After the Turk had made himself master of Bosnia and Herzegovina he
enrolled among his janissaries 30,000 of the young men, and in other
parts of Yugoslavia showed himself inclined at first to permit the
people to follow their own traditions, their religion,[22] their
language and their customs, so long as he was maintained in luxury and
so long as a sufficient supply of young men was forthcoming. The
abominable acts of cruelty, by which he is now remembered in the
Balkans, appear to have started at a later period, when he had himself
degenerated, when his lawless soldiery provoked the people, when the
people rose and he suppressed them in a manner that would make them
hesitate to rise again. But from the first he saw to it that there
should be recruits; many a young Slav taken early from his home was
transformed at Constantinople into a redoubtable janissary who fought
against Europeans; these troops, who were not allowed to marry, gave
an absolute obedience. They were perhaps the finest infantry in the
world--for two hundred years they formed the strongest prop of the
Turkish Empire. Paulus Jovius, the historian, says that in 1531 nearly
the whole corps of janissaries spoke Slav. Other young men were
received into the Government offices--the Porte, until the end of the
seventeenth century, used the Serbian language for its international
transactions; its treaties with the Holy Roman Empire, for example,
were all made out in Serbian and Greek. Finally there were not wanting
Southern Slavs who rose to high distinction in the Sultan's service,
such as Mehemet Sokolovi['c], who, after being thrice pasha of Bosnia,
was elevated to the post of grand vizier; Achmet Pasha Herzegovi['c]
(son of the last chief of Herzegovina), whose conversion was followed
by an appointment as Bey of Anatolia; he became brother-in-law of
Sultan Bajazet II. and likewise grand vizier. There was Sinan Pasha, a
Bosnian, who constructed in [vC]ajnica, his native place, the handsome
mosque that still exists, and there was the renowned Osman
Pasvantooelu Pasha, also of Bosnian origin, who appeared in 1794
outside the historic fortress called Baba Vida (Grandmother Vida), of
the dusty, old rambling town of Vidin on the Danube. Having won his
way into the fortress he was elected governor, and a year later he
became Pasha. His independence was remarkable even at a period when
Mahmud Bushatli Pasha flourished at Scutari and Ali Pasha at Jannina,
so that Lamartine described Turkey in Europe as "une confederation
d'anarchies." Pasvantooelu coined his own money, and, amongst other
exploits, placed on the outside of a mosque his own monogram instead
of the Caliph's emblem. Therefore the outraged Sultan sent against him
three armies in succession, and each of them went back from Vidin
vanquished. The pasha was a brave and energetic man of iron will, a
great soldier and an expert architect. He built famous places of
worship, whose gilded arabesques, whose fountains in the silent courts
may bring us to meditate on one who died in 1807, three years after
the first insurrection of his fellow-Yugoslav, Kara George. In
Pasvantooelu's great library at Vidin there are one hundred and twelve
books on scientific and literary matters. The Pasha was venerated and
was regarded almost with dread for having managed to assemble so many
volumes dealing with other than spiritual affairs.