It was certainly unfortunate for the Ottoman Empire—and it may possibly not have been altogether fortunate for the rest of Europe—that the rise of the power of Russia should have been synchronous with the period of the greatest weakness of Turkey. Russia’s principal attacks on the integrity and independence of Turkey were skilfully timed so as to coincide with the moment when that empire was in the throes of internal revolution, and could offer the least resistance to an external foe. At the time of Mahmoud II.’s accession to the throne, after the murder of Selim III., the accumulation of difficulties and dangers that beset the empire were such that it seemed as if nothing short of a miracle could prevent its complete destruction. It required at any rate some very potent principles of internal strength and cohesion to resist the centrifugal forces in full activity at that crisis. Servia was in open revolt under Michel Obrenowitz, Egypt was in the hands of the able and ambitious Mehemet Ali, Arabia was in the effervescence of a Wahabee rising, the Pasha of Janina had raised the standard of revolt, and the Governor of Widdin, the famous Pasvan Oglou, had proclaimed his independence, and—most serious danger of all—the insurrection of Greece, supported by a consensus of enthusiasm in Europe, threatened the integrity of the empire; all this, too, at the very moment when the military forces of the empire were undergoing the complete re‐organisation which Selim had begun, and Mahmoud was resolved to carry out. This revolution, for it was nothing less, consisted in the abolition of the ancient corps of Janissaries and the substitution for it of a regular force (the _Nizam_) drilled and organised on the European model.