vergence of policy in the Far East, again causing friction, chiefly illustrated in the American propositions to internationalize the railroad system of Manchuria under Chinese management and with foreign capital in order to eliminate the political purposes of Russia and Japan. It was further illustrated in the new facilities offered to Russian encroachment in Manchuria and Mongolia following the Chinese revolution of 1911 resulting in the American note of 3 Feb. 1912. In Persia also in 1911, the American government viewed with some concern the Russian action in forcing Commissioner Shuster to leave the country.

In 1912 Secretary Knox secured the right of the United States to participate in a loan needed by the new Chinese government, resulting in an arrangement (of June 1912) for a loan shared by bankers of six powers. After the rise of new difficulties resulting from hesitation of China and the imposition of new conditions which China in her extremity was compelled to accept, President Wilson, 18 March 1913, reversed this policy in recognizing the new Chinese republic, and withdrew government support from the combination of the six-power loan.

Meantime, on 7 July 1911, the United States and Russia together with Great Britain and Japan concluded at Washington a treaty for joint protection of fur-seals and sea otters in the north Pacific above 30° latitude for a period of 15 years.

The serious dispute in regard to non-admission (even for short visit) of American Jews into Russia, whose government had never officially abandoned the theory of perpetual allegiance, finally led to an American agitation for abrogation of the Russo-American commercial treaty of 1832.

As early as 1873 Secretary Fish protested against Russian treatment of American citizens of Jewish birth as a violation of the treaty of 1832, to which Russia replied that the treaty must be interpreted in accord with requirements of Russian domestic law. The importance of the subject increased by increase of intercourse and in 1880 Secretary Evarts and in 1881 Secretary Blaine vigorously protested to no avail-as did Frelinghuysen in 1884-85 and Bayard in 1886. The subject was investigated by Secretary Olney in 1895 and in 1902 Secretary Hay at the request of Congress made a detailed report showing that Russia was clearly violating provisions of the treaty of 1832. The United States had been inactive from a desire not to offend Russia, but a large Jewish immigration, and consequent political and business influence, finally led to offensive action in the House of Representatives in 1911 through the passage of an intemperate resolution ordering the abrogation of the treaty. The Senate proposed a more diplomatic substitute resolution which was unanimously adopted. Meanwhile President Taft properly informed Russia of the intention to abrogate by a year's notice as provided in the treaty.

Thus after seeking ineffectually for over 30 years by deliberate processes of diplomacy to persuade Russia to observe the treaty, the United States resorted to the remedy provided by the express words of the treaty, and on 1 Jan. 1913 the treaty was abrogated. The ac

tion met a strong protest from reactionary PanRussian leaders. Unsuccessful steps were at once taken to negotiate a new treaty on a basis satisfactory to the United States. The issue was not one easily settled by compromise or by arbitration. As each party showed no disposition to recede from its position no progress was made in negotiations.

After 1914, with the disappearance of many causes of alienation and with the probability of a satisfactory understanding in regard to China and Japan, American opinion was again disposed to be friendly to Russia- and especially to sympathize with the struggle for liberal reforms in government.

A general arbitration treaty signed in October 1914 was proclaimed 25 March 1915. A protocol of agreement concerning exportation of embargoed goods from Russia to the United States was signed at Washington 23 Sept. 1915.

During the earlier phases of the Russian revolution, the American government with a view to encouragement and aid sent a mission headed by Elihu Root, whose achievements were soon canceled by the development of the revolution, near the close of 1917, under control of unscrupulous Bolshevik-German agents acting solely in the interests of Germany.

Many look forward to the re-establishment of genuine good feeling after Russia has again recovered her international influence through a satisfactory solution of her internal crisis whose end it is still difficult to foresee and futile to forecast.

