Part 1

STANHOPE PRIZE ESSAY--1859.

THE

CAUSES OF THE SUCCESSES

OF THE

OTTOMAN TURKS.

BY

JAMES SURTEES PHILLPOTTS,

SCHOLAR OF NEW COLLEGE.

OXFORD:

T. and G. SHRIMPTON.

M DCCC LIX.

THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESSES OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS.

By the fall of the Seljukian dynasty in Asia Minor, a vast number of Turks, scattered over the fertile tracts of Western Asia, were left without any organized government. The Emirs of the Seljouks in their different districts tried to set up separate kingdoms for themselves, but their power was successfully exercised only in making depredations upon each other. For some time they were under the sway of the Khans of Persia, but the decline of the Mogul Empire after the death of Cazan, freed them from this control[1]. During this time of general anarchy, a clan of Oghouz Turks, under Ertogruhl, settled in the dominions of Alaeddin, the chief of Iconium. These Turks were of the same family as the Huns and Avars, and the other Barbarian hordes, whose invasions had continually devastated Europe for nearly ten centuries[2]; nor had the energy and restless activity of their race yet begun to fail. They were all united by the affinity of race, as well as by their language, and by the common bond of the Sunnite creed. In return for Ertogruhl’s services in war Alaeddin gave him a grant of territory in the highlands of Phrygia. The warlike spirit of Ertogruhl’s son Othman, raised him to the rank of an independent chieftain, and he soon made himself master of strong positions on the borders of the Greek Empire. With ill-judged parsimony, the Emperor Michael had disbanded the militia, who guarded the passes of Mount Olympus, and had thus left Bithynia open to attack. Orchan, the son of Othman, took advantage of these favourable occurrences, enlarged his territory at the expense of the Greeks, and by uniting several of the scattered Turkish tribes under one head, laid the foundation of the Ottoman Empire.

Thus the circumstances of the times were throughout eminently favourable to the Ottomans. The fall of the Seljouk monarchy, and the consequent diffusion of the Turkish population, had given free scope to their enterprising spirit. Through the civil wars of the Byzantine Emperors and the disputes of the Venetians and Genoese, they were enabled to gain their first footing in Europe. Had Amurath’s attempt to extend his kingdom over the Christian nations of Thrace and Roumelia been made in the 11th century, he would have roused all Europe in common resistance to his rising power. But in 1388, the Servian confederacy could obtain no aid from Western Christendom. As long as Richard II. was king of England, and Charles VI. of France--while Germany was ruled by the dissolute Winceslaus--Amurath had little to fear from the powers of the West[3]. Spain was too much occupied by her wars with the Moslems at home to think of the sufferings of her Christian brethren in the East. Nor was there any danger that the rival popes of Avignon and Rome would forget their private animosities to assist in arresting the fall of a distant and schismatical church.

At the crowning point of their success, the siege of Constantinople by Mahomet II., the advantages of time were again on the side of the Ottomans. The Roman pontiff, furious at their obstinacy in refusing to join the communion of the Latin church, had conceived an aversion for the Greeks which could hardly be exceeded by any abhorrence of the Mnssulman’s creed. It might have been expected that he would rouse himself to prevent the destruction of the Eastern defences of Christendom, but he chose rather a selfish and inglorious part, content to foresee and even to foretell the coming overthrow of the Greek Empire[4]. Thus did the Patriarch of the West, the natural head of any confederacy for the succour of Constantinople, look on at its fall with seeming unconcern. Meanwhile the English and the French were engaged in a quarrel too deadly to be reconciled. The Germans would not join with the Hungarians, nor would the Spanish have any concert with the Genoese. In short no coalition of the powers of Europe was possible. Even the Greeks themselves were too much divided by religious dissensions to offer united resistance to their Moslem foe, and their want of union could only be equalled by their cowardice. The valour of the last Constantine did indeed shed glory over his own particular fate, but the issue of the struggle could not be doubtful when the disciplined troops and the famed artillery of the Turk were opposed to the feeble and disunited force of the enervated Byzantines.

These external circumstances are important, as having been auxiliary to the rise of the Ottomans. But the main causes of their success must be sought in the wisdom of their rulers and in the institutions which they established.

Their government was most singularly constituted, and of a character totally dissimilar to any of the governments of Christendom. The institutions too from which they derived their solid and lasting power were for the most part peculiar to themselves. On these institutions the stability of the Ottoman greatness mainly rested. With their first appearance it arose; with their gradual development it had grown; as they were neglected and fell into disuse, the ancient glory of the Crescent was dimmed, obscured, and finally extinguished.

