creeds and
encouraged opposition to the execution of the pro-Christian Tanzimat. When
Christian turbulence at last brought on, in 1854, the Russian attack which
developed into the Crimean War, and Christian allies, though they
frustrated that attack, made a peace by which the Osmanlis gained nothing,
the latter were in no mood to welcome the repetition of the Tanzimat,
which Abdul Mejid consented to embody in the Treaty of Paris. The reign
closed amid turbulence and humiliations--massacre and bombardment at
Jidda, massacre and Franco-British coercion in Syria--from all of which
the sultan took refuge with women and wine, to meet in 1861 a drunkard's
end.

His successor, Abdul Aziz, had much the same intentions, the same civilian
sympathies, the same policy of Europeanization, and a different, but more
fatal, weakness of character. He was, perhaps, never wholly sane; but his
aberration, at first attested only by an exalted conviction of his divine
character and inability to do wrong, excited little attention until it
began to issue in fantastic expenditure. By an irony of history, he is the
one Osmanli sultan upon the roll of our Order of the Garter, the right to
place a banner in St, George's Chapel having been offered to this
Allah-possessed caliph on the occasion of his visit to the West in 1867.

Despite the good intentions of Abdul Aziz himself--as sincere as can be
credited to a disordered brain---and despite more than one minister of
outstanding ability, reform and almost everything else in the empire went
to the bad in this unhappy reign. The administration settled down to
lifeless routine and lapsed into corruption: the national army was starved:
the depreciation of the currency grew worse as the revenue declined and
the sultan's household and personal extravagance increased. Encouraged by
the inertia of the imperial Government, the Christians of the European
provinces waxed bold. Though Montenegro was severely handled for
contumacy, the Serbs were able to cover their penultimate stage towards
freedom by forcing in 1867 the withdrawal of the last Ottoman garrisons
from their fortresses. Krete stood at bay for three years and all but won
her liberty. Bosnia rose in arms, but divided against herself. Pregnant
with graver trouble than these, Bulgaria showed signs of waking from long
sleep. In 1870 she obtained recognition as a nationality in the Ottoman
Empire, her Church being detached from the control of the Oec