But the soldiers ransacked the
palace, and dragged from his concealment the young prince Mahmud,
second of the name, and destined to be a great reformer. Him they
proclaimed Sultan and set upon the throne, appointing their leader
grand vizir. The new government was devoted to reform, contemptuous of
French influence, and determined to repress the evils which seemed to
have ruined its predecessor. This severity was more than the
licentious capital would endure. At once every element of discontent
burst forth again,--the janizaries, the Ulema, or doctors of the
sacred law, and the people,--some mistrusting one thing, others
another, all alike unwilling to obey any master but their own will.
Disintegration of what little administrative organization there still
was, seemed imminent. The Turkish generals on the Danube began to make
light of the armistice or truce of Slobozia, Napoleon's one reliance
in his Eastern designs; they actually set in motion their troops, and
prepared to take the offensive against Russia. This was in the hope
that, before asking a separate peace from the Czar or returning to
seize the leadership at Constantinople, they might secure some
military prestige as a working capital. The whole outlook seemed to
foretell the extinction of French influence with the Porte and a crash
in the Orient before Napoleon was ready to take advantage of it.

But the events of Bayonne had been productive of greater alarm to the
house of Austria than to any other power. In the humiliation of the
Hohenzollerns, Napoleon had the sanction of conquest, though, in view
of Prussia's rising strength, it was now commonly said that he had
done too much or too little. While in weakening that nation he had
rudely lopped the strength of an old French ally, yet he had not
destroyed it, and he had exercised what all Europe still admitted to
be a right--that of superior force. Austria, on the other hand, had
been an old and inveterate rival of France in the race for territorial
extension. Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been
bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here,
however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive
announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all
been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general
expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had
been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, ob