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Rh Meanwhile the western sea-powers had made earnest efforts to restore peace, and in August 1737 the plenipotentiaries of the combatant powers met at Niemirov to arrange terms under their mediation. But Austria, which had made a great show of seconding their efforts, now began to unmask her real aims, which were to take advantage of Turkey's embarrassments to push her own claims in the principalities and the Balkan Peninsula. To the refusal of the sultan's representatives to concede any of her demands, Austria replied by revealing the existence of an alliance with Russia, which she threatened to make actively offensive if her terms were refused. In November the conferences broke up; in the spring of the following year Austrian divisions advanced simultaneously into Bosnia, Servia and Walachia; and in July the main army, under the prince of Lorraine, crossed the frontier and captured Nish. In spite of this initial success, however, the campaign proved disastrous to the Austrians; and France, which had meanwhile come to terms with the emperor, endeavoured to mediate a peace in conjunction with Sweden and Holland. But the Ottomans, though the negotiations continued throughout 1738, were in no hurry to come to terms; for the tide of war had turned against both Austrians and Russians; Ochakov and Kinburn were recaptured; and the victorious Turks crossed the Danube and penetrated far into the Banat. Not till the middle of 1739 would they consent to negotiate seriously for peace. The conferences were opened at the close of July in the camp of the grand vizier, who was pressing Belgrade hard and demanded the surrender of the city as a sine qua non. This was conceded; on the 1st of September, under the mediation of the French ambassador Villeneuve, the preliminaries were signed; on the 4th the grand vizier made his formal entrance into the city, where on the 18th the definitive treaties with Austria and Russia were signed. By the former Austria gave up Belgrade and the places on the right bank of the Save and the Danube which she had gained by the treaty of Passarowitz, together with the Austrian portions of Walachia. The treaty with Russia provided that Azov should be razed and its territory devastated to form a barrier, Russia having the right to erect a new fortress at Cherkask, an island in the Don, near Azov, and Turkey to build one on the border of Kuban near Azov. But Taganrog was not to be refortified, and Russia was to have no war-ships on the sea of Azov or the Black Sea. The Kabardias, great and little, were to remain independent, to serve as a barrier between the two empires. By the 12th article the Ottoman government agreed “amicably to discuss” the question of recognizing the tsar's claim to the imperial title, and by the 13th admitted his right to send to Constantinople representatives of whatever rank he might judge fitting (Noradounghian, Recueil, i. 258).

Scarcely two years after the signature of the treaty of Belgrade sinister rumours reached Constantinople from Persia, where Nadir Shah, on his return from India, was planning an attack on Mesopotamia. The war, which broke out in 1743, was waged with varying fortunes, and the peace by which it was concluded on the 5th of September 1746, beyond stipulating for a few privileges for Persian pilgrims to the holy places, altered nothing in the settlement arranged ten years before with Murad IV. In the war of the Austrian Succession, which followed the accession of Maria Theresa to the Habsburg throne, Turkey, in spite of the urgency of France, would take no share, and she maintained the same attitude in the disorders in Persia following the death of Nadir Shah.

In 1754 the Sultan Mahmud died. He was succeeded by

his brother Osman, whose three years' reign was marked by no political event of special importance. Osman III. was succeeded by his cousin Mustafa. At the outset of his reign negotiations

were actively pursued for the conclusion of a treaty with Prussia, to counteract the alliance between France and Austria contracted in 1756; and these resulted in the signature of Capitulations, or a treaty of friendship and commerce (March 22, 1761). The attitude

of the northern powers, however, and especially of Russia, towards Poland was beginning to excite the sultan's liveliest suspicions; and these the accession, in 1762, of the masterful Catherine II. to the Russian throne was not calculated to allay. In 1763, Catherine took advantage of the death of Augustus III. of Poland to force her favourite, Stanislaus Poniatowski, on to the vacant throne. From the committee of patriots at Warsaw complaints and warnings were carried to Constantinople; and the cession of Podolia was offered as the price of a Turkish attack on Russia. The sultan, though inclined to take up the cause of the Polish dissidents, was slow to move, and contented himself for a while with protests and threats. But the aggressive policy of Russia in the direction of the Caspian and Black Seas became more and more evident; complaints reached the Porte of a violation of the neutrality of Kabardia, of a seditious propaganda in Moldavia by Russian monks, and of Russian aid given to the malcontents in Servia and Montenegro. Added to all this was the news of the continual Russian military aggressions in Poland, against which the Catholic confederation of Bar continued to appeal for aid. At last, on the 6th of October 1768, on the refusal of the Russian minister to give guarantees for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Poland and the abandonment of Russia's claim to interfere with the liberties of the republic, war was declared and the Russian representative was imprisoned in the Seven Towers.

The war that followed marks an epoch in the decay of the Ottoman Empire and in the expansion of Russia. When, in the spring of 1769, the first serious campaign was opened by a simultaneous attack by three Russian armies on the principalities, the Crimea and the buffer state of Kabardia, the Turks, in spite of ample warning, were unprepared. They were hampered, moreover, by an insurrection in the Morea, where a Russian expedition under Orlov had stirred up the Mainotes, and by risings in Syria and Egypt. It was not, however, till September that the fall of Khotin in Bessarabia marked the first serious Russian success. The following year was more fatal. In May the Ottoman fleet was attacked and destroyed off Cheshme, and the Russian war-ships threatened to pass the Dardanelles. In June Romanzov's victory at Kartal made him master of the principalities, and by November the fortresses of Izmail and Kilia, guarding the passage of the Danube, and those of Akkerman and Bender on the Dniester had fallen into the hands of the Russians. The campaign of 1771, which opened with a gleam of success in the capture of Giurgevo, proved yet more disastrous to the Turks, the Russians passing the Danube and completing the conquest of the Crimea. Prussia and Austria now offered their mediation; and in June conferences were opened at Focshani, which led to no result. In the following year a conference, from which the Austrian and Prussian representatives were excluded, was opened at Bucharest (November 1772). In February 1773 the Russian plenipotentiary delivered his ultimatum, of which the most important demands were the cession of Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn, the free navigation of the Black Sea and Archipelago for Russian trading and war vessels, and the recognition of the tsar's right to protect the Orthodox subjects of the sultan. These conditions were submitted to Constantinople, and rejected after a stormy debate in the divan. The conference of Bucharest now broke up, and the war continued. The successful defence of Varna and Silistria seemed to justify the stubbornness of the Porte.

On the 24th of December 1773 Mustafa III. died, and was succeeded by his brother Abd-ul-Hamid I., a weakling, from whose character nothing could be expected to retrieve the now desperate fortunes of the war. The exhaustion of the treasury was evidenced by the absence of the usual donative to the troops; and the demoralization in both army and court made further resistance useless. At the beginning of July the Russians, under Kamenskiy, were before Shumla; and a few days later the grand vizier and his army, their communications with the