The turbulent condition of Western Asia at this period (13th century) could well afford the growth of a new power, or dynasty, provided this power was in sympathy with the prevalent religion, Mohammedanism, and congenial with the invading hordes. Unfortunately for the Christians, both in Western Asia, and later in Eastern Europe, we find a power, growing out of a nomadic tribe into a formidable empire, which held the Christian world in terror for several centuries. The following is the origin of this empire:
“About the middle of the thirteenth century a tribe of Turks, not of the stock of Seljuk, driven forward by the Mongol invaders, left their camping grounds in Khorasan and wandered into Armenia in search of undisturbed pasturage. After seven years of exile, deeming the opportunity favorable to return, they set out to their ancient possessions. But while fording the Euphrates, the horse of their leader fell with him and he perished in the river. A spot upon its banks now bears the name of the tomb of the Turk. Upon this accident occurring the tribe was divided by his sons into four companies and Ertogrul, the warlike head of one division, resolved to return to the westward and seek a settlement in Asia Minor. While pursuing his course he spied two armies in hostile array. Not willing to be a neutral spectator of the battle he joined himself to the apparently weaker party and his timely aid decided the victory. The conquered were an invading horde of Mongols, the conqueror was Aladdin, the Seljukian Sultan of Iconium, and Ertogrul received from the grateful victor an assignment of territory in his dominions for himself and his people. It consisted of the rich plains around Shughut, in the valley of the Sangarins (called the “country of pasture”), and of the Black Mountains on the borders of Phrygia and Bithynia. The former district was for his winter abode; the latter for his summer encampment. In this domain was nurtured his son Othman, or Osman, who became the founder of a dynasty and an empire. From him the Turks of the present day have the name of Ottoman, or Osmanli, which they universally adopt, rejecting that of Turk with disdain as synonymous with barbarian.”[62]
Othman began to reign about A.D. 1289. The shepherd, warrior, and freebooter were united in his character. He was dependent on the Sultan of Iconium during the life of the latter, but otherwise he was free to prey upon his neighbors and govern his people. After the death of the sultan, who had no sons to succeed him, his kingdom was divided, and Othman became, practically, an independent ruler. He increased and extended his power and territories by gradual encroachments upon the Grecian dominions, and by repeated inroads year after year. He captured Brousa and made it the capital of his government. His son and successor, Orchan, extended the bounds of Othman’s territories with astonishing rapidity. He crossed the Straits of Hellespont and Bosphorus. He appointed his brother, Aladdin, vizier. Aladdin created the system of the standing army in the year 1330.
“But the soldiers (taken from the Turks) proved intractable and could not be brought to submit to the strict discipline involved in military organizations. To obviate this difficulty the expedient was resorted to of rearing up in the doctrine of Islam the children of the conquered Christians inuring them from youth to the profession of arms and forming them into a separate corps. This black invention, as Von Hammer truly characterizes it, was adopted by Aladdin at the instance of Kara (black) Chalil Chenderli, the judge of the Army, and he adds, has ‘a diabolical complexion, much blacker than the gunpowder almost contemporaneously discovered by Schwartz (black) in Europe.’ Hence arose the Janissaries, a name which the westerns have corrupted from the Turkish Jenicheri, signifying the ‘new troops.’ The Corps continued to be recruited from the children of the captives taken in war, or from those Christian subjects, an inhuman tax of every fifth child or one child every fifth year, being rigorously levied upon the families. The number of the Janissaries, originally one thousand, was successively raised to twelve, to twenty, and to forty thousand, immediately connected with the Court, besides a much larger number scattered through the provinces. Hence it has been estimated that not less than half a million Christian children were cruelly torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islamism, and trained to maintain it with the sword. At length, in the reign of Mohammed IV (A.D. 1648-1687) began the custom of admitting into the regiment the children of the soldiers themselves; and after this innovation, the Janissaries became a kind of military caste, transmitting from father to son the profession of arms.
“In the days of their pristine vigor, the new troops were distinguished by their fanaticism and valor. Through upwards of three centuries, marked by a long series of great battles, they sustained only four single reverses, chiefly from Tamerlane in 1402, and John Humades, the Hungarian general, in 1442. During that period they extended the petty kingdom of Brousa over the vast dominions of Constantine the Great, and made known their prowess from the walls of Bagdad to the gate of Vienna, and from the Caspian Sea to the Nile, while their name was the common terror of Christendom.”[63]
The reason of our apparent deviation by giving at this time an account of the origin and growth of the Turkish empire, will be readily seen in the succeeding pages; for it was with the Turks that the Armenians have mostly had to do during the last five hundred years. Moreover, we would call attention to the fact that the brilliant conquests have not been accomplished by the Tatar Turks, but by the Christian youths, who from their early childhood were cruelly torn away from their parents and paternal Christian religion and compelled to embrace Islamism, and inured to the profession of arms to maintain with the sword the religion of Mohammed.
