Murad’s law of drafting (_devchurmé_) provided that in each conquered district in Europe the privilege of exemption from military service through the payment of the capitation tax (_kharadj_) should be denied to Christian youths. The Osmanlis reserved the right to select at discretion Christian boys, who were taken from home and kindred and brought up in the Mohammedan religion. They were trained for service as the Sultan’s bodyguard. They depended directly upon the sovereign, who paid them according to a definite scale. Their insignia were the pot and the spoon, and their officers received names which symbolized the functions of the camp kitchen.[266]
One is compelled to dissent from the consensus of opinion of European historians on the organization of the janissaries. Their scathing criticisms are best summed up in the words of a French historian: ‘It is the most fearful tribute of human flesh that has ever been levied by victors upon the vanquished.... It justifies the execration of which the Osmanlis have been the object on the part of Europeans during centuries. Let us add that, by this strange mode of recruiting, the Osmanlis have found, at the same time, the means of taking away from the Christian populations their most virile element, and of doubling their troops without putting arms into the hands of the conquered.’[267]
The actual number of janissaries under arms refutes the latter part of this criticism, when it is applied to any one of the Ottoman sovereigns of the period of conquest. As for putting arms into the hands of the conquered, we shall see that both Murad and Bayezid availed themselves of the services in war of their Christian subjects, led by their own princes. The tearing away of boys from their homes, and the loss of their Christian heritage, is a shock to humanitarian and religious sensibilities. But we must judge the Osmanlis of Murad and Bayezid by the Christians of their own century. When we compare the methods of conquest of the Osmanlis with those of the Spaniards against the Moors, of the English against the French and Scotch, of the Italians against each other, we must concede that Murad devised a humane, clever, and highly successful scheme in the institution of the janissaries.