Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman sultan who ended the Byzantines and who Vlad battled, was a notorious pederast: among his victims were Jacob Notaras and John Sphrantzes, both reputed to be good-looking sons of the Byzantine nobility, and Vlad's own brother Radu, who was literally nicknamed 'the Handsome'. No doubt there were also plenty more unfortunate boys who he added to his harem with each new conquest, but who weren't notable enough to have their names recorded in the history books.
Is it really any surprise that the peoples of the Balkans would be so fanatically opposed to the empire that (among all the other awful things empires tended to do) harvests their sons, rapes them and then uses them as mindless jackboots with which to do the same to even more lands? Or that Vlad himself was so unrelentingly brutal to the Turks and any who supported them, not just because it may have made sense from a pragmatic perspective, but also for personal reasons?
Is it really any surprise that the peoples of the Balkans would be so fanatically opposed to the empire that (among all the other awful things empires tended to do) harvests their sons, rapes them and then uses them as mindless jackboots with which to do the same to even more lands?
I have not heard of any sort of ritualistic rape of male populations in the Balkans by the Ottomans, let alone any sort of conscription rape. It would be a highly poor decision for an army to rape men, when women are available and far more valuable as a commodity. Not to mention, the morale of conscripts is already typically low, raping the conscripts into submission would just be stupid because it would give you an absolutely worthless army (and probably one immobilized by venereal diseases).
Remember that this is south-eastern Europe. Greek pederasty was exported all over, even to Afghanistan, over a thousand years earlier. I highly doubt that pedastry or homosexuality would have been wildly taboo. If anything, if the Ottoman sultan was big on pedastry, it would have been institutionally normalized in some way within his territory.
but also for personal reasons?
It would be, yes. Vlad was utterly, ruthlessly, practical and tactical. He was undeniably competent. The only personal issue he might have taken was with the fact that he was basically passed over by the Ottomans in the first place because he was Walachian. He proved his intelligence, competence, and cunning to them.
I have not heard of any sort of ritualistic rape of male populations in the Balkans by the Ottomans, let alone any sort of conscription rape. It would be a highly poor decision for an army to rape men, when women are available and far more valuable as a commodity. Not to mention, the morale of conscripts is already typically low, raping the conscripts into submission would just be stupid because it would give you an absolutely worthless army (and probably one immobilized by venereal diseases).
Remember that this is south-eastern Europe. Greek pederasty was exported all over, even to Afghanistan, over a thousand years earlier. I highly doubt that pedastry or homosexuality would have been wildly taboo. If anything, if the Ottoman sultan was big on pedastry, it would have been institutionally normalized in some way within his territory.
You might be surprised at the existence of the koceks, Turkey's equivalent to the bacha bazi of Afghanistan. They were exclusively non-Muslim boys dressed & made up specifically to seem as effeminate as possible, and were expected to dance and pleasure their masters. Tellaks (boy-attendants in Turkish baths) played a similar informal role, to the point that 'hamam oğlanı' (bath-boy) is still a synonym for homosexual in Turkish today.
While the kocek 'tradition' wasn't fully formalized until the 1600s, it grew out of centuries of informal practice in Ottoman palatial culture, of which we know Mehmed the Conqueror at minimum was an enthusiastic practitioner 200 years before the koceks were institutionalized. And as the book Islamic Homosexualities (which is cited in the above article) suggests, it was most definitely a tradition endorsed and supported by the sultans for 200 years after.
As you might guess, koceks also had a role in demoralizing the subject populations of the OE - without fighting, of course, because they were kept around for fun and not for war. Besides obviously serving as sexual outlets for whichever sultans and nobles liked to diddle boys (of which there were apparently enough to keep koceks popular for centuries), their existence also basically told said subjects 'if we can do this to your kids and you still can't shake our yoke off, what hope do you really have of escaping us?'
It would be, yes. Vlad was utterly, ruthlessly, practical and tactical. He was undeniably competent. The only personal issue he might have taken was with the fact that he was basically passed over by the Ottomans in the first place because he was Walachian. He proved his intelligence, competence, and cunning to them.
Ruthless and practical Vlad might've been, but the Impaler also knew how to nurse a grudge. For example, his extremely brutal treatment of the boyars wasn't just motivated by his desire to centralize Wallachia, but also by his knowledge of their assassination of his father and other brother. If he'd been so absolutely pragmatic as to know when to stop & not go overboard in terrorizing them, they probably wouldn't have come to hate him more than they feared him, causing them to race to the side of Radu & arrange for his overthrow in 1462.
