The Janissaries were a useful instrument in the hands of strong Sultans...

The Janissaries were a useful instrument in the hands of strong Sultans, but in the times of degenerate Sultans they became a kind of Praetorian Guard, dictating the deposition of Sultans and the nomination of their successors. In the eleventh/seventeenth and the twelfth/eighteenth centuries, they became a menace to the State and were given short shrift by Mahmud II in 1242/1826.

Another important event which took place during the reign of Sulaiman the Magnificent was his granting of preferential treatment to France in matters of trade and commerce, and also his allowing her to establish consular courts and exercise judicial rights over the French subjects in the Ottoman Empire. This was done to counteract, through alliance with France, the power of the Holy Roman Empire in South-East Europe.

After Sulaiman, when the Sultans lost their prestige, other Christian powers demanded the same political and commercial concessions as were accorded to the French and obtained them as a matter of fact. This proved very dangerous. It not only led the foreign Christian powers to foment troubles on the plea that discrimination was practiced against the Christians but it also made the Christian subjects look to anti-Ottoman powers for help and survival.

The loyalty of the Christian subjects thus became divided; indeed, their loyalty to outside powers exceeded their loyalty to the Ottoman Sultans. To every subsequent reform that the young Turks aimed at, "capitulations" served as a major handicap. It was not possible to weld the Christians into the body politic, so they were jealous of their separate entity.

Their separatist feelings were fanned partly by the agents of foreign Christian powers and partly by the mishandling of the situation by the unintelligent and unimaginative Sultans of the later period. The Sultans who succeeded Sulaiman possessed neither the imagination nor the political acumen necessary to keep a vast empire intact. They frittered away their energies in petty squabbles, meaningless intrigues, and frivolous avocations.

Little did they realize that in an age of technology and science their old weapons would prove worse than useless. Their defeat in 1094/1683 sealed their fate in Europe. But for the mutual bickering of the European powers, the Ottoman Empire could not have maintained its frontiers for any length of time.