began by degrees to set on foot practices, tending to corrupt the valour implanted in their hearts, and their zeal for religion. “Comrades (said they) the pay which we receive from government is seven aspers, and they point out to us Paradise as the reward of martyrdom; they will certainly cause us all to be slaughtered by the infidels; we have not two lives, why then should we be destroyed for seven aspers, and without reason?” Having, by similar and repeated insinuations, corrupted the minds of the faithful soldiers, these began to care no longer about the concerns they were intended for, and saying at last, “Useless and destructive expeditions are only proper for the Russian infidels, let us leave it to their soldiers to feed upon dry biscuits, as for us we will return home and eat fine Baklava.”[89] Thus they forgot the stream of benefits in which they were immersed, and the kind treatment and protection that they had experienced. As there was nobody, either in the corps or out of it, who spoke reason to them, they came in process of time to do whatever they liked, plundering the places that they traversed on their march, burning and destroying the houses both of Mussulmans and Rayahs, and stretching forth their hands against the honour of their families. Besides all this, although the whole body of men who compose an hundred and ninety six Ortas, being quartered altogether in one residence, ought to have no differences one with the other; yet hatred and dissension rose to such a pitch amongst them, that they no longer considered those who did not belong to their own Orta, as brothers in religion, but, without dissembling their sentiments, exchanged bullets, and drank each others blood; and in the villages, forcing open the houses of the poor, committed murder, which disorder still prevailing, as none of them are safe from the others either in war or peace, their well regulated system of discipline hath perished and gone to decay. They pass their days in propagating seventy thousand false reports, saying, “When we were opposed to the infidels, they did not allow us to give them battle; if we had obtained permission, we could without trouble have overthrown the crals from their thrones; but the ministers of our government conspiring with the Ghiaours[90] cause us to be slain and taken prisoners, and, receiving from the Russian infidels casks of gold, deliver up the country to them.”