For over four centuries, that cry of alarm struck fear in the hearts of every European who heard it, from the lowest to the highest, particularly in Constantinople, Greece, the Balkans and the Mediterranean area.
Who were the Janissaries? Why were they more dreaded than other enemies? In the annals of warfare, the Janissaries stand out as an example of shock troops and of psychological warfare. They should be studied, and not just in military academies, but by every American student by grade 10. That is the age when boys are thinking about a military career, and they need to know this sort of thing.
“The term in Turkish, yeniçeri means new troops, indicating exactly what they were in the beginning: An alternative to the old regular army.” 1
They became the shock troops of the Ottoman Empire, established by the Turkish Bey Murad I in the late Thirteenth Century. Conquests brought in many resources, not the least of which was slaves and servants for every level of society. Many people converted to Islam, it being the practical thing to do. Levies on the tribal chieftains and towns brought soldiers who were often undependable, willing to take the food, but not always reliable when needed most. Many of these men were simply prisoners of war, who were offered the not-so-difficult choice of death vs. serving as soldiers sworn directly to the Bey. After “converting” to Islam, they were then castrated and assigned to live in isolation from all other troops and from society. They were schooled in all things Turkish, particularly warfare, for seven years. Over time, they became the most feared fighting force in Europe and the Middle East for nearly half a millennium.
Constantinople had successfully resisted Muslim armies for centuries, but as the Ottomans ascended, Constantinople was declining, so that resistance was more and more accomplished by paying levies of tribute ‐ the Sultan would accept so much food, so much gold, and so many young boys as the price to forestall military incursion.
And that’s what struck fear in the hearts of the people of southeastern Europe. Many of the Janissaries were literally their own children!
Imagine, if you can, standing within the walls of your fortified city, watching the advance of the besieging army. Suddenly the wall is breached by cannon fire and who swarms through first? Not a swarthy Arabic army, but big, blonde, blue-eyed Muslim mercenaries swinging curved Arabian blades and shouting, “Allah akbar!” And then fathers and brothers and uncles killed, or were killed by their sons and brothers and cousins.
The use of professional mercenaries, combined with the diabolical twist of training the children of their enemies to fight against their own kind, struck more than fear in the hearts of their enemies ‐ it went to the very core of their being, to contend against their own flesh and blood in order to survive.
It was not without a reason that mothers would threaten their sons, “You’d better behave, or the Janissaries will get you!”
For many years, cities and states, including Constantinople, were forced under threat of invasion to pay annual tributes, not only in gold, but in a quota of young boys to be delivered to the Sultan of Turkey. Which ones do you think he chose? Their own sons? The sons of their nobility or the church leaders? The sons of the most powerful bureaucrats? Of course not. They looked to the children of their slaves, to the commons soldiers, to the poor. The majority of them were of Balkan or Scandinavian or northern European descent, for the Vikings had visited, colonized, and enthusiastically contributed to the gene pool along every coastline in Europe.
In 1453 A.D., when Constantinople finally fell to the Sultan Mehmet, with over 100,000 troops, the most effective of them were the Janissaries.2 These shock troops were easily distinguished on a field of battle because of their fair complexions, their flamboyant costumes, and the latest in weaponry. They were afraid of nothing on earth. The city was renamed Istanbul, and the Byzantine Empire crashed into history.
The Janissaries “served” their masters well in the beginning. All were castrated and the brightest placed into civil service, where they became very powerful. The strongest were sent to military school. These two groups were kindred, and sympathetic to one another. They were a disciplined group, to say the least, and as they had no other family, their loyalty to one another was fanatical. As they acquired wealth, hence the power that goes with it, they won concessions to wear beards, to not be castrated, to take wives, etc. They entered into commerce and became an autonomous culture within a culture. Some would argue that they had become an early version of the “military-industrial complex.” In the beginning, they prevented many attempts to overthrow their Sultan, but as power accrued, they actually pulled their own coup de etat from time to time, and on more than one occasion, they replaced the sultan himself with one who would give them a greater say in the running of things.
In the end, they became too dangerous to have around. They had no loyalty to anything except themselves, and with war being their stock in trade, they became power brokers to be feared by the nation and the sultan they were sworn to serve and protect.
