THE EMPEROR AND CZARINA CONCLUDE A PEACE WITH THE TURKS.

The events of war were still unfavourable to the emperor. He had bestowed the command of his army upon velt-mareschal count Wallis, who assembled his forces in the neighbourhood of Belgrade; and advanced towards Crotska, where he was attacked by the Turks with such impetuosity and perseverance, that he was obliged to give ground, after a long and obstinate engagement, in which he lost above six thousand men. The earl of Crawford, who served as a volunteer in the Imperial army, signalised his courage in an extraordinary manner on this occasion, and received a dangerous wound of which he never perfectly recovered. The Turks were afterwards worsted at Jabouka; nevertheless, their grand army invested Belgrade on the side of Servia, and carried on the operations of the siege with extraordinary vigour. The emperor, dreading the loss of this place, seeing his finances exhausted, and his army considerably diminished, consented to a negotiation for peace, which was transacted under the mediation of the French ambassador at the Ottoman Porte. The count de Neuperg, as Imperial plenipotentiary, signed the preliminaries on the first day of September. They were ratified by the emperor, though he pretended to be dissatisfied with the articles; and declared that his minister had exceeded his powers. By this treaty the house of Austria ceded to the grand seignor, Belgrade, Sabatz, Servia, Austrian Wallachia, the isle and fortress of Orsova, with the fort of St. Elizabeth; and the contracting powers agreed that the Danube and the Saave should serve as boundaries to the two empires. The emperor published a circular letter, addressed to his ministers at all the courts of Europe, blaming count Wallis for the bad success of the last campaign, and disowning the negotiations of count Neuperg; nay, these two officers were actually disgraced, and confined in different castles. This, however, was no other than a sacrifice to the resentment of the czarina, who loudly complained that the emperor had concluded a separate peace, contrary to his engagements with the Russian empire. Her general, count Munich, had obtained a victory over the Turks at Choczim in Moldavia, and made himself master of that place, in which he found two hundred pieces of artillery; but the country was so ruined by the incursions of the Tartars, that the Muscovites could not subsist in it during the winter. The czarina finding herself abandoned by the emperor, and unable to cope with the whole power of the Ottoman empire, took the first opportunity of putting an end to the war upon honourable terms. After a short negotiation, the conferences ended in a treaty, by which she was left in possession of Azoph, on condition that its fortifications should be demolished; and the ancient limits were re-established between the two empires.