Russian Sentence Examples
There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the room.
For the first time, after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.
Germany viewed the Russian mobilization as an act of war and therefore declared war on Russia.
She sometimes thought his accent sounded Russian, sometimes Irish.
After a few years' residence at Wilna he resigned his appointment to participate in a scientific expedition projected by the Russian government, and upon the relinquishment of this undertaking became librarian to the elector of Mainz.
Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance of his in the diplomatic service.
March on, destroy the Russian army....
In 1877 it was nearly destroyed by the Russian artillery stationed in the Rumanian town of Giurgevo, on the opposite bank of the Danube.
He rallied the Bulgarian army, now deprived of its Russian officers, to resist the Servian invasion, and after a brilliant victory at Slivnitza (November 19) pursued King Milan into Servian territory as far as Pirot, which he captured (November 27).
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers after a Russian bath.
AdvertisementHe was well aware that the mass of the Russian nation was on his side.
After a few years the father quarrelled with the Russian government, and went to England, where he obtained a professorship of natural history and the modern languages at the famous nonconformist academy at Warrington.
He entered the university of Göttingen, but soon left, and, taking service in the Austrian army, took part in the Russian campaign of 1812, and fought in the following year at Dresden, Kulm and Leipzig.
On the 16th of January 1547, he was crowned the first Russian tsar by the metropolitan of Moscow; on the 3rd of February in the same year he selected as his wife from among the virgins gathered from all parts of Russia for his inspection, Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina, the scion of an ancient and noble family better known by its later name of Romanov.
He soon, however, returned to Bulgaria, owing to the success of the counterrevolution led by Stamboloff, which overthrew the provisional government set up by the Russian party at Sofia.
AdvertisementOn the mount of Olives are the Russian church, tower and hospice, near the chapel of the Ascension; the French Paternoster church; the Carmelite nunnery; and the Russian church of St Mary Magdalene, near Gethsemane.
Joining a Polish artillery regiment in the French service, he took part in the Russian campaign of 1812, and subsequently so brilliantly distinguished himself in the defence of Danzig (January - November 1813) that he won the cross of the Legion of Honour.
Guaranteed thus against Russian attack, Italy became in the eyes of the central powers a negligible quantity, and was treated accordingly.
Russia, rich in salt-springs, but very poor in fossils, are now held by most Russian geologists to be Triassic. The Permian deposits contain marine shells and also remains of plants similar to those of England and Germany.
This village, after the Russian conquest in 1783, was selected for the chief naval station of the empire in the Black Sea and received its present name ("the August City,").
AdvertisementThere they all seemed to be Poles--all under the Russian crown--but here they're all regular Germans.
These rules were borrowed almost word for word from the project drawn up at the Brussels international conference of 1874, which, though never ratified, was practically incorporated in the army regulations issued by the Russian government in connexion with the war of 18 77-7 8.
On returning to Poland he was for a time in the Russian service, but lost his post, and his liberty as well for some time, for his outspokenness.
Few people south of the Balkans dreamed that Bulgaria could be anything but a Russian province, and apprehension was entertained of the results of the union until it was seen that Russia really and entirely disapproved of it.
Then the best was made of it, and for some years the sultan preserved towards Bulgaria an attitude skilfully calculated so as to avoid running counter either to Russian or to German wishes.
AdvertisementThe vilayet suffered severely during the Russian occupation of 1878, when, apart from the natural dislocation of commerce, many of the Moslem cultivators emigrated to Asia Minor, to be free from their alien rulers.
Yet after these warlike declarations and after the signing of a military convention at Turin, the king agreeing to all the conditions proposed by Napoleon, the latter suddenly became pacific again, and adopted the Russian suggestion that Italian affairs should be settled by a congress.
The AustroGerman alliance of 1879 formally guaranteed the territory of the contracting parties, but Austria could not count upon effectual help from Germany in case of war, since Russian attack upon Austria would certainly have been followed by French attack upon Germany.
The acceptance by the powers of the Murzsteg programme and the appointment of Austrian and Russian financial agents in Macedonia was an advantage for Austria and a set-back for Italy; hut the latter scored a success in the appointment of General de Giorgis as commander of the international Macedonian gendarmerie; she also obtained, with the support of Great Britain, France and Russia, the assignment of the partly Albanian district of Monastir to the Italian officers of that corps.
In 1069 he succeeded in placing Izaslaus on the throne of Kiev, thereby confirming Poland's overlordship over Russia and enabling Boleslaus to chastise his other enemies, Bohemia among them, with the co-operation of his Russian auxiliaries.
They numbered 40,000 to 50,000 infantry, and formed the greater part of the Russian armies in the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
In Russia a prescription containing any of the poisons indicated in the schedules A and B in the Russian pharmacopoeia may not be repeated, except by order of the doctor.
In the northern half of the district the Tatar element predominates (40,000) and there are a number of villages occupied by Russian Raskolniks (Nonconformists).
The Russian plant-anatomist, Russow, may be said to have founded the consideration of plant tissues from the point of view of descent (Vergleichende Untersuchungen ber die Leilbundelkryptogamen, St Petersburg, 1872; and Betrachtungen ber Leitbndel und Grundgewebe, Dorpat, 1875).
Xanthium spinosum has spread from the Russian steppes to every stock-raising country in the world, and in some cases has made the industry impossible.
Without the pilgrims who come to visit it, Meshed would be a poor place, but lying on the eastern confines of Persia, close to Afghanistan, Russian Central Asia and Transcaspia, at the point where a number of trade routes converge, it is very important politically, and the British and Russian governments have maintained consulates-general there since 1889.
With the opening of the Russian railway from the Caspian to Merv, Bokhara and Samarkand in 1886-1887, Russian manufacturers were enabled to compete in Central Asia with their western rivals, and the value of European manufactures passing Meshed in transit was much reduced.
In 1894 the Russian government enforced new customs regulations, by which a heavy duty is levied on Anglo-Indian manufactures and produce, excepting pepper, ginger and drugs, imported into Russian Asia by way of Persia; and the importation of green teas is altogether prohibited except by way of Batum, Baku, Uzunada and the Transcaspian railway.
Born on the 14th of February 1483, he was a descendant of Timur, and his father, Omar Sheik, was king of Ferghana, a district of what is now Russian Turkestan.
Southwards from the last-named, however, at the foot of the mountains and at the entrance to the valleys, there are rich areas of fertile land, which are being rapidly colonized by Russian immigrants, who have also penetrated into the Tian-shan, to the east of Lake Issyk-kul.
Prince Andrey Ivanovich (1768-1855), general in the Russian army, took a conspicuous part in the final campaigns against Napoleon.
Prince Mikhail Dmitrievich (1795-1861), brother of the last named, entered the Russian army in 1807 and took part in the campaigns against Persia in 1810, and in 1812-1815 against France.
In 1849 he commanded the Russian artillery in the war against the Hungarians, and in 1852 he visited London as a representative of the Russian army at the funeral of the duke of Wellington.
At this time he was chief of the staff of the Russian army and adjutant-general to the tsar.
In July the siege of Silistria was raised, and the Russian armies recrossed the Danube; in August they withdrew to Russia.
