The reason of our apparent deviation by giving at this time an account of the origin and growth of the Turkish empire, will be readily seen in the succeeding pages; for it was with the Turks that the Armenians have mostly had to do during the last five hundred years. Moreover, we would call attention to the fact that the brilliant conquests have not been accomplished by the Tatar Turks, but by the Christian youths, who from their early childhood were cruelly torn away from their parents and paternal Christian religion and compelled to embrace Islamism, and inured to the profession of arms to maintain with the sword the religion of Mohammed. A considerable number of Armenians driven from the face of the Mongolian invaders, had chosen for themselves the life of voluntary exiles in the Grecian provinces, and towards the end of the fourteenth century after the overthrow of their Cilician independence, the Turkish empire then being nearly a century old, many Armenians became a ready prey to the fanaticism of the Turks. It has been estimated that not less than 500,000 Christian children were thus cruelly torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islamism, and trained to maintain it with the sword. How many thousands of families were compelled to exchange their religion, the religion of love and chastity, for the religion of Mohammed, the religion of sensualism and tyranny; how many thousands were massacred because they would not obey such an infernal behest, it is impossible to tell. Suffice it to say that these questions are not imaginary possibilities, but attested facts of history which make up the darkest pages of the Ottoman chronicles. Indeed we would be unwilling to believe them if we had not seen and heard even worse things in the early part of the twentieth century.