Bridge of Sighs (Oxford) Bridge of Sighs (Oxford) Hertford Bridge, often called "the Bridge of Sighs", is a skyway joining two parts of Hertford College over New College Lane in Oxford, England. Its distinctive design makes it a city landmark. The bridge is often referred to as the Bridge of Sighs because of its supposed similarity to the famous Bridge of Sighs in Venice. However, Hertford Bridge was never intended to be a replica of the Venetian bridge, and instead it bears a closer resemblance to the Rialto Bridge in the same city. There is a false legend saying that many decades ago, a
Transformation of the Ottoman Empire Ottomans, as bandit raids only worsened the agricultural situation in Anatolia. One method of control involved their recruitment into the Ottoman army as musketeers, known as sekban and sarıca. Other methods were tried as well, such as the dispatch of an inspection team in 1659, which confiscated 80,000 illegally held firearms. Following the dramatic demographic growth of the sixteenth century, the seventeenth century population was mostly stable and in some regions even declined, again relatively consistent with general European trends. The empire's premier city was Istanbul, with a population of upwards of 250 thousand in the middle of the sixteenth