If the will of the prince became corrupt, it was quite sufficient to render the corruption general. In proportion as the character of the sultans degenerated, everything degenerated around them. A universal apathy displaced the noisy activity of war and victory. To the passion for conquests succeeded cupidity, ambition, selfishness, and all the vices that signalize and complete the decline of empires. When states rise and march on towards prosperity, there is an emulation to increase their powers; when they decline, there is also an emulation to urge on their destruction, and take advantage of their ruin. The empire had always a numerous army; but that army, in which discipline every day degenerated, was only formidable in time of peace. A crowd of _Thimariots_, or possessors of fiefs for life, having nothing to leave to their families, passed over the lands that were given to them like locusts, which, in the plains where the winds have wafted them, destroy even to the germs of the harvests. The pachas governed the provinces as conquerors. The wealth of the people was for them like the booty which conquerors distributed among themselves on the day of victory. Such as could amass treasures were able to purchase impunity. Such as had armies proclaimed their independence. Subalterns everywhere followed the example of the leaders. In the government, as well as in the army, everything was put up to sale, everything was subject to pillage. Thus this empire, which had displayed such energy, fell like a prey into the hands of all those whom fortune or the favour of the prince called to authority; and if we may be permitted to employ a not very elevated comparison to express the degree of abasement of a nation, the Ottoman power no longer presented any aspect but that of those lifeless bodies in which we can perceive no motion but in the insects that are devouring them. The sultans of Constantinople, while slumbering in their seraglios, were often awakened by the thunder of popular revolts. Violences of the army or the people were the only justice able to reach despotism. But this justice itself was one calamity the more, and only assisted in precipitating the general decline. Although the successors of Othman, after the reign of Selim, were the pontiffs of the national faith, this important dignity added nothing to their power. The Mussulman faith, which commanded with severity the observance of many minute practices, did not at all repress the passions of the multitude. A religious belief which permitted a prince to commit fratricide could be no safeguard for either the authority or the life of the prince. A religion always ready to consecrate the triumph of force, could find no motives in its moral code for the condemnation of revolt, particularly when the revolt happened to be crowned with success.[89]