the Czar, who desired to have the important city of Kertch as a foothold in the Crimea, and the king of Poland, who objected to leaving Kamienec the key of his kingdom, in the hands of the Turks. At length the five belligerent powers, Russia, Austria, Poland, Venice, and Turkey, and the two mediating powers, England and Holland, sent their representatives to Carlowitz, on the right bank of the Danube, to settle a peace. The treaty made there and then is memorable not only on account of the magnitude of the territorial change which it ratified, and not only because it marks the period when Europe ceased to dread the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, but also because it was then that the Porte and Russia took part, for the first time, in a general European congress; and because, by admitting to that congress the plenipotentiaries of England and Holland, neither of which states were parties to the war, both the Sultan and the Czar thus recognized the principle cf the intervention of European powers for sake of the general good.

The negotiations were long and angry, and there was one point on which the Ottomans were honorably and characteristically firm. Austria required that Count Tekeli, the Hungarian chief, who had taken shelter in Turkey, should be given up as a rebel to the emperor. This was not only refused, but Turkey insisted and obtained the concession, that the confiscated dowry of Tekeli's wife should be restored to her, and that she should be allowed to join her husband in Turkey. This was worthy of the government which afterwards refused to surrender Charles XII., of Sweden, to Peter the Great, when he took refuge at Constantinople, and which, in our own day, risked a war with Austria and Russia, combined, rather than deliver up Kossuth and the other Hungarian refugees-a course of conduct which compares favorably with that of the British government a few years before" when it violated the sanctity of private correspondence in the post office, in order to secure for Austria the patriot brothers, the Bandiera, who were thus sacrificed for merely meditating what has now received the enthusiastic sanction of England in the case of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel.

At length after many weeks of discussion, intrigues and threats, a treaty was concluded between Austria and Turkey for twentyfive years; by which the Austrian emperor was acknowledged sovereign of Transylvania, all Hungary, north of the Marosch,

and west of the Theiss, and of Sclavonia, except a small part be-
tween the Danube and the Saave. With Venice and Poland
treaties were effected without limitation of time. Poland re-
covered Podolia and Kamienec. Venice retained her conquests
in Dalmatia and the Morea, but restored to the Turks those which
she had made to the north of the Isthmus of Corinth. Russia re-
fused to consent to anything more than an armistice for two
years, which was afterwards enlarged into a peace for thirty
years, as for a time the Czar's attention was directed to schemes
of aggrandizement at the expense of Sweden. By this armistice,
the Russians kept possession of Azof and the districts which they
had conquered to the north of the sea of that name. This treaty
was concluded in January, 1699, and in the altered state of the
three greater belligerents, were compared with what they had
been in 1682, recognized the momentous effects of the seventeen
years' war. Russia had now stretched her arms southward, and
grasped the coasts of the Mæotis and the Euxine. At the begin-
ning of the war, Austria trembled for the fate of her capital, and
saw her national existence seriously menaced; at the end, the
house of Hapsburg was left not merely in security, but enlarged,
permanently strengthened and consolidated, while the house of
Othman saw many of its fairest dominions rent away,
and was
indebted for the preservation of the remainder from the conquest
of invading Christians, to the intervention of two other Christian
states. From that time, all dread of the military power of
Turkey has ceased in Europe. Her importance has become diplo-
matic. Other nations have, from time to time, sought to use her
as a political machine against Austria, or the growing power of
Russia; and this diplomatic importance has grown proportion-
ably greater as the sovereigns of Russia became desirous of pos-
sessing the Black Sea for the carrying out of their plans.* An-
other and a more general and enduring cause why the affairs of
Turkey have continued to inspire interest and anxiety, is the con-
sideration of the formidable aggressive power which must be ac-
quired by the conquering state that makes the Ottoman territories
integral portions of its own dominions. The empire which, in the
hands of the Turks, might be feeble for purposes of attack, would,
under the rule of other states, become a power which might crush
the liberties of the world.

* Schlosser's Introduction to the History of the 18th Century.

At the end of another decade, the Sultan seeing the preparations Peter was making for the conquest of Turkey, declared war against him. Peter advanced rapidly to meet the Turkish army, but was caught on the Pruth and surrounded by a powerful force, which left him no option but to make a most abject treaty, surrendering the fortress of Azoff and other fortifications, and engaging not to meddle in future with the affairs of Poland or the Crimea. Not one of the conditions was fulfilled, and thus now, on the banks of the Pruth, or at the siege of Vienna, did Turkey lose by the incapacity or corruption of her generals, the opportunity of quenching her two greatest enemies. Nothing can more decidedly prove her decline than the character of the leading men who, at this time, controlled her destinies. Had the Turkish general cut the Russian army to pieces, or taken them prisoners, and captured or killed Peter, the whole history of Europe might have been changed; for had the Czar been then cut off, his plans might have been nipped in the bud, and Russia kept back while Sweden advanced as the first power of the North.