Even in the legendary history of the founder of their nation is shadowed forth the faint outline of their peculiar, policy. By patient waiting till he attained his purpose, Othman won his wife from an alien tribe. His expeditions were sanctioned by the blessing of the Holy Scheik Edebali. From the fruit of these expeditions, from the Christian captives who were condemned to slavery, was selected the wife of his son Orchan. A Christian apostate, ‘Michael of the Pointed Beard’ was the chief of Othman’s captains.

It was from the example of their founder, they would have us believe, that they adopted customs of receiving renegades, of foreign intermarriage, a warlike zeal sanctioned by religion, a system of slavery-institutions which in later times were the distinguishing characteristics of their race[5]. It matters not if these accounts of Othman’s early history be the invention of later times; this rather shows (since fiction is more philosophical than truth), that the Ottomans themselves were convinced that it was mainly on the preservation of these usages that their greatness rested. It was, however, reserved for the sons of Othman to set the system on a permanent basis, and to the legislative genius of Alaeddin in the succeeding reign, was chiefly due the stability of the Ottoman race.

In general the Asiatic dynasties culminate to their height of power with a marvellous rapidity, and then, dependent solely on the merits of their rulers, with no institutions calculated to ensure any lasting greatness, fall by a decline no less rapid and less marvellous than their rise. The career of Ottoman conquest lacked the dazzling grandeur which invests the exploits of Genghis Khan, or Timour, but it was not destined to be as ephemeral as they. In its slow and cautious advance, in the gradual organization of conquered provinces, in the unswerving patience which waited always for the fittest opportunity, it bore no faint resemblance to the stately march of Roman sovereignty.

The close of Othman’s life of seventy years saw him but just made possessor of a single city of importance. It was not till the reign of Orchan that the Ottomans ceased to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Iconian Sultans, and first adopted a coinage of their own. The wise policy of Orchan’s coadjutor, Alaeddin, gave them a respite from war for twenty years, in which time he consolidated the small kingdom they had already won, and perfected a system which was to be the instrument of future conquest.

It was during this period of tranquillity that the organization of the army was effected--an organization which, possessing in itself the various merits of the most invincible forces that have ever been collected--the asceticism and brotherhood of the Spartan companies, the mixture of races in the army of Hannibal, the religious zeal of the English Puritans, and the devotion of Caesar’s 10th legion--added to all these, two peculiarities of their creed, the absolute subjection of every individual to the sacred authority of the Sultan, and the warlike inspirations of a religion that taught them that ‘in the conflict of the crossing scymetars Paradise was to be won.’

It is a remarkable and significant fact, that this abstinence from war for the long period of twenty years was never repeated by the Ottomans during the time of their success. That soldiers long unemployed must become either citizens or rebels is an axiom which must have special force in a government like that of the Ottomans. War was the normal condition of their race. It was to this object that not only their iconoclastic creed, but the whole tenor of their institutions pointed, and in this aspect they must chiefly be contemplated.

The feudal system of the Ottomans was essentially military. It was the device of an aggressive power and was made to answer a double purpose; to secure the permanency of its conquests, and to supply soldiers for war. Ottoman feudalism was wholly different from that which prevailed in Western Europe. The great distinction lay in the fact, that among the Ottomans all the feudal vassals held their fiefs directly of the Sultan, or his officers; whereas in Western Europe, between the sovereigns and the lower tenants was interposed a powerful class, which always more or less counterbalanced the supreme power. The one was the division of a kingdom into petty fiefs, the other the fusion of conquered territories under the sway of one victorious monarch. It was through the feudal system of the Ottomans, in combination with their institution of slavery, that war was made to feed war; that every conquest supplied the means for future conquest.

The use of the Ottoman system for the supply of soldiers in time of war may be estimated from the fact, that an armed horseman was required for every fief of the value of twelve pounds a year, and another for every additional twenty pounds. In the time of Solyman these fiefs were able to furnish 150,000 cavalry[6]. The feudal troops were always kept in readiness, nor was anything required to summon them to the field but an order of the Sultan to the two Beglerbegs of the Empire from whom it was communicated to a regular gradation of officers entrusted with the task of mustering these Spahi, or Cavaliers, in their separate divisions[7]. This force served without pay. If they fell in battle, they were honoured as martyrs: if they distinguished themselves, or if the expedition was successful, they were rewarded with larger gifts of property. All their hopes of advancement depended upon the Sultan, and his success in war. They were ready to do his bidding in any part of the world, for the greater part of every country which they subdued was divided among the members of their own body.

