Abstract
The " Happy Event " of the destruction of the janissaries showed that Mahmud II had learned his lesson. The movement had begun like Selim III's " New Order ", with the organization of a new army, while the janissaries were invited to submit to regular discipline and training in order to be integrated into the new system. Was this a trap laid in wait for a reaction that would justify the use of force ? We don't know , but after a few days' hesitation, the janissaries finally mutinied, giving the sultan the opportunity to launch a full-scale military campaign against them. This decision to go on the offensive rather than the defensive, as in previous cases, caught the rebels unawares : most of them were massacred during the systematic bombardment of their barracks on the night of June 15th to 16th ; the survivors were chased through the streets of the capital and summarily executed without the slightest recourse to legal proceedings. The Sultan was on a war footing, and camped himself and his entourage in the courtyard of the Sultan Ahmed mosque, which had been improvised as a military camp. The chronogram composed by Esad Muhlis Pacha, governor of Andrinople, summed up the situation perfectly : gaza-yı ekber, or " the greatest of the holy wars ", whose numerical value reached 1241, the date of the event according to the Hegira calendar.
This religious rhetoric was evident in the long proclamation made to the people on June 16th and shouted through the streets of Constantinople. In it, the Sultan hurled anathema at the Janissaries and invited all true Muslims to join him under the sacred banner of the Prophet in fighting these infidels who had risen up against their sovereign and, above all, against divine law. The same proclamation promised to re-establish the Empire and religion by purifying them of the harmful elements that had violated them, and to create a new army whose name was fraught with symbolism : the Muslim Troops Aided by God(Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye).
