fulfilled. He also condemned the action and professed not to offer his
assistance, which was the kiss of death for Ypsilantis because the
support he obtained in the Principalities where the Greeks were generally
unpopular was chiefly a result of the local inhabitants’ faith in a
Russian military intervention. Now, the tsar’s assistance of which the
people had been constantly assured became an illusion. Even worse
for the Greeks, Alexander I allowed the Turks to send their troops
into the Principalities to crush the revolt, which was the consent that
Sultan Mahmud II needed according to Russo-Ottoman treaty stipulations.
The tsar’s response filled Metternich with optimism as he
believed in the prompt defeat of “that madman, that masked liberal,
that ill-advised Hellenist.”3 This desire was soon satisfied. In early
May, Turkish soldiers entered the Principalities and seized Bucharest
before the month passed. Ypsilantis fled to Austrian soil in late June
and the rest of his companions fighting in the Danubian Principalities
were sent fleeing during the summer.4