with Mehemet Ali’s genius and administrative capacity, should not have created an army superior in force and discipline to that of the Egyptian Pasha, and equal to the task of preventing the Russians from crossing the Balkans. XX THE RULE OF ELCHIS 1839-76 MAHMOUD was succeeded by his son, Abdul Mehzid, a youth of sixteen years, who proved to be of very different stamp from his father. He was of mild and gentle nature, without physical or mental vigour, and wanting in force of character. He was enfeebled early in his reign by excessive indulgence in his harem. Later he was addicted to alcohol, like many of his predecessors. His father had monopolized power, and had frequently changed his ministers, with the result that he left no statesman behind him who could impose his will on the young Sultan and govern in his name. Nor was any lady of the harem ambitious and competent to guide or misguide the ship of State, as had not infrequently been the case in the past, when the reigning Sultan was unequal to the task. The main power during this reign as regards foreign affairs, and to some extent even as regards internal affairs, seems to have been vested in the ambassadors of the Great Powers. This power was exercised collectively by them on the rare occasions when they were unanimously agreed, but at other times by one or other of them, and chiefly, as will be seen, by the British Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, later Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who, by his force of character and commanding presence, obtained immense personal influence over the feeble mind of Abdul Mehzid, and exercised an almost undisputed sway from 1842 to 1858, with the exception of brief intervals when he was in England on leave, and when the Russian Ambassador succeeded in obtaining exclusive influence. The new Sultan was fortunate, as compared with his father, that in the thirty-one years of his reign his Empire experienced no serious loss of territory. It is necessary, however, to advert to the two main events of it—the one, the suppression of Mehemet Ali’s ambitious projects and the restriction of his hereditary Pashalic to Egypt; the other, the Crimean War, as it is known in history—the war with Russia, the effect of which was to stave off for nearly twenty years the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire in Europe.