One of the results of the victory of Mohacs was the consolidation of Ottoman rule in the north-western countries, Bosnia and Croatia. Jajce, which had so long defied the Sultans, was at last taken (1528), and many other fortresses of less note. Early in 1529 it was known that Solyman was preparing for a grand expedition northwards in that year. Germany was alive to the danger. Luther changed his attitude and acknowledged the necessity of war against the Turks, while he insisted that all the disasters which had befallen Christendom from Varna to Mohacs had been due to the interference of Popes and bishops—language which the deeds of Archbishop Paul Tomory of Kalocsa, the defender of southern Hungary, might have been held to belie.
Solyman marched northwards—we can again follow his movements in his own diary—at the head of an immense army, set at 250,000 men, an exaggerated figure. King John met him on the field of Mohacs, and the crown of St Stephen on this occasion passed for safe keeping into the possession of Solyman, who never gave it back. Buda was easily taken, and the host advanced up the Danube, avoiding Pressburg, against Vienna. The garrison numbered 22,000; the walls were not strong; and Charles V, who ought to have hastened to the defence of the eastern mark, was in Italy. Ferdinand waited in terrible anxiety at Linz. He believed that it was the purpose of Solyman to winter in Vienna and spend three years in the subjugation of Germany. The garrison of Vienna in the meanwhile made suitable arrangements for encountering the storm. The houses outside the walls were levelled, the streets within torn up, buildings unroofed. The city was surrounded on September 26 and the operations began with mining. But the difficulty of procuring provisions and the approach of winter rendered the army impatient; and, when successive attempts at storming had been repelled with grave loss (October 9-12), it was decided to retreat after one more effort—especially as help was approaching, about 60,000 men from Bohemia, Moravia, and Germany. A half-hearted attack closed the episode of the first siege of Vienna, and at midnight the signal was given for a retreat which was marked by every horror. On December 16 Solyman records, he returned “fortunately” to Stambul. He had failed in Austria, but Hungary lay at his feet, and John Zapolya, though not a tributary, was absolutely dependent on his support.
The Ottoman State is marked off from the rest of Europe by a legal and political system which is based entirely on religious foundations. In Christian countries religion has frequently modified the principles of secular law; but in Turkey the problem of legislators has been to relax or adjust the interpretation of the canons of Islam, so as to permit it to take its place among European States, and to establish a modus vivendi with neighbouring unbelievers. Under Mohammad II a general code of law called “the Pearl” was drawn up by the Molla Khusrev in 1470; but this was superseded by Ibrahim Haleby of Aleppo, who in the reign of Solyman compiled a code which he named “the Confluence of the Seas” (Multeka-ul-ubhar). The sources from which these codes were compiled are four: the Koran; the Sunnas (the sayings of the Prophet which depend on early tradition, and inferences from his actions and his silences); the “apostolic laws” (explanations and decisions given by the Prophet’s apostles and chief disciples in theological and moral matters); and the Kiyas (canonical decisions of “the four great Imams,” who lived in the eighth and ninth centuries).
One of the universal duties of Islam on which the code of Ibrahim does not fail to insist was the conquest of the unbelievers; they must be converted to Islam, subjected to tribute, or destroyed by the sword. The fulfilment of this religious duty was the end and purpose of the Ottoman power, to which its institutions were designed and excellently adapted. Under the autocratic will of one man, possessing religious as well as secular supremacy, and holding a sovereignty which the Sacred Book forbade to be divided, the whole forces of the State could be directed to the execution of his policy. And these forces were organised in such a way that they could move swiftly and promptly at his command. The two features of this organisation were a feudal system of a peculiar kind, and the slave tribute.
The main part of the Turkish army was the feudal levy of cavalry ( the sipahis). When a new country was conquered, it was parcelled out into a number of larger fiefs called ziamets and smaller called timars, which were assigned to Ottoman horse-soldiers in reward for military service in the past and with the obligation of military service in the future. The holder of each fief was bound to supply one or more mounted soldiers, according to the amount of its value. In the time of Solyman the total number of the levy of the sipahis is said to have amounted to 130,000. A number of districts or “sabres” was constituted as a sanjak or “standard,” under the authority of a sanjakbeg (“sanjak lord”); and sanjaks were combined into larger districts (eyalayets) under beglerbegs (“lords of lords”). All these governors were subject to the two great beglerbegs of Europe and Asia (Rumelia and Anatolia), military and administrative powers being combined. When the word of the Sultan flew forth to summon the army to war, there was no delay; the horse of the sipahi was always ready at a moment’s notice; all the sabres rallied round the sanjak; the sanjaks gathered to the mustering place appointed by the beglerbeg, and there awaited further orders. The feudal system of the Turks, founded by Othman, remodelled by Murad I (1375), differed from the feudal systems of the West in this one important respect, that the fief of the father did not necessarily descend to the son; each man had to win a right to a fief by his own valour. But on the other hand, only the son of a feudal tenant could become a feudal tenant. This provision was a safeguard of the military effectiveness of the system; and it must also be remembered that the Ottoman tenants were still nomads in spirit, and had not developed the instincts of a settled agricultural population.
Such a levy was almost equivalent to a standing army; but there was also a standing army in a precise sense,—an establishment of paid troops, recruited from captive children who were robbed from hostile or subject Christian countries and educated in Islam. A strict, but not cruel, discipline trained some of them to be foot-soldiers; while others, under an equally severe regime, served in the seraglio; thence rising gradually to offices of state, or being drafted into the brilliant corps of the paid mounted soldiery who were the bodyguard of the Sultan. The Turks had one enlightened principle of education: they observed carefully the particular qualifications of the individual youth, and adapted his work to his powers. Those of the Christian children—taken every five years or oftener as a tribute from the subject population—who had not the finer qualities which marked them out for service in the palace, were set to all kinds of hard work; but their stern discipline seems to have been compatible with acts of petulance and outrage in the city. In this preliminary stage they were called ajami oghlanlars. At the age of about twenty-five they were enrolled among the yani chari (new soldiery), whose name we have corrupted into Janissaries. The Janissaries, organised by the great Sultan Orchan, constituted the infantry of the Ottoman army, and at the beginning of Solyman’s reign they numbered only about 12,000; yet this small body often decided battles; they had won Kosovo and Varna, and had never been known to flee. All except men of Christian birth, thus trained from childhood, were jealously excluded from the corps, which was under the command of the Aga of the Janissaries, one of the highest officers of the realm. The fundamental laws which regulated their discipline were absolute obedience to the commanders, abstinence from luxury, modest attire, fulfilment of the duties of Islam. They were unable to marry or exercise any trade, or leave their camp. It is clear that the existence of such a body of warriors was in itself a constant incentive or even compulsion to warlike enterprises; and peacefully inclined sultans like Bayazid II were unpopular with the Janissaries who were more fanatical in fighting for Islam even than men of Muslim race. Without any bonds of family or country, they were the creatures of the Sultan, in turn imposing their yoke on him. Scanderbeg’s tenacious devotion to the memory of his father and the Albanian mountains was an isolated exception.
Against an army thus disciplined and