districts and peoples whom the Greeks justly considered to belong to
them by blood and religion. Greek armed bands came into collision with
Bulgarian bands, and in order to calm these disturbances by thoroughly
effectual means, irregular Turkish troops were sent into Bulgaria,
charged with the command to 'stop the row,' but with no other
instructions. Indiscriminate killing, with all the passions and horrors
that bloodshed evokes in the half-civilised, followed, and there was no
more trouble just then in the disturbed districts, for there was none to
make trouble. In 1876 Abdul Aziz was deposed by a group of king-makers
under Midhat Pasha, Murad V. reigned shadow-like for three months, and
during the same year Abdul Hamid was finally selected to fill the
throne, and stand forth as the Shadow of God. It was a disturbed and
tottering inheritance to which he succeeded, riddled with the dry-rot of
corruption, but the inheritor proved himself equal to the occasion.

For a little while he was all abroad, and at the bidding of Midhat, who
had placed him on the throne, he summoned a kind of representative
Turkish Parliament, by way of imbuing the Great Powers with the idea
that he was an enlightened Shadow of God bent on reform. This parody of
a Parliament lasted but a short time: it was no more than a faint,
dissolving magic-lantern picture. In the spring of 1877 Rumania, under
Russian encouragement, broke away from Turkish rule. Turkey declared war
on Russia, and in 1878 found herself utterly defeated. At Adrianople was
drawn up the Treaty of San Stefano, creating an independent Bulgarian
state, and, in the opinion of Great Britain and Germany, giving Russia
far greater influence in the Balkan Peninsula than was agreeable to that
disastrous supporter of Turkey, the Balance of Power. In consequence the
Treaty of San Stefano was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin.

In those arrangements Abdul Hamid had no voice, but he was well content