CHAPTER XIII.
Weeks and months passed away, during which the physical exercises of the lads in the Janizary school were varied with lessons in the Turkish language; and, in the case of a select number, in the Arabic, mastering it at least sufficiently to read the Koran, large sections of which they were compelled to commit to memory.
The teachers in the Janizary schools were far from ordinary men. They were highly learned, and, like most Orientals of education, gifted with great eloquence. After the daily tasks had been accomplished the boys were gathered in a semicircle upon the floor about the instructor, who sat cross-legged among them, and narrated in glowing language the history of the Prophet and his successors in the khalifate; inflaming their young minds with the most heroic and romantic legends of Arabia and Egypt, Algiers and Granada, where the Koran had conquered the faith of the people whom the swords of the true Moslems had subdued. Wild stories of the early days of the Turks, before Ertoghral,[39] "The Right-hearted Man," led the tribes from the banks of the Euphrates; and earlier still when Seljuk[40] led his people from north of the Caspian; of the settlement of their remote ancestors in Afghanistan, where the great chief was first called Sultan;[41] of how they had once held the religious faith of Zoroaster. Indeed, myths from the very dawn of known history, when the Turkius did all sorts of valiant deeds in far-off China.[42]
The Christian books were made to appear to the young proselyte as but imperfect suggestions of the completed teaching of the book of Mahomet; while the peculiar dogmas of the Christians were restated with such shrewd perversion that to the child's judgment they seemed puerile or untrue.
"Behold the sky!" one would exclaim. "Is it not one dome, like the canopy of one mighty throne? Behold the light! Does it not pour from one sun and fill all space with one flood? Breathe the air! Is it not the same over all lands and in all lungs? Do not all birds fly with one mechanism of wings? and all men live by the same beating of the heart? How then can there be three Gods, Allah, and Jesu and Mary, as the Christians teach?[43] What does reason say? What does the universe testify? What says the true and wise believer?"
"There is one God and Mahomet is His Prophet," would be the response of the pupils, bowing their heads to the floor.
"Can the less contain or give out the greater? Can a stone bring forth the orange tree? Can a stick give birth to the eagle? A worm be the father of a man? How, then, can we say with the Christians, that Mary of Bethlehem is the mother of God? What says the faithful and wise believer?"
"There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet," would be the choral response.
"Is God weak? Can men thwart His plans? Shall we then believe that the infidel Jews crucified the Son of God?"
"God is great, and Mahomet is His Prophet," would roll up from the lips of the scholars.
"Shall we, then, kiss the toe of the pope because he calls himself the grand vizier of Allah, when our Janizaries can cut the throats of his soldiers, as our brethren of Arabia destroyed the crusaders? Or shall we kiss the hand of the patriarch of the Greeks, who claims supremacy in the name of Allah, when already our arms have shut up the whole Greek empire within the walls of Constantinople? What says the faithful and wise believer?"
"God is great, and Mahomet is His Prophet," is the reply.
"Who would cringe and beg forgiveness at the feet of a dirty priest, when the sword of every Janizary may open for him who holds it the gate of paradise?"
Not only such arguments, but every event of the day that could emphasize or illustrate the superiority of the Moslem faith, was skilfully brought to bear upon the susceptible minds of the youths. And within the first year of Michael's cadetship one such significant event occurred.
In the year of the Hegira 822,[44] six months after the flight of Scanderbeg, it was solemnly agreed between Christian and Moslem that the sword should have rest for ten years. A stately ceremony was made to seal the compact. Vladislaus of Hungary represented in his person the pledge of kingly honor. Hunyades gave the sanction of a soldier's word. And Cardinal Julian was supposed to have added to the treaty the confirmation of all that was sacred in the religion of which he was so exalted a representative. On behalf of the Christians, the concord was signalized by an oath upon the Gospels. On the other side, Sultan Amurath, in the presence of his generals and the holiest of the Moslem dervishes, swore upon the Koran. This compact, guarded by all that men hold to be honorable on earth and sacred in heaven, lulled the suspicions of the Turks. The rigid drill, the alert espionage, the raids along the border gave way to the indolence of the barracks and the pastimes of the camp. Thousands of horses and their riders were returned to till the fields in the Timars, Ziamets and Beyliks[45] scattered throughout distant provinces. The Sultan retired to meditate religion, or devise the things belonging to permanent peace, in his secluded palace at Magnesia in Asia Minor. The death of his eldest son, Prince Aladdin, led him to put the crown of associate Padishah upon the brow of the young Mahomet that in these quiet times the prince might learn the minor lessons of the art of ruling.
