Hey This is my first TL on the Ottomans comments and criticism is welcome!
Ever since the Great Turkish war a century ago Europe thought the Grand Turk was not very grand anymore. They thought the Ottomans were about to fall and Constantinople could maybe be taken out of Muslim hands. Like the Moon which waxes and wanes, the Crescent will wax again.
The Ottomans and General Bonaparte
The Ottoman Empire in 1789 was both heavily weakened by war with Russia and Austria and the Ottomans were in a war with Russia over the Crimean Khanate. It had lost Hungary in the last century, and was in a retreat primarily north of the Danube. Selim the Third ascended to the throne during a war that the Ottomans were losing badly. He had tried to rally the Ottomans to any sort of victory, but that failed. The Ottomans soon signed the Treaty of Jassy recognizing the Russian annexation of the Crimea, and changed the Ottoman frontier to the Dniester. The Ottomans soon withdrew from the Bug River, and Selim the Third’s reaction was to set up the Asakir-i-Nizamiye (Regular Corp). They were trained in the French style, and wore the blue uniforms of France. Soon the Asakir-i-Nizamiye numbered fifteen thousand men and along with fifty thousand Sipahis. Selim and the Ottomans were soon confident in their abilities to crush the Janissaries, but they had chosen the next year to destroy them. In January 16, 1796 Bonaparte arrived in Constantinople, and he was supposed to train the Ottomans in Artillery. One day, on May 17 1796, the Corps was ordered to stay in their barracks, and then they rioted due to rumors of their abolishment. Twenty-five thousand marched on to Topkapi Palace brandishing muskets, swords, and clubs aiming to overthrow Selim like the previous times they had done so, and replacing him with Shahzade Mustafa who was more pliable to the Corp. What they did not count on was Bonaparte’s grapeshot.
Bonaparte was only armed with 25 cannons and 125 men, but he had positioned his cannons at chokepoints and entrances so he would not have been overran. He had waited until rioters came within point blank range and he had loaded the cannons with grapeshot. When the cannons fired the rioters were massacred and were forced to retreat to their barracks. Bonaparte could barely hold off the masses of Janissaries until the cavalry arrived. Now, they were attacked by the Sipahis who arrived at the barracks and then the corps’ barracks were set on fire. Shahzade Mustafa was rewarded by being strangled in his sleep. The Ottomans soon outlawed the Bektashi Sufi order due to its associations with the Janissaries and was driven underground which won the support with the more orthodox ulema, and Sufi lodges. Within a year the Janissaries were soon exterminated, and as gratitude for saving his life; he had Meanwhile Napoleon converted to Islam and then took the name Napolyon Pasha, he nativitized had chose the first name to make him distinctive in the ranks of the General Staff.
By Ahmed Kara 8th year Constantinople Ottoman Military Academy
In 1806, due to an Alliance with France the Ottomans were invaded by Russia which occupied Bessarabia and a year later was forced to withdraw from it because France threatened war with Russia over the Ottomans and Russia was forced to withdraw. In the next year the Greeks revolted over taxes although by the present day some Neo-Hellenic historians would paint it as a nationalist uprising and Russia intervened over the “Greek Horrors” but by the time Russia intervened with the army by then the revolt had been crushed, and the leaders were hanged.
The Ottomans reoccupied Bessarabia and Napolyon decided to wait for a Russian offensive in the spring and Russia did re occupy Moldavia and Wallachia in April. Russia was overconfident and expected an easy victory and only sent a paltry thirty thousand man army to fight. The Ottomans on the other hand were French trained and they had an army of forty thousand men. The Cavalry was under Muhammad Ali Pasha on the left wing, Napolyon on the center wing and Ahmed Bey in the right. The battle plan was Napolyon would attack the Russian army under Bagration, Napolyon knew about Russian tactics against the Ottomans which was beating off the first cavalry charge and then attack the weak infantry and force them to retreat to their forts. Napolyon would attack the center using light cavalry under Muhammad Ali to feint a retreat after a first charge, and the Russians would attack thinking they would win. Then Napoleon would attack them with shock troops and then the Ottomans left and right would surround the Russians and win. The offensive was launched on June 2, 1809. Napolyon attacked Bagration at Sillistra and it was the decisive battle in this war. At Sillistra the Russians were supposed to link up with Kutuzov, and Napolyon decided to defeat Bagration first and then attack Kutuzov. The Russians were superior to the Ottomans in infantry, and so Napolyon Pasha ordered a Grand Battery in which the Ottoman Artillery would break the Russian center, and then light cavalry would screen the charge. The heavy infantry would charge and then break the Russians.