In the reign of the empress Ann, Russia and Austria attacked Turkey together, by concert, Austria acting in the most treacherous manner, by pretending friendship to the Sultan, and negotiating and mediating till the two conspirators were ready to pounce upon their prey, while the Russian arms, numbering 70,000, and 600 cannon, were everywhere victorious. Austria was defeated, and lost the glory previously won for her by Eugene. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that the temporary superiority of Austria was not in her men, but in the genius of the foreign general who led them. The emperor concluded the peace of Belgrade, by which he suffered shame and disgrace, losing all the possessions which had been gained in the previous war, his best military frontier, and his most considerable fortresses, including Belgrade, the whole of Servia, Austrian Wallachia, and that part of Bosnia acquired in the last war. Russia, mortified also, made peace, because she was unequal to carrying on the war alone. But in the reign of Catherine II., for whom her ability and her licentiousness have procured equal fame, ample amends were made for the practical failure of this futile war. It was under her rule that the Russian policy was most successfully carried into effect-the policy of fomenting disturbance and civil war in adjoining states, in order to create an opportunity for intervention,

subjugation, and absorption of the unhappy belligerents. Her war with Turkey led to the fatal treaty of Kainaroji, by which Turkey partly surrendered her independence, by conceding to Russia the right of mediating on behalf of the Greek Christians subject to the Sultan. It was on this treaty Mentchikoff relied in forcing his demands on Turkey previous to the late war; and by this treaty Catherine obtained a foothold in the Crimea, which ended in its annexation. She was preparing for the conquest of Constantinople when death cut short her designs, but her successors have never lost sight of the prey. From the time of the treaty of Kainanoji to that of Adrianople, in 1829, we see Russia mistress of the whole political scene of Europe. Venice and Austria, who had played so important a part after the treaty of Carlowitz are effaced; Poland is absorbed ; France and England are scarcely mediating powers. Russia directs the diplomatic negotiations of the Porte, and dictates and expounds all matters at Constantinople.

Unfortunately for Turkey, in the wars of the French revolution, which immediately followed, her two most powerful friends were on opposite sides, and their own immediate interests so blinded them to the future, that they sacrificed her between them. Napoleon discovered his error, as regarded Turkey, when it was too late. It was to defeat the designs of Russia on Constantinople that he undertook his famous expedition to Russia, which, signally failing, turned the scale in Europe against him; and, when he was finally conquered, and the crowned heads at Vienna, in 1815, were settling the affairs of Europe, they did not invite Turkey to take a part in the Conference. This was, of course, effected by the influence of Russia, a fatal blunder, which cost much blood and treasure to France and England, in 1854, and leaves Russia at this moment the terror of all Europe. Had Turkey been represented at the Congress, the separation of Greece, the loss of Algiers, and of the Ionian Isles, could not have taken place, and under the joint protection of the treaty, Russia would have been compelled to respect the integrity of the Ottoman empire, and the unfortunate treaty of Adrianople would never have been extorted from the Sultan.

The history of the Greek insurrection is well known. It commenced in Wallachia and Moldavia, because these provinces were near to Russia, and expected her assistance. A secret society

and a conspiracy, long existed among the Greeks, and the Spanish revolution, in 1821, kindled it into a flame of revolt in Wallachia, which was headed by a military leader, who was formerly a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian service. He soon found himself at the head of fourteen thousand men, in Bucharest, the capital of the province. Another insurrection shortly after broke out in the other Danubian province of Moldavia, under the leadership of Ipsilanti, a distinguished officer in the Russian service, of Greek extraction, and son of a former Hospodar of Wallachia. He entered Jassey, the capital of Moldavia, with two hundred horse, and issued a proclamation, calling on the people to rise against Turkey, promising the assistance of Russia.* The effect of these proceedings was instantaneous and great. Very soon Ipsilanti was at the head of 20,000 men. He then organized a battalion, which he styled the Sacred Battalion, which embraced the flower of the youth of the country. Their uniform was black, with a cross formed of bones, in front, having the famous inscription of Constantine: "In this sign you shall conquer." The insurrection next extended to ancient Greece. Here was an opportunity for Russia. The news of the insurrection reached the emperor when he was at the Congress of Laybach. The object which the Court of St. Petersburgh had been laboring for a century to accomplish, seemed within its grasp. The other nations were so occupied with their own social troubles, that they could not offer any effectual resistance to its designs; yet Alexander shrunk back from the conflict. The reason is assigned in his own memorable words to Chateaubriand : 'It devolves on me to show myself the first to be convinced of the principles on which the Holy Alliance is founded. An opportunity presented itself on the occasion of the insurrection of the Greeks. Nothing certainly could have been more for my interests, those of my people, and the opinion of my country, than a religious war against the Turks; but I discerned in the trouble of the Peloponnesus the revolutionary work. From that moment I kept aloof from them." So the autocrat of all the Russias feared the spectre of revolution, which had reared its head in Spain and Italy, and he would give it no encouragement in Greece; but he expected that Turkey would be exhausted in

"

* Annaire Historique iv. 381.

"In hoc signo vinces."