In 1855 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian forces in the Crimea in place of Prince Menshikov.
Prince Gorchakov, Alexander Mikhailovich (1798-1883), Russian statesman, cousin of Princes Petr and Mikhail Gorchakov, was born on the 16th of July 1798, and was educated at the lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo, where he had the poet Pushkin as a school-fellow.
He remained at Stuttgart for some years as Russian minister and confidential adviser of the crown princess.
When the German confederation was re-established in 1850 in place of the parliament of Frankfort, Gorchakov was appointed Russian minister to the diet.
Gorchakov perceived that Russian designs against Turkey, supported by Great Britain and France, were impracticable, and he counselled Russia to make no more useless sacrifices, but to accept the bases of a pacification.
An attempt was made to form an anti-Prussian coalition, but it failed in consequence of the cordial understanding between the German and Russian chancellors.
In the Russian Orthodox Church the term "ambo" is used of the semicircular steps leading to the platform in front of the iconostasis, but in cathedrals the bishop has an ambo in the centre of the church.
Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilievich (1711-1765), Russian poet and man of science, was born in the year 1711, in the village of Denisovka (the name of which was afterwards changed in honour of the poet), situated on an island not far from Kholmogori, in the government of Archangel.
He compiled a Russian grammar, which long enjoyed popularity, and did much to improve the rhythm of Russian verse.
On his refusal the offer was repeated with the additional inducement of accommodation for as many of his friends as he chose to bring with him to the Russian capital.
The dramatic capabilities of the subject are, however, great, and it afterwards attracted Schiller, who, however, seems to have abandoned it in favour of the similar theme of the Russian Demetrius.
On the 4th of January 1878 a Russian army again entered Sofia after the passage of the Balkans by Gourko; the bulk of the Turkish population had previously taken flight.
Although the name is thus correctly applied, both in English and Russian, to the whole area of the Russian empire, its application is often limited, no less correctly, to European Russia, or even to European Russia exclusive of Finland and Poland.
It is certainly derived, through Rossiya, from Slavonic Rus or Ros (Byzantine `Pws or `Pc o-oc), a name first given to the Scandinavians who founded a principality on the Dnieper in the 9th century; and afterwards extended to the collection of Russian states of which this principality formed the nucleus.
As thus traced, the boundary in Central Asia includes the two khanates of Bokhara and Khiva, which, though nominally protected states, are to all intents and purposes integral parts of the Russian empire.
The total length of the frontier line of the Russian empire by land is 2800 m.
Viewed broadly, the Russian empire may be said to occupy the territories to the N.W.
These were the obvious channels of Russian colonization.
The limits of the Russian Jurassic system may be represented by a line drawn from the double valley of the Sukhona and Vytchegda to that of the upper Volga, and thence to Kieff, with a wide gulf penetrating towards the N.W.
The average number of women to every 100 men in the Russian governments proper was 102.9; in Poland, 98.6; in Finland, 102.2; in Caucasia, 88.9; in Siberia, 93'7; and in Turkestan and Transcaspia, 83 o.
On the other hand, in the six years, 1892-97, the excess of Russian emigration over immigration was 207,353, as compared with an excess of foreign immigration over emigration of only 136,740.
It is also known that the number of Russian immigrants into the United States in1891-1902was 742,869, as compared with 313,469 in 1873-90, or a grand total since 1873 of 1,056,338.
Y g Y P process, so manipulated as to secure an overwhelming preponderance for the wealthy, and especially the landed classes, and also for the representatives of the Russian as opposed to the subject peoples.
The Russian translation is Gosudar.
Popularly, however, the emperor is known by his old Russian title of tsar.
As a legislative body the powers of the Council are co-ordinate with those of the Duma; in practice, however, it has seldom if ever initiated legislation.6 The Duma of the Empire or Imperial Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), which forms the Lower House of the Russian parliament, consists (since the ukaz of the znd of June 1907) on the 27th of April 1906, while the name and princi p le of autocracy was jealously preserved, the word " unlimited " vanished.
The competence of the Russian parliament' thus constituted is strictly limited.
In 1893 district committees for the management of the peasants' affairs, similar to those in the purely Russian governments, were introduced into this part of the empire.
This was made part of the general reform of Russian local government, which in the autumn of 1910 was still under the consideration of the Duma.
One good feature of the Russian primary school system, however, is that in many villages there are school gardens or fields; in nearly moo schools, bee-keeping, and in 300 silkworm culture is taught; while in some 900 schools the children receive instruction in various trades; and in 300 schools in slojd (a system of manual training originated in Finland).
The steady tendency of Russian society towards increasing the number of secondary schools, where instruction would be based on the study of the natural sciences, is checked by the government in favour of the classical gymnasiums. 5 Sunday schools and public lectures are virtually prohibited.
The work achieved by Russian savants, especially in biology, physiology and chemistry, and in the sciences descriptive of the vast territory of Russia, is well known to Europe.
Taking their origin from a series of lacustrine basins scattered over the plateaus and differing slightly in elevation, the Russian rivers describe immense curves before reaching the sea, and flow with a very gentle gradient, while numerous large tributaries collect their waters from over vast areas.
The Pruth rises in Austrian Bukovina, and separates Russia from Rumania; it enters the Danube, which flows along the Russian frontier for 100 m.
The Forest Region of the Russian botanists includes the greater part of the country, from the Arctic tundras to the steppes, and over this immense expanse it maintains a remarkable uniformity of character.
The Russian plains have been, however, the scene of so many migrations of successive races, that at many places a series of deposits belonging to widely distant epochs are found one upon another.
Bogdanov, Birds and Mammals of the Black-Earth Region of the Volga Basin (in Russian, Kazan, 1871); Karelin for the southern Urals; Kessler for fishes; Strauch, Die Schlangen des Russ.
Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not pure.
This may be explained by a variety of causes, of which the chief is the maintenance by the Slays down to a very late period of gentile or tribal organization and gentile marriages, a fact vouched for, not only in the pages of the Russian chronicler Nestor, but still more by visible social evidences, the gens later developing into the village community, and the colonization being carried on by large co-ordinated bodies of people.
Moreover, while a Russian man, far away from home among Siberians, readily marries a native, the Russian woman seldom does the like.
Russian type has thus been maintained from Novgorod to the Pacific, with but minor differentiations on the outskirts - and this notwithstanding the great variety of races with which the Russians have come into contact.
But a closer observation of what is going on in the recently colonized confines of the empire - where whole villages live without mixing with the natives, but slowly bringing them over to the Russian manner of life, and then slowly taking in a few female elements from them - gives the key to this feature of Russian life.
Not so with the national customs. There are features - the wooden house, the oven, the bath - which the Russian never abandons, even when swamped in an alien population.
Russian - readily adapts himself to many other differences.
The Zaporozhian Cossacks colonized the steppes farther E., towards the Don, where they met with a large population of Great Russian runaways, constituting the present Don Cossacks.
The Bashkirs, Meshcheryaks and Teptyars rendered able service to the Russian government against the Khirgiz, and until 1863 they constituted a separate Cossack army.
In Russian Poland they constitute 132% of the total population.
