The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863. Various
two bodies. These innovations were made in the midst of a destructive Greek war, and at a time when the Danube and the Balkan were no longer formidable barriers to the Muscovite descendants of Ivan the Terrible, who brought back memories of the past, and threatened to avenge deeply treasured wrongs. Even at this critical period, when his army was annihilated, his fleet defeated, and the legions of Russia within a few days' march of Constantinople, Mahmoud threatened to feed his horses at the high altar of St. Peter's, and proclaim the religion of the prophet in the Muscovite capital. A threat that savored more of the seraglio than of the throne!
His next step was to assail the privileges of the great provincial cities, the inhabitants of which elected from their own number ayans, or magistrates, distinguished for their wisdom and virtue. These magistrates had much influence among the people; they had always resisted exorbitant taxes and unjust decrees; their protection was extended to Mussulmans and Christians without distinction. Their power of veto was almost as effective as that of the tribuni plebis of Rome; they could point back to Solyman, the Solon of his time, as the author of their protective system. But their power originated with the people. To this Mahmoud would not submit. All power must emanate from him, the all-wise and innovating sultan, who raised the low and humbled the great, not as they were honest or corrupt, but as they fawned upon him, or refused to yield implicit obedience to his nod.
In their endeavors to institute a new financial system, the predecessors of Mahmoud reduced the standard of money gradually, in order not to produce a panic. But he wished to accomplish in one day the work of years. He issued a decree commanding the people to bring all their coin, gold and silver, to their respective governors—where they would receive less than half its value! He threatened the refractory with death. The capital resounded with the dreaded cry of rebellion; and the exasperated multitude that had surrounded the royal palace was not appeased until it witnessed the public execution of the mint officers, whose only crime was obedience to their master. This impolitic measure in the financial department impoverished the people, and left the treasury still empty. Foreign speculators bought the money—the circulation of which had become illegal—and resold it to the sultan for sterling value!
Shortly after this he expelled about thirty thousand Christians from the capital, which they had embellished and enriched by their labor. Their fidelity had never been doubted. For this despicable act—their expulsion—Mahmoud could adduce no better reason than that 'it was solely on political grounds.' Strange politics this, for a sovereign, who professed to have the magnanimity of Christian rulers! On the expulsion of the Christians, Russia commenced hostilities, and a war followed, in which the sultan paid dearly for his rashness.
In short, Mahmoud could not have given a better lesson to his subjects than by reforming himself. He was cruel beyond measure—if the grand seignior can ever be so called, who is taught that he may lop off a score of heads each day 'for divine inspiration.' Still if he had been as thoroughly skilled as he professed to have been, he should have shown himself a humane as well as an innovating sovereign. Those who assisted him in his reforms, he rewarded with the bowstring. His character was blackened by ingratitude, an instinctive vice in oriental rulers. Obstinate as he was suspicious, deceitful as he was cunning, he could not rule his own passions, much less could he control the corrupt morals of his people. He was to an extraordinary degree avaricious, a quality everywhere odious, but especially in a land where generosity measures love—where in the highest and in the lowest stations liberality is the moving spring. While he mistook parsimony for economy, he did not scruple to make war on trifling pretexts and waste his amassed treasures in a hopeless cause.
In every attempted reform he wounded Ottoman pride and prejudice. Unlike his cousin, he did not humor the faults of the people while making innovations; he neither amused them with imposing shows, nor flattered them by the pompous spectacle of his appearance in public—in one word, he wanted the tact of a reformer. Selim, while he increased the navy and established manufactories, built gorgeous palaces, and by his magnificence dazzled the people, who were blind to his real designs; they even permitted him to set up printing presses in the large cities, on receiving assurance that the Koran would not be submitted to the unholy process of squeezing!
Mahmoud thought, or pretended to think, that he could reform the empire by imitating only the vices of Christianity, and manifesting a contempt for Moslem virtues. While he drank wine—and in many other breaches of the teachings of the sacred book provoked the faithful—his proclamations breathed a most orthodox and fanatical spirit. He was a sceptic; neither Mussulman nor Christian, but surprisingly inconsistent and capricious. His, we fear, were 'hangman's hands,' and 'not ordained to build a temple unto peace.'
Under Solyman the Magnificent, at once the most warlike monarch and munificent patron of literature and art, the constitution of the Janissaries was wise and effective. The children of Christians, taken by the Turks in war or in their predatory incursions, were exposed in the public markets of Constantinople, whence any person was at liberty to take them into his service, on making a contract with the government to return them at the demand of the sultan. These children were instructed in Islamism, and were trained by manly exercise and labor, calculated to strengthen the body and give elasticity to the spirits. From these hardy orphans the ranks of the Janissaries were recruited. They came eagerly to the camp; for they had been taught to regard it as the theatre of their future glory. From earliest infancy they looked forward with joy to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers, whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which a Janissary could not aspire—a strong incentive to the display of bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of numbers, but by superior military discipline and valor. In the middle of the nineteenth century the capture of Christian children was abandoned. The land forces degenerated into a wretchedly organized army of less than three hundred thousand men, drafted from the lowest classes. Mothers put their children to death that they might be spared the pangs of seeing them torn away to pass their days in scenes of shame and dissipation.
Not till the army had become a laughing stock to the weakest European power did the sultans perceive the necessity of military reform. Selim III established a school for artillery and naval officers, and engaged Europeans, especially Frenchmen, as instructors in military science. We can readily comprehend the degeneracy of the Turkish army, when we remember that since the establishment of the school at Sulitzi for engineers, the Turks have learned from foreign teachers military tactics of which their own ancestors were the inventors, and which had been forgotten, although full accounts of them lay hidden in musty volumes in their military archives.
Foreign officers were at first regarded with contempt by Turkish soldiers, whose unconquerable pride has ever proved a great impediment to the regeneration of the empire. Moslem talent was not equal to the exigencies that arose from the impolitic measures of Mahmoud. We find a parallel case in Russia. Had Peter trusted to Muscovite genius to form and command the troops which superseded the Strelitzes, Charles XII would have quartered in the Kremlin.
Kutchuk Husseyin, the relative and favorite of Selim, made valuable additions to the navy in which his master took such pride. Husseyin, who had the welfare of his country at heart, was liberal and disinterested. Vested with the office of captain pasha, he sent to Greece for architects and engineers, with whose assistance he fortified Stamboul, Sinope, and Rhodes; he built arsenals and extensive docks, which he supplied with the necessary equipments of a powerful fleet. In a short time, twenty sail of the line, constructed on the newest European models, rode at anchor within sight of his palace. He also erected barracks for the troops, and greatly improved the naval school. The sudden death of Selim paralyzed the navy, which soon resumed its accustomed languor.
The events of 1821, in which the Turkish fleet was defeated by armed merchant vessels of Greece, gave a fresh impulse to the navy. Experienced officers were placed in command, who, as they grew in strength, grew in confidence, and trusted more to their own resources than to the protection of Allah. Six years after the defeat, the navy was in a state of greater practical efficiency than at any other time. After a protracted struggle of five years it had gained the undisputed supremacy of the Archipelago; and had it not been for the disastrous defeat at Navarino, it would have proved equal, if not superior, to the Russian fleet in the Black sea. The Turkish navy,