most modern of all the dynasties of Europe-in 1613, formed the era of the first consolidation of the Russian territories into a compact and powerful monarchy. The earliest hostilities between the Muscovite and the Turkish standards date about forty-five years previously (A.D. 1568-70). The commercial energy of the Ottoman State had then suggested the extension of its commercial relations on the Caspian and the inland waters of Southern Russia; and a force was accordingly despatched to lay siege to Astrakhan. This expedition was unsuccessful; and the first occasion of hostility between Russia and Turkey marked the prowess of the Russian arms. From that period the dominion of the Crimea became the principal subject of contest between the hostile governments.

This peninsula-famous through the traditions and vicissitudes of two thousand years-was then ruled by its Khans. These Khans it was the policy of Turkey to sustain and of Russia to assail; as though either State even then foresaw the influence which the possession of the Crimea would ultimately work upon the fortunes of the East. So powerful were these rulers of the CrimTartar race even in the seventeenth century, that they then extended their victorious arms as far as Moscow, and imperilled the very existence of the Russian power. The Crimean Khans, though virtuallyindependent, were then titularly the vassals of the Porte: and every motive of ambition, of policy, and of revenge thus stimulated the Czars of Muscovy, with the increase of their military power, to subjugate, in the first instance, this outwork of the Ottoman strength, as the basis of their future schemes against the Turkish dominion in Europe.

The definitive declension of the Ottoman power is clearly to be dated from the peace of Carlowitz, concluded, after a war of seventeen years' duration, in 1699. The impolicy of the Turkish Government in that period had caused nearly all the adjacent Powers to conspire for its destruction. Russia, governed by the genius and the ambition of Peter the Great; Poland, directed by the military heroism of Sobieski; Austria, still powerful in the elasticity of its political resources; and Venice, pur

suing the career of conquest and subjugation which it had initiated on the ever-memorable waves of Lepanto; constituted the irresistible confederacy against an anti-Christian State which had still the hardihood to declare itself the enemy of the European Powers. This seventeen years' war was essentially, in relation to the Ottoman Porte, what our recent hostilities will probably prove in relation to the court of St. Petersburg :it placed an effectual check upon a policy of territorial aggression. The Turks had been driven back, in signal discomfiture, by Sobieski from the walls of Vienna: they had been ejected from the Morea by the vigorous administration of the Venetian Republic: and they had yielded to the final establishment of military and commercial settlements on the shores of the Sea of Azoff, by the dogged perseverance of the Russians under the administration of Peter. But for the far-seeing policy of William III. who then controlled the government both of Great Britain and of Holland-it seems clear that the Ottoman State would have been brought to the verge of destruction. That sovereign, in 1698, succeeded in arresting the unequal contest in the East of Europe, by the interposition of the powerful mediation of the British and Dutch Governments. The correspondence of the Sultan with Lord Paget, the British Ambassador at the Turkish Court, strikingly evinces the respect which was then entertained for our own country by the most distant monarchy of Europe. Austria was won over by the representations of William to a policy of peace and from this period we may date the rise of her jealousy of the Russian power on the coasts of the Euxine. Peter the Great, less skilled in diplomacy than in domestic administration, found himself reduced to the alternative of a peace, or of fighting single-handed against Turkey. By territorial cessions, on the part of the Porte, to each of the belligerent Powers, the Peace of Carlowitz, under the auspices of William III., reas sured, in 1699, the existence of the Ottoman State, though it sealed the doom of its political ascendancy.

The dawn, then, of the eighteenth century brings Russia and Turkey to an approximate equality of power.

In point of naval prowess, however, Turkey was still all-powerful. She was still possessed of the whole coast of the Euxine, with the exception of the few settlements on the northern shore, for the retention of which the Czar Peter had stipulated in the Treaty of Carlowitz. It was under these encroachments from the North, that that position of international law, which had declared the Euxine an inland sea, began to undergo a change; and the ancient law -confirmed in the treaty of the Dardanelles in 1809, and again in the treaty of 13th July, 1841-which recognised in the Turkish Government the power of closing the Straits of the Bosphorus, arose not from the concession of the different Powers towards Turkey, but from the retention of the original rights of that Government.

From this period the hostility of Russia and Turkey appears to have become traditionary, instinctive, and irreconcileable. Poland was now rapidly declining; Austria more and more involved in warfare with the West; and Venice receding from its proud maritime pretensions.

