Ottoman army

Did you ever heard march of Mehter?=)!!!

The millitary bands helped the Ottomans and previous Turk states aswell.

Has anyone listened to them? Damn they get you in the mood for fighting, get the adrelling rushing, create national fervour and pride. Imagine thousands getting pyhced up by for example the "Hujum Marsh"

 

In the SultanAhmet Square they the Millitary Bands were playing at the weekends, I can see how it would have been a moral booster.

 

Ottomans borrowed from the West and vica-versa.

 

The Millitary Bands was a concept bought to Europe by the Turks who had been using it for over a thousand years.  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc were influenced by this music heavily and wrote some compositions inspired by it.

 

 

Originally posted by Bulldog   The Millitary Bands was a concept bought to Europe by the Turks who had been using it for over a thousand years.  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc were influenced by this music heavily and wrote some compositions inspired by it.

Not really by the Turks.Trenk's panduri brought it.They brought it from Slavonia(eastern part of Croatia) just after it was reconquered from the Turks.They also used clothes very similar to Ottoman.

Edited by Chilbudios - 21-Sep-2006 at 10:03

Not really by the Turks.Trenk's panduri brought it.They brought it from Slavonia(eastern part of Croatia) just after it was reconquered from the Turks.They also used clothes very similar to Ottoman.

Originally posted by Chilbudios Originally posted by Maljkovic Pretty much all protoserbian states left behind after Dusan's empire fell apart, Moldavia, Bosnia, Albania... ... so what's that only battle which triggered the fall of Moldavia and when this falling happened?

I looked at my books again and it seems I shouldn't have included Moldavia. My bad

Originally posted by Earl Aster One of the main advantages of the Ottoman armies was their willingness to adopt contempary european military styles. At the battle of Cahandirgan (If that's how you spell it) the Ottomans triumphed over the Safavids because of their adoption of heavy cannon. Also they were more unified as a state and after Selim conquered Mecca, they could have more of a right and control over Muslims, giving them more influence. If you look at the comparisions of Ottoman and other Eastern soldiers, the Ottoman soldiers tend to be far more european.

    

How the Ottomans were able to defeat so many countries so easy? Is it llight calvary?

I can argue that it wasnt an easy conquest but an ardoous live and learn situation drawn out from the beginning of the rise of the Ottomans to the empires created by Mehmed II to Sulejman.

I would say the backbone of it all was the Ghazi. A nomadic clan of warriors who was often sponsored(but rarely controlled) by the Sultan into attacking surrounding Christian lands.

Following the death of the Seljucs I believe there came the rise of numerous independant Turkic states in Anatolia. Most of these states were administratively ignorant. Around that time there were also numerous movements of various nomads into Anatolia looking for plunder. With the surrounding Turkic states which bordered other turkic states this was a cause of many problems but one in partcular, the Osmans, bordered the Balkans and its Christia states. The Ottomans sent these various groups into the Balkans where they then plundered and weakened already failing Balkan states or often serving in their military as mercenaries.

The Byzantines could hold these groups off when the Empire was in Nicaea however when the capitol was moved again to Constantinople, its priorities shifted to the west. Eventually the Byzantines saw themselves lose all their lands in Anatolia, further opening the gates to the Balkans.

Many of the Balkan states, after the death of Dusan, were splintered principalities often at war with one another or often fighting various tribal groups within the Balkans. For instance the Despotate of Epirus saw itself weakened and eventually falling apart from various Albanian attacks on its realm. Many of these feuding groups brought Turkic mercenaries from Anatolia into their lands to figt for them.

With this the Turkic groups began to learn the weakeness of the Balkan states along with their warfare. Soon, it was these very groups which were absorbing the lands they were hired to protect.

However there were setbacks and defeats. For the Albanian example, the Sultans had to learn that bringing in massive armies would not work in mountaenous territory scarce in food and plunder. Many of these troops ended up dying from local plundering groups, disease and lack of nutrition. Mehmed II eventually started correcting this sending armies that were no more then 25,000-30,000 into the territory for only short periods of time. It was a steep contrast to the assualts of his father, which often rellied on sieging and camping a large army for an extended period of time, something brought many casualties.

In the end, the ottomans faced many setbacks but learned and fixed them. European and Balkan disunity and inability to form any kind of serious coalition brought about the real defeat. Had any group allied with Constantinople, to make a large enough force to defend the city, it would have worked. But who would have led? Undoubtably afterwards the strongest remaining in the group would have tried to takeover.

tactics,dicipline,no fear of death
and most important one

Turkish Power

Originally posted by Maljkovic Of course we remeber Constantinopole... remeber it was a Hungarian who forged those guns