lised, followed, and there was no
more trouble just then in the disturbed districts, for there was none to
make trouble. In 1876 Abdul Aziz was deposed by a group of king-makers
under Midhat Pasha, Murad V. reigned shadow-like for three months, and
during the same year Abdul Hamid was finally selected to fill the
throne, and stand forth as the Shadow of God. It was a disturbed and
tottering inheritance to which he succeeded, riddled with the dry-rot of
corruption, but the inheritor proved himself equal to the occasion.

For a little while he was all abroad, and at the bidding of Midhat, who
had placed him on the throne, he summoned a kind of representative
Turkish Parliament, by way of imbuing the Great Powers with the idea
that he was an enlightened Shadow of God bent on reform. This parody of
a Parliament lasted but a short time: it was no more than a faint,
dissolving magic-lantern picture. In the spring of 1877 Rumania, under
Russian encouragement, broke away from Turkish rule. Turkey declared war
on Russia, and in 1878 found herself utterly defeated. At Adrianople was
drawn up the Treaty of San Stefano, creating an independent Bulgarian
state, and, in the opinion of Great Britain and Germany, giving Russia
far greater influence in the Balkan Peninsula than was agreeable to that
disastrous supporter of Turkey, the Balance of Power. In consequence the
Treaty of San Stefano was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin.

In those arrangements Abdul Hamid had no voice, but he was well content
to sit quiet, think about what was to be done with what was left him,
and thank his waning crescent that once again the Balance of Power had
secured Constantinople for him, leaving him free to deal with his
Asiatic dominions, and such part of Europe as was left him, as he
thought fit. He could safely trust that he would never be ejected from
his throne by a foreign Power, and all he need do was to make himself
safe against internal disturbances and revolutions which might upset
him. And it was then that he begot in the womb of his cold and cunning
brain a policy that was all his own, except in so far as the Bulgarian
atrocities, consequent on feuds between Bulgars and Greeks, may be
considered the father of that hideous birth. But it was he who suckled
and nourished it, it was from his brain that it emerged, full-grown and
in panoply of armour, as from the brain of Olympian Zeus came Pallas
Athene. This new policy was in flat contradicti