The whole institution kept itself in power, and defended and enlarged the empire, by being organized as an army. With exceptions, all its officers of government were soldiers and all its army officers had governmental duties. It constituted a standing army of cavalry and infantry, aided by artillery, commissary, and transport services; and it controlled a much larger feudal and irregular army. Through the feudal army it kept the country in subjection. By garrisons it held the towns quiet. In case of rebellion, it threw a great force upon the insurgents, and beat them down with cruel and resistless energy. For foreign wars it gathered an enormous but well-controlled host, which was victorious in battle throughout the reign of Suleiman. It took by siege Belgrade and Rhodes, but it failed at Vienna and Malta. The weakness of the Ruling Institution as an army was its essential indivisibility. Only one great war could be waged at a time, although there were great enemies in two directions; hence an overwhelming defeat of the principal army would have been irreparably disastrous. But the army was to suffice for a long period; and for generations its worst foes were to be, not foreign armies, but internal rivalries and departures from its constitutive principles. To maintain the pomp and ceremony which are attached to the idea of an empire, especially in the East, and to supply the sultan on a large scale with all the enjoyments which were considered due to his state, the Ottoman Ruling Institution was in another aspect a great court and household. Nearly all its members shared in the display of grand occasions, many went to the hunt with the sultan, and a large proportion of them had constant duties of ceremonial and personal service. Suleiman was known as the Legislator and the Conqueror, but beyond both these titles as the Magnificent; he shone as head of the government and the army, but still more as head of the court. Splendor and luxury, however, are expensive, and in the end his example was to be ruinous. All the members of the Ruling Institution were set off as a nobility by exemption from taxation and by special jurisdiction; but, lest they might prove a danger to the institution, they were not allowed to transmit their nobility to their descendants. In the end, however, their special privilege was to become so desirable that the walls of separation would be invaded and the institution would be wrecked.