Bibliography.- Callahan, J. M., Alaska and Americo-Canadian Relations' (1908), and 'Russo-American Relations during the American Civil War' (1908); Coolidge, A. C., United States as a World Power' (1908); Foster, J. W., 'Diplomatic Memoirs' (1909); Hildt, J. C., 'Early Diplomatic Negotiations of the United States and Russia' (1906); Johnson, W. F., 'America's Foreign Relations' (1916); Moore, J. B., 'Digest of International Law (1906); Thayer, W. R., 'Life and Letters of John Hay' (1915); American Historical Review xviii, 309– 345; 537-562; Cong. Record, 62d Cong., 2d Sess., 493; Internat. Year Book; North American Review (October 1874); United States Foreign Relations.

JAMES M. CALLAHAN, Professor of History and Political Science, West Virginia University.

RUSSIAN COSSACKS. The name of Cossack is derived from the Russian Kazak, which in turn came from a Tatar word, meaning adventurer, rover, freebooter. The Cossacks of the former Russian Empire enjoyed certain special privileges in return for which they were obligated to render a very extensive military service, nominally from 18 to 50, practically from 18 to 38, of which 12 years in active service. The Cossack, under these agreements, was bound to furnish his own uniform, equipment and horse, the government providing merely his weapons, guns, etc. The officers were trained in special military schools, and this tuition was really better than that for the officers of the regular army in the rest of Russia. The general administration was kept separately for each voisko, and differed in each The central administration culminated in

case.

the Ministry of War in Petrograd, and there also, with the aid and advice of delegates from each voisko, new legislation for the Cossacks was discussed, deliberated upon and passed. In time of war the 11 Cossack voiskos supplied 890 mounted sotnias, or squadrons, each of 125 men; 108 sotnias of infantry, of equal strength; and 236 guns, representing 4,267 officers and 177,000 men, with 170,695 horses. But altogether they furnished 328,705 men for military service. The Cossack population of the whole of Russia numbered, according to the census of 1893, 2,648,049, and in 1905, 3,252,637, of which 1,573,898 were women. Altogether they owned 146,500,000 acres of land, 105,000,000 of which was arable and most of the remainder in forest. This land (leaving out of consideration the small space occupied by towns) was divided into stanitzas, or villages, the average rate of holdings per soul being 81 acres, with special grants to the officers, in lieu of pension, from esaul upward, leaving altogether about one-third of the whole land for future use. Altogether there were 11 Cossack voiskos, or tribes, settlements; namely, those of the Don, the Kuban, Terek, Dnieper, Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian, Semiryechensk, Amur and Ussuri. Their location, of course, was always along border lands, past or present, of more or less military or political importance. There are very few towns of any size within the Cossack holdings, and the stanitza, or Cossack village community, was and remains the unit. The stanitzas hold their land in common, on the principle of the Russian mir, but with wider attributes, such as village assembly, assessing taxes for local purposes or for the whole of their voisko, dividing the tillable land at regular stated intervals, providing schooling for the children, village grain stores and electing its ataman, or communal elder, its judges, etc. All this, of course, applies to conditions before the World War. Since the Bolshevist régime has been set up in the heart of the former empire, the Cossack communities everywhere have resisted the introduction of this economic and political system within their areas, mostly by force, and at this writing successfully.

As a rule popular education is more advanced among the Cossacks than among the remainder of the Russian populations, attendance being both larger in percentage and more regular. In addition to agriculture, which supplies more than their needs, leaving a considerable proportion for export, the Cossack population devote themselves largely to the breeding of horses and cattle, to viticulture in the Caucasus, to fishing on the Don, the Caspian and the Ural, to hunting and agriculture, etc. The fructification of the mining lands within their territories is almost altogether left to non-Cossack strangers, the privileges being chartered out, or subject to an annual rent, to a percentage of the gross output or some other similar method of farming it, while trading and manufacturing are mostly permitted on payment of a license. From of old the typical Cossack despises trade, banking, manufacturing and similar occupations. Ethnologically considered the Cossacks are of mixed origin. They are conglomerate descendants of Russian, Lithuanian and Polish ancestors, fugitives

