Although a decree issued in November, 1850, proclaimed the Protestants equal in the eye of the law, and accorded to them protection from persecutions, yet the condition of the brethren was very miserable. Many of the younger brethren were disinherited by their parents, and thrown out of employment by their employers, for their espousal of the cause of reformation. The anathemas of the patriarch upon “the heretics” and those who would have any dealings with them, shut out the Protestants from the society of, and the business intercourses with, the people. Many, therefore, had to sell and sacrifice their properties for the necessities of life, and fell into abject poverty and had almost reached the verge of starvation. Russia’s desire and demand to establish a protectorate over the Greek Christians in the Turkish empire, and the latter government’s refusal, led these two powers into, what is generally known in history, as the Crimean war. England and France were the allies of the Turk in that war, 1853. This Crimean war also greatly added to the misery of the Protestant community and threatened the existence of the little flock. But the ingenuity of the Rev. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the noble missionary, did ameliorate the condition of the Protestants. He established industries, especially the mill and bakery, where he found sufficient work for them to do; he also was able to build a few churches, in which these brethren might worship. These churches were greatly needed, and he had some balance left in hand after building them.[90] Some good people thought that “the Crimean war was overruled for the furtherance of the Gospel by becoming the occasion, if not the actual means, for securing another concession from the Turkish government on the subject of religious liberty, a new Magna Charter for the Christian subjects of the Porte.” Some regarded this edict (the Hatti Humayaun) as a complete grant of freedom to all Christians or Mohammedans, to follow the dictates of their consciences without any molestation whatever. A few high-sounding sentences from it will show what great contentment it would have given to the subjects of the Porte if it had been meant to be fulfilled: “Every distinction or designation tending to make any class whatever of the subjects of my empire inferior to another class on account of their religion, language, or race, shall be forever effaced from the administrative protocol. “As all forms of religion are and shall be freely professed in my dominions, no subject of my empire shall be hindered in the exercise of the religion that he professes, nor shall be in any way annoyed on this account. NO ONE SHALL BE COMPELLED TO CHANGE HIS RELIGION.” It is, however, nothing uncommon with the sultans and other officials of the Turkish government to promise a good deal, with the full determination not to fulfill the least.