Besides the wonderful efficacy of their military organization and the talents of their Sultans, there is one point of their history which is worthy of remark as having tended indirectly towards their success. The whole tenor of their legislation was much in advance of that of the European powers in general. English history has often been said to be a century before that of France, but the history of the early Turkish Emperors was much more strikingly advanced beyond that of the other sovereigns of Europe. At the end of the fifteenth century, when, although the times were not yet ready for the development of popular right, the oppressions of European feudalism had become intolerable, the strong hand of despotic sovereigns supplied the only safe guard against lawless outrage. The aggrandizement of their power at that time saved the states which they governed. In this respect, however, the Ottomans were before their age--for whilst the states of Europe were for the most part impotent through the overbearing spirit of the feudal nobility, the Ottoman government was vigorously swayed by an Absolute Monarch[20]. Thus, when England was distracted by the wars of the Roses, Mahomet the Conqueror was leading his nation on to victory. In fact, the aggrandizement of the Ottoman Sultans was anterior to that of the European sovereigns. In other points we may notice the same advancement in their history. Their whole military system was beyond their age. They possessed disciplined infantry, when a standing army was unknown, and cavalry had not yet been supplanted by foot-soldiers in the rest of Europe. They had a regular commissariat department to supply their armies with the necessaries of war, and a special corps to do the work of Sappers and Miners, long before such a division of labour was adopted by Christendom. On the departments of artillery and engineering Mahomet II. bestowed his special attention. The Ottomans first made regular approaches in besieging a fortress, and became masters of the Italians in the art of fortification[21].