The Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran.  And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot.

The diplomacy of Europe has long engaged the Porte in wars which are not in its interest, or has forced it to make treaties of peace in which it has lost some of its provinces.  During all this time, however, the Ottoman Empire had to deal with an enemy at home who seemed more terrible than all the foreign armies and navies.  Selim III. was not the first Sultan to lose his throne and his life in his struggle against the Janizaries, and his successor preferred the dangers of a reformation to the necessity of trusting himself to this society.  Through streams of blood he reached his end.  The Turkish Sultan gloried in the destruction of the Turkish army, but he had to crave the help of an all-too-powerful vassal in order to suppress the insurrection on the Greek peninsula.  At this juncture three Christian powers forgot their ancient feuds.  France and England sacrificed their ships and men to destroy the Sultan’s fleet, and thus laid open to Russia the way to the heart of Turkey, and brought about what they had most wished to avoid.

The country had not yet recovered from these many wounds, when the Pasha of Egypt advanced through Syria, threatening destruction to the last descendant of Osman.  A newly levied army was sent against the insurgents, but the generals fresh from the harem led it to destruction.  The Porte applied to England and France, who were calling themselves its oldest and most natural allies, but received from them only promises.  At this juncture Sultan Mahommed invoked the help of Russia, and his enemy sent him ships, money, and an army.

Then the world saw the remarkable spectacle of fifteen thousand Russians encamped on the Asiatic hills overlooking Constantinople, ready to protect the Sultan in his seraglio against the Egyptians.  Among the Turks dissatisfaction was rampant.  The Ulemas saw their influence wane; the innovations had hurt countless interests, and the new taxes incommoded all classes.  Thousands of Janizaries, who were no longer permitted to call themselves such, and the relatives and friends of thousands of others who had been throttled, drowned, or shot down, were scattered through the country and the capital.  The Armenians could not forget the persecution which they had recently suffered, and the Greek Christians, who constituted half of the populace of the original Turkish empire, looked upon their rulers as their enemies, and upon the Russians as fellow-believers in the same religion.  Turkey at that time could not raise another army.

And just then France was laboring with her great event, England was carrying a load in her public debts, while Prussia and Austria had attached themselves more intimately than ever before to Russia, compelled to do so by the conditions of Western Europe.