2.
Othman, the founder of the line and people, who take from him the name of Ottoman or Osmanli, was the grandson of a nomad Turk, or Turcoman, who, descending from the North by Sogdiana and the Oxus, took the prescriptive course (as I may call it) towards social and political improvement. His son, Othman's father, came into the service of the last Sultan of the Seljukian line, and governed for fifty-two years a horde of 400 families. That line of sovereigns had been for a time in alliance with the Greek Emperors; but Othman inherited the fanaticism of the desert, and, when he succeeded to his father's power, he proclaimed a gazi, or holy war, against the professors of Christianity. Suddenly, like some beast of prey, he managed to leap the mountain heights which separated the Greek Province from the Mahomedan conquests, and he pitched himself in Broussa, in Bithynia, which remained from that time the Turkish capital, till it was exchanged for Adrianople and Constantinople. This was the beginning of a long series of conquests lasting about 270 years, till the Ottomans became one of the first, if not the first power, not only of Asia, but of the world.
These conquests were achieved during the reigns of ten great Sultans, the average length of whose reigns is as much as twenty-six years, an unusual period for military sovereigns, and both an evidence of the stability, and a means of the extension, of their power. Then came the period of their decline, and we are led on through the space of another 270 years, up to our own day, when they seem on the verge of some great reverse or overthrow. In this second period they have had as many as twenty-one Sultans, whose average reigns are only half the length of those who preceded them, and afford as cogent an argument of their national disorder and demoralization. Of these twenty-one, five have been strangled, three have been deposed, and three have died of excess; of the remaining ten, four only have attained the age of man, and these come together in the course of the last century; two others have died about the age of thirty, and three about the age of fifty. The last, the thirty-first from Othman, is the present Sultan, who came to the throne as a boy, and is described at that time by an English traveller, as one of the most "sickly, pale, inanimate, and unmanly youths he ever saw,"[57] and who has this very year just reached the average length of the reign of his twenty predecessors.
The names of the Ottoman Sultans are more familiar to us and more easy to recollect than other Oriental sovereigns, partly from their greater euphony as Europeans read them, partly from their recurrence again and again in the catalogue. There are four Mahomets, four Mustaphas, four Amuraths or Murads, three Selims, three Achmets, three Othmans, two Mahmoods, two Solimans, and two Bajazets.[58]
I have already described Othman, the founder of the line, as a soldier of fortune in the Seljukian service; and, in spite of the civilizing influences of the country, the people, and the religion, to which he had attached himself, he had not as yet laid aside the habits of his ancestors, but was half shepherd, half freebooter. Nor is it likely that any of his countrymen would be anything else, as long as they were still in war and in subordinate posts. Peace must precede the enjoyment, and power the arts of government; and the very readiness with which his followers left their nomad life, as soon as they had the opportunity, shows that the means of civilization which they had enjoyed, had not been thrown away on them. The soldiers of Zingis, when laden with booty, and not till then, cried out to be led back, and would fight no more; Tamerlane, at the end of fifty years, began to be a magnificent king. In like manner, Othman observed the life of a Turcoman, till he became a conqueror; but, as soon as he had crossed Mount Olympus, and found himself in the Greek territory as a master, he was both willing and able to accommodate himself to a pomp and luxury to which a mere Turcoman was unequal. He bade adieu to his fastnesses in the heights, and he began to fortify the towns and castles which he had heretofore pillaged. Conquest and civilization went hand in hand; his successor, Orchan, selected a capital, which he ornamented with a mosque, a hospital, a mint, and a college; he introduced professors of the sciences, and, what was as great a departure from Tartar habits, he raised a force of infantry, among his captives (in anticipation of the Janizaries, formed soon after), and he furnished himself with a train of battering engines. More strange still, he gained the Greek Emperor's daughter in marriage, a Christian princess; and lastly, he crossed over into Europe under cover of friendship to the court of Constantinople, and possessed himself of Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont. His successors gained first Roumelia, that is, the country round Constantinople, as far as the Balkan, with Adrianople for a capital; then they successively swept over Moldavia, Servia, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Morea. Then they gained a portion of Hungary; then they took Constantinople, just 400 years ago this very year. Meanwhile they had extended their empire into Syria, Egypt, and along the coast of Africa. And thus at length they more than half encompassed the Mediterranean, from the straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Venice, and reigned in three quarters of the world.