War had been impending for several years between Russia and Turkey. The Turks, in the wanton spirit of barbarian conquest, without the shadow of excuse for the invasion, had crossed the Hellespont with an overwhelming army, had seized Constantinople, and rushing onward in the tide of victory, had unfurled their triumphant banners within sight of the battlements of Vienna. All Europe had trembled beneath the tread of the terrible Moslem armies. Catherine was anxious to drive these usurping Turks back from Europe, across the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, into their Asiatic wilds. She would make the imperial city of Constantine her maritime capital and her great naval depot, from which most admirable point she could command the commerce of the world. This was the real and ever-constant cause for the war, which for nearly a century had been waged between Russia and the Porte. But innumerable and frivolous pretexts had been brought forward, as excuses for an appeal to arms. About ten years before this, the empress had established a naval depot on the right bank of the Dnieper, not very far from the entrance of the river into the Euxine, or Black Sea. Imperial influence soon brought a population of forty thousand to this port, which became an important dock-yard, where the largest ships-of-war were launched. The region around was wild, savage, filled with wandering, half-civilized Tartar tribes. Russian gold and Russian arms gradually gained the ascendency and the tribes, with their territory, were gradually annexed to the majestic Russian Empire. Catherine then contrived, by a treaty with the Porte, to obtain the sovereignty over the immense province of the Crimea; also a sort of dominion over the Black Sea, and the right to pass with her ships through the Dardanelles. In anticipation of the conquest of Constantinople, she caused her young son to be called Constantine. The King of Poland, the Emperor of Austria, and most of the other powers of northern Europe, were in sympathy with the ambitious designs of Russia. They all wished to see the Turks driven back into Asia. In that case, most of them would receive portions of the immense territory which the Turks had overrun in Europe. But England was intensely opposed to the designs of Russia. The Turkish Empire, England regarded as an important and necessary barrier between the rapidly growing power of Russia and her own possessions in the East Indies.