in Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately for the peace of the world his habitual policy of maintaining the existing state of things was frequently obscured and disturbed by his desire to maintain and increase his own and his country's prestige, influence and territory. By the Persian War, which broke out in 1826, in consequence of frontier disputes, he annexed the provinces of Erivan and Nakhichevan, and during the whole of his reign the conquest of the Caucasus was systematically carried on. With regard also to the Ottoman empire his policy cannot be said to have been strictly conservative. As protector Nicholas I. and the Ottoman empire. of the Orthodox Christians he espoused the cause of the rayahs in Greece, Servia and Rumania. Under a threat of war he obtained in 1826 the Convention of Akerman, by which the autonomy of Moldavia, Walachia and Servia was confirmed, free passage of the straits was secured for merchant ships and disputed territory on the Asiatic frontier was annexed, and in July 1827 he signed with England and France the treaty of London for the solution of the Greek question by the mediation of the Powers. As the sultan rejected the mediation, his fleet was destroyed by the combined squadrons of the three Powers at Navarino; and as this “untoward event” did not suffice to overcome his resistance, a Russian army crossed the Danube and after two hard-fought campaigns advanced to Adrianople. Here, on the 14th of September 1829, was signed a treaty by which the Porte ceded to Russia the islands at the mouth of the Danube and several districts on the Asiatic frontier, granted full liberty to Russian navigation and commerce in the Black Sea, and guaranteed the autonomous rights previously accorded to Moldavia, Walachia and Servia. By the 10th article of the treaty, moreover, Turkey acceded to the protocol of the 22nd of March 1829, by which the Powers had agreed to the erection of Greece into a tributary principality. This attempt of Russia to secure the sole prestige of liberating Greece was, however, frustrated by the action of the other Powers in putting forward the principle of the independence of the new Greek state, with a further extension of frontiers.
The result of the war was to make Russia supreme at Constantinople; and before long an opportunity of further increasing her influence was created by Mehemet Ali, the ambitious pasha of Egypt, who in November 1831 began a war with his sovereign in Syria, gained a series of victories over the Turkish forces in Asia Minor and threatened Constantinople. Sultan Madmud II. after appealing in vain to Great Britain for active assistance turned in despair to Russia. Nicholas immediately sent his Black Sea fleet into the Bosphorus, landed on the Asiatic shore a force of 10,000 men, and advanced another large force towards the Turkish frontier in Bessarabia. Under pressure from Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833. England and France the Egyptians retreated and the Russian forces were withdrawn, but the tsar had meanwhile (July 8, 1833) concluded with the sultan the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, which constituted ostensibly a defensive and offensive alliance between the two Powers and established virtually a Russian protectorate over Turkey. In a secret article of the treaty the sultan undertook in the event of a casus foederis arising, and in consideration of being relieved of his obligations under the articles of the public treaty, to close the Dardanelles to the warships of all nations “au besoin,” which meant in effect that in the event of Russia being threatened with an attack from the Mediterranean he would close the Dardanelles against the invader. England and France protested energetically and the treaty remained a dead letter, but the question came up again in 1840, after Mahmud's renewed attempt to crush Mehemet Ali had ended in the utter defeat of the Turks by Ibrahim at Nezib (June 24, 1839). This time Mehemet Ali was supported by the French government, which aimed at establishing predominant influence in Egypt, but he was successfully opposed by a coalition of Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, which checkmated the aggressive designs of France by the convention of London (July 15, 1840) (see Mehemet Ali and Turkey). In this way the development of Russian policy with regard to Turkey was checked for some years, but the project of confirming and extending the Russian protectorate over the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852, The Holy Places. when Napoleon III. obtained for the Roman Catholics certain privileges with regard to the Holy Places in Palestine. At the same time Austria intervened in Montenegrin affairs and induced the sultan to withdraw his troops from the principality. In these two incidents the tsar perceived a diminution of Russian prestige and influence in Turkey, and Prince Menshikov was sent on a special mission to Constantinople to obtain reparation in the form of a treaty which should guarantee the rights of the Orthodox Church with regard to the Holy Places and confirm the protectorate of Russia over the Orthodox rayahs, established by the treaties of Kainarji, Bucharest and Adrianople. The resistance of the sultan, supported by Great Britain and France, led to the The Crimean War. Crimean War, which was terminated by the taking of Sevastopol (September 1855) and the treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856). By that important document Russia reluctantly consented to a strict limitation of her armaments in the Black Sea, to withdrawal from the mouths of the Danube by the retrocession of Bessarabia which she had annexed in 1812, and finally to a renunciation of all special rights of intervention between the sultan and his Christian subjects. Nicholas did not live to experience this humiliation. He had died at St Petersburg on the 2nd of March 1855 and had been succeeded by his eldest son, Alexander II.
The first decade of Alexander's reign is commonly known in Russia as “the epoch of the great reforms,” and may be described Alexander II., 1855-81. as a violent reaction against the political and intellectual stagnation of the preceding period. The repressive system of Nicholas, in which all other public interests were sacrificed to that of making Russia a great military power, the guardian of order in Europe and the predominant factor in the Eastern Question, had been tried and found wanting. Ending in a military disaster and a diplomatic humiliation, it had failed to attain even the narrow object for which it had been created. This was clearly perceived and keenly felt by the educated classes, and as soon as the strong hand of the uncompromising autocrat was withdrawn, they clamoured loudly for radical changes in the aims and methods of their rulers. Russia must adopt, it was said, those enlightened principles and liberal institutions which made the Western nations superior to her not only in the arts of peace but even in the art of War; only by imitating her rivals could she hope to overtake and surpass them in the race of progress. On that subject there was wonderful unanimity, and the few persons who could not join in the chorus had the prudence to remain silent. For the first time in the history of Russia public opinion in the modern sense became a power in the state and influenced strongly the policy of the government. Though the young emperor was of too phlegmatic a temperament to be carried away by the prevailing excitement and of too practical a turn of mind to adopt wholesale the doctrinaire theories of his self-constituted, irresponsible advisers, he recognized that great administrative and economic changes were required, and after a short period of hesitation he entered on a series of drastic reforms, of which the most important were the emancipation of the serfs, the thorough reorganization of the judicial administration and the development of local self-government. All these undertakings, in which the humane, liberal-minded autocrat received the sympathy, support and co-operation of the more enlightened of his subjects, were successfully accomplished. The serfs were liberated entirely from the arbitrary rule of the landowners and became proprietors of the communal land; the old tribunals which could be justly described as “dens of iniquity and incompetence,” were replaced by civil and criminal law courts of the French type, in which justice was dispensed by trained jurists according to codified legislation, and from which the traditional bribery and corruption were rigidly excluded; and the administration of local affairs—roads, schools, hospitals, &c.—was entrusted to provincial and district councils freely elected by all classes of the population. In addition to these great and beneficent changes, means were taken for developing more rapidly the