Considerable numbers of Germans, tradesmen and artisans, settled at the invitation of the Russian government in many of the larger towns as early as the 16th century, and to a much greater extent in the 18th century.
Protected as they were by the right of self-government, exempted from military service, and endowed with considerable allotments of good land, these colonies are much wealthier than the neighbouring Russian peasants, from whom they have adopted the slowly modified village community.
According to returns published in 1905 the adherents of the different religious communities in the whole of the Russian empire numbered approximately as follows, though the heading Orthodox Greek includes a very great many Raskolniki or Dissenters.
In his relations with Moslems, Buddhists and even fetishists the Russian peasant looks rather to conduct than to creed, the latter being in his view simply a matter of nationality.
Any idea of proselytism is quite foreign to the ordinary Russian mind, and the outbursts of proselytizing zeal occasionally manifested by the clergy are really due to the desire for " Russification," and traceable to the influence of the higher clergy and of the government.
The Russian emperors, having established themselves as heads of the Church and the Holy Synod as a state department, were not likely willingly to tolerate their existence.
The co-operative spirit of the Great Russians shows itself in another sphere in the artel, which has been a prominent feature of Russian life since the dawn of history.
As illustrating the general impoverishment of the Russian peasantry, it may be stated that the arrears of taxation owed by them have increased enormously since 1882, when they a, ounted to £2,854,000, until in 1900 the total amount was put k £15,222,000.
Out of an average of some 2,700,000 tons of pig-iron produced annually in the whole of the Russian empire, 61.5% is produced in the basin of the Donets, and out of an average of 2,160,500 tons of worked iron and steel 48.7% are prepared in the same region.
Since the time of Peter the Great, the Russian government has been unceasing in its efforts for the creation and development of home manufactures.
Manufacturing industry in the modern sense can hardly be said to have existed in Russia ' See Russian Journal of Financial Statistics, in English (2 vols., St Petersburg, 1901).
The peculiar feature of Russian industry is the development out of the domestic petty handicrafts of central Russia of a semifactory on a large scale.
As a consequence this central Russian industry, even when supported by very high protective duties, is only able to produce for the home market and the markets of the adjacent territories in Asia which are under Russian political control.
But of the vessels that visit the Russian ports in the way of trade every year only 8.3% are Russian, the rest being of course foreign.
Russian craft play, however, a much more important part on the internal waterways, the traffic on which increases rapidly, e.g.
Consequently a company was formed by the Russian government in 1896 to construct, with the consent of the Chinese government, a railway from Vladivostok across Manchuria to Karymskaya near Chita in Transbaikalia.
The first portion of the Manchurian railway, built by Russian engineers, with Chinese labour, was finished in 1902.
Caucasia, having been connected with the Rostov-Vladikavkaz line, has consequently also been brought into touch with the Russian railways.
Three brothers, princes of Ras, called respectively Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, accepted the invitation and founded a dynasty, from which many of the Russian princes of the present day claim descent.
Who were those warlike men of Ras who are universally recognized as the founders of the Russian Empire?
This question has given rise to an enormous amount of discussion among learned men, and some of the disputants have not yet laid down their arms; but for impartial outsiders who have carefully studied the evidence there can be little doubt that 1 See Researches into the State of Fisheries in Russia (9 vols.), edited by Minister of Finance (1896, Russian); Kusnetzow's Fischerei and Thiererbeutung in den Gewassern Russlands (1898).
In theory the whole Russian land was a gigantic family estate belonging to the Rurik dynasty, and each member of that great family considered himself entitled to a share of it.
It had to be divided, therefore, into a number of independent principalities, but it continued to be loosely held together by the dynastic sentiment of the descendants of Rurik and by the patriarchal authority - a sort of patria potestas - of the senior member of the family, called the grand-prince, who ruled in Kiev, " the mother of Russian cities."
Thereupon Russian colonization and political influence retreated northwards, and from that time the continuous stream of Russian history is to be sought in the land where the Vikings first settled and in the adjoining basin of the upper Volga.
Unlike the ordinary Russian principalities, it had a republican rather than a monarchical form of government.
There was here in the Russian land the germ of republicanism or constitutional monarchy, but it was not destined to be developed.
The principality which was to become the nucleus of the future Russian empire was not Novgorod with its democratic institutions, but its eastern neighbour Moscow, in which the popular assembly played a very insignificant part, and the supreme law was the will of the prince.
In response to this call some Russian princes formed a league and went out eastward to meet the foe, but they were utterly defeated in a great battle on the banks of the Kalka (1224), which has remained to this day in the memory of the Russian common people.
About the origin and character of these terrible invaders we are much better informed than the early Russian chroniclers.
One of his successors, half a century later, married a daughter of the Byzantine emperor, and gave his own daughter in marriage to a Russian prince.
The grand khan was the lord paramount or suzerain of the Russian princes, and he had the force required for making his authority respected.
For this purpose Dimitri Donskoi formed in 1380 a coalition of Russian princes, and gained a great victory over Khan Mamai of the Golden Horde on the famous battlefield of Kulikovo, the memory of which still lives in the popular legends.
For some time longer the Tatars remained troublesome neighbours, capable of invading and devastating large tracts of Russian territory and of threatening even the city of Moscow, but the Horde was now broken up into independent and mutually hostile khanates, and the Moscow diplomatists could generally play off one khanate against the other, so that there was no danger of the old political domination being re-established.
From the ecclesiastics Basil likewise insisted on unquestioning obedience, and he did not hesitate to depose by his own authority a metropolitan who was at that time the highest dignitary of the Russian Church.
There was no longer within the Russian land any independent principality in which an asylum could be found, and emigration to a principality beyond the frontier, such as Lithuania, was regarded as treason, for which the property of the fugitive would be confiscated and his family might be punished.
As late as 1571 Moscow was pillaged by a Tatar horde; but there was no longer any question of permanent political subjection to the Asiatics, and the Russian frontier was being gradually pushed forward at the expense of the nomads of the steppe by the constant advance of the agricultural population in quest of virgin soil.
He met with such a favourable reception from the tsar that on his return to England a special envoy was sent to Moscow by Queen Mary, and he succeeded in obtaining for his countrymen the privilege of trading freely in Russian towns.
Thus began a period of Russian history commonly called " the Troublous Times, " which lasted until 1613.
As a precaution against Tatar invasions he founded fortified towns on his southern frontiers - Tambov, Kozlov, Penza and Simbirsk; but when the Don Cossacks offered him Azov, which they had captured from the Turks, and a National Assembly, convoked for the purpose of considering the question, were in favour of accepting it as a means of increasing Russian influence on the Black Sea, he decided that the town should be restored to the sultan, much to the disappointment of its captors.
During the Russian Dark Ages certain clerical errors had crept into the liturgical books Reforms a nd certain peculiarities had been adopted in the ritual.
When put into execution the project produced in the Russian Church a great schism and numerous fantastic sects.
An ambitious, energetic sister of Ivan, well known in Russian history as Sophia Alexeyevna,instigated the stryeltsi(strelitz), as the troops Sophia of the unreformed standing army were called, to upset Alexey- the arrangement.
