AHC: A Christian country with janissary-like military units/recruitment
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I know this isn't a great example because frankly there's alot of contrasts between the two, but perhaps the varangians fit what you're thinking?
The big(gest) problem would imo be tye fact that armed slaves were a big no-no in the western tradition (dating back to Roman times and to the fear of slave revolts).
The second point is that the military part of the feudal obligation, if always declining in practice was always very important ideologically (even in almost contemporary times, if you consider the very aristocratic nature of the officer corps of most armies up to ww1).
The Ottomans had a system which was close to feudalism, but not exactly the same and it was (in its golden age and excluding far-ofc areas like Algiers) generally much more centralised than contemporaey european state, whit the balance if power firmly favouring the court vs the landed arustocracy or city/mercantile classes.
By having an elite corps that is answering solely to the sovereign (it is in fact owned by himself) you put in danger any leftover pretense of autonomy that barons or cities would have still had in the European Renaissance. When mass armies developed later on you had similar dynamics and in the end centralised state power won over local or personal autonomies, but that's much later than the times of Suleiman and only a very partial analogy.
So you might need a very early pod so that feudalism develop vastly differently, with a limited inheritability of land parcels and stronger central authority (not sure if it's possible, maybe with a more successful ERE?).
Another option would be giving a strong armed arm to the one entity that is centralised and organised enough to control and use something akin to a jannissary corps and that is the Roman Catholic Church, maybe starting with a different dynamic at the time of the investitures controversy or with a different development of the monastic kightly orders during and after the crusades.
Note that this would be highly problematic in itself, but maybe someone could come up with a suitable POD or chain of PODs.
Note that this was a rather simplified/rough post, I probabpy made lots of error that some of the real experts here on site are kindly invited to correct.
The second point is that the military part of the feudal obligation, if always declining in practice was always very important ideologically (even in almost contemporary times, if you consider the very aristocratic nature of the officer corps of most armies up to ww1).
The Ottomans had a system which was close to feudalism, but not exactly the same and it was (in its golden age and excluding far-ofc areas like Algiers) generally much more centralised than contemporaey european state, whit the balance if power firmly favouring the court vs the landed arustocracy or city/mercantile classes.
By having an elite corps that is answering solely to the sovereign (it is in fact owned by himself) you put in danger any leftover pretense of autonomy that barons or cities would have still had in the European Renaissance. When mass armies developed later on you had similar dynamics and in the end centralised state power won over local or personal autonomies, but that's much later than the times of Suleiman and only a very partial analogy.
So you might need a very early pod so that feudalism develop vastly differently, with a limited inheritability of land parcels and stronger central authority (not sure if it's possible, maybe with a more successful ERE?).
Another option would be giving a strong armed arm to the one entity that is centralised and organised enough to control and use something akin to a jannissary corps and that is the Roman Catholic Church, maybe starting with a different dynamic at the time of the investitures controversy or with a different development of the monastic kightly orders during and after the crusades.
Note that this would be highly problematic in itself, but maybe someone could come up with a suitable POD or chain of PODs.
Note that this was a rather simplified/rough post, I probabpy made lots of error that some of the real experts here on site are kindly invited to correct.
The answer is no for most Christian states with the exception of the ERE because they simply can't afford any sizeable standing armies.The ERE is possible because they already have a tradition of enrolling orphans into military units,close to non-Christian lands and with the exception of the last phase of it's lifespan,rich.
That would be very interesting, especially since that would potentially fit a "kids of a different religion taken early and converted" narrative.
I can quite imagine Jesuits or another order taking young indigenous Amazonians, raising them Christians and using them as an army to make sure their holdings are respected against, say the Portuguese in Brazil.
From there, it's an easy leap to using it elsewhere
Maybe one of the city states could do something similar, like, say Venice or Genoa drafting tatars in Crimea?
I've suggested this for a few timelines (including @Joshuapooleanox 's Cesare Borgia TL), it would be a powerful tool for ensuring cultural shift in conquered territories.
Fundamentally you're interested in isolating them from their old culture and more-or-less brainwashing them to make them into soldiers and settlers for securing territories, or bureaucrats for administration. Being slaves is pretty optional. You're brainwashing children into being a loyal corps.
