The Turkish Empire, Its Growth and Decay

by Baron G. Shaw-Lefevre Eversley

During the last three hundred years, when these vast changes were being effected, the Ottoman army lost all the prestige it had acquired during the previous three hundred years. With the single exception of the battle of Cerestes, fought against the Hungarians in 1646, when a débâcle of the Turkish army was averted by the splendid cavalry charge of Cicala Pasha, which saved to the Ottoman Empire the larger part of Hungary for another term of seventy-two years, its armies were defeated in almost every battle of any importance. In nearly all of them the Ottomans had the advantage of very superior numbers, but this did not save them from disaster. The armies opposed to them were led by a succession of generals who were masters of the art of war, such as Sobieski, King of Poland, Prince Eugène of Savoy, Prince Charles of Lorraine, Generals Munnich, Loudon, Kutusoff, Suvorov, Diebitsch, Paskievitch, Skobeleff, and Gourko. Compared with these, the Turks had not a single general of eminence and only a few valiant leaders in battle.

To what causes, then, are we to attribute the decay and dismemberment of the vast Empire, and the complete failure of its armies to maintain prestige for victory and valour? It is more easy perhaps to suggest causes for downfall than for the birth and growth of the Empire. First and foremost of the causes has unquestionably been the degeneracy of the Othman dynasty. It could not have been by a mere chance coincidence that the growth of Empire was synchronous with the reign of the first ten Sultans, and that its decay and dismemberment were extended through the reign of twenty-five successors, of whom all but two, or possibly three, were degenerates and wholly incompetent to rule. The Ottoman State was an autocracy in which all military, civil, and religious faculties were centred in its head. It needed autocrats competent for the task, and in the absence of such it was certain that the State would take the road to ruin. Whether the degeneracy of the dynasty was due, as has been hinted, to a break in the true succession, and the introduction of alien blood after Solyman the Magnificent, or not, the fact remains that we can discern no trace of the eminent qualities of the family in those who succeeded him.

The deterioration of the race, which began with Selim ‘the Sot,’ was confirmed and accentuated by what occurred after three more Sultans had succeeded father to son—all of them equally unfit to fill the throne. The original law of succession, which had been set aside by the cruel practice of fratricide, was then reverted to, and the eldest male of the family, and not the eldest son of a defunct Sultan, was recognized as his successor. Thenceforth, by way of precaution against conspiracy and rebellion, the reigning Sultans, in lieu of putting their brothers to death, immured them as virtual prisoners in the building of the Seraglio known as the Cage, where they were allowed little or no communication with the world. They were permitted to maintain their harems, but by some abominable process the women were sterilized so as to prevent their giving birth to possible claimants to the throne. Of twenty successors to Mahomet IV, seventeen were subjected to this degrading treatment, and only left prison on succeeding to the throne. Three Sultans escaped this treatment, two of them by succeeding their fathers, in default of other male heirs of an older age. Only one of these three was better equipped to fill the throne than the average of the other seventeen. It is evident, therefore, that the dynasty was worn out. It would have been well for the Empire if the Othman race had long ago come to an end, and had been replaced by some more virile and competent stock.

It followed, from the degeneracy of this long succession of Sultans, that the supreme power of the State fell into other hands, either of viziers who were able to dominate the reigning Sultans and to secure themselves against intrigues of all kinds, or more often of the harem. It would be difficult to exaggerate the evils which resulted from the intervention of the Sultan’s harem in affairs of State. The harem consisted of a vast concourse of women and slaves, of concubines and eunuchs, maintained at a huge expense—a nest of extravagance and corruption. It was always in antagonism to the official administration of the Porte, which ostensibly carried on the administration of the State under the direction of the Sultan. The favourite concubine for the time being, or the ambitious mother of a Sultan, or not infrequently the principal eunuch, gained the ear of the Sultan and overruled the more experienced advisers of the Porte. The harem was the centre from which corruption spread throughout the Turkish Empire, as officials of every degree, from the highest to the lowest, found it expedient to secure their interest with its inmates by heavy bribes. It has been shown in previous pages that the sale of offices, civil and military, became universal. This was largely responsible for the decay and dismemberment of the State. An illustration of this was to be found in the cases of Egypt, Algiers, and Tunis. The incompetent pashas, who had obtained by purchase the governorships of these important provinces, were unable to control the local Mamelukes in Egypt, or the local Janissaries in Algiers and Tunis, with the result that these provinces became practically independent and later were lost to the Empire.