The

Russian and Turkish Governments henceforth began to absorb the chief share in the international politics of the East. The Muscovite had now succeeded to the career of conquest and aggression which the declining power of the Osmanli had tacitly repudiated. The former had now replaced his ancient standard by the double eagle of the Byzantine emperors and so far, therefore, as the Czars could be regarded as the successors of the Eastern Cæsars, it was obvious that the relations of the Christian and the Turk in the East of Europe had now become directly inverted that the policy of the Turk had become a policy of repression and retention, and that of the Christian a policy of aggrandisement and spoliation.

The first twenty years of the eighteenth century shook the conviction of that age in the inevitable decline of the Turkish Power. The last war which the Great Peter undertook against the Ottomans was wholly disastrous to the Russians. Venice, too, was simultaneously driven out of the Crimea. But the Treaty of the Pruth (1711) concluded

VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXXI.

between Russia and the Porte was, in the circumstances, singularly favourable to the defeated Power; and, as if to restore the balance of the Peace of Carlowitz, Austria secured in the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), after a victorious campaign, extensive cessions of territory from the Turks.

It is singular to observe that the principles of foreign policy which have been illustrated in the war from which we have just emerged, are strikingly identical with those that passed current in Europe a century and a half before. England appears to have manifested the same jealous watchfulness of the rights of Turkey throughout this period. The ministers of George I., sustaining the wise policy of William III., brought about the peace of Passarowitz by a timely intervention between Turkey and Austria, much as William had brought about the peace of Carlowitz by just such an intervention principally between Turkey and Russia. It is worthy of remark that in these early contests, Great Britain has been far more solicitous for the interests of the East than the French Court. Here, in truth, we have a triumphant answer to the favourite assertion of the Germans, that our recent sacrifices in support of the Turkish Empire were dictated simply by a selfish consideration for the safety of our Indian empire; for those sacrifices in truth illustrated but a simple conformity to the maxims which the British government had laid down half a century before the foundation of our Indian settlements.

The next period of Turkish history -extending over fifty-six years, and ranging from the Treaty of Passarowitz to the Treaty of Kainardji, 1718-1774-marks the rapid decline of Turkey, the equally rapid advance of Russia, and the definitive character imparted to the politics of the East. If, indeed, we can once conceive the idea of the Government of a State as an individual, a moral, and responsible agent, we shall see the most striking instances of the principle of retribution working its course through the scheme of political affairs, and surely though slowly retaliating the crimes and iniquities of each Government on itself. No more conclusive evidence of this truth is to be obs 2

served than in the conduct of Austria throughout that period. Had the equally impolitic and unjustifiable wars of this state against Turkey during the eighteenth century never been waged, Austria would have probably remained to this day in her pristine strength, overshadowed in no greater degree by a preponderance in Russia than in Turkey. The disastrous issue of the wars which Russia forced on Turkey was clearly the result of the junction of Austria with Russia. The same scheme for the appropriation of the Polish soil, by which the Court of Vienna thought to extend its power, is now working its gradual destruction. Turkey, in the moral alienation of her Christian dependencies, is now working the natural result of her ancient tyranny. And if Russia as yet appears to have only profited by the iniquities in which she has taken part with others, it is impossible to doubt that the perfidy of her external and the cruelty of her internal government supply strong probabilities of an extensive confederacy from without, and of universal disunion from within, which may one day annihilate the proud fabric of the Russian power.

The wars, then, intervening between the Treaties of Passarowitz and Kainardji were characterised by the double aim of absorbing the independence of Poland, and of appropriating the frontier lands of the Turkish empire, both by Austria and Russia. The Court of Vienna sought for an extended territory on the Danube-the Court of St. Petersburg on the Black Sea. Hitherto Turkey had possessed a powerful ally in the North of Europe. In place of a powerful ally she at length gained a powerful enemy. For the friendship of Sweden and of Charles XII., she had now to encounter the hostility of Prussia and the Great Frederic. The Russo-Prussian Treaty of 1764 deterImined the definitive alliance of the Houses of St. Petersburg and Hohenzollern; and we even yet trace its effects on the destinies of Turkey. To this formidable confederacy the Ottoman empire finally succumbed; and the Treaty of Kainardji, in 1774, which proclaimed the result of the struggle between the Mahometan and the Christian Powers, was regarded

by nearly all the politicians of that age as heralding the inevitable dissolution of the Turkish empire.

But events did not long remain at this point. The stipulations of the treaty which had provided for the independence of the Crimea, were followed by the annexation of that peninsula to Russia. That empire, in conjunction with Austria, next schemed a partition of the Turkish soil, as they had already, with the sanction of Russia, parted out the soil of Poland. The intervention of England once more saved Turkey from her doom; and the Treaty of Jassy again gave a peace to the East, attesting the progress of the Muscovite dominion.