59

mostly who had fled from serfdom and joined the free settlements of the Cossacks in the 16th and 17th centuries, and who mingled racially with the aborigines, Tatars and other tribes of Mongolian race, such as the Polovtsi. Physically the Cossacks are more hardy than the Russian proper, though they bear a resemblance to the latter, and share with him certain characteristics, but are physically more slender and supple, of bold, handsome features and dark, expressive eyes, and of vastly more energy and daring. The Cossacks are nearly all adherents of the Greek Orthodox faith, very devout in observing its tenets and ritual, intolerant of other creeds and violently antiJewish, hence the frequency of pogroms on territory settled by Cossacks. At different periods the Cossack hetmans, or military chiefs, have exercised greater or lesser power over their tribes or confederations, according to the times and circumstances. Some of them, by their innate genius, achieved supreme and autocratic prerogatives, with scarcely any interference by the kings of Poland or the tsars of Russia, as did Chmielnicki. But as early as Ivan the Terrible's reign the tsar was beginning to be acknowledged, first among the eastern branch of the Cossacks, as their overlord or suzerain, and at last the chief hetman of all the Cossacks became the tsarevitch, or eldest son of the Russian tsar, who assumed his power with certain ancient ceremonies, such the investment with the bulawa and bunchuk.

as

History. The Ukraine (ie., "borderland"), extending from Kiev to the Black Sea, was the first home of the Cossacks, who under the nominal suzerainty of Poland, then by far the largest and most powerful country in the East, here grew and developed into a race of their own. A slow process it was. After the long Tatar and Mongolian invasion had at last subsided, before which the nomadic and roaming tribes had fled or been annihilated, the first small Cossack settlements were founded. These were constantly added to by hosts of fugitive serfs from the feudal estates of Poland, Lithuania, Muscovy, who joined the bands of rude and plundering freebooters along the eastern limits of the steppe. This went on steadily for three centuries, about 1400-1700, during which time the Don and Dnieper Cossacks founded warlike fraternities, with fastnesses along the river shores or on inaccessible islands. As early as 1514 the Kazaki were formed into companies and placed respectively under the command of the Polish frontier starostas, or governors, those of Kaniev, Kamenets, Cherkask, etc., but a shifting policy was pursued by Poland all along. It was altogether within the nominal domains of the Poland of that time that Cossack territories were located, and hence the earliest traces of Cossack history form a part of Polish history, although from the very start the Cossacks claimed a large measure of independence and autonomy, and in most instances succeeded in maintaining it. Nevertheless, undoubtedly Poland made use of the Cossack settlements and of the Cossack fighting spirit to protect her eastern and southern boundaries. But under various Polish rulers there were also erected by Poland strongholds, like Bar and Krzemi

eniec, by which that commonwealth meant to defend herself both against the frequent murderous irruptions of the Tatars of the Crimeaand Azov, and against the marauding or rebellious Cossacks. But a settled policy Poland had not. The dzikie pola, the "savage steppe," remained "savage" for three centuries. Up to 1500 in fact the large steppe, extending from the Dnieper to the Ural, had no settled population. Hunters and fishermen frequented its innumerable rivers. Shoals of runaway serfs from Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy, settled beneath the shelter of the stockades and armored blockhouses or watch towers built, from time to time, to guard the southern frontiers of Poland and Muscovy. The Tatars and Turks, being the declared foe of all Christians, the Cossacks exterminated them for centuries, wherever feasible, and went on frequent expeditions undertaken as a rule for the sake of booty. The latter in turn they sold to Poles or Muscovites, and this, as a matter of fact, for a long period was their largest item of revenue. The same motive impelled them in making their frequent raids along the shores and to the harbor cities of the Moslem Black Sea. These raids off and on became veritable naval battles, in which the Cossack light and easily managed long boats would prove superior to the clumsy Moslem galleys. One king of Poland, Vladislas IV, was so greatly hampered in his national policy by this guerilla naval warfare that he had to conclude a special agreement with the Cossacks regarding it. Like the Vikings of old, the Cossacks would undertake raids in their flotillas of light sail boats along the whole coast of the Crimea, then and for many years after under the power of the Khan, and to the opposite shores of the Black Sea, to Batoum, to Trebizonde, Samsoun, etc., burning, slaying, devastating all, and causing annually millions of damage, bringing home immense booty. They would now and then even, under the leadership of some specially bold adventurer, penetrate as far as the Sea of Marmora, to the very haunts of the sultan of Turkey, and this irrespective of whether the latter was at peace with Poland or not, thus often wilfully entangling the web of international statecraft.

