I have always been fascinated with the Janissaries: their rise, "reign" and demise is a unique part of Islamic history.
From my understanding, a significant aspect of the push for military reform by the Porte was the predicament of the Janissaries becoming an obsolete fighting force. They were supposedly stuck in tradition and their "old ways."
I understand the political and social influence the corps had on Ottoman government and society, however this question is geared more so in respects to military strategy and structure.
I know the Ottomans began to lose battles at an alarming rate for about a century leading up the Auspicious Incident. Was it because they refused to adopt modern military strategy? Technology? Training methods? Did they simply get too comfortable with their expanded rights, basically losing their edge and discipline?
Any insight would be appreciated. For a fighting force that struck fear into leaders across Europe, the downfall of the Janissaries is quite compelling when intertwined with the eventual deterioration of the empire.
This is a great question! This very issue was made the subject of an article by Virginia Aksan in 1998 (“Whatever Happened to the Janissaries? Mobilization for the 1768-1774 Russo-Ottoman War.” War in History 5 (1998): 23-36). Aksan was concerned with the nature of the Ottoman army in 1768, and in particular this very issue of why the Janissaries came to play such a different role in the Ottoman military than they had in previous centuries. While Janissaries were present in the 1768 campaign, the Ottoman army by then acquired most of its manpower from the recruitment of volunteers in the Balkan and Anatolian countryside, either through direct recruitment by the state or indirectly through provincial notables. These troops, seasonally recruited musketeers rather than professional soldiers, were referred to by a variety of terms, the most common being levend. In 1768 about 100-150,000 of them were mobilized for war, so many in fact that they overwhelmed the usually flawless Ottoman supply system. Unlike the so-called "classical" army of the sixteenth century, in which military manpower was drawn from a closed group known as the "askeri" (military) class, the eighteenth-century Ottoman army was essentially egalitarian, relying upon volunteer manpower from all corners of society.
So by this period, Janissaries had already ceased to constitute the main infantry force in the Ottoman army. The Janissaries who did still serve were largely undifferentiated from the levend forces, as they don't appear to have maintained much training or discipline. How did this happen?
Essentially, this change in the nature of the Janissary Corps was part of a wider military transformation which the empire began to undergo in the last decades of the sixteenth century. The "classical" Ottoman army of c. 1450-1580 consisted of a fairly small standing force of elite Janissaries, cavalry, and artillery and logistical troops, while the bulk of the army was drawn from the provinces through the Timar System, whereby revenue from plots of land were granted to cavalrymen in exchange for their service in imperial campaigns. The Ottoman army was thus mostly cavalry-based, and well-suited to contemporary warfare. However, by the end of the sixteenth century the importance of gunpowder weapons began to drastically increase. The Ottomans found themselves particularly outmatched when fighting the Habsburgs in siege warfare in Hungary, where their cavalry was of little use. To compensate, the Ottomans began to rapidly increase the size of the Janissary Corps, from 12,000 in 1550 to nearly 40,000 in the seventeenth century. The traditional method of recruitment, the devşirme levy of Christian youths from the Balkan countryside, couldn't keep up with the army's demand for manpower. The Janissary Corps was thus opened up to Muslim-born volunteers. I think it's important to emphasize that this change in the nature of the Janissary Corps was part of a process of military modernization, an ultimately successful effort to bring the army's infantry-to-cavalry ratio in line with the demands of seventeenth-century warfare. And at this early stage it didn't bring a halt to the Corps' military innovation, since we find them employing new tactics in the early seventeenth century, putting volley fire into battlefield use earlier than most European armies.
Membership in the Janissary Corps brought one a number of social and economic advantages in addition to a (rather meager) salary. It meant membership in the empire's elite askeri class, and thus tax exemption. Janissaries maintained an ethos of cooperation and the Corps acted as a social safety net for its members. It could also offer financial assistance to members in need or capital to those looking to open or expand a business. By the seventeenth century many men with no connection to the military at all had purchased membership, and many janissaries had likewise abandoned their military duties to pursue non-military occupations as craftsmen, merchants, and tax farmers. This process is what Gábor Ágoston has called the "civilianization" of the Corps. Certainly not all janissaries abandoned the military life during this period, but the Corps as a whole expanded far beyond its original purpose as an elite standing army. By 1768 there were some 400,000 janissary pay tickets in circulation, of which only a tenth may have represented actual soldiers. Clearly, the Corps wasn't a purely military organization anymore. In fact it was for the most part not a military organization.
Was it because they refused to adopt modern military strategy? Technology? Training methods? Did they simply get too comfortable with their expanded rights, basically losing their edge and discipline?
So essentially, the answer is that the very nature of the Corps was changed by its expansion and civilianization. The janissaries of 1750 had different origins and a different ethos than the janissaries of 1550. In 1768, after almost 30 years of peace in the west, the military arm of the janissaries consisted of little more than untrained recruits. The Corps was a problem for the central government because it served the purposes of a variety of entrenched interest groups, and the large number of nonmilitary janissaries were a drain on the treasury. Their military ineffectiveness is easy to overstate, however. The Ottomans held their own against their rivals during the first half of the eighteenth century, and it was only after 1768 that they suffered a long series of defeats against Russia. As noted above, the bulk of the Ottoman army didn't consist of janissaries anyway, but of levend troops recruited in the countryside. What the destruction of the Corps in 1826 did was pave the way for the establishment of an absolute monarchy. With no more Janissary Corps to rival the sultan for power in Istanbul, Mahmud II could push ahead with his reform program and the creation of a modern western-style army.
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