A second main cause of the decadence of the Empire was undoubtedly the deterioration of its armies. We miss altogether in the many great battles of the last three hundred years the élan and the daring spirit by which the Ottomans won their many victories in the period of accretion of the Empire. Two main explanations may be offered for this. The one that the armies in the later period were formed more exclusively from the Turkish and Arabic subjects of the Empire, and that the proportion of men of Greek or Slav descent was far less, if it was not wholly absent. When the Empire was extended over the whole of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Syria, the Moslem population was enormously increased. In 1648 the corps of Janissaries ceased to be levied from Christian youths and was recruited from Moslems. There was wanting, therefore, to the army the spirit given to it in the past by the Greeks and other Christian races. This difference was probably more serious in the case of the officers than with the rank and file. The Turks supplied very poor material for officers.

The other explanation is to be found in the absence of incentive to military ardour in the later period. If we have been justified in the conclusion that there was little or no motive for the Turkish army in the shape of religious fanaticism and the desire to spread Islam, but that plunder and the hope of acquiring lands for distribution among the soldiers was its main inducement, it followed that this incentive to victory and valour was almost entirely absent in the later period when the Empire was on the defensive, when it was no longer a question of making fresh conquests, but of retaining what had already been won. The army could not expect to get loot and plunder or captives for sale as slaves, or land to be confiscated for fiefs, when engaged in war for the defence of some tributary or vassal State or of some more integral part of the Empire. Nor could there be the feeling of fighting for their own homes and property when defending a subject Christian province. Yet another partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the general corruption had infected the army, as well as the civil administration of the State. Promotions through all the ranks went not to merit, but to the highest bidders. The civil branches of the army also, such as the commissariat and those for the supply of munitions, which in the earlier period were well provided for, fell into disorder and confusion owing to the universal spread of corruption.

In view of these many serious changes, it is not difficult to appreciate the causes for the falling off of the morale of the Ottoman army and for its failure to maintain the reputation it had achieved in the three centuries of conquest and extension of the Empire. The war which is now raging in the Near East has shown that the Ottoman soldiers, when organized, and in part led, by competent foreign officers, when fighting pro aris et focis, and especially when in defence of well fortified lines, have a great military value.

A third cause, however, for the failure of the Ottomans to maintain their Empire in Europe is undoubtedly to be found in the continually worsening conditions of the Christian populations subject to it. In the earlier period there is good reason to conclude that the average condition of the rayas in the Christian provinces subjected to Ottoman rule and law was somewhat better than that of the peasants in some neighbouring States, such as Hungary, Austria, and Russia. There was something in the way of fixity of tenure accorded to the rayas which was absent from the feudal serfs.

It was alleged that peasants from Hungary not infrequently migrated into the Balkan States in order to enjoy this better treatment, and it is certain that the Greeks of the Morea and Crete preferred the rule of the Ottomans, bad as it was, to that of the Venetians, who were even more cruel and rapacious. However that may have been, it is certain that everywhere under Turkish rule, during the last three hundred years, the conditions of the Christian populations became more wretched and intolerable, and relatively far worse than in neighbouring States. This was greatly due to the degeneracy and corruption of the central Government at Constantinople, and to its evil example and influence throughout the Empire. Governors of provinces and all local officials became more corrupt and rapacious. There was no security for life or property. Justice was not obtainable in the local tribunals. Arbitrary exactions were levied on the peasantry. Brigandage everywhere increased. Money levied in the provinces was never expended for the benefit of their populations. Turkish rule acted as a blight on the districts subject to it. Provinces liberated from it improved in condition beyond recognition. The comparison with them was an ever present object-lesson to those who remained under Turkish rule. The efforts of the combined Powers of Europe to induce or compel the Porte to effect improvements in the government of its subjects proved to be futile and impotent. Treaty obligations with this object were habitually disregarded by the Porte and were treated as waste-paper. Provinces thus conditioned were always on the brink of rebellion. They were kept in subjection, not by the maintenance of any large armed forces there, but by periodic massacres of a ruthless character. These were not the product of religious fanaticism, as has often been suggested, but of deliberate policy, and were instigated by orders direct from the Porte, with the hope of inspiring terror in the minds of the subject races.

Foreign intervention, incited not so much by territorial ambition as by popular sympathy for the oppressed, was resorted to for the purpose of redressing grievous wrongs and for preserving the peace of Europe. As a result of these causes, extending over more than three hundred years, the Turkish Empire, so far as Europe is concerned, and in the sense of a dominant Power over subject races, has ceased to exist. In countries which it held in subjection for over five hundred years it has left no trace that it ever existed. The very few Turks and the Tartars and Circassians who had been planted there by the Porte when the Crimea and the Caucasus were subjected by Russia have departed bag and baggage from Europe. They have migrated to Asia Minor at the instigation of their mollahs. The few Moslems who remain behind in these districts are not of Ottoman or Turkish descent; they are of the same races as their neighbours. Their ancestors adopted Islam to save their property.