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'Selim III. Content: 1. Biography 2. Family 3. Reforms 4. Foreign relations 5. Franco-Turkish relationships 6. Turko-Russian war Biography and Family Sultan Selim III was born in Istanbul, on 24th December 1761. He is the son of Sultan Mustafa III and Mihrisah Sultana. His mother is originated in Georgia , she was reforming the government schools and establishing political corparations. His father Sultan Mustafa III was very well educated and he was was believing the necessity of a reforms. He was interested about the reformation of the King of Prussia Fredrick II and sent few soldiers to the west ,to read history and to take experience from other governments. Father of Selim the third tried to create powerful army during the peace time and to have educated soldiers. He was thinking that the worst disaster will come from Russia to his country. During the Turko -Russian War he had fallen ill and died because of a hearth attack in 1774. Sultan Mustafa was aware of the fact that a military reform was necessary. He declared new military regulations and He opened maritime and artillery academies But the most important thing was that Sultan Mustafa was very influenced by the oracles and as they told that his son Selim will be a world-conqueror he organized a feast lasted seven days with great joy. Selim was very well educated in the palace. Sultan Mustafa III bequeathed him as his successor. But, Selim's uncle Abdulhamid I ascended the throne after Sultan Mustafa III . Sultan Abdulhamid I had taken care of Selim and put great emphasis on his education. After Abdulhamid's death Selim succeeded him on 7th April 1789, in his 28th year. Sultan Selim III was very fond of literature and calligraphy, many of his works were put on the walls of mosques and convents. He had spoken Arabic and Persian fluently. Selim III was very religious, and very patriotic. He was a talented poet and a brilliant musician, also very fond of fine arts. Selim was a very modern man and a reformist ruler. He was planning to modernize the Ottoman Empire. When he was acceded, his people revealed their respect to him and they were very hopeful about his administrations. The Ottoman people hoped that this young modern sultan would have brought back the victorious days of the empire. Prince Selim developed plans for modernizing the Ottoman army. He came to the throne during the 1787–92 war with Austria and Russia and had to postpone serious reform efforts until its completion. Selim’s early efforts to modernize the Janissary corps created such opposition that thereafter he concentrated on creating a new European-style army called new order”, using modern weapons and tactics developed in Europe. Officers and military experts sent by the different European powers that were competing for the sultan’s support trained in Istanbul and in a number of Anatolian provincial centres this new force, never numbering more than 10,000 active soldiers. In order to avoid disrupting the established Ottoman institutions, it was financed by an entirely new treasury whose revenues came from taxes imposed on previously untaxed sources and from the confiscation whose holders were not fulfilling their military and administrative duties to the state. Under the guidance of European technicians, factories were erected to manufacture modern weapons and ammunition, and technical schools were opened to train Ottoman officers. Limited efforts also were made to rationalize the Ottoman administrative machinery, but largely along traditional lines. The older military corps, however, remained intact and hostile to the new force, and Selim was therefore compelled to limit its size and use. Selim III left the throne to Mustafa on 29th May 1807 and he died a year 2 months later. The men of the new sultan during Alemdar Pasha Events killed him. His was buried in Laleli Mosque near his father's tomb. Selim III was very fond of literature and poetry. He wrote many poems, especially, he wrote very effective verses about Crimea's occupation by the Russian. Reforms of Selim Selim introduced domestic reforms to strengthen his government. He solicited suggestions throughout the governing institutions. As a basis for change, he created a new treasury,. Schools were opened, attention was given to printing and to the circulation of Western translations, and young Turks were sent to Europe for further study. The most significant reforms, however, involved the military. The navy was strengthened, and a navigation school was opened. The army commissariat was changed, officer training was improved, the Bosporus forts were strengthened, the artillery was revitalized, and the new engineering school was reorganized. The major innovation was the founding of a new body of regular troops known as nizam-i-jedid (new regulation), a term also applied to the reforms as a whole. A former Turkish lieutenant in the Russian army formed the first of these new units, uniformed, well disciplined and drilled, in 1792. Other units followed, involving, in some