War; and after the bloody battle of Konia (1832), where the raw Turkish army was routed and the grand vizier taken prisoner, it was only European intervention which prevented the Egyptian general, Ibrahim Pasha, from marching unopposed to the Bosphorus.
Its fragrant, pale yellow flowers come in autumn, perfuming with a Jessamine-scent the fields of the Crimea about the Bosphorus.
But even this sheet of water is an inland sea, the only outlet of which, the Bosphorus, is in foreign hands, while the Caspian, an immense shallow lake, mostly bordered by deserts, possesses more importance as a link between Russia and her Asiatic settlements than as a channel for intercourse with other countries.
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.
Nicholas immediately sent his Black Sea fleet into the Bosphorus, landed on the Asiatic shore a force of 10,000 men, and advanced another large force towards the Turkish frontier in Bessarabia.