tian States, Bulgaria, Servia, and Hungary. In the year 1683 they
laid siege to Vienna; but after being beaten back from that city by the
valiant Sobieski, King of Poland, they gradually lost ground. Little by
little Hungary, Transylvania, the Crimea, and parts of the Ukraine
(South Russia) were wrenched from their grasp; and the close of the
eighteenth century saw their frontiers limited to the River Dniester and
the Carpathians[87]. Further losses were staved off only by the
jealousies of the Great Powers. Joseph II. of Austria came near to
effecting further conquests, but his schemes of partition fell through
amidst the wholesale collapse of his too ambitious policy. Napoleon
Bonaparte seized Egypt in 1798, but was forced by Great Britain to give
it back to Turkey (1801-2). In 1807-12 Alexander I. of Russia resumed
the conquering march of the Czars southward, captured Bessarabia, and
forced the Sultan to grant certain privileges to the Principalities of
Moldavia and Wallachia. In 1815 the Servians revolted against Turkish
rule: they had always remembered the days of their early fame, and in
1817 wrested from the Porte large rights of local self-government.

[Footnote 87: The story that Peter the Great of Russia left a clause in
his will, bidding Russia to go on with her southern conquests until she
gained Constantinople, is an impudent fiction of French publicists in
the year 1812, when Napoleon wished to keep Russia and Turkey at war. Of
course, Peter the Great gave a mighty impulse to Russian movements
towards Constantinople.]

Ten years later the intervention of England and France in favour of the
Greek patriots led to the battle of Navarino, which destroyed the
Turco-Egyptian fleet and practically secured the independence of Greece.
An even worse blow was dealt by the Czar Nicholas I. of Russia. In 1829,
at the close of a war in which his troops drove the Turks over the
Balkans and away from Adrianople, he compelled the Porte to sign a peace
at that city, whereby they acknowledged the almost complete independence
of Moldavia and Wallachia. These Danubian Principalities owned the
suzerainty of the Sultan and paid him a yearly tribute, but in other
respects were practically free from his control, while the Czar gained
for the time the right of protecting the Christians of the Eastern, or
Greek, Church in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan also recognised the
independence of Greece. Further troubles ensued which laid Tu