Janissaries Surrounded and Killed

This is the second half of The Janissaries Massacred
our selection from History of the Ottoman Empire from its Establishment till the year 1828 by Edward Upham published in 1829.

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Previously in The Janissaries Massacred.

Time: 1826
Place: Istanbul

The proposition was unanimously approved of, and the various orders were rapidly issued. The standard was taken accordingly from the imperial treasury, and borne to the Sultan Achmet’s mosque; the ulemas and the softas preceded, the Sultan and his court followed, all rehearsing the Koran. The zealous Muslims rushed from all quarters to gaze upon and rally under the sacred symbol. The standard, borne into the mosque, was placed in the pulpit, and the Sultan pronounced an anathema on all who refused to range themselves under it. The Pacha Aga’s troops now arrived from the Bosporus; the Topgee Bashi landed his artillery at the Yali kiosk, under the walls of the seraglio; the galiend goes, or marines, and the bostanji, or household guard, were also in readiness; all seemed as perfectly matured as it was sagaciously planned.

Four officers of rank were now dispatched by the Sultan to the Atmeidan to offer pardon to the Janissaries if they would immediately disperse; which offer was scornfully rejected and the four officers were wantonly put to death; for long experience had made them presume upon their most extravagant propositions being ultimately accepted. The Sultan demanded then of the mufti if he might kill his subjects in case of their rebellion? The mufti answered affirmatively; upon which the Sultan required a fetsa and prepared to accomplish the long-projected design.

The Pacha-Aga had by this time collected about sixty thousand men on whom he could fully depend, and he received immediate orders to put the Janissaries down by force of arms, which he lost no time in executing. He entirely surrounded the Atmeidan, where they were assembled in a dense crowd and were without the slightest intimation of the Sultan’s intention. The first conviction of their horrid situation was from a general discharge of grape-shot, which did vast havoc upon their crowded masses; great numbers being killed, the survivors were obliged to retire to their kislas, or barracks, which were close by. Here they shut themselves up, and, as the crisis had decided the Sultan to give no quarter, orders were given to set fire to the edifices and consume them together with all their unhappy inmates and the dreadful command was faithfully performed.

The barracks were surrounded, like the Atmeidan, by cannon which thundered on the walls without intermission. No situation can be conceived more horrible than that of the Janissaries: the houses in flames over their heads, the buildings battered down and torn in pieces by grape-shot, and overwhelmed with ruins and burning fragments. As it was determined to exterminate them utterly, no quarter was given or received. The Janissaries, notwithstanding the great odds at which they were taken, defended themselves with extraordinary fierceness and slew a vast number of their assailants.

The work of death proceeded, the infatuated victims were crushed, or destroyed by the devouring flames, and the smouldering ruins as they fell in. The burning fragments overwhelmed them all, until, the conflagration being at length extinguished by the lack of any proximate fuel to feed upon, the Atmeidan presented, on the ensuing morning, a hideous spectacle of burning ruins slaked in blood and a mingled mass of dead bodies and smoking ashes.

For two days afterward the city gates continued closed, during which time, such was the relentless rigor of the Sultan, that the bostanghis searched every corner of the city for whatever Janissaries might have escaped the massacre of their comrades; these, when found, were led away to appointed spots, where executioners were stationed to decapitate their victims. Vast numbers were thus slaughtered in those human shambles, which were horrible to behold. The blaze of fires and the report of cannon ceased, and at length the public laborers were directed to cleanse the city, which had thus become one immense charnel-house. The number of Janissaries who perished could never be distinctly ascertained, but they evidently, in the capital alone, greatly exceeded twenty thousand, independently of the numbers which perished in the provinces.

The gates of Constantinople were at length opened to Christians and all comers to pursue their customary avocations. The Sultan appeared in the uniform of a new corps, and went to the mosque, attended by the seimen, the topgees, the bostanji, instead of his usual guard of Janissaries, whose nizams, or badges, were everywhere torn down and trampled upon. On the next day, Mahmud, as the “Caliph of the Faithful,” publicly anathematized the whole body of the Janissaries, inhibited the mention of their or any allusion to them, and in their place solemnly conferred the appellation of “Assakini – Muhamuditch,” or forces of Mohammad, on the new army forming to replace them. In the evening fellahs, or public criers, were everywhere sent about the city and suburbs, to proclaim that tranquility was restored.

Thus, after four centuries and a half, the class of Janissaries perished, who had been the most powerful support of the empire in the first centuries of their institution, but who eventually became an inflexible barrier to all progressive improvement, and the fomenters of continued intestine troubles and commotions; being all-powerful to work evil, and incapacitated, by their ignorance, their enervated and licentious habits, to contribute in any degree to the well-being or advantage of the State.

It is certainly an anomaly in history, to behold a great empire thus shake off all its veteran force, its positive and existing strength, changing its long-recognized character and its entire system, and with so much of sternness massacring the bulk of its most efficient soldiery, at the very instant in which it is about to enter upon a contest not merely for power, but for its very existence, against a grasping, ambitious neighbor (Russia) of such superior strength. Had time been allowed to him, Mahmud had evidenced energies commensurate to the almost Herculean task of infusing life, vigor, and renovation into the inert mass of Turkish imbecility but the alarms and the dangers of war had come on too instantly after the singular and astonishing event and the appalling catastrophes which we have just described.

The last mention made of the falling corps relates to a feeble and expiring effort in the month of August, 1828, when a number of the disbanded Janissaries, who had repaired to the capital under the pretext of enlisting in the new levies then making, were detected in a conspiracy which had been organized for calling on all their dispersed members throughout the Empire to rise in insurrection.

The Sultan gave orders for their immediate execution and by his rigor stifled the plot. Great alarm was, however, felt at the first moment and it delayed for several days the march of the grand vizier with the reinforcements for the army in the camp at Shumla, opposed to the Russians.

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