As Sweden was known to be exhausted by the long wars of Gustavus Adolphus and his successors, and weakened by internal dissensions, the dismemberment seemed an easy matter, and Peter embarked on the scheme with a light heart; but his illusions were quickly dispelled by the eccentric young Swedish king, Charles XII., who arrived suddenly in Esthonia and completely routed the Russian army before Narva.
In the midst of the Northern War, shortly after the great Russian victory of Poltava (1709), the sultan, at the instigation of Swedish and French agents, determined to recover Azov, and made great military preparations for that purpose.
To avert the danger of a man of this type succeeding to the throne Peter made a law by which the reigning sovereign might choose his successor according to his own judgment, and two years later he caused his second wife, Catherine Catherine, the daughter of a Lithuanian peasant, to 1, be crowned with all due solemnity, " in recognition of the courageous services rendered by her to the Russian Empire."
As a true daughter of the great Russian reformer, Elizabeth (1741-61) relegated the German element to a subordinate position in the administration and gave her confidence to genuine Russians like Bestuzhev, Vorontsov, Razumovski (her morganatic husband) and the Shuvalovs.
Her hatred of Germans showed itself likewise in her persistent struggle with Frederick the Great, which cost Russia 300,000 men and 30 millions of roubles - an enormous sum for those days - but in the choice of a successor she could not follow her natural inclinations, for among the few descendants of Michael Romanov there was no one, even in the female line, who could be called a genuine Russian.
Whilst primary education was neglected, secondary schools were created in the principal towns and a Russian Academy was founded in St Petersburg.
In foreign affairs Catherine devoted her attention mainly to pushing forward the Russian frontier westwards and south- Foreign wards, and as France was the traditional ally of policy of Sweden, Poland and Turkey, she adopted at first Cath- the so-called systeme du Nord, that is to say, a close erine.
The first step westwards was taken in Courland, which lay between Russian territory and the Baltic coast.
At the time of her accession the duchy was ruled by a son of the Polish king Augustus III., and he gave a pretext for aggression by refusing to allow Russian troops returning from the Seven Years' War to pass through his territory.
Under Biren (1763-69) and his son and successor (1769-95), as nominees of Catherine, Courland was completely under Russian influence until 1795, when it was formally incorporated with the empire.
Unfortunately for the success of her schemes she had to reckon with stronger states which were anxious to check the Russian advance, and which were determined, in the event of aggression, to have a share of the plunder.
Then an imperial manifesto reminding the Poles of the treaty of 1768 was issued and a large Russian force entered the Ukraine.
The Tatars of the Bug, of the Crimea and of the Kuban were liberated from the suzerainty of the Porte; Azov, Kinburn and all the fortified places of the Crimea were ceded to Russia; the Bosphorus and Dardanelles were opened to Russian merchant vessels; and Russian ambassadors obtained the right to intervene in favour of the inhabitants of the Danubian principalities.
It was intended that Russia should take what remained of the northern coast of the Black Sea, Austria should annex the Turkish provinces contiguous to her territory, the Danubian principalities and Bessarabia should be formed into an independent kingdom called Dacia, the Turks should be expelled from Europe, the Byzantine empire should be resuscitated, and the grand-duke Constantine, second son of the Russian heir-apparent, should be placed on the throne of the Palaeologi.
Fortune again favoured the Russian arms, but as Austria was less successful and signed a separate peace at Sistova in 1791, Catherine did not obtain much material advantage from the campaign.
During the first years of the French Revolution Catherine's sympathy with philosophic liberalism rapidly evaporated, and the European sovereigns to the democratic movement; but she carefully abstained from joining the Coalition, and waited patiently for the moment when the complications in western Europe would give her an opportunity of solving independently the Eastern Question in accordance with Russian interests.
Paul left no deep, permanent mark on Russian history.
The sovereigns of Sardinia, Naples, Portugal and Spain were dethroned, the pope was driven from Rome, the Rhine Confederation was extended till France obtained a footing on the Baltic, the grand-duchy of Warsaw was reorganized and strengthened, the promised evacuation of Prussia was indefinitely postponed, an armistice between Russia and Turkey was negotiated by French diplomacy in such a way that the Russian troops should evacuate the Danubian principalities, which Alexander intended to annex to his empire, and the scheme for breaking up the Ottoman empire and ruining England by the conquest of India, which had been one of the most attractive baits in the Tilsit negotiations, but which had not been formulated in the treaty, was no longer spoken of.
Here, on the 14th of September 1829, was signed a treaty by which the Porte ceded to Russia the islands at the mouth of the Danube and several districts on the Asiatic frontier, granted full liberty to Russian navigation and commerce in the Black Sea, and guaranteed the autonomous rights previously accorded to Moldavia, Walachia and Servia.
Under pressure from Treaty of England and France the Egyptians retreated and the Unklar- Russian forces were withdrawn, but the tsar had mean- Skelessl, while (July 8, 1833) concluded with the sultan the 1833' treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, which constituted ostensibly a defensive and offensive alliance between the two Powers and established virtually a Russian protectorate over Turkey.
In this way the development of Russian policy with regard to Turkey was checked for some years, but the project of confirming and extending the Russian protectorate over the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852, when Napoleon III.
It was not without secret satisfaction, therefore, that Prince Gorchakov watched the repeated defeats of the Austrian army in the Italian campaign of 1859, and he felt inclined to respond to the advances made to him by Napoleon III.; but the germs of a Russo-French alliance, which had come into existence immediately after the Crimean War, ripened very slowly, and they were completely destroyed in 1863 when the French emperor wounded Russian sensibilities deeply by giving moral and diplomatic support to the Polish insurrection.
In return for these services Bismarck helped Russia to recover a portion of what she had lost by the Crimean War, for it was thanks to his connivance and diplomatic support that she was able in 1871 to denounce with impunity the clauses of the treaty of Paris which limited Russian armament in the Black Sea.
Much greater success attended the efforts of Russian diplomacy and Russian arms in Asia.
Nationality and Eastern Orthodoxy, which are so closely connected as to be almost blended together in the Russian mind, received not less attention.
The local institutions were assimilated to those of the purely Russian provinces; the use of the Russian language was made obligatory in the administration, in the tribunals and to some extent in the schools; the spread of Eastern Orthodoxy was encouraged by the authorities, whilst the other confessions were placed under severe restrictions; foreigners were prohibited from possessing landed property; and in some provinces administrative measures were taken for making the land pass into the hands of Orthodox Russians.
He suspected Bismarck of harbouring hostile designs against Russia, and he came to recognize that the permanent weakening of France was not in accordance with Russian political interests.
In view of this contingency the Russian and French military authorities studied the military questions in common, and the result of their labours was the preparation of a military convention, which was finally ratified in 1894.
In the summer of 1891 the visit to Kronstadt of a French squadron under Admiral Gervais was made the occasion for an enthusiastic demonstration in favour of a Franco-Russian alliance; and two years later (October 1893) a still more enthusiastic reception was given to the Russian Admiral Avelan and his officers when they visited Toulon and Paris.
He then allowed the military authorities to push forward in the direction of Afghanistan, until in March 1885 an engagement took place between Russian and Afghan forces at Panjdeh.
For this purpose Russian diplomacy became more active in south-eastern Europe.
