746 
CONFLAGRATION BY THE JANISSARIES. 
plague ; and during my residence in the British palace I beheld 
one of these horrid fires. It burst forth at the dead of the night 
in the middle of the city, and blazed with a tremendously ex¬ 
tending light over the darkness. Like most other accidents of 
the kind, this had been the act of the incensed Janissaries ; that 
being the usual way they take to show their displeasure against 
the Sultan. He had lately offended the whole body, by having 
ordered four of their brethren to be strangled; and thus lighting 
a funeral pyre to their manes, the survivors gave the ordinary 
hint to their otherwise despotic sovereign, that his guards could 
avenge as well as protect. His Sublime Highness did not re¬ 
quire a second reminder, but immediately appeased their fury 
by banishing their Aga, to whom he had committed the ex¬ 
ecution which had so enraged them, and completely made his 
peace by appointing a commander more agreeable to their wishes. 
The city being built chiefly of wood, renders these fires, whether 
by casualty or premeditation, much more destructive than when 
such disasters take place where brick or stone are the principal 
materials of a town. The present conflagration, which they call 
trifling , burnt down five hundred houses ! Such an event hap¬ 
pening in our western Europe, is generally the effect of accident; 
and that term is used here too, for the cause of this calamity : 
but then the plague is called an accident ; which word seems 
to import the same to a Turk, as that of doom , — a fatality that 
must come, and being out of human foresight to prevent, is 
also beyond human power to stop in its career. By this paraliz- 
ing sort of superstition, some faculties are little better than ever¬ 
lasting sleepers in the minds of these Ottoman sons of blind 
destiny. However, that all are not so submissive to the passing- 
events of the day, we see in the lighters of these fires ; and on 
