His story is actually even more badass than that. The Janissaries fucked him over but good - at one point when he was still young, they forced him to watch as one of his closest advisors was publicly executed. The advisor apparently asked the young Sultan not to intervene, rather than risking being overthrown.
The Janissaries had once been a source of strength to the Ottoman nation, but they had grown fat and corrupt, blocking desperately needed military reforms, and worse, they would threaten the Sultan himself whenever their privileges were questioned. He knew that he had to break them utterly in order to even attempt to enact any real reform of the Ottoman state.
He plotted for years to have his revenge on the Janissaries, and eventually when all the pieces were in place, he provoked them into a confrontation. The Janissaries were confident that this would go down exactly as it had during the reign of the last few Sultans who'd dared to fuck with them, and knew they could take down the small royal guard the Sultan was permitted.
They did not anticipate that said small unit of guards were equipped with two top of the line Prussian-made cannons.
After experiencing the unpleasantness of trying to charge a prepared artillery position with swords, the Janissaries retreated to their fortified barracks, daring the Sultan to lay siege to them with the comparatively limited forces available to him (though backed by angry citizens who were also sick of the Janissaries' shit).
The Sultan declined to play the game on their terms, and had his artillerists reduce the barracks to rubble.
There's probably a moral there somewhere (other than the fact that Ottoman history is like 600 years of nonstop game of thrones craziness).
Around the year 1200 the Cherokee Indians had a priestly class that dominated their population and took a lot of extra privileges for themselves . About this time a warrior was away for a few days and when he came back he found out that one of those priests had helped himself and took advantage of the warriors wife. This ticked off the warrior so much that he did something unheard of, he dispatched that priest to the happy hunting grounds.
Now the priests had been abusing their position so much that there was a deep resentment and it boiled over overnight and the people were inspired by the warriors action and just went on a killing spree of the priestly class.
And that kind of social arrangement never appeared in the Cherokee society again.
I guess that is the way it always is, there is a tipping point and things change suddenly overnight.
His story is actually even more badass than that. The Janissaries fucked him over but good - at one point when he was still young, they forced him to watch as one of his closest advisors was publicly executed. The advisor apparently asked the young Sultan not to intervene, rather than risking being overthrown.
The Janissaries had once been a source of strength to the Ottoman nation, but they had grown fat and corrupt, blocking desperately needed military reforms, and worse, they would threaten the Sultan himself whenever their privileges were questioned. He knew that he had to break them utterly in order to even attempt to enact any real reform of the Ottoman state.
He plotted for years to have his revenge on the Janissaries, and eventually when all the pieces were in place, he provoked them into a confrontation. The Janissaries were confident that this would go down exactly as it had during the reign of the last few Sultans who'd dared to fuck with them, and knew they could take down the small royal guard the Sultan was permitted.
They did not anticipate that said small unit of guards were equipped with two top of the line Prussian-made cannons.
After experiencing the unpleasantness of trying to charge a prepared artillery position with swords, the Janissaries retreated to their fortified barracks, daring the Sultan to lay siege to them with the comparatively limited forces available to him (though backed by angry citizens who were also sick of the Janissaries' shit).
The Sultan declined to play the game on their terms, and had his artillerists reduce the barracks to rubble.
There's probably a moral there somewhere (other than the fact that Ottoman history is like 600 years of nonstop game of thrones craziness).
History repeats
Around the year 1200 the Cherokee Indians had a priestly class that dominated their population and took a lot of extra privileges for themselves . About this time a warrior was away for a few days and when he came back he found out that one of those priests had helped himself and took advantage of the warriors wife. This ticked off the warrior so much that he did something unheard of, he dispatched that priest to the happy hunting grounds.
Now the priests had been abusing their position so much that there was a deep resentment and it boiled over overnight and the people were inspired by the warriors action and just went on a killing spree of the priestly class.
And that kind of social arrangement never appeared in the Cherokee society again.
I guess that is the way it always is, there is a tipping point and things change suddenly overnight.
Shouldn’t Congress go first?
If you really want go down the rabbit hole, check out how the Janissary got started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary
Whoa calm down, if you kill that many chinese agents at once we may start WW3.
Start WW3? It has already begun.
Going down the semantic hole, this is World War V.
One, yeah. Two, got it. WWIII = Cold War WW Four = Global War on Terror WW Five = Freedom vs. not freedom (now)