When he had thus sacrificed the flower of his professional troops and had hardly had time to replace the local governments of the provinces by anything much better than general anarchy, he found himself faced by a Russian assault.  His raw levies fought as no other raw levies than the Turkish can, and, helped by manifestations of jealousy by the other powers, staved off the capture of Constantinople, which, at one moment, seemed about to take place at last.  But he had to accept humiliating terms, amounting virtually, to a cession of the Black Sea.  Mahmud recognized that such a price he must pay for crossing the broad stream between Byzantinism and Nationalism, and kept on his way.

Finally came a blow at the hands of one of his own household and creed.  Mehemet Ali of Egypt, who had faithfully fought his sovereign’s battles in Arabia and the Morea, held his services ill requited and his claim to be increased beyond other pashas ignored, and proceeded to take what had not been granted.  He went farther than he had intended—­more than half-way across Asia Minor—­after the imperial armies had suffered three signal defeats, before he extorted what he had desired at first:  and in the end, after very brief enjoyment, he had to resign all again to the mandate, not of his sovereign, but of certain European powers who commanded his seas.  Mahmud, however, who lived neither to see himself saved by the giaur fleets, nor even to hear of his latest defeat, had gone forward with the reorganization of the central and provincial administration, undismayed by Mehemet Ali’s contumacy or the insistence of Russia at the gate of the Bosphorus.

As news arrived from time to time in the west of Mahmud’s disasters, it was customary to prophesy the imminent dissolution of his empire.  We, however, looking backward now, can see that by its losses the Osmanli state in reality grew stronger.  Each of its humiliations pledged some power or group of powers more deeply to support it:  and before Mahmud died, he had reason to believe that, so long as the European Concert should ensue the Balance of Power, his dynasty would not be expelled from Constantinople.  His belief has been justified.  At every fresh crisis of Ottoman fortunes, and especially after every fresh Russian attack, foreign protection has unfailingly been extended to his successors.

It was not, however, only in virtue of the increasing solicitude of the powers on its behalf that during the nineteenth century the empire was growing and would grow stronger, but also in virtue of certain assets within itself.  First among these ranked the resources of its Asiatic territories, which, as the European lands diminished, became more and more nearly identified with the empire.  When, having got rid of the old army, Mahmud imposed service on all his Moslem subjects, in theory, but in effect only on the Osmanlis (not the Arabs, Kurds, or other half assimilated nomads and hillmen), it meant more