199. A little bit of everything
“Give me an army of Turks and I'll take the world hostage.”
“I can't even be considered a disciple of Sultan Mehmet Fatih (Conqueror), because I am a Loser who lost the lands conquered by me with a sword in my hands. As for Sultan Fatih, he is the Lucky One, whose conquered lands were transferred without losses from generation to generation.”
Napoleon
“War with the Ottomans? It is all French intrigues”
Gogol, ‘Auditor’
The Ottoman Empire.
Sultan Selim III died in 1809 from the natural causes to be succeeded by Mahmud II.
“
Soon I was invited to the Sultan. He sat immovable in a small room, clean and tastefully cleaned, on a canapé. His face is entertaining and inspires participation; but redness begins to appear at the ends of it, which, however, will not yet ugly him. He wears a small trimmed beard, a red fez on his head; his Cossack dress, over which he had a blue cloak.” [2]
Mahmud was (or at least intended to be) a great reformer and he, indeed, introduced some important domestic reforms like closing the Court of Confiscations and abolishing the ancient rights of Turkish governors to doom men to instant death by their will; the Paşas, the Ağas, and other officers, were enjoined that "they should not presume to inflict, themselves, the punishment of death on any man, whether Raya or Turk, unless authorized by a legal sentence pronounced by the
Kadı, and regularly signed by the judge." He even went as far as setting an example by regularly attending the Divan, or state council, instead of abstaining from attendance (which was a venerable tradition going all the way back to Suleiman I). His modernizations included the relaxation of much of the restrictions on
alcoholic beverages in the Empire, and the sultan himself was known to drink socially with his ministers. By the end of his reign, his reforms had mostly normalized drinking among the upper classes and political figures in the Empire. [1]
Besides these formidable achievements, Mahmud continued modernization of the Ottoman army started by his predecessor. The foreign instructors had been invited (each of them trying to teach along the lines of his own army with the predictably messy results) but his main attention was toward creation of a powerful navy.
Training of the army continued but not enough attention had been paid to the physical condition of the recruits, their training and living conditions.
“In the gates of his palace there were about 50 regular infantrymen in two rows, skinny, untidy young people.
...
The Turks, introducing regularity in their troops, wanted to imitate Europeans in everything and did not guess to notice that the officers do not wear soldiers' overcoats and a coats.
…
In a guard house there were only 10 Turkish soldiers whose uncleaned guns were hanging on the walls, while the people were sitting half-bare on the floor. I asked the officer to show me rifle drill and marching. The unfortunate cinderellas were put at the front, and at the command of the officer of their 2nd Regiment of the 6th Company of Yuz-Bashi Ghassan made rifle exercises, and although they did not follow the rules with accuracy, I noticed in them the ability to do this matter and quite agility in handling the gun. You can't expect more from the young army; but the untidyness of clothes, hands, shoes and the gun itself cannot stop. People are very young and weak, but they move and perform everything with unquestioning submission and silence.
“ [2].
Egypt. After being (finally) officially recognized by the Porte and getting rid of the Mamelukes and other “problematic” elements Mohammed Ali proceeded with
his reforms much more effectively than his superiors in Constantinople. To provide an economic base for his power he started with the change in the agricultural field, when he introduced manyvarieties of unknown seeds in Egypt, and experts and supervisors from many countries, suchas Syria, the Levant and Armenia, were also brought to cultivate these seeds, and establishing a monopoly made him the only grower of the new crops and he alone could deal with the merchants because the peasants had to hand over their crop to the government. One of the most important cash crops became
sugar cane growth of which he actively promoted in Upper Egypt. By importing
indigo seeds from Levant he turned its local production into a valuable export item. He exempted people from the
rice producing provinces from a military service to increase its production. The
cotton crop alone raised the value of the annual production in Egypt in one year(1823)by more than a sixth, providedEgypt with an income of more than thirty millions francs(1.14 million pounds). Again, quality of the item was improved by the import of the seeds from the areas with a high cotton quality. Much later, (in OTL)
under the British pressure, he was forced to abolish the cotton trade monopoly. Egypt under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century had the fifth most productive
cotton industryin the world, in terms of the number of
spindles per capita. The industry was initially driven by machinery that relied on traditional energy sources, such as
animal power,
water wheels, and
windmills, which at that time were also the principle energy sources in
Western Europe.
