In 1862, after a short but terrible struggle, the Servians rid themselves of the Turkish garrisons and framed a constitution of the Western type.

But the worst blow came in 1870.
During the course of the Franco-German War the Czar's Government (with the good-will and perhaps the active connivance of the Court of Berlin) announced that it would no longer be bound by the article of the Treaty of Paris excluding Russian war-ships from the Black Sea.

The Gladstone Ministry sent a protest against this act, but took no steps to enforce its protest.

Our young diplomatist, Sir Horace Rumbold, then at St.
Petersburg, believed that she would have drawn back at a threat of war[89].

Finally, the Russian declaration was agreed to by the Powers in a Treaty signed at London on March 31, 1871.
[Footnote 89: Sir Horace Rumbold, _Recollections of a Diplomatist_ (First Series), vol.ii.p.