This system was extended to Wallachia and Moldavia, and no other Christian race in the Othoman dominions was exposed to so long a period of unmitigated extortion and cruelty as the Roman population of these principalities.  The Treaty of Kainardji which concluded the war with Russia between 1768 and 1774, humbled the pride of the sultan, broke the strength of the Othoman Empire, and established the moral influence of Russia over the whole of the Christian populations in Turkey.  But Russia never insisted on the execution of the articles of the treaty, and the Greeks were everywhere subjected to increased oppression and cruelty.  During the war from 1783 to 1792, caused by Catherine II. of Russia assuming sovereignty over the Crimea, Russia attempted to excite the Christians in Greece to take up arms against the Turks, but they were again abandoned to their fate on the conclusion of the Treaty of Yassi in 1792, which decided the partition of Poland.

Meanwhile, the diverse ambitions of the higher clergy and the phanariots at Constantinople taught the people of Greece that their interests as a nation were not always identical with the policy of the leaders of the Orthodox Church.  A modern Greek literature sprang up and, under the influence of the French Revolution, infused love of freedom into the popular mind, while the sultan’s administration every day grew weaker under the operation of general corruption.  Throughout the East it was felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of the Greeks had arrived.

IV.—­The Greek Revolution

The Greek revolution began in 1821.  Two societies are supposed to have contributed to accelerating it, but they did not do much to ensure its success.  These were the Philomuse Society, founded at Athens in 1812, and the Philike Hetaireia, established in Odessa in 1814.  The former was a literary club, the latter a political society whose schemes were wild and visionary.  The object of the inhabitants of Greece was definite and patriotic.

The attempt of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was repudiated by the Tsar of Russia.  Very different was the intensity of the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy the power of their Othoman masters.  In the month of April 1821, a Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living dispersed in Greece employed in agriculture.  Before two months had elapsed the greater part—­men, women, and children—­were murdered without mercy or remorse.  The first insurrectional movement took place in the Peloponnesus at the end of March.  Kalamata was besieged by a force of 2,000 Greeks, and taken on April 4.  Next day a solemn service of the Greek Church was performed on the banks of the torrent that flows by Kalamata, as a thanksgiving for the success of the Greek arms.  Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless brigands sobbed like children.  All present felt that the event formed an era in Greek history.  The rising spread to every part of Greece, and to some of the islands.