no evidence as yet of a fanatical
Moslem spirit--this was to be bred in them by subsequent experiences--and
their official creed had governed their policy hardly more than does ours
in India or Egypt. Mohammed the Conqueror had not only shown marked favour
to Christians, whether his _rayas_ or not, but encouraged letters and the
arts in a very un-Arabian spirit. Did he not have himself portrayed by
Gentile Bellini? The higher offices of state, both civil and military,
were confided (and would continue so to be for a century to come) almost
exclusively to men of Christian origin. Commerce was encouraged, and
western traders recognized that their facilities were greater now than
they had been under Greek rule. The Venetians, for example, enjoyed in
perfect liberty a virtual monopoly of the Aegean and Euxine trade. The
social condition of the peasantry seems to have been better than it had
been under Greek seigneurs, whether in Europe or in Asia, and better than
it was at the moment in feudal Christendom. The Osmanli military
organization was reputed the best in the world, and its fame attracted
adventurous spirits from all over Europe to learn war in the first school
of the age. Ottoman armies, it is worth while to remember, were the only
ones then attended by efficient medical and commissariat services, and may
be said to have introduced to Europe these alleviations of the horrors of
war.

Had the immediate successors of Mohammed been content--or, rather, had
they been able--to remain within his boundaries, they would have robbed
Ottoman history of one century of sinister brilliance, but might have
postponed for many centuries the subsequent sordid decay; for the seeds of
this were undoubtedly sown by the three great sultans who followed the
taker of Constantinople. Their ambitions or their necessities led to a
great increase of the professional army which would entail many evils in
time to come. Among these were praetorianism in the capital and the great
provincial towns; subjection of land and peasantry to military seigneurs,
who gradually detached themselves from the central control; wars
undertaken abroad for no better reason than the employment of soldiery
feared at home; consequent expansion of the territorial empire beyond the
administrative capacity of the central government; development of the
'tribute-children' system of recruiting into a scourge of the _rayas_ and
a continual offence to neighbouring states, and