The White Huns took to commerce and diplomacy in the course of a century or two; the Saracens in a shorter time unlearned their barbarism, and became philosophers and experimentalists; what have the Turks to show to the human race for their long spell of prosperity and power?
As to their warfare, their impracticable and unprogressive temperament showed itself even in the era of their military and political ascendancy, and had much to do, as far as human causes are concerned, with their defeat at Lepanto. "The signal for engaging was no sooner given," says the writer in the "Universal History," "than the Turks with a hideous cry fell on six galeasses, which lay at anchor near a mile ahead of the confederate fleet." "With a hideous cry,"--this was the true barbarian onset; we find it in the Red Indians and the New Zealanders; and it is noticed of the Seljukians, the predecessors of the Ottomans, in their celebrated engagement with the Crusaders at Dorylæum. "With horrible howlings," says Mr. Turner, "and loud clangour of drums and trumpets, the Turks rushed on;" and you may recollect, the savage who would have murdered the Bishop of Bamberg, began with a shriek. However, as you will see directly, such an onset was as ignorant as it was savage, for it was made with a haughty and wilful blindness to the importance of firearms under their circumstances. The Turks, in the hey-day of their victories and under their most sagacious leaders, had scorned and ignored the use of the then newly invented instruments of war. In truth, they had shared the prejudice against firearms which had been in the first instance felt by the semi-barbarous chivalry of Europe. The knight-errant, as Ariosto draws and reflects him, disdained so dishonourable a means of beating a foe. He looked upon the use of gunpowder, as Mr. Thornton reminds us, as "cruel, cowardly, and murderous;" because it gave an unfair and disgraceful advantage to the feeble or the unwarlike. Such was the sentiment of the Ottomans even in the reign of their great Soliman. Shortly before the battle of Lepanto, a Dalmatian horseman rode express to Constantinople, and reported to the Divan, that 2,500 Turks had been surprised and routed by 500 musqueteers. Great was the indignation of the assembly against the unfortunate troops, of whom the messenger was one. But he was successful in his defence of himself and his companions. "Do you not hear," he said, "that we were overcome by guns? We were routed by fire, not by the enemy. It would have been otherwise, had it been a contest of courage. They took fire to their aid; fire is one of the elements; what is man that he should resist their shock?" They did not dream of the apophthegm that knowledge is power; and that we become strong by subduing nature to our will.