f Greece was
chiefly sapped by the ruthless military organization of the Ottoman state.
The bulk of the Ottoman army was drawn from a feudal cavalry, bound to
service, as in the mediaeval Latin world, in return for fiefs or 'timaria'
assigned to them by their sovereign; and many beys and agas have
bequeathed their names in perpetuity to the richest villages on the
Messenian and Thessalian plains, to remind the modern peasant that his
Christian ancestors once tilled the soil as serfs of a Moslem timariot.
But the sultan, unlike his western contemporaries, was not content with
irregular troops, and the serf-communes of Greece had to deliver up a
fifth of their male children every fourth year to be trained at
Constantinople as professional soldiers and fanatical Moslems. This corps
of 'Janissaries'[1] was founded in the third generation of the Ottoman
dynasty, and was the essential instrument of its military success. One
race has never appropriated and exploited the vitality of another in so
direct or so brutal a fashion, and the institution of 'tribute-children',
so long as it lasted, effectually prevented any recovery of the Greek
nation from the untimely blows which had stricken it down.

[Footnote 1: Yeni Asker--New soldiery.]

2

_The Awakening of the Nation_

During the two centuries that followed the Ottoman conquest of
Constantinople, the Greek race was in serious danger of annihilation. Its
life-blood was steadily absorbed into the conquering community--quite
regularly by the compulsory tribute of children and spasmodically by the
voluntary conversion of individual households. The rich apostasized,
because too heavy a material sacrifice was imposed upon them by loyalty to
their national religion; the destitute, because they could not fail to
improve their prospects by adhering to the privileged faith. Even the
surviving organization of the Church had only been spared by the Ottoman
Government in order to facilitate its own political system--by bringing
the peasant, through the hierarchy of priest, bishop, and patriarch, under
the moral control of the new Moslem master whom the ecclesiastics
henceforth served.

The scale on which wholesale apostasy was possible is shown by the case of
Krete, which was conquered by the Turks from Venice just after these two
centuries had closed, and was in fact the last permanent addition to the
Turkish Empire. No urban or feudal settlers of Turkish blood were imported
i