Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/671

Rh 1791-1827.] TURKEY 649 Constantinople between the janissaries and the remainder of Bairaktar s troops, during which the dethroned sultan Mustafa vas put to death, the janissaries remained con querors, and Mahmud was forced to submit to their de mands. The innovations of the late reign were abolished, and for a while Mahmud seemed content to reign as ser vant of the reaction. It is well known that plans for the partition of the Otto man empire occupied Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit. Austria, though unwilling to see Russia aggrandized, was prepared in the last resort to combine with the dismember ing powers, if all attempts to prevent the execution of the plan by diplomatic means should fail. But after a few years the alliance declined and a war between France and Russia was seen to be inevitable. Meanwhile the conflict on the Danube had been resumed, and the Servians were still in arms. The Russians had advanced into Bulgaria and captured Silistria. England, which had made peace with Turkey in 1809, sought to reconcile the belligerents, in order that the czar might be free to employ his whole Peace of force against Napoleon. In May 1812 a treaty was signed Bucha- a t Bucharest, by which Bessarabia was ceded to Russia, ^ the river Pruth becoming the boundary of the two empires. The Porte in this treaty promised to grant an amnesty to the Servians, to leave to them the management of their internal affairs, and to impose upon them only moderate taxes. These promises, however, were neither accepted by the Servians as a sufficient concession, nor were they observed by the Porte. The Servians continued to fight, and ultimately secured their autonomy about 1817 without help from Russia. Mahmud s Mahmud II. (1808-1839) was the only sultan of modern rnle - times who possessed the qualities of a great ruler. Brought up in the seclusion of the seraglio till the age of twenty- three, when he was suddenly placed on the throne, it is surprising that he should have shown the power, the re solution, and the intelligence which marked his govern ment. The difficulties of his reign were enormous. He belonged to an epoch when the Ottoman empire might fairly be considered as in actual dissolution. This he to some extent arrested, and the reforms which he effected, partial and imperfect as they were, have prolonged the existence of the Turkish state to our own day. The first and most obvious internal danger to be met was the insub ordination of the provincial pashas. Against these rebelli ous servants Mahrnud waged a persistent and unwearying war, now employing them against one another, now crush ing them by his own armed force. One of the most for- Ali Pasha midable was Ali Pasha of Janina, who had made himself of Janina. master of Albania and part of Greece. When Mahmud in 1820 threw his armies upon this chieftain, the outbreak of hostilities in Epirus was the signal for the insurrection of Greece. While Hypsilanti, grandson of a hospodar of Moldavia who had been put to death by the Porte, raised the standard of revolt in Moldavia, asserting that Russia had promised the Christians its support, the Greeks of Greek re- the Morea rose and exterminated the Turkish population among them. Hypsilanti was soon crushed ; and the ris ing in the Morea was answered by massacres of the Greeks in the principal cities of the empire, and by the execution of Gregory, patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Greek Church. These deeds of violence excited the utmost indignation in Russia. A despatch was sent to Constanti nople, calling upon the Porte to restore the churches which had been destroyed, to guarantee the inviolability of Christian worship in the future, and to discriminate in its punishments between the innocent and the guilty. These demands were presented as an ultimatum by the Russian ambassador, who, not receiving an answer within the time allowed, quitted Constantinople (27th July 1821). The volt. influence of Austria and England, however, restrained the emperor Alexander from declaring war, and the Greeks were left to sustain their combat by themselves. As long as Ali Pasha was unsubdued, the only forces which the sultan could employ against the Greeks were irregular bands of volunteers. It was by one of these hordes that the fearful massacres of Chios, in the spring of 1822, were perpetrated. In that same spring, however, the overthrow and death of Ali set free the regular troops. Two armies of considerable strength now moved southwards from Thessaly, with the object of reducing the country north of the Gulf of Corinth and then uniting to conquer the Morea. The western army, commanded by Omer Brionis, was checked by the Suliotes, and subsequently beaten back by the defenders of Missolonghi. The eastern army, after advancing under the command of Dramali into the Morea, was compelled to retreat. But the passes in its rear had been seized by the Greeks ; on all sides the enemy closed in upon it ; and it was only through the disorders of the Greeks themselves that Dramali s force escaped annihila tion. Of those who survived the encounter most perished by sickness and famine in the neighbourhood of Corinth. Nor was the fortune of the Ottomans better at sea. The destruction of their admiral s vessel with all its crew by the fire-ship of the Greek captain, Kanaris, caused such terror that all further attempts to reduce the islands were abandoned, and the fleet returned to the Dardanelles. After an interval of ineffective land warfare, the sultan determined to call upon Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, for assistance. Mehemet had risen to power in the disturbed period that followed the expulsion of the French from Egypt. He had a more powerful fleet than that of his sovereign, and an army disciplined after the European system. In calling upon his powerful vassal for help the sultan must have been aware of the dangers which his ag grandizement would involve. Mehemet eagerly responded Mehemet to Mahmud s call ; and his son Ibrahim, in command of a Ali&amp;gt;s as- powerful armament, set sail in the spring of 1824 from istance Alexandria against Crete. This island was rapidly quered, and Ibrahim, after failing in some combined opera tions against Samos, crossed over to the Morea. Here he marched across the peninsula, carrying all before him. Nauplia alone maintained its defence, while the Egyptian sent out his harrying columns, slaughtering and devastat ing in every direction. From the Morea Ibrahim was summoned to assist the Turks, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully engaged in a second siege of Mis solonghi. Ibrahim began his siege operations in the beginning of 1826 ; but it was not for three months more that Missolonghi fell. The tide of Ottoman conquest moved on eastwards, and the acropolis of Atlfens capitu lated in the following year. But the defence of Misso longhi had lasted long enough to bring the powers of Europe into the field. On the death of the emperor Alexander at the end of 1825, Canning sent the duke of Wellington to St Petersburg to negotiate conditions of joint diplomatic action on the part of England and Russia. A protocol signed at St Petersburg on 4th April 1826 fixed the conditions on which the mediation of Great Britain was to be tendered to the Porte. Greece was to remain tributary to the sultan, but to be governed by its own elected authorities and to be independent in its com mercial relations. The surviving Turkish population was to be removed from Greece ; all property belonging to Turks, whether on the continent or the islands, was to be purchased by the Greeks. This protocol was developed into the treaty of London between England, Russia, and France, signed in July 1827, by which the three powers bound themselves to put an end to the conflict in the East. In pursuance of this treaty the mediation of the XXIII. 82