The Treaty of Bucharest, in 1812, consigned to Russia the whole northern coast of the Euxine, between the Sea of Asoph and the mouths of the Danube. That of Adrianople, 1829, somewhat extended this enormous acquisition by adding to the Russian dominion the possession of the Delta intervening between the several Danubian mouths. This treaty, however, was rather of a commercial than of a territorial character. It has, in fact, been a common error to ascribe to the Treaty of Adrianople those territorial cessions which had been made seventeen years previously in the Treaty of Bucharest. The earlier Treaty destroyed the Ottoman dominion in the Black Sea: the latter annihilated the Austro-Turkish commerce on the Danube.

The political declension of Turkey, however, was singularly marked by a proportionate commercial growth. The entrance of that Empire into the European system, in the character of a Commercial State, dates from the year 1535. This was effected in the first capitulation granted to Francis I. of France, which guaranteed the privileges of French merchants. Towards the end of the same century three English merchants proceeded to Constantinople, and obtained similar privileges. Nothing can more fully illustrate the idea of barbarity which was then attached in Western Europe to the Turkish Court, than the fact that one of these mercantile adventurers was appointed the Ambassador of Queen Elizabeth to the Porte. Additional privileges were

now obtained by the mission of Sir Thomas Roe in the reign of James I. For the progress, however, of commercial intercourse between Turkey and the West of Europe, we must refer our readers to the Collection of Commercial Treaties, ably edited by Mr. Hertslet of the Foreign Office.

The historical character of the CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGES forms a more engrossing subject at the present moment, when it has been the aim of our diplomacy to secure these privileges in conjunction with the supremacy of the Central Power. We are ourselves in no apprehension that the recent legislation of Turkey will be found to have embraced, as is commonly supposed, two incompatible ideas-namely, that of sovereignty in the titularly dominant, and of liberty in the titularly servile race. The

whole history of Turkish conquest, as we have already indicated, strikingly enunciates the very imperfect Sovereignty which the Sultans obtained, in their most glorious age, over the outlying principalities. Their mediæval treaties with the Chiefs of Moldavia and Wallachia were scarcely more binding or more rigorous in their terms, than those of which we have lived to witness the conclusion. When the Porte formed the only maritime power on the Euxine, we have seen that the Khans of the Crimea were nearly independent potentates. In fact, the colonial policy of the Turks has been traditionally more wise and moderate than any other attribute of their dominion. They seldom aimed at a fusion of races professing incompatible religions, or at the complete subordination of a population possessed of a military character and an independent spirit. Their conduct in this respect was like that of the Romans --like that of Charlemagne-and like that of Napoleon. To the Turksas to the acute statesmen of antiquity, to the Carlovingian chiefs, and to the ministers of Imperial France-it was obvious that where the bonds of conquest became intolerable, they were ever liable to be broken.

Ab

solute rebellion, indeed, was invariably met by the Turks with absolute repression. But where their suzerainté was acquiesced in, they were more often willing to leave these provinces as the propugnacula im

perii of Roman story-to unite the ascendancy of the one with the qualified freedom of the other-and to rely upon reciprocal interest and mutual succour to maintain the rights of either against foreign power.

This, then, is exactly the political system which the Allies have sought to enforce, and which Russia has continuously endeavoured to destroy. In the Crimea her first effort was directed to the abolition of the Turkish suzerainté. Her next was to annex the territory, thus disjoined from the hostile state. So in Moldavia and Wallachia, she has more recently introduced her own Protectorate conjunctively with that of Turkey. These were obviously more insidious means of gaining the same end. The religious freedom of those Christians who did not enjoy the advantage of a separate government has not, indeed, been hitherto secured. But as, in the distinct Principalities, religious rights were an inevitable incident of the political rights which had been traditionally maintained, it is obvious that these concessions of the Turkish government have introduced no fresh principle into her internal polity.

It is easy to appreciate, then, the magnitude of the results of the recent war in the East of Europe. Turkey had been threatened, first, by the fleet of Sebastopol; secondly, by the insidious encroachment of Russia on the side of her Principalities; thirdly, by Muscovite intrigues with the Courts of Asia. Two of these three menaces are now swept away. That great naval armament which SO long threatened the heart of the Ottoman empire with sudden overthrow-and that jurisdiction in the Principalities which was insidiously usurping the trans-Danubian provinces of Turkey -are now extinguished. The allied armies now relinquish to Russia the possession, not of proud arsenals and fleets on the coast of that Crimea in the conquest of which she lavished the blood of a century and a-halfbut of vessels rotting beneath the waters that were long their cradle and their protection, and of vast dockyards, storehouses, and quays, now blasted by explosions of gunpowder, and transformed into one chaotic mass of irreversible ruin. The flag of Turkey waves once more in uncontested do