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Sultan Achmet III., having checkmated Peter the Great in his attempt to march to the conquest of Constantinople, assembled a large army at Adrianople under the command of Ali Cumurgi, which expelled the Venetians from Greece before the end of 1715. Peace was concluded, by the Treaty of Passarovitz, in July 1718. Thereafter, the material and political position of the Greek nation began to exhibit many signs of improvement, and the agricultural population before the end of the eighteenth century became, in the greatest part of the country, the legal as well as the real proprietors of the soil, which made them feel the moral sentiment of freemen.

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.

The attempt of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was repudiated by the Tsar of Russia. Very different was the intensity of the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy the power of their Othoman masters. In the month of April 1821, a Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of 20,000 souls, was living dispersed in Greece employed in agriculture. Before two months had elapsed the greater part--men, women, and children--were murdered without mercy or remorse. The first insurrectional movement took place in the Peloponnesus at the end of March. Kalamata was besieged by a force of 2,000 Greeks, and taken on April 4. Next day a solemn service of the Greek Church was performed on the banks of the torrent that flows by Kalamata, as a thanksgiving for the success of the Greek arms. Patriotic tears poured down the cheeks of rude warriors, and ruthless brigands sobbed like children. All present felt that the event formed an era in Greek history. The rising spread to every part of Greece, and to some of the islands.

Sultan Mahmud II. believed that he could paralyse the movements of the Greeks by terrific cruelty. On Easter Sunday, April 22, the Patriarch Gregorios and three other bishops were executed in Constantinople--a deed which caused a thrill of horror from the Moslem capital to the mountains of Greece, and the palaces of St. Petersburg. The sultan next strengthened his authority in Thrace and in Macedonia, and extinguished the flames of rebellion from Mount Athos to Olympus.

In Greece itself the patriots were triumphant. Local senates were formed for the different districts, and a National Assembly met at Piada, three miles to the west of the site of the ancient Epidaurus, which formulated a constitution and proclaimed it on January 13, 1822. This constitution established a central government consisting of a legislative assembly and an executive body of five members, with Prince Alexander Mavrocordato as President of Greece.