A considerable number of Armenians driven from the face of the Mongolian invaders, had chosen for themselves the life of voluntary exiles in the Grecian provinces, and towards the end of the fourteenth century after the overthrow of their Cilician independence, the Turkish empire then being nearly a century old, many Armenians became a ready prey to the fanaticism of the Turks.
It has been estimated that not less than 500,000 Christian children were thus cruelly torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islamism, and trained to maintain it with the sword. How many thousands of families were compelled to exchange their religion, the religion of love and chastity, for the religion of Mohammed, the religion of sensualism and tyranny; how many thousands were massacred because they would not obey such an infernal behest, it is impossible to tell. Suffice it to say that these questions are not imaginary possibilities, but attested facts of history which make up the darkest pages of the Ottoman chronicles. Indeed we would be unwilling to believe them if we had not seen and heard even worse things in the early part of the twentieth century.
While the expatriated Armenians were cruelly treated by the Turks, who were growing in power and increasing in numbers at the expense of the Christians in western and central Asia Minor, those still in Armenia proper received one of the severest calamities ever inflicted upon humanity. The executor of this terrible infliction was the famous Mongolian savage and warrior, Lenk Temur, commonly called Tamerlane (Temur the lame). He made himself the master of an empire extending from the great wall of China to Moscow and to the Mediterranean, having Samarcand his capital. He marched with an immense army against the Persians and in a short time subdued them. He subjugated Bagdad, plundered Aleppo (Hallep), burned down the greater part of Damascus and wrested Syria from the Mameluke Sultan. From the city of Van to the city of Sebastia (Sivas), from one end to the other of Armenia, no city, town or village of any size escaped the notice of the rapacious potentate; he reduced them all to ruinous heaps and ashes. The foreign rulers of the different parts of Armenia had no power whatever, to withstand the terrible army of Temur, which covered the land like an army of locusts. A Kurd, chief by the name of Kara (black) Yusuf, who was assuming control over the Sasoun district and southern part of Armenia, fled from the face of Temur into the mountain fastnesses, where with some of his subjects he wandered until the calamity was past. The city of Van, after a feeble resistance surrendered; the youths were carried as captives, the rest were massacred in various forms. The inhabitants of Sivas surrendered on his solemn promise that “no soldier of his will lift up the sword on them.” He was true to the letter, but not to the spirit of his promise. Four thousand soldiers were roasted to death, and as many were buried alive, and thousands of the very young and old whose hands and feet were tied, were thrown together and trampled under the hoofs of the horses. The spot upon which this barbarous mode of massacre took place, to this day, bears the name of Sev Hokher, signifying in the Armenian language the “Black Plains.” He then marched to meet the Ottoman ruler Bajazet I. Bajazet may deserve a word or two before we hand him over to the tender mercies of Temur—his three predecessors had borne the title of emir, commander, but Bajazet changed it for that of Sultan. He was the first also to set the example of fratricide in the royal family, for he caused his only brother to be put to death. The Mohammedan historian trying to justify him, says, “remembering the text of the Koran, that disturbance is worse than execution.” Sigismund of Hungary, with his allies, “a body of French and German knightly auxiliaries, endeavored to cope with the fiery Turk, but was defeated with terrible loss in the battle of Nicopolis in 1396.”
Bajazet, fierce and proud, warlike and bloodthirsty (in the above battle ten thousand prisoners were put to death by his order), acquired the name of Ylderum, ‘lightning,’ on account of his energy and quickness of action. “Elated by his successes, he contemplated a campaign into the heart of Europe, and boasted that he would one day feed his horse at Rome with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter’s.”[64] He who has the destinies of men in His hand, had differently mapped the career of Bajazet, the Ylderum. The lame Temur with his immense army moved westward, and Bajazet eastward to meet the Tatar warrior. The latter fully confident of a victory courted an encounter with the former. Their armies met one another on the plains of Angora. Fierce must have been the conflict. There is always some reason, or excuse for a defeat. It is said that Bajazet was ill at the time and though he was riding on one of the fleetest horses in the field, he could not effect his escape. He was captured and his army scattered in 1402. It is supposed that he died in the following year from natural causes, “aggravated by his inability to brook a reverse of fortune so signal and complete.”