The battle started on June 5th with a massive artillery barrage in the Russian center and then the cavalry screened the attack and then the heavy infantry charged and crushed the Russian army after seeing Bagration’s defeat. Kutuzov was forced to retreat.
By 1810 the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the principalities due to several defeats at Shumla, and at sea in the Dardanelles, the Russians could not establish naval supremacy strategically due to British Advisors in the Ottoman Navy due to the Treaty of the Dardanelles which in exchange for massive concessions economically they would train the Ottoman Navy and then the Russians were forced to sign the Treaty of Bucharest which was a Status Quo Ante Bellum peace.
Article on the Russo Ottoman war (1806-1812) on Omnipedia Ottoman language version
The Tanzimat reforms of 1809 were started by Alemdar Mustapha Pasha, and these reforms were to take the feudal system of the Ottomans and make them more like Europe. First in order for Europe not to interfere in Ottoman affairs they made everyone equal under the law. Second they made the Eyelets which were huge and unwieldy into Vilayets which was more like French Provinces. The rest of the reforms included revamping of the Navy and Bureaucracy.
Article on the Tanzimat Reforms French Secondary School textbook (1990)
The Selimiye was a flag ship which was a three masted and three decked 128 gun ship commissioned in 1817. In the 1820’s and 30’s trade increased and some of the Balkan Christians decided to immigrate to Louisiana in a desire to gain economically. In 1845 the economic reforms happened like breaking up the guilds and attempting to start light industry like Textiles had started to take effect in the Balkans in locations primarily in the Danube they had employed mostly women and Children. This was caused by primarily by French loans to build industry in the empire, and soon the Ottoman Empire had a lot of French and British loans to build up their navy.
excerpts from Ottoman Reforms for dummies
An Ottoman army under Napolyon Pasha in 1811 was sent to Arabia which was on the Hejaz. His campaign was against the Saud clan, who were recently in Mecca. They followed a puritanical form of Islam called Wahhabism, and they destroyed things like the Prophet’s tomb because to the Saudis this is “idolatry.” The army was sent to Mecca to chase them out, and they did chasing them southeast into the Nejd engaging them at Diriyah. The Ottoman army easily crushed the Saudis sending them to the sand. The Saudis were poorly armed whereas the Ottomans fresh from campaigns in the Romanian Principalities were well trained. The Saudis were brave but they had no defense against cannon and muskets, and were retreating into the desert with no supplies. After a while the Saudis were forced to send their religious leaders to Constantinople for execution and Saud clan was forced to retreat to the Nejd because the Ottomans could not be bothered by a bunch of Bedouin, but it was only temporary until the Ottomans could recentralize their position in Arabia.
Selim had sent Bonaparte into Egypt. Egypt was under the rule of the Mamluks, who were similar to the Janissaries in that they were slaves who had amassed power and now ruled Egypt. Bonaparte Pasha, along with ten thousand men marched to Cairo, and they met the Mamluks just outside of Cairo in the small town of Embadeh, in the Battle of the Pyramids on April 17, 1813. Bonaparte had organized his army in the square formation. The Mamluk armies were armed with traditional weapons like swords and spears. They attacked relentlessly, but they were routed with heavy losses, and with relatively few losses on the part of the Ottomans. The remaining Mamluks either fled to Sudan or lived anonymously until their death. In 1814 the Ottoman state centralized control in Libya, Tunis and Algiers rather easily. By 1815 the Ottoman state was somewhat recentralized and Selim III appointed Muhammad Ali as Grand Vizier who replaced Hurshid Pasha.
Bonaparte atricle excerpt from Omnipedia
In 1821 the Ottoman Empire declared war on Persia due to the accusation of Ottoman backing of Azeri rebels. They had met at Lake Van and the Persians were commanded by Abbas Mirza who had trained a Western style force of thirty thousand men it was bloody but the Ottomans had numbers on their side won but the Persians and the Ottomans signed a treaty of Erzurum it was a Status Quo Ante Bellum peace due to the Ottomans desire to not expand their borders with the Russian Empire.
Excerpt from The Late Ottoman Era authored by Lord Richmond 9th edition (1972). [/I]