The Janissaries from being a redoubtable _corps d’élite_ recruited from Christian youths, who embraced the military as a life‐long profession, and were imbued with a military spirit which proved its worth on the hard‐fought fields of Mohacs, Nicopolis and Cossovo, had become through successive relaxings of the bonds of discipline and the ruin of its military _esprit de corps_, nothing but an unruly Pretorian Guard, a greater terror to the sovereign and to peaceful citizens than to the enemies of the empire. The gratuities that they were accustomed to receive on the accession of a new Sultan, and the licensed pillagings that invariably ensued on these occasions, were irresistible temptations to them to render this event as frequent as possible, and they consequently deposed sovereigns and proclaimed new ones almost at their will. The privileges, moreover, that they wrested from the terrified sovereigns, especially after the death of Soliman I.—such as the right to marry, to desert barrack life (their _odjaks_), and to pursue trades and industries—completely changed and deteriorated their martial character, and from the victorious soldiery that they were in the days of Ilderim Bayazid they became nothing but a turbulent militia. At last the scandal caused by their depredations and violence became intolerable, and their disbandment was loudly demanded by public opinion in all classes of the population. Selim III. determined to suppress them, and, as a necessary preliminary, commenced the re‐organisation of the naval and military forces of the empire by inviting French engineers to build ships of war, and French officers to drill and discipline a new army on European principles. Unfortunately Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt, and the declaration of war that ensued between France and Turkey, recalled these military instructors before the work of instruction and re‐organisation was half completed. It was these threatened Janissaries who, on their return to Constantinople from an expedition to Syria, willingly lent themselves as instruments of the ambition of the Sultan’s brother, Mustafa, and who deposed and finally murdered Selim. But the deposed sovereign, in his retirement and before his death, found time and opportunity thoroughly to imbue with his reforming enthusiasm his cousin Mahmoud, and he, on ascending the throne, determined, as the only means of saving the empire from ruin, and in spite of the menacing attitude of the new Czar Nicholas of Russia—who inaugurated his accession by sending an Ultimatum to Constantinople—to carry out unflinchingly the whole programme of reforms conceived by Selim. At a Grand Council (_Divan_) assembled in 1826, a unanimous vote was passed in favour of the total suppression of the Janissaries, and shortly afterwards, the decree being resisted by the mutinous soldiery, they were surrounded and overpowered, and in the massacre that ensued this famous Pretorian Guard finally disappeared.