A century and a half after the flight of Xerxes, Alexander’s army, under Parmenio, crossed the Hellespont at the place where it had been bridged by the ambitious and vainglorious Persian despot. It was at, or near, this spot that Frederick Barbarossa crossed at the head of the Third Crusade. And it was at this same spot that Solyman Pasha, the warlike son of Orkhan, passed from Asia to Europe, where, in 1354, he planted the Osmanli standard and where it has ever since flown as a sign of Moslem faith and of Moslem victory over the hated Giaour. We disembarked at the town of Chanak Kalesi, which Europeans usually call the Dardanelles. It is noted as being at the narrowest point of the Hellespont--the channel here is about fourteen hundred yards in width--and was until recently the headquarters of the general in command of the Turkish troops in the many forts which defended the Strait. In the long-discussed plans of Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia, for joint dominion of the world, the Russian monarch always insisted on securing possession not only of the Bosphorus and Constantinople but also of the Strait of the Dardanelles. But the French emperor just as persistently refused to acquiesce in the Czar’s demands. For a while Napoleon seemed disposed to yield the Bosphorus and even Constantinople, but nothing could induce him to consider for a moment the granting to his ally of control of the Dardanelles--the key to the Mediterranean. Alexander insisted that, owing to its geographical position, the Dardanelles should belong to Russia; that, having Constantinople, he should also hold the key to the Ægean. But Napoleon retorted that, if Russia possessed this important waterway, she would at once become mistress not only of the commerce of the Levant and of India, but she would also be a constant menace to Toulon, to Corfu, and to the commerce of the world. But the Czar and his advisers would not take a refusal. They realized that they would never again have so good an opportunity of gaining possession of the long-coveted capital on the Bosphorus and of the channel connecting the Euxine with the Mediterranean as when Napoleon was counting on their coöperation with him in his great schemes of conquest in Asia. Negotiations continued without interruption from the conference of Tilsit to that of Erfurt, and nothing stood in the way of their successful issue except the possession by Russia of the narrow strait between the Marmora and the Ægean. In return for this Alexander was prepared to accede to Napoleon’s every wish.