With Prussia thus shattered, disintegrated, and almost annihilated, Napoleon proceeded without the loss of a moment to use his new vantage against both Russia and England. In the Oriental question he could strike both with a single blow. As a result of the thorough knowledge of the East obtained in 1803 through Sebastiani, he had virtually determined to assert his supremacy over Turkey. To this end, however, he must for the present spare the sensibilities of Austria, which, though humbled to the dust, was again rising to her feet; her curiously assorted, heterogeneous peoples showed more spirit than the Prussians, displaying resources and courage comparable to those of France. During the summer of 1806, apparently of his own motion, but in reality by French suggestion, the Sultan Selim III had on August twenty-fourth dismissed the viceroys of Moldavia and Wallachia, both of whom had made themselves conspicuous by their Russian proclivities. At once the Czar Alexander I sent an army to cross the Pruth. The Sultan was terrified when the Russians occupied Bucharest, but on November eleventh, 1806, at the very climax of his peril, he was officially notified that Napoleon now had three hundred thousand men free to attack Russia and save Turkey; the Emperor would himself operate from the Vistula, and a Turkish army must simultaneously appear on the Dniester. The Sultan at once obeyed, and the Czar consequently sent eighty thousand men against the Turks. Two British expeditions were despatched in coöperation, one to Constantinople, one to Egypt: both were failures. Russia was soon fully occupied in her offensive campaign against Napoleon and correspondingly disabled in the East, while the Sultan's janizaries by low intrigue rendered active operations on his part impossible. Austria, mindful, apparently, of Russia's desertion after Austerlitz, displayed neither resentment nor alarm at the course taken by France, and Napoleon, whose material gain was slight, nevertheless won the diplomatic move and felt himself a step nearer both to victory over Russia and to such a protectorate of Turkey as would be a serious menace to England's Eastern empire.