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  STANHOPE PRIZE ESSAY--1859.




  THE

  CAUSES OF THE SUCCESSES

  OF THE

  OTTOMAN TURKS.


  BY

  JAMES SURTEES PHILLPOTTS,

  SCHOLAR OF NEW COLLEGE.

[Illustration]

  OXFORD:

  T. and G. SHRIMPTON.

  M DCCC LIX.




THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESSES OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS.


By the fall of the Seljukian dynasty in Asia Minor, a vast number of
Turks, scattered over the fertile tracts of Western Asia, were left
without any organized government. The Emirs of the Seljouks in their
different districts tried to set up separate kingdoms for themselves,
but their power was successfully exercised only in making depredations
upon each other. For some time they were under the sway of the Khans of
Persia, but the decline of the Mogul Empire after the death of Cazan,
freed them from this control[1]. During this time of general anarchy,
a clan of Oghouz Turks, under Ertogruhl, settled in the dominions of
Alaeddin, the chief of Iconium. These Turks were of the same family as
the Huns and Avars, and the other Barbarian hordes, whose invasions
had continually devastated Europe for nearly ten centuries[2]; nor had
the energy and restless activity of their race yet begun to fail. They
were all united by the affinity of race, as well as by their language,
and by the common bond of the Sunnite creed. In return for Ertogruhl’s
services in war Alaeddin gave him a grant of territory in the highlands
of Phrygia. The warlike spirit of Ertogruhl’s son Othman, raised him to
the rank of an independent chieftain, and he soon made himself master
of strong positions on the borders of the Greek Empire. With ill-judged
parsimony, the Emperor Michael had disbanded the militia, who guarded
the passes of Mount Olympus, and had thus left Bithynia open to
attack. Orchan, the son of Othman, took advantage of these favourable
occurrences, enlarged his territory at the expense of the Greeks, and
by uniting several of the scattered Turkish tribes under one head, laid
the foundation of the Ottoman Empire.

Thus the circumstances of the times were throughout eminently
favourable to the Ottomans. The fall of the Seljouk monarchy, and
the consequent diffusion of the Turkish population, had given free
scope to their enterprising spirit. Through the civil wars of the
Byzantine Emperors and the disputes of the Venetians and Genoese, they
were enabled to gain their first footing in Europe. Had Amurath’s
attempt to extend his kingdom over the Christian nations of Thrace and
Roumelia been made in the 11th century, he would have roused all Europe
in common resistance to his rising power. But in 1388, the Servian
confederacy could obtain no aid from Western Christendom. As long as
Richard II. was king of England, and Charles VI. of France--while
Germany was ruled by the dissolute Winceslaus--Amurath had little to
fear from the powers of the West[3]. Spain was too much occupied by
her wars with the Moslems at home to think of the sufferings of her
Christian brethren in the East. Nor was there any danger that the rival
popes of Avignon and Rome would forget their private animosities to
assist in arresting the fall of a distant and schismatical church.

At the crowning point of their success, the siege of Constantinople
by Mahomet II., the advantages of time were again on the side of the
Ottomans. The Roman pontiff, furious at their obstinacy in refusing
to join the communion of the Latin church, had conceived an aversion
for the Greeks which could hardly be exceeded by any abhorrence of
the Mnssulman’s creed. It might have been expected that he would
rouse himself to prevent the destruction of the Eastern defences
of Christendom, but he chose rather a selfish and inglorious part,
content to foresee and even to foretell the coming overthrow of the
Greek Empire[4]. Thus did the Patriarch of the West, the natural head
of any confederacy for the succour of Constantinople, look on at its
fall with seeming unconcern. Meanwhile the English and the French were
engaged in a quarrel too deadly to be reconciled. The Germans would
not join with the Hungarians, nor would the Spanish have any concert
with the Genoese. In short no coalition of the powers of Europe was
possible. Even the Greeks themselves were too much divided by religious
dissensions to offer united resistance to their Moslem foe, and their
want of union could only be equalled by their cowardice. The valour
of the last Constantine did indeed shed glory over his own particular
fate, but the issue of the struggle could not be doubtful when the
disciplined troops and the famed artillery of the Turk were opposed to
the feeble and disunited force of the enervated Byzantines.

These external circumstances are important, as having been auxiliary to
the rise of the Ottomans. But the main causes of their success must be
sought in the wisdom of their rulers and in the institutions which they
established.

Their government was most singularly constituted, and of a character
totally dissimilar to any of the governments of Christendom. The
institutions too from which they derived their solid and lasting power
were for the most part peculiar to themselves. On these institutions
the stability of the Ottoman greatness mainly rested. With their first
appearance it arose; with their gradual development it had grown; as
they were neglected and fell into disuse, the ancient glory of the
Crescent was dimmed, obscured, and finally extinguished.

