such as the Chapanoghlus of Yuzgad, whose sway stretched from Pontus to Cilicia, right across the base of the peninsula, or the Karamanoghlus of Magnesia, Bergama, and Aidin, who ruled as much territory as the former emirs of Karasi and Sarukhan, and were recognized by the representatives of the great trading companies as wielding the only effective authority in Smyrna.  The wide and rich regions controlled by such families usually contributed neither an asper to the sultan’s treasury nor a man to the imperial armies.

On no mountain of either Europe or Asia—­and mountains formed a large part of the Ottoman empire in both—­did the imperial writ run.  Macedonia and Albania were obedient only to their local beys, and so far had gone the devolution of Serbia and Bosnia to Janissary aghas, feudal beys, and the Beylerbey of Rumili, that these provinces hardly concerned themselves more with the capital.  The late sultan, Mustapha III, had lost almost the last remnant of his subjects’ respect, not so much by the ill success of his mutinous armies as by his depreciation of the imperial coinage.  He had died bankrupt of prestige, leaving no visible assets to his successor.  What might become of the latter no one in the empire appeared to care.  As in 1453, it waited other lords.

5

Revival

It has been waiting, nevertheless, ever since—­waiting for much more than a century; and perhaps the end is not even yet.  Why, then, have expectations not only within but without the empire been so greatly at fault?  How came Montesquieu, Burke, and other confident prophets since their time to be so signally mistaken?  There were several co-operating causes, but one paramount.  Constantinople was no longer, as in 1453, a matter of concern only to itself, its immediate neighbours, and certain trading republics of Italy.  It had become involved with the commercial interests of a far wider circle, in particular of the great trading peoples of western Europe, the British, the French, and the Dutch, and with the political interests of the Germanic and Russian nations.  None of these could be indifferent to a revolution in its fortunes, and least of all to its passing, not to a power out of Asia, but to a rival power among themselves.  Europe was already in labour with the doctrine of the Balance of Power.  The bantling would not be born at Vienna till early in the century to come:  but even before the end of the eighteenth century it could be foreseen that its life would be bound up with the maintenance of Constantinople in independence of any one of the parent powers—­that is, with the prolongation of the Osmanli phase of its imperial fortunes.  This doctrine, consistently acted upon by Europe, has been the sheet anchor of the Ottoman empire for a century.  Even to this day its Moslem dynasty has never been without one powerful Christian champion or another.