The Cossacks had been little meddled with by their Polish suzerains, so long as they kept on defending the frontiers against the Tatars and Turks who made frequent inroads. The Don Cossacks, as early as about 1600, had definitely cut loose from their brethren, the Cossacks of the Dnieper, the so-called Zaporozhians, and from the time of Ivan the Terrible had at least nominally placed themselves under the authority of Muscovy, the determining reason with them for this step being that the Russians, like themselves, were of the Greek Orthodox faith. The Don Cossacks, however, were by no means steadfast in their allegiance. They kept wavering, sometimes neutral, at other times taking sides with one party or the other, as their ungoverned spirit inclined them. For the Cossacks of the Dnieper, though, who still remained under Polish suzerainty, there had been, throughout the whole of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, a slowly accumulating list of grievances against their Polish overlords. The Poles, above all, living under a strictly feudal social and political sys

tem, had all along laid claim to territorial feudal rights over the whole Ukraine, including even the very Cossack belt of land on the Dnieper, a claim which the Cossacks had never admitted, they calling themselves the "Cossack Republic" or "The Free Brotherhood of the Dnieper." Now, from some time before 1600, and corresponding with the anti-Reformation set up by the Jesuits in Poland proper, another element of strife and dissatisfaction had been infused into the relations subsisting between Poland and her nominal vassals, the Zaporozhians; namely, the religious one. A persistent attempt was made, under Jesuit guidance, to turn the Cossacks and all the people of the Ukraine from adherents of the Greek Orthodox creed into Roman Catholics. Unwise harshness was shown in this long drawn-out proselyting campaign, and the whole Ukraine, but more particularly the actual Cossack portion of it, conceived a deep hatred for their oppressors. To facilitate the conversion of the Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the Ukraine the Poles had hit upon the expedient of founding, with the assent of the Vatican, a new branch of the Roman Church under the caption of the Uniate denomination, leaving intact the dogmas and ritual of the Greek Orthodox Church, with some slight modifications, but bringing it under the governance of the Roman pontiff. The Cossacks, therefore, and with them the Ukrainians as a whole, began to hate their Polish lords not alone as their feudal oppressors, but also as their spiritual ones, as heretics. The whole Ukraine was in a ferment during the 17th century. The Cossacks, with the assistance of the Ukrainian settlers, rose in rebellion, in 1635-36, and this rising was put down by Poland with the utmost difficulty. Retribution of the severest type was meted out by the Polish Diet. But the great rebellion that broke out in 1648, and which shook Poland to its very foundations, was the one at the head of which was Bogdan Chmielnicki, hetman of the Zaporozhians, or Cossacks of the Dnieper, one of the most singular and able men in history. By allying himself with the Tatars of Crimea, their foes of centuries, he in the spring of 1648 marched suddenly with all his available forces against the flower of Polish knighthood, and simultaneously there was a general uprising, terrible and bloody, by the settlements of the Ukraine-most of them also Greek Orthodox and descendants of Cossack forefathers. While Chmielnicki, with the help of the Tatars, defeated and destroyed one Polish army after the other, the serfs and settlers of the Ukraine wiped out nearly the entire race of Polish lords that had ruled them for so long. Every manor house was reduced to ashes; every lord destroyed with bestial cruelty-impaled, sawn asunder, flayed alive; every Catholic priest was hanged before his own altar, usually between a Jew and a slaughtered hog. On 23 Sept. 1648, at Pildawa the main Polish army of 40,000 was utterly destroyed. During the following three years Chmielnicki with his hosts made himself complete master of the whole Ukraine, and conducted himself like an independent sovereign, even receiving ambassadors from several great powers. But at last, on 1 July 1651, Bogdan Chmielnicki was defeated at Berestecko. But the fruits of this victory were

not gathered by Poland, now hurrying to her destruction, but by Muscovy-Russia, while another result of this great feat of arms was that it did away forever with all dreams of Cossack independence. The Cossacks, little by little, transferred their allegiance from Poland to Russia.

