present in being before whose deadly antagonism its fortunes were at length to fail. A step, however, had about this time been taken toward the impending change, which deserves to be recorded. The Turks were disqualified no less by individual character than by national pretensions for the subtle functions of diplomacy; and the rude violence of their deportment in their foreign relations may be ascribed in no inconsiderable degree to the fierce and obstinate bearing of a true believer. Toward the end of the century, accidental events suggested the employment, in this peculiar capacity of the Grecian subjects of the Porte; who turned to such account the opportunities which were thus afforded them, that they presently monopolised the more important duties of external intercourse. In some sense, the Ottoman Empire was of course a gainer by the substitution of these supple intriguers for its own intractable sons; but the change contributed materially to effect its position in the eyes of other nations, and served incidentally to mark the period at which its characteristic arrogance began to recede.

ifested rather in its neutrality than its aggressiveness. Bacon's doctrine, that there was a perpetual justification of invasive war with the Turks, on the ground of prevention, was evidently an anachronism. Probably no Christian Power, in such a position, could have avoided an active participation in the wars of religion and succession which one after another desolated the European Continent; whereas the arms of Turkey, at this crisis of the destinies of Germany, were again turned with irresistible force upon Persia. It was not until that terrible struggle had been terminated, that the Ottomans were allured, by the seductive representations of Tekeli, to make their last gratuitous demonstrations against the capital of the Western Empire. But the result of this famous invasion was very different from what they had anticipated. Not only were the ramparts of Vienna maintained against Black Mustapha's janizaries, and his spahis scattered by the first charge of Sobieski's cavaliers, but the several particulars of the campaign disclosed the fact, that the pre-eminence in arms had passed at length from the Ottomans to the Christians. The stories of this celebrated With the eighteenth century a new scene siege, and the apparent peril of a second opened upon Europe, in which the part hithChristian capital, tended to revive in no small erto played by Turkey was to be strangely degree the popular horror of the Turk; how-reversed. Though we have brought our ever, in point of fact, the growing ascendency of Christendom had been indisputably shown. Already had the defence of Candia, protracted to more than twice the length of the defence of Troy, demonstrated the resources of even unorganized Europe against the whole forces of the Ottoman Empire, directed by the ablest minister it had ever known; the recollections of Lepanto were reanimated and heightened by a new series of naval victories; and now, for the first time, the superior excellence of European tactics was displayed on the banks of the Danube. Even had Vienna yielded to the first assaults, there is scarcely any room for doubting that the tide of conquest must soon have been both stayed and turned.

Still, although the seventeenth century was to close upon the Porte with humiliation and discomfiture, neither its attitude nor its position among the States of Europe had yet experienced any material change. It no longer indeed maintained a mastery in the field; but it still preserved its traditional carriage in the cabinet. It was still beyond obvious reach of insult or attack, and still affected the haughty language of unapproachable supremacy. It had not yet come to need countenance or protection; nor was the Power at

In

sketch of the Ottoman fortunes to a compar-
atively modern period, we have as yet had
no opportunity of naming that remarkable
nation by whose action they were to be final-
ly regulated. The reader may, perhaps, be
amused with the first dim foreshadowing of
the mighty figures which were to come.
times long past, before the singular succession
of bold and sagacious monarchs on the throne
of Constantinople had been broken by the
elevation of idiots or debauchees from the re-
cesses of the seraglio, some of these powerful
princes, with an enlightenment for which
they have hardly received sufficient credit,
cast about for means of restoring those com- ·
mercial advantages of which their dominions
had been deprived by the discoveries of
Vasco di Gama, and by the consequent di-
version of Eastern trade from the overland
route to an entirely new channel. Among
other projects for this purpose, Selim II.
conceived or revived the idea of connecting
by an artificial canal, at the most convenient
points, the two great streams of the Don and
the Volga, thus opening a navigable passage
from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and es-
tablishing an easy communication between
Central Asia and Western Europe.
seldom that the Ottoman Sultans did their