You then have two issues. Risks of lingering cultural sympathies, at which point you have to consider the value of deploying them in their cultural homeland, or settling them there as their retirement. The risk of defection is reduced if you take them young enough as they become akin to a modern Third Culture Kid, and look after them well. That might help when it comes to resettling conquered territories - as you aren't defining them by their source culture, reducing their chances of identifying as such and turning against you.
I think @Yanez de Gomera is right that the ERE is a prime candidate, but this entire process could be a way to build a centralised state as well - an example where this could be done is the Norman Kingdom of Africa. If they immediately started taking strong children, en mass, for this process - in the interceding 15-20 years, they can raise these bureaucrats/soldiers/settlers in Catholic Monasteries, funded for this purpose. At which point, they can use them to replace the Muslim princes they had in place, and replace them with a die-hard loyal bureaucracy and professional army that is essentially a seperate class to the Nobles and Peasants (in the same way that many see Public Sector workers as completely different to Private Sector workers).
A PoD - this is exactly what happens with the invasion of Africa, with the Sicilians setting up new monasteries in Sicily and Italy, where those monks are instructed to raise the children given to them as strong, literate Christians, loyal to God and King. Those monasteries may at first be small simple villages that are building the monastery at first, but that works to the goal - the church is literally being built by these children. At the age of 14 you take the boys and turn them into soldiers. If you choose to take girls as well, you raise them as bureaucrats, but also as book-copiers. By age 18-20 the Sicilians have a substantial population, and 'queue' of troops and bureaucrats to build a centralised bureaucracy in the conquered territory, leaving the feudal system intact at home. When the time is right, or when nobles rebel, or break the law, you can use these same forces to occupy and keep their lands.
When the soldiers are too old, you retire them from military service, with a plot of land, which they can choose to sell back to the King, or farm. Suddenly all those childhood skills are immediately useful again - alongside their education and strength.
Don't get me wrong, this is terrifying, and isn't far removed from ethnic cleansing - but I see no reason that any feudal state couldn't achieve this route to centralisation. The hard part is maintaining control during those first 10-15 years where you're kidnapping children at sword-point, be it with silver tongues and promises of educating children, or making an example of enough parents that people stop resisting the process. After that you want to make it something families will offer their children to, because they can't afford to raise them, or because they think it is good. That way you can get recruits from long-conquered territories and 'homeland' territories.
Side note : this could also be done as a way to reverse barbary raids. You can target coastal cities and raid them for infants.
Fundamentally you're interested in isolating them from their old culture and more-or-less brainwashing them to make them into soldiers and settlers for securing territories, or bureaucrats for administration. Being slaves is pretty optional. You're brainwashing children into being a loyal corps.
You then have two issues. Risks of lingering cultural sympathies, at which point you have to consider the value of deploying them in their cultural homeland, or settling them there as their retirement. The risk of defection is reduced if you take them young enough as they become akin to a modern Third Culture Kid, and look after them well. That might help when it comes to resettling conquered territories - as you aren't defining them by their source culture, reducing their chances of identifying as such and turning against you.
I think @Yanez de Gomera is right that the ERE is a prime candidate, but this entire process could be a way to build a centralised state as well - an example where this could be done is the Norman Kingdom of Africa. If they immediately started taking strong children, en mass, for this process - in the interceding 15-20 years, they can raise these bureaucrats/soldiers/settlers in Catholic Monasteries, funded for this purpose. At which point, they can use them to replace the Muslim princes they had in place, and replace them with a die-hard loyal bureaucracy and professional army that is essentially a seperate class to the Nobles and Peasants (in the same way that many see Public Sector workers as completely different to Private Sector workers).
A PoD - this is exactly what happens with the invasion of Africa, with the Sicilians setting up new monasteries in Sicily and Italy, where those monks are instructed to raise the children given to them as strong, literate Christians, loyal to God and King. Those monasteries may at first be small simple villages that are building the monastery at first, but that works to the goal - the church is literally being built by these children. At the age of 14 you take the boys and turn them into soldiers. If you choose to take girls as well, you raise them as bureaucrats, but also as book-copiers. By age 18-20 the Sicilians have a substantial population, and 'queue' of troops and bureaucrats to build a centralised bureaucracy in the conquered territory, leaving the feudal system intact at home. When the time is right, or when nobles rebel, or break the law, you can use these same forces to occupy and keep their lands.
When the soldiers are too old, you retire them from military service, with a plot of land, which they can choose to sell back to the King, or farm. Suddenly all those childhood skills are immediately useful again - alongside their education and strength.