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria had long been anxious to legalize his position by a reconciliation, and as soon as he got rid of Stamboloff he made advances to the Russian government.
After Prince Lobanov's death and the appointment of Count Muraviev as his successor in January 1897, this tendency of Russian policy became less marked.
A great part of the eastern section of the railway was constructed on Chinese territory, and elaborate preparations were made for bringing Manchuria within the sphere of Russian influence.
What contributed powerfully to the conclusion of peace was the fact that the Russian government was hampered by internal troubles.
The majority of this decided to approach the crown with a suggestion for a reform of the Russian system on the basis of a national representative assembly, an extension of local self-government, and wider guarantees for individual liberty.
Muromtsov, they drew up Vyborg and issued a manifesto calling on the Russian people mani- to refuse taxes and military service.
The of the revolutionary terrorists were countered by the Russian terrorists of the reaction who under the name of People."
Khomiakov, had been one of the founders of the " Union of 17 October," but even the Octobrists formed but a third of the House and were compelled to act with the reactionaries of the Right; and the vice-president, Prince Volkonsky, was a member of the Union of the Russian People.
On the whole, the new Duma was fairly representative of the changed temper of the Russian people, disillusioned and weary of anarchy.
The government had done wisely in obscuring the passion for democratic ideals by an appeal to Russian chauvinism, an appeal soon to bear fruit in disuniting the revolutionary parties.
Dubrovin, president of the Union of the Russian People and organizer of pogroms, having written a letter of congratulation to the tsar on the occasion of the coup d'etat, received a gracious reply; the hideous reign of terror of the " Black Hundred " in Odessa did not prevent the Grand-duke Constantine from accepting the badge of membership of the Union.
In May 1908 a deputation of Russian the Slav members of the Austrian Reichsrat paid a moveens.
Neo-Slav dreams were now replaced by a passionate desire to consolidate the Russian empire on a purely Russian basis.
Finnish diet ought to refer to the imperial legislature not only all military matters - as the tsar demanded (Rescript of October 14) - but the question of the use of the Russian language in the grand-duchy, the principles of the Finnish administration, police, justice, education, formation of business companies and of associations, public meetings, the press, the customs tariff, the monetary system, means of communication, and the pilot and lighthouse system.
That in the work of restoring its military position the Russian government had the support of the Russian parliament was proved by a subsidy of Li 1,000,000 voted by the Duma, on the 30th of December 1909, for the special service of the reorganization and redistribution of the army.
The publications of the Imperial Russian Historical Society of St Petersburg, amounting to upwards of 100 vols., are of great value.
If the Asiatic portions of the Russian Empire were given in the same table, the total Russian mileage would appear nearly as large as that of Germany and Italy together.
He then became lieutenant of engineers, and took part in the Russian campaign, during which he was taken prisoner and was confined at Saratov on the Volga.
He at once became the recognized leader of the Liberal opposition to the reactionary government, but must be distinguished from Count Bennigsen, a member of the same family, and son of the distinguished Russian general, who was also one of the parliamentary leaders at the time.
In 1747 he was accredited to Copenhagen as Russian minister, but a few months later was transferred to Stockholm, where for the next twelve years he played a conspicuous part as the chief opponent of the French party.
For a long time he could not endure the thought of destroying her, because he regarded her as an indispensable member of his "Accord," wherein she was to supply the place of Austria, whom circumstances had temporarily detached from the Russian alliance.
As the Austrian influence increased Panin found a fresh enemy in Joseph II., and the efforts of the old statesman to prevent a matrimonial alliance between the Russian and Austrian courts determined Catherine to get rid of a counsellor of whom, for some mysterious reason, she was secretly afraid.
A small wooden church, erected by the monk Sergius, and afterwards burned (1391) by the Tatars, stood on the site now occupied by the cathedral of the Trinity, which was built in 1422, and contains the relics of Sergius, as well as ecclesiastic treasures of priceless value and a holy picture which has frequently been brought into requisition in Russian campaigns.
Yet in spite of these disabilities there are amongst the Russian Jews many enterprising contractors, skilful doctors, and successful lawyers and scientists.
Such incidents were the Damascus charge of ritual murder (1840), the forcible baptism of the Italian child Mortara (1858), and the Russian pogroms at various dates.
On the same day Georgi Pasha, the Christian governor-general, took refuge on board a Russian ironclad, and, on the next, naval detachments from the warships of the powers occupied Canea.
During the Russo-Japanese War he served in the Red Cross and in the Municipal Union for the organization of hospitals; he was left to take care of the Russian wounded after the battle of Moukden, and showed much dignity and efficiency in the performance of his arduous duties.
When the first Russian revolutionary movement developed in 1905 he took part in the meetings of Zemstvo representatives, but did not join the Cadets, whom he considered to be too doctrinaire and cosmopolitan.
When the campaign of 1915 had disclosed the incredible inefficiency and corruption of the Russian War Office, Guchkov threw his whole energy into the work of refitting the army on the technical side.
It is connected by rail with the south Russian railway system at Beslan, the junction for Vladikavkaz (400 m.), via Derbent and Petrovsk, with Batum (560 m.) and Poti (536 m.) on the Black Sea via Tiflis.
Beside the harbour are engineering works, dry docks and barracks, stores and workshops belonging to the Russian Caspian fleet.
Owing to its excellent harbour Baku is a chief depot for merchandise coming from Persia and Transcaspia - raw cotton, silk, rice, wine, fish, dried fruit and timber - and for Russian manufactured goods.
The Russians captured it from them in 1723, but restored it in 1735; it was incorporated in the Russian empire in 1806.
The towns are entirely Russian.
But while we have yet to wait for that expansion of principal triangulation which will bring Asia into connexion with Europe by the direct process of earth measurement, a topobetween graphical connexion has been effected between Russian Russ/an and Indian surveys which sufficiently proves that the and deductive methods employed by both countries for the Indian determination of the co-ordinate values of fixed points so surveys.
In 1871-1873 the great Russian explorer, Nicolai Prjevalsky, crossed the Gobi desert from the north to Kansu in western China.
Following Prjevalsky the Russian explorers, Pevtsov and Roborovski, in 1889-1890 (and again in 1894), added greatly to our knowledge of the topography of western Chinese Turkestan and the northern borders of Tibet; all these Russian expeditions being conducted on scientific principles and yielding results of the highest value.
Miles made his adventurous journey through Oman, while Theodore Bent threw searchlights backwards into ancient Semitic history by his investigations in the Bahrein Islands in 1888 and in Hadramut in 1894 - 181n northern Asia it is impossible to follow in detail the results of the organized Russian surveys.
Asiatic Russia, especially eastern Siberia and Mongolia, have been brought within the sphere of Russian exploration, with results so surprising as to form an epoch in the history of Asia.
The depression westward of the Caspian and Aral basins, and the original connexion of these seas, have also come under the close investigation of Russian scientists, with the result that the theory of an ancient connexion between the Oxus and the Caspian has been displaced by the more recent hypothesis of an extension of the Caspian Sea eastwards into Trans-Caspian territory within the postPleiocene age.
Between the Russian Pamirs and Chinese Turkestan the rugged line of the Sarikol range intervenes, the actual dividing line being still indefinite.
