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See Barkan, IFM XIX: p. 305. 3 Of these, 39,470 were barracked in Istanbul and the remaining 14,379 were assigned to provincial garrison duty; see Barkan, IFM XVII: pp. 263–4. 1. for the navy to a small proportion of general defence expenditure. 17 Because of the greater cost of equipment in naval wars, even apart from personnel considerations, land wars always represented the smaller burden. The French example, furthermore, represents an underestimation of real costs, since in foreign wars transport and provisioning costs were at much higher levels.

This position of temporary vulnerability was transformed overnight by exceptional meteorological events into the makings of a military disaster of major proportions. Western sources on the battle of St Gotthard make note of the decisive effect of freak weather conditions in the encounter. Rycaut’s commentary includes the following statement: As soon as the Turkish army had (. 43 The halting of military operations in August rather than October because of the onset of adverse weather conditions was highly unusual, but the underlying problem was endemic to Ottoman warfare in all theatres.

For military purposes these dates formed the two demarcation points around which all army activities were habitually organized. 20 MATERIAL CONSTRAINTS ON OTTOMAN WARFARE The first call to arms came at the vernal equinox which preceded the Day of Hizir by 40 days, but troops were by custom allowed April as a period of grace before reporting for active duty. 36 If circumstances demanded, the army’s departure for the front could be pushed back to mid-March or forward to later in May, but in the former case this meant only a deferring of delays to a subsequent halting place better suited to the pasturing of the army herds.