It was

work negligently. On this occasion the zeal of Selim was quickened by his desire to invade Persia through the new route, and he commenced his canal as it might have been commenced by a king of Egypt. He may be pardoned, in the fulness of his power, for not taking into account the destined opposition to his schemes. As the work, however, was proceeding, a body of men, with uncouth figures, strange features, and barbarous language, sallied out from a neighboring town, surprised the expedition, and cut soldiers and workmen to pieces. These savages were the Muscovite subjects of Ivan the Terrible, -and such was the first encounter of the

Turks and the Russians.

|ercising a highly beneficial though partial influence upon the rising kingdom. But this removal of the grand "princes" or “dukes” from so convenient a capital as Kiev, to what is nearly the centre of the present monarchy, completely cut off the Russians from Constantinople and Christendom; and was the first of those occurrences which so singularly retarded the political development of this mighty State. The second was the invasion of the Moguls.

When, in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Tartars of the Asiatic Highlands burst, for the third time, upon the plains of Europe, they found an easy prey in the disorganized principalities of Russia. Vladimir, About the middle of the ninth century, a as we have remarked, was the capital of a short time before the accession of our Alfred grand duchy, to which a score of princes, the Great, Rurik, one of the Varangian ro- all of the blood of Rurik, owed a nominal alvers of the Baltic, sailed into the Gulf of legiance; but, so destructive had been the Finland, and, with the audacity and fortune consequences of unsettled successions and recharacteristic of his race, established a Nor- peated partitions, that there was nothing to man dynasty at Novogorod. He presently de- oppose the inroad or settlement of the Mogul, spatched a step-son to secure the city of Kiev, and the result was the establishment, upon on the Dnieper, which had formed the south- the banks of the Don, of a Tartar khannat, ern settlements of the old Slavish popula- with undisputed supremacy over the ancient tion, as Novogorod had formed the northern; princes of the land. The sovereignty of the and the invaders thus became the recogniz- horde, however, although complete, was not ed lords of a country which was even then very actively exerted; and, in the two cencalled Russia. To the instincts of the new turies which followed, the grand dukes were setlers, the wealthy and unwarlike empire of left at liberty to work out, in the interior of the East was a point of irresistible attraction, the country, the problem of Russian liberaand five times within a century were the tion. Kiev having now been definitely aban"Russians" conducted by their new rulers to doned, the seats of the three leading princes the siege of Constantinople. The bulwarks, were at Vladimir, Twer, and Moscow; the however, of the imperial city were proof first of which lines enjoyed the supremacy, against the canoes and spears of the barba- until it devolved, in the beginning of the rians; and the last of these expeditions, in fourteenth century, upon Twer, and, in the 955, terminated in an event which precluded course of about fifty years more, upon Mosany recurrence of the trial. By the instru- COW. At this point the succession was finalmentality of a princess, the House of Rurik ly settled in the person of Ivan of Moscow, and its subjects received the doctrines of surnamed Kalita; whose resources were Christianity; and from this time the maraud- strengthened by the gradual conflux of the ing ambition of the Russians was exchanged population upon his territory, as they retired for a deep respect toward that State from from the encroachments of the Lithuanians which they had obtained their religion, their and Poles. His descendents were soon enwritten characters, and many of the usages of abled to hold their own not only against these civilization. Unfortunately, one of the con- nations, but even against their Tartar lords; sequences of the disorders of an irregular and and the frame of a kingdom of "Muscovy" disputed succession was the transfer, about was already formed, when, in 1462, IVAN the year 1170, of the seat of government THE GREAT succeeded to the heritage of his from Kiev to Vladimir. The former city had ancestors. So completely, indeed, had the been early preferred to Novogorod, on ac- collateral lines of the royal stock been subcount of its contiguity to the scene of antici- ordinated to its head, that little more was pated conquest; and, when the relations be- required for the consolidation of a powerful tween its rulers and the Greek emperors had monarchy than the reduction of some muniexperienced the change to which we have cipal republics, and the subjugation of the referred, the proximity was still desirable now enfeebled horde on the Don. These for the sake of an intercourse which was ex-conditions were soon realized. In 1481, Ivan,

assuming the title of Czar, announced himself | as an independent sovereign to the States of Christendom ;--and the EMPIRE OF RUSSIA was formed.

