e signal for the nemesis that was
to overtake an empire in distress. Nine-tenths of the large Turkish armies
had melted away. A fourth of the whole population had perished from war,
disease, famine and massacre.

A new ruler, Muhammad VI, the last of the twenty-five successive
degenerate sultans, had meanwhile succeeded his wretched brother. The
edifice of the empire was now quaking and tottering to its fall. Mustafa
Kamal dealt it the final blows. Turkey, that had already shrunk to a small
Asiatic state, became a republic. The sultan was deposed, the Ottoman
Sultanate was ended, a rulership that had remained unbroken for six and a
half centuries was extinguished. An empire which had stretched from the
center of Hungary to the Persian Gulf and the Sudan, and from the Caspian
Sea to Oran in Africa, had now dwindled to a small Asiatic republic.
Constantinople itself, which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been
honored as the splendid metropolis of the Roman Empire, and had been made
the capital of the Ottoman government, was abandoned by its conquerors,
and stripped of its pomp and glory--a mute reminder of the base tyranny
that had for so long stained its throne.

Such, in their bare outline, were the awful evidences of that retributive
justice which so tragically afflicted 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, his successors, his
throne and his dynasty. What of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, the other partner in
that imperial conspiracy which sought to extirpate, root and branch, the
budding Faith of God? His reaction to the Divine Message borne to him by
the fearless Badi, the "Pride of Martyrs," who had spontaneously dedicated
himself to this purpose, was characteristic of that implacable hatred
which, throughout his reign, glowed so fiercely in his breast.

DIVINE RETRIBUTION ON THE QAJAR DYNASTY

The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Baha'u'llah's Tablet,
and directed his minister, as Baha'u'llah Himself asserts, to address to
its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, it is
reliably stated, blanched while reading the communication addressed to his
Imperial master and his ministers, and made the following comment: "It is
as if the king of kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal
king, and regulating his conduct!" Queen Victoria, it is said, upon
reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: "If this is of God, it will
endure; if not, it can do no harm." It was reserved for Nasiri'd-Din