A 16th-century European ambassador saw Ottoman discipline mirrored in Western decadence

Evidence

How different are our soldiers, who on campaign despise ordinary food and expect dainty dishes … and elaborate meals. If these are not supplied, they mutiny and cause their own ruin; and even if they are supplied, they ruin themselves just the same. For each man is his own worst enemy and has no more deadly foe than his own intemperance which kills him if the enemy is slow to do so. I tremble when I think of what the future must bring when I compare the Turkish system with our own; one army must prevail and the other be destroyed, for certainly both cannot remain un­ scathed. On their side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, experience and practice in fighting, a veteran soldiery, ha­ bituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, order, discipline, frugality, and watchfulness. On our side is public poverty, private luxury, impaired strength, broken spirit, lack of endurance and training; the soldiers are insubordinate, the officers avaricious; there is contempt for discipline; li­ cence, recklessness, drunkenness, and debauchery are rife; and, worst of all, the enemy is accustomed to victory, and we to defeat. Can we doubt what the result will be? — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 720

Categorization

• XREF: Busbecq’s Ottoman/Turkish vs. European character-dichotomy diagnosis is a quintessential early instance of the discourse Said traces in Orientalism; connects to how Western legibility of the Ottomans was moralized as disciplined virtue vs. decadent vice.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone working on early modern Ottoman-European self-perception; Busbecq inverts the usual ‘oriental decadence’ trope by making the Turks the disciplined frugal ones.