In 1826, learning that Sultan Mahmud II was contemplating a modernized army, they began to prepare for another coup, but the Sultan anticipated their reaction, and most of the 135,000 man force of Janissaries were butchered in a cannon assault on their barracks in Constantinople. Those who were not killed in the assault were then executed, with only a few escaping with their lives.
Empires require standing armies, with professional soldiers, whose unquestioning loyalty is to the Emperor.
Wars of conquest require Conscription, Deficit Spending, and Emergency Wartime Powers.
Wars for purposes of defense are never short on manpower, while wars of conquest cannot long be sustained using volunteers who have loyalties to anything beyond war itself and the power it accrues. But they are very expensive to maintain, and professionals get ideas.
The Founding Fathers of that new nation, those “united States of America”, understood this principle. It’s why they expressly forbade a standing army.
The Constitutional prohibition against a standing Army has not been repealed ‐ it is still illegal, but has been ignored. A standing Navy was authorized, and it is reasonable to extrapolate that the Founding Fathers would not have opposed a standing Air Force, a standing missile defense system, etc. But the Standing Army is more than just prohibitive in cost ‐ it is contrary to the needs of a government which is the servant of the People.
When you have a standing army, it is apparently a temptation that presidents cannot resist, to use them where diplomacy fails. In some cases, to use them instead of diplomacy.
The British Empire employed mercenaries in many wars, including the American War of Independence. Those soldiers had no say in where they fought, or for whom, for they were placed there by their “owners” in Hessia, for instance. When foreigners volunteer to serve another nation that is a fundamentally different matter. The Hessians were “rented out” to Great Britain. And the reports are that they were not well-liked by the American colonists.
Today we see private mercenaries working in countries around the world, under contract to the US government, doing what soldiers have always done, but without answering to the military chain of command. This is another dangerous practice, mighty handy for covering up operations that will not stand the scrutiny of public observation.
What is worse, however, is that American citizens who enlisted in the U.S. military are being seconded to foreign powers ‐ specifically the United Nations, NATO, and other multi-jurisdictional agencies in order to blur the lines of accountability, to increase response times and to create more professional military units. The problem with all this is that it is, once again, contrary to Constitutional Law in the USA.
ONLY Congress may declare war, not the President. ONLY Congress may appoint officers over American soldiers, not the President. There was a reason for this in the 18th Century, and that reason has not gone away just because we live in the 20th Century.
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
We raise our children with the understanding that, “there is a time to fight,” and that they may be called upon by their nation to respond to an invasion against us by another country, as happened in World War II. Such a thing has not happened since World War II.
When our troops volunteer to serve their country in uniform, they take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, “foreign and domestic.” The oath is not to obey all orders, full stop. The oath is to, “obey all orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the UCMJ...” . That specifically means that orders which are contrary to the UCMJ, (which includes the Constitution embedded in it), should not be obeyed.
An order to serve a foreign power is one of those orders. When Congress declares war, and one finds one’s self assigned to work with an ally in that war, that is totally different. But when the president, acting on the unconstitutional authority of another government power, forces American troops into military service where they may be called upon to fight, to bleed and to die, treason has been committed.
It is absolutely contrary to both Law and Conscience that American troops should be switched into involuntary servitude to a foreign power, in violation of their oaths of enlistment, their contracts, and the U.S. Constitution.
And yet, we bring soldiers to trial today for refusing to serve in United Nations uniforms, under foreign officers, on deployments and in military actions not authorized by Congress, nor by statutory law, nor by the Constitution. In so doing, American soldiers are being turned in to 21st Century Mercenaries.
When SPC Michael New was ordered to serve in Macedonia in a U.N. uniform, he refused, and one of his objections was that, “If they can force me to wear that uniform and serve foreign generals in Macedonia, then they can force me to do the same thing in the USA. Geography is not a logical defense, the question is one of authority, and I don’t think they have it.”
The basis for such questionable military activity was an executive order issued by President Bill Clinton (Presidential Decision Directive #25) which contained elements which were not what he told Congress. but they could not check, since he classified the bill, and would not even allow the chairman of the House Committee on the Armed Forces (Bob Dornan) to read it!
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