It is to this institution of feudalism that we must look for an explanation of the fact, that the Turkish conquests, unlike those of other great conquerors, seldom returned to their original possessors. Immediately an additional piece of territory was gained, it became an integral part of the Empire. Thus it was that the Sultans were able to consolidate and unite their dominions, step by step, with every fresh acquisition of land. In most cases, the conquest of distant territories has been any thing rather than lucrative to the victorious nation. But the Turkish conquests reimbursed the Sultan, and enriched the nation; some portions of land were regularly assigned to the sovereign, and others became public property.

Thus the community of the Timarli, or fief-holders, carried out, on a large scale, the intention of the Roman system of colonise, both as guarding the dangerous frontiers and ensuring the preservation of conquered lands.

But there is one aspect of the Ottoman feudalism which we have not yet regarded, and which redounds more than any other to their honor. Toleration of creed, with one remarkable exception, was given to the conquered Christians, and even in the days of Othman, equal protection was dealt out alike to Greek and Turk, Christian and Mahometan. This tolerant and enlightened system induced numbers of the Christians who dwelt on the borders of the Ottoman Empire to exchange their hard position, as Hungarian serfs, for that of Rayas under the Turks.

We have said that there was one most signal exception to the general toleration of their rule, and this was the institution of the corps of Janissaries, the Yengi Cheri, or “New Soldiers” of Alaeddin. The importance of a well-disciplined standing army struck the far-seeing mind of Orchan’s coadjutor, and to the organization of the army he gave his chief attention during the twenty years of peace of which we have spoken. He first formed, of the native Osmanli, a corps of paid infantry. But it soon appeared that these Turks were too proud and turbulent to endure the necessary discipline. In this perplexity we are told that Alaeddin sought the advice of his relative Black Khalil Tschendereli. Black Khalil’s counsel dictated a device of the most subtle and effective kind--that the Ottoman army must be formed out of the children of the conquered Christians, who should be forced to become Mahometans. By this means, he argued, you will gain troops which can be schooled to any discipline. To the Mussulman religion you will gain many converts, while you will prevent any rebellion of your Christian subjects by the incorporation of the whole strength of their race with your own forces. The plan was adopted by Alaeddin and carried out in the next reign by the First Amurath. Amurath’s warlike spirit, and the lust of conquest that was predominant in his race, led him to make repeated expeditions against the Sclavonic tribes of Servia and Bosnia. Among this hardy race he found no treasures of gold and silver--no spoil for his conquering army--but he found an inexhaustible supply of brave soldiers[8]. The children who were taken captive in his wars were immediately disciplined in the schools of the Janissaries, and in due time drafted into their ranks. Those who were not available for this purpose, or for the service of the Sultan, were sold as slaves, and thus brought in a considerable revenue to the Turkish Emperor.

As long as the flower of the Christian youth were converted not merely into Mahometans, but into devoted supporters of the Ottoman power, any revolt of the Rayas was impossible. In their strict discipline and continued occupation the proselytes lost all remembrance of their kindred and their country. With the highest positions in the Empire open to their ambition, they might well glory in a station that raised them over the heads of the native Osmanli. The rigorous pride with which they kept their own body aloof from any foreign admixture may offer a parallel to that remarkable system by which the proudest chivalry of Egypt was formed out of Circassian slaves.

Thus at the court of the Sultan were gathered an abundance of men, from various nations, devoted only to the common weal of the race into which they were adopted. Not only were there the prisoners taken in war, as well as the tithe, so to speak, of Christian children taken every five years, but from every pacha of the Empire came presents of slaves to the Sultan[9]. These slaves were divided into different classes, according to their abilities. Those who were destined for Janissaries were trained to every exercise that could increase their physical strength, and inure them to toil and hardship. Others were educated for the more immediate service of the Sultan, either as his state-officers or his body-guard. Thus the Turkish armies, though they were those of an Asiatic nation, were composed of the hardiest of Europeans. Nor were these Europeans ever suffered to fall into the enervating habits of Asiatics. They had no homes in which they could be pampered with Oriental luxury. Their barracks were like monasteries; their dress the dark robes of monks; their meals the frugal fare of mountaineers. They were not allowed to take wives; they might ply no trades; engage in no commerce; nor were any admitted into their body who had not gone through the regular course of this discipline. At home they lived as if they were in the camp; in the camp they preserved the same order, the same discipline as at home. War was the occupation of their life. They had given no “hostages to fortune;” they had no domestic ties that could bind them to a peaceful life. Their hopes of advancement rested on their valour in battle. They were justly proud of the achievements of their corps, and were stimulated by every motive of ambition, self-interest, and the love of glory, above all, emulation to surpass the successes of their predecessors. They knew that the watchful eyes of the Sultan were on them in the fight, and that every deed of heroism would meet with its appropriate reward. If he fell, what recked a Janissary of death, save as the glorious consummation of his prowess, as the opening of Paradise to the martyr who had won it[10]?