With that in mind, I don't believe it's likely he'd have had no vengeful feelings over the Turks turning his younger brother into their boytoy and then their pet pretender against his crown. (There are also stories that Mehmed raped Vlad himself while he was still a Turkish hostage, but these aren't nearly as well-supported as the ones about Mehmed and Radu, and thus are unlikely to be true)
So, it turns out you might have been talking about some portion of the Jannisary corps, so I have to contest the way you described them. They way you described them was like some kind of mass effort to take men who captured, and turn them into a tortured, rape-zombie militia. When it was more that children were being groomed into a highly trained and zealous military units (I'm just going to point out that that isn't the first time that such a thing happened in that region of Europe... Sparta). Neither are good (it's the Ottomans, nothing is actually good), but it sounded like you were talking about a mass depopulation effort with conscripts, and not institutionalized grooming program to develop zealot soldiers.
You might be surprised at the existence of the koceks, Turkey's equivalent to the bacha bazi of Afghanistan.
Like I said, not really. I don't really understand why Greek Pedastry has such a long lasting impact everywhere that Alexander might have touched, but it did. There's something about Ancient Greek pedastry that just fucking lingers through millennia.
As you might guess, koceks also had a role in demoralizing the subject populations of the OE - without fighting, of course, because they were kept around for fun and not for war.
I feel like you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. As with any harem from any time period, it's not meant as a threat to the population, but luxury of the elites. Slavery, in many forms, has this kind of "civilizing" argument by the slavers. It servers as a status symbol among themselves, as well as a demonstration of their "mercy" and "wisdom" to civilize backward peoples... with their dick.
Like, it's Islam. Marrying a 12 year old isn't crazy to them. That doesn't mean they're trying to use that to demoralize Arabs, Persians, or Turkmen by marrying off daughters, or even having them as harem members. A sex slave would just be an exotic luxury of the slaver's most recent conquest. Moreover, what we see from any study of slavery is that parents are prepared to sell children to slavers.
There are many ways every Islamic Empire is prepared to brutalize a people, but this doesn't really seem like one of them. This seems like a gift that the elites gave themselves.
For example, his extremely brutal treatment of the boyars wasn't just motivated by his desire to centralize Wallachia
Keyword: just. The focal point is always his power and control.
With that in mind, I don't believe it's likely he'd have had no vengeful feelings over the Turks turning his younger brother into their boytoy and then their pet pretender against his crown.
Honestly, I feel like he'd be more pissed off at his brother for threatening his crown.
The use of a groomed children brought into the Empire, castrated, and put in a very specialized military unit with heavy indoctrination. He was describing them like it was a mass program of rape of men that were then conscripted into generic soldiers who were some sort of zombie like soldiers.
Thing is:
used as disposable footsoldiers.
That part doesn't make sense. The Jannisaries were elite soldiers... and that would make sense given heavy indoctrination, long-term training, and total isolation from anything outside of the military. I wouldn't call them "disposable". If anything they would be less disposable than many other Imperial troops and levies.
When you invest that much into training, you expect a high return.
Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman sultan who ended the Byzantines and who Vlad battled, was a notorious pederast: among his victims were Jacob Notaras and John Sphrantzes, both reputed to be good-looking sons of the Byzantine nobility, and Vlad's own brother Radu, who was literally nicknamed 'the Handsome'. No doubt there were also plenty more unfortunate boys who he added to his harem with each new conquest, but who weren't notable enough to have their names recorded in the history books.
Is it really any surprise that the peoples of the Balkans would be so fanatically opposed to the empire that (among all the other awful things empires tended to do) harvests their sons, rapes them and then uses them as mindless jackboots with which to do the same to even more lands? Or that Vlad himself was so unrelentingly brutal to the Turks and any who supported them, not just because it may have made sense from a pragmatic perspective, but also for personal reasons?
I have not heard of any sort of ritualistic rape of male populations in the Balkans by the Ottomans, let alone any sort of conscription rape. It would be a highly poor decision for an army to rape men, when women are available and far more valuable as a commodity. Not to mention, the morale of conscripts is already typically low, raping the conscripts into submission would just be stupid because it would give you an absolutely worthless army (and probably one immobilized by venereal diseases).
Remember that this is south-eastern Europe. Greek pederasty was exported all over, even to Afghanistan, over a thousand years earlier. I highly doubt that pedastry or homosexuality would have been wildly taboo. If anything, if the Ottoman sultan was big on pedastry, it would have been institutionally normalized in some way within his territory.
