to Russia to the reactionary Janissaries: Despite all these treatises and efforts at modernization, the Janissaries and their allies managed to derail Sultan Selim III's Western-style military, bureaucratic, and financial reforms, even killing the "infidel sultan" himself. It was not until the 1830s that fundamental reforms could be started under Mahmud II, who destroyed the Janissaries in 1826, a century and a quarter after Peter the Great's liquidation of the strel'tsy. In 1806, the Ottoman Empire incited by Napoleonic France started a new war. The long six-year war for Russia took place in parallel with the Russo-Persian War, the Russo-Swedish War and the War of the Fourth Coalition. Despite this, in the decisive campaign of 1811, the Russian army of Kutuzov defeated the Ottoman army on the Danube, which made it possible to conclude a peace treaty beneficial for Russia, according to which Russia get Bessarabia. The Ottoman Empire had maintained military parity with Russia until the second half of the eighteenth century, but by the 1820s the Ottoman armies were unable to put down the Greek War of Independence in southern Greece. The great powers of Europe decided to intervene and assist Greece with its independence. After the Battle of Navarino and the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29), in which the Russian army first crossed the Balkan Mountains and took Adrianople, Turkey recognized the independence of Greece and the transition of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus to Russia. Thus Greece became the first independent country created out of a section of the Ottoman Empire. Russian Empire aspirations for a section of the empire and bases on Russia's southern flank provoked British fears over naval domination of the Mediterranean and control of the land route to the Indian Subcontinent. When in 1853 Russia destroyed the entire Ottoman fleet at Sinop, Britain and France concluded that armed intervention on the side of the Ottomans was the only way to halt a massive Russian expansion. Even though Ottomans and Russians were on opposing sides, the roots of the ensuing Crimean War lay in the rivalry between the British and the Russians. The war ended unfavorably for the Russians, with the Paris peace of 1856. The war brought a decline in Ottoman morale and a feeling of helplessness, illustrating that modern technology and superior weaponry were the most important part of a modern army, and a part that the Ottoman Empire was sorely