The truce signed with Russia in 1807 had had no result, and the war continued fitfully. France had encouraged the Porte to resume the Russian wars but the misfortunes of these wars aroused public opinion in Turkey against France and turned it in favour of England. On June 5, 1809, a treaty was signed in Chanak between England and Turkey, the British representative being Sir Robert Adair. A peace with Russia was also concluded on May 28, 1812, in Bucharest by the mediation of Stratford Canning, the British ambassador who played a great part in the Anglo-Turkish friendship. The treaty gave Khotin, Bender and Akkerman to Russia, and confined the Eastern frontiers of Turkey to the lines of the River Pruth. The clause which restored Serbia to Turkish suzerainty was vague and gave rise to disputes.
The Turkish army marched into Serbia and appointed one Milosh Obrenovitch as the governor of his district ; he however raised a successful revolt against Turkey and ruled Serbia in semi-inde pendence. Kara George, who had returned, was killed by him and in 1817 he was designated hereditary prince of Serbia.
During the war with Persia Russia had acquired the right from Turkey to use temporarily the road from the Black sea to Tiflis by way of the valley of Rion-Phasis. Russia desired to have this district ceded to her by a secret clause in the Treaty of Bucharest, and the sultan had refused to ratify it. But within a few years she acquired the high land between the Caspian and the Black sea and the low lands along the coast between Anapa and Poti, which were nominally under the suzerainty of the sultan.
Such was the situation when a European guarantee of integrity of Turkey was proposed at the Congress of Vienna, in the belief that break-up of the Turkish empire would endanger the world's peace. It was decided, with the consent of the tsar Alexander, that England, France and Austria should trace clearly the fron tiers of the Turkish empire, whose integrity the Powers would undertake to guarantee. The Porte, deeming the proposal to be a humiliating foreign intervention, refused. The return of Napoleon threw the question into the background and the Turk ish empire thus remained outside the European concert. This Eastern Question (q.v.) which occupied the political history of the 19th century can be summed up as the result of the conflict of the following desires : Russia's and Austria's desire to reach the Mediterranean; the British desire to prevent Turkey from obstructing the route to India; the desire of the non-Muslim Turkish subjects for independence which was often concealed under the demands for reform.
Mohammed Ali Pasha, the governor of Egypt, who had become known during the war with Napoleon, had proved his strength by putting to an end the Mameluke risings; and his successful expedition against the Wahhabis in Hejaz had made him a popular hero as the saviour of the holy places. Another Ali Pasha, the tepedelenly, the governor of Morea, who was keeping the Greeks quiet in Morea by drastic measures but taking a rebellious attitude to the Porte, was executed.
society passed into action with the help of Alexander Ypsilanti, son of hospodar Ypsilanti, a Greek who had become general in the Russian army and used his forces to support the Greek in surgents in 1821. The emperor Alexander's aversion to sup porting a revolutionary, even against the infidel Turks, together with the preference of the population of the Danubian prin cipalities for the Turkish rule rather than that of the hated Phanariotes, considerably weakened the cause of the insurgents. This, the first serious rising was put down at the battle of Dragashani on June 19, 1821. But the Greek rebels in Morea had massacred almost to extermination the native Muslims and the sultan retaliated by executing the Greek patriarch in Con stantinople on the charge of being instigator of the slaughter. Russia, taking this up as an insult to the Orthodox Church, broke off relations with Turkey. The European Powers used every effort to avert a Russo-Turkish conflict. Metternich hoped that with time and the moral and material assistance of European peoples the Greeks would of themselves achieve national inde pendence. On March 25, 1823, however, Canning induced England to recognize the Greek insurgents as a belligerent party. The Rus sian emperor, jealous of this new influence in favour of the Ortho dox Christians of the East, called as a counterpoise a conference in St. Petersburg, in April 1824. Neither the Turks nor the Greeks would abide by its decisions and the sole outcome of the con ference was an offer of the joint mediation of Austria and Russia, which the Porte refused. The sultan, finding himself unable to put down the Greek revolt, asked the aid of Mohammed Ali Pasha, the governor of Egypt, promising him the general governor ships of Morea, Syria and Damascus in return. The well-dis ciplined Egyptian army and fleet entered the Morea under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mohammed Ali. The Greeks were defeated in June 1827, Athens once more was in the hands of the Turks, and Ibrahim Pasha was sending crowds of Greeks as captives to Egypt and replacing them by the fellahin (Egyptian peasants). An isolated Russian intervention, for which Russia was concentrating in the south, was prevented by the death of the emperor Alexander in 1825. Canning persuaded the new tsar Nicholas I. to call another conference in St. Petersburg on April 4, 1826, as a result of which England was empowered to offer Turkey a settlement of the Greek question based on the establishment of Greece as a vassal and tributary State. In case of refusal the two Powers, whether separately or in common, would take the earliest opportunity of enforcing a settlement. Russia, meanwhile, issued a separate ultimatum to the Porte for the satisfaction of her other grievances. The Porte, though it resented new demands being made before the others were dealt with, was unable to resist and signed the Convention of Akkarman accepting the Russian demands which were : the confirmation of the Treaty of Bucharest ; the opening of the navigation of the Black sea to Russian ships ; seven years' term of office for the hospodars of Walachia and Moldavia, as well as the consent of the Russian ambassador in Constantinople before they could be dismissed; and the recognition of the autonomy, where no Muslim was to reside except in the fortresses.