Photo from "Constantinople," by Edwin A. Grosvenor, Amherst College 



the; plane: tree oe the janissaries 



The tree served as the gallows of ancient Constantinople. In the days when the Janis- 

 saries terrorized the city, hundreds of victims would sometimes be swinging from its branches 

 at one time. The Janissaries were recruited from the sons of captured Christians and Jews. 

 The boys were taken from their parents when from five to seven years old and trained by 

 the Turks to fight and hate the race from which they had sprung. First a scourge to Eastern 

 Europe, they later became the masters of the sultans, many of whom they deposed and slew. 

 In 1826 the corps was wiped out by a popular insurrection led by Sultan Mahmoud the 

 Reformer, 6,000 Janissaries being slain in one day. 