There were, however, repeated attempts by a number of Cossack heroes or leaders to establish_political autonomy. One of these was made by Stenka (Stephen) Razin, originally a hetman of the Don Cossacks, who was sent off on a diplomatic mission to the Kalmuck Tatars, and then made himself head of a piratical brotherhood. But in 1670 he openly rebelled against the government at Moscow. He captured Cherkask, Tsaritsyn and took Astrakhan, converting the latter into a Cossack republic. He spread rebellious doctrine as far as NizhniNovgorod, Penza, Tambov, etc., even Moscow. Razin proclaimed his object to be to root out the boyars and tchinovniks (officials), and to establish absolute equality, such as practised by the Cossacks within their commonwealths. A number of pitched battles were fought by Razin's adherents and the tzar's armies, but finally, one year later, Razin was captured at Kagalnik, and taken to Moscow, where after unspeakable tortures, he was quartered alive.

Mazeppa, whose full name is Ivan Stepanovitch, another Cossack hetman and man of ability, was born in the Ukraine, near Kiev, about 1640, and died on 22 Sept. 1709, in Bender, a fellow-captive of state with his ally, King Charles XII of Sweden. Byron's poem has made Mazeppa's name and romantic life history familiar to readers. In his youth, being then a page at the royal Polish court, a jealous husband had him strapped to the bare back of a vicious steed, and thus driven into the wilderness steppe. Being rescued by roaming Cossacks, he next became secretary to the Cossack hetman Ivan Samoilovitch, and himself hetman in 1687. He aided materially Peter the Great in his wars against the Turks and Tatars in Crimea and Azov. But later he turned against the tsar, and made the last attempt on a large scale of obtaining political independence for the Cossacks by allying himself with the Swedish monarch, sharing at last his defeat at Poltava, and his flight to Turkish territory where he breathed his last, having attained a ripe old age. Pugatcheff, also hetman of the Don Cossacks for a time, in 1773, during the reign of the Empress Catherine II, raised once more the standard of revolt among the Cossacks. He did so by pretending to be Peter III, the murdered husband' of the empress, and his scene of action was the Volga region. For more than a twelve-month he kept the armies of the sovereign at bay, but was finally crushingly defeated, 2,000 of his supporters being killed and 6,000 taken prisoners, including himself. He was beheaded in Moscow. Pugatcheff's name and exploits still live in popular legends and ballads throughout Russia. During the World War now come to a close, the Russian Cossacks, as long as Russia remained in the field, have sustained their great warlike reputation, and at this writing it is one of their leaders, General Denikin, although fighting against tremendous odds, that successfully is opposing the Bolshevist fighting masses, just as it was

61

another such leader, General Korniloff, who just before the accession of Lenine, would have saved Russia from Bolshevism if properly supported. What the ultimate fate of all the 11 Cossack settlements within the former empire is going to be is matter of conjecture merely. But if they are allowed their way they will enjoy autonomy.

Bibliography. Bain, R. N., The First Romanovs (London 1905); Cresson, W. P., The Cossacks: Their Country and History'; Grass, C. K., 'Russische Sekten' (Saint Petersburg 1907); Kostamaroff, N. J., The Rebellion of Stenka Razin' (2d ed., Saint Petersburg 1859); Leroy-Beaulieu, A., 'L'Empire des Tsars (3d vol., Paris 1889); Martynoff, S., 'Das Petschoragebiet' (Saint Petersburg 1905); Morfill, W. R., 'Russia' ('Story of the Nations Series, New York 1891); Munro, H. H., 'Rise of the Russian Empire' (Boston 1900); Raimbaud, A. N., 'Histoire de la Russie' (new ed., Paris 1900); Schierbrand, Wolf von, Russia: Her Strength and Her Weakness' (New York 1904); Solovieff, S. M., 'History of Russia' (Vol. II, Saint Petersburg 1895); Umanez, J. R., The Hetman Mazeppa' (Moscow 1897). WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND,

Author of Russia: Her Strength and Her Weakness, etc.

