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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE. XXV11
Islam, to authorise him to kill the Janissaries if they resisted: it was granted by the
chief of the Faith, and he sent his adherent, Kara Gehenna, or " the black infernal," to
execute it. The Janissaries were surrounded with artillery, and he at once opened a
discharge with grape-shot on the dense crowd. He battered down their kislas, or barracks,
over their heads, and never ceased till this fierce and formidable body of men were left
a monument in the midst of Constantinople, a mound of mangled flesh and smoking
ashes slaked in blood. To perpetuate the utter destruction of this corps, and ensure
its extinction, a firman was issued, obliterating its very name, and declaring it penal for
any man ever to pronounce it.
Just before the destruction of the Janissaries at Constantinople, that of the Mamelukes had been effected in Egypt. These descendants of Christian slaves, equally
formidable to the Porte, had been doomed to like destruction by the predecessor of
Mahmoud. They were invited to a feast on board the Capitan Pasha's ship, when the
most formidable of their chiefs were seized and strangled. The remnant were induced,
by solemn promises of protection to enter the fortress of Cairo, when every man of them
was sacrificed in cold blood, without pity or remorse. Thus these two corps, originally
formed and recruited from a Christian population, became, in the hands of the Osmanli,
for many centuries, the most powerful and unrelenting opponents of the people professing
the faith of their ancestors, and at length became so formidable to their employers as to
render their own destruction necessary. Not a remnant of these extraordinary renegades, now exists in the world, and the very names of Mameluke and Janissary are
condemned to everlasting oblivion.
The energetic and terrible sultan, having thus silenced opposition, and created
unanimity to his plans, by putting to death every man that presumed to differ from him
in opinion, proceeded rapidly with his reforms. A new order of things was every where
established. The soldiers, who were a mere uncontrollable rabble, every one dressed
according to his own fancy, and doing whatever seemed good in his eyes, were now clad
in regular uniform, subject to discipline, and exercised in European tactics. Civil
usages which stamped the Turks with barbarism, were abolished. Ambassadors, who
represented infidel kings, were no longer dragged by the neck into the presence of the
sovereign of the faithful like criminals, or sent to his prison like malefactors; but, above
all, knowledge was no longer proscribed as an impious acquisition, and ignorance
cherished as a venerable quality. Lancasterian schools were opened; literary works on
various subjects were written by Turks, and published at the press at Constantinople,
now revived for that purpose; and, finally, an innovation was introduced, supposed to
be altogether hopeless and extraordinary, among a people so stubborn and prejudiced:
to spread the lights of European knowledge with more rapidity, and present them daily
to the eyes of every man, four newspapers were established in the capital, in Turkish,
Greek, Armenian, and French, for the different people that compose the population;
and thus 700,000 persons, the calculated number of inhabitants on both peninsulas,
instead of being kept in utter darkness of every thing around them, are now constantly
apprised of all that passes, not only in their own, but in every other country. The arts, |