instances, extensive barracks building with related town facilities, such as the mosques and baths of Scutari. Such buildings constitute Selim's major architectural legacy. Before the reforms, education in the Ottoman Empire had not been a state responsibility but had been provided by the education for Muslims. The first inroads into the system had been made with the creation of naval engineering, military engineering, medical and military science colleges. In this way specialized Western-type training was grafted onto the traditional system to produce specialists for the army. Similar institutions for diplomats and administrators were founded, including the translation bureau and the civil service school the latter was reorganized and eventually became the political science department of the University of Ankara and the major training center for higher civil servants. The first comprehensive plan for state education was put forward. It provided for a complete system of primary and secondary schools leading to the university level, all under the Ministry of Education. A still more ambitious educational plan, inaugurated in 1869, provided for free and compulsory primary education. Both schemes progressed slowly because of a lack of money, but they provided a framework within which development toward a systematic, secular educational program could take place. There were more than 36,000 Ottoman schools, although the great majority were small, traditional primary schools. The development of the state system was aided by the example of progress among the non-Muslim millet schools, in which the education provided was more modern than in the Ottoman schools included more than 1,800 Greek schools with about 185,000 pupils and some 800 Armenian schools with more than 81,000 pupils. Non-Muslims also used schools provided by foreign missionary groups in the empire Reforms in law Law, to a large extent, also had been the responsibility of the various millets. The Capitulations exempted foreigners and those Ottoman citizens on whom foreign consuls conferred protection from the application of criminal law. The Tanzimat reformers had two objects in the reform of law and legal procedure: to make Ottoman law acceptable to Europeans, so that the Capitulations could be abolished and sovereignty recovered, and to modernize the traditional Islamic law. Their efforts resulted in the promulgation of a commercial code (a commercial procedure code a maritime code and a penal code (1858). French influence predominated in these, as it did in the civil code of 1870–76. Increasingly, the laws were administered in new state courts, outside the control of the ulama. Although they failed to achieve the purposes intended, they provided the basis for future success. The Tanzimat reforms moved steadily in the direction of modernization and centralization. The reformers were handicapped by a lack of money and skilled men, and they were opposed by traditionalists who argued that the reformers were destroying the empire’s fundamental Islāmic character and who often halted the progress of reform. Centralization, meanwhile, was slowed by interference from the major European powers, who obstructed the Ottoman attempt to recover power in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1853, forced the granting of autonomy to Mount Lebanon in 1861, and considered, but eventually rejected, intervention to prevent the Ottomans from suppressing a Cretan revolt of 1868. Although Britain and France helped the Ottomans resist Russian pressure during the Crimean War the Ottomans derived no real benefits from the peace settlement; new arrangements helped to bring about the unification of the principalities and paved the way for the emergence of independent Romania. Foreign Relations On the international scene all remained peaceful until 1798, although foreign affairs received considerable attention. New resident embassies were established in Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria. Selim, a cultured poet and musician, carried on an extended correspondence with Louis XVI. Although distressed by the establishment of the republic in Franc. Ottoman government was soothed by French representatives in Istanbul who maintained the goodwill of various influential personages, including the later On July 1, 1798, however, French forces landed in Egypt, and Selim declared war on France. In alliance with Russia and Britain, the Turks were in periodic conflict with the French on both land and sea until March 1801. Peace came in June 1802, The following year brought trouble in the Balkans. For decades a sultan's word had had no power in outlying provinces, prompting Selim's reforms of the military in order to reimpose central control. This desire was not fulfilled. One rebellious leader was Austrian-backed Osman Pasvanoglu, whose invasion of Wallachia in 1801 inspired Russian intervention, resulting in greater autonomy for the Dunubian provinces. Serbian conditions also deteriorated. They took a fateful turn with the return of the hated