It all was taking time but even in the short term Mohammed Ali was in a good position to finance maintenance of an army and he proceeded with the task much better than his Ottoman sovereign.
The first and most difficult problem was personnel. Centuries-old statedom in Egypt of Ottoman Pashas and Mamluk "military lords" made the local Arab population completely unfit for military service. Muhammad Ali did not perceive fellah farmers as future soldiers capable of fighting and winning on the battlefield. In Egypt, as in other Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, de jure was forbidden to recruit peasants for military service. In the Land of the Pyramids, the fellach was executed if weapons were found in front of him. Therefore, Muhammad Ali ordered his son Ibrahim to recruit and actually capture black recruits during the war of conquest in Sudan. But the slaves captured in Sudan had been dying en mass on the way from Asuan to Cairo and in 1821-24 it was possible to get only approximately 3,000 recruits. As a result, in 1822 Mohammed Ali issued an order to start recruiting the peasants of Upper Egypt. Initially, the conditions of military service were as attractive as possible. The conscripts had to serve for 3 years, after which they returned to their native villages with certificates guaranteeing against the second conscription. In total, 30,000 Fellahs were drafted into the army at the first stage of the reform. But Muhammad Ali was not going to refuse to "recruit" recruits in Sudan. He set the task of improving logistics, living conditions and treatment of Africans, thus reducing their losses. To reduce travel losses they had to be transported by the boats and food points should be organized in Aswan and Manfalut.
If the first task of the military reform was to recruit new soldiers, the second most important was to recruit an officer corps. Mohammed Ali sought to hire European officers as technical specialists, advisers in the army and teachers in military schools. Most of them had been French. But the basis of the officer corps in the combat units was the Turks (actually, predominantly the Albanians) and Mamluks. Having destroyed his competitors in the struggle for power, the Great Pasha replaced the "pick" with a "carrot" against those who showed loyalty and goth for serving him. He tried to create them the most favorable living conditions and form a political support in the Arab country of Turkish and Circassian officers alien to the Egyptians.
Understanding the weakness of the national identity of yesterday's Fellahs, Muhammad Ali set the task of Islamic indoctrination. The new army was named Jihadiyye Misriye (Egyptian Jihad).
Russia.
- In 1810, a year after successful experience with the first Russian steamship by the imperial decree, the joint-stock company "Russian Society of Shipping and Trade" (ROPiT) was established with headquarters in Odessa. Initially, its fleet included 2 steamships built in Nikolaev but with the support of the government (loan, exemption from customs duties), ROPiT placed orders for the purchase of steamers in England and France and by 1818 had a fleet of 35 steamers serving twelve lines. Ten years later, in 1828, ROPiT already had 63 steamers, some of them, including one iron-built, [3] ordered in Britain and France, and 38 barges. By 1828, the company supported regular travel to twenty destinations, out of which six foreign ones, including Egypt and France. In trade with Turkey, ROPiT took a dominant position, exporting grain, alcohol, metal products, fabrics and much more through the port of Odessa to Istanbul. Coffee, tobacco, raisins, nuts, exotic goods went in the opposite direction. Among the domestic routes, ROPiT maintained an important crossing between Kerch and Taman.
- Formally, the first steamship of the Baltic fleet was “Elizabeth”, completed in 1809. The Black Sea fleet got its first steamer in 1810. Both these ships were not the military ones: their task was to carry cargo and people and to tug the sail-ships.
The first steam warship was created at the Nikolaev shipyard. Its laying took place on March 29, 1813, and in 1815 the Black Sea Fleet was replenished with the first steamer, “Meteor”, armed with 14 guns, that is, it was adapted to combat operations.
The length of the steamer was 36.6 meters, width - 6.1 meters, draft - 2.21 meters. Two steam engines of the Bird plant with a total capacity of 60 nominal hp were installed on the steamer. A small draft was making it convenient in the case of the future coastal operations on the Black Sea.
The first steam warship of the Baltic fleet, “Izhora”, was built on Izhora Plant in 1816. The length of the steamer was 46.83 meters, width without sheathing - 6.7 meters, draft - 4.1 meters. A steam engine with a capacity of 100 nominal hp was installed on the steamer. The ship's armament consisted of eight 6-pounder carronades.
