THE campaign, and the resulting treaty of Belgrade, saved the Ottoman Empire from further shrinkage for many years. There followed a long period of peace. This was due not merely to the fact that the Porte pursued a policy of peace, but because the two great Powers in Europe, Russia and Austria, who were bent on the dismemberment of Turkey, were not in a condition to prosecute their aims, and were not able to enter into any combination for the purpose. In 1740 the Emperor Charles VI died. This event led to a scramble among the neighbouring Powers for his inheritance, and to the war known as that of the Austrian Succession, which was brought to an end by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. This was followed later again by another war, known as the Seven Years War, which was concluded in 1763. In neither of these great wars did the Porte take any part, and it is to its credit that it did not take advantage of them to attempt the recovery from Austria of any of its lost dominions in Hungary. Till war broke out with Russia in 1768 there was profound peace. Sultan Mahmoud died in 1754 and was succeeded by his brother, Othman II, who reigned for three years only. He was deformed—a hunchback. He does not appear to have made any change in the foreign policy of his government. In his three years of reign there were six Grand Viziers, and it seems probable that the real power of the State was exercised by the successor to the Kislaraga Bashir, from behind the curtain of the harem. Mustapha III succeeded his brother at the age of fifty. He had spent his life up to this time in seclusion, in the Cage of the Seraglio, cut off from all contact with, or even knowledge of, public affairs. For the first six years of his reign he left matters very much in the hands of his Grand Vizier, Raghab Pasha, the last of the many who had filled this post under Mahmoud. Raghab proved to be a most wise and competent statesman, not far behind Sokolli and the Kiuprilis, and, like them, devoted to a policy of peace. After the death of Raghab in 1763 Mustapha gradually took into his own hands the reins of government. Though well-intentioned and with a sense of public duty, he was feeble, hasty, and impatient, and was wanting in the most essential faculty of a ruler, that of selecting competent men as generals and administrators. He abandoned the policy of peace and allowed himself to be drawn into war, with the most unfortunate results to his Empire. It was his misfortune that his reign coincided with those of two such able and unscrupulous neighbouring potentates as Catherine II of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia.