A Short History of Russia eBook

Mary Platt Parmele
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 209 pages of information about A Short History of Russia.

A Short History of Russia eBook

Mary Platt Parmele
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 209 pages of information about A Short History of Russia.

The Khedive of Egypt, who ruled under a Turkish protectorate, in 1832 was at war with his master the Sultan.  It suited the Emperor of Russia at this time to do the Sultan a kindness, so he joined him in bringing the Khedive to terms, and as his reward received a secret promise from the Porte to close the Dardanelles in case of war against Russia—­to permit no foreign warships to pass through upon any pretext.  There was indignation in Europe when this was known, and out of the whole imbroglio there came just what Nicholas and his minister Nesselrode had intended—­a joint protection of Turkey by the Great Powers, from which France was excluded on account of her avowed sympathy for the Khedive in the recent troubles.

The great game of diplomacy had begun.  Nicholas, for the sake of humiliating France, had allied himself with England, his natural enemy, and had assumed the part of Protector of an Ottoman integrity which he more than anyone else had tried to destroy!  There were to be many strange roles played in this Eastern drama—­many surprises for Christendom; and for Nicholas the surprise of a crushing defeat a few years later to which France contributed, possibly in retaliation for this humiliation.

The Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith in 1550 under Suleyman the Magnificent, when, with its eastern frontier in the heart of Asia, its European frontier touching Russia and Austria, it held in its grasp Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, and almost every city famous in biblical and classical history.  Then commenced a decline; and when its terrible Janizaries were a source of danger instead of defense, when its own Sultan was compelled to destroy them in 1826 for the protection of his empire, it was only a helpless mass in the throes of dissolution.

But Turkey as a living and advancing power was less alarming to Europe than Turkey as a perishing one.  Lying at the gateway between the East and the West, it occupied the most commanding strategic position in Europe.  If that position were held by a living instead of a dying power, that power would be master of the Continent.  No one state would ever be permitted by the rest to reach such an ascendency; and the next alternative of a division of the territory after the manner of Poland, was fraught with almost as much danger.  The only hope for the peace of Europe was to keep in its integrity this crumbling wreck of a wicked, crime-stained old empire.  Such was the policy now inaugurated by Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia; and such in brief is the “Eastern Question,” which for more than half a century has overshadowed all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations.  We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges.  But there is not one.

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A Short History of Russia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.