But this sense of security among the Turks offered too strong a temptation to the cupidity of the Christian leaders. King Vladislaus opposed conscientious objections to any breach of the compact. Hunyades maintained his personal honor by at first refusing to draw his sword. But Cardinal Julian stood sponsor to a breach of faith, and announced that principle which has, in the estimate of history, made his scarlet robe the symbol of his scarlet sin—that no faith need be kept with infidels; and, in the name of the Holy Father, granted absolution to the chief actors for what they were about to do.
Without warning, the tide of Christian conquest poured from Servia eastward until it was checked in that direction by the Black Sea. The hordes of Europe then turned southward, seized upon Varna, and pitched their camps amid the pennants of their ill-gotten victory near to its walls. To human sight no power could avert irrevocable disaster to the arms, if not the subversion of the entire empire of the Ottomans in Europe.
In their extremity the lands of the Moslem made their solemn appeal to Allah. Every mosque resounded with reiterated prayers. The camps echoed the pious invocations with loud curses and the rattle of the preparation of armor. Scurrying messengers flew from the centre to the circumference of the Ottoman domain, and hastily gathered legions concentrated for one supreme blow in retaliation for the grossness of the insult, and in vindication of what they believed to be the cause of honor and truth, which, in their minds, was one with that of Allah and the Prophet.
The Sultan hurried from his retreat, and with marvellous celerity marshalled the faithful against the invaders at Varna. Riding at the head of the Janizaries, he caused the document of the violated treaty to be held aloft on a lance-head in the gaze of the two armies, and with a loud voice uttered this prayer—a strange one for a Moslem's lips—
"O, Thou insulted Jesu, revenge the wrong done unto Thy good name, and show Thy power upon Thy perjured people!"
Victory hovered long between the contending hosts, but at last rested with the Moslems. To make the intervention of Allah more apparent, it was told everywhere, how, when Amurath believed that he was defeated, and had given the order for retreat, a soldier seized the bridle of the Sultan's horse and turned him back again toward the enemy. The very beast felt the inspiration of heaven, and led the assault upon the breaking columns of the Christians, until the victors returned, bearing upon spear-points the heads of Cardinal Julian and King Vladislaus; while Hunyades fled in disgrace from the field.
It is not to be wondered at that such an event, which led many whole communities to renounce their alliance with the Christian powers, and many of the chiefs of Bosnia and Servia to accept the Moslem faith, should have rooted that faith more deeply in the hearts of those who already held it. A flame of fanaticism ran throughout the Mohammedan world. The most rabid sects increased in the number and fury of their devotees. Many who were engaged in useful occupations left them to became Moslem monks, spending their lives in meditation, if perchance they might receive more fully the blessings which heaven seemed ready to pour upon every true believer; or to become preachers of the jehad—the holy war against the infidels.
In the schools of the Janizaries the fanaticism was fed and fanned to a flame of utmost intensity. The square court within their barracks was transformed into a great prayer place of the dervishes. Here the Howlers formed their circles, and swaying backward and forward with flying hair and glaring eyes, grunted their talismanic words from the Koran, until they fell in convulsions on the pavement. And the Wheelers spun round and round in their mystic motions until, full of the spirit they sought, they dropped in the dizzying dance. Learned sheiks preached the gospel of the sword, and the imams watered the seed thus sown with fervent prayers, until the ardent souls of the youth seemed to have lost their human identity, and to be transformed into sparks and flashes of some celestial fire which was to destroy the lands of the Christians.
Michael's mind was not altogether unimpressed by the religious fanaticism that raged around him. While in quiet moments he was troubled with what he heard against the Christian faith which he had been taught in his mountain home, at other times he was caught in the tide of the general enthusiasm and felt himself borne along with it, swirled around in the rings of the mad maelstrom; not unwilling to yield himself to the excitement, and yet by no definite purpose committing himself to it. If it requires all the strength of an adult mind, with convictions long held and character well formed, to maintain its faith and principles against the attrition of daily temptation in a Christian land, we must not be surprised if the child gave way to the incessant appeal of the Moslem belief, accompanied as it was by extravagant promises of secular pleasure, and counteracted by no word of Christian counsel.
But the spiritual impulse in Michael was less active than the martial instinct; and this latter was stimulated to the utmost by the associations of every day and hour. The battles which were fought on the great fields were all refought in the vivid descriptions of the Janizary teachers, and sometimes in the mimic rencounters of the playground. Michael rebelled against his childish years which prevented his joining some of the great expeditions that were fitted out;—against the Greeks of the Peloponnesus, the Giaour lands to the north, and the Albanians on the west, who, under Scanderbeg, had become the chief menace against the Ottoman power.