Catherine had conceived an ambitious plan of solving radically the Eastern Question by partitioning Turkey as she and her allies had partitioned Poland, and she had persuaded the emperor Joseph II.
During the first years of the French Revolution Catherine's sympathy with philosophic liberalism rapidly evaporated, and the European sovereigns to the democratic movement; but she carefully abstained from joining the Coalition, and waited patiently for the moment when the complications in western Europe would give her an opportunity of solving independently the Eastern Question in accordance with Russian interests.
But the sultan could not bend his pride to suffer foreign intervention in a matter that touched his honour, and the return of Napoleon from Elba threw the Eastern Question into the background.
The Congress of Verona (1822) passed without any serious developments in the Eastern Question.
The Eastern Question had now suddenly once more entered an acute phase.
