Andrei Uvarov was undeniably a man of consequence, but his grand scheme had gone awry.
The Russian army was nowhere near as powerful as he had imagined.
In particular, on the Anatolian Plateau, the Russian army—which had been advancing triumphantly—had become bogged down. It could not break through the front, supplies were running short in the rear, and uprisings kept flaring up in the occupied territories.
On the eastern front, once he realized the Austrian army was merely bluffing, Omar Pasha—the Austrian deserter—decisively concentrated his forces against the rebellious Bulgarians. After crushing the uprising, he headed north to reinforce Dobruja, where the Russians suffered another setback.
At sea, the balance of power had shifted after Austria and Britain reached a peace agreement and the British Navy began secretly supporting the Ottoman navy.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet had missed its best opportunity to annihilate the Ottoman navy, and its plan to attack Constantinople directly had to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, with the Ottoman Empire beleaguered on all sides, its Sultan dead, and the state beset by internal and external troubles, its leaders finally set aside their differences. The twenty-eight-year-old Valide Sultan Shevkyevza had overruled all opposition and appointed Omar Pasha, an Austrian deserter.
Omar Pasha's real name was Mihailo Latas. He had been a Serbian military aristocrat from Austria and served as a clerk in the Austrian Empire's army.
But after his father offended Hungarian nobles and was exposed for corruption, Mihailo Latas's family fell into decline. Determined not to suffer the same fate as his father, he stole all 180 florins from the army's treasury and fled to Bosnia.
Afterward, Mihailo Latas changed his name to Omar, converted to Islam, and underwent circumcision, beginning his extraordinary life.
Although Omar Pasha had never received a formal European military education, growing up