RUSSIAN PEOPLE, LEAGUE OR UNION OF, or UNION OF TRUE RUSSIANS (the "Black Band" or "Black Hundred"), a reactionary political group of Russia organized in 1905 to combat the rising revolutionary tendencies of the period, and powerful for about five years. Its members supported the traditional Russian régime, including autocracy, and sought to counteract revolutionary activities by employing terrorist methods against them. It was contended that the government secretly connived at their efforts. Their ranks were recruited from the nobles, and they maintained that Russian political troubles in general should be ascribed to the non-Slavic element of the population. They were particularly charged with organizing pogroms against the Jews. In the first sessions of the Duma the party was not strong, but by a manipulation of the suffrage laws they gained ascendency in the third Duma, one of their members, Prince Volkonsky, becoming its vice-president. The party was for a time the recipient of favor in high circles, but gradually lost its power through the disaffection of some of its members who disapproved of its extreme measures, as well as by internal quarrels, and a growing public sympathy for the measures and tendencies it was formed to suppress.

RUSSIAN THISTLE, a naturalized annual (Salsola tragus, one of the Chenopodiacea), becoming a dreaded pest in the northern and western United States. It is closely related to, and resembles, the prickly salt wort of the sea-beaches and in no way, except spininess, can be confounded with the true thistles. It is a glabrous, succulent, spreading bushy herb, with slender branches and small linear leaves, topped by a prickle, and usually bright red at maturity. Its small flowers are single in the axils, and are succeeded by hard little fruits surrounded by broad, the five-parted horizontal wing of the calyx, which is conspicuously veined. Like many desert plants, at

62

maturity, and in the dry season, its branches contract into a ball, enclosing its capsules full of ripe seeds, and it becomes a "tumble-weed," blown across the country by the wind, and scattering its seeds, to take root in favorable soils. Careful cultivation is the best way to exterminate the Russian thistle.

RUSSNIAKS. See RUTHENIANS.

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR. See JAPAN. RUSSO-TURKISH WARS. Ever since the conquest of Constantinople by Mohammed II in 1453, the Turks had been regarded as a perpetual menace to the Christian countries of Europe. The remarkable military achievements of the Osmanli; their enormous encroachments upon European territory, and, above all, their utter incapacity for equitable administration, plus the insuperable difference in race, creed and language, made them most undesirable neighbors to the Slav, Greek, Magyar, Latin and Teutonic peoples of southern and southeastern Europe. In 1547 the Turks acquired Serbia; Trebizond and Sinope in 1461; Wallachia in 1462; Bosnia in 1463; the Crimea in 1475; Albania in 1479; Otranto in 1480. Bayazid II (1481-1512) took Venice and parts of the Morea; Selim I (1512-20) made his fleet the terror of the Mediterranean, while his successor Suleyman the Magnificent captured Belgrade, Rhodes and Lower Hungary; his triumphant progress was arrested only at the walls of Vienna in 1529. By the first peace treaty between Austria and Turkey (22 June 1533) the sultan received the right to sanction any arrangement about Hungary. In 1534 Suleyman attacked Charles V in the Mediterranean and made the Turks supreme in both the eastern and western basins of that sea. The Turkish fleet attacked Italy in 1537, and Venice was compelled to make a truce with the Porte in 1539. Hungary was invaded for the fourth time in 1541 and a Turkish government was established at Buda; further places were seized in Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia in 1544; Szegedin fell in 1552, and Chios in 1566. In 1571 Pius V organized the Holy League against the Turks, who captured Cyprus from Venice. But the turn of the tide was at hand. battle of Lepanto (October 1571) shattered the reputation of invincibility which the Turkish fleet had attained, and in 1573 a new and formidable adversary appeared in the lists against Turkey - the power of Russia. The first proper Russo-Turkish War came in 1678; it ended in 1682 and secured the Ukraine and the Cossack territory to Russia. Other wars followed in 1686 Russia began operations; two years later Transylvania renounced Turkish suzerainty and became a province of the king of Hungary, and in 1689 Russia joined forces with the Imperialists to fight the Turks on the Danube. In 1710, at the instigation of Charles XII, the Sultan Achmet III declared war on Russia. By the treaty of the Pruth (21 July 1711) Peter the Great gave back Azov to the Turks, destroyed all Russian fortresses on Turkish territory and made a definitive treaty of peace with Turkey in 1713. In 1715 the Turks conquered the Morea and the Venetian fortresses in Crete; in 1716 the Austrian Imperialists defeated the Turks at the battle of Peterwardein, and Temesvar, the last of the Turkish possessions in Hungary, fell 13 August.