It would be, yes. Vlad was utterly, ruthlessly, practical and tactical. He was undeniably competent. The only personal issue he might have taken was with the fact that he was basically passed over by the Ottomans in the first place because he was Walachian. He proved his intelligence, competence, and cunning to them.
You might be surprised at the existence of the koceks, Turkey's equivalent to the bacha bazi of Afghanistan. They were exclusively non-Muslim boys dressed & made up specifically to seem as effeminate as possible, and were expected to dance and pleasure their masters. Tellaks (boy-attendants in Turkish baths) played a similar informal role, to the point that 'hamam oğlanı' (bath-boy) is still a synonym for homosexual in Turkish today.
While the kocek 'tradition' wasn't fully formalized until the 1600s, it grew out of centuries of informal practice in Ottoman palatial culture, of which we know Mehmed the Conqueror at minimum was an enthusiastic practitioner 200 years before the koceks were institutionalized. And as the book Islamic Homosexualities (which is cited in the above article) suggests, it was most definitely a tradition endorsed and supported by the sultans for 200 years after.
As you might guess, koceks also had a role in demoralizing the subject populations of the OE - without fighting, of course, because they were kept around for fun and not for war. Besides obviously serving as sexual outlets for whichever sultans and nobles liked to diddle boys (of which there were apparently enough to keep koceks popular for centuries), their existence also basically told said subjects 'if we can do this to your kids and you still can't shake our yoke off, what hope do you really have of escaping us?'
Ruthless and practical Vlad might've been, but the Impaler also knew how to nurse a grudge. For example, his extremely brutal treatment of the boyars wasn't just motivated by his desire to centralize Wallachia, but also by his knowledge of their assassination of his father and other brother. If he'd been so absolutely pragmatic as to know when to stop & not go overboard in terrorizing them, they probably wouldn't have come to hate him more than they feared him, causing them to race to the side of Radu & arrange for his overthrow in 1462.
With that in mind, I don't believe it's likely he'd have had no vengeful feelings over the Turks turning his younger brother into their boytoy and then their pet pretender against his crown. (There are also stories that Mehmed raped Vlad himself while he was still a Turkish hostage, but these aren't nearly as well-supported as the ones about Mehmed and Radu, and thus are unlikely to be true)
So, it turns out you might have been talking about some portion of the Jannisary corps, so I have to contest the way you described them. They way you described them was like some kind of mass effort to take men who captured, and turn them into a tortured, rape-zombie militia. When it was more that children were being groomed into a highly trained and zealous military units (I'm just going to point out that that isn't the first time that such a thing happened in that region of Europe... Sparta). Neither are good (it's the Ottomans, nothing is actually good), but it sounded like you were talking about a mass depopulation effort with conscripts, and not institutionalized grooming program to develop zealot soldiers.
Like I said, not really. I don't really understand why Greek Pedastry has such a long lasting impact everywhere that Alexander might have touched, but it did. There's something about Ancient Greek pedastry that just fucking lingers through millennia.
I feel like you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. As with any harem from any time period, it's not meant as a threat to the population, but luxury of the elites. Slavery, in many forms, has this kind of "civilizing" argument by the slavers. It servers as a status symbol among themselves, as well as a demonstration of their "mercy" and "wisdom" to civilize backward peoples... with their dick.
Like, it's Islam. Marrying a 12 year old isn't crazy to them. That doesn't mean they're trying to use that to demoralize Arabs, Persians, or Turkmen by marrying off daughters, or even having them as harem members. A sex slave would just be an exotic luxury of the slaver's most recent conquest. Moreover, what we see from any study of slavery is that parents are prepared to sell children to slavers.
There are many ways every Islamic Empire is prepared to brutalize a people, but this doesn't really seem like one of them. This seems like a gift that the elites gave themselves.
Keyword: just. The focal point is always his power and control.
Honestly, I feel like he'd be more pissed off at his brother for threatening his crown.
He's referring to the young boys abducted by the Ottomans for use in the Jannisaries.
Abducted as young as 3, raped, forcefully converted to islam, castrated and then used as disposable footsoldiers.
Okay, that makes more sense.
The use of a groomed children brought into the Empire, castrated, and put in a very specialized military unit with heavy indoctrination. He was describing them like it was a mass program of rape of men that were then conscripted into generic soldiers who were some sort of zombie like soldiers.
Thing is:
That part doesn't make sense. The Jannisaries were elite soldiers... and that would make sense given heavy indoctrination, long-term training, and total isolation from anything outside of the military. I wouldn't call them "disposable". If anything they would be less disposable than many other Imperial troops and levies.
When you invest that much into training, you expect a high return.