the
empire, the first provinces so to pass since the Osmanli loss of Hungary.
Yet it was in the middle of that fatal struggle that Mahmud settled for
ever with the Janissaries, and during all its course he was settling one
after another with the Dere Beys!

When he had thus sacrificed the flower of his professional troops and had
hardly had time to replace the local governments of the provinces by
anything much better than general anarchy, he found himself faced by a
Russian assault. His raw levies fought as no other raw levies than the
Turkish can, and, helped by manifestations of jealousy by the other
powers, staved off the capture of Constantinople, which, at one moment,
seemed about to take place at last. But he had to accept humiliating
terms, amounting virtually, to a cession of the Black Sea. Mahmud
recognized that such a price he must pay for crossing the broad stream
between Byzantinism and Nationalism, and kept on his way.

Finally came a blow at the hands of one of his own household and creed.
Mehemet Ali of Egypt, who had faithfully fought his sovereign's battles in
Arabia and the Morea, held his services ill requited and his claim to be
increased beyond other pashas ignored, and proceeded to take what had not
been granted. He went farther than he had intended--more than half-way
across Asia Minor--after the imperial armies had suffered three signal
defeats, before he extorted what he had desired at first: and in the end,
after very brief enjoyment, he had to resign all again to the mandate, not
of his sovereign, but of certain European powers who commanded his seas.
Mahmud, however, who lived neither to see himself saved by the _giaur_
fleets, nor even to hear of his latest defeat, had gone forward with the
reorganization of the central and provincial administration, undismayed by
Mehemet Ali's contumacy or the insistence of Russia at the gate of the
Bosphorus.

As news arrived from time to time in the west of Mahmud's disasters, it
was customary to prophesy the imminent dissolution of his empire. We,
however, looking backward now, can see that by its losses the Osmanli
state in reality grew stronger. Each of its humiliations pledged some
power or group of powers more deeply to support it: and before Mahmud
died, he had reason to believe that, so long as the European Concert
should ensue the Balance of Power, his dynasty would not be expelled from
Constantinople. His belief has been justified. At every f