Once in five years a general
conscription was made by means of which all the children of Christian
parents who had reached the age of seven and gave promise of excellence
in mind or body were taken from their homes and brought to the capital.
They were then removed to different quarters and placed in seminaries
where they might receive such instruction as would fit them for the
duties of life. Those giving greatest promise of strength and endurance
were sent to places prepared for them in Asia Minor. Here they were
subjected to a severe training, to abstinence, to privations of every
kind, and to the strict discipline which should fit them for the
profession of a soldier. From this body was formed the famous corps of
the Janissaries.... Their whole life may be said to have been passed in
war or in preparation for it. Forbidden to marry, they had no families
to engage their affections, which, as with the monks and friars of
Christian countries, were concentrated in their own order, whose
prosperity was inseparably connected with that of the State. Proud of
the privileges which distinguished them from the rest of the army, they
seemed desirous to prove their title to them by their thorough
discipline and by their promptness to execute the most dangerous and
difficult services. Clad in their flowing robes, so little suited to
war, armed with the arquebus and the scimitar--in their hands more than
a match for the pike or sword of the European--with the heron's plume
waving above their head, their dense array might ever be seen bearing
down in the thickest of the fight; and more than once when the fate of
the Empire trembled in the balance it was this invincible corps which
turned the scale, and by their intrepid conduct decided the fortune of
the day.
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