was as new and strange as the event was "untoward," by which British and French ships of war were allied with Russian, in destroying the naval power of the Turks. The battte of Navarino was "an event unexampled in the history of nations." And the unwonted league of France and England, to the formation of which jealousy of Russia may have somewhat conspired, was, by a remarkable fatality, the death-blow of the Turkish navy, and by giving the the command of the Euxine to the Russians, led to a new series of calamities to the Ottomans.

While the policy of Europe was directed to stay the threatened war, the sultan, by an act which "cut short all intermission," gave new proof to the truth of the proverb, with illustrations of which history is full, and Bonaparte is an example, quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat-God first deprives of reason the man whom he has devoted to destruction. Το call forth the fanatical fury of the Moslem population, as if to see whether Islamism had still. the spirit or the fate to conquer, or was doomed to triumph or to fail in a war professedly religious, the sultan issued a despatch by the reis effendi, to all the pashas of the provinces, in which he avowed that his pretended negotiations with Russia "had been only devices to delay actual hostilities, till he should be able to sustain them," and that from the beginning "every thing announced that the answer to the proposition of the Franks would at last have to be given by the sabre alone."*

Russia declared war against Turkey on the 26th of April 1828. A Russian army, under Paskewitch, after having defeated the Persians and enforced peace, was in readiness on the eastern frontier of Turkey to invade its territories. Immediately on

* Ann. Reg. 1928, p. 222.

the declaration of war, "the sultan was attacked in his Asiatic pachalics; a Turkish army was put to flight; four entrenched camps were attacked, and taken possession of; the fortress of Achakalaki was reduced and occupied; and the conquerors took the city of Achalzik itself by storm, after an assault of thirteen hours, in the course of which the garrison of four thousand men were put to the sword. Paskewitch next overran, with little opposition, the pachalic of Bajazet, (Bayazid,) and was preparing to march against Erzerum, in the end of October, when the approach of winter put an end to the campaign."*

66

On the north, Turkey was invaded by a Russian army of an hundred and fifteen thousand men.Ӡ The Turks fought with their ancient fury, as if they still had been prepared to slay. After desperate and long-continued sieges, Brailow was taken, and Varna surrendered. Other fortresses along the coast of the Euxine were yielded up to the Russians, and while their partial disasters led to new exertions, a way was prepared for the more splendid successes of the following year.

In 1829, the power of the Turkish empire was broken, though the empire itself was preserved. Literally and historically, without reference to prophecy, it might, be said that "tidings out of the east and out of the north troubled" the Porte. On the east two Turkish armies were successively defeated; and Erzerum, the capital of Anatolia, fell into the hands of the invaders. And scarcely were these conquests won, when, after the fall of Silistria and of "the ports of the Euxine one after another" and the defeat of the grand visier, the Balkan was passed, and the head-quarters of the

* Ann. Reg. 1828, p. 222.

† Ibid. p. 242.

Russians were soon in the city of Adrianople. "Experience was thus teaching the Turkish government in every direction, that it was involved in a struggle, in which continued resistance would only render ultimate ruin more inevitable and decisive.”* "When the Ottoman government learned that the Balkan had been passed-that the Russian army was hurrying on from victory to victory, and that no force existed to bar their march to Constantinople, the true situation of their affairs was revealed to them. The capital was in consternation."† The banner of the prophet, which had wrought the destruction of the janisaries, was unfurled in vain. And the sublime porte submitted to the terms of peace dictated by the Russian commander.

The sultan, ere the contest began, called forth the Turks to the defence of their faith, and proclaimed a religious war which was to decide the fate of Mahometanism. But it was destined to fall without hand, and the Russians did not destroy it, or subvert the empire of the Ottomans. Consternation had indeed seized the Turkish government, from simultaneous tidings out of the east and out of the north. But as, in "the fatal moment," Constantinople had been saved, when assaulted by the Turks, when the time of their preparation to slay was not complete, so in the moment of conquest and triumph, the progress of the armies of Russia was stayed at the very time when the empire of Turkey, in Asia and Europe, seemed to be prostrated before them. And although the conquest of Constantinople had long been accounted the main object of the policy of the Czars, it fell not by foreign foes.

From the testimony of a British officer who was

* Ann. Reg. 1829, p. 217.

† Ibid. p. 218.

present on the scene, who " had arrived from England to join the army in the field and to see the operations of the campaign," and who had access to the tent and table of Marshal Diebitch, the Russian commander-in-chief, the true state of the Russian army at the close of their conquests, and after the taking of Adrianople, is illustrated by direct evidence.

"In the beginning of October (1829) there were only eight thousand effective men with the headquarters; for of the thirty thousand to the south of the Balkan, at least nine thousand were sick, and dying with plague and fever. The supposed loss this year was one hundred thousand men, and last year more, principally during the siege of Varna, and the disastrous retreat of Silistria. Thirteen thousand men kept up the communication between the coast, the Balkan and head-quarters, and chains of posts were judiciously established from the blockading army before Schumla, to guard against surprise from that quarter. However, the pacha of Scutari, from his head-quarters at Philipopolis, gave some trouble, and attacked the Russian foraging parties."* "As the pacha of Scutari continually threatened to attack, with his whole force, the Russian head-quarters, it was thought advisable to call in from the advanced posts at Kirklissi, &c., the division of Count Pahlen."+

The

Peace was preferable, even by the victors, thus circumstanced, to a prolongation of the war. Russians, with the exception of part of an Asiatic province, agreed to abandon all their conquests. But liberty from the Turkish yoke was secured, by the temporary occupation of the Russian troops, to

*Captain Alexander's Travels to the Seat of War in the East, p. 127. #Ibid. p. 129.

the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, inhabited by Christians of the Greek Church, and not a Turk was to be permitted to reside to the north of the Danube. The liberty and independence of Servia was also secured; and the region inhabited by Franks in the European dominions of Turkey, Greece being already free, having thus been released from the despotism of the sultan, the great body of the Turkish empire, over which Mahometanism prevails, was left to its destined or predicted fate. The pacha of Scutari, who hung on the rear of the Russian army, and whose threatened attacks induced the invaders to call in their advanced posts, soon after raised the standard of rebellion, and it remained to be seen in what other manner the waters of the Euphrates should continue to be dried up, or whether the time was come that the second woe should terminate and pass away like the first, by mutual destruction, and the Turks, like the Saracens, should kill each other.

In 1729, an army of 40,000 French landed on the African coast, defeated an equal numerical force of Turks and Arabs, took Algiers, converted a province of Turkey into a colony of France, and thus dried up one of the sources of the Turkish power.

But internal dissension soon succeeded to external war, to hasten, as it would seem, the ruin of Islamism, Reform is ill adapted to support a system of imposture, such as that of Mahometanism, even as it is also incompatible with the pretended infallibility of the Romish church. The changes introduced by the sultan were abhorrent to the feelings of the fanatical Turks, and prejudicial to the interests of the despotic pachas. And when the victories of the Russians had lessened the terrors of the bow-string, and the charm of the grand Seignor's power was broken, and Greece had set the exam