The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire by Alan Palmer Read Free Book Online

campaigning, they practised trades; many behaved like a civilian reserve militia rather than as the core of the Sultan’s army. Yet while
greedy to acquire new rights, they remained jealously possessive of old privileges. Accession Money became, not a reward, but a form of extortion. When in 1623 Murad IV became the fourth Sultan to
accede in six years, the Grand Vizier informed the senior generals of the Janissaries that the treasury was empty, and they agreed that their troops would forgo the bonus; but, in a mutinous mood,
the Corps insisted on its rights: gold and silver plate from the Topkapi Sarayi was melted down and minted into coin for their benefit.
    A strong and fearless ruler would have suppressed the Janissaries. But how? Unlike the Russian streltsy , the corps was not based on any single centre in the empire. There had long been
Janissary barracks in Constantinople, in the larger provincial cities, and in conquered capitals such as Cairo and Damascus. Suleiman, aware of the potential danger constituted by the Corps,
encouraged the growth of an Imperial Bodyguard of dragoons ( silahtar ). Under his successors this regiment was recruited from the richer Turkish nobility and in any campaign remained close tothe Sultan’s person. Yet while the silahtar was a small élite force, the Janissaries could number 90,000 men organized in more than a hundred battalions
( orta ), if fully mobilized. They included what might be regarded as a proto-commando brigade, the serdengecti (‘those willing to give up their heads’), an initial infantry
assault force. If the Ottoman Empire was to meet the military challenge from the West, the Sultans needed the Janissaries, provided the Corps would fight as loyally and ferociously as in the days
of Mehmed the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent.
    Briefly it seemed as if they might. Under Mustafa II, who came to the throne in February 1695, a vigorous attempt was made to halt the Austrian advance. 8 Within eleven weeks of his accession Sultan Mustafa appointed as ş eyhülislâm Feyzullah Effendi, his former tutor. As principal interpreter of Holy Law it was
Feyzullah Effendi’s task to win support from the conservative ulema for renewed war on the Danube. Resistance to the Habsburgs required more taxation and greater personal suffering in
the villages of both Rumelia and Anatolia, for a new campaign would once again denude the fields of labourers. Feyzullah Effendi became more than a spiritual leader; in the absence of a strong
Vizier he was the Sultan’s chief executive, capable of scaring reluctant provincial pashas into raising troops for the Sultan and of checking the mutinous tendencies of the Janissaries.
Theoretically the Janissary Corps was at full strength, although in practice no more than 10,000 men were ready for service in Europe and the orta stationed in Egypt remained wildly
undisciplined. But by the early months of 1696 a formidable army had gathered around the holy banner. Feyzullah Effendi and the ulema would, under the protection of Allah, control the
Ottoman Empire from the capital while, once again, a Sultan led his army into battle.
    At first Sultan Mustafa’s generalship met with some success. He defended Temesvar (Timisoara) against Emperor Leopold’s troops, enabling the Turks to keep a firm foothold north of
the Danube. But in the late summer of 1697 he became over-ambitious, advancing northwards from Belgrade, into the rich Hungarian granary of the Backsa (now the Serbian Vojvodina). Near the small
town of Zenta the Sultan’s engineers improvised a bridge of pontoons across the lower Tisza, broad and fast-flowing at this point, not far from the river’s confluence withthe Danube. It was while the army was crossing the Tisza, late in the evening of 11 September, that the Austrians struck. Under the inspired leadership of Prince Eugene of Savoy they
cut the Turkish force in two. Possibly as many as 30,000 men in the Ottoman army