Sultan Mahmud II Destroys the Janissaries

In mid-June 1826 (sources give dates from 15 to 17 June), Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II initiated a decisive confrontation in Istanbul against the empire's long-established military order, the Janissaries. First formed in the late fourteenth century as an elite corps of household troops recruited through the devshirme system, the Janissaries had earned renown during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for their strict discipline and battlefield effectiveness. Over the ensuing centuries, however, the corps evolved into an entrenched, hereditary interest group that enjoyed extensive tax exemptions, collected state payments regardless of active military service, and frequently assassinated or deposed rulers who attempted to diminish its power.

By the early nineteenth century, the Janissary force had grown to about 140,000 names on the rolls by 1808, although probably no more than a tenth were trained soldiers, and the corps exerted an effective veto over imperial administration. Sultan Mahmud II determined that restoring the empire's geopolitical standing required sweeping military restructuring and the creation of an army organized along contemporary European standards. Historians commonly view the events of June 1826 as an intentional provocation by the sultan, who announced the establishment of a new, European-style military unit known as the Eşkinci. Knowing the Janissaries would interpret this as an existential threat to their long-standing privileges, the Ottoman administration prepared for the predictable uprising.