ABSTRACT
A revolutionary mentality was set up as a new bond for the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. The ideas of the French Revolution became catalysts for the break-up of the Orthodox commonwealth, by providing the common denominator for the formation of nationalities. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, in the ruins of the old Ottoman order, the surviving Byzantine tradition in its Phanariot and Russian interpretations faced the new ideas of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution. Phanariot rule had reinforced links with the Russian Church as well as with the ecumenical patriarchate. Many 'displaced' Phanariots and diaspora Greeks stayed on to take part in the Greek War of Independence, and to influence the constitutional forms of the emerging Greek state. While it would be wrong to regard the First Serbian Rising as an offshoot of the French Revolution, the notion of a 'Serbian revolution' was accepted in Europe at the time.