The

were

In 1726 Russia and Austria formed an offensive alliance for 30 years against Turkey, though the projected war did not break out until 10 years later, in 1736, and lasted three years, during which time the Turks recovered Nissa from the Austrians, captured Orsova, won the battle of Crocyka, and compelled peace. By the Treaty of Belgrade (18-23 Sept. 1739) Austria ceded Orsova, Belgrade and all territories gained by the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), viz., a strip of Serbia and the Banat of Temesvar, while Russia ceded all her conquests except Azov, which was to be dismantled. A treaty of neutrality was concluded between Turkey and Russia in 1748, but in 1767 Russian agents began to stir up the Greeks, Montenegrins and Bosnians against the Turks, who declared war against Russia in October 1768. The struggle raged for nearly six years; the Russians defeated the Turks and occupied Moldavia and Bucharest, but their initial successes checked by a Turkish victory and a revolt among the Don Cossacks, so that the tsar solicited the mediation of Austria in 1773. By the peace of Kutchuk Kainardji (July 1774) the Tartars were brought under Russian influence; Russia gained an embassy at Constantinople and secured privileges for the Christians; she exacted promises of better government for the principalities, the right of free commercial navigation in Turkish waters, and gained a firm footing on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Austria obtained Bukovina from Turkey-after forcible occupation-in 1775. Yielding to Russian demands, Turkey ceded the Crimea and Kuban to Russia in 1784, and on 10 Aug. 1787 Turkey once more declared war on Russia, which was followed by Austria declaring war on Turkey 9 Feb. 1788. The Russian troops gained several successes, but the campaign proved unfavorable to the Austrians. Their united forces defeated the Turks at the battle of Fokshani (31 July 1789), and at Rimnicu (22 Sept. 1789); the Turks lost Belgrade, Bucharest, Bender and Akerman. Austria made peace 4 Aug. 1791 and took Orsova; Russia continued until 9 Jan. 1792, when she also made peace in order to devote her strength to the war with Poland. While Europe was ablaze with the Napoleonic wars, Russia and Turkey again came to grips in November 1806. England joined Russia and a British fleet forced the passage of the Dardanelles. In 1808 Russia submitted peace terms to the Porte; they were rejected, and another war began in April 1809. The Russians seized Tultcha and Ismail on the Danube and drove the Turks from Rustchuk, which the Russians set on fire in 1811. A Turkish army in Wallachia surrendered. Russia made peace on 28 May 1812 on terms favorable to her enemy in order to repel the threatened invasion of her own dominions by Napoleon. Turkey lost part of Bessarabia and Moldavia, and acknowledged the principality of Serbia.

After the fall of Napoleon the Greek struggle for independence from Turkey claimed the attention of the European powers. On 20 Oct. 1827 the combined fleets of England, France and Russia inflicting a crushing defeat on the Turkish navy in the Bay of Navarino and made Greece a free country. On 26 April 1828 Russia again declared war on Turkey, crossed the