The Eighteenth Century: the Westernizers 417
seek to destroy them, and thus those states that take no precautions end up
being dependent on others. In Sekbanbaşı’s version of the birth of Nizam-i
Cedid (W227–239), in 1792 it became known that there was a Russian plot,
with the help of “zealous partisans of the Greek nation” (W230), to capture
Istanbul after destroying its water reservoirs. This would be very easy, since the
Anatolian troops were “employed in cultivating the land and smoking their
pipes”, while those who inhabit Istanbul were “either busy carrying on vari-
ous trades, or at least not subject to any good discipline”. To confront this dan-
ger, the only possible method was to keep a body of infantry, one composed
of trained and disciplined men (rather than boatmen, sellers of pastries, and
other tradesmen), always ready for service in the capital. A first attempt to re-
cruit them from among the janissaries was fruitless because “our bravoes who
are engaged in the 32 trades” were unwilling to submit themselves to a daily
program of drills and thus be prevented from caring for their private affairs.
The government then had to recruit some bostancıs and settle them in camps
day and night, where they would be drilled daily and in good discipline. By
such measures the Russian threat was considerably weakened.
In a very similar way, Kuşmani describes Selim III’s efforts to organize and
train the army. According to him, the reforms were necessary due to the pitiful
situation of the Ottoman armies because of their lack of experience after a pro-
longed period of peace, on the one hand, and because their Christian enemies,
working day and night for the amelioration of their own armies, exceeded the
Muslim ones. Kuşmani then describes the reforms, insisting that Selim “reno-
vated the foundations of the state” (İ7: esas-ı devleti tecdid eder) and that for a
new branch to bloom from an old root, the old branch must be broken (İ4–23).
Both authors deplore the situation of the janissary corps, using a vocabu-
lary coming directly from the early seventeenth-century declinist tracts.
Sekbanbaşı asks the janissaries how they can explain their being routed by the
Russian troops in the 1768–74 war and even whether they may prove “that at
any time, or in any place, [they] have rendered the least service” to the sultan;
he blames them for losing the war, for the odious treaty that was imposed on
the Ottomans, and for the loss of the Crimea. Mahmud I was about to insti-
tute regular exercises, using a treatise entitled “The origin of the institution
of discipline” (Müteferrika’s Usûlü’l-hikem), but he died before he could im-
pose these reforms. Sekbanbaşı cites examples where the Nizam-i Cedid troops
were much more effective against the French invaders of Egypt than the more
numerous but undisciplined janissary forces, as well as of the inability of the
latter to cope with modern weapons (W246–254). Furthermore, while admit-
ting the discipline and effectiveness of the corps during Süleyman’s time,
Sekbanbaşı argues that the infidels found ways to introduce their own spies