426 Ch. 1 1 • Dynastic Rivalries and Politics

Sultan Selim III in his palace in Istanbul, with a line of followers stretching in

front of him. The Turkish sultans ruled indirectly over a vast network of domains, a

tactic that may have hastened the decline of Ottoman absolutism.

empire were free. But Turkish authority virtually collapsed in mountainous

Montenegro and Bosnia, where the Turks battled Habsburg and Venetian

forces. The government began to run out of money. Stop-gap measures,

such as the debasement of the currency, failed to provide sufficient

revenue.

Incapable sultans unwilling or unable to impose reforms further weak­

ened the Ottoman Empire. As boys they lived in virtual isolation in a world

of uncertainty among court eunuchs and palace intrigue. No regular pat­

tern of succession had ever been established. Whereas Peter the Great of

Russia undertook Western military reforms, the sultans did not. The Turk­

ish economy, army, and navy could not keep pace with the Western powers.

Turkish cavalrymen, with curved swords and magnificent horses, fell before

Western artillery. The advice of officials who had been sent to Vienna and

Paris to study methods of state went unheeded in Constantinople. Long

wars fought against Persia in the east made it more difficult to repress dis­

turbances in the Balkans. In some parts of the empire, a system of land

inheritance replaced the old system, and new landowners began to force

peasants into serfdom. European merchants took over Ottoman sea trade.

The haphazard and inefficient collection of taxes, increasingly by dishon­