“I devoutly hope the barbarous Turks will be driven out of the land of Xenophon, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, and Euripides. If Europe really cared, that would soon be done. But seven crusades of superstition were once undertaken, and no crusade of honour will ever be undertaken; all the burden will be left to Catherine.” He did not conceal how highly pleased he was with the events of 1769-71, and he wrote to the “Northern Semiramis,” as he styled her: “It is not sufficient to carry on a fortunate war against such barbarians; it is not enough to humble their pride; they ought to be driven away to Asia for ever. Your Imperial Majesty restores me to life by killing the Turks. It has always been my opinion that if their empire is ever destroyed, it will be by yours.” Indeed, some people maliciously hinted at the time that Voltaire’s opinion of the Turks was due to his disappointment at the failure of his play “Mahomet, ou le fanatisme,” and that it was for the same reason he wrote in his “Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations” while he was Madame du Chatelet’s guest: “Force and rapine built up the Ottoman Empire, and the quarrels between Christians have kept it up. Hardly any town has ever been built by the Turks. They have allowed the finest works of antiquity to fall to decay; they rule over ruins.” It seems that the members of the Supreme Council, in their answer to the Turkish delegation, only harped upon this old theme, and amplified it, and that in their settlement of the question they were inspired by similar considerations, evincing the same misunderstanding of Turkey and the same political error. The Supreme Council might have remembered J. J. Rousseau’s prophecy in his “Contrat Social,” which might very well be fulfilled now: “The Russian Empire will endeavour to subjugate Europe, but will be subjugated. The Tatars, its subjects and neighbours, will become its masters and ours too.”[15] * * * * * The negotiations which had just been broken off could only have been usefully carried on if the Allies had quite altered their policy and had realised the true condition of the Ottoman Empire and the interests of the Western nations, especially those of France.