EIGHTEEN years elapsed between the peace of Kainardji, 1774, and the treaty of Jassy, 1792, the next conspicuous event in the downward course of the Ottoman Empire. The first thirteen of these years were a period of external peace to the Empire under the rule of Abdul Hamid I. The country had been completely exhausted by the late war with Russia, and the Sultan—or, rather, his ministers, for he appears to have been little competent himself to carry on the government—were strongly in favour of maintaining peace, and did so in spite of great provocation from the Empress Catherine. That able and unscrupulous woman pursued her designs for the complete subjection of the Crimea with relentless resolution and activity. It was an essential condition of the peace of Kainardji that the Crimea was to be an independent State under the rule of a native Tartar prince. The breach of it, by the assumption of sovereignty, direct or indirect, on the part of Russia, would undoubtedly be a just cause of war to the Turks. The Porte, however, was not in a position to take up a challenge of the Empress. The knowledge of this was doubtless the main motive for her proceedings during the next few years. The steps by which Catherine attained her object bore a striking resemblance to those by which other annexations were carried into effect by Russia, and might well have been predicted. A member of the princely Tartar family of Gherai, Dewlet, was elected by the Tartars of the Crimea as their Khan. The agents of Russia thereupon supported the claims of a rival Gherai, Schahin. They fomented disaffection and revolt against Dewlet. While sedulously disclaiming any project of annexation, Catherine then sent an army into the peninsula with the ostensible purpose of restoring order. It compelled the abdication of Dewlet and the election of her nominee, Schahin. This prince, raised to the throne by Russian arms, found it necessary to follow the advice of the Russian agent, and soon made himself most unpopular with his subjects. A revolt took place against him. He appealed to the Empress for assistance. A Russian army again appeared in the guise of pacificator. The Tartars who opposed were slaughtered or driven from the country. Schahin was compelled to resign his throne, and the Empress thereupon proclaimed the annexation of the Crimea, with professions of acting only for the benefit of its people and to save them from misgovernment. The wretched tool Schahin was imprisoned for a time in Russia, and later was expelled the country into Turkey, where he was speedily put to death. The Porte was unable to undertake a war on behalf of the independence of the Tartars, and in 1784 a new treaty was made between the two Powers, recognizing the sovereignty of Russia over the Crimea and a district along the north of the Euxine inhabited by Tartars.