late sultan, Mustapha III, had lost almost the last
remnant of his subjects' respect, not so much by the ill success of his
mutinous armies as by his depreciation of the imperial coinage. He had
died bankrupt of prestige, leaving no visible assets to his successor.
What might become of the latter no one in the empire appeared to care. As
in 1453, it waited other lords.

5

_Revival_

It has been waiting, nevertheless, ever since--waiting for much more than
a century; and perhaps the end is not even yet. Why, then, have
expectations not only within but without the empire been so greatly at
fault? How came Montesquieu, Burke, and other confident prophets since
their time to be so signally mistaken? There were several co-operating
causes, but one paramount. Constantinople was no longer, as in 1453, a
matter of concern only to itself, its immediate neighbours, and certain
trading republics of Italy. It had become involved with the commercial
interests of a far wider circle, in particular of the great trading
peoples of western Europe, the British, the French, and the Dutch, and
with the political interests of the Germanic and Russian nations. None of
these could be indifferent to a revolution in its fortunes, and least of
all to its passing, not to a power out of Asia, but to a rival power among
themselves. Europe was already in labour with the doctrine of the Balance
of Power. The bantling would not be born at Vienna till early in the
century to come: but even before the end of the eighteenth century it
could be foreseen that its life would be bound up with the maintenance of
Constantinople in independence of any one of the parent powers--that is,
with the prolongation of the Osmanli phase of its imperial fortunes. This
doctrine, consistently acted upon by Europe, has been the sheet anchor of
the Ottoman empire for a century. Even to this day its Moslem dynasty has
never been without one powerful Christian champion or another.

There were, however, some thirty years still to elapse after Selim's
accession before that doctrine was fully born: and had her hands been
free, Russia might well have been in secure possession of the Byzantine
throne long before 1815. For, internally, the Osmanli state went from bad
to worse. The tumultuous insubordination of the Janissaries became an ever
greater scandal. Never in all the long history of their riots was their
record for the years 1807-9 equalled or even approached. Never