Selim, the late sultan's nephew, who succeeded, made strenuous preparations for continuing the war, but his generals were incompetent and his army mutinous; expeditions for the relief of Bender and Akkerman failed, Belgrade was taken by the Austrians, Izmail was captured by Suvorov, and the fall of Anapa completed the series of Turkey's disasters.
The dispute, at first of little importance, developed in seriousness during the next year or two, owing to the avowed intention of Russia, which by conquest or treaties with independent chiefs had acquired all the high land between the Caspian and the Black Sea, to take possession of the low lands along the coast, between Anapa and Poti, of which the sultan claimed the sovereignty.
The Treaty of Adrianople, by which the Danubian principalities were erected into practically independent states, the treaty rights of Russia in the navigation of the Bosporus Anapa and Poti in Asia ceded to the tsar, included also a settlement of the Greek question on the terms of the protocol of the 22nd of March.
This in ancient times seems to have formed a group of islands intersected by arms of the Hypanis or Kuban and various sounds now silted up. The whole district was dotted with Greek cities; on the west side, Panticapaeum (Kerch, q.v.), the chief of all, often itself called Bosporus, and Nymphaeum (Eltegen); on the east Phanagoria (Sennaja),Cepi,Hermonassa,Portus Sindicus, Gorgippia (Anapa).
The most promising of these little seaside places are Anapa, Gelenjik and Gagry.