improvement,--the school of suffering."

The Greek revolution has another aspect than battles on the Morea,
massacres on the islands of the Archipelago, naval enterprises under
heroic seamen, guerilla conflicts amid the defiles of mountains, brave
defences of fortresses, dissensions and jealousies between chieftains,
treacheries and cruelties equalling those of the Turks,--another aspect
than the recovery of national independence even. It is memorable for the
complications which grew out of it, especially for the war between
Turkey and Russia, when the Emperor Nicholas, feeling that Turkey was
weakened and exhausted, sought to grasp the prize which he had long
coveted, even the possessions of the "sick man." Nicholas was the
opposite of his brother Alexander, having neither his gentleness, his
impulsiveness, his generosity, nor his indecision. He was a hard despot
of the "blood-and-iron" stamp, ambitious for aggrandizement, indifferent
to the sufferings of others, and withal a religious bigot. The Greek
rebellion, as we have seen, gave him the occasion to pick a quarrel with
the Sultan. The Danubian principalities were dearer to him than remote
possessions on the Mediterranean.

So on the 7th of May, 1828, the Russians crossed the Pruth and invaded
Moldavia and Wallachia,--provinces which had long belonged to Turkey by
right of conquest, though governed by Greek hospodars. The Danube was
crossed on the 7th of June. The Turks were in no condition to contend in
the open field with seventy thousand Russians, and they retreated to
their fortresses,--to Ibraila and Silistria on the Danube, to Varna and
Shumla in the vicinity of the Balkans. The first few weeks of the war
were marked by Russian successes. Ibraila capitulated on the 18th of
June, and the military posts on the Dobrudscha fell rapidly one after
another. But it was at Shumla that the strongest part of the Turkish
army was concentrated, under Omar Brionis, bent on defensive operations;
and thither the Czar directed his main attack. Before this stronghold
his army wasted away by sickness in the malarial month of September. The
Turks were reinforced, and moved to the relief of Varna, also invested
by Russian troops. But the season was now too far advanced for military
operations, and the Russians, after enormous losses, withdrew to the
Danube to resume the offensive the following spring. The winter was
spent in bringing up reserves. The Czar finding that he had no a