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 228 DESTRUCTION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE which was almost irresistible. Wholly Christian and largely European in origin, it was yet completely Mahometan in spirit and in action. It was indeed an army which would have satisfied Frederick the Great or any other ruler who has desired to model a force according to preconceived ideas. Take a number of children from the most intelligent portion of the community ; choose them for their strength and intelligence ; instruct them carefully in the art of fighting ; bring them up under strict military discipline ; teach them to forget the home of their childhood, their parents and friends ; give them a new religion of a specially military type ; saturate them with the knowledge that all their hope in life depends upon their position in the regiment ; make peace irksome and war a delight,<with the hope of promotion and relaxation from the hardships and restraints of the barracks : the result will be a weapon in the hands of a leader such as the world has rarely seen. Such a weapon was the army of the Janissaries. The success of Mahomet's predecessors in the Balkan peninsula had been largely due to the New Troops. Though their numbers appear to have been limited to twelve thou- sand, they had already proved their value. We have seen that when John Hunyadi had put the Turks under Murad the Second to rout, it was the Janissaries who saved the day and turned the disaster of Yarna into a great victory. Their discipline and strength were even more triumphant in the defeat of the great Hungarian on the plain of Cossovo in 1448. Black John, as the Turks named him from the colour of his banner, succeeded in putting to flight the Anatolian and the Bumelian divisions of his enemy. But the attack on the Janissaries failed utterly. They stood like a wall of brass until the moment came for them to become the attacking force, and through their efforts the triumph of the sultan was complete. The force which had thus shown its quality only five years previously was by far the most important division under Mahomet's command. The ablest, bravest, most terrible portion of the army of the arch-enemy of Christendom