ABSTRACT
Even more than Christian feudal states, the Ottoman Empire was designed for almost permanent warfare. The Ottoman military threat to Western Europe in 1500 was very real. Large raiding parties galloped north out of Bosnia to make sweeps of booty and slaves in north-eastern Italy under Venetian jurisdiction. Raiding in search of livestock and slaves became a way of life over the vast area of Eastern Europe until the early eighteenth century. The peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606 restored the situation of unstable borders and periodic raiding. The phenomenon of Islamic raiding, which continued until the French conquered Algiers in 1830, led to the seizure of at least a million Christians over 300 years, in addition to the two million taken from Eastern Europe. Most of the English troops withdrew to defend their homeland in 1588, while others were deployed to quell a Spanish-supported Irish rebellion in Ulster.
