eir patriotic
passions, the Catholic confederates summoned the Mussulmans to their
assistance. Prince Galitzin, at the head of a Russian force very
inferior to the Ottoman invaders, succeeded in barring their passage; the
Turks fell back, invariably beaten by the Russian generals. Catherine at
the same time summoned to liberty the oppressed and persecuted Greeks;
she sent a squadron to support the rising which she had been fomenting
for some months past. After a few brilliant successes, her arms were
less fortunate at sea than on land. A French officer, of Hungarian
origin, Baron Tott, sent by the Duke of Choiseul to help the Sublime
Porte, had fortified the Straits of the Dardanelles; the Russians were
repulsed; they withdrew, leaving the Greeks to the vengeance of their
oppressors. The efforts which the Empress Catherine was making in Poland
against the confederates of Barr had slackened her proceedings against
Turkey; she was nevertheless becoming triumphant on the borders of the
Vistula, as well as on the banks of the Danube, when the far-sighted and
bold policy of Frederick II. interfered in time to prevent Russia from
taking possession of Poland as well as of the Ottoman empire.

Secretly favoring the confederates of Barr whom he had but lately
encouraged in their uprising, and whom he had suffered to make purchases
of arms and ammunition in Prussia, Frederick II. had sought in Austria a
natural ally, interested like himself in stopping the advances of Russia.
The Emperor, Maria Theresa's husband, had died in 1764; his son, Joseph
II., who succeeded him, had conceived for the King of Prussia the
spontaneous admiration of a young and ardent spirit for the most
illustrious man of his times. In 1769, a conference which took place at
Neisse brought the two sovereigns together. "The emperor is a man eaten
up with ambition," wrote Frederick after the interview; "he is hatching
some great design. At present, restrained as he is by his mother, he
is beginning to chafe at the yoke he bears, and, as soon as he gets
elbow-room, he will commence with some 'startling stroke; it was
impossible for me to discover whether his views were directed towards the
republic of Venice, towards Bavaria, towards Silesia, or towards
Lorraine; but we may rely upon it that Europe will be all on fire the
moment he is master." A second interview, at Neustadt in 1770, clinched
the relations already contracted at Neisse. Common danger bro