222 DESTINY DISRUPTED
And yet historians looking back can see quite clearly that Suleiman's
failure to take Vienna marked a watershed. At that moment the empire
had reached its greatest extent. After that moment, it was no longer ex-
panding. This was less than obvious at the time because the empire was
still fighting someone somewhere all the time, and the news from the bat-
tlefield was often good. Maybe the Ottomans were losing battles here and
there, but they were also winning battles here and there. Were they losing
more than they were winning? Were they losing the big ones and winning
only the little ones? That was the real question, and the answer was yes,
but that was hard to gauge for people swimming through the historical
moment. How does one weigh the significance of a battle? Some people
raised alarmist cries, but some people always do. After all, in 1600, the em-
pire certainly was not shrinking.
Unfortunately, however, not shrinking was not good enough for the
Ottoman Empire. In truth, this empire was built on the premise of perma-
nent expansion. It needed a constant and generally successful war on its
borders for all of its complicated internal mechanisms to work.
First of all, expansion was a source of revenue, which the empire could
ill afford to lose.
Second, war served as a safety valve, which vented all internal pressures
outward. For example, peasants who were forced off the land for one rea-
son or another didn't hang around hungry and hopeless, turning into a
surly rabble. They could always join the army, go on a campaign, score
some booty, and then come home and start a little business ....
Once expansion stopped, however, all those pressures began to press in-
ward. Those who could no longer make a living off the land for any reason
now drifted to the cities. Even if they had a skill, they might not be able to
ply it. The guilds controlled all manufacturing and they could absorb only
so many new members. A good many of the drifters ended up unemployed
and disgruntled. And there were lots of other little consequences like this,
generated by no longer expanding.
Third, the classic devshirme depended on the constant conquest of new
territories out of which "slaves" could be drafted for the institutes that pro-
duced the empire's elite. The janissary had originally labored under one
important restriction: they were not allowed to marry and produce heirs, a
device designed to keep new blood flowing into the administration. But