RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND, OR THE EASTERN QFESTION.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 999, 7 September 1877, Page 3

RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND, OR THE EASTERN QFESTION.

THE SLAVONIC BACK, AND THE ItISE OE THE MUSCOVITE EMPIRE. The Ugrians were not the first Asiatics to arrive in Europe. There had been migrations from Asia prior to that of the Turanian family. The Indo-European, or Aryan family, whose original seats were Armenia, Persia, and India, had sent out colonies to occupy the wooded plains and hills of Southern, Central, and Northern Europe ; and from their descendants come the European families of the present day. The Aryans found their way to the new world through Asia Minor, across the Bosphorus, and by a [passage between the Uralian Mountains and the Black Sea. Those arriving by the more southerly route peopled Italy, Thrace, Albania, and Greece. Those coming by the more northerly route, through the opening at the foot of the Uralian Mountains to the north of the Euxine passed on to the Danube, and thence spread over large tracts of country in the middle and north of Europe. These are divided into three principal families, called (1) The Celtic, of which the Irish, the Welsh, and the people of the Basque province in Spain, may be taken as fairly representative. (2) The Germanic, including the Scandinavians and Teutons, and (3) the Sarmatians, which included Pruthenians and Slavs, the whole being known by the latter denomination. The Celts, Teutons and Slavs are, it is thus seen, branches of one stock —the Aryan; and differ from each other through the action of surrounding circumstances. The Slavs occupy a large portion of the surface of Europe, and are divided into Eastern and Western Slavs. Those in the west of Europe, to the west of the Vistula, are (1) The Sorabians, occupying the shores of the Baltic between the Vistula and the Elbe. (2) The Tzecks'or Bohemians. (3) The Slovaks, in the north-west of Hungary ; the Slavs who were driven back by the arrival of the Magyars in the ninth century. (4) The Lekhs or Poles —Poland being the name of the country from polic, a plain; Lekhs, noble men, the name of the people. The Eastern Slavs are (1) the Russians inhabiting what was originally Sarmatia; (2) the Serbi, or Servians, in Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Slavonia (the only place which retains the name of the race); (3) the Croats in Austrian Croatia, and (i) the Wends in Carinthia, Styria, aud part of Hungary. It is thus seen that the Slavonians are a very numerous family, being estimated by some staticians at between eighty and ninety millions. They are sufficiently numerous to make the question of Pan-Slavism—-the establishment of a Slavonic Confederation with Russia at its head —a very formidable question indeed. The rise of Russia may be shortly indicated. Sometime in the ninth century the Slavs of Novogorod invited a Scandinavian prince, Rurik by name, to rule over them. They sent him a message to this effect—" Our country is great and fertile, but is under the empire of anarchy ; come and govern us, and reign over us." urik, Rhis brothers, and a body of friends, responded to this invitation, and established the dyncsty of Rurik, first as Dukes of Kiell, then Grand Dukes of Moscow, lastly Czars of Muscovy. This dynasty lasted for woven centuries, till the death of Ivan the Terrible in the reign of the English Elizabeth. After his death there was a period of anarchy and usurpation, until, in 1613, Michael Romanoff was elected Czar of Muscovy. From this Prince the present Emperor of Russia is descended, in the female line. He is, indeed, in strictness of speech, a German by descent, as in the male line he is descended from the Duke of Holstein-Got-torp, who married Anne, daughter of Peter the Great.