The testimony of contemporary writers to the wonderful efficacy of this remarkable institution is unanimous. Schwendi, a general of their opponents, owns that the Janissaries had never turned their backs in battle. Busbequius, the German ambassador, struck with admiration at their discipline and endurance, warns his countrymen of the nature of the foe whom they must be prepared to encounter, if they enter a war with the Turks. Barbaro, an ambassador of the Venetian government, comments with wonder on the fact that the power of the Ottomans mainly rested on a corps of compulsory converts from Christianity. The Venetian Relationi, quoted by Von Ranke, are full of the remarks of ambassadors expressing their admiration of the whole system of the Ottoman arms[11].

One of the most conspicuous features of their discipline was the order, temperance, and cleanliness of an Ottoman camp, as constrasted with the drunken, dissolute, and filthy habits of the armies of Christendom[12]. Frequently encamped as they were in the pestilential districts which proved disastrous to the French and English armies at the commencement of the late Russian war, we can easily understand how great an advantage over their opponents these wise regulations secured them in their campaigns.

The fiery valour of the Christian knights might surpass the more patient courage of the Ottoman troops, but their pride of birth, and spirit of independence would not brook the discipline, nor render the obedience, for which the Janissaries were remarkable; and to this may be attributed the fatal results of the battle of Nicopolis. At Kossova the Asiatic wing of the Turkish army had recoiled from the repeated onsets of the Bosnian king and his warriors, but the Janissaries ‘fighting with the zeal of proselytes’ against their Sclavonic brethren recovered the fortunes of the day for Amurath[13]. At Varna the panic which had spread through the Turkish troops from the furious attacks of Ladislaus and Hunyades was only checked by the firm resistance, the unflinching endurance of the Janissaries[14]. When the desperate and heroic resistance of the last Greek Emperor, and his few brave adherents, had driven back the Anatolian soldiery, and the fate of Constantinople was still hanging in the balance, it was their surpassing valour that turned the scales of victory, bore down all resistance, and won Eastern Rome for the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

At the great crises of their history we have seen how it was the power of the Janissaries that saved the Ottomans; but in every battle, in every campaign, the possession of a formidable corps of well-disciplined infantry at a time when their opponents had no regular infantry at all, gave them a continual advantage. It has been remarked that the Ottomans never encountered the forces of the only two European nations who had at this time any organized foot-soldiers[15]. We all know how the chivalry of France fell before the English bowmen at Cressy and Poictiers, and how the troops of Austria fled before the halberdiers of Switzerland, and we may doubt whether the Janissaries would have been equally invincible had they met the English or the Swiss on the battle-fields of Servia.

The institution of the Janissary force must not be considered as a system of mere cruelty and intolerance. The records of the age tell us that it was an usual occurrence for Christian parents voluntarily to bring their sons to the press-gang of the Janissaries, in order that in due time they might be enrolled in their ranks, while the high offices which were thrown open to these proselytes of Mahometanism brought renegades in numbers to the Sultan’s court, where no distinction of birth or country interfered to mar their fortunes. This system of the reception of refugees from all countries gained for the Ottomans many of the greatest names which adorn their history. Of the ten grand-viziers of Solyman, eight were renegades from Christianity. It was indeed noted as an unusual circumstance that one of his viziers was a native Turk[16]. Piale, who defeated the united Christian fleets in 1560 off the isle of Djerbe, was himself the son of Christian parents. Cicala Pasha, the great commander under the successors of Solyman, was an Italian by birth, but as aga of the Janissaries became one of the fiercest enemies of the Christians. And in the earliest times we find that Evrenos, who under Bajazet and Amurath I. added the greater part of Greece to the Ottoman dominions, was originally a Christian chieftain and a guardian of the passes of Mount Olympus. During the flourishing period of the Empire nearly all the high civil and military offices were filled by Christian slaves, who had risen either from the ranks of the Janissaries, or who had been brought up by the Mufti in the profession of the law[17]. Thus, to use the words of Gibbon, “a servile class, an artificial people, were raised by the discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command[18].”

If it be true according to the account we have given of the constitution of the Empire, that the highest offices of the state were conferred by the ruling prince on men raised by his own hand from slavery--that the feudal tenants were subject to a single superior, and the army directed by a single will,--it is evident that nothing but the largest capacity for legislation and military command could have successfully wielded such enormous authority.