Such is, for the most part, the negligence and profound security of this Court, that if the Christian princes leagued against the Porte their fleets would be at the Dardanelles and their army at the gates of Adrianople before the Turks could think of taking the defensive. But the different interests which divide Christendom will protect that people from a fate for which they at present seem ripe in their want of policy and their ignorance in war and naval matters. Achmet was so little acquainted with what was happening in Poland that he sent an aga to see if the Czar’s forces were there or not. Two of the King of Sweden’s secretaries, who understood Turkish, went with him, to keep a check on him in the event of a false report. The aga saw the forces with his own eyes and gave the Sultan a true account of the matter. Achmet, in a rage, was going to strangle the Grand Vizir, but the favourite, who protected him, and thought he might prove useful, got him pardoned and kept him some time in the ministry. The Russians were openly protected by the Vizir, and secretly by Ali-Coumourgi, who had changed sides; but the Sultan was so angry, the infraction of the Treaty was so palpable, and the janissaries, who often make the ministers, favourites and Sultans themselves tremble, clamoured so loudly for war that no one in the seraglio dare counsel moderation. The Sultan at once put the Russian ambassadors, who were already as accustomed to go to prison as to a concert, in the seven towers. War was declared again against the Czar, the horse-tails hoisted, and orders issued to all the pashas to raise an army of 200,000 fighting men. The Sultan left Constantinople for Adrianople in order to be nearer the seat of war. In the meantime a solemn embassy from Augustus and the republics of Poland to the Sultan was on the road to Adrianople. At the head of this embassy was the Prince of Massovia with a retinue of 300 persons. They were all seized and imprisoned in the suburbs of the city. Never was the Swedish party more hopeful than on this occasion; but these great preparations came to nothing, and all their hopes were dashed. If a minister of great wisdom and foresight, who was then living at Constantinople, is to be credited, young Coumourgi had other plans in his head than hazarding a war with the Czar to gain a desert. He wanted to take Peloponnesus, now called Morea, from the Venetians, and to make himself master of Hungary.