Sultan Mahmud II, nicknamed “the Reformer”, wants…

Sultan Mahmud II, nicknamed “the Reformer”, wants to eliminate the ungovernable janissaries (elite corps), the throne’s most powerful enemy within the Ottoman empire.

Convinced that modernization is essential and aware that earlier attempts had met with resistance—Mahmud himself had come to the throne in the wake of the Janissaries Revolt of 1807-08—he gains the support of the grand mufti and quietly concentrates on improving the artillery in his own personal army before decreeing a “New Order”, with a difference: instead of dismissing the janissaries, he will place one hundred and fifty from each battalion into each division of his new corps, meanwhile explaining that he is reviving an old Ottoman order.

The Janissaries, with their usual stubborn disobedience, storm the palace, where Mahmud’s troops rake them with grapeshot.

Retreating to the barracks, the Janissaries find themselves there the targets of the sultan’s artillery, as well as the victims of Turkish mobs: four thousand Janissaries die in the capital, and thousands more are soon slain in the provinces, The term Janissary is proscribed, and their abettors, the Bektashi dervishes, are outlawed.