Janissaries, ousted 8 years before. These forces murdered Selim's enlightened governor, ending the best rule this province had had in the last 100 years. Their defiant, outrageous actions prompted the anti-Janissary revolt of 1804. Neither arms nor diplomacy could restore Ottoman authority. French influence with the Porte did not revive but it then led the Sultan into defying both St. Petersburg and London, and Turkey joined Napoleon's Continental System. War was declared on Russia on December 27 and on Britain in March 1807. The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire under the Young Turks led to disaster. The 1908 revolution provided an opportunity for several powers to press their designs upon the empire. In October 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria proclaimed its independence. Italy seized Tripoli and occupied the a group of Aegean islands. Italy retained the former but agreed to evacuate the Dodecanese. In fact, however, it continued to occupy them. The two Balkan Wars almost completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. In the first the Ottomans lost almost all their European possessions, including Crete, to Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and the newly created state of Albania .In the second fought between Bulgaria and the remaining Balkan states over the division of Macedonia, the Ottomans intervened against Bulgaria and recovered part of eastern Thrace, including Edirne. The Ottomans had lost more than four-fifths of the territory and more than two-thirds of the population. Russo-Turkish war The first major Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) began after Turkey demanded that Russia’s ruler, Catherine II the Great, abstain from interfering in Poland’s internal affairs. The Russians went on to win impressive victories over the Turks. They captured Azov, the Crimea, and Bessarabia, and under Field Marshal P.A. Rumyantsev they overran Moldavia and also defeated the Turks in Bulgaria. The Turks were compelled to seek peace, which was concluded in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. This treaty made the Crimean khanate independent of the Turkish sultan advanced the Russian frontier southward to the Southern (Pivdennyy) Buh River; gave Russia the right to maintain a fleet on the Black Sea and assigned Russia vague rights of protection over the Ottoman sultan’s Christian subjects throughout the Balkans. Russia was now in a much stronger position to expand, and in 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimean Peninsula outright. War broke out in 1787, with Austria again on the side of Russia (until 1791). Under General A.V. Suvorov, the Russians won several victories that gave them control of the lower Dniester and Danube rivers, and further Russian successes compelled the Turks to sign the Treaty of Jassy on Jan. 9, 1792. By this treaty Turkey ceded the entire western Ukrainian Black Sea coast (from the Kerch Strait westward to the mouth of the Dniester) to Russia. When Turkey deposed the Russophile governors of Moldavia and Walachia in 1806, war broke out again, though in a desultory fashion, since Russia was reluctant to concentrate large forces against Turkey while its relations with Napoleonic France were so uncertain. But in 1811, with the prospect of a Franco-Russian war in sight, Russia sought a quick decision on its southern frontier. The Russian field marshal M.I. Kutuzov’s victorious campaign of 1811–12 forced the Turks to cede Bessarabia to Russia by the Treaty of Bucharest (May 28, 1812). Treaty of Bucharest, peace agreement signed on May 18, 1812, that ended the Russo-Turkish War, begun in 1806. The terms of the treaty allowed Russia to annex Bessarabia but required it to return Walachia and the remainder of Moldavia, which it had occupied. The Russians also secured amnesty and a promise of autonomy for the Serbs, who had been rebelling against Turkish rule, but Turkish garrisons were given control of the Serbian fortresses. Implementation of the treaty was forestalled by a number of disputes, and Turkish troops invaded Serbia again the following year. Russia and Great Britain and to force an alliance between the two. That these two European powers could win, demonstrates the decline of the Ottoman navy and land military more generally. By the late eighteenth century, in the midst of the Russo-Turkish wars, the Ottoman Sultan realized the tenuous position of the government. Sultan Selim III reformed the government in an attempt to root out the corruption brought on by hereditary rule while trying to maintain his authority and the coherence of his empire. This occurred at the same time as political reforms were sweeping Europe and the Americas, but without the revolutionary results. Unlike in Europe and the Americas, Selim III, however, was not influenced by the Enlightenment, rather he sought to return the Ottoman Empire back to the model instituted by Suleiman I is a strong sultan and loyal ministers all devoted to the good of the empire. He retreated into authoritarianism. This