At two points the Russian boundary nearly approaches that of provinces which are directly under British suzerainty.
Throughout this land of promise Russian influence was destroyed by Japan in the war of 1904.
Coincident with the demarcation of Russian boundaries in Turkestan was that of northern Afghanistan.
The increase of Russian influence on the northern Persian border and its extension southwards towards Seistan led to the appointment of a British consul at Kirman, the dominating Kirman.
The population may be set down roughly as 823,000,000, of which 330,000,000 inhabit Chinese territory, 302,000,000 British, and 25,000,000 Russian.
Of the two divisions (Kara Kirghiz and Kassak Kirghiz) into which the Kirghiz tribes are divided by Russian authorities, the Kassak Kirghiz is the more closely allied to the Mongol type; the Kara Kirghiz, who are found principally in the valleys of the Tian-shan and Altai mountains, being unmistakably Turkish.
It will thus be seen that European (excluding Russian) power in Asia is based almost entirely on improved navigation.
Though the geographical extent of Russian territory and influence is enormous, she has always moved along the line of least resistance.
As the Russian possessions in Asia are continuous with European Russia, it is only natural that they should have been russified far more thoroughly than the British possessions have been anglicized.
Coloman was twice married, (1) in 1097 to Buzella, daughter of Roger, duke of Calabria, the chief supporter of the pope, and (2) in 1112 to the Russian princess, Euphemia, who played him false and was sent back in disgrace to her kinsfolk the following year.
He spared neither men, money, nor himself in attempting to carry out his gigantic scheme for the colonization of the south Russian steppes; but he never calculated the cost, and more than three-quarters of the design had to be abandoned when but half finished.
Then the empress grew impatient and compelled him (1791) to return to Jassy to conduct the peace negotiations as chief Russian plenipotentiary.
Russian aggression began somewhat early in the r8th century, when Peter the Great, establishing his base at Astrakhan on the Volga, and using the Caspian for bringing up supplies and munitions of war, captured Derbent from the Persians in 1722, and Baku in the following year.
In 1783 George XIII., prince of Georgia and Mingrelia, formally put himself under the suzerainty of Russia, and after his death Georgia was converted (r80r) into a Russian province.
After a peaceful period of a quarter of a century the Armenian subjects of Russia in Transcaucasia were filled with bitterness and discontent by the confiscation of the properties of their national (Gregorian) church by the Russian treasury.
Nor were their feelings more than half allayed by the arrangement which made their ecclesiastics salaried officers of the Russian state.
In 1785 Bentham started, by way of Italy and Constantinople, on a visit to his brother, Samuel Bentham, a naval engineer, holding the rank of colonel in the Russian service; and it was in Russia that he wrote his Defence of Usury.
During nearly a quarter of a century he was engaged in negotiations with the government for the erection of a "Panopticon," for the central inspection of convicts; a plan suggested to him by a building designed by his brother Samuel, for the better supervision of his Russian shipwrights.
In 1865 the rinderpest, or steppe murrain, originating amongst the vast herds of the Russian steppes, had spread westward over Europe, until it was brought to London by foreign cattle.
At the time of his first view of the Adriatic (February 1797) he noted the importance of the port of Ancona for intercourse with the Sultan's dominions; and at that city fortune placed in his hands Russian despatches relative to the designs of the Tsar Paul on Malta.
The parallel extends even to the secret negotiations; for, if Austria could have been induced in May 1807 to send an army against Napoleon's communications, his position would have been fully as dangerous as before Austerlitz if Prussia had taken a similar step. Once more he triumphed owing to the timidity of the central power which had the game in its hands; and the folly which marked the Russian tactics at Friedland (14th of June 1807), as at Austerlitz, enabled him to close the campaign in a blaze of glory and shiver the coalition in pieces.
Opinions were divided in the emperor's circle between a Russian and an Austrian princess; but the marked coolness with which overtures for the hand of the tsar's sister were received at St Petersburg, and the skill with which Count Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, let it be known that a union with the archduchess, Marie Louise, would be welcomed at Schonbrunn, helped to decide the matter.
A marriage between Napoleon and a Russian princess would have implied the permanent subjection of Austria.
Mainly, it would seem, because he desired hurriedly to screen the refusal, which might at any time be expected from the Russian court, under the appearance of a voluntary choice of an Austrian archduchess.
That the Russian campaign of 1812 was the last device for assuring the success of the Continental System and the ruin of England was nothing to the great mass of Frenchmen.
Shortly before starting for the Russian expedition Napoleon vainly tried to reassure the merchants and financiers of France then face to face with a sharp financial crisis.
Now at the close of 1812 matters were worse, and Napoleon, on reaching Paris, found the nation preoccupied with the task of finding out how many Frenchmen had survived the Russian campaign.
In moths and certain saw-flies there is no rupture of the membranes; the Russian zoologists Tichomirov and Kovalevsky have described the growth of both amnion and embryonic ectoderm around the yolk, the embryo being thus completely enclosed until hatching time by both amnion and serosa.
Fortunately, the two first passes were unoccupied; and the third, Pyhajoggi, was captured by Charles, who with 400 horsemen put 6000 Russian cavalry to flight.
On the 4th of July 1708 he cut in two the line of the Russian army, 6 m.
G..Gmelin, Giildenstalt, Lepechin and others - in the exploration of the recently extended Russian empire supplied not only much material to the Commentarii and Acta of the Academy of St Petersburg, but more that is to be found in their narratives - all of it being of the highest interest to students of Palaearctic or Nearctic ornithology.
A similar bibliography of Russian ornithology by Alexander Brandt was printed at St Petersburg in 1877 or 1878.
Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian, English and German are the leading races.
In the trap-door species of Lycosidae, like, for instance, Lycosa opifex of the Russian steppes, the hinge is weak and the lid of the burrow is kept normally shut by being very much thicker and heavier at its free margin opposite the hinge so that it readily falls by its own weight.
This letter corresponds to the second symbol in the Phoenician alphabet, and appears in the same position in all the European alphabets, except those derived, like the Russian, from medieval Greek, in which the pronunciation of this symbol had changed from b to v.
The World's Commercial Cotton Crop. It is impossible to give an exact return of the total amount of cotton produced in the world, owing to the fact that in China, India and other eastern countries, in Mexico, Brazil, parts of the Russian empire, tropical Africa, &c., considerable - in some cases very large - quantities of cotton are made up locally into wearing apparel, &c., and escape all statistical record.
About one-third of the cotton used in Russian mills is grown on Russian territory, the remainder coming chiefly from the United States.
Gold mines are worked at several places in the northern part of Manchuria, of which the principal are on the Muho river, an affluent of the Amur, and near the Russian frontier.
Mines are also worked at Kwanyin-shan, opposite the Russian frontier town of Radevska, and at Chia-pi-kou, on an affluent of the upper Sungari.
The rest of the original Manchurian system (1088 miles) remains under Russian control.
Thence eat E min-ting and to Niu-chwang, and the link between Sin-min-ting and Mukden is also under Chinese control, The lines now under Russian control were laid down, and remain, on the 5 ft.
