d a meeting
at Czernowitz in Bukowina. Here they discussed joint intervention in
Greece as a means of forestalling the isolated intervention of Great
Britain. During the meeting the news arrived of the Turkish concessions
to the Russian demands of 1821. Before the conference broke up, the tsar
informally suggested a conference at St. Petersburg to arrange joint
intervention on the basis of the erection of three principalities under
Turkish suzerainty in Greece and the AEgean. In January, 1824, the same
proposal was made formally in a Russian circular addressed to the great
powers. Metternich and Canning both opposed the scheme, thinking that
the principalities would fall under Russian influence.

Metternich met it by a counter proposal for the complete independence of
Greece. Canning preferred to adopt neither course, and to watch the
sequence of events. In April, however, he consented that Great Britain
should be represented at the conference at St. Petersburg on condition
that no coercion should be applied to Turkey, and that diplomatic
relations should have been previously restored between Russia and
Turkey; in August the Greek government sent to London its protest
against the Russian proposals, and in November Canning, finding that
neither Greeks nor Turks would accept the decision of the conference,
and being still opposed to violent interference, refused to take part in
it. At the same time he offered British mediation to the Greeks in case
it should be absolutely necessary. Early in 1825 Metternich induced
Charles X., the new King of France, to support his proposal. Russia,
however, would not hear of the independence of Greece, which might mean
the creation of a rival to her influence in the Turkish dominions. The
conference therefore merely resolved that the Porte should grant
satisfaction to its subjects, failing which the powers offered their
mediation.

[Pageheading: _THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I._]

Turkey refused the offer. She was in fact busily engaged in restoring
order in her own way. In February, 1825, an Egyptian army was landed in
the Morea, and met with rapid successes of such a nature as to arouse a
suspicion that it was the fixed policy of its commander, Ibrahim, the
adopted son of Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, to depopulate the Morea.
His advance upon Nauplia was checked by an order of the British
commodore, Hamilton, and he retired towards Tripolitza and Navarino. The
Turkish successes induced Can