The increased importance of the diplomatic relations of the Porte with the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks at Constantinople, and gave rise to the formation of a class of officials in the Othoman service called "phanariots," whose venality and illegal exactions made the name a by-word for the basest servility, corruption, and rapacity. This system was extended to Wallachia and Moldavia, and no other Christian race in the Othoman dominions was exposed to so long a period of unmitigated extortion and cruelty as the Roman population of these principalities. The Treaty of Kainardji which concluded the war with Russia between 1768 and 1774, humbled the pride of the sultan, broke the strength of the Othoman Empire, and established the moral influence of Russia over the whole of the Christian populations in Turkey. But Russia never insisted on the execution of the articles of the treaty, and the Greeks were everywhere subjected to increased oppression and cruelty. During the war from 1783 to 1792, caused by Catherine II. of Russia assuming sovereignty over the Crimea, Russia attempted to excite the Christians in Greece to take up arms against the Turks, but they were again abandoned to their fate on the conclusion of the Treaty of Yassi in 1792, which decided the partition of Poland. Meanwhile, the diverse ambitions of the higher clergy and the phanariots at Constantinople taught the people of Greece that their interests as a nation were not always identical with the policy of the leaders of the Orthodox Church. A modern Greek literature sprang up and, under the influence of the French Revolution, infused love of freedom into the popular mind, while the sultan's administration every day grew weaker under the operation of general corruption. Throughout the East it was felt that the hour of a great struggle for independence on the part of the Greeks had arrived. _IV.--The Greek Revolution_ The Greek revolution began in 1821. Two societies are supposed to have contributed to accelerating it, but they did not do much to ensure its success. These were the Philomuse Society, founded at Athens in 1812, and the Philiké Hetaireia, established in Odessa in 1814. The former was a literary club, the latter a political society whose schemes were wild and visionary. The object of the inhabitants of Greece was definite and patriotic.