The only point added by them was what was certainly the worst of all—the tribute of children. A certain number of the strongest and healthiest Christian children of six or seven years old were taken away every year to supply the Sultan's Janissary (yeni cheri = new troop) guard. They were, of course, brought up as Moslems, knowing neither father nor mother nor country, having no attachment to, anything or any one except to their barracks and the Sultan. So they formed a tremendous engine in the hands of the Government, and the Christians, whose lands were harried and whose homes were burnt by the Janissaries, had the additional horror of knowing that these persecutors were really their own children. The Janissary corps lasted till 1826. It was only then, after they, knowing their own strength, had become too utterly unruly, that Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839) at the risk of his own life abolished them.[1] This most cruel piece of tyranny was not part of the law of Islam, but a special and private abomination of the Turk.
With this exception, however, the fate of the Rayahs was not the worst possible. What they had to complain of was, first, that they always remained a separate subject-people under a race of foreign conquerors and masters; and, secondly, that they were at the mercy of tyrants, who at any time could, and who continually did, overstep their own law. The root of the whole evil was that Christian and Moslem never could, never can mix into one people. There have been other conquests as cruel and as unjust as the Turkish conquest of the Empire, and yet in other cases after a century or two the races have mixed and no one either knows or cares any longer whether he belongs by blood to the original conquerors or conquered. This can never happen where Moslems rule over Christians. No one now asks whether an Englishman be Briton or real Englishman or Norman, whether an Italian be Roman or Goth or Lombard; but the Turk and the Rayah belong to two different nations to-day as much as in 1453. The difference of religion in this case makes a barrier that nothing can break down. Religion to the Moslem is the only thing that matters at all. Islam is the perfect example of a theocratic democracy, governed of course,
- ↑ The tribute of children was done away with in 1638.