program was called the nizam-i jadid, (the new system) and it referred to his new system of diplomacy and the reformation of the military. He also established permanent embassies in Europe to facilitate communication between European capitals and the Ottoman Empire. Previously, diplomatic correspondence was taken with special emissaries or traders between the Ottomans and foreign rulers. This meant that the Sultan was at the whim of the merchants and those without the empire’s best interests. Second, he employed European military advisers to help reduce the corruption of the military, update tactics and strategies and introduce new weaponry. Third, he began sending individuals to study in France and to study French. Court officials until this time typically spoke Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, but rarely knew European languages; it was simply unnecessary. In introducing these reforms, Selim III became incredibly unpopular and in 1806 he was deposed by a coalition of elites and killed in the next year. Franco-Turkish relationships French Goals At the same time, 30-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, general of the French Republic, returned from his ill-fated Egyptian Campaign. Unfortunately, the French seizure of Egypt had produced results contrary to those, which Napoleon had intended. Instead of striking a blow at the colonial power of Britain, the invasion had alarmed the Ottoman Porte and driven it into an alliance with the British as well as the long-standing enemy of the Turks, Russia. Yet, by 1802, the Peace of Amiens would put an end to the war between France and the Second Coalition. The Peace would give Napoleon, who was now the First Consul of France, a respite during which he could begin to mend French relations with the Ottoman Empire. The years 1802-1807 would witness a decidedly pro-Turkish policy on the part of Napoleon. For him, this slowly deteriorating empire would come to play, in these years, an integral role in his European diplomatic strategy. Friendship and alliance with the Ottoman Empire could serve him not only as a useful tool against the commercial power of his greatest enemy, Britain, but even more so (by 1805) as a means to bend Russia and its Tsar to his will. In his goal to rebuild and strengthen Franco-Turkish relations, Napoleon benefited from two things. The first factor, riding in his favor was the long history of diplomatic and economic relations that had existed between France and the Ottoman Empire, since the 16th Century. While many European nations had, over the centuries, made agreements and sent ambassadors to the Turkish court, the French had been one of, if not the most highly favored nation. The French were the first to conclude a commercial treaty with the Turks. French businessmen invested heavily in the Ottoman Empire and by the late 18th Century, all Roman Catholics in the Ottoman Empire were placed under French protection. A second factor, which benefited Napoleon, was that the Ottoman sultan, Selim III, had, for most of his life, been somewhat disposed towards the French. As the nephew of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, Selim had ascended to the throne in the same year that revolution had exploded in France: 1789. Since the time that he had been a young prince, secluded in the palace, Selim had apparently developed a personal taste for things European. Though he had a fondness for Western European theater, music, art and poetry, his greatest interest was in European military institutions and practices. Even before he became sultan, he had secretly written to the French court of Louis XVI requesting advice on how to build up the Ottoman armed forces to the level of those in Europe. This early desire for military reform would come to fruition after he became sultan, when the wars between the Ottoman Empire and the ambitious Catherine the Great of Russia had revealed the overall weakness, lack of discipline and lack of training among the Ottoman forces. Turkish Goals After the Peace of Jassy in 1792, which ended the war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, Selim had hoped to stay out of the European conflicts that had arisen as a result of the French Revolution, though he personally sympathized with the French in their struggle. Selim's desire for neutrality stemmed from his wish to have time in which to implement his plans for military reform. One of the most important of these was to be the reform of the unruly janissary corps. Selim also had other grand designs such as the creation of an entirely new military force, the Nizam-i- Cedit (or "new order"), which was to be equipped, clothed, drilled and instructed in a totally European manner with rank to be based on ability. To aid him in these reforms, Selim at first utilized the skills of General Albert Dubayet, French ambassador to the Porte in 1796. Dubayet had brought with him several model artillery pieces as well as French artillery officers, drill sergeants and engineers to aid the sultan in bringing his army