240-241), states that only the autocracy could have stayed the Russian advance on Constantinople.

General U.S.Grant told her that if he had had such an order, he would have put it in his pocket and produced it again when in Constantinople.] The preliminary bases of peace between Russia and Turkey were signed at Adrianople (Jan.

31) on the terms summarised above, except that the Czar's Ministers now withdrew the obnoxious clause about the Straits.

A line of demarcation was also agreed on between the hostile forces; it passed from Derkos, a lake near the Black Sea, to the north of Constantinople, in a southerly direction by the banks of the Karasou stream as far as the Sea of Marmora.

This gave to the Russians the lines of Tchekmedje, the chief natural defence of Constantinople, and they occupied this position on February 6.