which we have referred, it is probable that the relations between Turkey and Christendom would have been changed at a much early period by the menacing attitude of Russian dominion. Alexis, the second of the Romanoffs, suggested, even in the middle of the seventeenth century, the formation of a holy league against the infidels of Constantinople. His country, however, was as yet in no condition to play the part desired; nor was it, indeed, until the days of Peter the Great, that Russian vessels, after a lapse of nearly eight centuries, again swam the sea of Azov. Still, the future was preparing. The peace of Carlowitz, in 1699, terminated the last of those Turkish wars by which Euro

It actually included Russia and thus was Russia, for the first time, brought seriously into hostile contact with the Porte. It may be even added, that the terms of the treaty were honorable to Peter; nevertheless, although the ascendency of the Imperialist over the Ottoman arms had now been conclusively decided, some time further was to elapse before this superiority was shared by Russia also.

It is very remarkable that even this remote and peculiar State, which then gave so little promise of its future destiny, should thus have been apparently consolidated at the same period which witnessed the definite formation of so many of the European kingdoms. Ivan the Great was contemporary with Maximilian of Austria, with Ferdinand of Spain, and with Louis XI. of France. And circumstances, arising immediately from the events before us, seemed at one moment to favor, in no small degree, the ultimate development of the new dominion. Constanti-pean freedom was conceived to be threatened. nople, the early patroness of Russian progress and civilization, from which the recollections of the people had never, even by the intruding Tartars, been wholly estranged, had now, in her original capacity and influence, become extinct, and was occupied by aliens in religion and race. We may perhaps say, indeed, that this catastrophe was more sincerely felt in Russia than in any other part of Christendom. To the high gratification of his subjects, Ivan raised Sophia, the last of the Greek princesses, to a share of his throne and bed; adopted as the ensign of his State the two-headed eagle, which, by a strange vicissitude, had now been replaced at Constantinople by the old crescent of Pagan Byzantium; and appeared, by his alliance and his sympathies, to have acquired some of the dignity and pretensions of the emperors of the Greeks. Detached, in this manner, from its original connection with the East, the Russian monarchy acquired rather a European than an Asiatic aspect; an exchange undoubtedly conducive to its eventual advancement. Its penance, however, was not yet done. At this critical juncture, when everything appeared to promise the speedy growth of the new Power, the old stock of Rurik, after seven centuries and a half of existence, failed in the third generation from the great Ivan; and a succession of usurpers, invaders, and pretenders for fifteen years, during which interregnum the country narrowly escaped annexation to Poland, threw back the rising monarchy into a condition scarcely better than that from which it had emerged. At length, in 1613, the election of Michael Romanoff to the vacant throne provided Russia anew with a royal stock; and the fated antagonist of the House of Othman was finally established in policy and power. But for the retarding circumstances to

The Turkish Empire entered upon the eighteenth century, considerably damaged by the last campaigns. Its forces had been relatively, though not, perhaps, actually weakened; but its reputation was most seriously diminished. Nevertheless, this very circumstance probably contributed, by finally removing all dread of its aggressions, to promote that peculiar interest which the cabinets of Europe now began to take in its political fortunes. It was, however, the progress of Russia alone which modified the estimation of Turkey among the Western States; and we shall best understand this gradual revolution of opinion by observing the respective positions of the Porte and its new rival, at the close of the several wars by which this century was distinguished. It should be recollected, that the direct influence of Turkey, at this period, upon the European system, was almost exclusively confined to the Northern States. The secret inspiration of France was, indeed, perceptible in the decisions of the Divan; but it was only on the banks of the Vistula and the shores of the Baltic that the vibrations of Ottoman struggles were practically felt. Acting on Russia and Poland through the medium of Cossack and Tartar hordes, which carried their allegiance and their disorder to all these countries in turn,-on Prussia and Sweden through Poland, and on Denmark through Russia,—the

