The Janissary Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

slaves to the sultan mounted at their head, they became
a corps. A terrifying fighting machine that the Ottoman sultans had unleashed
against their enemies in Europe.
    If
the Ottoman Empire inspired fear throughout the known world, it was the
Janissaries who carried the fear to the throats of the unbelievers. The
conquest of Sofia and Belgrade. Istanbul itself, wrested from the Greeks in
1453. The Arab peninsula and, with it, the Holy Cities. Mohacs, 1526, when the
flower of Hungarian knighthood was cut down in the saddle and Suleiman the
Magnificent led his men to Buda, and on, fleetingly, to the gates of Vienna. Rhodes
and Cyprus, Egypt and the Sahara. Why, the Janissaries had even landed in
France in 1566 and spent a year in Toulon.
    Until--who
could say why?--the victories dried up. The terms of engagement changed. The
Janissaries sought permission to marry. They petitioned for the right to take
up trades when there was no fighting, to feed their families. They enrolled
their sons into the corps, and the corps grew reluctant to fight. They were
still dangerous: loaded with privilege, they lorded it over the common people
of the city. Designed to die fighting at the lonely borders of an
ever-expanding empire, they enjoyed all the license and immunity that the
people and the sultan could bestow on men who would soon be martyrs. But they
no longer sought to martyr themselves. The men who had been sent to terrify
Europe made a simple discovery: it was easier--and far less dangerous--to
terrorize at home.
    The
palace made efforts to reason with them, efforts to discipline them. In 1618,
Sultan Osman tried to overturn them: they had him killed, as Yashim knew, by
the compression of his testicles, a mode of execution that left no traces on
the body. Special man, special death. It was considered fitting for a member of
the imperial family. Later still, in 1635, Murad IV rounded up thirty thousand
Janissaries and marched them to their deaths in Persia. But the corps survived.
    And
slowly, painfully, the Ottomans had come to realize that they could no longer
properly defend themselves. Unreliable as they were, the Janissaries still
insisted on being the supreme military power: they had become unassailable. The
common people were afraid of them. In trade, they exploited their privileges to
become dangerous rivals. Their behavior was threatening and insolent, as they
swaggered through the city streets, fully armed and wielding sticks, uttering
loutish blasphemies. Outside the Topkapi Palace, between Aya Sofia and the Blue
Mosque, lay an open space called the Atmeidan, the ancient Hippodrome of the
Byzantines. In it grew a huge plane tree to which the Janissaries always
rallied at the first sign of any trouble, for the blotched and peeling trunk of
the Janissary Tree stood at the center of their world; as the palace lay at the
center of Ottoman government, and Aya Sofia at the heart of religious faith. Beneath
its branches the Janissaries divulged their grievances and secrets, and plotted
mutinies. From the swaying limbs of the tree, too, they hanged the bodies of
men who had displeased them: ministers, viziers, and court officials sacrificed
to their bloodlust by a terrified succession of weak and vacillating sultans.
    Meanwhile,
lands conquered by the sultan's armies in the name of Islam were being lost to
the infidels: Hungary, Serbia, the Crimea. In Egypt, Ali Pasha the Albanian
built on the experience of the Napoleonic invasion to train the fellahin as
soldiers, Western-style. And when Greece disappeared, from the very heartland
of an empire where every other man was Greek by speech, it was the final blow. The
Egyptians had held the fort for a while: they were to be commended. They had drill
and discipline; they had tactics and modern guns. The sultan read the message
and began to train his own, Egyptian-style force: the seraskier's New Guard.
    That
was ten years ago. The sultan issued orders that the Janissaries should adopt
the