The failure of the two great elements of their power mainly caused their decline. The empire needed vigorous rulers; the Sultans after Solyman have been characterized by a native statesman as “either fools or tyrants.” It required a well-disciplined army; but after Solyman, the discipline of the Janissaries decayed; their very system was corrupted; they admitted native Turks into their body; they began to take wives and to ply trades, becoming turbulent citizens rather than soldiers; and with their decay fell the military organization of the state. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 20.] [Footnote 2: Ibid. vol. viii. p. 2. n.] [Footnote 3: Creasy, History of Ottomans, vol. i, p. 43.] [Footnote 4: Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 153.] [Footnote 5: See an Article in the Christian Remembrancer for April, 1855, p. 232.] [Footnote 6: Creasy, vol. i. p. 327.] [Footnote 7: Ranke’s Spanish and Ottoman Empires, p. 1.] [Footnote 8: Gibbon, vol. viii. 28.] [Footnote 9: Ranke, p. 6.] [Footnote 10: Ranke, passim.] [Footnote 11: Ranke, p. 7.] [Footnote 12: Creasy, vol. i. p. 324.] [Footnote 13: Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 30.] [Footnote 14: Creasy, vol. i. p. 112.] [Footnote 15: Creasy, vol. i. p. 161.] [Footnote 16: Hulme’s Chapters on Turkish History (in Blackwood, July, 1840,) p. 18.] [Footnote 17: Von Hammer’s History of the Ottoman Turks, vol. i. p. 193.] [Footnote 18: Gibbon, vol. viii, p. 93.] [Footnote 19: Sec Freeman’s History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 145.] [Footnote 20: For proofs that the Ottoman government was really absolute, see Robertson’s Charles V. note 43.] [Footnote 21: Robertson’s Charles V. note 45.] [Footnote 22: Creasy, i. p. 334.] [Footnote 23: Creasy, i. p. 114.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Causes of the Successes of the Ottoman Turks, by James Surtees Phillpotts