The next year the Main Admiralty Wharf in St-Petersburg completed more powerful steamer-frigate “Bogatyr”. The displacement was 1,495 tons, the length was 56.66 meters, the width without sheathing was 9.75 meters, and the draft was 6.9 meters. An unbalanced steam engine produced by Izhora Plant with a capacity of 240-260 nominal hp was installed on the steam locomotive. The ship's artillery armament consisted of 28 guns: two 4-pound bomb guns mounted on turntables and six 24-pounder carronades on the upper deck, as well as twenty 36-pounder guns in a closed battery.
The first few years of exploitation revealed numerous problems with an idea of a paddle warship and the search of a better option began.
- Construction of the railroads started putting brand new requirements to the Russian metallurgy to which the new plants of the Southern Russia were best suited to respond. The big old plants of Ural had to start with creation of a brand new supportive infrastructure including railroad(s) connecting them to the rest of the country and for a while the best thing they could do was to provide an adequate production of the rails for their own railroad. The old metallurgic plant of “Outside Moscow” group were so far more oriented on the production of domestic consumption items with the different requirements to the metal and technology and already were deep into the machine-building. The sharp raise of production by the new coal-based plants of the South allowed to fulfill the new needs (and to keep on pair with Britain 😜).
- Social News (1810): A Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the French Republic, Citizen Lucien Bonaparte, arrived to Moscow. Accompanying him were his widowed sister Mme Pauline Leclerc nee Bonaparte and his younger brother Louis. 😂
French Republic. A French Ambassador on his way to the court of the
Nguyễn dynasty landed in Singapore on 28 January 1811 and recognised the island as a natural choice for the new port convenient for the future French encroachments into the region. The island was ruled by
Paduka Sri Sultan Abdul Rahman I Muazzam Shah ibni al-Marhum Sultan Mahmud Syah Alam (“call me simply ‘Sultan Abdul Rahman Muazzam Syah’l), the 16th Sultan of Johor
, who just succeeded his father,
Mahmud Ri’ayat Shah Zilu’llah fil’Alam Khalifat ul-Muminin ibni al-Marhum Sultan ‘Abdu’l Jalil Shah (just “Mahmud Shah III” for the friends and family) who had problems with the Dutch, the Bugis [4] and the members of his own council who preferred Sultan’s exiled elder brother, Tengku. With the help of council, Tengku was smuggled into Singapore and got an offer he could not refuse: recognition as “Sultan Hussein” (or rather Sultan
Hussein Mua'zzam Shah ibni Mahmud Shah Alam), 125,000 francs annually for himself, plus 75,000 for his council. All this in exchange for a trifle: granting the French Republic a right to establish a trade post in Singapore. The formal treaty was signed on 6 February 1811. [5] In 1815 the treaty was upgraded leaving the whole island in the French possession.
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[1] Besides this being obviously a move in a right direction, leading by a personal example in this specific case surely demonstrated that he had a potential of becoming a truly great leader.
Just to underscore a global importance of the issue (hopefully, I’ll be excused for giving examples from the modern times), here are two examples from the distinctively different (and perhaps even opposite) cultures: (a) Gorbachev, practically overnight, lost whatever popularity he had by declaring a war on drinking in the SU; (b) the only two cases (as far as I can remember) during the last 30 years when the citizens of Massachusetts (one of the most liberal places in the US) voted in a reasonable way were (1) allowing to sell booze on Sundays (the law prohibiting this existed since at least 1781) and (2) abolishing an extra tax on alcohol. 😂😂😂😂
[2] Muravyev-Karssky “The Diaries”. This is about his visit of the Sultan Mehmed II on diplomatic mission in 1829.
[3] The first iron steamship to go to sea was the 116-ton
Aaron Manby, built in 1821. So between that time and 1828 there is plenty of time to find out that the idea is practical.
[4] The local ethnic group that was seemingly very fond of the politics. It seems that in OTL they were actually on his side but I got lost in the names, circumstances and the titles. The important thing is that the Brits are screwed.
[5] Beating the Brits to it by 8 years. 😜