Manchuria was claimed by Russia as her particular sphere of interest towards the close of the 19th century, and in the course of the disturbances of 1900 Russian troops occupied various parts of the country.
A Russian traveller, Peter Kalm, in his work on America, published in 1748, showed on a map the oil springs of Pennsylvania, and about the same time Raicevich referred to the " liquid bitumen " of Rumania.
The extremely high pressure under which oil is met with in wells drilled in some parts of the Russian oil fields is a matter of common knowledge, and a fountain or spouting well resulting therefrom is one of the " sights" of the country.
A form of the rod system is used in the Russian oil-fields, but owing to the large diameter of the wells the appliances differ from those employed elsewhere.
The primitive methods originally in use in the Russian oil-fields have already been described; but these were long ago superseded by pipe-lines, while a great deal of oil is carried by tank steamers on the Caspian to the mouth of the Volga where it is transferred to barges and thence at Tzaritzin to railway tank-cars.
Here Blucher crossed the Rhine with the Prussian and Russian armies, on New Year's night 1813-1814, in pursuit of the French.
With a Russian army he joined Manuel in the invasion of Hungary and assisted at the siege of Semlin.
Russian mediation proved barren, but Gallatin persevered, catching at every opportunity for negotiation.
In both fields he displayed much talent, and by writing his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America (1836), and by founding the American Ethnological Society of New York in 1842, he earned the title of "Father of American Ethnology."
He entered the navy in 1846, and served first at sea off Portugal in 1847; afterwards, in 1848, in the Mediterranean, and from 1848 to 1851 as midshipman of the "Reynard" in operations against piracy in Chinese waters; as midshipman and mate of the "Serpent" during the Burmese War of 1852-53; as mate of the "Phoenix" in the Arctic Expedition of 1854; as lieutenant of the "Hastings" in the Baltic during the Russian War, taking part in the attack on Sveaborg.
He was the only Russian statesman of the day with sufficient foresight to grasp the fact that the Baltic seaboard, or even a part of it, was worth more to Muscovy than ten times the same amount of territory in Lithuania, and, despite ignorant jealousy of his colleagues, succeeded (Dec. 1658) in concluding a three-years' truce whereby the Muscovites were left in possession of all their conquests in Livonia.
Finally he laid stress upon the immense importance of Livonia for the development of Russian trade.
He was, in fact, the first Russian chancellor.
With his name, too, is associated the building of the first Russian merchant-vessels on the Dvina and Volga.
A Russian monk named Ilarion, in the western Caucasus, had published a book, under the title of In the Mountains of the Caucasus, in which he argued that the name of God, being part of God, is divine, and therefore to be worshipped.
The crisis began when Archbishop Antony of Volinsk denounced the doctrine as heretical in The Russian Monk.
On the appeal of the abbots the dispute was now referred by the Holy Synod to the court of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the intervention of the Russian Government was invited.
The condemnation of the " heretics " by the Patriarch led to their repudiation by the community of Vatopedi, and at the instance of the Russian ambassador at Constantinople the refractory monasteries were subjected to a rigorous blockade.
It was feared that the heresy, if suffered to make headway, would spread like wildfire among the ignorant Russian peasantry, and Archbishop Nikon was sent to Athos to threaten the recalcitrant brethren with severe temporal and eternal penalties should they remain obstinate.
But his reception was worse than cold, and the Russian Government determined to take strong measures.
On June 24, 200 Russian soldiers landed on Mount Athos, and a month later 600 of the monks were deported to Russia, where they were distributed as prisoners in various monasteries.
After their conversion to Islam they began building forts, several of which are mentioned in Russian annals.
Their chief town, Bolgari or Velikij Gorod (Great Town) of the Russian annals, was often raided by the Russians.
For maps of the Balkan Peninsula we are still largely indebted to the rapid surveys carried on by Austrian and Russian officers.
The Russian setter has a woolly and matted coat.
The conclave was remarkably free from political influences, the attention of Europe being at the time engrossed by the presence of a Russian army at the gates of Constantinople.
While still a girl she was connected with the Russian court, and became one of the leaders of the party that attached itself to the grand duchess (afterwards empress) Catherine.
Before she was sixteen she married Prince Mikhail Dashkov, a prominent Russian nobleman, and went to reside with him at Moscow.
In 1782 she returned to the Russian capital, and was at once taken into favour by the empress, who strongly sympathized with her in her literary tastes, and specially in her desire to elevate Russ to a place among the literary languages of Europe.
Immediately after her return the princess was appointed "directeur" of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1784 she was named the first president of the Russian Academy, which had been founded at her suggestion.
She projected the Russian dictionary of the Academy, arranged its plan, and executed a part of the work herself.
It was twice threatened by hostile fleets, the Greek in 1827 and the combined British, French and Russian squadrons in 1828.
The population is mostly White Russian.
The greatest depth is 1030 fathoms (1227 Russian fathoms) near the centre, there being only one basin.
In 1799 it was taken of ter ten days' bombardment by the Austrian and Russian armies, and, in 1800, of ter the victory of Marengo, the French demolished the fortifications.
He managed to get into the Fourth Duma through the joint protection of Bieletzky, the Russian Fouche, and Lenin.
But for us, Russian Social Democrats, there can be no doubt that, from the point of view of the working-classes and of the toiling masses of all the Russian peoples, the lesser evil would be a defeat of the Tsarist monarchy.
In order to assist the young kingdom of Bulgaria, which could only with great difficulty and with much damage to its resources have found means to indemnify Turkey for this serious breach of treaty engagements, the Russian government intervened, and proposed as compensation to the Turkish government the deferment for forty years of the annual payment (£T350,000) of the 1877 war indemnity.
It also saw the first intercourse between a Russian tsar and an Ottoman sultan, Ivan III.
Doroshenko now deserted the Turkish alliance for the Russian; in consequence an expedition was sent into the Ukraine which was both costly and useless.
France thereupon declared war against Russia and her ally Austria, and her envoy, the marquis de Villeneuve, urged Turkey to join by representing the danger of allowing Russian influence to extend.
The Russians had not waited for the formal declaration of war; and on the very day that this was notified by the hanging out of the horse-tails before the Seraglio at Constantinople a Russian army under Marshal Munnich stormed the ancient wall that guarded the isthmus of the Crimea.
Added to all this was the news of the continual Russian military aggressions in Poland, against which the Catholic confederation of Bar continued to appeal for aid.
At last, on the 6th of October 1768, on the refusal of the Russian minister to give guarantees for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Poland and the abandonment of Russia's claim to interfere with the liberties of the republic, war was declared and the Russian representative was imprisoned in the Seven Towers.
When, in the spring of 1769, the first serious campaign was opened by a simultaneous attack by three Russian armies on the principalities, the Crimea and the buffer state of Kabardia, the Turks, in spite of ample warning, were unprepared.
They were hampered, moreover, by an insurrection in the Morea, where a Russian expedition under Orlov had stirred up the' Mainotes, and by risings in Syria and Egypt.
It was not, however, till September that the fall of Khotin in Bessarabia marked the first serious Russian success.
In May the Ottoman fleet was attacked and destroyed off Cheshme, and the Russian war-ships threatened to pass the Dardanelles.
