Martel had saved it on the plains of Poitiers, had set bounds to the
wave of Mussulman westward invasion, and definitely fixed a limit which
it should not pass, that the Osmanli warlike instincts recoiled
upon themselves. The haughty descendants of Ortogrul, who considered
themselves born to command, seeing victory forsake them, fell back upon
tyranny. Vainly did reason expostulate that oppression could not long be
exercised by hands which had lost their strength, and that peace imposed
new and different labours on those who no longer triumphed in war; they
would listen to nothing; and, as fatalistic when condemned to a state of
peace as when they marched forth conquering and to conquer, they cowered
down in magnificent listlessness, leaving the whole burden of their
support on conquered peoples. Like ignorant farmers, who exhaust fertile
fields by forcing crops; they rapidly ruined their vast and rich empire
by exorbitant exactions. Inexorable conquerors and insatiable masters,
with one hand they flogged their slaves and with the other plundered
them. Nothing was superior to their insolence, nothing on a level
with their greed. They were never glutted, and never relaxed their
extortions. But in proportion as their needs increased on the one hand,
so did their resources diminish on the other. Their oppressed subjects
soon found that they must escape at any cost from oppressors whom they
could neither appease nor satisfy. Each population took the steps
best suited to its position and character; some chose inertia, others
violence. The inhabitants of the plains, powerless and shelterless, bent
like reeds before the storm and evaded the shock against which they were
unable to stand. The mountaineers planted themselves like rocks in a
torrent, and dammed its course with all their might. On both sides arose
a determined resistance, different in method, similar in result. In the
case of the peasants labour came to a stand-still; in that of the hill
folk open war broke out. The grasping exactions of the tyrant dominant
body produced nothing from waste lands and armed mountaineers;