Even in the legendary history of the founder of their nation is
shadowed forth the faint outline of their peculiar, policy. By patient
waiting till he attained his purpose, Othman won his wife from an alien
tribe. His expeditions were sanctioned by the blessing of the Holy
Scheik Edebali. From the fruit of these expeditions, from the Christian
captives who were condemned to slavery, was selected the wife of his
son Orchan. A Christian apostate, ‘Michael of the Pointed Beard’ was
the chief of Othman’s captains.

It was from the example of their founder, they would have us
believe, that they adopted customs of receiving renegades, of foreign
intermarriage, a warlike zeal sanctioned by religion, a system of
slavery-institutions which in later times were the distinguishing
characteristics of their race[5]. It matters not if these accounts
of Othman’s early history be the invention of later times; this
rather shows (since fiction is more philosophical than truth), that
the Ottomans themselves were convinced that it was mainly on the
preservation of these usages that their greatness rested. It was,
however, reserved for the sons of Othman to set the system on a
permanent basis, and to the legislative genius of Alaeddin in the
succeeding reign, was chiefly due the stability of the Ottoman race.

In general the Asiatic dynasties culminate to their height of power
with a marvellous rapidity, and then, dependent solely on the merits
of their rulers, with no institutions calculated to ensure any lasting
greatness, fall by a decline no less rapid and less marvellous than
their rise. The career of Ottoman conquest lacked the dazzling grandeur
which invests the exploits of Genghis Khan, or Timour, but it was not
destined to be as ephemeral as they. In its slow and cautious advance,
in the gradual organization of conquered provinces, in the unswerving
patience which waited always for the fittest opportunity, it bore no
faint resemblance to the stately march of Roman sovereignty.

The close of Othman’s life of seventy years saw him but just made
possessor of a single city of importance. It was not till the reign of
Orchan that the Ottomans ceased to acknowledge the sovereignty of the
Iconian Sultans, and first adopted a coinage of their own. The wise
policy of Orchan’s coadjutor, Alaeddin, gave them a respite from war
for twenty years, in which time he consolidated the small kingdom they
had already won, and perfected a system which was to be the instrument
of future conquest.

It was during this period of tranquillity that the organization of
the army was effected--an organization which, possessing in itself
the various merits of the most invincible forces that have ever been
collected--the asceticism and brotherhood of the Spartan companies, the
mixture of races in the army of Hannibal, the religious zeal of the
English Puritans, and the devotion of Caesar’s 10th legion--added to
all these, two peculiarities of their creed, the absolute subjection of
every individual to the sacred authority of the Sultan, and the warlike
inspirations of a religion that taught them that ‘in the conflict of
the crossing scymetars Paradise was to be won.’

It is a remarkable and significant fact, that this abstinence from war
for the long period of twenty years was never repeated by the Ottomans
during the time of their success. That soldiers long unemployed must
become either citizens or rebels is an axiom which must have special
force in a government like that of the Ottomans. War was the normal
condition of their race. It was to this object that not only their
iconoclastic creed, but the whole tenor of their institutions pointed,
and in this aspect they must chiefly be contemplated.

The feudal system of the Ottomans was essentially military. It was the
device of an aggressive power and was made to answer a double purpose;
to secure the permanency of its conquests, and to supply soldiers for
war. Ottoman feudalism was wholly different from that which prevailed
in Western Europe. The great distinction lay in the fact, that among
the Ottomans all the feudal vassals held their fiefs directly of
the Sultan, or his officers; whereas in Western Europe, between the
sovereigns and the lower tenants was interposed a powerful class,
which always more or less counterbalanced the supreme power. The one
was the division of a kingdom into petty fiefs, the other the fusion
of conquered territories under the sway of one victorious monarch. It
was through the feudal system of the Ottomans, in combination with
their institution of slavery, that war was made to feed war; that every
conquest supplied the means for future conquest.

The use of the Ottoman system for the supply of soldiers in time of
war may be estimated from the fact, that an armed horseman was required
for every fief of the value of twelve pounds a year, and another for
every additional twenty pounds. In the time of Solyman these fiefs were
able to furnish 150,000 cavalry[6]. The feudal troops were always kept
in readiness, nor was anything required to summon them to the field
but an order of the Sultan to the two Beglerbegs of the Empire from
whom it was communicated to a regular gradation of officers entrusted
with the task of mustering these Spahi, or Cavaliers, in their separate
divisions[7]. This force served without pay. If they fell in battle,
they were honoured as martyrs: if they distinguished themselves, or if
the expedition was successful, they were rewarded with larger gifts of
property. All their hopes of advancement depended upon the Sultan, and
his success in war. They were ready to do his bidding in any part of
the world, for the greater part of every country which they subdued was
divided among the members of their own body.

It is to this institution of feudalism that we must look for an
explanation of the fact, that the Turkish conquests, unlike those of
other great conquerors, seldom returned to their original possessors.
Immediately an additional piece of territory was gained, it became an
integral part of the Empire. Thus it was that the Sultans were able to
cons