3-052-469 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Waiting for Orders', 1880. 'Was there not a time...when the Seraglio was a den of murder; when the lives of men and women of all ranks, Princes, Pashas, or courtiers, and the wives or female companions of the gloomy despot, his children, and all his kindred, were liable to be sacrificed...to a fit of jealousy or rage...? We have read of these dark deeds and their hideous instruments...There were Janissaries in those days; a band of select household troops guarding the Sultan's palace, serving rather as executioners than soldiers, ever ready to go at a word or sign and to inflict sudden death upon the objects of his displeasure, or upon individuals whom an infernal statecraft doomed to perish for the sake of his policy. And there was also in existence among the depraved servants of Oriental tyranny and luxury, an indescribable class of unmanly creatures, to whom was committed the custody of part of the Sultan's household. In the drawing, by M. Benjamin Constant, which has been engraved for our Illustration, the representatives of each of these two classes appear "waiting for orders;" and, from their being joined in one service upon this occasion, we should fear that the business in hand is likely to be the murder of an unhappy woman'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.