If they were powerful servants, they were also powerful tyrants. Their valor often reaped a harvest of victories, but their obstinacy again and again imperilled their triumphs. With the increase of their power their self-assurance increased likewise. It was not so much the Sultans and Viziers who commanded them as they who commanded the Sultans and Viziers. And if the rebellious Janissaries hoisted on the Atmeidan a kettle, the signal of revolt, it was always with fear and trembling that the Seraglio asked them what were their demands; and the whole Divan breathed more freely when the answer came that it was gold they wanted, and not blood—the blood of their officers. And when, after the great Feast of Bairam, there was the usual distribution of pilaf, and the dangerous kettles were filled full with this savory mess of rice and sheep's flesh, the Sultan, all trembling, would anxiously watch to see how the majestic Janissaries partook of their pottage. If they devoured it voraciously, that was a sign of their satisfaction; but if they only touched it in a finiking sort of way, then the Sultan would fly into the Seraglio, and lock himself up among the damsels of the harem, for it was now certain that their lordships the Janissaries were displeased, and it was well if their displeasure only expressed itself by reducing a whole quarter or so of the city to ashes.
Two Sultans had tried to break in two this dangerous double-edged weapon, which inflicted as many wounds in the heart of the realm as ever it dealt outside; but the Janissaries' magic influence was so interwoven with, so ingrafted in, the mind of the nation that public feeling was on their side, and both rulers perished in the bold attempt. They dragged Sultan Osman forth from the Seraglio, and set him on the back of an ass with his face to its tail, carried him in derision from one end of the town to the other, and then flung him into the fatal Seven Towers, where the Turkish rulers and their relatives are wont to be buried alive and die forgotten. Mahmoud II.'s father, Selim, on the other hand, expired beneath the sword-thrusts of the rebels, and those swords were still sharp and those hands were still strong when the son of the man whom they had slain sat on the throne, and under no other Sultan did the throne tremble so much as under him.
In these days the mighty corps of the Janissaries lived only to commit crimes or gigantic mistakes; its ancient glory was not renewed. During the last century their arms had constantly been shattered whenever they came into collision with the progressive military science of Europe. In the course of the ages the flowers in Begtash's garden had sadly faded. The flowery petals of their glory had fallen from them, and only the thorns remained; and even these were no longer the thorns of the brave thick-set hedge which defends the borders of the garden against would-be invaders, but the stings of the nettle which hurts the hand of the gardener as he hoes.
Neither life nor property was any longer safe from them. The Sultan himself, when he sat upon the throne, was in the most dangerous place of all, and the Viziers—the chief officials of the realm—trembled every day for their lives. The turbulence of the Janissaries was a perpetually recurring disease running through all the arteries of the realm, and covering the once mighty empire with poisonous ulcers.
These seditious outbreaks occurred even during the deliberations of the Divan, and fear on such occasions was a more urgent counsellor than conviction to the palace magnates who sat in the cupolaed chamber.
The threats of the Janissaries had compelled Mahmoud to take up arms against Ali Pasha; and now, when Ali had kindled the flames of war all over the empire, and the Sultan bade the Janissaries hasten against the enemy and subdue him, they replied that they would not fight unless the Sultan led them in person.
Instead of that, they waged war within the very walls of Stambul, for whenever the news of a defeat reached the capital, the Janissaries would fall upon the defenceless Greeks and massacre them by thousands.
From distant Asia, from the most savage parts of the empire, Begtash's priests appeared and proclaimed in the mosques death and destruction on the heads of all the Greeks. It was they who, with torches in their hands, headed the rush of the fanatical Janissaries against Buyukdere, Pera, and Galata, the quarters of the city where the Greeks resided, and every day they thundered with their bludgeons at the gates of the Seraglio, demanding ever more and more sentences of death against the Greek captives who were shut up in the Seven Towers. The Sultan's officials, trembling with fear, wrote out the sentences demanded of them, and the victims fell in hundreds; and when the Russian ambassador, Stroganov, protested against this butchery, the Janissaries attacked his palace and riddled all the doors and windows with bullets, which was the subsequent pretext for the long war which shook the empire to its base, though the Janissaries never lived to feel it.
Mahmoud watched from the summit of the imperial palace the devastation of Stambul and the devastation of his empire, and he saw no help anywhere. He saw nothing but the melancholy examples of his ancestors and the disappearance of his dominions; and as he stroked the head of his first-born, Abdul Mejid, a child of nine, he thought to himself, "This lad will not sit on the throne, he will not be a ruler as his forefathers were; he will not dictate laws to half the world like the other descendants of Omar; but he will be a fugitive on the face of the earth, the slave of strange people, as was the fugitive Dzhem, whom they cast forth ages ago."
How miserable was the life of the Sultan! What avails it though an earthly paradise be open to him if life itself be closed against him? What avails it to be a god if he cannot be a man? The Sultan never knows what it is to have relatives. Very early, while they are still children, the latest born are shut up in the Seven Towers. The first-born son can never meet them, unless it be on the steps of the throne, when the rebellious Janissaries drag one of them from his dungeon to raise him to the throne, and lock up the first-born in his stead. The Sultan cannot be said to possess a wife; all that he has are favorite concubines, in hundreds, in thousands, as many as he chooses to have, and there is no difference between them except differences of feminine loveliness and the blind chance which blesses some of them with children. And he makes no more account of one than he does of another. Not one of them feels it her duty to love her husband; it is enough if she be the slave of his desires. If the Padishah be troubled or sorrowful, there is none about him to whom he can open his heart. He may go from one end of the harem to the other, like one who wanders through a conservatory whose flowers are all so beautiful, so radiantly smiling; but in vain will he tell them of his grief and trouble, for they do not understand him, they do not trouble their heads about his thoughts; and if, perchance, he tells them that from all four corners of the world mighty foes are marching against Stambul, here and there, perchance, he may hear a sigh of longing from some captive maiden, who cannot conceal her secret joy at the thought of the happy hour when the hand of deliverance will thunder at the harem door and break its bolts and give freedom, beautiful sunbright freedom, to the captives.