resh crisis of
Ottoman fortunes, and especially after every fresh Russian attack, foreign
protection has unfailingly been extended to his successors.

It was not, however, only in virtue of the increasing solicitude of the
powers on its behalf that during the nineteenth century the empire was
growing and would grow stronger, but also in virtue of certain assets
within itself. First among these ranked the resources of its Asiatic
territories, which, as the European lands diminished, became more and more
nearly identified with the empire. When, having got rid of the old army,
Mahmud imposed service on all his Moslem subjects, in theory, but in
effect only on the Osmanlis (not the Arabs, Kurds, or other half
assimilated nomads and hillmen), it meant more than a similar measure
would have meant in a Christian empire. For, the life of Islam being war,
military service binds Moslems together and to their chiefs as it binds
men under no other dispensation; therefore Mahmud, so far as he was able
to enforce his decree, created not merely a national army but a nation.
His success was most immediate and complete in Anatolia, the homeland of
the Osmanlis. There, however, it was attained only by the previous
reduction of those feudal families which, for many generations, had
arrogated to themselves the levying and control of local forces. Hence, as
in Constantinople with the Janissaries, so in the provinces with the Dere
Beys, destruction of a drastic order had to precede construction, and more
of Mahmud's reign had to be devoted to the former than remained for the
latter.

He did, however, live to see not only the germ of a nation emerge from
chaos, but also the framework of an organization for governing it well or
ill. The centralized bureaucracy which he succeeded in initiating was, of
course, wretchedly imperfect both in constitution and equipment. But it
promised to promote the end he had in view and no other, inasmuch as,
being the only existent machine of government, it derived any effective
power it had from himself alone. Dependent on Stambul, it served to turn
thither the eyes and prayers of the provincials. The naturally submissive
and peaceful population of Asia Minor quickly accustomed itself to look
beyond the dismantled strongholds of its fallen beys. As for the rest--
contumacious and bellicose beys and sheikhs of Kurdish hills and Syrian
steppes--their hour of surrender was yet to come.

The eventual product of M