But leaving this for another Occasion, I shall proceed to give your Lordship some Account of the State of their Army and Soldiery, their Trade and Revenue, their Laws and Customs at present; since the said Period of 1949, to which my Predecessors Memoirs and my own little Experience necessarily confines me.
It is certain then, my Lord, that both the Spirit and Courage, as well as the Discipline of their Soldiery, has been sensibly declining ever since the coming in of the Tartar Race, and especially within this last 150 Years, provided we always except the small Interval of Vizier Ibrahim's Administration.
This has been chiefly owing to their taking in all sorts of People (and especially natural Turks, married Men and Tradesmen) for Money into the Body of the Janizaries; who us'd formerly to be compos'd of Christian Children taken Captives, and bred up in the strict Discipline and School of the Seraglio, in all manly and warlike Exercises.
It must be confest also, that the secret spreading of Christianity among their People and the Soldiery, has not a little contributed hereunto; for as the Success of theirArms
