Yet, in spite of his uniform success in the struggle with his Turkish subjects, the Sultan has more than once been face to face with imminent danger owing to the efforts of this party. The most daring of these attempts was made by a certain Suavi Effendi, whose name I mentioned before, who was a very cultured as well as courageous member of the _Ulema_ class, and was one of the organisers of the once powerful Young-Turkish movement Suavi Effendi was in London about thirty-five years ago, finding it safer to print here the political literature of the movement to be smuggled into Turkey, but before the fall of the late Sultan he went back to Constantinople, and was engaged in educational and journalistic work. Soon after the accession of Abd-ul-Hamid, Suavi collected a band of some hundreds of desperate refugees, who had flocked into the capital from the provinces which were lost as the consequence of the Russo-Turkish War, and with them he attacked the Sultan's palace. Before, however, they could release the ex-Sultan Murad from his captivity, to be reinstated in his place, they were overtaken by the guards in the palace garden, and, after a fearful struggle, Suavi and most of his followers perished. The mere rustic private who is credited with having cut Suavi Effendi himself down is now the all-powerful Hassan Pasha, the present head of the police guarding those quarters of the capital which border on Yildiz Kiosk. He is a man of great physical strength and ferocity. Most men who are denounced as being Young-Turkish adherents are handed over to him before being sent into exile, and terrible tales are related about his beating the prisoners. The Sultan not long ago conferred on him the rank of a Field-Marshal for his loyal service, though Hassan is so ignorant that he cannot even write his own name.
Another attempt to depose the Sultan was made some twenty years ago by a Circassian cavalry regiment which was quartered near Yildiz Kiosk. The men of the Circassian regiment, who evidently had lady friends in the harem of the palace, laid a plot against Abd-ul-Hamid. They also failed at the last moment in their attempt, and the regiment speedily and mysteriously disappeared. The last projected attempt of a serious nature was reported to have been nearly carried out during the Armenian troubles. At that time the door of the Sultan's room was guarded by two Kurds, and these men were the disciples of a religious order which prescribes to its followers a self-sacrificing devotion towards their sheikhs or chiefs. The sheikh of this order, who was won over by the adherents of the Reform Party, explained to his two Kurdish followers the true character of the man who occupied the office of the caliphate, and, according to the same report, they both bound themselves by an oath to get rid of him when their turn came to guard his room. Fate was, however, again on the side of Abd-ul-Hamid, and the plot failed in due course.