The institution of the Janissary force must not be considered as a system of mere cruelty and intolerance. The records of the age tell us that it was an usual occurrence for Christian parents voluntarily to bring their sons to the press-gang of the Janissaries, in order that in due time they might be enrolled in their ranks, while the high offices which were thrown open to these proselytes of Mahometanism brought renegades in numbers to the Sultan’s court, where no distinction of birth or country interfered to mar their fortunes. This system of the reception of refugees from all countries gained for the Ottomans many of the greatest names which adorn their history. Of the ten grand-viziers of Solyman, eight were renegades from Christianity. It was indeed noted as an unusual circumstance that one of his viziers was a native Turk[16]. Piale, who defeated the united Christian fleets in 1560 off the isle of Djerbe, was himself the son of Christian parents. Cicala Pasha, the great commander under the successors of Solyman, was an Italian by birth, but as aga of the Janissaries became one of the fiercest enemies of the Christians. And in the earliest times we find that Evrenos, who under Bajazet and Amurath I. added the greater part of Greece to the Ottoman dominions, was originally a Christian chieftain and a guardian of the passes of Mount Olympus. During the flourishing period of the Empire nearly all the high civil and military offices were filled by Christian slaves, who had risen either from the ranks of the Janissaries, or who had been brought up by the Mufti in the profession of the law[17]. Thus, to use the words of Gibbon, “a servile class, an artificial people, were raised by the discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command[18].” If it be true according to the account we have given of the constitution of the Empire, that the highest offices of the state were conferred by the ruling prince on men raised by his own hand from slavery--that the feudal tenants were subject to a single superior, and the army directed by a single will,--it is evident that nothing but the largest capacity for legislation and military command could have successfully wielded such enormous authority.