y appeared on the Turkish
frontiers with vast armies. The attention of Catharine was constantly
directed towards Constantinople, the acquisition of which city, with
the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, was the object which, of all others,
was the nearest to her heart. On the banks of the Dnieper, eighteen
hundred miles from St. Petersburg, she laid the foundations of Kherson
as a maritime port, and in an almost incredibly short time a city rose
there containing forty thousand inhabitants. From its ship-yards
vessels of war were launched which struck terror into the Ottoman
empire.

By previous wars, it will be remembered, the Crimea had been wrested
from the Turks and declared to be independent, remaining nominally in
the hands of the Tartars. Catharine II. immediately took the Tartar
khan of the Crimea under her special protection, loaded him with
favors, and thus assumed the guidance of his movements. He became
enervated by luxury, learned to despise the rude manners of his
countrymen, engaged a Russian cook, and was served from silver plate.
Instead of riding on horseback he traveled in a splendid chariot, and
even solicited a commission in the Russian army. Catharine contrived
to foment a revolt against her protege the khan, and then, very
kindly, marched an army into the Crimea for his relief. She then,
without any apology, took possession of the whole of the Crimea, and
received the oath of allegiance from all the officers of the
government. Indeed, there appears to have been no opposition to this
measure. The Tartar khan yielded with so much docility that he soon
issued a manifesto in which he abdicated his throne, and transferred
the whole dominion of his country to Catharine. Turkey, exasperated,
prepared herself furiously for war. Russia formed an alliance with the
Emperor of Germany, and armies were soon in movement upon a scale
such as even those war-scathed regions had never witnessed before. The
Danube, throughout its whole course, was burdened with the barges of
the Emperor of Germany, heavily laden with artillery, military stores
and troops. More than a hundred thousand men were marched down to the
theater of conflict from Hungary. Fifteen hundred pieces of artillery
were in the train of these vast armies of the German emperor. The
Russian force was equally efficient, as it directed its march through
the plains of Poland, and floated down upon the waters of the Don and
the Dnieper. The Turkish sultan was n