Note 224 — LETTER III. (continued 3)

‘The youths among the Christian tribute children most conspicuous for birth, talent, and beauty were admitted into the inferior class of agiamoglans or the more liberal rank of ichoglans, of whom the former were attached to the palace and the latter to the person of the prince.’—Gibbon, ch. lxv. Busbecq, in his Art of War against the Turks, gives an account of the method by which the Turkish army was recruited from the children of Christians. Every year the Sultan sent to his different provinces, and took one out of every three or four of the boys. When they arrived at Constantinople, the handsomest and cleverest were placed in the households of the Sultan and Pashas. Of the rest some were hired out to farmers, &c., and the remainder employed in public works. The former were fed and clothed by their masters, till they grew up, when they were drafted into the ranks of the Janissaries, as vacancies occurred. Those who were placed in the Sultan’s household often rose to the highest offices of the state. The last of these levies of Christian children was made in 1638.—Von Hammer, book xlviii. tome ix. p. 325.