Had he stopped with this act of violence, his supporters might defend him on the doubtful ground of expediency; but he did not stop here. For centuries the tyranny of the sultans had been restrained by the derebeys, or lords of the valleys. They had been confirmed in the possession of their lands by Mohammed II, from which time they had continued to pay tribute to the sultan, and furnished him with quotas of troops. The sultan had no control over their lives or property. The subjects who tilled the productive lands of the valleys were suitably rewarded for their labor. The happiest and wealthiest peasants of the empire were found among the vassals of the beys, to whom they showed great devotion. These feudal lords, at a moment's warning, could summon twenty thousand men before their palace gates. They furnished the greater part of the sultan's cavalry force in war; and, unlike the pashas, had never raised the standard of rebellion; they had never wished for revolutions, and had never sanctioned insurrections. The possession of their property was guaranteed to them by inheritance, and they had no need of money with which to bribe the Sublime Porte.
Mahmoud was bent on depriving them of their wealth and curtailing their privileges. They were rich, did not bribe him, and held hereditary possessions. These were unpardonable crimes in the sight of this exemplary reformer. The beys, who never dealt in treachery, were unsuspicious of others, and fell an easy prey. The peasants ceased to cultivate the lands from which they could no longer profit; and many of the wealthiest possessions became desolate. We must not think it strange, therefore, that the military power was prostrated, when, after having annihilated the Janissaries, Mahmoud deprived the derebeys of their ancient authority; for the military power of the empire rested chiefly in these two bodies. These innovations were made in the midst of a destructive Greek war, and at a time when the Danube and the Balkan were no longer formidable barriers to the Muscovite descendants of Ivan the Terrible, who brought back memories of the past, and threatened to avenge deeply treasured wrongs. Even at this critical period, when his army was annihilated, his fleet defeated, and the legions of Russia within a few days' march of Constantinople, Mahmoud threatened to feed his horses at the high altar of St. Peter's, and proclaim the religion of the prophet in the Muscovite capital. A threat that savored more of the seraglio than of the throne!
His next step was to assail the privileges of the great provincial cities, the inhabitants of which elected from their own number ayans, or magistrates, distinguished for their wisdom and virtue. These magistrates had much influence among the people; they had always resisted exorbitant taxes and unjust decrees; their protection was extended to Mussulmans and Christians without distinction. Their power of veto was almost as effective as that of the tribuni plebis of Rome; they could point back to Solyman, the Solon of his time, as the author of their protective system. But their power originated with the people. To this Mahmoud would not submit. All power must emanate from him, the all-wise and innovating sultan, who raised the low and humbled the great, not as they were honest or corrupt, but as they fawned upon him, or refused to yield implicit obedience to his nod.
In their endeavors to institute a new financial system, the predecessors of Mahmoud reduced the standard of money gradually, in order not to produce a panic. But he wished to accomplish in one day the work of years. He issued a decree commanding the people to bring all their coin, gold and silver, to their respective governorswhere they would receive less than half its value! He threatened the refractory with death. The capital resounded with the dreaded cry of rebellion; and the exasperated multitude that had surrounded the royal palace was not appeased until it witnessed the public execution of the mint officers, whose only crime was obedience to their master. This impolitic measure in the financial department impoverished the people, and left the treasury still empty. Foreign speculators bought the moneythe circulation of which had become illegaland resold it to the sultan for sterling value!
Shortly after this he expelled about thirty thousand Christians from the capital, which they had embellished and enriched by their labor. Their fidelity had never been doubted. For this despicable acttheir expulsionMahmoud could adduce no better reason than that 'it was solely on political grounds.' Strange politics this, for a sovereign, who professed to have the magnanimity of Christian rulers! On the expulsion of the Christians, Russia commenced hostilities, and a war followed, in which the sultan paid dearly for his rashness.
In short, Mahmoud could not have given a better lesson to his subjects than by reforming himself. He was cruel beyond measureif the grand seignior can ever be so called, who is taught that he may lop off a score of heads each day 'for divine inspiration.' Still if he had been as thoroughly skilled as he professed to have been, he should have shown himself a humane as well as an innovating sovereign. Those who assisted him in his reforms, he rewarded with the bowstring. His character was blackened by ingratitude, an instinctive vice in oriental rulers. Obstinate as he was suspicious, deceitful as he was cunning, he could not rule his own passions, much less could he control the corrupt morals of his people. He was to an extraordinary degree avaricious, a quality everywhere odious, but especially in a land where generosity measures lovewhere in the highest and in the lowest stations liberality is the moving spring. While he mistook parsimony for economy, he did not scruple to make war on trifling pretexts and waste his amassed treasures in a hopeless cause.
In every attempted reform he wounded Ottoman pride and prejudice. Unlike his cousin, he did not humor the faults of the people while making innovations; he neither amused them with imposing shows, nor flattered them by the pompous spectacle of his appearance in publicin one word, he wanted the tact of a reformer. Selim, while he increased the navy and established manufactories, built gorgeous palaces, and by his magnificence dazzled the people, who were blind to his real designs; they even permitted him to set up printing presses in the large cities, on receiving assurance that the Koran would not be submitted to the unholy process of squeezing!
Mahmoud thought, or pretended to think, that he could reform the empire by imitating only the vices of Christianity, and manifesting a contempt for Moslem virtues. While he drank wineand in many other breaches of the teachings of the sacred book provoked the faithfulhis proclamations breathed a most orthodox and fanatical spirit. He was a sceptic; neither Mussulman nor Christian, but surprisingly inconsistent and capricious. His, we fear, were 'hangman's hands,' and 'not ordained to build a temple unto peace.'
Under Solyman the Magnificent, at once the most warlike monarch and munificent patron of literature and art, the constitution of the Janissaries was wise and effective. The children of Christians, taken by the Turks in war or in their predatory incursions, were exposed in the public markets of Constantinople, whence any person was at liberty to take them into his service, on making a contract with the government to return them at the demand of the sultan. These children were instructed in Islamism, and were trained by manly exercise and labor, calculated to strengthen the body and give elasticity to the spirits. From these hardy orphans the ranks of the Janissaries were recruited. They came eagerly to the camp; for they had been taught to regard it as the theatre of their future glory. From earliest infancy they looked forward with joy to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers, whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which a Janissary could not aspirea strong incentive to the display of bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of numbers, but by superior military discipline and valor. In the middle of the nineteenth century the capture of Christian children was abandoned. The land forces degenerated into a wretchedly organized army of less than three hundred thousand men, drafted from the lowest classes. Mothers put their children to death that they might be spared the pangs of seeing them torn away to pass their days in scenes of shame and dissipation.