In 1828 the Turkish population was full of hatred on account of the
extermination of the Janissaries. The Christian population were ready to
rise against the government, on account of the events of the Greek war.
Albania was in revolt, because it was opposed to the system of
conscriptions for regular military service. Anatolia was discontented on
the same ground. Mehemet Ali possessed Egypt, and paralyzed the action
of the government in Arabia and Syria. Servia had just laid down arms,
but had not yet concluded peace. The Danubian principalities, though
unfavourable to Russia, were not hearty in support of the Porte, and
remained apathetic under the occupation of Russia. The revenue did not
exceed 400,000,000 piastres (20,000,000 dollars), and was insufficient
for a second campaign. The new army was not yet organized, and amounted
only to 32,000 men, without tried generals. The fleet had been destroyed
at Navarino. The foreign diplomatists had left the empire, and the
capital was exposed to an attack of the enemy. In such a position no
European government could have risked a war.
Russia had just defeated Persia, and by this victory got access to the
Asiatic provinces of the Turkish empire; it had therefore to defend the
frontiers on both sides. Russia had not yet entered into Circassia, and
could therefore rally all her forces; she had not yet abolished the
Poland of 1815, and could leave it without garrisons; she had not yet
roused the hatred or the jealousies of Europe. She had engaged all the
natural allies of the Porte into a combination for rousing the
populations of her enemy, and by her diplomacy she gained the power of
bringing her fleet into the Mediterranean, for blockading the ports of
Turkey; and Navarino opened for her the Black Sea, where she had
thirteen men-of-war. Not disturbed by the Porte, by Circassia, by
Poland, by France, or by England, she had prepared two years for this
war, whilst her enemy, passing through a terrible crisis, was without
money, without an organized army, without a fleet, without other
resources than the feeble Mussulman population on the seat of war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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