In February 1773 the Russian plenipotentiary delivered his ultimatum, of which the most important demands were the cession of Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn, the free navigation of the Black Sea and Archipelago for Russian trading and war vessels, and the recognition of the tsar's right to protect the Orthodox subjects of the sultan.
Negotiations for peace were now opened and on the 21st of July - chosen by the Russian plenipotentiary as the anniversary of the humiliating convention of the Pruth - the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji was signed.
The recognition of the imperial title (padishah) was at last conceded to the Russian tsars.
Turkey was to pay a war indemnity of 15,boo purses, the Russian fleet was to withdraw and the islands captured by it to be restored.
The Porte, unable to resist, was obliged to consent to the convention of Ainali Ka y ak (March 10, 1779) whereby the Russian partisan, Shahin Girai, was recognized as khan of the Crimea, the admission of Russian vessels to navigate Turkish waters was reaffirmed and Russia's right of intervention in the affairs of the Danubian principalities was formally recognized.
The Russian and Turkish fleets attacked and took the Ionian Islands, which had become French by the treaty of Campo Formio, and certain towns, hitherto unconquered, on the Albanian coast.
Russia, desirous of deriving some return for the support which she had given the sultan during his rupture with the French, induced the Porte to address to her a note in which the right of intervention in the affairs of the principalities, conferred on her by the treaty of Kainarji and reaffirmed in the convention of Ainali Ka y ak, was converted into a specific stipulation that the hospodars should be appointed in future for seven years and should not be dismissed without the concurrence of the Russian ambassador at Constantinople.
In pursuance of this agreement Constantine Ypsilanti was appointed to Walachia and Alexander Muruzi to Moldavia - both devoted to Russian interests.
The British ambassador sought by every means in his power to induce Turkey to give way to Russia, going so far as to guarantee the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Moldo-Walachia if the Porte remained at peace, and threatening that if Turkey persisted in her opposition England would join with Russia against her.
This roused the emperor Alexander to action, since it seemed as though Great Britain was aiming at ousting Russian influence in the Levant.
The reform of the army, however, involved the destruction of the Janissaries (q.v.), and though their massacre on the 15th of June left the sultan free to carry out his views with regard to the army, it left him too weak to resist the Russian demands.
Then, the Russian and French squadrons having joined, it was determined to put further pressure on the Egyptian commander, and the allied fleets, on the morning of the 10th of October, stood into the bay of Navarino.
Meanwhile the other powers had taken advantage of the reverses of the Russian arms to discount the effect of their ultimate victory by attempting to settle the Greek question.
The crisis which ended in 1841, however, materially altered the situation from the Russian point of view.
In 1844 he took advantage of his visit to England to propose to British ministers a plan of partition, under which Great Britain was to receive Egypt and Crete, Constantinople was to be erected into a free city, and the Balkan states were to become autonomous under Russian protection.
Early in 1853 the Russian army was mobilized, and Prince Menshikov, a bluff soldier devoted to the interests of Orthodoxy and tsardom, was sent to present the emperor's ultimatum at Constantinople.
On the 22nd of April the French, Russian and British ministers came to an agreement on the question of the holy places; with the result that, when the question of protectorate was raised, Menshikov found himself opposed by the ambassadors of all the other powers.
On the 22nd Menshikov and the whole of the Russian diplomatic staff left Constantinople; and it was announced that, at the end of the month, the tsar's troops would enter the Danubian principalities.
On the 22nd of June the Russian army, under Prince Gorchakov, crossed the Pruth, not - as was explained in a circular to the powers - for the purpose of attacking Turkey, but solely to obtain the material guarantees for the enjoyment of the privileges conferred upon her by the existing treaties.
In August a conference of the four powers assembled at Vienna, but the settlement they proposed, which practically conceded everything demanded by Russia except the claim to the protectorate, though accepted by the tsar, was rejected by the Porte, now fallen into a mood of stubborn resentment at the Russian invasion.
Lord Aberdeen still hoped to secure peace, and the Russian government was informed that no casus belli would arise so long as Russia abstained from passing the Danube or attacking a Black Sea port.
On the 30th of November the Russian fleet attacked and destroyed a Turkish squadron in the harbour of Sinope; on the 3rd of January the combined French and British fleets entered the Black Sea, commissioned to " invite " the Russians to return to their harbours.
This concession, given under strong pressure from Russia, aroused the deepest resentment of the Greeks, and was the principal factor in the awakening of the Bulgarian national spirit which subsequent events have done so much to develop. Russian influence at Constantinople had been gradually increasing, and towards the end of 1870 the tsar took advantage of the temporary disabling of France to declare himself no longer bound by those clauses of the Treaty of Paris which restricted Russia's liberty of possessing warships on the Black Sea.
A commission composed of British, French and Russian officials held an inquiry into the events which had occurred, and early in 1895 England, France and Russia entered actively into negotiations with a view to the institution of reforms. The scheme propounded by the three powers encountered great objections from the Porte, but under pressure was accepted in October 1895.
A serious Bulgarian insurrection in Macedonia in the autumn of 1903 induced Austria and Russia to combine in formulating the Miirzsteg reform programme, tardily consented to by Turkey, by which Austrian and Russian civil agents were appointed to exercise a certain degree of control and supervision over the three vilayets of Salonica, Monastir and Kossovo.
On the 26th of September, its deployment beyond the mountains was complete, and as Napoleon did not know of Mack's intention to stay at Ulm and had learned that the Russian advance had been delayed, he directed his columns by the following roads on the Danube, between Donauworth and Ingolstadt, so as to be in a position to intervene between the Austrians and the Russians and beat both in detail.
Here help was expected to arrive from England, and the tide might yet have turned, for the Russian armies were gathering in the east.
The Russian Army formed the most complete contrast to the French that it is possible to imagine.
In cavalry they were weak, for the Russian does not take kindly to equitation and the horses were not equal to the accepted European standard of weight, while the Cossack was only formidable to stragglers and wounded.
Bennigsen, now commanding the whole Russian army which with Lestocq's Prussians amounted to 100,000, also moved into winter quarters in the triangle Deutsch-Eylau-Osterode-Allenstein, and had every intention of remaining there, for a fresh army was already gathering in Russia, the 1st corps of which had reached Nur about 50 m.
The emperor now pressed on towards Friedland, where he would completely control the Russian communications with Konigsberg, their immediate base of supply, but for once the Russians outmarched him and covered their movement so successfully that for the next three days he seems to have completely lost all knowledge of his enemy's whereabouts.
Before their advance, however, the Russian armies steadily retired, Barclay from Vilna via Drissa to Vitebsk, Bagration from Wolkowysk to Mohilev.
The Russian government, however, failed to see the matter in its true light, and Marshal Kutusov was sent to the front to assume the chief command.
Towards this place the French advance was now resumed, and the Russian generals at the head of a united force of 130,000 men marched forward to meet them.
Here, however, the inefficiency of the Russian staff actually saved them from the disaster which must certainly have overtaken them had they realized their intention of fighting the French.
Murat and Ney as " general advanced guard " attacked the town in the morning of the 16th of August, and whilst they fought the main body was swung round to attack the Russian left and rear.