughters of court officials, carried messages. Where a man seemed approachable on that side, some member of his harem was converted, or else some woman was placed in his way, even sold to him, perhaps. Dozens of women sold into the harems of prominent men went as apostles of the new faith. Women deliberately sacrificed their reputations, since free association with men, unless supposedly lovers, would have aroused suspicion.