Turkish Empire found itself connected with | the less important moiety of Christendom -its relations with the Great Powers of the West being mainly suggested by its capacities for annoying Austria. In the wars, therefore, of the Spanish succession, as in the other great European contests, the Ottoman Empire was in no way directly mixed. Though its councils, as we shall presently see, became more and more exposed to the intrigues of diplomatists, yet so lordly was the indifference of the Porte to such opportunities, and so capricious and uncertain was its disposition, that no extensive combination could be safely based on its probable de

meanor.

promptly found to renew hostilities with the Ottomans. Indeed, the cabinet of St. Petersburgh appears to have even now almost succeeded to the imperious carriage of the Porte itself. Though, twenty years later, such was the condition of the country, that one of the most intelligent of French diplomatists described it as a country liable, at any moment, to relapse into barbarism, and on that ground disqualified for any permanent alliances; yet it already assumed all the airs of supremacy, so far as even to contest the ancient precedence of France. The war from 1735 to 1739, which now ensued, proved the hinging point in the military fortunes of Turkey. It cannot certainly be termed discreditable in its conduct. Since, notwithstanding that it was actually engaged in Persia with the formidable Nadir Shah, the Porte was still able to show a resolute front to Munnich in the Crimea, and to the Count de Wallis on the Danube, and at length drove the Austrians to a precipitate peace under the walls of Belgrade. But though the honor of the Ottoman arms was thus far unexpectedly maintained, and though no advantage was ever gained against them without a desperate struggle, it was nevertheless demon

When the division of Europe with which it was most immediately concerned had been convulsed by the enterprises of Charles XII. of Sweden, it took no original part in the quarrel; but when, after the defeat of Pultawa, the vanquished hero sought refuge at Bender, the peace of Carlowitz was summarily broken, in behalf of a sovoreign whose inferiority to his adversary had been exposed before all the world. It would be a work of some interest to ascertain how far the Divan was actually influenced by any considerations respecting Russian aggrandize-strated, by the results of the campaign, that ment, and whether, upon this early occasion, its deliberations were swayed by the maxims of more modern policy. That it was not so influenced, to any very great extent, we may perhaps infer from its promptitude in engaging the Czar, and from the justification which such confidence received on the Pruth. Peter was there completely discomfited; and although the Swedish king gained nothing in the end, the advantages obtained by the Turks over the Russians appeared in 1711 quite decisive on the comparative strength of the two parties. In 1724, however, the Divan had begun to look with jealousy, if not apprehension, upon the growth of Russia; and war was only averted by the good offices of the French court. Its ambassador, on this occasion, represented to the Porte, remarkably enough, that the aggrandizement of Russia could be in nowise injurious to the Ottoman interests; but that, on the contrary, it would supply a counterpoise against Austria, the natural enemy of Mahometan power. It is said, that Peter the Great bequeathed certain cabinet traditions for effacing what he considered to be the humiliating features of the treaty of the Pruth; and it is at any rate clear, that when the accession of the Empress Anne introduced fresh spirit into the Russian councils, an opportunity was

the rising power of Russia had at length reached an equality with that of Turkey; nor could it be much longer doubtful with which the superiority would rest for the future. The point had now been reached after which, even if Turkey did not retrograde, yet Russia must continue to advance,—and the distance between them must yearly increase. Even the terms of the particular treaty which followed immediately upon the peace of Belgrade, showed the change of relationship between them. The territorial arrangements were not greatly to the disadvantage of the Porte; but the haughty Ottoman condescended to acknowledge an "Empress" in the Czarina; and an explicit stipulation was introduced for the annulment of all previous conventions, agreements, and concessions, and the recognition of this treaty as solely defining the relations which were to subsist thereafter between the contracting Powers.

After this, all, excepting the actual conquest of the Ottoman Empire, may be said to be virtually over. In fact, even the last war had been commenced with the definite expectation of despoiling the Porte of some, at least, of its European possessions-so precipitate had been its decline. Turkey was now fairly on the descending limb of her orbit;