this important privilege permanent, Russia by secret articles
of the Treaty of Bucharest had secured the cession of this
district, in return for an undertaking to destroy the forts of Kilia
and Izmail on the Danube. But the sultan refused to ratify
these articles, and the relations between Russia and Turkey
were therefore determined by the patent treaty only, which
positively stipulated for the evacuation by the Russians of
every spot occupied by them on Turkish soil in Asia. When the
Russians showed no signs of withdrawing from the valley of
the Rion, the sultan threatened to renew the war, the sole
result of which was to reveal the determination of the tsar
not to be bullied into concessions. The dispute, at first of
little importance, developed in seriousness during the next
year or two, owing to the avowed intention of Russia, which by
conquest or treaties with independent chiefs had acquired all
the high land between the Caspian and the Black Sea, to
take possession of the low lands along the coast, between Anapa
and Poti, of which the sultan claimed the sovereignty.
Such was the situation when the question of a European guarantee of Turkey was raised at the Congress of Vienna. Congress of Vienna. In view of the multiple dangers to which the Ottoman Empire was exposed, both from without and from within, and of the serious consequences to the world's peace which would result from its break-up, there was a strong feeling among the powers in favour of such a guarantee, and even the emperor Alexander was willing to agree to it in principle. But nothing could be done until the Porte should have come to terms with Russia as to the Treaty of Bucharest; for, as the British ambassador, Sir Robert Listen, was instructed to point out to the Ottoman government, “it is impossible to guarantee the possession of a territory of which the limits are not determined.” With the consent of the tsar, it was proposed to submit the questions at issue to the decision of Great Britain, France and Austria; and the Porte was informed that, in the event of its accepting this arrangement, the powers would at once proceed to guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But the sultan could not bend his pride to suffer foreign intervention in a matter that touched his honour, and the return of Napoleon from Elba threw the Eastern Question into the background. The Ottoman Empire thus remained outside the European concert; Russia maintained her claim to a special right of isolated intervention in its affairs; and the renewal of war between Russia and Turkey was only postponed by the preoccupation of Alexander with his dream of the “Confederation of Europe.”
Meanwhile, within the Ottoman Empire there was every sign of a rapidly approaching disintegration. In Egypt Mehemet Egypt. Ali had succeeded in establishing himself as quasi-independent ruler of the country. By his action during Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion, and later when the British fleet after leaving Constantinople in 1807 proceeded to Egypt, he had to some extent acquired the goodwill of the Turkish government. In 1811 he was called upon by the Porte to put down the Wahhābi insurgents (see Arabia, vol. ii. p. 268), his success in this matter, and especially in the recovery of the holy cities, adding greatly to his prestige.
Sultan Mahmud now devoted himself to breaking the overgrown power of the local governors, which had for many years practically annihilated that of the central authority. Their extortions impoverished the whole country, yet the abolition of the system might perhaps have been carried out more gradually and with greater precaution, and Turkey more than once felt the want of their aid, questionable as its value often was. Thus Greek Revolt. Ali (q.v.), Pasha of Iannina, the most famous of these, though insubordinate and inclined to intrigue with foreign powers in the hope of making himself independent, had used his influence to keep the Greeks quiet; and it was only after his power had been broken in 1821 that the agitation of the Hetairia issued in widespread dangerous revolt. The first hope of emancipation from the Turkish yoke had been founded by the Greeks on Peter the Great, who had planned the expulsion of the Turks from Europe and had caused the inscription “Petrus I., Russo-Graecorum Monarcha” to be placed beneath his portrait engraved at Amsterdam. Catherine II. following in his footsteps, aspired to found a Greek empire, the throne of which was to be occupied by her nephew, Constantine, specially so baptized, and brought up by Greek nurses (see Constantine Pavlovich). During the war of 1770 the Greeks had risen in an abortive rebellion, promptly crushed by the Turks. But the idea of liberation continued to grow, and about 1780 the Society of Friends (Ἑταιρία τῶν φιλικῶν) was founded at Bucharest by the fervent patriot and poet, Constantinos Rhigas (q.v.). The secret organization, temporarily checked by Rhigas's arrest and execution in 1798, was revived at Odessa in 1814; it extended throughout Turkey, and in 1820 the insurrection took shape, a favourable opportunity being afforded by the outbreak of hostilities between Ali Pasha and the Porte. (See Greek Independence, War of.)
On the 6th of March 1821 Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, son of the hospodar Constantine, and a general in the Russian service, crossed the Pruth, proclaiming the revolt of the Greeks against the sultan and the intention to restore the Greek Empire of the East. But in the principalities, where the Vlach peasants regarded the Phanariots as worse oppressors than the Turks, the movement had little chance of success; it was doomed from the moment that the emperor Alexander disavowed Ypsilanti's claim to his support (see Alexander I.). After some initial successes the Greeks were finally routed at the battle of Dragashani (June 19, 1821). It was far otherwise with the insurrection which broke out at the beginning of April in the Morea. The Mussulman population of the Morea, taken unawares, was practically exterminated during the fury of the first few days; and, most fatal of all, the defection of the Greeks of the islands crippled the Ottoman navy by depriving it of its only effective sailors. The barbarous reprisals into which Sultan Mahmud allowed himself to be carried away only accentuated the difficulty of the situation. The execution of the patriarch Gregorios, as technically responsible for the revolt, was an outrage to all Christendom; and it led at once to a breach of diplomatic relations with Russia.
To prevent this breach developing into war was now the chief study of the chanceries. Public opinion throughout Europe was violently excited in favour of the Greeks; and this Philhellenic sentiment was shared even by some of the statesmen who most strenuously deprecated any interference in their favour. For at the outset Metternich was not alone in maintaining that the war should be allowed to burn itself out “beyond the pale of civilization.” The mutual slaughter of barbarians in the Levant seemed, even to George Canning, a lesser evil than a renewed Armageddon in Europe; and all the resources of diplomacy were set in motion to heal the rupture between Turkey and Russia. In spite of the emperor Alexander's engagements to the Grand Alliance and the ideal of European peace, this was no easy matter; for the murder of the patriarch was but the culmination of a whole series of grievances accumulated since the Treaty of Bucharest. Moreover, the Porte was thrown into a suspicious mood by the contrast between the friendly language of the western powers and the active sympathy of the western peoples for the Greeks, who were supported by volunteers and money drawn from all Europe. But, though the sultan remained stubborn, the emperor Alexander, who since the Congress of Laibach had been wholly under Metternich's influence, resisted the clamour of his people for war, and dismissed his Greek minister Capo d'Istria (q.v.). The Congress of Verona (1822) passed without any serious developments in the Eastern Question.
The stubborn persistence of the Greeks, however, dashed Metternich's hope that the question would soon settle itself, and produced a state of affairs in the Levant which necessitated some action. In the instructions drawn up, shortly before his death, for his guidance at Verona, Castlereagh had stated the possibility of the necessity for recognizing the Greeks as belligerents if the war continued. The atrophy of the Ottoman