Don't get me wrong, this is terrifying, and isn't far removed from ethnic cleansing - but I see no reason that any feudal state couldn't achieve this route to centralisation. The hard part is maintaining control during those first 10-15 years where you're kidnapping children at sword-point, be it with silver tongues and promises of educating children, or making an example of enough parents that people stop resisting the process. After that you want to make it something families will offer their children to, because they can't afford to raise them, or because they think it is good. That way you can get recruits from long-conquered territories and 'homeland' territories.
Side note : this could also be done as a way to reverse barbary raids. You can target coastal cities and raid them for infants.
The main problem with a Muslim Janissary corps is that Christians don't have a concept of putting other faiths under their protection in exchange for tribute. "Janissary"-like Muslim troops would require a change in the Christian belief system to allow for Muslim vassal states.
*Looks at Norman N.Africa* *Looks at British India* *Looks at Spain* *Looks at the Crusader States*
Y'what mate?
Wars make a lot of orphans. This could be construed as a Christian duty to take care of the meek. And if in the process, some of those are not really orphans, well it's nothing we haven't seen before
The thing is that, for Christians, everyone should have the "right" to have the same religion as theirs (this is written in the Code Noir e.g). Even though there are multiple examples of Christian rule over a Muslim majority, such "blood tax" was never created, it would have been seen as immoral by the Church I suppose. However, if the Spanish monarchy "evolves" to be as "liberal" as the Ottomans, I can see a Devsirme for Muslims and Jews, later it could also be expanded to Protestants.
Could such a scenario have worked with ATL Crusaders targeting North Africa to put a stop to Mediterranean piracy and slave raids (via a wanked revived Byzantine Empire managing to gain the Levant and Egypt), followed by the likes of the Norman Kingdom of Africa, Kingdom of Portugal and Spanish Empire opportunistically taking advantage of a weakened (potentially vasselized in not conquered) Maghreb?
Basically, you need a society where religious authority is subservant to political power. In the West, for example, the military orders are best suited to the training en masse of young children : they have the financial means, the military expertise and the religious justification. But they follow their own agendas, roughly going along the pope's, but certainly not the kings', as this unfortunate Templars business has shown. Before the modern era, the ideal of "nation/patria" or the ethos of king's service is not enough to ensure the acceptance of a standing army running on mass abduction and basically brainwashing. Only religion might justify such a policy.
IF the Valladollid debate finishes with a different conclusion, i.e. Native Americans can be legally kept as slaves, the Catholic Monarchs could make a deal with the religious orders in order to allow them to do their work on the New World, like: "hey, ok, you can establish your missions in my land, but you'll need to give me 10% of your converts."
It was not a proper devisirne equivalent, but the Sicilian Normans did widely use muslim archers from Sicily and North Africa as auxiliaries and this custom became even more important under the Hohenstaufen dinasty.
Frederick II deported most of the surviving Muslim population of Sicily to Lucera, in northern Apulia, but allowed them to keep practising their faith under his protection.
In exchange they had to pay a sort of recerde gizyia and serve in the army as archers.
These were actually among the most loyal (im contrast with the unruly feudal cavalry) troops to his cause and distinguished themselves in various battles against the guelphs, like at Cortenuova. From the numbers of Muslim "saracens" that he appears to have brought with him on campaign and given the plausible population of the Muslim settlement in Lucera it looks like warfare at the Emperor's service was the main occupation of most of the city's adult population.
Anyways true jannissaries would need conversion, right? This would fatally upset the balance of protection in exchange for taxes and military service, meaning revolts and eventually the destruction of the city's Muslim population, which iotl happened in 1300 under the House of Anjou.
Deleted member 97083
What if the recruitment of pseudo-janissaries in this case is based on any "other" group, be it cultural, religious, national, or political rather than strictly religious.
(Not social/economic though because that would just be a regular warrior caste.)
(Not social/economic though because that would just be a regular warrior caste.)
That's already OTL. See the Varangian and Swiss Guards.
What makes the janissaries (and the mamluks) so unique is the fact they're actual slaves.
Deleted member 97083
They weren't captured though. I meant that the recruits are captured and basically re-educated to fight against the people they were captured from, like Janissaries.
The Iroquois for example captured other tribes' children and raised them as Iroquois warriors.