August by Codrington with Mehemet Ali, the principle of evacuation by the Egyptian troops had already been settled before the arrival of the French expedition, the Morea remained for the time in French occupation. On the 16th of November a protocol of the London conference placed the Morea, with the neighbouring islands and the Cyclades, under the guarantee of the powers; and on the 22nd of March 1829 another protocol extended the frontier thus guaranteed to the line Arta-Volo and included the island of Euboea. According to this instrument Greece was to be erected into a tributary state, but autonomous, and governed by an hereditary prince chosen by the powers.
The Treaty of Adrianople, by which the Danubian principalities were erected into practically independent states, the treaty Greek independence. rights of Russia in the navigation of the Bosporus and Dardanelles confirmed, and the districts of Anapa and Poti in Asia ceded to the tsar, included also a settlement of the Greek question on the terms of the protocol of the 22nd of March. This fact, which threatened to give to Russia the whole prestige of the emancipation of Greece, spurred the other powers to further concessions. The acceptance of the principle of complete independence, once more warmly advocated by Metternich, seemed now essential if Greece was not to become, like the principalities, a mere dependency of Russia. On the 3rd of February 1830 was signed a protocol embodying the principle of an independent Greece under Leopold of Coburg as “sovereign prince.” This was ultimately expanded, after the fall of the Wellington ministry, into the Treaty of London of the 7th of May 1832, by which Greece was made an independent kingdom under the Bavarian prince Otto. (See Greece: History.)
Before the final settlement of the Greek question a fresh crisis had arisen in the affairs of Turkey. Her lessened prestige Syria. had already received a severe blow from the bombardment and capture of Algiers by the French in 1830, and her position was further embarrassed by revolts in Bosnia and Albania, when news reached Constantinople that Mehemet Ali had invaded Syria (Nov. 1, 1831), nominally in order to punish his enemy Abdullah, pasha of Acre, really in order to take by force of arms the pashaliks of Syria and Damascus promised as a reward for his services in Greece. An account of the collapse of the Turkish power before Mehemet Ali, and of the complicated diplomatic developments that followed, is given in the article Mehemet Ali. Here it must suffice to say that the recognition of Mehemet Ali's claims, forced on the sultan by France and Great Britain, was followed in 1833 by the signature cf the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which seemed to place Turkey wholly in the power of Russia, after which Sultan Mahmud concentrated his energies on creating a force strong enough to crush his rebellious vassal.
At last, in 1839, his eagerness would no longer be restrained, and without consulting his ministers, and in spite of the warnings of all the powers, he determined to renew the war. On the 21st of April the Ottoman army, which had been massed under Hafiz Pasha at Bir on the Euphrates, crossed the stream, by the sultan's orders, and advanced on Damascus. On the 23rd of June it was attacked by Ibrahim at Nezib and annihilated. As for Mahmud, the news of the disaster reached Constantinople when he was unconscious and dying. Early on the 1st of July he was dead, and his son Abd-ul-Mejid, a lad of eighteen, reigned in his stead (see Mahmud II.).
The Eastern Question had now suddenly once more entered an acute phase. The news of Nezib was immediately followed Abd-ul-Mejid, 1839–1861. by that of the treason of Ahmed Pasha, the Ottoman admiral, who, on the plea that the sultan's counsellors were sold to Russia, had sailed to Alexandria and handed over the fleet to Mehemet Ali. With an inexperienced boy on the throne, divided and untrustworthy counsels in the divan, and the defences of the empire shattered, the house of Osman seemed doomed and the Turkish Empire about to dissolve into its elements. If Russia was to be prevented from using the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi for her own purposes, it was essential that the powers should concert measures to deal with the situation. The story of the diplomatic negotiations that followed is told elsewhere (see Mehemet Ali). Here it may suffice to say that the desire of the emperor Nicholas to break the entente between Great Britain and France led him to waive his special claims under the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and that in the ultimate concert by which the question was settled France, which throughout supported Mehemet Ali, had no part. The intervention of the powers, based on the convention of London of the 15th of July 1840, led to the withdrawal of Ibrahim from Syria, and the establishment by the firman of the 13th of February 1841 of Mehemet Ali as hereditary pasha of Egypt under conditions intended to safeguard the sovereign rights of the Ottoman sultan. On the 10th of July the four signatory powers of the convention of London signed a protocol recording the closure of the incident (protocole de clôture), and on the 13th France united with them in signing another protocol (protocole des détroits) by which the powers engaged to respect the principle proclaimed by the sultan as to the closing of the Dardanelles to foreign warships.
The severe crisis through which the Ottoman Empire had passed accentuated the need for strengthening it by a drastic Reform Policy in Turkey. The Tanzimāt. reform of its system. For such an experiment, though hampered by continual insurrections within and troubles without, Mahmud had done something to pave the way. The destruction of the Janissaries and the suppression of the quasi-independent power of the dérébeys had removed the worst disturbing elements; the government had been centralized; a series of enactments had endeavoured to secure economy in the administration, to curb the abuses of official power, and ensure the impartiality of justice; and the sultan had even expressed his personal belief in the principle of the equality of all, Mussulman and non-Mussulman, before the law. It was therefore no sudden revolution when, on the 15th of November 1839 Abd-ul-Mejid signalized his accession by promulgating the Tanzimāt, or Hatt-i-Sherīf of Gulhané, a decree abolishing the arbitrary and unlimited power hitherto exercised by the state and its officials, laying down the doctrine of the perfect equality of all Ottoman subjects of whatever race or creed, and providing for the regular, orderly and legal government of the country and the security of life, property and honour for all its inhabitants. Yet the feelings of dismay and even ridicule with which this proclamation was received by the Mussulmans in many parts of the country show how great a change it instituted, and how strong was the opposition which it encountered among the ruling race. The non-Mussulman subjects of the sultan had indeed early been reduced to such a condition of servitude that the idea of their being placed on a footing of equality with their Mussulman rulers seemed unthinkable. Preserved merely as taxpayers necessary to supply the funds for the maintenance of the dominant and military class, according to a foreign observer in 1571, they had been so degraded and oppressed that they dared not look a Turk in the face. Their only value was from a fiscal point of view, and in times of fanaticism or when anti-foreign sentiment ran high even this was held of little account, so that more than once they very nearly became the victims of a general and state-ordered massacre. Thus Sultan Ibrahim was dissuaded from such a step in 1644 only by the refusal of the Sheikh-ul-Islam to sanction the proceeding. The humane and tolerant measures provided for in the “nizam-i-jedīd,” or new regulations for the better treatment of the Christians enacted by Mustafa Kuprili during his grand vizierate (1689–1691), did for a time improve the position of the rayas. But the wars with Russia and other Christian powers, and the different risings of the Greeks and Servians, helped to stimulate the feelings of animosity and contempt entertained towards them by the ruling race; and the promulgation of the Tanzimāt undoubtedly heralded for the subject nationalities the dawn of a new era.
