Note 11 — Chapter III

The Janizaries (Yeni tscheri, or “new troops”) were composed entirely of the children of Christians, who had been forced, usually at a tender age, to adopt Mahometanism. They were torn from their parents, and trained to renounce the faith in which they were born and baptised, and to profess the creed of Mahomet. They were then carefully educated for a soldier’s life; the discipline to which they were subjected being peculiar, and in some respects severe. They were taught to pay the most implicit obedience, and to bear without repining fatigue, pain, and hunger. At first they were made to share with the peasants the labours of the field, after which they were drafted into the companies of the Janizaries, but only to commence a second noviciate. Sometimes they were employed in the menial duties of the palace; sometimes in the public works, the dockyards, or the imperial gardens. But liberal honours and prompt promotion were the sure rewards of docility and courage. Some attained to the highest dignities in the state; and one of them married the sister of the sultan. Cut off from all ties of country, kith, and kin, but with high pay and privileges, with ample opportunities for military advancement and for the gratification of the violent, the sensual, and the sordid passions of their animal natures amid the customary atrocities of successful warfare, this military brotherhood grew up to be the strongest and fiercest instrument of imperial ambition which remorseless fanaticism, prompted by the most subtle state-craft, ever devised upon earth. As the Turkish power extended itself in Europe, care was taken to recruit the chosen corps from children who were natives of that continent rather than among the Asiatics. This terrible body of infantry, so long the scourge of Christendom and the terror of their own sovereigns, was during three centuries (the conquering period of the Ottoman power) recruited by an annual enrolment of 1000 Christian children; so that no less than 300,000 baptised souls were thus made the polluted and sanguinary ministers and agents of Mahometan crime and dominion. From the year 1648, in the reign of Mahomet IV., the recruits were taken from among the children of Janizaries and native Turks; and finally the whole corps, 20,000 in number, was annihilated in our own day by means of a barbarous massacre. Creasy, vol. i. pp. 20-24, 161. Newman’s Lectures, pp. 137, 267-8.