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 554 General History of Europe In the course of our narrative something has been said of the coming of the Turks into Europe, their capture of Constantinople in 1453, and their conquests westward into Hungary and toward the Adriatic. They even besieged Vienna in 1683, but were shortly after expelled from Hungary about the year 1700. While they ceased to be a serious menace to the Christian states of central Europe, the question arose as to what was to be done with European Turkey, which was largely inhabited by Christians belonging mainly to the Eastern Church. Russia claimed to be the natural protector of the Slavic peoples under the Sultan. The Slavs were of the same race as the great mass of the Russians and shared the same religion. 1001. Russian Influence in Turkey. Catherine the Great man- aged to conquer the Crimea and a region close on the Black Sea and induced the "Porte," as the Turkish government was com- monly called, to grant Russia the right to protect the Sultan's Christian subjects, who belonged to the Greek Church, which was the State Church of Russia. These and other provisions seemed to give the Russians an excuse for intervening in Turkish affairs and offered an oppor- tunity for stirring up discontent among the Sultan's Christian subjects. In 1812, just before Napoleon's march on Moscow, Alexander I forced Turkey to cede to him Bessarabia on the Black Sea, which, down to the present day, is the last of Russia's conquests toward the southwest. 1002. Emergence of Serbia (isi7). Shortly after the Congress of Vienna the Serbians, who had for a number of years been in revolt against the Turks, were able to establish their practical independence (1817), and Serbia, with Belgrade as its capital, became a principality tributary to Turkey. This was the first of a series of Balkan states which have reemerged, during the .nineteenth century, from beneath the Mohammedan inundation. 1003. The National Spirit awakened in Greece. The next state to gain its independence was Greece, whose long conflict against Turkish despotism aroused throughout Europe the sym- pathy of all who appreciated the glories of ancient Greece. The