successful rebellion in the empire of the Grand Turk is now 

 no longer doubtful. 



A sense of their declining strength has induced the 

 Ottoman princes, since the beginning of the last century, 

 to aim at introducing some military reforms, and to endea- 

 vour, by the adoption of European tactics, to retrieve the 

 tarnished glory of their arms. A brief detail of these 

 attempts, all of which failed from the stubborn prejudices 

 of the people and their want of active spirit, cannot fail to 

 prove instructive, and to guide us in our conjectures 

 respecting the future destiny of the Ottoman empire. 



Bonneval, an officer of prince Eugene's army, of a 

 petulant and restless disposition, fled into Turkey from 

 the consequences of his misconduct, and taking the turban 

 in 1720, engaged in the service of the Porte. The Turks 

 had been instructed in the casting of cannon about fifty 

 years before, by an Italian renegade of the name of Sardi ; 

 but they were unskilful in the management of artillery, and 

 totally unacquainted with the use of bombs. These defects 

 Bonneval undertook to supply ; a regiment of Combaradgis, 

 or bombardiers, was formed on the European model, and 

 Bonneval (or Achmet Pasha, as he was named), was placed 

 at the head of it : he retained the command till his death in 

 1747, when he was succeeded by his son Soliman Aga. In 

 twenty years, nevertheless, after the death of Bonneval, the 

 art of pointing, or even of firing a mortar, appears to have 

 been totally forgotten by the Turks, The vizir, Moro- 

 vandgi Pasha, who commanded the troops at Choczim, in 

 the Russian war, begged of De Tott to show him a mode 

 of firing mortars without a fuse, merely because a muezzin, 

 who appeared to him to have great talents as an engineer, 

 was a stranger to the use of fuses ; so little benefit had been 

 derived from Bonneval's instructions. De Tott also 

 assisted in establishing a school of engineers; and after- 

 wards the science of fortification was for some time dili- 

 gently studied under General Lafitte, who resided fourteen 

 years in Turkey, and was intrusted with some operations 

 in the war of 1787. In 1793, Aubert de Bayet, the ambas- 

 sador of the French Republic, brought with him to Con- 

 stantinople a squadron of horse artillery, the rapidity and 



