ABSTRACT
The Crimean War caught the Ottoman Army in the midst of a radical military transformation. A mixture of old and new faced the Russians. The Ottoman officer corps was a mixture of everything. There were officers graduated from the modern European style military higher education institutions and officers commissioned from the ranks or protégés of the sultan or high officials. That's why European observers had difficulty in understanding and describing the Ottoman military. An army of ignorant and primitive peasants commanded by corrupt and equally backward officers was the general perception of contemporary Western observers. It is true that the Ottoman army and its officer corps were wholly unprepared for modern warfare in 1853. However, thanks to the war, academically trained officers without any aristocratic and political connections gained power and prestige slowly. The influx of Hungarian and Polish emigrant officers revitalized the military reforms thereby empowered the Military Academy graduates. Education, training and battlefield performance rather than status and household politics came to determine commission and promotion. Unfortunately for the empire both the military reforms and new generation of academy graduates needed time and resources which the empire did not have.
