In failing, however, Midhat left bad to become so much worse that the next reformers would inevitably have a more convinced public opinion behind them, and he had virtually destroyed the power of Mahmud’s bureaucracy.  If the only immediate effect was the substitution of an unlimited autocracy, the Osmanli peoples would be able thenceforward to ascribe their misfortunes to a single person, meditate attack, on a single position, and dream of realizing some day an ideal which had been definitely formulated.

The Russian onslaught, which began in both Europe and Asia in the spring of 1877, had been brought on, after a fashion become customary, by movements in the Slavonic provinces of the Ottoman Empire and in Rumania; and the latter province, now independent in all but name and, in defiance of Ottoman protests, disposing of a regular army, joined the invader.  In campaigns lasting a little less than a year, the Osmanli Empire was brought nearer to passing than ever before, and it was in a suburb of Constantinople itself that the final armistice was arranged.  But action by rival powers, both before the peace and in the revision of it at Berlin, gave fresh assurance that the end would not be suffered to come yet; and, moreover, through the long series of disasters, much latent strength of the empire and its peoples had been revealed.

When that empire had emerged, shorn of several provinces—­in Europe, of Rumania, Serbia, and northern Greece, with Bulgaria also well on the road they had travelled to emancipation, and in Asia, of a broad slice of Caucasia—­Abdul Hamid cut his losses, and, under the new guarantee of the Berlin Treaty, took heart to try his hand at reviving Osmanli power.  He and his advisers had their idea, the contrary of the idea of Midhat and all the sultans since Mahmud.  The empire must be made, not more European, but more Asiatic.  In the development of Islamic spirit to pan-Islamic unity it would find new strength; and towards this end in the early eighties, while he was yet comparatively young, with intelligence unclouded and courage sufficient, Abdul Hamid patiently set himself.  In Asia, naturally sympathetic to autocracy, and the home of the faith of his fathers, he set on foot a pan-Islamic propaganda.  He exalted his caliphate; he wooed the Arabs, and he plotted with extraneous Moslems against whatever foreign government they might have to endure.

It cannot be denied that this idea was based on the logic of facts, and, if it could be realized, promised better than Midhat’s for escape from shameful dependence.  Indeed, Abdul Hamid, an autocrat bent on remaining one, could hardly have acted upon any other.  By far the greater part of the territorial empire remaining to him lay in Asia.  The little left in Europe would obviously soon be reduced to less.  The Balkan lands were waking, or already awake, to a sense of separate nationality, and what chance did the Osmanli element, less progressive than