The close of Othman’s life of seventy years saw him but just made possessor of a single city of importance. It was not till the reign of Orchan that the Ottomans ceased to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Iconian Sultans, and first adopted a coinage of their own. The wise policy of Orchan’s coadjutor, Alaeddin, gave them a respite from war for twenty years, in which time he consolidated the small kingdom they had already won, and perfected a system which was to be the instrument of future conquest. It was during this period of tranquillity that the organization of the army was effected--an organization which, possessing in itself the various merits of the most invincible forces that have ever been collected--the asceticism and brotherhood of the Spartan companies, the mixture of races in the army of Hannibal, the religious zeal of the English Puritans, and the devotion of Caesar’s 10th legion--added to all these, two peculiarities of their creed, the absolute subjection of every individual to the sacred authority of the Sultan, and the warlike inspirations of a religion that taught them that ‘in the conflict of the crossing scymetars Paradise was to be won.’ It is a remarkable and significant fact, that this abstinence from war for the long period of twenty years was never repeated by the Ottomans during the time of their success. That soldiers long unemployed must become either citizens or rebels is an axiom which must have special force in a government like that of the Ottomans. War was the normal condition of their race. It was to this object that not only their iconoclastic creed, but the whole tenor of their institutions pointed, and in this aspect they must chiefly be contemplated. The feudal system of the Ottomans was essentially military. It was the device of an aggressive power and was made to answer a double purpose; to secure the permanency of its conquests, and to supply soldiers for war. Ottoman feudalism was wholly different from that which prevailed in Western Europe. The great distinction lay in the fact, that among the Ottomans all the feudal vassals held their fiefs directly of the Sultan, or his officers; whereas in Western Europe, between the sovereigns and the lower tenants was interposed a powerful class, which always more or less counterbalanced the supreme power. The one was the division of a kingdom into petty fiefs, the other the fusion of conquered territories under the sway of one victorious monarch. It was through the feudal system of the Ottomans, in combination with their institution of slavery, that war was made to feed war; that every conquest supplied the means for future conquest.