up to date. Selim wished to reform the janissaries along the same lines as the Nizam-i-Cedit, trained, equipped and clothed in the European manner. In the end Selim's efforts were not overly successful. The janissaries bitterly opposed the reforms and refused to be trained in the manner of Europeans. In addition they did all that they could to hamper the creation of the Nizam-i-Cedit. Except for some marked improvements in the artillery corps, by the end of his reign, Selim's forces remained at the same low level as they had been when he first became sultan. This period of reform was interrupted, however, when Selim found himself forced to take sides in the European conflict when General Bonaparte's forces invaded Egypt and Syria. As a result, Selim would declare war on France on September 11, 1799. In doing so, he not only allied himself to England, but also with his oldest and most important enemy - Russia. As it is well known with the death of Catherine the Great 1796, her son Paul I became tsar. He made overtures for rapprochement with the Turks in order to secure, via the alliance signed with the Turks in 1799, the right for Russian warships to pass through the Straits. He also gained concessions on the issue of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (which will be discussed later). Selim would be troubled by these alliances in the years to come. Yet, Russia withdrew from the anti-French coalition not long after signing the alliance with the Porte and by 1801, Britain had agreed to negotiate a peace with France. In June of 1802, a formal peace treaty was signed between Britain and France at Amiens. Among the many articles in this treaty, Article 8 stated that the possessions and integrity of the Ottoman Empire were to be preserved as they were before the war. More importantly, the Turks decided to enter into a separate peace with France, in conjunction with Amiens - a peace for which they received little British or Russian support. Through this agreement, France regained her former privileges (such as capitulations and as the protectors over the sultan's Catholic subjects) and for the first time, the Porte gave French merchant vessels the right to trade freely on the Black Sea. With this treaty, Napoleon restored many of the rights that had been enjoyed prior to the Revolution and set the Ottoman Empire and France on the road to rebuilding their diplomatic relations. In addition, Napoleon had opened up new markets by which France could trade with Russia, the Balkans and even into Persia. These new markets, he hoped, would rival and perhaps surpass British commercial interests in the East. For Napoleon, his signature on the Peace of Amiens did not mean that he had suddenly abandoned all his plans to destroy Britain's commercial and naval supremacy, nor did mean that he had forgotten his territorial ambitions for France in the realm of the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon especially desired to regain French control over the Ionian Islands (which he won in 1797, but lost to Russia after 1799) and also had his sights set on controlling key areas on the Adriatic Coast in the Balkans. The key point in his future plans was Constantinople, now Istanbul. In reality, Amiens (for both France and Britain) was regarded as more of truce than a definite termination to their conflicts. Not only did Napoleon continue to concern himself with plans for Britain, but he soon found his attentions turned more seriously towards Russia as well. In 1801, a new tsar, the young Alexander I, had ascended to the Russian throne, after assassination of his father Paul I. Like his grandmother Catherine, Alexander held definite designs for the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which lay south of his realm. He especially desired to control the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, the Dardanelle and naturally set his sights at the historical goal of Russia - the acquisition of Constantinople. But, Alexander's ambitions did not lead him to take rash actions. Instead, he decided it best, for the moment, to approach the Porte in a cautious and amicable manner. Only in this way could he maintain the privileges, which Russia still enjoyed from the 1799 alliance (The Porte was at this time still permitting Russian ships to pass through the straits and to continue to hold a protectorate over the Ionian Islands) and keep his influence with the Porte strong enough to rival any ambitions of Napoleon. Bibliography Stanford J.Shaw& Ezel Kural Shaw, Cambrige Press University (1977) , “History the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey “. Malcolm Edward Yapp “Europe in the Turkish mirror”, Past and Present, (1992). The information portal regarding the history, military, culture and arts of the Ottoman Empire, www.theottomans.org The Baldwin Project http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=horne&book=turkey&story=reforms Research subject Government and Polotics http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/diplomatic/c_tufrdip1.html'