To return, however, to the line of Rurik. His successor, the Regent Olcg, captured Kiell by treachery, and attacked Constantinople, from which he was driven off. Rurik's son, Izor, also made an attempt upon the same city with a similar result. It is thus seen that Russia at a very early date coveted the capital of the Byzantine Empire. All she gained from these attacks was the introduction of Christianity in the reign of Vladimir in the tenth century. Vladimir embraced Christianity in the form accepted by the Greek Church, and his obedient subjects accepted it with him. After this there was a period of division and anarchy lasting for fully two centuries; and in the thirteenth century Russia was overrun by the hordes of Eastern conquerors under Zenghis Khan, the same that had so nearly destroyed the Seljukian dynasty at Roum, under the Sultans of Icomum. The effect upon Russia was more disastrous, for she lay till the middle of the fifteenth century under the heel of her Mongol invaders. They occupied her fairest provinct-s and mado her pynices the sport of their will ; doing indeed, in this respect, the sauio thing that Russia has since delighted to do in Poland, the Crimea, RouSjania, and Servia. In 1462 Ivan 111. svicasded to the throne of Mo&cqnv, and under

his able rule the power of the Tartars -was broken. It was this Ivan who sent an ambassador to the Ottoman Court in the reign of Bajazet the Second. He was succeeded in 1505 by Vasili Ivanovich, whose reign lasted till 1533. He completed the work which Ivan had begun, and subdued the Tartars, leaving a united Russia to Ivan IV., or Ivan the Terrible, who ascended the throne of a comparatively "powerful Russia in 1533, and extended his dominion in all directions. The kingdom of Russia was, at his death, nearly four times the size of the one he received at his accession. The Russia that he inherited was 37,000 German square miles in extent. The Russia that he bequeathed to his successor was 144,000 German square miles. He assumed the title of Czar of Muscovy, which continued to be the title of Russian rulers until the time of Peter the Great, who assumed that of Emperor of Russia. Ivan's reign was contemporary with that of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth of England; and with that of Solyman, the Magnificent, of Turkey. In his reign Turkey and Russia first crossed swords, and from that time the two powers began to come into more or less warlike relations ; until, within the last century and-a-half, those relations may be described as a chronic state of war. Eighty years before this warlike intercourse there had been, as we have mentioned, some diplomatic relations between the two countries. Ivan 111., in sending hiß representative to Constantinople, had instructed him neither to bow the knee to the Sultan nor to allow any other ambassador to take precedence of him. Bajazet made a weak complaint of this rudeness to the Khan of Crimea, and that was all. Ivan the Terrible, towards the close of his reign, had seized Astrakhan, a fortified town on the Caspian Sea, which enabled him to control the navigation of that water, and opened to him the heart of Persia. Astrakhan had been held by the Tartars, presumably subjects of the Khan of Crimea. In 1569 the Grand Vizier of Turkey, seeing the importance of the position to the power which held "the Crimea and the Black Sea, resolved to make an effort to recover Astrakhan, and sent against it 20,000 men; but they were defeated by the soldiers of the terrible Czar, and had to return. Within two years, however, of this defeat, the Tartars of Crimea under their Khan made an incursion into the heart of Russia, sacked and burnt Moscow, and returned to their own land laden with spoil. Ivan complained to the Sultan of Turkey of this conduct of his tributary, and proposed that there should be peace between the two empires. Peaceable relations were established, and even maintained for nearly a hundred years. Eor although there was a good deal of border warfare between the subjects of the two Empires, the Cossacks on the one side and the Tartars on the other, during the period of our own civil war in the time of Charles I, yet the Empires themselves were not formally at war until 1672, during the reign of diaries II of England. At that date war broke out between Russia and Turkey which lasted with little intermission until the close of the century, when the peace of Carlowitz was made through the instrumentality of England and Holland. It is noteworthy that Russia was, during the reign of Mary an unknown country to England, as a monopoly was granted to certain merchants in connection with the trade of Muscovy, " upon discovery of the said country ;" and further that the special proclivities of that nation were even at that early date perceived by observing men. For Sigismund of Poland described " the Muscovite," as "the hereditary enemy of all free nations," and in another place adds, " the Muscovite made more perfect in warlike affairs, with engines of war and ships, will slay or make bound all that shall withstand him, which God defend." The existance of this aggressive spirit has been the fertile cause of Turkey's anarchy and decline during the last two centuries.